We left him to feed his ravening reptiles, and since our dinner was still an hour or so away, and the weather had cleared a little and the tide was out, we took a long walk over the exposed dying coral, startling eels and small sharks in pools, and causing velvety pulsating clams to shut up tight on our approach. Only the star jelly fish, coloured the richest blue imaginable, were indifferent to us. And of course the coral itself. I’d been much taken by the brain coral I’d seen through the windows of the submarine, but out here the polyps had created simulacra of the whole organic system of man; here was the large and small intestine, the gut, the heart, the soul, the seats of good and evil even – all in bright greens and flaming purples and lurid pinks.

After an amiably but inexpertly served dinner, we joined the other house guests in a stroll down the pier to the Underwater Observatory, where we passed a further hour fish-gazing. Mark gave us five minutes of his time each, sharing our portholes and remembering our names. ‘Look, Howard,’ he said, when it came to my turn, ‘an azure demoiselle.’

These were the last words he ever addressed to me.

Back at the bar a frenzied atmosphere was building up, because New South Wales and Queensland were playing each other in the first of the State of Origin rugby series and the match was being shown live on TV. Along with all the other guests, Ros decided this was not for her; but I wanted one more beer and something for my notebook. I soon saw that it was distinctly a staff-only venue. A place for the exploited to turn up after work and swap gossip and complaints. It reminded me of a bar at a language school. Everyone was over-tired from too many late nights and too much drinking and day-long duty rotas which were not sufficiently distinguished from social life. It was a sealed community, excited by rumour, rent with dissension, entire unto itself.

A Canadian girl with green eyes noted my presence with surprise. ‘Most guests don’t come here,’ she told me.

I asked her why that was. She shrugged. Because most guests are boring farts, she seemed to want to say. Without exactly meaning to except me from that judgement. She looked sorry, actually, to have even bothered talking to me. She was attentive only to what was passing between the other kids who worked here.

I asked her how she liked it. ‘Yah,’ she said, ‘yah, OK Some of the people complain about the conditions—’

‘The conditions?’

‘Yah, you know – the state of the rooms, the amount of sharing, all that. But I don’t mind. I’m only here for a while. Shooting through before university. I think travel gives you experience and teaches you a lot.’