A Town like Alice

would."
    She laughed. "Then I'd have to find six or seven more." She got up. "Let's go and bathe. It'll be too hot if we don't bathe soon."
    They went and changed and lay in the clean, silvery water on the coral sand. "Look at those bruises," she said. "You great bully. Hit somebody your own size." And presently she said, "I've got another shock for you. You won't drown if I tell you now? I want to start an ice-cream parlour."
    "Oh my word."
    "I'm going to pay these girls a lot of money, Joe," she said seriously. "I've got to get some of it back."
    He looked at her, uncertain if she were laughing or not. "An ice-cream parlour in Willstown?" he said. "It'll never pay."
    "You wait till you see what I charge for an ice-cream," she said. "Not only ice-cream, Joe-fruit and vegetables, quick frozen stuff, and women's magazines, and cosmetics, and all the little bits of things that women want. I've got a very pretty girl who wants to come and run it for me, a girl called Rose Sawyer who lives in Alice Springs."
    He said slowly, "If you've got a girl like that to run it, the women won't be able to get in the shop. It'll be full of ringers."
    "That's all right," she said, "so long as they buy ice-cream." She turned to him. "Joe, did you ever spend a Sunday in Alice Springs?"
    He shook his head. "I don't think I ever did. Not since before the war, anyway."
    "I know why that is, too," she said. "The pubs are shut."
    He grinned. "Too right."
    "The pub's shut in Willstown, too, on Sundays."
    "The bar's shut," he said. "You can usually get it out of Ma Connor, round the back."
    She rolled over in the water. "I'll have to tip off Sergeant Haines, Joe. Sunday's the best day of all for the ice-cream parlour at Alice. All the men who are in the bar all the week come along with their wives and kids on Sunday to the ice-cream parlour and put down ice-cream sodas and Coca-Cola. That place does a roaring trade on Sundays."
    "It would," he said thoughtfully. "There'd be nothing else to do."
    They got out of the sea presently and went and sat in the shade; he would not let her stay in long for fear of sunburn. When they were smoking together under the trees, he said, "It's going to cost a hell of a lot of money, all this you want to do. Three or four thousand pounds, I'd say, or more than that."
    "I've got enough," she said.
    He turned to her. "Mr Strachan told me you were a wealthy woman," he said quietly. "It worried me, that did, till I got used to the idea. How much have you got? Don't tell me if you'd rather not say, but if I knew about how much I'd be able to help you more."
    "Of course," she said. Nothing would come between them now, after last night. "Mr Strachan says I've got about fifty-three thousand pounds. It's all in trust for me until I'm thirty-five, though. If I want to spend capital before then, I've got to ask him."
    "Oh my word."
    "It is a lot of money, isn't it?" she said. "I'm glad that it's in trust for me in a way, because I wouldn't in the least know what to do with it. And Noel has been such a dear." She paused. "I want to do something useful with it," she said. "I don't know anything about real business. The only thing I know about at all is what Pack and Levy made. I thought if we could start a little workshop of that sort, and a shop where women could get things they like-well, even if it didn't pay very well, it'll be using money the way money ought to be used, in places like Willstown."
    He bent and kissed her. "There's another thing, Joe," she said. "I don't know, but I've got a sort of feeling that there's more to it than just employing a few girls. You say the ringers are all leaving the Gulf country, and men won't come to the outback. Well, of course they won't if they can't get a girl. And all the girls go because they can't get a job. For every girl I make a job for, I believe you'll get a man to work at Midhurst. Don't you think that's true?"
    "I don't know." He stared out over the sea to the dim blue line of the Tableland. "It’ll certainly help to have a flock of girls around. It can be lonely in the outback, oh my word."
    A poignant realization of the solitude struck her. The long nights alone in the homestead, when 'you couldn't get along in the outback without dogs'. The sensitive, intelligent face of the manager of Carlisle, Eddie Page, who had married his illiterate, inarticulate lubra. She turned to him with quick understanding and sympathy. "I feel an awful pig asking you to wait," she said.