A Town like Alice

gallon cans and a length of rubber hose, which he hid behind the latrine. He came back to the trucks presently, ostentatiously buttoning his shorts.
    In the darkness, early in the night, he came to the school-house; it may have been about ten o'clock. One of the Japanese soldiers was supposed to be on guard all night, but in the five weeks that they had been with this pair of guards the women had not shown the slightest inclination to escape, and their guards had long given up watching them at night. The Australian had made sure where they were, however, and when he had seen them squatting with the truck guards he came silently to the school.
    At the open door he paused, and said quietly, "Which of you ladies was I talking to this afternoon? The one with the baby."
    Jean was asleep; they woke her and she pulled up her sarong and slipped her top on, and came to the door. He had several little packages for her. "That's quinine," he said. "I can get more of that if you want it. I couldn't get Glauber's, but this is what the Chinese take for dysentery. It's all written in Chinese, but what he says it means is three of these leaves powdered up in warm water every four hours. That'll be for a grown-up person. If it's any good, keep the label and maybe you could get some more in a Chinese drug shop. I got this Zam-Buk for the skin, and there's more of that if you want it."
    She took them gratefully from him. "That's marvellous," she said softly. "How much did it all cost?"
    "That's all right," he said in his deliberate manner. "The Nips paid, but they don't know it."
    She thanked him again. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Where are you going with the trucks?"
    "Kuantan," he said. "We should be back there tonight, but Ben Leggatt-he's my cobber-he got the truck in bits so we had to give it away. Get down there tomorrow, or we might stretch it another day if it suits, though it'll be risky, I think." He told her that there were six of them driving six trucks for the Japanese; they drove regularly from Kuantan upcountry to a place upon the railway called Jerantut, a distance of about a hundred and thirty miles. They would drive up one day and load the truck with sleepers and railway lines taken up from the track, and drive back to Kuantan the next day, where the railway material was unloaded on to the quayside to be taken away by ship to some unknown destination. "Building another railway somewhere, I suppose," he said. A hundred and thirty miles is a long way to drive a heavily loaded truck in a day in tropical conditions, and they sometimes failed to reach Kuantan before dark; when that happened they spent the night in a village. Their absence would not be remarked particularly at Kuantan.
    He had been taken somewhere in Johore, and had been driving trucks from Kuantan for about two months. "Better than being in a camp," he said.
    She sat down on the top step of the three that led up to the school, and he squatted down before her on the ground. His manner of sitting intrigued her, because he sat down on one heel somewhat in the manner of a native, but with his left leg extended. "Are you a truck driver in Australia?" she asked.
    "No bloody fear," he said. "I'm a ringer."
    She asked, "What's a ringer?"
    "A stockman," he said. "I was born in Queensland out behind Cloncurry, and my people they're all Queenslanders. My dad, he came from London, from a place called Hammersmith. He used to drive a cab and so he knew about horses, and he came out to Queensland to work for Cobb and Co., and met Ma. But I've not been back to the Curry for some time. I was working in the Territory over to the west, on a station called Wollara. That's about a hundred and ten miles south-west of the Springs."
    She smiled. "Where's the Springs, then?"
    "Alice," he said. "Alice Springs. Right in the middle of Australia, half way between Darwin and Adelaide."
    She said, "I thought the middle of Australia was all desert?" He was concerned at her ignorance.
    "Oh my word," he said deliberately. "Alice is a bonza place. Plenty of water in Alice; people living there, they leave the sprinkler on all night, watering the lawn. That's right, they leave the sprinkler on all night. Course, the Territory's dry in most parts, but there's usually good feed along the creeks. Come to that, there's water all over if you look for it. You take a creek that only runs in the wet, now, say a couple of months in the year, or else not that. You get a sandy billabong, and