A Town like Alice

three meals that they would have before they took the road again. They sat about in the shed or at the roadside after they had finished, replete with the first really nourishing meal that they had had for months, and presently the Australians came across to talk to them.
    Joe Harman came to Jean. "Sorry I couldn't send over more of that pig," he said in his slow Queensland drawl. "I had to let the bloody Nips have most of it."
    She said, "It's been splendid, Joe. We've been eating and eating, and there's still lots left for tomorrow. I don't knew when we last had such a meal."
    "I'd say that's what you need," he observed. "There's not a lot of flesh on any of you, if I may say so."
    He squatted down upon the ground beside the women, sitting on one heel in his peculiar way.
    "I know we're pretty thin," Jean said. "But we're a darned sight better than we were. That Chinese stuff you got us as the substitute for Glauber's salt-that's doing the trick all right. It's stopping it."
    "Fine," he said. "Maybe we could get some more of that in Kuantan."
    "The pig was a god-send," she said. "That, and the fruit-we got some green coconuts today. We've been very lucky so far that we've had no beriberi, or that sort of thing."
    "It's because we've had fresh rice," said Mrs Frith unexpectedly. "Being in the country parts we've had fresh rice all through. It's old rice that gives you beriberi."
    The Australian sat thoughtful, chewing a piece of stick. "Funny sort of a life for you ladies," he said at last. "Living in a place like this, and eating like the boongs. Nips'll have something coming to them, when it's all added up." He turned to Jean. "What were you all doing in Malaya?" he asked.
    "Most of us were married," she said. "Our husbands had jobs here."
    Mrs Frith said, "My hubby's District Engineer on the railway. We had ever such a nice bungalow at Kajang."
    Harman said, "All the husbands got interned separately, I suppose?"
    "That's right," said Mrs Price. "My Arthur's in Singapore. I heard about him when we was in Port Dickson. I think they're all in Singapore."
    "All comfortable in a camp while you go walking round the country," he said.
    "That's right," said Mrs Frith. "Still, it's nice to know that they're all right, when all's said and done."
    "It seems to me," said Harman, "the way they're kicking you around, they just don't know what they can do with you. It might not be too difficult for you to just stay in one place, as it might be this, and live till the war's over."
    Mrs Frith said, "That's what I've been thinking."
    Jean said, "I know. I've thought of this ever since Mrs Frith suggested it. The trouble is, the Japs feed us-or they make the village feed us. The village never gets paid. We'd have to earn our keep somehow, and I don't see how we could do it."
    Harman said, "It was just an idea."
    He said presently, "I believe I know where I could get a chicken or two. If I can I'll drop them off for you when we come up-country, day after tomorrow."
    Jean said, "We haven't paid you for the soap yet."
    "Forget about it," he said slowly. "I didn't pay cash for it myself. I swapped it for a pair of Nip rubber boots." With slow, dry humour he told them about the boots. "You got the soap, the Nip got another pair of boots, and Ben got a dollar," he said. "Everybody's happy and satisfied."
    Jean said, "Is that how you're going to get the chicken?"
    "I'll get a chicken for you, one way or another," he said. "You ladies need feeding up."
    She said, "Don't take any risks."
    "You attend to your own business, Mrs Boong," he said, "and take what you get. That's what you have to do when you're a prisoner, just take what you can get."
    She smiled, and said, "All right." The fact that he had called her Mrs Boong pleased her; it was a little tenuous bond between herself and this strange man that he should pull her leg about her sunburn, her native dress, and the baby that she carried on her hip like a Malay woman. The word boong put Australia into her mind, and the aboriginal stockmen, and she asked a question that had occurred to her, partly from curiosity and partly because she knew it pleased him to talk about his own country. "Tell me," she said, "is it very hot in Australia, the part you come from? Hotter than this?"
    "It's hot," he said. "Oh my word, it can be hot when it tries. At Wollara it can go to a hundred and eighteen-that's a hot day, that is. But it's not like this heat here. It's a kind of a dry heat, so you don't