There would now be no moment where his brothers would stand on the shore and watch him glide on the currents. They would never wait for him to swing the sail and come towards them. The boat and its captain—this masterly Ned of the river—would only ever exist as a debatable, possibly exaggerated anecdote. As far as his brothers would ever know—when Toby came back, if Bill came back—their warless little brother had spent a pleasant few months killing rabbits, buying a boat, repairing and then selling it before he went back to school. To them, that would be the extent of his work. That would be the story.

These thoughts made him remember something that had happened between the three of them not long before Bill enlisted. Perhaps only a week or two. Bill and Toby had been invited to a party a few orchards over, an end-of-year affair organised by a girl they went to school with. Ned wasn’t on the list, was too young to even be thought of. But at ten o’clock his brothers hadn’t come home, and his father told him to go fetch them.

They could hear the party, had been hearing it for hours. Noises flying across the paddocks, through the windows. Revelry mixed with crashes that had become louder and more frequent as the night ran on. At a particularly harsh one—the loud ring of something smashing into tin or iron—the old man stood up and gave Ned the order. His voice and movement sudden, almost violent. Ned didn’t want to go; his brothers would be furious with him for interrupting the party. But their father was now staring out the window, wincing at each sound, so he did not talk back. He got a torch and put on his boots.

Outside the ground was wet, the air heavy. His torchlight tripped over the trees, which were taller and more severe in the darkness than under the sun. He followed the noises across Limberlost, over another orchard, up a driveway, until he reached their source: a packing shed. Coloured lights were blinking through its apertures. Yelling and singing poured from its door, as well as a kind of music Ned thought he hadn’t heard before, until he realised it was just regular instruments played with too much rigour and not enough skill. Unsteady figures were coming in and out of the shed, arms linked, arms over shoulders, cigarettes burning into fingers and lips. Another group was the source of the crashing sounds: a few men throwing empty bottles onto the roof of the shed.