A Town like Alice

the trees; these huts had open sides to let the breeze blow through, with an occasional curtain for privacy. They bathed at once and met upon the beach; Jean had a new white two-piece costume and was flattered at the reception that it got. "It's pretty as a picture," he said. "Oh my word."
    She laughed. "There's not enough of it to fill a picture frame, Joe."
    "Too right," he said. "But there aren't any wowsers here."
    "I'll have to look out I don't get burnt," she said. "I bet I'm the whitest woman that ever bathed here."
    "You are in parts," he observed. He stood looking at her, reluctant to take his eyes off her beauty. "You've been out in the sun up top, though."
    Her shoulders and her arms were tanned; there was a hard line above her breasts, brown above and white below. "That's where I was wearing a sarong in Malaya," she said. "While they were building the well. In the village we used to wear the sarong up high, under the arms. It's beautifully cool like that, and yet it protects most of you from sunburn. And it's reasonably decent, too."
    "Have you got it here? " he asked.
    She nodded. "I'm going to put it on presently."
    As they turned to go into the water she saw his back for the first time, lined and puckered and distorted with enormous scars. Deep pity for him welled up in her at the sight; this man had been hurt enough for her already. She must not hurt him anymore. He glanced back at her and said, "We'd better not go in more than about knee-deep. There's plenty of sharks round here." And then he looked at her more closely, and said, "What's the matter?"
    She laughed quickly. "It's the sun," she said. "It's making my eyes water. I ought to have brought my dark glasses."
    "I'll go and get them. Where are they?"
    "I don't want them, really." She threw herself forward in a shallow dive over the sand in about two feet of water and rolled over on her back, flirting the water from her face. "It's marvellous," she said. He flung himself forward, wallowed for a little, and sat beside her on the coral sand in the warm sea. "Tell me, Joe," she said. "Do sharks really come in close like this?"
    "They'll take you in water that's only waist-deep," he said. "Oh my word, they will. I don't know if there are any here just now. Trouble is, you never can tell. Didn't you have sharks in Malaya?"
    "I think there were," she said. "The villagers never went out more than about knee-deep, so we didn't. There were crocodiles in the river, too." She laughed. "Taking it all in all, there's nothing to beat a good swimming-pool in a hot country."
    They rolled over in the blue, translucent water; the sun came shimmering through the ripples and made silvery lights upon the coral sand around them. "I've never bathed in a swimming-pool," he said. "They make them with a shallow end, do they? Where you can sit, like this?"
    "Of course. They have a shallow and a deep end, with diving-boards at the deep end. Don't they have swimming-pools here, in Australia?"
    "Oh my word. They have them down in places like Sydney and Melbourne. I've heard of station owners having them upon their land, too. But places like Cairns and Townsville and Mackay, they're on the sea, so they don't need a pool."
    "Mrs Maclean's got a pool at Alice Springs," she said.
    "I know. They only made it a year or two ago. I've never seen it."
    She rolled over on her back, and watched a seagull soaring in the thermals from the island. "You could have a pool at Willstown," she said. "You've got all the water in the world, from the bore, running to waste right in the middle of the town. You could make a lovely swimming-pool right opposite the hotel."
    'That water isn't running to waste," he observed. "Oh my word. The cattle drink that, in the dry."
    "It wouldn't hurt the cattle if we borrowed it first and used it for a swimming-pool," she said. "It’ll taste all the sweeter."
    "Might taste sweeter if you swam in it," he concurred. "I don't know about me."
    He would not let her stay in the water more than a quarter of an hour. "You'll burn," he said. "Midday, like this, you can burn just as easy in the sea as on the land. You want to be careful, with a skin as white as yours." They went up from the beach into the shade of the trees and sat smoking for a time; then they went back to their huts to put on a little more covering for lunch. Australian hotels, she had discovered, are very particular about dress at mealtimes; in Cairns even on the hottest day of summer a man without a