A Town like Alice

sweat like you do here." He thought for a minute. "I got thrown once," he said, "breaking in a brumby to the saddle. I broke my thigh, and after it was set the hospital they used to point a sort-of lamp at it, a sunray lamp they called it, to tone up the muscles or something. Do you have those things in England?"
    She nodded. "It's like that, is it?"
    "That's right," he said. "It's a kind of warm, dry heat, the sort that does you good and makes you thirsty for cold beer."
    "What does the country look like?" she inquired. It pleased the man to talk about his own place and she wanted to please him; he had been so very kind to them.
    "It's red," he said. "Red around Alice and where I come from, red earth and then the mountains are all red. The Macdonnells and the Levis and the Kernots, great red ranges of bare hills against the blue sky. Evenings they go purple and all sorts of colours. After the wet there's green all over them. In the dry, parts of them go silvery white with the spinifex." He paused. "I suppose everybody likes his own place," he said quietly. "The country round about the Springs is my place. People come up on the 'Ghan from Adelaide and places in the south, and they say Alice is a lousy town. I only went to Adelaide once, and I thought that was lousy. The country round about the Springs is beautiful to me."
    He mused. "Artists come up from the south and try and paint it in pictures," he said. "I only met one that ever got it right, and he was an Abo, an Abo called Albert out at Hermannsburg. Somebody gave him a brush and some paints one time, and he started in and got it better than any of them, oh my word, he did. But he's an Abo, and he's painting his own place. I suppose that makes a difference."
    He turned to Jean. "What's your place?" he asked. "Where do you come from?"
    She said, "Southampton."
    "Where the liners go to?"
    "That's it," she said.
    "What's it like there?" he asked.
    She shifted the baby on her hip, and moved her feet in the sarong. "It's quiet, and cool, and happy," she said thoughtfully. "It's not particularly beautiful, although there's lovely country roundabout-the New Forest, and the Isle of Wight. It's my place, like the Springs is yours, and I shall go back there if I live through this time, because I love it so." She paused for a moment. "There was an ice rink there," she said. "I used to dance upon the ice when I was a girl at school. One day I'll get back there and dance again."
    "I've never seen an ice rink," said the man from Alice. "I've seen pictures of them, and on the movies."
    She said, "It was such fun…"
    Presently he got up to go; she walked across the road with him towards the trucks, the baby on her hip, as always. "I shan't be able to see you tomorrow," he said. "We start at dawn. But I'll be coming back up the road the day after."
    "We shall be walking to Pohoi that day, I think," she said.
    "I'll see if I can get you those chickens," he said.
    She turned and faced him, standing beside her in the moon-lit road, in all the noises of the tropic night. "Look, Joe," she said. "We don't want meat if it's going to mean trouble. It was grand of you to get that soap for us, but you did take a fearful risk, pinching that chap's boots."
    "That's nothing," he said slowly. "You can run rings round these Nips when you learn how."
    "You've done a lot for us," she said. "This pig, and the medicines, and the soap. It's made a world of difference to us in these last few days. I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do, please, be careful."
    "Don't worry about me," he said. "I'll try and get the chickens, but if I find things getting hot I'll give it away. I won't go sticking out my neck."
    "You'll promise that?" she asked.
    "Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over."
    "You think that it will be as long as that?" she asked.
    "Ben knows a lot more than I do about things like that," he said. "He thinks about two years." He grinned down at her. 'You'd better have those chickens."
    "I'll leave that with you," she said. "I'd never forgive myself if you got caught in anything, and bought it."
    "I won't," he said. He put out his hand as if to take her own, and then dropped it again. "Goodnight, Mrs Boong," he said.
    She laughed. "I'll crack you with a coconut if you say Mrs Boong again.