雙語·像愛麗絲的小鎮(zhèn) Chapter 9

Chapter 9

In the months of November and December that year Jean Paget worked harder than she had ever worked before.

Rose Sawyer joined her in Willstown within a fortnight, and Aggie Topp sailed early in November. I got Mr Pack to send Aggie to see me before she left. She was a gaunt, rather prim woman, but I could see at once that Pack had been quite right; if anyone could make girls work this woman could. I gave her her ticket and a typed sheet of instructions telling her how she would get by air from Sydney to Willstown, and then I talked to her about the job.“You know, it's very, very rough,”I said.“It's rough, and it's hot, and Miss Paget is having to start absolutely from nothing. She's got plenty of money, but it's going to be hard, all the time. You understand that, Mrs Topp?”

She said,“I've had two letters from Miss Paget, and she sent a photograph of the place, the main street. It don't look up to much, I must say.”

“You're quite happy to go out there, are you?”

She said,“Oh well, I've been in rough places before. It's only for a year to start with, anyway.”And then she said,“I always liked Miss Paget.”

I had another matter to fix up with Aggie Topp. Jean was very anxious to get hold of an air-conditioning unit, a thing about the size of a small refrigerator which stood in the room and took hot air into itself and pumped it out cold into the room; it seemed to her important to have this to prevent the girls' hands from sweating as they worked and marking the delicate leathers of the shoes. She had not been able to get hold of one in Australia and had cabled me, and I had found a firm that made them and got hold of one with a good deal of difficulty and some small payments on the side. Derek Harris is rather good at that sort of negotiation. I had it in our office standing at the foot of the stairs and I showed it to Mrs Topp, and arranged for her to take it out with her to Sydney. From Sydney it would have to be flown up with her to Cairns and Willstown at some considerable expense, but it seemed to me to be worth it since it was then the hottest time of the year.

This was the biggest commission that I got from Jean and was my own main contribution to the venture; the remainder of her cables were concerned with little bits of things that were no trouble. Aggie Topp took out with her a good deal of stuff from Pack and Levy, too; three cases full of tools and lasts and formers and all sorts of things, the bill for which came to about a hundred and forty-six pounds, which I paid for Jean in England.

Joe Harman helped her to get the buildings started on the day that they arrived in Willstown. They had a meeting with Tim Whelan and his two sons, in the carpenter's shop amongst the coffins. They had already placed orders for two lorry loads of lumber in Cairns. The men stood or sat squatting, ringer fashion, on the floor with papers on the floor before them, planning the layout of the buildings; the workshop with its three-bedroom annexe was to be built first, and after that the ice-cream parlour next to it, leaving room for the expansion of the workshop one way and of the ice-cream parlour the other way. There were no great difficulties of expansion in the built-up area of Willstown.

They sent Tim Whelan presently to find Mr Carter, the Shire Clerk, to pass the plans of the new buildings and to grant a lease of the site in the main street.“It'll be all right there,”he said thoughtfully.“There was a whole row of houses there in 1905—I've got a photograph. But nobody ever paid rent for that land in my time.”Jean asked what rent would be required for the area she wanted, a difficult matter to decide in view of the fact that no plans existed and the area that she wanted was quite uncertain.“This is a town borough,”Mr Carter said.“You don't lease land upon an acreage basis in a town borough. If you're going to develop the land by building, then I'd say about a shilling a year for each hundred foot of frontage. It's in the main street, you see. If you wanted it for chickens or anything like that I'd have to charge five shillings.”

They adjourned to the bar of the hotel to seal the contracts; Jean sat on the steps outside with a lemonade, as was fitting for a lady with a reputation to preserve in Willstown.

She went to Brisbane a week later, flying to Cairns and flying on the same day down to Brisbane. She stayed there for three days and came back having ordered an electric generating set, a very large refrigerator, two deep freezes, a stainless steel counter, eight glass-topped tables, thirty-two chairs, two sink units, and a mass of minor shop fittings, glasses, plates, cutlery, and furnishings as well as a good deal of electrical fittings and cable. She made arrangements with the firms for all this stuff to be crated and consigned to Forsayth; in Cairns she made arrangements for the truck transport of these goods from Forsayth to Willstown. I had arranged the necessary credits for her and she was able to pay cash for everything.

She came back to Willstown a week later having made tentative arrangements for supplies of stock for her ice-cream parlour, and found the framework of the workshop already erected; a wooden building goes up very quickly. The matter was a nine days' wonder in Willstown and old men used to stand around wondering at this midsummer madness of an English girl, a stranger to the Gulf country, who proposed to make shoes there and send them all the way to England to be sold. They were too kindly to be rude to her or to laugh at such an eccentricity, but an aura of disbelief surrounded the whole venture and made her feel very much alone in those first weeks.

She visited Midhurst at a very early stage, one Sunday when no work was going on upon her building. Joe Harman drove in to fetch her in his big utility at dawn one day, and took her back to Midhurst in time for breakfast. As soon as they were out of sight of the town they stopped for five minutes to kiss and talk.

Presently they disentangled and went on. Jean was accustomed by this time to the idea that no road in this country had a metalled surface. She had not been beyond the town hitherto; very soon she discovered that a road was where the car drove across country. The land was parched and dry with the heat of summer, covered with thin tufts of scorched grass. It was a wooded land, covered thinly with spindly, distorted eucalyptus trees averaging twenty to thirty feet in height; these trees were fairly widely spaced so that it was possible for a car or truck driven across country to find a way between them. This was the road, and when the surface of the earth became too deeply pitted and potholed with traffic the cars and trucks would deviate and choose another course. These tracks followed the same general direction, coming together at the fords where creeks, now dry and stony, had to be crossed, and fanning out again upon the other side.

Once in the twenty miles she saw half a dozen cattle, that stampeded wildly at the noise of the utility as it bounced, and rocketed over the uneven ground. She asked Joe what on earth the cattle found to eat; the ground seemed to her to be completely barren.“They get along,”he said.“There's plenty here for them to eat, my word. This dry stuff in the tussocks, why, it's just the same as hay.”He told her that there was a waterhole a little way from their track.“They never go more than three or four miles from water,”he said.“Horses, now—you'll find them grazing up to twenty miles from a drink.”

Once she exclaimed at three brown, furry forms bounding away among the trees.“Oh, Joe— kangaroos!”

He corrected her.“Wallabies. We don't get any 'roos up in these parts.”

She stared after the flying forms, entranced.“What's the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo, Joe?”

“A wallaby's smaller,”he said.“A big, buck kangaroo, he'll stand up to six feet high, but a wallaby's not more than four. A kangaroo, he's got a face like a deer. A wallaby, he's got a face like a rabbit, or a rat. I got a little wallaby to show you at the homestead.”

“A wild one?”

“He's a tame one now. He'll get wild as he grows older; then he'll go off to his own folks.”He told her that when they had shot the wallabies to send the sample skins to Cairns for her they had shot a doe with a joey, and rather than leave the small defenceless creature to die they had taken it home to rear.“I like a wallaby about the place,”he said.

They came to Midhurst presently. A fence of two wire strands tacked to the trees, with an occasional post in the wider gaps, crossed their path, with an iron gate; beyond the gate the track became the semblance of a road. She got out of the utility and opened the gate and he drove through.“This is the home paddock,”he said.“For horses, mostly.”She could see horses standing underneath the trees, lean riding horses, swishing long black tails.“I've got about three square miles fenced off like this around the house.”

The road swung round, and she saw Midhurst homestead. It was prettily situated on a low hill above the bend of a creek; this creek was not running, but there were still pools of water held along its length.“Of course, you're seeing it at the worst time of year,”he said, and she became aware of his anxiety.“It's a lovely little river in the winter, oh my word. But even in the worst part of the dry, like now, there's always water there.”

The homestead was a fairly large building that stood high off the ground on posts, so that you climbed eight feet up a flight of steps to reach the veranda and the one floor of the house. It was built of wood and had the inevitable corrugated iron roof. Four rooms, three bedrooms and one sitting-room, were surrounded on all four sides by a veranda twelve feet deep; masses of ferns and greenery of all sorts stood in pots and on stands on this veranda at the outer edge and killed most of the direct rays of the sun. There was a kitchen annexe at one end and a bathroom annexe at the other; the toilet was a little hut over a pit in the paddock, some distance from the house. Most of the life of the building evidently went on in the veranda and the rooms seemed to be little used; in the veranda was Joe's bed and his mosquito net, and several cane easy chairs, and the dining-room tables and chairs. Suspended from the rafters was a large canvas waterbag cooling in the draft, with an enamelled mug hung from it by a string.

Five or six dogs greeted them noisily as the utility came to a standstill before the steps. He brushed them aside, but pointed out a large blue and yellow bitch like no dog Jean had ever seen before.“That's Lily,”he said fondly.“She had a bonza litter, oh my word.”

He took her up into the coolness of the veranda; she turned to him.“Oh Joe, this is nice!”

“Like it?”Puppies were surging about them, grovelling and licking their hands; odd-shaped yellow and blue puppies. Along the veranda a small animal stood erect behind a chair, peering at them around the corner. Joe took the puppies one by one and dropped them into a wire-netting enclosure in one corner.“I let them out this morning before driving in,”he said.“They'll be big enough to go down in the yard pretty soon.”

“Joe, who fixed up these plants? Did you?”

He shook his head.“Mrs Spears did that, when she used to live here. I kept them going. The lubras water them, morning and evening.”He told her that he had three Abo women, wives of three of his stockriders, who shared the domestic duties of the homestead and cooked for him.

He looked around.“There's the joey somewhere.”They found the little wallaby lolloping about on the other side of the veranda; it stood like a little kangaroo about eighteen inches high, and had no fear of them. Jean stooped beside it and it nibbled at her fingers.“What do you feed it on, Joe?”

“Bread and milk. It's doing fine on that.”

“Don't the puppies hurt it?”

“They chase it now and then, but it can kick all right. A full-grown wallaby can kill a dog. Rip him right up.”He paused, watching her caress the little creature, thinking how lovely she was.“It's all in fun,”he said.“They get along all right. By and by when he gets bigger and the dogs are bigger he'll get angry with them, and then he'll go off into the bush.”

A fat, middle-aged lubra, a black golliwog of a woman, laid the table and presently appeared with two plates of the inevitable steak with two eggs on the top, and a pot of strong tea. Jean had become accustomed to the outback breakfast by this time but this steak was tougher than most; she made mental notes to look into the Midhurst cooking as she struggled with it. In the end she gave up and sat back laughing.“I'm sorry, Joe,”she said.“It's because I'm English, I suppose.”

He was very much concerned.“Have a couple more fried eggs. You haven't eaten anything.”

“I've eaten six times as much as I ever ate in England for breakfast, Joe. Who does the cooking?”

“Palmolive did this,”he said.“It's her day. Mary cooks much better, but it's her day off.”

“Who are they, Joe?”

“I've got a ringer called Moonshine,”he said.“Palmolive's his gin. My boss Abo, he's called Bourneville; he's a bonza boy. Mary's his gin. Mary cooks all right.”

“Tell me, Joe,”she said,“do you ever get any indigestion?”

He grinned.“Not very often. Just now and then.”

“You won't mind if I reorganize the cooking a bit when I come in?”

“Not so long as you don't do it all yourself,”he said.

“You wouldn't like me to do that?”

He shook his head.“I'd rather see you keep time for the things you want to do, the shoes, and the ice-cream parlour, and that.”

She touched his hand.“I want to keep time for you.”

He took her out before the heat of the day and showed her the establishment. Although the property covered over a thousand square miles, there were no more buildings round the homestead than she had seen on a four-hundred-acre farm in England. There were three or four cottages of two rooms at the most, for stockmen; there were two small bunkhouses for unmarried ringers, white and black. There was a shed housing the truck and the utility and a mass of oddments of machinery. There was a stable for about six horses, which was empty, and a saddle-room, and a butcher's room. There was a Diesel engine that drove an electric generator and pumped water from the creek. That was about all.

Once he said,“Can you ride a horse?”

She shook her head.“I'm afraid not, Joe. Ordinary people don't ride horses much in England.”

“Oh my word,”he said.“You should be able to do that.”

“Could I learn?”

“Too right.”

He put his fingers to his mouth like a schoolboy and blew a shrill whistle; a black head came poking out the window of a single-room cottage.“Bourneville,”he called.“Get out and bring in Auntie and Robin, 'n saddle up. I'll be down to help you in a minute.”

He turned to her, surveying her cotton frock.“I dunno about your things. Could you get into a pair of my strides, or would you rather not?”

She laughed.“Oh Joe, they'd go round me twice!”

“I wasn't always as fat as this,”he said.“I got a pair I used to wear before the war, I can't get into now. It doesn't matter if they don't fit right; we'll only be walking the horses so you'll see what it feels like.”

He took her up into the homestead and produced a clean man's shirt and a faded pair of jodhpurs and a belt for her; she took them from him laughing, and went into his spare room and put them on, with a pair of his elastic-sided, thin-soled riding boots that were far too big for her. It gave her a queer feeling of possession to be dressed all in his clothes. She walked gingerly down into the yard with the feeling that everything was likely to fall off her, as it had done on another memorable occasion.

He helped her up into the saddle; once astride the patient fourteen-year-old Auntie the feeling of insecurity left her. They adjusted her stirrups and showed her how to set her foot; once she was fairly settled she felt very safe. She knew little about horses or saddlery at that time, but this saddle was like no saddle she had ever seen in England, even in a picture. It rose up in an arch high behind her seat and high in front of her, so that she was seated as in a hammock. There was a great horn that projected above each of her thighs and another one under each thigh, so that she was as if clamped into place.“I don't believe that anyone could fall off from a saddle like this,”she said.

“You aren't meant to fall off,”he replied.

They walked the horses out of the yard and down the track to the creek; as they went he showed her how to hold the reins and how to use her heels. He took her up the creek for about a mile and then by a wide circuit through the bush, winding beneath the trees so far as possible to seek the shade. Once she saw four scurrying black forms vanishing among the trees and he told her that these were wild pig, and once in a wide stretch of water covered with water lilies there was a violent swirl of water as an alligator dived away from them. She saw several wallabies bounding away before their horses.

They returned to the homestead after an hour or so. Although they had walked the horses all the way Jean was drenched with sweat under the hot sun, and she had a raging thirst. In the veranda she drank several mugs of water, and then she went into the bathroom and had a shower, and changed back into her own cool clothes.

They lunched in the veranda on steak and bread and jam, a repeat of breakfast without the eggs.“Palmolive hasn't got much imagination in the matter of tucker,”he said apologetically.

“She's looking very tired,”Jean said.“Great black circles under her eyes. Give her the afternoon off, Joe. I'll make tea for you.”

He offered her the use of the spare room bed to sleep on after lunch, but they had seen so little of each other in the last fortnight that the time seemed too precious to waste in sleep.“Let's sit out here,”she said.“If I should go to sleep, Joe, it'll be just one of those things.”So they pulled two of the long cane chairs to the corner of the veranda where there might be a little breeze, and sat together close, so that they could touch hands.“It's not always as hot as this,”he said, still anxious for her approval of the place.“Just these two months are the bad ones. By January it'll be beginning to cool off, when the rain gets properly under way.”

“It's not too bad,”she said.“I remember times when it was quite as hot as this in Malaya.”

She led him on to tell her about his work on the station; having seen a little of the terrain that morning she felt she could appreciate what he told her better now.“There's not a lot to do this time of year,”he said.“I like to get up to the top end of the station once a fortnight, if I can, in case of duffers. Make a cache or two of tucker up there, top, this time of year, and shoot the worst of the scrub bulls you see around.”

“What's a duffer, Joe?”

“Why, cattle duffers—cattle thieves. We've not had much of it this year. Sometimes the drovers coming down to Julia Creek from the Cape stations—they pick up a few as they go through the property and put them with the herd. It means faking the brands, of course, and there's the police at Julia to keep an eye open for fresh-branded beasts as they go on the train. They caught a joker at it two years ago and he got six months. We've not had much since then. Poddy-dodging, now—well, that's another matter.”

“What's poddy-dodging, Joe?”She was beginning to grow sleepy, but she wanted to know all she could.

“Why, a poddy's a cleanskin, a calf born since the last muster that hasn't been branded. Some of these jokers, even your best friends, they'll come on to your station and round up the poddys and drive them off on to their own land, and then there's nothing to say they're yours. That's poddy-dodging, that is. It's a fair cow. Of course, there's always cattle crossing the boundaries because there aren't any fences, so it's a bit of a mix-up generally when you come to muster. But I've been on stations where there weren't hardly any poddys there at all when we come to muster. All the jokers on the other stations had got them.”

She said,“But do the poddys just stay on the new land? Don't they want to go back to mother?”

He glanced at her, appreciating the question.“That's right—they would if you let them. They'd go straight back to their own herd on their own land, even if it was fifty miles. But what these jokers do is this. They build a little corral on their land in some place where no one wouldn't ever think to look, and they drive your poddys into it. Then they leave them there for four or five days without food or water—don't give them nothing at all. Well, if you do that to a poddy he goes sort of silly and forgets about the herd, and mother. All he wants is a drink of water, same as you or I. Then you let him out and let him drink his fill at a waterhole. He's had such a thirst he won't leave that waterhole for months. He forgets all about his own place, and just stays in his new home.”

Her eyes closed, and she slept. When she woke up the sun was lower in the sky, and Joe had left her. She got up and sponged her face in the bathroom, and saw him outside working on the engine of the truck. She tidied herself up, looked at her watch, and went to investigate the kitchen.

Primitive was the word, she thought. There was a wood-burning hearth which mercifully was out, and a wick-burning oil stove; this was the cooking equipment. There was a small kerosene refrigerator. Masses of cooked meat were stored in a wire gauze meat safe with nearly as many flies inside it as there were outside. The utensils were old-fashioned and dirty and few in number; it was a nightmare of a kitchen. Jean felt that the right course would be to burn it down and start again, and she wondered if this could be done without burning down the house as well. There was little in the store cupboard but staple foods such as flour and salt and soap.

She put on the kettle to boil for tea and looked around for something to cook, other than meat. Eggs were plentiful at Midhurst and she found some stale cheese; she went and consulted Joe, and then came back and made him a cheese omelette with eight eggs. He cleaned his hands and came and watched her while she did it.“Oh my word,”he said.“Where did you learn cooking?”

“In Ealing,”she said, and it all seemed very far away: the grey skies, the big red buses, and the clamour of the Underground.“I had a sort of little kitchenette with an electric cooker. I always used to cook myself a two-course evening meal.”

He grinned awkwardly.“Afraid you won't find many electric cookers in the outback.”

She touched his hand.“I know that, Joe. But there are lots of things that could be done here to make it a bit easier.”As they ate their tea they talked about the kitchen and the house.“It's just the kitchen that needs altering,”she said.“The rest of it is lovely.”

“I'll get a toilet fixed up in the house before you come,”he promised her.“It's all right for me going out there, but it's not nice for you.”

She laughed.“I don't mind that, so long as you keep up the supplies of the Saturday Evening Post.”He grinned, but she found him set upon this alteration.“Some places have a septic tank and everything,”he said.“They put one in at Augustus when the Duke and Duchess stayed there. I reckon that we'll have to wait a while for that.”

They ate their tea out on the veranda as the sun went down, and sat looking out over the creek and the bush, smoking and talking quietly.“What are you doing next week?”she asked.“Will you be in town, Joe?”

He nodded.“I'll be in on Thursday, or Friday at the latest.“I'm going up to the top end tomorrow for a couple of days, just see what's going on.”

She smiled.“Looking after the poddys?”

He grinned.“That's right. It's a bit difficult this time of year, in the dry, because the tracks don't show so good. I got a boy called Nugget on the station now, and he's a bonza tracker, oh my word. I'm taking him up with me. I've got a kind of feeling that Don Curtis, up on Windermere station, he's been at my poddys.”

“What would you do if you found tracks, then, Joe? Tracks leading off your land and on to his?”

He grinned.“Go after 'em and find 'em and drive 'em back,”he said.“Hope Don doesn't come along while we're doing it.”

He drove her into Willstown at about nine o'clock that night; they halted for a while outside the town to say goodnight in proper style. She lay against his shoulder with his arm around her, listening to the noises of the bush, the croaking of the frogs, the sound of crickets, and the crying of a night bird.“It's a lovely place you live in, Joe,”she said.“It just wants a new kitchen, that's all. Don't ever worry about me not liking it.”

He kissed her.“It'll be all ready for you when you come.”

“April,”she said.“Early in April, Joe.”

She started up the shoe workshop in the first week of December, three or four days after Aggie Topp arrived. To start with she had five girls, Judy Small and her friend Lois Strang, and Annie, whose figure was beginning to deteriorate and who had been sacked from the hotel, and two fifteen-year-olds who had recently left school. For cleanliness and to mark the fact that they were working in a regular job she put everyone into a green overall coat in the workshop, and gave them a mirror on the wall so that they could see what they looked like.

From the first days she found that the fifteen-year-olds were the best employees. Girls straight from school were used to the discipline of regular hours of work; she seldom got the girls from outback homes to settle down to it so well as the younger ones. The monotony was irksome to the older girls who had left school for some years, or who had never been to school at all. She tried to help them by ordering an automatic changing gramophone from Cairns, with a supply of records; the music certainly intrigued and amused the whole of Willstown and may have helped the older girls a little, but not much. The big attraction of the workshop was the air-conditioner.

The air-conditioner was the best recruiting agent of the lot. In that torrid summer heat which ranged from between a hundred and a hundred and ten degrees at midday, she managed to keep the temperature of the workshop down to about seventy degrees, at which the girls could work without their hands sweating. For the girls it meant that they got respite from the heat of the day, and music to listen to, and the novelty of a clean green overall to wear, and money in their pockets at the end of the week. The workshop was popular from the first, and Jean never had any difficulty in getting as many recruits for it as she could handle. For the early months, however, she was content with five.

She spent a hectic fortnight after the workshop opened getting the ice-cream parlour furnished and stocked. She was resolved to have this open by Christmas Day, and she achieved her aim by opening on December 20th. On Joe's advice she only opened half of it at first, leaving the parlour for the Abos till it was established that they wanted ice-cream. This saved her the wages of a coloured girl and the expense of furnishing. In fact, it was not for nearly a year that the demand arose and Abo ringers started hanging round the kitchen door to buy an ice-cream soda. She opened the coloured annexe in the following September.

She stood with Joe outside in the blazing sunlit street on that first afternoon, looking at what she had done. The workshop and the ice-cream parlour stood more or less side by side on the main street. The windows of the workshop were closed to keep the cool air in, but they could hear the girls singing as they worked over the shoes. Christmas was near, and they were singing carols —“Holy Night”, and“Good King Wenceslas”, and“See Amid the Winter Snow”. The shirt was sticking to Jean's back and she shifted her shoulders to get a little air inside.“Well, there it all is,”she said.“Now we've got to see if we can make it pay.”

“Come on and I'll buy you a soda,”he said.“That'll help.”They went in and bought a soda from Rose Sawyer behind the counter.“This part of it'll pay,”he said.“I don't know about the shoes, but this should do all right. I was talking to George Connor up at the hotel. He's getting very worried about his bar, with you starting up.”

“I don't see why he's got anything to worry about,”she said.“I'm not going to sell beer.”

“You're going to sell drinks to ringers,”he remarked.“If you had a bar instead of this, wouldn't it rile you?”

She laughed.“I suppose it would. I can't see myself putting the bar out of business, Joe.”

“I can see you doing all right, all the same.”As they sat at the little chromium glass-topped table, Pete Fletcher came in shyly and sidled up to the bar and ordered an ice-cream, and began chatting with Rose Sawyer. Joe said,“Poor old George Connor.”They laughed together, and then he said,“I bet you don't keep Rose six months.”

Jean had seen a good deal of Rose Sawyer in the last month.“I'll take you,”she said.“Bet you a quid she's still there in a year from now, Joe.”They shook hands on it according to the custom of the place.“If she is,”he said,“it'll be a miracle.”

Now that the businesses were started, she was very tired; she felt slack and listless in the great heat, drained of all energy. She would have liked to go out with Joe to Midhurst that evening and live quietly there for a day or two, sleeping and riding and playing with the little wallaby. A cautionary instinct warned her not to offend against the rural code of morals by an indiscretion of that sort; if she was to make a success of what she had set out to do for women in that place her own behaviour would have to be above reproach. No mothers in the outback, she knew, would care to let their daughters work for her if it were known that she was spending nights alone at Midhurst with Joe Harman; no married man would care to bring his wife and daughters to an ice-cream parlour run by a loose woman of that sort.

It was a Wednesday, but Sunday was no longer an off day for Jean since it was likely to be the biggest day of all for the ice-cream and soft drinks. She arranged with Joe that he should call for her at the hotel soon after dawn and take her out to Midhurst for the day. She said goodbye to him and went to her room as soon as work stopped in the workshop, pausing only to see the girls from the workshop sampling the ice-cream parlour. She went and lay down on her bed, exhausted and too tired to eat that night; it was refreshingly cool in the workshop building, for the air-conditioner had been on all day. She took off her clothes and put on her pyjamas, and slept in the coolness; she slept so for twelve hours.

She had been out to Midhurst several times since that first visit and had fitted herself out with a small pair of ringer's trousers in Bill Duncan's store for riding, with a pair of elastic-sided ringer's riding boots to match. She met Joe in the early morning with a little bundle of riding things under her arm, and got into the utility with him. As usual they drove a little way out of town and stopped for an exchange of mutual esteem; as he held her he asked,“How are you feeling this morning?”

She smiled.“I'm better now, Joe. It was the reaction, I suppose—getting it finished and open. I went to bed just after leaving you and slept right through. Twelve solid hours. I'm feeling fine.”

“Take things very easy today,”he said.

She stroked his hair,“Dear Joe. It's going to be much easier from now on.”

“This bloody weather'll break soon,”he said.“We'll get rain starting within the week, and after that it'll begin to get cool.”

They drove on presently.“Joe,”she said,“I had an awful row this week with the bank manager— Mr Watkins. Did you hear about it?”

He grinned.“I did hear something,”he admitted.“What really happened?”

“It was the flies,”she said.“It was so hot on Friday, and I was so tired. I went into that miserable little bank to cash the wages cheque and you know how full of flies it always is. I had to wait a few minutes and the flies started crawling all over me, in my hair and in my mouth and in my eyes. I was sweating, I suppose. I lost my temper, Joe. I oughtn't to have done that.”

“It's a crook place, that bank is,”he observed.“There's no reason why it should have all those flies. What did you say?”

“Everything,”she said simply.“I told him I was closing my account because I couldn't stand his bloody flies. I said I was going to bank in Cairns and get the cash in by Dakota every week. I said I was going to write to his head office in Sydney and tell them why I'd done it, and I said I was going to write to the Bank of New South Wales and offer my account to them if they'd start up a branch here with no flies. I said I used a DDT spray and I didn't get flies in my workshop and I wasn't going to have them in my bank. I said he ought to be setting an example to Willstown instead of...”She stopped.

“Instead of what?”he asked.

She said weakly,“I forgot what I did say.”

He stared straight ahead at the track.“I did hear in the bar you told him he ought to set an example instead of sitting on his arse and scratching.”

“Oh, Joe, I couldn't have said that!”

He grinned.“That's what they're saying that you told him, in Willstown.”

“Oh...”They drove on in silence for a time.“I'll go in on Friday and apologize,”she said.“It's no good making quarrels in a place like this.”

“I don't see why you should apologize,”he objected.“It's up to him to apologize to you. After all, you're the customer.”He paused.“I'd go in there on Friday and see how he's getting on,”he advised.“I know he got ten gallons of DDT spray on Saturday, because Al Burns told me.”

When they got to Midhurst he made her go at once and sit in a long chair at the corner of the veranda with a glass of lemon squash made with cold water from the refrigerator. He would not let her move for breakfast, but brought her a cup of tea and a boiled egg and some bread and butter on a tray. She sat there, relaxed, with the fatigue soaking out of her, content to have him gently fussing over her. When the day grew hot he suggested that she took the spare bedroom and lay down upon the bed leaving the double doors open at each end of the room to get the draught through; he promised, grinning, not to look if he passed along the veranda. She took him at his word and took off most of her clothes in the spare room and lay down on the bed and slept through the midday heat.

When she woke up it was nearly four o'clock and she was cool and rested and at ease. She lay for a while wondering if he had looked; then she got up and slipped her frock on and went to the shower, and stood for a long time under the warm stream of water. She came to him presently on the veranda, fresh and rested and full of fondness for him in his generosity, and found him squatting on the floor mending a bridle with palm, needle, and waxed thread. She stooped and kissed him, and said,“Thanks for everything, Joe. I had a lovely sleep.”And then she said,“Can we go riding after tea?”

“Still a bit hot,”he said.“Think that's a good thing?”

“I'd like to,”she said.“I want to be able to sit on a horse properly.”

He said,“You did all right last time.”She had been promoted from the fourteen-year-old Auntie to the more energetic Sally and she was gradually learning how to trot. She found that trotting in that climate made her sweat more than the horse and made it difficult for her to sit down next day, but the exercise, she knew, was good for her. Starting at her age, she would never be a very good rider, but she was determined to achieve the ability to do it as a means of locomotion in that country.

They rode for an hour and a half that evening, coming back to Midhurst in the early dusk. He would not let her stay out longer than that, though she wanted to.“I'm not a bit tired now,”she said.“I believe I'm getting the hang of this, Joe. It's much easier on Sally than it was on Auntie.”

“Aye,”he said.“The better the horse the less tiring for the rider, long as you can manage him.”

“I'd like to come with you one day up to the top end,”she said.“I suppose it'll have to be after we're married.”

He grinned.“Plenty of wowsers back in Willstown to talk about it, if you came before.”

“Do I ride well enough for that?”

“Oh, aye,”he said.“Take it easy and you'ld get along all right on Sally. I never travel more than twenty miles in the day, not unless there's some special reason.”

He drove her into Willstown in the utility, and as they kissed goodnight he said that he would be in during the following week. She went to bed that night rested and content, refreshed by her quiet day.

She went to the bank on Friday and cashed the wages cheque as usual; she found that the walls were in the process of being distempered and there was not a fly in the place. Mr Watkins was distant in his manner and ignored her; Len James, the young bank clerk, gave her her money with a broad grin and a wink. She saw Len again on Saturday afternoon, when he brought in Doris Nash for an ice-cream soda. He grinned at her, and said,“You wouldn't know the bank, Miss Paget.”

“I was in there yesterday,”she said.“You're having it all distempered.”

“That's right,”he said.“You started something.”

“Is he very sore?”she asked.

“Not really,”the boy said.“He's been wanting to decorate for a long tune, but he's been scared of what the head office would say. There's not a lot of turnover in a place like this, you know. Well, now he's doing it.”

“I'm sorry I was rude,”she said.“If you get a chance, tell him I said that.”

“I will,”he promised her.“I'm glad you were. Haven't had such a laugh for years. I don't like flies, either.”

On the first Sunday she worked steadily in the ice-cream parlour with Rose Sawyer from nine in the morning till ten o'clock at night. They sold a hundred and eighty-two ice-creams at a shilling each and three hundred and forty-one soft drinks at sixpence. Dead tired, Jean counted the money in the till at the end of the day.“Seventeen pounds thirteen shillings,”she said. She stared at Rose in wonder.“That doesn't seem so bad for a town with a hundred and forty-six people, all told. How much is that a head?”

“About two and six, isn't it?”

“Do you think it's going to go on like this?”

“I don't see why not. Lots of people didn't come in today. Most of them come in two or three times. Judy must have had about ten bob's worth.”

“She can't keep that up,”Jean said.“She'll be sick, and we'll get a recession. Come on and let's go to bed.”

She opened the ice-cream parlour after lunch on Christmas Day and took twenty pounds in the afternoon and evening. She had the gramophone from the workshop in the parlour that evening playing dance music so that the little wooden shack that was her ice-cream parlour streamed out music and light into the dark wastes of the main street, and seemed to the inhabitants just like a bit of Manly Beach dropped down in Willstown. Old, withered women that Jean had never seen before came in that night with equally old men to have an ice-cream soda, drawn by the lights and by the music. Although the parlour was still full of people she closed punctually at ten o'clock, thinking it better as a start to stick to the bar closing time and not introduce the complication of late hours and night life into a rural community.

The workshop went fairly steadily under Aggie Topp and they despatched two packing-cases of shoes to Forsayth just after Christmas to be sent by rail to Brisbane and by ship to England. She had already sent a few early samples of their work to Pack and Levy by air mail.

On Boxing Day the rain came. They had had one or two short showers before, but that day the clouds massed high in great peaks of cumulonimbus that spread and covered the whole sky so that it grew dark. Then down it came, a steady, vertical torrent of rain that went on and on, unending. At first the conditions became worse, with no less heat and very high humidity; in the workshops the girls sweated freely even at seventy degrees, and Aggie Topp had to postpone the finishing operations and concentrate on the earlier, less delicate stages of the manufacture of shoes.

Jean went with Joe to Midhurst for a day soon after the New Year; as usual he called for her just after dawn. This time it was a grey dawn of hot, streaming rain; she scuttled quickly from the door of her room into the cab of the utility. By that time she was getting used to being wet through to the skin, and drying, and getting wet again; the water as it fell was nearly blood temperature and the chance of a chill was slight. She said as she got into the car,“What are the creeks like, Joe?”

“Coming up,”he said.“Nothing to worry over yet.”A time would come when for a few weeks he would be unable to reach Willstown from Midhurst in the utility, and would have to ride in if they were to meet at all. He had been stocking up with foodstuffs for the homestead in the last week or two.

There were two creeks between Willstown and Midhurst, wide bottoms of sand and boulders that she knew as hot, arid places in the dry. Now they were wide streams of yellow, muddy water, rather terrifying to her. At the first one she said,“Can we get through that, Joe?”

“That's all right,”he said.“It's only a foot deep. You see that tree there with the overhanging branch? When that branch gets covered, at the fork, it's a bit deep then.”

They drove the utility ploughing through the water and emerged the other side; they forded the second creek in the same way, leaping from boulder to boulder, and went on to Midhurst. They got there as usual in time for breakfast. It was still streaming rain down in a steady torrent, too wet for any outdoor activity. They set to work after breakfast to plan out the new kitchen and the toilet he had set his heart on.

In Cairns that morning, four hundred miles to the west of them, Miss Jacqueline Bacon tripped delicately down the pavement in the rain from her home to the Cairns Ambulance and Fire Station. She wore a blue raincoat and she carried an umbrella. She hurried in between the fire engines, and shook the rain from her umbrella. She said to one of the firemen on duty,“My, isn't it wet?”

He sucked his empty pipe and stared out at the rain.“Fine weather for ducks.”

She went into her little office off the main hall where the gleaming fire engines stood and glanced at the clock; she had still three minutes to go. The room was furnished with a table and with a microphone and a writing-pad, and two tall metal cabinets of wireless gear; a set stood on the table before her pad. She turned three switches for the apparatus to warm up and took off her wet coat and her hat. Then she found her pencil and drew the pad to her, and a card with a long list of call signs and stations on it. She sat down and began her daily work.

She turned a switch on the face of the cabinet before her and said,“Eight Baker Tare, Eight Baker Tare, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Baker Tare. Eight Baker Tare, Eight Baker Tare, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Baker Tare. Eight Baker Tare, if you are receiving Eight Queen Charlie will you please come in. Over to you. Over.”She turned the switch.

From the speaker in the set before her came a woman's voice.“Eight Queen Charlie, Eight Queen Charlie, this is Eight Baker Tare. Can you hear me, Jackie?”

Miss Bacon turned the switch and said,“Eight Baker Tare, this is Eight Queen Charlie. I'm receiving you quite well, about strength four. What's the weather like with you, Mrs Corbett? Over to you. Over.”

“Oh my dear,”the loudspeaker said,“it's coming down in torrents here. We're having a lovely rain; Jim says we've really got it at last. I do believe it's getting cooler already. Over to you.”

“Eight Baker Tare,”said Miss Bacon,“this is Eight Queen Charlie. We're having a lovely rain here, too. I have nothing for you, Mrs Corbett, but if you should have anybody going into Georgetown will you pass word to Mrs Cutter that her son Ronnie came up on the train from Mackay last night and he's coming on by train to Forsayth. He'll be there on Thursday morning, so he should be home on Thursday night. Is this Roger, Mrs Corbett? Over to you. Over.”

The loudspeaker said,“That's Roger, Jackie. One of the boys or Jim will be in Georgetown later on today, and I'll see Mrs Cutter gets that message. Over.”

“Eight Baker Tare,”said Miss Bacon,“this is Eight Queen Charlie. Roger, Mrs Corbett. I must sign off now. Listening out. Eight Easy Victor, Eight Easy Victor, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Easy Victor. Eight Easy Victor, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Easy Victor. If you are receiving me, Mrs Marshall, will you please come in. Over to you. Over.”

There was silence. Miss Bacon went on calling Eight Easy Victor for a minute, but Mrs Marshall, she knew, was in the habit of feeding the hens at the time of the morning schedule and more usually came in in the evening. She made her statutory number of calls and went on to the next.“Eight Nan How, this is Eight Queen Charlie,”and repeated herself.“If you are receiving me, Eight Nan How, will you please come in. Over to you. Over.”

A man's voice said,“Eight Queen Charlie, this is Eight Nan How. Over.”

Miss Bacon said,“Eight Nan How, this is Eight Queen Charlie. I have a telegram for you, Mr Gosling. Have you got a pencil and paper? I can wait just one minute. Only one minute, mind. Call me when you're ready. Over.”

She waited till he called her back, and then said,“Eight Nan How, this is Eight Queen Charlie. Your telegram is from Townsville and it reads Molly had son seven last night eight pounds four ounces both doing fine. And the signature is, Bert. Have you got that, Mr Gosling? Over to you. Over.”

The speaker said,“I got that. It's another boy. Over.”

Miss Bacon said,“I am so glad it's all gone off all right. Give Molly my love when you write, won't you, Mr Gosling? Have you got anything else for me? Over.”

The speaker said,“I'll think out a reply to this, Jackie, and give it to you on the evening schedule. Over to you. Over.”

She said,“Okay, Mr Gosling, I'll take it then. Now I must sign off from you. Eight Item Yoke, Eight Item Yoke, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Item Yoke.”She went on with her work.

Twenty minutes later she was still at it.“Eight Able George, Eight Able George, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Able George. Eight Able George, if you are receiving Eight Queen Charlie will you come in now. Over.”

The answer came in a sobbing torrent of words, rather impeded by the static of three hundred miles.“Oh, Jackie. I'm so glad you've come. We're in such trouble here. Don's horse came back last night. I heard the horse come in about two o'clock in the morning and I thought, that's funny, because Don never travels at night because of the trees, you know. And then I thought, that's funny, because there was only one horse and he had Samson with him so I got up to look and I couldn't see the horse, my dear, so I got a torch and put my coat on and went out in the rain and, my dear, there it was, Don's horse, Jubilee, saddled and everything and Don wasn't there, and I'm so frightened.”The voice dissolved into a torrent of sobs.

Miss Bacon sat motionless before the microphone, one hand on the transmitter switch, listening to the carrier wave and the low sobbing at the other end, clearly distinguishable through the static. There was nothing to be done until Helen Curtis recovered herself and remembered to switch over to Receive. She glanced quickly at the list before her; she hesitated, and then left her chair and opened the door and called to the fireman on duty,“Fred, ring up Mr Barnes and ask him to come down if he can. Something's happened at Windermere.”

She went back to her chair, and now a heterodyne squeal shrilled out, drowning the sobbing as some sympathetic, foolish woman came in on the same wave saying something unintelligible. She sat patiently waiting for the air to clear; until they remembered their routines she could do nothing for them. The heterodyne stopped and Helen Curtis was still sobbing at the microphone three hundred miles away, beneath the coloured picture of the King and Queen in coronation robes and the picture of their daughter's wedding group that stood upon the set. Then she said,“Jackie, Jackie, are you there? Oh, I forgot. Over.”

Miss Bacon turned her switch and said,“All right, Helen, this is Jackie here. Look, everybody, this is Eight Queen Charlie talking to Eight Able George. Will everybody please keep off the air and not transmit. You can stay listening in, but not transmit. I'll call you if you can do anything. Mrs Curtis, I've sent Fred to telephone to Mr Barnes to get him to come down. Now sit down quietly and tell me what happened and I'll take it down. Remember your routine and switch over when you want me to answer. It's going to be all right, Helen. Just tell me quietly what happened. Over to you. Over.”

The speaker said,“Oh, Jackie, it is good to hear you. I've got nobody here except the boongs. Dave's on holiday and Pete's in Normanton. What happened was this. Don went up to the Disappointment Creek part of the station three days ago and he took Samson with him and he said he'd be away two days. I wasn't worried when they didn't get back because of the rain, you know, and I thought they'd have to go around because the creeks would be up. And then last night Don's horse came back alone, and no sign of Samson. Samson's our new Abo stockrider. I've got a very good tracker here called Johnnie Walker, and Johnnie went out at dawn to track the horse back. But he came back an hour ago and it wasn't any good because the rain had washed the tracks out; he could only follow it about three miles and then he lost it, and now I don't know what to do.”There was a pause, and then she said,“Oh, over.”

Miss Bacon's pad was covered with rough notes. She turned her switch and said,“This is Jackie, Helen. Tell me, what stations are north and south of you? Over.”

“It's Carlisle, north of us, Jackie—that's Eddie Page. It's Midhurst to the south, and Pelican to the east. Midhurst is Joe Harman and Pelican Len Driver. I don't think Midhurst's got a radio, though. Over.”

Miss Bacon said,“All right Helen, I'll call some of them. Stay listening in, because Mr Barnes will want to speak to you when he comes. Now I'm going over to Carlisle. I have telegrams for Eight Dog Sugar and for Eight Jig William, and I will give them as soon as I'm free. Eight Charlie Peter, Eight Charlie Peter, this is Eight Queen Charlie. If you are receiving me, Eight Charlie Peter, will you come in. Over.”

She turned her switch and heard the measured tones of Eddie Page, and sighed with relief.“Eight Queen Charlie, this is Eight Charlie Peter. I heard all that Jackie. I've got Fred Dawson here, and we'll go down to Windermere soon as we can. Tell Helen we'll be with her in about four hours and see what we can do. Will you be keeping a listening watch? Over.”

She said,“That's fine, Mr Page. We shall be on watch here till this is squared up listening every hour, from the hour till ten minutes past the hour. Is this Roger? Over.”

He said,“Okay Jackie, that's Roger. I'll sign off now and go and saddle up. You won't be able to raise me any more; Olive can't work it. Out.”

She called Pelican next, but got no answer, so she called Eight Love Mike, the Willstown Mounted Police Station, and got Sergeant Haines at once. He said,“Okay Jackie, I've heard all of that. I'm sending Phil Duncan and one of my trackers, and we'll see if any of the boys can come along. I'll see that someone goes round by Midhurst and tells Joe Harman. Tell Mr Barnes that Constable Duncan will be at Windermere about three or four this afternoon. Your listening watch is Roger. Good girl, Jackie. Out.”

Drama or no drama, the day's work still remained to be done. Miss Bacon said,“Eight Dog Sugar, this is Eight Queen Charlie calling Eight Dog Sugar. I have a telegram for Eight Dog Sugar. If you are receiving Eight Queen Charlie will you please come in. Over.”She went on with her work.

At Midhurst Jean was measuring up the kitchen with Joe Harman and making a plan on a writing-pad, when they heard a horse approaching about noon. It was still raining, though less fiercely than before. They went to the other side of the house and saw Pete Fletcher handing his horse over to Moonshine; he came up to the veranda. He was wearing his broad ringer's hat and he was soaked to the skin; his boots squelched as he climbed the steps.

He said,“Did you hear the radio?”

“No. What's that?”

“Some kind of trouble up on Windermere,”the boy said.“Don Curtis went up with an Abo ringer to the top end of his station three days ago. Now the horse is back without him.”

“Tracked the horse back?”Joe asked at once.

“Tried that, but it didn't work. Tracks all washed out.”The boy sat down on the edge of the veranda and began taking off his boots to tip the water out of them; a little pool formed round him.“Jackie Bacon, the girl on the Cairns radio, she got the news on the morning schedule. She called Sergeant Haines, and he sent Phil Duncan to Windermere. Phil's on his way there now, with Al Burns. I said I'd come round this way and tell you. Eddie Page is on his way to Windermere from Carlisle, with Fred Dawson.”

Joe asked,“Who was the Abo ringer he had with him?”

“Chap called Samson from the Mitchell River. He's been with Don about a month.”

“Do they know where on the station he was going to?”

“Up by Disappointment Creek.”

“For Christ's sake,”Joe said.“Then I know what he's been up to.”Jean, looking at him, saw his mouth set in a hard line.

“What's that?”asked Pete.

“He's been at my poddys again,”said Joe.“The mugger's got a poddy corral up there.”

“How do you know that?”asked Pete.

“Found the sod,”said Joe.“I'll tell you where it is. You know where Disappointment Creek runs into the Fish River?”The boy nodded.“Well, from there you go up Disappointment Creek about four miles and you'll come to an island and a little bit of a creek running in from the north just by it. Well, go on past that about a mile and you'll see a lot of thick bush north of the creek with a little bare hill behind. You can't mistake it. The poddy corral's round the back of the thick bush, just under the bare hill. If you get up on that hill—it's only about fifty feet high—you'll see the poddy corral to the south of you.”He paused.“If you're going on a search party I'd start off with that.”

“Thanks, Joe,”Pete said.“I'll tell them at Windermere.”

“Aye, you'd better. I don't suppose Mrs Curtis knows anything about it.”

Jean had been hesitant to break in on a discussion about things that she knew nothing of, but now she said,“How did you get to know about it, Joe?”

He turned to her.“I was up at the top end just after Christmas with Bourneville, and I thought poddys were a bit scarcer than they ought to be. So then Bourneville got to tracking and the rain hadn't hardly begun then, so it was easy. The Cartwright River makes the station boundary just there, and we followed the tracks across and on to Windermere. Two horses there were, with a lot of poddys. We found the corral like I said, and there they were; been there two or three days. I let 'em out, of course, and drove them back. Had a cow of a job to get them past the first water, oh my word.”

Pete asked,“How many were there, Joe?”

“Forty-seven.”

“All cleanskins?”

“Oh yes.”Joe was rather shocked at the implied suggestion.

“Don wouldn't go and do a thing like that,”he said.

The boy put on his boots and got up.“What'll you do, Joe? Come along with me?”

“I don't think so,”Joe replied slowly.“I think I'll get up to the top end of my station, where he got those poddys from. Maybe he's been after some more, and had his accident up there. That's south of the Cartwright River, and east of the new bore we made. If I can't see any trace of him on my land, then I'll follow the way he drove those poddys to his corral. Maybe I'll meet you around there somewhere tomorrow or the next day.”

Pete nodded.“I'll tell Phil.”

“Tell him I'll be taking Bourneville with me, and I'll start as soon as I've run Miss Paget here back into town in the utility.”

Forty miles in the utility in those wet conditions would take the best part of three hours. Jean said,“Joe, don't bother about me. I'll stay here till you come back. You get off at once.”

He hesitated.“I may be away for days.”

“Well then, I'll ride into town on Sally. One of the boongs can come with me and bring Sally back.”

“You could do that,”he said slowly.“Moonshine will be here, and he could go with you. I'll be taking Bourneville along with me.”

“Well then,”she said,“that's perfectly all right. What time's Dave coming back?”

“Should be back this afternoon,”he said. He turned to Pete.“I've got Jim Lennon on holiday, and Dave's off visiting a girl, one of the nurses down at Normanton. But he'll be back today.”

Jean said,“I'll stay here till Dave comes, in case anything crops up, Joe.”

He smiled at her.“Well, that would be a help. I don't like leaving the place with just the boongs. I'll tell Moonshine he's to take you into town any time you want to go. He turned to Pete.“Want another horse?”

“I don't think so. 'Bout thirty miles to Windermere from here?”

“That's right. Cross over the river here, you know, and you'll find a track that leads there all the way. It's not been used much lately. If you miss it, go north to the Gilbert and follow up a mile or two and you'll find a little hut Jeff Pocock uses when he's hunting 'gators. There's a shallow about two miles up from that where you can get across. Go north from there about ten miles and you'll find their track from the homestead to Willstown. You can't mistake that.”

“Okay.”

“What about some tucker?”

The boy shook his head.“Think I'll get on my way.”

They went down into the yard and saw him saddle up and ride away. The rain had practically stopped, but the clouds were heavy and black overhead. Joe turned to her.“Sorry about this,”he said quietly.“It's spoilt our day. You're sure you don't mind riding in with Moonshine?”

“Of course not,”she said.“You must get away at once.”

She hurried in to galvanize Palmolive to prepare some lunch and food for them to take with them; down in the yard the men were saddling up. They took their riding horses and one packhorse with them, loaded with a tent and camping gear. She was distressed at the meagre quantity and poor quality of the food Joe seemed to think it necessary to take with them. He took a hunk of horrible black, overcooked meat out of the meat safe and dropped it into a sack with three loaves of bread; he took a couple of handfuls of tea in an old cocoa tin and a couple of handfuls of sugar in another. That was the whole of his provision for a journey of indefinite length. She did not interfere, seeing that he was absorbed in his preparations and not wanting to fuss him, but she stored up the knowledge for her future information.

He kissed her goodbye on the veranda and she went down with him to the yard.“Look after yourself, Joe,”she said.

He grinned.“See you in Willstown next week.”Then he was trotting out of the gate with Bourneville by his side and the packhorse behind on a lead, and she was left alone at Midhurst with the boongs.

It began to rain again, and she went up into the veranda. It was very quiet and empty now that Joe was gone, and Palmolive had retired to her own place. The rain made a steady drumming on the iron roof. It occurred to her that the whole business might be over. Don Curtis might have turned up at Windermere and Joe's journey might be so much wasted effort. It was absurd that Midhurst had not got a radio transmitter. It was true enough that they were only twenty miles from the hospital and so would hardly need it for their own accidents, but in a case like this it was both difficult and trying not to know what was going on. She made up her mind to have a transmitter at Midhurst when they were married. A cattle station without one in these days was a back number.

She had never been alone in Midhurst before. She wandered through from room to room, slowly, deep in thought, and the wallaby lolloped after her; from time to time she dropped her hand to caress it, and it nibbled her fingers. She spent a long time in his room, touching and fingering the rough gear and clothes that were essentially Joe. He had so few things. Yet it was in this room he had dreamed and planned that fantastic journey to England in search of her, that journey that had ended in Noel Strachan's office in Chancery Lane. Chancery Lane seemed very far away.

At about three o'clock Dave Hope arrived. He came riding from Willstown through the rain as Pete Fletcher had come in the morning; he had got a lift up on a truck from Normanton. He had heard all about the Windermere affair in Willstown, which he had left shortly before noon, and he could add further information from the radio. He told her that the Abo ringer, Samson, had returned to the homestead.

“Seems they were looking for some poddys,”he said,“somewhere up at the Disappointment Creek end of the station. They separated and one went one way, one the other, for some reason; they left the camp standing and were going to meet back in the evening. Don didn't turn up that evening and of course the Abo couldn't track him in the dark. When the morning came the whole place was swimming in water, and he couldn't track him at all. That's how it seems to be.”

They talked about it for some time on the veranda. Somewhere thirty or forty miles from them a man must be lying injured on the ground; he might be anywhere within a circle thirty miles in diameter. He might be lying under a bush and very probably by that time he would be unconscious; looking for him would be like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay.

“You'd better go and help, Dave,”Jean said at last.“There's nothing to do here. I'll stay here and look after things.”

He was a little doubtful.“What did Mr Harman say I was to do?”

“He didn't say anything. I said I'd stay here till you got back. He doesn't want the station left without anyone at all, except the boongs. I'll stay here Dave, till somebody else comes. You go and join them over at Windermere. That's the best thing you can do.”

“It certainly seems crook to stay here doing nothing,”he admitted.

She got him off in the late afternoon with about two hours of daylight left. He knew Windermere station well, and was quite happy about finishing his journey in the dark. Left to herself, Jean went on with the plan of the kitchen she would have liked to see built, with a view to getting Joe to pull the old one down completely and start again from scratch. Presently Palmolive came in and cooked eggs for her tea, and fed the various animals, and watered the veranda plants.

When Palmolive had gone away, she was alone in Midhurst for the night, with only the puppies and the wallaby for company. Somewhere out in the darkness and the rain Joe Harman would be pushing on towards the top end of the property, horses and men soaked through, picking their way cautiously through the darkness. She could do nothing to help them, nothing but sit and wait.

She learned a lot that evening. She learned a little of the fortitude that a wife on a cattle station must develop, even, she thought a little grimly, a wife with fifty-three thousand pounds. She learned that a radio transmitting and receiving set was almost indispensable to such a wife; even on that first evening she would have liked to exchange a word or two with Jackie Bacon in Cairns. She learned how much a lonely person turns to animals, and queerly the memory of Olive came into her mind, the brown Abo girl who could not bear to be separated from her kitten even on a visit to the Willstown hotel. By the time she went to bed she understood Olive a bit better.

She went to bed at about nine. There were one or two old British and American magazines about the place, tattered, much read stories about a different world. She took one of these and tried to read it in bed, but the fiction failed to satisfy her or to quell her anxieties. The rain stopped, and started, and then stopped again, and presently she slept.

She slept lightly and woke many times, and dozed again. She woke before dawn to the sound of a horse in the yard. She got up at once and put her frock on and went out on the veranda, and switched on the light, and called,“Who's that?”

A man came forward into the light at the foot of the steps, and said,“It's me, Missy, Bourneville. Missa Hope, him come back?”

He spoke with a thick accent; she could not understand what he was saying. She said,“Come up here, Bourneville. What is it?”

He came up to her in the veranda. He was a man of about fifty years of age, very black, with a seamed, wrinkled face and greying hair. He said again,“Missa Hope, him come back?”

She understood this time.“He's gone over to Windermere. He came back here, and went on to Windermere. What's happened to Mr Harman, Bourneville?”

He said,“Missa Harman, him up top end. Him find Missa Curtis, him leg broken. Missa Harman, him send me back fetch Missa Hope, him drive utility up top end, bring Missa Curtis down.”

She was angry with herself that she could not fully understand what he was saying. The fault lay within herself; a woman of the Gulf country would understand this man at once, and it was terribly important that she should understand. She said quietly,“I'm sorry, Bourneville. Say that again slowly.”

She got it at the second repetition.“Mr Hope's not here,”she said.“He's gone to Windermere.”

He was silent for a time. Then he said,“No white feller here, drive utility?”

She shook her head.“Can you drive the utility, Bourneville?”

“No, Missy.”

“Can any of the other Abos drive the utility?”

“No, Missy.”

The thought came to her that she could drive it up to them herself, with Bourneville as a guide, but it was not a thing to be undertaken lightly. She had never owned a car, and though she had driven cars belonging to various young men from time to time and knew the movements, her total driving experience did not exceed five hours. Again, she was angry and humiliated by her own incompetence.

She lit a cigarette and thought deeply. It would benefit nobody if she attempted to drive the utility and crashed it. It was a very big vehicle, larger than any ordinary car and much bigger than anything she had ever driven before. The alternative would be to send Bourneville riding on to Willstown, perhaps to the police station; they would send a truck or a utility out with a driver who would go on to the top end. The return journey to Willstown was forty miles. It would mean at least six hours delay before the truck could arrive at Midhurst ready to start for the top end.

She asked,“How far away is Mr Harman, Bourneville?”

He thought.“Four mile past bore.”

Joe had once told her that the new bore was twenty-two miles from the homestead; that made the scene of the accident twenty-six miles away. She said,“What's the track like? Can the utility get there?”

“Him bonza track in dry far as bore,”he said. She nodded; this was likely enough because the bore had only been made a few months and there must have been trucks going up to it. It would probably be possible to get along it even in this rain. Already the sky was getting grey; full daylight was not far away.

She asked,“Are there any creeks to cross?”

He held up three fingers.“Tree.”

“Are they deep? Can the utility go through?”

“Yes, Missy. Creeks not too deep.”

If Bourneville rode a horse beside the utility to guide her, she thought that she could make it. It was worth trying, anyway; the worst that could happen would be that she would get it stuck and have to send Bourneville back to Willstown with a note for them to send up somebody more competent. So long as he had his horse there was no risk of any great delay. She said,“All right, Bourneville, I'll drive the utility. You come up with me on your horse.”

“Get fresh horse, Missy. Him tired.”

“All right, get a fresh horse.”Bourneville must be tired too, but she was too unaccustomed to these seamed black faces to be able to detect fatigue.“You get some tucker,”she said.“I get tucker, too. We'll start in half an hour.”

He went off and she put the kettle on for a cup of tea and then went and changed into her riding shirt and breeches. There was an old tin truck in Joe's room which she had discovered the night before; it was half full of bandages and splints and various medicines. Being of tin, she thought, it would be waterproof, and she filled it up with blankets and some tins of food from the store cupboard, and a small sack of flour. That was all she could think of for provision in case she got stuck halfway and had to spend a night or two in the utility.

She had a cup of tea and a small meal of meat and bread and jam; then she went down to the yard and examined the utility. The huge petrol tank had twenty gallons in it, and the sump was full of oil. She filled the radiator from the water-butt and filled the waterbag suspended from the lamp bracket. Then she sat in it; to her relief the gears were clearly marked. She switched it on and pressed the starter and jiggeted the accelerator, and was both alarmed and pleased when the engine started. Very gingerly she put it in reverse and drove it out into the yard.

They put the trunk into the back and started off, Bourneville riding ahead of her to show her the way. Partly because of Bourneville on his horse and partly because she thoroughly distrusted her own competence, she never got it into top gear all the way, and never exceeded ten miles an hour. She drove through each of the three creeks along the line that Bourneville showed her, following the agitated, plunging horse as he forced through the yellow water swirling about its legs. Once the water rose above the floorboards of the cab and she was very frightened. But she kept the utility going and the designer had anticipated such usage and had placed the ignition system above the cylinders, and it came through bounding from rock to rock with water pouring out of every hole and cranny.

Four miles beyond the bore Joe Harman sat at the mouth of his small tent. It was pitched in a clearing in a thick patch of bush in the bottom of a little valley. A heavy log stockade or corral had been built in this clearing and stood immediately behind the tent; the movable logs that formed a gate had been pulled down and the corral was empty. Joe had built a fire before the tent, and he was boiling up in a billy over it.

A man lay inside upon a bed of brushwood covered with a waterproof sheet, with a blanket over him. Joe turned his head, and said,“What happened, Don? Did they rush you when you got the pole down?”

From the tent the man said,“My bloody oath. They pushed the pole back on to me and knocked me down. Then about six of them ran over me.”

Joe said,“Serve you bloody well right. Teach you to go muggering about on other people's land.”

There was a pause. Then he said,“How many of mine did you get last year, Don?”

“'Bout three hundred.”

Mr Harman laughed.“I got three hundred and fifty of yours.”

From the tent Mr Curtis said a very rude word.