A Town like Alice

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,