‘Standing up?’

‘Hemingway used to write standing up.’

Vernon laughed. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Swearing in a church?’

‘I figure I swear outside church within God’s earshot. His hearing isn’t any different in here.’

‘Well, I can’t argue with that. Gotta look at a man’s motives, though.’

‘Why’d he write standing up?’ Vernon said. Sat down on a pew and felt his friend was preaching right at him. Imposing again, up higher than the rest.

‘He said he liked to get into the rhythm of it. I don’t know.’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘I don’t know. I like it.’

Vernon nodded as though he knew what Bill was talking about.

‘You think I’m full of it, don’t you?’

Vernon shrugged in response, one foot resting on the other. ‘Mate, I don’t pretend to know the first thing about all that. What’re you writing?’

‘Remember our chat the other night? I’m writing about Warren Bonner, actually.’

‘That arsehole?’

‘That’s what I’m writing.’

‘About him being an arsehole?’

‘You calling him one.’

Vernon scoffed. ‘You can’t write that.’

‘It’s my journal. I can write what I like. Nobody reads this but me. I just . . .’ Kelly searched for words with his hands. ‘I find it so hard putting up with it. Smiling at people like everything’s fine. People don’t know about him, but I do. Lots of people liked him, but he was as you say.’

‘An arsehole.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t swear in church?’

‘No. I don’t,’ Kelly said. He leaned back on his heels, took the pulpit in both hands as though he were starting up. ‘You know, beneath it all he was horrible. Hit his wife. Nobody talks about it.’ He looked at Vernon. ‘I near tore his throat out when he told me. Reported him to the cops. They didn’t do much about it. Just let him keep getting away with it.’

Vernon could only nod. Knew his son had done far worse.

Kelly continued, ‘And you. You’re hard to get to know, you know? You don’t come to church.’

‘Get off it.’

‘But Warren did. So people think of him as good and you as the opposite. Doesn’t seem to matter, does it, the type of bloke you are? Hard to see the point of it, sometimes.’

‘The point of what?’

‘The point of trying to do good. The point of anything.’

Vernon pointed a finger at his right ear. ‘In one, out the other, mate. I can’t follow you with all that.’

‘Don’t give me that. You follow just fine.’ Kelly let his hands dangle over the front of the pulpit. ‘You remember Weymouth?’

Vernon said nothing.

‘The kid from New Guinea?’

Vernon nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sure he’s in Hell.’

Vernon scoffed.

‘I think about it,’ Kelly said. ‘I should’ve said something to him. I didn’t know what to say, but that doesn’t excuse it. I go over it and over it.’ He swayed back a bit, then, ‘They got him right in the back of the neck, didn’t they?’ He smacked his hand against his neck, the sound loud and shocking in the hall. It bounced into the seats. ‘Never saw the world again. Died rejecting Christ. Swallowed up in that jungle mud.’