A Town like Alice

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