A Town like Alice

sat down together in the deckchairs. "Tell me what happened to you," he asked. "I know you said not to talk about Malaya. It was a fair cow, that place. I don't want to remember about it anymore. But I do want to know what happened to you-after Kuantan."
    She sipped her beer. "We went on," she said. "Captain Sugamo sent us on the same day, after-after that. We went on up the east coast with just the sergeant in charge of us. I was sorry for the sergeant, Joe, because he was very much in disgrace, because of what happened. He never got over it, and then he got fever and gave up. He died at a place called Kuala Telang, about half way between Kuantan and Khota Bahru. That was about a month later."
    "He was the only Nip guarding you?" he asked.
    She nodded. "Well, what did you do then?"
    She raised her head. "They let us stay there all the war," she said, "We just lived in the village, working in the paddy fields till the war was over."
    "You mean, paddling about in the water, planting the rice, like the Malays?"
    "That's right," she said.
    "Oh my word," he breathed.
    She said, "It wasn't a bad life. I'd rather have been there than in a camp, I think-once we got settled down. We were all fairly healthy when the war ended, and we were able to make a little school and teach the children something. We taught some of the Malay children, too."
    "I did hear a bit about that," he said thoughtfully. "I heard from a pilot on the airline, down at Julia Creek."
    She stared at him. "How did he know about us?"
    "He was the pilot of the aeroplane that flew you out, in 1945," he replied. "He said that you got taken in trucks to Khota Bahru. He flew you from Khota Bahru to Singapore. He's working for TAA now, on the route from Townsville to Mount Isa. That goes through Julia Creek. I met him there this last May, when I was down there putting stock on to the train."
    "I remember," she said slowly. "It was an Australian Dakota that flew us out. Was he a thin, fair-haired boy?"
    "That'd be the one."
    She thought for a minute. "What did he tell you, Joe?"
    "Just what I said. He said he'd flown you down to Singapore."
    "What did he tell you about me?" She looked at him, and there was laughter in her eyes.
    He grinned sheepishly, and said nothing.
    "Come on, Joe," she said. "Have another beer, and let's get this straight."
    "All right," he said. He took a glass and held it in his hand, but did not drink. "He said you were a single woman, Mrs Boong. I always thought the lot of you was married."
    "They all were, except me. Is that why you went rushing off to England?"
    He met her eyes. "That's right."
    "Oh, Joe! What a waste of money, when here we are in Cairns!"
    He laughed with her, and took a long drink of beer. "Well, how was I to know that you'd be turning up in Cairns?" He thought for a minute. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked. "You haven't told me that."
    She was embarrassed in her turn. "I came into some money," she said. "I think Noel Strachan told you about that."
    "That's right," he said kindly.
    "I didn't know what to do with myself then," she said. "I didn't want to go on working as a typist in a London suburb any more. And then I got the idea into my head that I wanted to do something for the village where we lived for those three years, Kuala Telang. I wanted to give them a well."
    "A well?" he asked.
    Sitting there with a glass of beer in her hand she told him about Kuala Telang, and about her friends there, and the washhouse, and the well. Then she came to the difficult bit. "The well-diggers came from Kuantan," she said. "I thought that you were dead, Joe. We all did."
    He grinned. "I bloody nearly was."
    "The well-diggers told me that you weren't," she said. 'They told me that you'd been put into the hospital, and you'd recovered."
    "That's right," he said. "I tried to find out what had happened to you, but they didn't know, or if they knew they wouldn't say. I reckon they were all scared stiff of that Sugamo."
    She nodded. "I went to Kuantan. It's very peaceful there now. People playing tennis on the tennis courts, and sitting gossiping under that ghastly tree. They told me at the hospital that you'd asked about us." She smiled. "Mrs Boong."
    He grinned. "But did you come on to Australia from there?"
    She nodded. "Yes."
    "What for?"
    "Well," she said awkwardly, "I wanted to see if you were all right. I thought perhaps you might be still in hospital or something."
    "Is that dinky-die?" he asked. "You came on to