A Town like Alice

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 Palm-olive 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