‘Don’t spoil things, we were all in such a nice mood,’ Norma said. ‘Let’s go out to the balcony, Ron, it’s a gorgeous view on a day like this. Kelly, have you thought about setting up the luncheon outside?’

Kelly put on her Munch’s The Scream face, which, without the Workers’ Education Association, would have been plain old wide-eyed horror.

‘That might set the timetable back,’ Gordon said weakly.

‘We’re happy to wait, aren’t we, Ron?’

‘No.’ Ron busied himself by poking through Gordon’s mail. ‘Anything from the JPA here?’

‘I’ll set up the card table outside,’ Gordon said, thinking, Just get through this hour and we’ll deal with the next hour when it comes. ‘How’s the hip, Mum?’

‘Dr Ting was very pleased with me. Did I tell you that his daughter knew the two of you from back in school days? I don’t remember any Chinese at Bluebird High.’

Ron asked someone to make him a drink, which gave Gordon an excuse to put off moving the card table and slip back through the saloon door for a conversation with Kelly.

‘We can get through it,’ he whispered forlornly.

Kelly looked at him not with new eyes but old. He felt a guttering flame.

‘Gordon, I—’

‘Why did we stop?’

‘Stop?’

‘We were—together again—we were—doing something—and then we stopped.’

She gave him a once-over, taking in the revolutionary impact of his clothing. ‘Maybe we were only kidding ourselves that we’d changed.’

‘Change is what I’m ready for.’

‘Gordon …’

‘If I don’t change now …’

He had been aware of a sound like a stomach rumble, easily ignored, a distant hubbub, male, somewhere else. Now an angry voice rose above others, above the sky and sea, above the conversation he was attempting to have with Kelly, above even the clamour of voices inside his head.

‘What is that?’ Kelly asked.

They joined Gordon’s parents at the balcony rail. Down on the beach, in the south corner, not fifty metres below, a circle of heads, five or six deep, clustered around what looked very much like a brawl. The circle seemed to revolve, like hajjis at Mecca. Angry shouting from all sides, men at other men to Stop, stop, stop, and others exhorting Fight, fight, fight. Several of the watching crowd had surfboards under their arms. Men dived in and pulled other men out: slaps of flesh on flesh. A broken black paddle was flung onto the rocks.

Ben joined his parents and grandparents on the deck.

‘It’s Dog,’ he said, a glitter in his eyes. ‘Getting the shit beaten out of him!’