When you select a memory – of Christmas morning 1956 for example – presenting it to yourself with the switch held on, others appear, sparked automatically. Obsolete patterns, flickering to life, illumine a darkened landscape to show back there, where you came from. People appear, some dead, all changed, but as they were they tell who you once were. In this way I remember that Christmas in my childhood long ago. Holding down the switch, unflinching, I can relive, uncertainly, and in moments that spin off on retrieval, the inside story of that day.

            In childhood the knowledge of Christmas coming loomed above other days at the end of the year, bristling with lights. How accepting of it was the boy of ten years’ dreaming, looking towards Camelot. And when it arrived, that particular Christmas, we children went as usual with Father in the car, while Mum stayed home to cook the Christmas chicken. Alive with presents on the special morning of Christ’s nativity, we alighted scintillating in the bright sunshine at the end of that famous journey. We paid our ritual visit to a family benefactor, Mr Bruce and his farm. Dogs barked, and envelopes concealing pound notes were ours. Mrs Bruce stood moist eyed. Father collected a billy of fresh milk because the shops were closed. A cardboard box of vegetables was specially pressed upon us.

            On the way home, still early in the day I remember, my father spoke unusually of his own past. He too said ‘I remember.’ He recited, ‘I remember the house where I was born, the little window where the sun came creeping in at morn …’ And so I pictured it then, and still do, Father’s home as we went home, with its little window taking him by surprise. He spoke also of his mother, with reverence meaning she had suffered or worked hard. We could be near to Dad on that rare day, but only through his words. I suppose now he was shy of his children, or affected by the War. I remember his colourless eyebrows, bushy but almost invisible, and that his freckled skin, coarser than Mum’s, was untouchable. He lived for us only by his presence that day, by his participation in the Christmas proceedings, by his appropriate speech, enclosed in his invisible fuzz of untouchability. No hugs from Dad. He was driving the car. But he stopped so we could see a dead wombat, still warm, on its side in the dusty grass. He seemed to know about the truck that had hit it, and how these things were. He told us he had once seen a Tasmanian tiger, in the old days, hung by its tail on a neighbor’s fence.

By dinner at midday we may have been tired by so much specialness, but determined to have it all. Paper ropes of twisted red and green looped across the ceiling, hung with paper bells. The knives and forks came from the blue tissue-lined boxes in the middle drawer. Mum put out bowls of nuts and raisins for just us, and we ate them as we should on Christmas Day. By afternoon we really were tired going to Gran and Granddad’s, but all the important people, the relatives, were there.

I do not know where Dad went then. I suppose he was talking to Uncle Dan, drinking beer. We played with a cousin in a double-breasted suit. He had bony hands and his dark eyebrows met in the middle. We climbed all over him, Mum said she was sorry, but he did not mind. He could grip our wrists so tightly we could not prise up even one of his big fingers. But I do not know where Dad was. I think now he did not like big family occasions. I recall only his absence that afternoon, not where he went. I suppose he talked to Uncle Dan about his car and missed the speech, and grown-up’s jokes, and all the children opening more presents from aunts and uncles.

            And some memories are just not there. Going home again, going to bed, the end of Christmas Day, are all lost to me now. Father bringing us home, seeing us off to bed, making it in the end like the beginning of Christmas Day, I cannot recall. I suppose he found some things difficult with us. Years later, when he died, it was not actually the dying I regretted.

            When you select a memory, with the switch held down, you wait for regrets as well as other memories that will come. We had our father for such brief instalments, and then he was not there, telling us about Australia. But Christmas 1956 looms large in my boyhood, bristling with lights, and that is who I am.

********

They came from Surges Bay. A ratatat of plovers sharpened the distant air. They brought their old house with them. How? I did not see. But round the enclosed verandah the panes of stained glass glistened. They brought their dog, Nipper, later shot out rabitting with the men. They came from down the Huon, where Bruni Island shields the rocky inlets from the vastness of Storm Bay.

            We loved one another as children do. You can forget as adults, but we will never, ever forget – or not until we die. We will never forget not knowing we would die, hearing the talk of Surges Bay under the flapping clothes line propped against the wind. There was Michael and his wicked sister, Ann. Later she would stick her bare backside out the window for a dare. Wicked, though older than us, whenever she had done things wrong she said we did it. She told those sort of fibs, and yet I liked her best. Where was she ever when Michael and I were playing? Yet I remember her best. He waited for me so gently, I think now, but Ann had the clever face and the ringlets of black hair.

            ‘Would you like me to sit on a prickle?’ And she did! Sat down on a flat prickle out in the paddock, without a care.

            ‘D’you think I’d do it again?’ I do not remember that, but I remember a nest in the long grass, and hiding there when the bull was with the cows.

            Their father had a whip, so it was dangerous to do things wrong. ‘Dad’s got the whip out!’ Ann crowed when we came back one day, guilty of lighting fires down the creek. Their mother got her headaches, went to bed and read her Rock Hudson magazines. Their nanna came out from town and kissed us all, and wheezed.

They never went back to Surges Bay, but I went once and wondered why that had left – or been there in the first place. They never had visitors from there. They had shifted. Left it behind. Yet as children we spoke about it with the importance due to the place they had first known.  The name carried the weight I might give now to Africa or to Spain – the name of Surges Bay. From pieces of such stuff we made up the imagined world, and what was there ever there but a cluster of weathered houses and a prospect of the sea?

***********

First I will describe the toy watering can: I do not remember it shiny and new with bright red paint, part of a children’s gardening set with child-size rake and hoe to match. I remember it lying old and dented in the garden, in the moist earth under the mint bushes, part silver metal, where the paint had been rubbed off, and part the flakey dull red of old paint. When the kittens came we found one with its head stuck inside it, as far as we could tell. We thought it was funny. We thought the stuck kitten would die, walking backwards, banging the can on the concrete path, its mewing muffled but persistent. The others mewed sharply, but just as persistently, for their mother. We pulled on the little warm body of the trapped kitten and out came a tousled head, different from the rest. Her face was flat, her eyes blue and her black fur wildly fluffy.

We knew at once she was special. ‘She’s a Persian cat,’ my sister said. I had never heard of such a thing but I could see she was different. Maybe that is when she became mine.

We were not allowed to keep them all. Only two. Mum was quite firm about that, and we kept the black Persian cat, of course, and another black one with smooth fur. We had other cats already. Many lived under our house, some tame and some that streaked off as soon as you approached them. Mum threw scraps to them. We all threw scraps to them. Our new kittens blended in. I stroked my Persian beauty a lot, making her purr, and my sister stroked her brother. The four of us played together sometimes, but not all the time. We did many things in those days. Sometimes I was cruel to mine. Once, when she had grown a bit bigger, I tried to stick the point of a pencil up her bottom and she wailed and scratched me. I do not know why I did that. Mostly I was so kind to her. I bought her a tin of sardines and she purred and purred.

Slowly our kittens grew into cats as the long days of our childhood passed. Mine kept her flat face and blue eyes and her black fluffy coat. When the smooth one died she developed a grey ruff round her neck for a time. ‘She misses him that much,’ Mum said, and I saw how it might be for her. She taught us grief.

Sometime later, perhaps when I was eight or nine, I began to take her to bed with me each night. I am surprised now that I was allowed to do that. I lay in bed in a special way to accommodate her. There was a place for her between my knees and my tummy and under my arm, and I kept my bed-clothes slightly open so she could get fresh air. I still lie like that when I turn over to go to sleep, with my knees drawn up. She came to look forward to my bedtime, rubbing around my legs and purring to tell me it was time.

But I have not told you the most important thing: she was the mother of countless kittens. I cannot remember when she first started having them. With newborn kittens she purred more loudly than at any other time, licking and licking their little bobbing heads. Once we saw her having them: we saw her with two in her cardboard nest, then three, then four. I did not actually see them come out from inside her, but I knew that was what was happening. She taught us birth.

With time and many litters she got bored with having them. She treated her later offspring a bit roughly, I thought. I could see how she felt. There is just so much fun to be had out of having kittens, and then it is a bit the same as before.

Still she went on having them. What a wonderful cat. She was still there when eventually I left home. Even now I cannot believe she ever died. I never saw it. No-one ever said she had died. So she lives on, still there where we grew up, there where we will one day return.

Rabbits? Jeez, they’re cute. Or kittens? And there’s this one with little pigs sucking their mother’s tits.

I’m choosing a card for me doctor, see. No, not ‘cause it’s his birthday or nothing. He’s just nice. Dr Frankl. He’s a spunk! Not really. I just said that. He’s funny though – wears old fashioned clothes ‘cause he’s from Europe or somewhere. And Sister Barton likes him.

She’s so la-de-da but she always says, ‘Are you all right, Dr Frankl? Got everything you want, dear?’

And he’s about forty and looks like a bleedin’ rabbit hisself. Clever though. Moves his hands around when he talks to ya. You can tell he’s brainy. You know. How doctors do. And he likes me.

I need a good doctor, I reckon, ‘cause I’m a psytriachric case. Yeah, well I’m better than I was. I used to be terrible. I’m not that bad now, but I still got me worries though. I can’t help meself – I worry a lot. Look, what’s the worst thing you could think of doing? Poisoning little babies, isn’t it? That must be the worst thing, and that’s me biggest worry. Well, milk, really. Milk’s me actual problem. I can’t look at milk. If I see milk, I think I’ve put poison in it. I can’t help meself. I think, ‘Maybe I done it. Maybe I put poison in that milk.’ And I worry.

They’re used to me now, where we live. They know if I see the milk I won’t let ‘em drink it. Jeez, they used to get mad though, even if I paid for it. But it’s all right now, if I don’t see it. If I see it, I make ‘em pour it out still. Only if I haven’t, I know it’s all right – I can’t have poisoned it, can I? If I haven’t seen it? So everyone hides the bloody milk quick. They’re that used to me now, where we live.

Dr Frankl knows too. He knows I can’t help it. He said so. ‘You can’t help yourself, Mrs Finn,’ he said, ‘ That’s a special kind of worry,’ And he give me pills.

Everyone’s give me pills. So did he. Bloody pills.

And he said I should worry about me weight instead, and make the most of meself, ‘cause I’m too fat. ‘You’re your own worst enemy there,’ he said.

‘Jeez, you’re right,’ I said.

Then, one day I asked him about Jim. I’ve seen a lot of doctors but I’ve never said nothing about that before. I know Jim can’t help hisself neither.

I blame Jim’s mother. God, she’s terrible! Ya know, when we was going together, before we was married, he asked me home to meet his mother. And d’ya know what she done? She cooked tea and she put some on a plate for him and some for her, and then they say down and started eating it.

‘Where’s mine?’ I said.

‘Oh, I ain’t cooked none for you,’ she said.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. And Jim didn’t say nothing. Not against his Mum, he wouldn’t. Never. That’s why I blame her. For making him quiet like he is.

I never liked her. I still don’t.

Anyway, I said to Dr Frankl, ‘Could it be Jim as makes me worry? ‘Cause he’s sexually impotent, see? I never told no-one before, but could that be what does it?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said, he was embarrassed ‘cause of what I asked him.

But he’s nice really, so after a bit he said, ‘Why don’t you bring Jim along with you, to see me next time?’

Well, I knew that wouldn’t be too good, only he was trying to help.

‘All right,’ I said.

Jim wasn’t pleased though. Not too pleased at all, but I made him come.

‘Me doctor said you’ve got to,’ I told him.

And d’ya know what he said to Dr Frankl? As soon as we walked in there, before he even said hullo or nothing, he said, ‘I’m very sorry, doctor. I’ll try harder.’

‘Ya wimp! You always say that,’ I said.

But Dr Frankl felt sorry for him. You leave us to have a talk on our own, Gladys,’ he said.

So I left them, and they talked for a while, and I felt sorry for Jim too, when I thought about it.

Then I went back in, and Dr Frankl said, ‘Sex doesn’t matter that much, Galdys. As long as ya love each other, that’s the main thing. And that’s not why you’re not well.’

So that was a disappointment for me. And he’d know, wouldn’t he? Only I felt disappointed. Bloody doctors! What good are they?

So d’ya know what I do for meself? What really makes me feel better when I’m down? D’ya know what I do?

I lock meself in me bathroom at home. Then I have a hot bath. Then I get out and climb on the wicker basket so I can see me whole self in the mirror. We got a light over our bathroom mirror, so I don’t have the big light on. I like to see meself just be that mirror light. And I look lovely, I reckon. It’s steamy, and I’m all hot and pink and soapy. I like being fat, too. I look at me big, pink tits and put me arms up over me head – ooh de la de da – ooh de la de da – and when I shut me eyes, d’ya know what? I start floating. The wicker basket don’t hurt me feet now, ‘cause I’m floating, see.

And, d’ya know what else? Me tits feel like they’re growing, and I’ve got more tits. I got hundreds of tits with, like, little babies hanging on ‘em. I can feel all their little mouths tugging on all me tits, and I’m floating, and there’s light around me.

Only one time the basket give way, and I fell off.

I could’ve killed meself. Well I hurt me shoulder bad, but I didn’t tell no-one how I done it, not even Dr Frankl.

I got Dr Frankl to have a look at it next visit. But he didn’t know what to do. He knows about ya nerves, and he works at a hospital, but he doesn’t know nothing about your body, he told me. So he writ me a letter so I could see Dr Tanner there. And a form to have a X-ray. Only that was on the Tuesday, and the X-ray was Wednesday, and Dr Tanner was Friday, so the bleedin’ taxi fares cost me fifty dollars, and I hadn’t even had no treatment yet.

They was real busy at Dr Tanner’s clinic too.

‘Next one!’

‘Who’s next?’

‘In ya go,’

Then I heard me name called, and it was my turn.

‘Here’s ya notes, Mrs Finn,’ they said. ‘Would ya take ‘em in with you, please.’

But it was just a new folder, and I’ve been going to that hospital for bloody years.

So I was thinking, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing here,’ and then I seen him, Dr Tanner, when I got in there, sitting behind his desk.

God, he was gorgeous. More like a footy player than a doctor. He had the letter from Dr Frankl and he read it in one second then put it in the folder I give him.

‘You’re the painful shoulder, are you?’

‘Yeah. Gladys Finn. Glad-arse,’ I told him like that, and winked.

But he was real serious. ‘Where’s your X-ray?’

‘I dunno.’

How would I know. They never give ya your X-ray y’self.

So he stood up. ‘Nurse!’ he yelled, ‘I want Mrs Finn’s X-ray in here!’

I couldn’t help meself, me eyes went straight to the front of his trousers. Well, he’s be sizing me up, wouldn’t he? Only he was wearing a suit, and in them kind of trousers ya can’t see what’s inside anyway. Nice material though.

‘Show me where it hurts,’ he said.

Then he was coming round the desk to examine me. Shit!

He stood behind me and felt along me shoulder without saying nothing. It did hurt a bit. He pressed hard on the bone, but I didn’t care. Then he made me move me arm up and down, and that hurt too.

‘The X-ray!’ He was shouting again, and the nurse come in and give it to him, a bit cross about it.

He yanked the thing out of the brown envelope and shoved it up on the screen on the wall. He was so tall he had to bend his knees to look at it straight.

I was looking at him, though, not the X-ray. Well I told ya he was gorgeous. He kept clenching his teeth as he examined me bones.

Then it bloody happened. The tea lady come in and poured him a cup of tea with milk in it, right before me eyes. I tried me hardest not to look, but, o’ course, I started to think straight away it might be poisoned. Probably it was all right, but I knew I coulda poisoned it. And what if I had? Me heart started thumping. I couldn’t let Dr Tanner drink it, could I?

‘I’m thirsty,’ I said real quick. ‘ I think I’ll have the cup of tea.’

He looked at me hard.’ That’s my tea, Mrs Finn,’ he said. ‘Patients have to pay for their tea at the kiosk.’

‘But could I have this one?’ I said. ‘I’m really thirsty. Please could I have it?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Well, let me have a sip of it.’

‘No,’ he said.

I was thinking, ‘Let me die, not you,’ so I asked him again. ‘Please …’

No, you can’t have it!’ He started to get mad. Then he sat down and started writing.

I was desperate. I reached out and knocked it over. I meant it to go on the floor, but it went straight onto him.

Hell, he was angry. ‘You did that on purpose!’ he yelled. ‘You get out of here!’ He sounded like a bloody dog barking.

So I started to run. I ran out of the office, and the waiting room, and down the corridor, and down the stairs, and more stairs, and I was bloody nearly dying from running, till I got to Dr Frankl’s office. And I ran straight in there, puffing and crying and shaking at the same time.

‘Fancy seeing you here today,’ Dr Frankl said.

‘Oh, God!’ I said and told him what had happened. And d’ya know what? He started to laugh.

‘He’s fucking laughing at me!’ I thought.

But he kept on. And d’ya know what he did then? He come round his desk and he kissed me. Shit! Even though he’s so shy. I couldn’t believe it.

And it was funny really, when I thought about it, so I started to laugh too.

Sister Barton didn’t know what we was hooting about. ‘Just look at you two,’ she said.

And that’s why I’m buying him a card. This one. All covered with pink rosebuds.

Dr Pagel liked his general practice in Melbourne well enough. That was what he had always wanted. He imagined his patients talking about him warmly, saying, ‘Yes, Brian is our doctor,’ to their friends. Yet he did not quite believe it. He imagined himself saying, ‘These are my patients,’ with the same warmth, but it was lukewarm. Sometimes he could see instead, in his mind’s eye, his first schoolyard on the other side of the country, with the big pine tree standing near the gate and the children sitting among the roots and pine needles, himself among them. He thought of the bright little boy he had once been and felt sorry.

He considered going back West for a holiday and took down his battered suitcases. He changed his mind. Then he saw a television documentary one evening, about another doctor in a famine-besieged city in a poor country far away. He sat and thought, withdrawn into himself.

You’re thinking about New Guinea again,’ his wife said kindly.

How did she know that? He felt alarmed that she should know him better than he did. But it was true. ‘Yes, I am,’ broke from him like a confession.

Long ago in New Guinea he had felt bright, and that is the important thing. Brighter even than he had been as a boy, in fact. He had seen the jungle clad mountains like a great green brain, firing his imagination. How could he deny that? Should he see New Guinea again? New Guinea post independence, fraught with social problems?

That was the journey he made. On his own. The airfares were more expensive than he expected, and travel arrangements difficult. He also found far fewer white people there, of course, than in colonial times. When he arrived in Hagen, in the West Highlands, there were none with whom he made contact. Only the small, dark highlanders from the wild mountains and the plains of kunai grass were as he remembered. But not exactly as he remembered. The locals had changed too. They wore cheap, store-bought clothes and lounged on street corners like unemployed people anywhere.

He lost his nerve for a time Maybe he had only liked the expatriate Australians there in the past, on an adventure, and not the place itself. He had certainly liked the effect being there had on them all, encouraging their generosity and open-mindedness. Maybe he had liked the native New Guineans only for the exoticism of their former Stone Age lifestyle. That had certainly fascinated him. Such thoughts depressed him, but also offended his sense of fairness. There must have been more to it than that. Alone he walked in the overgrown botanical gardens with increasing alarm. During the first night he woke to a drunken argument in loud voices outside his hotel door.

His mood brightened next morning. He found the communal bathroom sinks full of tiny, curly, black hairs from highlanders’ beards, and that tickled him. He ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sat on the hotel back steps afterwards, watching barefoot laundrymen hang out the linen on a row of rotary clothes lines. Behind them rose the ancient landscape of soft blues and pale greens. New Guinean guests had washed their clothes too, in the communal laundry, and were also hanging them on the lines. One man pegged out many children’s shorts and shirts.

Later in the day he befriended a couple of squeaky-voiced local boys on the lookout for something to do. He hoped to use them partly as guides and interpreters, but also for company. They called him ‘Mister Brian’. He was not sure how old they were. Perhaps mid teens. They were excited at having their own white man to tote about and persuaded him to rent a utility truck for transport. One, Abel, began formulating more elaborate plans as well, for Brian to provide the capital in a business they would start, perhaps even in Port Moresby. The other one, Simon, was convinced they would always be friends, at least. Brian liked him for that, and accepted their speculations as part of the amusement he provided.

They journeyed constantly over the ensuing week, to waterfalls and caves, to a bird sanctuary and to dozens of roadside markets, giving lifts to selected villagers vetted by the two boys. The back of the ute was always full of people singing and shouting to their friends. Their vehicle leapt over great pot holes in the road. They got bogged in mud, and freed. They repaired countless flat tyres, the result of worn gravel roads weathered by topical rains.

Eventually Brian told Abel and Simon that he had once worked in Ialibu, at the base of the mountain with the same name, and that he wanted to go there. They were surprised. Was he a doctor? He had not told them that. They were also reluctant to go so far. But it was Brian’s last day and his last chance, and he insisted.

He had been still a student, in fact, when he had traveled to Ialibu on his first visit to New Guinea so many years ago. There had been other students too, from other parts of Australia, all based in Mount Hagen and Mendi. Brian had been especially selected to go to Ialibu.

‘All right,’ said Abel and Simon. ‘Somewhere new for us.’

He appreciated their courage, knowing they would be afraid of devils in distant places. He supposed they trusted him to protect them, though he was worried himself, to be so blatantly revisiting his youth. He remembered the excitement shared with the other students, and the medical officer in Mendi who had taken such a paternal interest in them all. The boys’ company would protect him, he hoped, from the dangers of such nostalgia.

Doubt returned as soon as they set off.  It seemed a bleak prospect, after all, to be going there now without compatriots. He had been left in charge of the little hospital back then, despite his lack of qualifications, and the others had sent him messages addressed playfully to ‘The Chief Medical Officer, Ialibu.’  Long ago. To make matters worse, Abel and Simon started the journey in high spirit only to run out of steam as the landscape changed. Lush vegetation gave way to stony country with more open streams, and smoke rising from bare ridges high above them. For long stretches no-one had anything to say. They were forced to halt eventually where a culvert had collapsed and the road had become temporarily impassable.

Men had come down from a village on the nearby mountainside and made repairs with large stones. They were particularly dark skinned and had stripped to stand chest deep in the fast flowing water. Their bodies glistened black as the rocks, and their faces were grim with concentrated effort. Time passed slowly. Then the job was done, and they beamed with pride, motioning to Brian that it was safe to continue.

Further on, another village clustered closer to the road. Abel and Simon had mentioned that people in these parts built their grass houses differently from the ones near Hagen, so Brian stopped the vehicle again to take a look. The boys got out uncertainly. A line of old ladies in crumpled cotton smocks sat holding piglets which they rubbed and stroked as they chatted. They cried out with pleasure on seeing Brian and wanted to touch his skin. He smiled helplessly and their hands felt greasy, but he remembered something from before. He remembered their alien goodwill. An old man appeared with a kundu drum to show them. He did a solitary singsing with it, in his baggy pants and t-shirt, smiling broadly, recalling the old days too. He would once have been dressed in bark and leaves, not cloth, Brian remembered, and his mouth would not have been stained red with betel nut as it was now. His wrist strap would not have been adorned with plastic beads.

A smartly dressed local policeman emerged from one of the houses and greeted Brian in English. That was new too. It seemed to reassure the two boys, however, who livened immediately and responded to the man’s invitation to come into the village proper.  Brian found himself being shared, as if hospitality towards him established a group enterprise in which Abel and Simon could now participate.

‘Come and see inside the house,’ they said, leading him into the dark that smelled of smoke and dry earth. It took a while for his eyes to adjust.

‘This is my mum and dad’s house,’ the policeman told him.

The old man had joined them, continuing to smile.

‘See where the people sleeps,’ the policeman went on. ‘That’s my dad’s sleeping place there, and that is where he keeps his private things. See how the roof is made in two levels. See the fireplace – how the people does it in these parts.’

The old man nodded happily. Abel and Simon grunted, looking to see Brian’s reaction to what he was being shown.

The villages are just not as colourful as they used to be, Brian thought, regretting his reaction. He had been looking at empty tuna cans on the floor and an old truck tyre supporting part of the wall. He forced a smile, knowing their pleasure in talking to him was a fragile and precious thing. But when he was young he would probably not even have noticed the tuna cans, he admitted to himself, and smiled at his reluctance to be pleased now.

‘No young people in the villages,’ the policeman said, looking Brian in the eyes as if he knew what he was thinking. ‘But we love to come back to visit. I come to visit my old folk. Of course, I must.’

‘Of course he must,’ Abel and Simon repeated.

Outside, the policeman put his hand on Brian’s shoulder and pointed with the other one along the road. He was much taller than his old relatives. ‘You are going to Ialibu,’ he said. ‘Soon you will see the Ialibu mountain as you go.’

As he and the boys continued on their way, one mountain did begin to stand out taller than the rest, against a patchy sky. The boys pointed it out, as if Brian might not notice. Its top was blurred by cloud, and Brian was not sure he really recognised it from before.

He could not recognise the hospital either, when they got to the township and stopped again, except that the faded notice board beside the road looked familiar. ‘Ialibu D.H.’ And three steps on a curve.

Abel and Simon fell quiet again, allowing Brian to lead the way up a rocky slope. They reached a group of long, low buildings at the top, connected by a covered walkway. Perhaps he did remember that. Men and women of all ages sat about out of doors, some with bandages or plaster casts, others apparently the relatives of the sick. Naked children wrestled on the sparse lawn. Some people nodded and made sounds of greeting, relieved from the boredom of waiting to get better. Brian clasped the extended hands, but the two boys hung back.

Eventually they came upon a nurse, but she too looked alarmed when she saw Brian. He asked if the doctor was about, but she could not speak. Simon and Abel tried too, in their own language, to no avail.

She braced herself at last and said, ‘No doctor,’ in English, then changed her mind and said she would get him. She smiled shyly.

Dr Johns arrived and introduced himself with much enthusiasm. He was young and had the creamy complexion and straight hair of a Polynesian islander, looking just as out of place here as Brian might have done. Yet the hospital was clearly his domain, and his manner bestowed an unexpected dignity on the occasion. He shook hands with the two boys too, careful to include them in his greeting. He was from the Cook Islands, he told them, and his youthful face took on a wistful expression as he mentioned his home. He looked tired then, Brian noticed, but moved on quickly. He had studied medicine in Port Moresby, he said, and was now committed to working in the New Guinea health service. This was his first long posting away from the capital.

‘Come and see my work,’ he said, with obvious pleasure. ‘I came here before as a student,’ he said, leading the way into the wards, ‘and then I chose this place to return after qualification.’

Brian wondered whether to mention that he had also been here as a student, so much longer ago, but Simon said it for him. ‘Mr Brian was here too.’

Dr Johns seemed not to notice. ‘This man with a knife wound to his wrist is interesting,’ he said. ‘You see? All the tendons were cut. I’ve had a tricky morning stitching those and I’ve made him this support of fencing wire.’

‘They fight him? With bush knife?’ asked Abel.

‘Quick tempered people,’ the doctor said good humouredly and laughed at the boy’s reminder. ‘And this next man was badly burned by his cooking fire at one time. Now he has skin contractures restricting his arm movements. See?’

So he showed them his patients, describing his efforts proudly, acknowledging their remarks.

Brian noticed with amusement the reactions of the two boys, but this did not distract him from his own perplexing response. He felt an intense interest in Dr John’s work just because this was Ialibu. He had been a callow youth, thinking of this as an adventure to share with other students, but must also have taken it very seriously. It had stayed in his mind like a long ago love affair.

Dr Johns told them about his success in reducing infant deaths from enteritis, and his theory that an increase in iron deficiency anaemias had resulted from the people changing to using aluminium cooking pots. He discussed obstetric problems, nutrition, smoking and T.B.

Brian was appropriately impressed by the man’s absorption in his work, but there was something else he wanted from him, and was not sure what.

‘Do you have much contact with other doctors?’ he asked.

‘Very little.’ Dr Johns laughed again, but less certainly. ‘I have to make my own running most of the time.’

‘Not easy,’ said Brian. ‘Lonely sometimes, I suppose.’

The boys looked worried at this turn in the conversation. No-one likes to think of loneliness.

In the X-ray department Dr Johns pointed out two gleaming new machines, a gift to the hospital from Japan. ‘And this is my dear friend Peter Robin,’ he said in the hospital laboratory, pushing towards them the old technician, reluctant to be introduced. Everywhere they went Dr Johns greeted people, asking after their comfort. Everywhere people responded lovingly.

‘I’m afraid of loneliness,’ Brian said, as if this was something with which Dr Johns could help him.

Dr Johns paused for a moment, then continued talking about other things.

‘The political situation in this country,’ Brian said later, ‘must be all important.’

‘Oh, we are far from politics here …’

‘But …’ Brian said, then checked himself from saying more. Dr Johns was hardly more than a boy, he realised with a shock.

They smiled at each other.

‘I’ve been here before,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Dr Johns.

‘I told him,’ said Simon.

‘And would I want to come somewhere like this again?’ This was the question he had come to ask.

‘That’s something for you to decide,’ said Dr Johns.

David felt the pressure rising just slightly beyond comfort. Sometimes he could enjoy the anxious anticipation of triumph or disappointment. Could thrive on its energy. He knew it contributed often to his success. Not now. Today it threatened to incapacitate. He had woken early, as if the feeling had already gripped him as he slept. He had been unable even to doze uneasily and had risen to pace the plate-glass outlook of his room, appreciative, at least, of the panoramic view his penthouse flat provided. His heart pounded, and mountains trembled on the edge of town.

‘Damnation!’ he muttered, quoting from a play he has attended the night before. That was in another State. He could not now recall much else of what it had been about.

‘Con Brio!’he read aloud the direction for the Beethoven First Movement on his bedside table. ‘With spirit!’ he commanded, but the words seemed strangely ineffectual.

The score was already too familiar, anyway, and further study would be ill-advised. He knew from past experience that it worked best for him to be not quite ready, to leave some residual demands before the actual performance. Why was that? Insurance against carelessness, perhaps? Insurance against cocky over-confidence? To be not quite certain of the details summoned up just the right concentration of his thoughts. He knew himself that well, in some ways. He was ready enough, he knew, in some ways. If it were not for this damned, too-great anxiety.

He raised his baton as if to conduct the rooftops fanning out beneath him. He saw them as brooding unresponsively in the early morning light. This is the worst thing about coming home, he thought, this indifference the place has for me, despite its familiarity. He needed the magic of overseas. He remembered Melbourne as having enclosed him uncomfortably, as somewhere to be escaped from. It waited for him again now, and what was he supposed to do? He found it hard to breathe.

He thought of his initially-happy first evening back in Australia. He had been driving east from Adelaide that first day, as the sun set, speeding along a good road through rolling sheep country, friendly but uneventful. The clarity of the light roused a special interest in him, after the haziness of Europe. His own response enthralled him too, as if it was an indication of what the future held. He recognised the sparking of youthful memories, the reconnection with the bigger, brighter world of youth. He watched the changing colours of the hills. Shadow had engulfed the immediate foreground through which he drove, and a cold greyness replaced the daytime browns and greens, but the distance reflected the fierce magnificence of the Australian dusk. Reds and blues glowed like fire-coals, then softened to rose and violet. A veil of pink mist floated in the sky above the hills, then slowly darkened, then dissolved. The country darkened too, though shapes remained at first, and then dissolved.

In his youth he might have thought of this sunset as purposely orchestrated, just for him. He might have thought that some benevolent, great man, who happened to love him, Brahms or Mahler perhaps, had so depicted the close of day in the Great South Land, just for him. He had heard their great chords sounding through the landscape. He had felt enormous power, with great men to back him in pursuit of life. He knew he was musically clever. Everyone said so. He knew the great composers were grateful to him, preserving their legacy, and would smile upon him.

He drove on mechanically, following the road picked out in illuminated markers through the night. He puzzled over his recollections. Had it been so simple, really? Had it been hard work, really, for his imagination to maintain those grandiose illusions? Or had illusions come without effort, back then when he was young? Cocooned, inexperienced in the real world he was to know, he had simply nurtured an extravagant promise of the future. His music had been his cocoon. His reading of Brahms and Mahler might now be so much more accomplished and discrete, so much more securely in the European tradition now, yet he envied the ignorance of that boy he had been – his unfettered passion, and his ease.

He pulled over, to sit and think. He remembered something else: the loneliness of his youth. He had felt so small and lonely, too, and that was something he had also forgotten. He was not lonely now; he had his close associates, his public and his career. Would I rather be sad, like then, or anxious, as I am now? he asked himself. Is that the choice? Other cars swung past with dazzling lights. Lorries bore down on him, shuddering the dark cell in which he sat. He had set himself a task in Europe, to discover the world afresh each day, free of prior conceptions, and had found countless interpretations at hand, in Europe, of how to be at home. The place where I was born is not a foreign land, he tried to tell himself here. No more foreign, at least, than everywhere. Yet he felt dismayed to be in Australia, and nothing he had in Europe was working for him now.

‘You need more friends your age,’ his mother used to say.

How he had resented her solicitude. Who was there he wanted to be friends with anyway?

‘I am here, my dear people, to give you Beethoven,’ he announced to the waiting houses beneath his penthouse window.

A gentle knock on his door would be Quentin, he knew. Quentin usually came to wake him when on tour.

‘I’m awake,’ he called, reluctant to see even Quentin in his present state of mind.

‘You’re up? Magnificent!’ Quentin crowed, once in.

‘You want coffee?’ David asked.

‘Capital,’ said Quentin.

‘It’s rented-apartment coffee,’ David said. The electric kettle came quickly to the boil, and he tore open the paper sachets dolefully.

‘What is it, my pet?’ said Quentin, taking his cue.

‘Blast this concert. I don’t feel like it,’ David answered with all the childish petulance he could muster.

‘You funny old thing. It was what you said you wanted,’ said Quentin with real concern.

They hugged. They laughed.

‘What am I going to do?’ David said. ‘It will be a disaster.’

‘Never! Do what you always do. Inspire them. I know it is only Australia, but you mustn’t look down on them, my dear. Bring them up to your level, my sweet. Who knows what little future genius might have been brought by his Mummy to hear you?’

‘I can’t.’ David grimaced and looked out the window again. He knew he sounded silly, but this was the game he and Quentin always played. Except that this game was not working for him either. He really wanted to sound silly, not just pretend. That was how he felt. Silly. He wanted to run away and hide, despite Quentin’s loving care.

He looked at the city roofs again, and the distant mountains. ‘I wish I was back in comfortable, old London,’ he said.

‘When did you ever find London comfortable?’ Quentin responded with surprise. ‘London’s not meant to be comfortable.’

They had met in London. They had been friends for years. Quentin knew the music scene, and David took the part of the talented new arrival, and then of the talented old hand. They had liked each other anyway, since their first meeting, like mother and son.

‘Whenever I lose my capacity to rejoice in the world, I make my mind free to listen to great music,’ Quentin had said, as they lay on the carpet in his Knightsbridge flat. ‘It may not work for everyone, but that is how I am.’

‘Me too,’ David had answered with enormous gratitude. His world, until then, had been filled with forbidding strangers. ‘I don’t just listen. I play great music,’ he said.

‘Do you, my dear?’

What fun they had had.

‘The concert hall is tip-top,’ Quentin said now, ‘if that is any consolation. And you should see the opera theatre. Splendid! The European sacred cave successfully replicated.’

David noticed for the first time what ridiculously small hands Quentin had. ‘Can you fight?’ he asked.

‘You want to fight?’ Quentin’s eyes widened with astonishment.

‘I mean, could you fight if you had to? If you were attacked?’

‘I should say not,’

They laughed again.

‘I’m such a lonely man,’ David said.

That hurt Quentin’s feelings. He did not say, ‘But you’ve got me,’ but he looked hurt.

‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Eventually Quentin left to get on with his own preparations for the evening. David wondered then if his parents would come to his performance. He supposed they would want to, though his father always claimed to dislike the music David had made into his career, and his mother would not come alone. They would be angry, he supposed too, that he had not kept in touch. He did not know really where he stood with them, nor why he had been so careless of their feelings. He could call them. He could get rebuffed, if that is what they wanted to do. He could not call them yet. He was not up to it.

He tried to sleep some more, in case his body needed it. His anxiety had lessened slightly but rebounded immediately, in full force, as soon as he closed his eyes. His pounding heart would give him no respite. The telephone rang, but he ignored it. Someone else knocked on his door. He ignored that too.

He had thrown rocks at a koala asleep in a gum tree once, while on his way to school. Had that been a deliberately symbolic act? He smiled to think what a morose and self-absorbed youngster he had been, chucking rocks and feeling sorry for himself, but also felt ashamed of his limitations. He thought of all the things he had not handled well. His throat tightened with shame. He had not stood his ground when other boys confronted him. What use that he could fling off Bach fugues on the piano without a falter, compared to that? What did it matter that Quentin admired him now? Some secret had eluded him: how to be strong and carefree in the ordinary world. He had thought desperately that Miss McKay’s chrysanthemum brooch held some special answer – the brooch that hung on her breast as she presided over the class approvingly. Even now he could sometimes dream of that glittering ornament become a wondrous, writhing plant beneath the sea, its trailing tendrils, white and green, and edged with copper fire. He had longed to be part of other things as well, less tangible – the catch in her voice as Maree Wright called over her shoulder to Susan and Tommy Campbell, or the swaggering stance of Brian Calvert as he and Kevin pushed their paper boats around a muddy pool.

The telephone rang again. This time he answered. The receptionist told him that visitors had requested his apartment number and were on their way up in the lift.

‘Please check with me first,’ he complained, in alarm. The clerk apologised. He heard further knocking on his door.

When he opened it, he did not recognise any of the four people waiting to come in.

‘We met yesterday,’ said a young man with a German accent. ‘My name is Thomas, you will remember. And this is my wife, Jilly.’

‘We met in Frankfurt two years ago,‘ she said. ‘I am sure you don’t remember that. All of us in the orchestra are so excited you’ve come back. My parents wanted to meet you too. They remember your first concert here. That was just before you went away.’

‘Oh that,’ said David, embarrassed at the thought. He was not flattered. He was irritated at the intrusion. He shook hands with the smiling parents politely, even so.

‘I’m only sorry I will be taking a break soon myself,’ Jilly continued, as if she imagined he was going to stay on. ‘We’re expecting our first baby later in the year.’

‘My God,’ David said. ‘How nice,’ he added hastily.

She and Thomas looked so pleased his feelings softened towards them.

‘You’ll have tea?’ he said to everyone. ‘I’ll ring down for cakes.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’

‘But I insist.’

Somehow a conversation got underway that he enjoyed. Gradually talk began to flow pleasantly and smoothly, as the kettle boiled and cakes arrived.

‘I like babies very much,’ he found himself saying, to his own great surprise. But it was true. He had once held one, and he had liked it.

Thomas told him how differently the German music sounded to him in Australia.

‘Yes, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Like drinking wine in a country other than where it was made.’

Jilly told him that Thomas was very gifted, and that Melbourne was lucky to have him. Jilly’s father ventured to say he was sure Melbourne was very lucky to have David, and Jilly’s mother said how nice it was that he was so down-to-earth and easy to talk to, into the bargain.

‘You’re so easy to talk to,’ David protested.

He wondered, after they had gone, why he had said that. He had not found it easy, but he did feel a little better. He pushed the musical scores into his briefcase for tonight. He rang down again, this time for a newspaper to be sent up, thinking he might do the crossword puzzle. He checked his parents’ telephone number and wrote it down.

The Niugini night is warm and still. The silver moon lights banks of cloud – become enchanted realms – above the earth and sea. It is nineteen seventy-five, the year of independence, and Dr Thomas walks down the hill to his hospital on the shore, to make his bedtime round.

            He is puzzled to see a gathering at the entrance, of men around an open truck. He hears low voices speaking earnestly.

            ‘Good night,’ he calls.

            ‘Yes. Good night.’

            They give no direct indication of what they are doing there, but as he passes he hears a sudden thud and grunt. ‘Get down, you!’ someone mutters, but not to him.

            He passes on in, leaving them to let him know what they want in their own good time.

The wards in the Australian-run hospital are all at peace. The sleeping sick and their relatives share beds and floor, grass mats and flowered pillows and mothers’ arms, and breathe and dream. A shy nurse accompanies him, carrying a flickering spirit lamp. He knows her and likes her. All she does is good, he thinks.

Later, crossing the mottled lawn between the buildings, he hears the shriek of rusty wheels rotating and sees the group of men crowding along a concrete walkway pushing a wheelchair bumpily. The wheelchair occupant flings his arms about. The group halts from time to time to grapple with him and hold him down. A rope stretches from his feet to one man who walks ahead, drawing the rest behind him.

‘Good night,’ Dr Thomas calls to them again.

Some look embarrassed as he approaches, including one of the male nurses he recognises among them.

‘He’s being admitted?’

‘He longlong,’ they say jointly, making as if to press on with what they are doing. ‘He smoke marihuana.’

Dr Thomas steps nearer and stares into the face of the longlong, a small wiry man who grimaces and pops his eyes at him.

‘Hullo,’ Dr Thomas says.

‘Hullo-hullo.’ The longlong gives a sudden lunge.

The crowd springs back and forward again, to hold him. The rope jerks, and they continue on their way.

‘You need help?’

‘Good night,’ they say.

Dr Thomas follows, watching over them, smiling to himself at the little man to whose welfare so many of them are attending.

Once they reach the men’s ward they spread eagle their charge on a bed in a single room.

‘Let him go now. Lose the rope,’ calls Dr Thomas.

‘Let doctor in,’ says the charge nurse, Andrew, his favorite.

The others make way reluctantly for the doctor to reach the bed. He feels old and possibly redundant, but grateful to Andrew for his help. Being stoned is not normally a medical disease.

The others release their hold on the man, also uncertainly, untie the rope and step back as from a snake they have emptied from its bag. The longlong stays motionless for one second, thrashes about blindly for several more, grabbing at the air, then stops.

‘Hullo,’ Dr Thomas tries again.

‘Hullo-hullo.’

‘You smoke marihuana?’

‘Smoke mawana! Smoke mawana!’ He chuckles hoarsely.

The onlookers approve.

He sneezes like a little boy.

The onlookers laugh.

He stands up on the bed. ‘Me king!’ he says. ‘You all rubbish men! Something-nothing men!’

They laugh again.

He falls neatly onto the bed, curls up in a ball and flutters his eyelids.

‘We must take his blood pressure,’ Andrew says.

True,’ the others reply.

All wait while Andrew brings the apparatus. His hands tremble wrapping the cuff around the longlong’s arm. All are silent. They hear each squelch as Andrew pumps the air into the rubber bag and they watch the column of mercury rise. They hear the hiss as the air is released and the measure taken. The longlong hisses too.

‘One twenty on eighty,’ Andrew announces firmly. ‘Now we must give him sedative.’

‘True,’ the others say again.

Andrew goes out and returns with two tablets and a plastic cup of water. ‘Up,’ he says.

The longlong sits up.

‘Drink .’

The longlong takes the tablets in one hand and the brimming cup in the other. His eyes rove around the room.

All wait.

He puts the tablets carefully on his tongue and washes them down with the water at a single swallow.

All voice approval and relax.

‘Now we must leave him to sleep,’ Andrew says.

‘Ah, yes,’ everyone agrees. ‘Leave him now to sleep.’

A tough-looking teenage boy comes forward to say he is the longlong’s friend. ‘His relative give him the bad smoke then run away,’ he explains earnestly. ‘I can stay with him.’

So that is settled too.

Dr Thomas finishes his rounds and, as he climbs the hill, he remembers, ‘Me king!’ and smiles again

The moonlit clouds still hang in the sky above the sparkling sea.

            ‘Good night,’ he wishes them all again, more aware than usual that his medical practice here has not been so much a matter of administering a service to fellow adults, as being an indulgent grandfather half the time, to mischievous children. ‘But would they see it that way?’ he wonders now. ‘What is the future for them now?’

They told me they had seen a man go into the forest. ‘A young-old man,’ they said. ‘His back was strong but he stooped. He carried a gun, and his horse was laden with provisions.’

‘Where are you going?’ one asked.

‘What are you doing?’ asked another. ‘What are you hunting?’

The man did not reply.

‘It is probably a bear you are after?’ a woman asked him.

Then he did speak. He looked at the woman and said, ‘Yes.’

‘Which one?’ someone quipped.

‘I know which one,’ he said, and they were silent.

The sun shone on his hair, which was blond but uncombed. The sun lit the grass bright green, but in the forest it was dark.

‘It’s dangerous,’ the woman said.

‘There are worse dangers,’ he told her and looked away.

‘There’s getting lost,’ someone said.

’There’s finding no bear,’ said another. ‘There’s wasting your time.’

‘I’m not,’ the man said, no longer looking at any of them.

His eyebrows were so pale they were lighter then the ruddy skin of his face. His eyes were pale blue, as if lit from behind. He was amused by the conversation, but bored with talking to humbugs, and went on in among the dark trees until he was beyond their watching and their commentary. His horse bumped against him from time to time since there was love between them. They liked the pine scent of the forest and the silence of the needles underfoot.

The man was thinking about another woman hungrily and distastefully. The thought of her stirred a familiar restlessness in his chest, and he wanted to stop thinking. He felt his penis stir, as if every part of her remembered body was like a magnet. He saw her tilted face, her smile of mock dismissal, and her eyes watching for his reaction.

The bear could see them, man and horse, as they walked between the trunks of the great trees. The bear moved silently too, despite his bulk and the awkwardness of his gait. He sniffed and took it all in – horse-smell, man-smell, gun-smell, and provisions – and blinked his tiny eyes.

The man had no idea how to begin to hunt a bear. How to fire a gun, even, he knew only in theory. He had purchased the weapon specifically for this enterprise. Maybe he would know better tomorrow what to do. He was not without a sense of humour – like his horse, who also liked a joke. He grinned. He was a long way from boyhood, but he could look like a boy when he was puzzled, or confronting life’s absurdity, or his own.

The next human being they encountered was a black-hearted villain. He appeared from the shadows like a creature of the forest, but he lacked the forest’s innocence. He enquired most sweetly regarding their quest, begged food and wine, and stole more than he had been offered while they slept.

The man’s predicament now, with food in short supply, was no laughing matter. He was glad to be alone again with his own thoughts, but his thoughts berated him for his foolishness, and this new humiliation blended with those of the past.

The horse respected the man’s state of mind, and days passed.

The man ate stringently and had begun to discern traces of the bear’s probable proximity. No way would he turn back. He kept his gun on hair-trigger alert.

More days passed with no communion between man and beast. They stayed awake long into the night. Small movements by small creatures captured their attention. In the morning small signs of the bear suggested he may have inspected them as they slept.

The bear was not so interested as all that in the wanderings of the man and his horse. He liked to test his claws on the bark of trees, enjoying their strength.

As his supplies dwindled the man became irritable. The horse bumped against him at his peril.

They met Bane-the-Bear-Fixer just as their circumstances were becoming desperate, sent by God, so young, so kind, so earnest, who walked beside them. The man noticed again how the sunlight filtered through the canopy of the pines and fell sometimes on the path ahead, and sometimes on the horse’s mane, and sometimes now on Bane.

As a bear-fixer, Bane knew how to interpret the signs. He knew where they were going each day and what to do. He spoke with enthusiasm about pits, and rope snares, and driving their quarry into a tight corner. The man listened eagerly.

As days passed the man began to find the boy too talkative. He asked himself: whose bear hunt is this? Then he noticed Bane’s fear, and the over-inclusive talk took on new meaning.

The man learned as much as he needed nevertheless. They spotted the bear on more than one occasion, and Bane fell silent.

When the boy left them, however, so did the bear.

The bear chuckled to see the man seeing him across the ravine.

The man watched and wondered how it was so. In either direction the chasm stretched as far as he could see. How, then, was the bear padding so cheerily on the far brink, heaving his great body over rocks and irregularities, waving his nose from side to side, so unconcerned?

The horse laughed, despite his exhaustion, to see the man’s perplexity.

Since there was little point standing and staring, they retreated into the obscurity among the trees to wait and weave their way and ponder life’s futility.

The lack of food affected the man’s mind. He heard great chords sounding as he moved through the forest, announcing new vistas. A chirpy tune accompanied his steps and his swinging shoulders, and the wind in the pine tops played a long and wistful melody. His horse shimmered beside him, and in their shared hopelessness he loved the horse as much as the horse loved him. The music in his mind was at one with the horse, and the horse became the music, and so it was that the bear moved back within range.

Back in the forest the bear smelled the man and the horse with alarm. He broke twigs in his lumbering haste, and the man thought it was another human being he heard proceeding so noisily, and not the bear whom he least expected.

The bear’s jaws were terrible, and his body muscular, but his brain was no match for man and horse. The gunshot rang louder than anyone could reasonable have expected. The horse whinnied. The man felt the pain as if his collarbone was broken. The bear felt the pain of death.

The bear’s guts were also most horrible, but the man was merely satisfied to see them spilled, while his horse shook with the aftermath of fear.

The man used his knife to empty the bear’s abdominal cavity completely. He used his rope slung over a tree-branch to raise the bear as the last innards plopped steaming to the ground. He lowered the gutted carcass onto the back of his trembling steed.

They saw the man come out of the forest with the bear, they told me. He acknowledged their remarks without speaking in return. His horse staggered slightly but did not falter. The woman saw that the man was handsome now he stood erect and free.

Greg studied the faces of the two anxious petitioners in the warm night. Winged insects flickered the light from the overhead bulb, and fireflies zigzagged among the distant trees. He was unused to having such power over other men’s lives. They were shorter in stature than he was, and, though powerfully built and used to physical work, they were gently spoken. Their dark faces glistened on the edge of the circle of light. One had a sparse, curly beard, lips red with betel nut, and red-stained teeth. He was bare-foot, in baggy shorts, and his barrel chest was encased in a sleeveless V-neck Rugby shirt. He fumbled with his wrist-watch which had no glass. The other, in a soot-marked business shirt with broken buttons, had hair more neatly cropped, and teeth that gleamed white. Yet he too hung his head at Greg’s scrutiny.

How old would they be? Greg guessed twenty-five and thirty years, but had found the age of New Guineans hard to estimate. They could look like strong men at sixteen then remain unaltered until too old to work.  He referred to all of them as ‘boys’, at any rate, as was the custom among white Australians in those days, though he had relied on many of them as fellow adults often enough, following their lead along the forest paths. He had enjoyed their easy companionship, and their tactful attitude to his incompetence in their domain. On those occasions he associated their heavy features with light and animated talk.

Not now. Conscious of his own height, and slender frame, he wished he could apologise for his position as a doctor in their country, sorry that they should feel anxious before him, that they should be fearful of his eyes. He hoped to regard them with kindness. Why else would he be here?

‘Master, mipella like look’em,’ the older one said.

Greg noticed they were holding hands, like children, as they pleaded. He could have been amused by this quaintness in their behaviour, but they were speaking about a death, and about wanting to view the body of someone they had known. They spoke about a death already familiar to Greg, from earlier in the day, and about the body of an actual boy – a schoolboy, the men said – now locked in the tiny shed that served the hospital as a mortuary.

They should see the body of their friend, if they want to, Greg thought. He had access to the key. But it was not really up to him as a mere first-year, even if he was on duty for the night. Or maybe it was? He was in charge of the hospital for now, and himself unsupervised, and he thought of white-man’s New Guinea as more his domain than any of the others’ here. He thought of it as his chosen calling, even, and these his chosen people.

This morning, in the Hospital Secretary’s office, he had overheard a radio message come through from Kavieng, beyond the horizon of the sea, of a helicopter accident in the distant mountains of New Ireland, and of a dead teenager to be flown in to the hospital in Rabaul. On duty in Outpatients he would have to receive the body, he supposed, and had braced himself for such a sight, being not so far removed from teenage years himself.

‘Always dying, the natives, eh Greg?’ old Kerwin had said. He knew Kerwin did not like him and had said it to annoy, to mock his youth and sensitivity. He disliked Kerwin in return. He was proud not to like him.

‘And dying is a major concern for the Department of Health,’ Kerwin continued, challenging him to join in a shared cynicism he could not understand.

Was caring forbidden? ‘Don’t worry about it, mate,’ Kerwin had told him so often he wanted to punch the man’s face. He knew that worrying was strictly forbidden at the New Guinea Club where Kerwin was in charge, and at the Golf Club, and even at the Staff Club, but he knew he was above all that himself. Maybe things were a little different at Kerwin’s home where he had been invited for a beer once only, when he first arrived, and had wondered why Kerwin’s wife did not emerge from the adjoining room and why Kerwin answered his questions evasively, about their boys at school down south in Sydney.

He had got scant reply this morning too when he had asked for details from the accident report, and how the local teenager had been killed. ‘Not your business, matey. Just issue the death certificate without too much fuss this time, will you.’

‘What fuss are we talking about? What time?’ Greg had protested, proud of his reputation. He had a lot more to say, in his own mind, as he left the office to get on with the day’s work.

In the Outpatients Department later, form-filling amongst fractious children, assisting the hospital orderly to lance a breast-abscess, he have been braced but was not ready when the dark blue Toyota had lumbered along the hospital road through the palms to deliver the burden of the morning’s radio call. In the end cubicle where the damp-vegetable smell of the tropics mingled with that of iodine antiseptic they had laid the body on a wooden bench, and he had shared the surprise of nurse-onlookers at the boy’s appearance – so robust and immaculate but without life. How had he died unblemished, his limbs and trunk intact, his determined young jaw thrust forward, his soft eyelashes closed above his smooth cheeks? No-one had spoken, but Greg had seen then that the back of the boy’s head was gone, sheared off as neatly as by a circular saw. Almost half his head was gone. It had been hard to look at a wound so cleanly cruel.

Unbelievable as any death, this had seemed to Greg the more so, being from an accident almost anyone would fear under the rotating helicopter blades. Had they seemed to the luckless boy to be higher than they were? Or had he been too distracted by the occasion to take care? Had he jumped up as he jumped out too hastily after his joyride, from the cockpit to the ground? Perhaps the only one in the village brave enough to accept the offer to amuse the bored soldiers, had he then been overawed to find himself so close to the whites in their mechanical fluttering bird?  Had they laughed even, to see his awe, and themselves forgotten to take care of him, as they should? Like a live bird, he could die.

So Greg had felt a rush of sorrow that no-one else shared, as far as he could see, for this anonymous black youth from far away. His feelings reinforced his sense that his was a special attunement to the life-and death drama of this place. He had seen the loss as his own, in a way, the shock of it as his own surprise that even the young are mortal despite their future dreams. Grief, unfamiliar, had rebounded onto him from this young lifeless face, and he had felt that he had some special honour to bestow in being so moved by what he saw. Although he was from Australia, educated, middle class, and vitally alive, he had known boyhood well enough to know this boy’s tragedy well enough as well. During his lunch-break he had slipped off among the trees to cry in secret, smitten with this dismay.

He thought a lot about flying since being here. He had always loved to fly. He had found nowhere quite like New Guinea to fly above, imagining all New Guineans would love to see what he saw – their country from on high. He had seen how storms in one direction could embroil the sky, obscuring the mountains with a grey wall of rain, while in another direction the endless massed clouds of the monsoon could float serene, a flotilla of dazzling white, above ranges lit sharply by the sun. He had gazed out over the rugged greenery below, where the huts of villages clustered along ridges, and waterfalls tumbled into the shaded valleys. Away in the distance he had seen how the sudden coastline meets the blue-green chemistry of the sea, with long pale plumes of muddied brown where rivers end.

He had translated such images all afternoon into a transformation of the mundane details of his work, caring with new intensity that everything should be done just so, and far above the duties the likes of Kerwin would allot. He had dwelt long on the dilemma of the woman with tuberculosis detained compulsorily for treatment despite her protests as to her important status when at home. ‘I will not cough on my own children,’ she had cried, but no-one would agree. He had thought hard about the old man, now recovered, waiting impatiently for the transport to his home, knowing the wait for routine transport would be long. He had received the bloodied man who had marched in to declaim that he had speared the enemy of his family and would go happily before the courts to answer the charges of murder the white man’s law determined. He had wondered anew about the white man’s mission here, bringing our technology and our social systems, bringing change. And he had thought repeatedly of the young New Guinea body he had trundled to the morgue.

‘I do not understand,’ he told everyone who would listen, ‘why the body had to come here anyway. The boy’s people would have their own ceremonies to conduct.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Kerwin had told him, ‘he was killed in a bloody white man’s machine. Don’t you appreciate what that might mean? This is not the time for native ceremonies, mate. His people will be a bit upset with us, savvy?’

Greg had stared back at the other man’s sun-dried face and watery eyes, and had said nothing.

‘If we don’t watch out we’ll have an incident on our hands,’ Kerwin had continued, ‘and for the time being that mortuary is out of bounds to everyone. No sight-seers, you understand?’ He had laughed disconcertingly then, as if he had got something off his chest.

God knows what, Greg had thought. He must know there is no danger to us. We have all the power in this situation. The local people have no power over us.

But he had not thought until now of disobeying the older man’s instructions, of ‘letting down the side’ as he had always longed to do. ‘Come,’ he said to the two unknown New Guineans who had appeared from nowhere and wanted to look, for the last time, at their lost friend. They would be his unknowing accomplices in his subversion of the white masters, however trivial or important it all was. Only he was aware of the confused but urgent feelings he now expressed. What was he really trying to show, and to whom? He could not say.

‘Come and look, if you like,’ he said as kindly as he could. They waited silently while he found the mortuary keys, without much trouble, in one of the drawers in the Administration Officer’s desk. They looked about at the office paraphernalia as they waited. He took the pressure lamp, without a second thought, from the Records Office porch. He led the way with it, slowing when they kept their distance behind him, wanting them to catch up, so that they all could walk together.

The wards of the hospital spread widely, an arrangement of low buildings connected with covered walkways through gardens of rough lawn and shrubs of scented flowers. The sick and their attendant families, now asleep, spread beyond the open-ended sheds, with their concrete floors, onto the soft grass between. The sprawling limbs and cherubic faces made this lamp-lit walk among them an unnerving one for Greg, as if they had entered the spirit world of an unknown religion, visible only in the night. He knew the two men with him would be frightened anyway by what they had come to see, and would not be expecting the way there to be quite like this, perhaps.

They passed a group of people still awake, close in conversation around a kerosine lantern on the ground.

‘Marum,’ murmured one of them respectfully, a patient Greg had admitted during the afternoon. The man blinked in the glare of the pressure lamp held at his eye-level.

‘Marum,’ Greg and his two companions answered.

The mortuary lay apart, at the end of its own path, a square, wooden building with frosted glass in louvred windows and a padlock on the door. Greg had been inside many times before, but the other two hesitated, then began to weep noisily. His hands shook undoing the padlock and slipping the bolt. As he guided them in, the noise of their lamentation grew. Disturbed by this, but still in charge of the situation, he placed the lamp on the formica table that served the mortuary attendant as a desk. He knew that the large metal cupboard against the wall contained the bodies in sliding metal drawers, like a huge filing cabinet. The dead boy’s hospital records he recognised, left open. He read the number and located what he thought was the corresponding drawer on the bottom level. It slid out heavily, emitting an acrid odour of formalin from the damp sheeting within. This wrapped the body tightly, held with a safety pin in the centre of the chest.

The New Guineans crowded him hotly now. They had begun a more guttural wailing in chorus, pre-empting the awaited viewing. He fumbled as he released the pin to unshroud the head, and realised, as he did so, that this was not the boy.

‘Em no got!’ he cried out, appalled, pulling the cloth back over the withered features of an old man.

One of the mourners was by now pounding his chest. His continuous moan jerked rhythmically to the repeated blows of his clenched hand. Desperate now, Greg heaved the long drawer closed, hardly believing he could have misread the number. He checked again. He found the reference again. He pulled out the correct drawer. Again the body was enveloped in damp cloth secured in the same way. The pin undone, he flung back the sheeting, having somehow forgotten and remembering the sight within, as the other two fell silent. Surrounded by the crumpled white material, the lamp-lit features of the boy resumed the centre of all their experience. His eyelids had half opened and his lips were drawn back slightly from his clenched teeth.

The younger, bearded man grabbed him by the shoulders and began lifting and flinging down the body noisily against the metal case, as if demanding the return of life. Finding no response, he clasped the boy to him and wept without restraint. The older man held Greg’s arm, more quietly tearful, as if he had less right, and was there to help his friend. The room, the lamp, all physical details of the occasion, were lost to them by now. They looked at the face of someone who had, until recently, walked the earth with them. This was a coming to terms with something, old as time.

Alarmed by the continued wailing from the two men, Greg began to worry about the situation after all, and the outpatient clinic he had left unmanned, and his knowledge that he had no formal right to have brought them here. Someone might come at any time, and demand an explanation from him. He may have asserted to himself that he had the right to do as he had chosen, but he now wished the episode to end quickly.

Eventually the chief mourner, the younger, betel nut chewing one, turned his wet face to Greg’s and spoke with spicy breath. ‘This is my son, you know,’ he said in New Guinea Pidgin. ‘I was father to him when I was a schoolboy myself.’

Taken aback, Greg made a hurried calculation as to whether this could possibly be the case.

‘I fuck my teacher and she get pregnant,’ the man explained, keen for Greg to hear.

This was so strange it must be true, Greg thought, until the other man shouted, ‘And I fuck her too! This my son too!’ with anguish as if his own life depended on his testimony to this.

‘He’s everyone’s son,’ Greg tried to explain to them. He had no clear idea what any of them was saying.

When they emerged from that place they found that many other people had come, awakened by the commotion. The silent gathering separated to let them through. Some extended hands slowly to touch them as they passed.

On reaching the road at the front of the hospital, Greg said, ‘I am sorry we have taken him. I am sorry you can’t give him a proper funeral yourselves.’

‘No big thing,’ they said. ‘No money.’

‘But what would you do in the village? What is the custom when somebody has died?’

‘We don’t know,’ they said. ‘We town-boys now.’

Then, as if it had just occurred to him, the older one added, ‘Master, mipella like lookim em gen tomorrow. You give me pass?’

Greg had no pass to give. He wanted them to go quickly. He also wanted them to come back tomorrow if they wanted to, but he did not know what would happen if they did.

‘You boss of all dead man in this hospital?’ the man went on.

‘No. The boss would not let you see. He’s at home now.’

 ‘You did not ask?’ they said. This news worried them more than he had expected.

‘No, I didn’t. I would get into trouble if he knew.’

The sudden anger that could overtake New Guineans took Greg by surprise. These two were very angry now. ‘You make trouble for us!’ they shouted. ‘You trouble man!’

They were frightened, he could see.

‘Little trouble for you. Big trouble for us boys,’ they said.

He knew they were right.

‘We go now.’

The younger one did then touch Greg’s hand, but they went in haste, without thanking him, without farewell.

Yet more agitated by now, Greg went to restore order in the mortuary at least. He read further in the medical file. The boy came from a village remote even to distant Kavieng and, according to the record, he and his family had received no education. There was no school there, the records said.

I found it counterproductive with the reindeer to think in strategic ways. I learned fast, while with them, to think in ways that were other than was my previous custom. Counterproductive, too, even to speculate. But how could I not? By tuning into some other part of mind, the archaic mind, perhaps, finding this part, in my case, to be a poor, vestigial remnant, compared to theirs, weakened with disuse, full of holes, like a neglected net, un-mended, uninspected even, since ancient times. None of my companions thought or planned strategically. Yet they were not as children, as I sometimes pretended – they were adult in an unfamiliar, forgotten way. None of them possessed the power to speculate, as I did. Yet they were not unresponsive to the vagaries of our circumstances, nor uncreative. They were free as poetry is free.

Since I could not refrain from speculation altogether, I had simply to bracket it out, like having to spit into a bottle, or blow into a tissue. My way was strewn, in fact, with bracketed-out, discarded speculations. I had repeatedly to remind myself who we were, and that we did not think like that. We moved as the herd moves. We rubbed against one another continuously, wishing never to be out of touch with the warmth and roughness of our companions. To be alone, independent, was unimaginable. I ceased to think of me. We licked one another behind the ear, as we moved along, as the most penetrating of entries into each other’s reindeer mind. For me this meant rubbing behind my companions’ ears with my outstretched hand, and raising my leather-clad arm to receive the tongues of others. I had found that the swipe of the reindeer tongue on my unprotected cheek and neck rasped painfully and I bled from multiple tiny abrasions at first, stung by the wind. So it was that I learned to raise my arm to receive the gesture of companionship.

I remember now the gathering speed and the wild joy we shared, descending the mountain slopes. I remember the sense of foreboding we shared at the entrance to the cave. I remember the anxiety of the stony desert  …

How we loved and admired our leader. How wonderful he was, how sure we were to follow him always. (How can he lead us, I wondered uselessly, when he is also one of us? We love to follow him so much, but how can he be not as we are? We love to move as our companions move, rubbing and licking our reassurances. How can he not have companions, and not be led? Does he pretend he has them still? Does he pretend to have his imaginary leader too, who shows him his actions, as he shows us ours? Since he was once like us? Or does something change within, when leadership is thrust upon you? Could all of us transform in that way, finding ourselves in his position?) The others marveled too at this phenomenon, but not as I marveled, turning the ideas about in my mind. Among the reindeer we marveled as the worshipers of a god do, seeing the leader as both other and ours, and something unquestionably wonderful. Still I long, so many year later, to have him again before me, his mighty antlers other than all others, shedding authority with each toss of his head, his mighty rump bouncing ahead of me. How I would follow him still.

I was accepted among them despite my awkward shape, my lack of strength, my lack of speed. (Do they think of me as misshapen calf? Do I appeal to that in them which tolerates the deficiencies of the young?) They accepted me without thought, knowing only that I was ever-present, familiar, a component of the herd as they knew it now and always. I had often to hitch a ride on another’s back. I did not sit astride another, of course, but could grasp the tough skin between the shoulders of one of my racing companions and let the earth fly beneath my feet faster than I could run unaided. They accepted this too, though not all co-operated with me in this. Some shrugged me off. Some rolled back their eyes and arched their necks, but did not shrug, letting me use their strength in this way as long as I needed to. How I still wish for such assistance that can never be again. How much died in me when the herd was no more.

I see again the lurid sun before us, clawing at the edge of the dark ridge as we ascended. I see the Spring day, the tiny plumes of vapor rising from among the mossy stones, and the vast sky clear above us. (Is it beautiful to them as it is to me?) We felt our joy together, and our tiredness, and our bewilderment. (Are these feelings old as time?)

I could not eat as my companions ate. Some cress, some juicy stalks. some soft mosses I could browse, but for the most part, I had need to leave the grazing herd and head off among the trees to hunt. Yet, at the same time, I did not leave them. They came with me, in my way of being of the herd, not with the herd. Sometimes one would follow me, attempting to nudge me back to be in the together, but then would know somehow that I was not leaving them but taking them with me. They did not hunt, but I had learned to hunt from their companionship and the gradual rousing of my reindeer mind. I did not hunt strategically, as I would once have done, but allowed myself to be in the thoughtlessness of animals. I found quarry without fuss or concern. I gathered currants and berries too, as my companions grazed. With them I drank the melting snow.

Away we went together, covering ground fast. Down we went, and over. That was life.

Stephen had not wanted to talk about work on his weekend away. He found it difficult to explain the moral position taken by his department, despite its importance to him, and no-one had seemed much interested. After lunch they set out on a walk, and at last he felt free.

Long, low lines of hills, and the variegated greens and browns of farmland stretching on either side, stirred him, as it did everyone, to stride out energetically. Around them the children shouted and confided, jostled and touched one another, in a floating pack of subsidiaries. Stephen took particular pleasure in the animal spirits of the children. He took pleasure too in the clear winter light. His eye composed neat pictures between the trees, in which everything miniature, distant and dappled could be arranged: toy farmhouses in model landscapes dotted with tiny sheep and cattle, pebble outcrops and clumps of bushes like moss.

All good, he thought, and beamed about – at his wife Margaret, her brother, their friends old and young. He heard high above him the raucous calling of cockatoos – unusual in these parts, someone remarked – and this added to his satisfaction. From the paddocks ahead he heard the low, melodious warbling of magpies and the high-pitched twitter of smaller birds, like the scratching of twigs against a window pane. Crickets sounded like tiny bicycle bells.

‘Where’s Jake,’ he asked. ‘Where’s Jakey?’

‘He just wouldn’t come,’ Margaret answered, looking across at him anxiously.

‘I’ll go back for him,’ Stephen said.

Their ten-year-old had been having difficulties too. His cousin Toby had been contemptuous on this occasion of their former friendship, and had made this clear. Jake had gone on trying to win back Toby’s interest, unable to accept the rejection.

I hope we haven’t sheltered the boy, Stephen worried, unable to accept it himself. Have we set him up to be hurt?  The problem shortened his temper, and he could no longer have enjoyed the walk without him. He would prefer someone had done it to him, rather than to his son. He could handle things better than Jakey.

He found the boy sprawled in the shape of a spiral in a room called ‘the link’, because it ran between the main part of the house and recent additions. Here were the most comfortable chairs, too old to matter, as well as children’s desks and books and games.

‘I don’t want to come,’ Jake said again. His face was pink from the warmth of an electric heater, and his wiry hair had not been combed that day. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and would not look at his father. Recently his expressions were sometimes those of a sullen youth. Stephen had a glimpse of him growing up and growing away.

‘Well if I have to  …’ he said, changing suddenly. He followed his father out with lowered eyes.

Stephen waited in the yard and put his arm round him. There was no response. He squeezed his son’s shoulder affectionately.

‘Just let go.’

Back with the other walkers, Stephen talked instead to a large woman called Eilleen. Her arms were folded across her breasts as she bumped along. He remarked what a nice day it was and what a nice outing, and she answered cheerfully. Then, when they came to the first lot of sheep, she named them aloud:

‘Sheep.’

‘Yes,’ Stephen said.

‘They always look at you as if you have just made a loud noise, or blipped them on the nose.’

Three sheep looked at them in just that way. Stephen laughed.

‘Funny old sheep,’ Eilleen said. She stared doggedly ahead again. That was all she had to say.

Stephen like her a lot. He wondered what it would be like to have always lived in the country and to have seen so many sheep.

Then they became aware of a white wing being lifted fluttering from the ground ahead, under a wire fence. ‘Is it a fallen angel?’ Stephen said, but Eilleen seemed not to know how to answer that.

‘It’s a cocky!’ the children shouted, running to the spot.

By the time the adults had gathered there the cockatoo had regained its feet and was attempting to hurry off jerkily through the dry grass. It was unable to fly. Although the head, breast and wings were in good shape its body ended in a bloodied stump without tail feathers.

‘Shot,’ someone said.

The bird ceased trying to escape, raised its handsome, yellow crest and rolled its eyes warily.

‘He’s being so brave,’ one of the children said to Stephen.

Two little girls wanted to take the cocky home to nurse it better.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Stephen said, knowing this was untrue. Probably the children did too, he thought after he had said it.

They found some ungerminated barley seed on the stony edge of the field and gathered a small handful to leave near the injured bird.

Everyone was thinking about the cocky as they continued their walk, though the conversation turned to other things. Stephen watched the children more thoughtfully. He envied how in touch with each other they seemed to be, how diverse and animated their facial expressions were.

They climbed a long slope to reach a viewpoint over marshy ground interspersed with rocky platforms. The rocks are from an old lava flow, someone explained, but Stephen knew that already from previous occasions. He found Jake beside him as they gazed out.

‘Glad you came now?’ Stephen asked him.

‘Not really.’ He gave a little cough after he had spoken.

I should not have asked him, Stephen thought. Probably he was glad until I asked.

After the group had picked its way along the edge of a ploughed field, one of the farmers among them described the difficulty he had been having ploughing one of his own paddocks, and the time and effort he had spent grubbing out a large rock. Stephen was amused by the earnestness of his tone, and felt prompted to tease him.

‘As big as a tractor? Surely not?’

‘Prettywell that big,’ the farmer maintained.

‘But that would have weighed several tonnes.’

‘It did too, by crikey.’

‘That’s amazing.’

Margaret looked across at Stephen again, disapprovingly this time. They were negotiating an area of uncultivated land at this stage and Stephen caught the toe of his shoe in the entrance to a rabbit burrow, stumbled painfully and swore. Serves me right, he thought. You are not in a good mood, Margaret would tell him. He always denied it when she said that, but she was always right.

The burrow entrance was one of many in the area. The group seem to be crossing a large rabbit warren.

‘Hasn’t there been poison laid in these parts?’ someone asked.

‘That’d be right,’ the talkative farmer answered. ‘These are old burrows. No rabbits in them now.’

He spoke about going rabbiting ‘in these parts’ when he was a boy with his mates. They had not needed a gun, he said, only an ordinary gardening hoe. They would dig their way along the burrows, turning them into open trenches, until they had gone far enough to reach in and pull the rabbits out by hand.

‘Did they bite?’ one little girl wanted to know.

‘Not very badly,’ he said with a wink at Stephen, his chief listener. He did not mention the breaking of the rabbits necks.

‘You must have had to dig pretty deep,’ said Jake.

‘No. You’d be surprised. The burrows run along very close to the surface. Look!’

The farmer jumped and landed with the heel of his shoe just behind the entrance to one, managing to cave in the first part of the roof. He jumped again and broke some more, further along. Several of the children had a go. Some were not heavy enough to make much impression, but others soon exposed long, winding furrows with repeated blows. A general bouncing about ensued, with grunts and yells and tumbles.

‘Be careful not to twist an ankle,’ one of the parents called, but without much conviction. Everyone was enjoying watching the children. 

After a while the adults skirted the site and continued their walk. Eventually the children rejoined them. A few spots of rain fell.

Only when they had made their way round a curved hillside and down into a gully beyond was it noted that Jake was no longer with the group.  Margaret missed the boy first. She had not seen him since the pause at the rabbit warren.

‘He’s still there,’ the other children told her.

‘I don’t think we should go back for him again,’ Stephen said. ‘He’ll catch up with us when he is ready.’

‘You don’t have to go. I’ll do it,’ Margaret said.

‘No, don’t. I mean we shouldn’t fuss.’

‘Don’t be cross with him, Steve.’

‘I’m not cross.’

She smiled and did not go. Other people agreed with Stephen that the boy would come when he wanted to, and the group moved on.

‘I just wish we could see where he is,’ Stephen said a little later. ‘It’s hidden by that hill now.’

Margaret smiled again. ‘And don’t worry,’ she said.

‘You can look back,’ someone else advised, ‘when we get to the other side of this gully and climb the slope.’

So they could, they found, when they eventually reached the other side. Stephen and Margaret could see their son quite clearly, though a long way off, still at the rabbit burrows as they had thought.

‘Oh there,’ they said to each other.

Other people agreed to wait now.

The children had found interesting places to perch in a wind-blown fallen pine tree. ‘Can you see where Jakey is?’ Stephen heard them asking on another.  Then they invented a game with the dried out pine cones.

‘What’s he doing?’ Stephen asked aloud, not expecting an answer. The other adults were discussing rain gauges. Margaret stood beside him saying nothing, shading her eyes with her hand.

In the vast landscape before them Jake was reduced to a tiny speck on a distant slope. Yet, on so clear a day, Stephen could see that he was still jumping and turning, breaking the earth with his feet, his head and back curved forward, his arms waving. The boy’s movements at this distance were no greater than the twinkling of a star, yet that curve forward of his body, and the rhythmic repetition of his efforts, aroused a feeling of tenderness almost too hard to bear.

‘I don’t care what I have to sort out myself …’ he began to say to his wife.

He watched his son bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. 

Julien wore his office suit like a teapot wears an old fashioned tea-cosy. As if it spoiled his appearance rather than enhanced it. As if his real self was bone china, not foolish woolen stuff. So he felt. Julien rode on the train as if he was getting something over with. When would his real life begin? He read interesting books on the way home from work, to pass the journey, about wars in foreign places. But he would not wish to kill anyone. Sometimes he looked at young women in the kind of way that made his willy tingle. Occasionally he saw an astonishingly beautiful one, talking on her mobile phone, perhaps, while carefully smoothing the skin under one eye with the tip of her finger, or removing a fleck of lipstick from her front tooth. When he got home he flung his briefcase down and grabbed the remote for the television, almost in one movement.

His mother loved him to distraction, which only made his situation worse. She had his meal ready for him, messages from his friends, a ripe nectarine and gently shining eyes. He regretted his dissatisfaction particularly when he saw how good she was. What he wanted was to leave her far behind.

At the pub, in response to his complaints, his best friend, John Tewksbury, told him he was a pussycat. That did not help either.

‘Do something, fuck you,’ John said, and maybe he was right. It takes another man to know what is needed. But Julien still did not know what to do.

‘Or be something,’ John said, ‘other than a pussy. Be a tom cat. Be a dog. Be a horse.’

Julien knew this was good advice. Tom cat, dog and horse were all more exciting metaphors than his current life. He started frequenting night clubs, which worried his poor old mother as it should, getting into competitive relationships of all kinds with other men, which worried him, and galloping about the city. Imagine what that was like. It meant he spent a lot of money on new clothes, not necessarily intended to keep him warm. He undertook journeys eager to reach his destination.

But it was at work, in his business suit, in broad daylight, that his life actually changed for the better. One of the young women, Alison, asked him which of the many bosses was Alan Saunders, so he drew her a picture on a scrap of paper.

‘I know exactly who that is,’ she said. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘’How did you draw such a good likeness with only a few lines? Could you do it again?’

So he drew a picture of Alison.

‘That is too like me for comfort,’ she said, but was obviously pleased.

Alison was a talkative member of the team, and word quickly spread of Julien’s remarkable ability. Others approached him, wanting drawings of this person or that, or mostly of themselves. In a few lines he could just do it, and there they were on paper, recognisable to all. Word spread beyond the office. He became famous in a limited way. He joined a life-drawing class but was not particularly good at figures. Drawing faces was his thing, and his fame spread. He bought a spiral-back notepad which he kept in his pocket with his pen at all times

After a few months he had strangers approaching him, saying, ‘You’re Julien Bowman, aren’t you? Will you draw me?’ So he did.

‘Can you make money out of it?’ John Tewkesbury asked.

‘I don’t want money,’ he said. ‘But I have had a promotion. So I suppose it has made me money indirectly. There is nothing like being well known for attracting attention.’

‘You old dog,’ said John.

He gave money away, in fact. To Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres and World Vision, because he was happy. He drew his mother’s face several times. And, because he was happy, he soon had a beautiful girlfriend all of his own, and drew her picture so often she had to tell him to stop. Now half Melbourne knows who he is, and his little drawings flutter about everywhere.