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and Stella came in 1930 was alien and indecipherable. There was an economic depression, a fear of communists, a secessionist movement rising in the west. There was a shabby genteel aristocracy, gold millionaires, indigent labourers and an isolationist attitude. Anthropology must have seemed to many a purely useless pursuit.
    Nicholas had a meeting in Perth with the Chief Protector of Aborigines, and was told that his field-work projects would be useful in the governance of the natives. Aboriginal people were susceptible to the misguided influence of Reds and Foreigners and likely to be persuaded to sedition by God-bothering Missionaries. They needed to be watched, assessed.There had been ‘disturbances’, the Protector said. There had been casualties. Something hush-hush, apparently. Something unmentionable. Without enquiring what he meant, Nicholas felt assured of the importance of his work, knowing he would report back to agencies of the State.
    In Perth, Nicholas and Stella boarded a merchant ship heading up the west coast. Nicholas possessed government papers, which he waved authoritatively, and the crew eyed him with suspicion and mocked his snooty accent. Nicholas watched as they yarned and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, their manner collective, wry and self-assured; they swore, made crude jokes; they were their own community. He tried to join in, but was not admitted. Since he could not bear retreating to the claustrophobic cabin where Stella was ensconced, defiantly reading Shakespeare, he befriended the captain, another Englishman, as it happened, with a handlebar moustache not unlike Kitchener’s, whom he regarded as his only possible companion. Captain Smith gave Nicholas the benefit of his semi-local knowledge. The Aborigine, he said, like all primitive peoples, had a tendency to expire on contact with a superior race. It was the sad duty of Civilised Man to raise or erase the lesser humans, to enable the March of Progress and the Completion of God’s Plan. He confirmed that knowledge of how the black buggers thought would be useful in their management and control.
    Nicholas watched the captain extract a thread of tobacco from the tip of his tongue and flick it away. He admired this man, a man of action. The world, Nicholas thought, was built by men like Captain Smith.
    When he returned to the cabin, Stella was propped on the bunk, reading The Tempest . She wanted them drowned. She told him so. Something in their marriage had temporarily capsized her passivity. With wild eyes she stared up from undercrumpled sheets and declared in a wicked tease: ‘ I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell, and leaky as an unstanched wench. ’ The cabin smelled of Epsom salts and potions against seasickness. Nicholas turned away. ‘ We split, we split! ’ she cried out after him. Her voice was frayed and mildly hysterical. The vessel of their marriage was already sundered. The ocean around them heaved and roiled, and Nicholas, momentarily nauseous, felt like a child, afraid. His hand grasped the cold metal railing that led him back up the iron stairs, away from his wife and her fierce, lunatic quotations.
    In Australia, he knew, he would be a better man, more substantial and more determined. His wife would settle down. She would be well-behaved. He would find again the young man he was when his brothers were alive, full of potential, confident, sure of each step he took towards the future. The bodies of his brothers were rotted in Flanders, forever foreign, but here he was, in a new world, on a new adventure, bent on discovering the why and the wherefore of primitive man. It would be no explanation, but at least a kind of purpose.

2
    It is difficult now to know what words might truly report them. Parents are recessed within us, in memory, in feeling, in ways we sometimes know best at faltering, precarious moments. A confident description is no guard