A Town like Alice

Willstown I'll be doing some pretty odd things, things that Willstown people will think crazy. Some of them may be, because there'll probably be some mistakes. I don't want you to have to be mixed up in it, just because we're engaged. You've got a position to keep up."
    "Wouldn't it help if people thought I was with you in whatever you're doing?"
    She smiled, and rolled over and kissed him. "You're all salt. It wouldn't help if you get in a fight every Saturday night in the bar because somebody says something rude about your fiancée." He grinned. "They will, you know. They're bound to think I'm crackers."
    They got out of the water presently and sat in the shade of the trees, talking and talking about the future. "Joe," she said once, "what do I do if a boong comes into the ice-cream parlour and wants a soda? A boong stockrider? Do I serve him in the same place, or has he got to have a different shop?"
    He scratched his head. "I dunno that it's ever happened in Willstown. They go into Bill Duncan's store. I don't think you could serve them in an ice-cream parlour, with a white girl behind the counter."
    She said firmly, "Then I'll have to have another parlour for them with a black girl in it. There's such a lot of them, Joe- we can't cut them out. We'll have two parlours, with the freezes and the kitchen between." She drew a little diagram on the white sand with her forefinger: "Like this."
    "Oh my word," he said. "You're going to start some talk in Willstown."
    She nodded. "I know. That's why I don't want us to be engaged till just before we're married."
    In the evening as they kissed goodnight between their bedroom huts, she said, "We won't be able to do this in Willstown. I'll remember this Green Island all my life, Joe."
    He grinned. "Come back here in April, if you like. Before Julia Creek."
    They left next morning, when Eddie came for them with his motorboat, and landed at Cairns early in the afternoon. They took their bags to the hotel, and then went straight to see Mr Gordon at the tannery, and spent an hour with him discussing alligator skins and other shoe materials. He advised them to dismiss the idea of kid for linings. "Anything that can be done with kid we'll do for you with wallaby," he said. "You've got any amount of wallaby out there, and it's as good as kid- texture, appearance, bleaching, glazing-anything you like." Harman arranged to send him half a dozen skins for sample treatment by the next lorry. "Be a good thing to keep down some of these wallabies," he said. "They eat an awful lot of feed out on the station. Too many of them altogether."
    They spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and ordering, and got back to the hotel at dusk, tired out, having booked their passages to Willstown upon the morning plane. Jean said, "There's one thing I must do tonight, Joe, before leaving Cairns. I must write to Noel Strachan and tell him what's happened."
    In the warm scented night of early summer by the Queensland sea, she sat down on the veranda after tea and wrote me a long letter. Joe Harman sat beside her as she wrote, smoking quietly, at peace.
    She was very good about writing, and she still is; she still writes every week. I got that letter early in November; I remember it so well. It was a foggy, dark morning with a light rain or drizzle falling. I had to have the electric light on for breakfast, and the Palace stables on the other side of the road were hardly visible. In the street below the taxis went past with a wet swish of mud and water on the wet wood blocks.
    It was a long letter from a very happy girl, telling me about her love. I was delighted at the news, of course. I sat reading it with my breakfast before me, and then I read it through again, and then I read it a third time. When I woke up to realities my coffee was cold and the fried egg had frozen to the dish in front of me in cold, congealed fat, but I was too absorbed in her news to want it. I went into my bedroom to put my shoes and coat on for the office, and as I opened the wardrobe to get my coat I saw her boots and skates, that I had been keeping for her till she came back for them. Old men get rather silly, sometimes, and I must say that that rather dashed me for a moment, because she wouldn't be coming back for them. She wouldn't be coming back to England ever again.
    I went to the front door, and my charwoman was in the flat, just coming out of the dining-room. "Such good news, Mrs Chambers," I said. "Do you remember Miss