A Town like Alice

by playing with its tail. I could have sat there indefinitely watching it all, and watching the grace of Jean moving round the house attending to her children and her Abo women. I did sit there for three days.
    She took me into town one morning, and showed me everything that she had done. She took me to the workshop first, and she made me put a scarf on before we went in because it would be cold. It was not cold as we would know cold, but it struck chilly after the warm day outside, because she kept the air-conditioner going all the year round. "The girls do love it so," she said. "There's always more of them wanting to work here than I can take on, just because of that." They all looked very smart and pretty in their green smocks, working at the leather goods. There was a long mirror at the end of the shop, and a few pictures of hair styles and frocks cut out of illustrated magazines pinned up on the wall. "We change those every so often," she said. "I like them to make the best of themselves."
    The workshop stood by itself, but she had arranged her other enterprises all in a row as a little street of shops. She had built a wooden veranda over the broad tarmac pavement to shade shopgazers from the sun or the rain. Here she had the beauty parlour with an Estonian in charge, a dark, handsome middle-aged woman, beautifully got up, with two Australian girls under her. There were four private little booths, and a glass counter and display-case full of women's things; it was all very clean and nice. Next in the row came a little shop with a battery of four Home Laundries, and three young married women sitting gossiping while they waited for their wash. Next was the greengrocer's shop, which sold seeds and garden implements as well as fruit and vegetables, and after that the dress shop. This was quite a big place, with counters and dummies clothed in summer frocks, and I was interested to see a small, secluded part served by a middle-aged woman where the elderly could buy the clothes they were accustomed to, black skirts and flannel petticoats and coarse kitchen aprons.
    She took me across the road and showed me the cinema and the swimming-pool. It was quite a hot day and by that time I had had about enough, so she took me to the ice-cream parlour and we had a cool drink there. She had some business to attend to and she left me there for half an hour, and I sat watching the people as they came into the parlour, or as they passed on the sidewalk. There were far more women than men. All of them seemed to be pretty, and at least half of them seemed to be in the family way.
    She came back presently, and sat with me in the parlour. "What comes next?" I asked. "Is there any end to this?"
    She laughed and touched my hand. "No end," she said. "I keep on badgering you for more money, don't I? As a matter of fact, I think I can start the next one out of the profits."
    "What's that one going to be?"
    "A self-service grocer's shop," she replied. "The demand's shifting, Noel. When we started, it was entertainment that was needed, because everyone was young and nobody was married then. The solid, sensible things weren't wanted. What they needed then was ice-cream, and the swimming-pool, and the beauty parlour, and the cinema. They'll still need those things, but they won't expand so much more. What the town needs now is things for the young family. A really good grocer's shop selling good, varied food as cheap as we can possibly get it. And then, as soon as I can start it, we must have a household store. Do you know, you can't even buy a baby's pot in Willstown?"
    I nodded at the store opposite. "Doesn't Mr Duncan sell those?"
    "He's got no imagination. He only sells big ones, that'ld hold the whole baby."
    I asked her presently, "How do all your goods get here? They aren't all flown, surely?"
    She shook her head. "They come by train from Cairns to Forsayth, and by truck from there. There's no proper road, of course. It makes it terribly expensive, because a truck is worn out in about two years. Bill Wakeling says the Roads Commission are considering a road from here to Mareeba and Cairns-a proper tarmac road. Of course, he wants to build it. He thinks we'll get it inside two years, because the town's growing so fast. I must say, it'll be a god-send when we do. Fancy being able to drive to Cairns in a day!"
    The Land Administration Board answered our letter later on that week and suggested a meeting on the following Tuesday or