A Town like Alice

Joe Harman to regain the value of the dams that he was building on the property and all the other improvements that he was making; he could not possibly go on with capital improvements until a very much longer lease had been negotiated.
    I showed her letter to my partner then, and we had a long talk about it. He took the same view that I did, that the lease was the kernel of the matter. "I can't say that I take a very serious view of this trust, Noel," he said. "I think your approach is the right one, to try and put yourself in the testator's shoes when looking at this thing. He was quite content to leave the money to his sister without any question of a trust, while her husband was alive to help her. It was only after the husband's death that he wanted the trust. Well, now the daughter's got a husband to help her. If he was disposing of his money now, presumably he wouldn't bother about any trust at all."
    "That's a point," I said. "I hadn't thought of that one."
    "I don't suggest we disregard the trust," he said. "I think we ought to use it as a lever to get this lease put right for her. Tell all and sundry that we won't release her money till the leasehold is adjusted to our satisfaction. Then, so far as I'm concerned, she can have all she wants."
    I smiled. "I wouldn't tell her that."
    I sat down next day and drafted a letter to her in reply. "I do not think it is impossible to release a further ten thousand pounds," I wrote, "but I should be very sorry to do so until this matter of the lease had been adjusted to our satisfaction. As the thing stands at the moment, you could lose your home in seventeen years' time and lose with it all the money that you and Mrs Spears have expended on improvements such as dams and other water conservation schemes, which would pass to the State without any payment whatsoever, so far as my present information goes." I learned later that that was incorrect.
    I came to the main point of my letter next. "No doubt you have a solicitor that you can trust, but if it would assist you I would very gladly come and visit you in Queensland for a few weeks and see this matter of the lease put into satisfactory order before you invest this money in Midhurst. It is many years since I left England and I have regretted that; I cannot expect to have many more years left in which to travel and see the world. I would like to take a long holiday and travel a little before I get too feeble, and if I could help you in this matter of the lease I should be only too glad to come and do so." I added, "I need hardly say that I should travel at my own expense."
    The answer came in a night letter telegram about ten days later. She urged me to come to them, and suggested that I should come out by air about the end of April, since their winter was approaching then and the weather would be just like an English summer. She said that she was writing with a list of clothes that I should have and medicines and things that I might need upon the journey. I was a little touched by that.
    I saw Kennedy, my doctor, at his place in Wimpole Street next day. "Is there any particular reason why I shouldn't fly out to Queensland?" I asked.
    He looked at me quizzically. "It's not exactly what I should advise for you, you know. Have you got to go to Queensland?"
    "I want to go, very much," I said. "I want to go and stay out there about a month. There's business I should like to see to personally."
    "How have you been walking recently?"
    There was no point in lying to him. "I walk as far as Trafalgar Square most mornings," I said. "I take a taxi from there."
    "You can't quite manage the whole distance to your office?"
    "No," I said. "I haven't done that for some time."
    "Can you walk upstairs in your club, to the first floor, without stopping?"
    I shook my head. "I always go up in the lift. But anyway, there aren't any stairs in Queensland. All the houses are bungalows."
    He smiled. "Take off your coat and your shirt, and let me have a look at you."
    When he had finished his examination, he said, "Well. Are you proposing to go alone?"
    I nodded. "I shall be staying with friends at the other end. They'll meet me when I get off the aeroplane."
    "And you really feel it's necessary that you should go?"
    I met his eyes. "I want to go, very much indeed."
    "All right," he said. "You know your condition as well as I do. There's nothing new-only the deterioration that you've got to expect. You put ten years on your age during the war. I