‘Keep your voice down, and I mean really down. Bill and Doris don’t need to hear it. They’ve never had their eyes opened,’ he said, then drained his beer.

‘I didn’t come back to talk about me, either,’ James said.

‘You know, an old mate of Dad’s once explained it to me at the saleyards. He reckoned it runs in families, this,’ and James watched with horror as his father tried to grasp invisible qualities between both hands, ‘this homosexual stuff. A couple of blokes I went to school with got over it. Tony could have gotten over it too. Alan’s alright, but the jury’s still out on you.’

Each offended pulsation of the slack skin around his father’s mouth made James angrier. ‘Whether people are gay or not is really none of your fucking business,’ he said.

‘Well, you’re wrong about that. Obviously, it’s in the bloodlines. You can’t help what’s in your bloodlines, end of story.’

‘So, you reckon being gay is inherited?’ James said, impersonating his father’s country-boy bulldust.

‘Nah, I reckon you’ve just got to marry a decent woman, and the problem just drifts into the background. One fella I knew had so much hassle over it he spent a night in the cop shop, when we were young.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, he always said it was nothing to do with him, but he got arrested with a bunch of perverts in a public dunny down at Newcastle railway station. His dad went and bailed him out. His mum never knew. She didn’t need to, because he’s been alright since he just came home and got married.’

A rueful laugh escaped James’s nostrils. ‘First you reckon it’s genetic, then you say it’s environmental. You can’t have it both ways, Dad.’

‘Ah, save your intellectual bullshit for the big city.’

‘Well, let me put it in a way you can understand,’ James said, his sarcasm clear. ‘Marriage obviously didn’t work for Tony. He went looking for what he needed in the toilets below the bridge.’

His father dismissed him with a rough sigh. ‘You’ve been away for too long, Jamie. You’re looking for something that just doesn’t happen up here.’

‘Didn’t anyone notice Tony was missing? I mean, come on, Dad, it was months!’

‘Lower your voice, mister amateur detective. We all assumed he was on his yacht.’

‘How would Tony have gotten to the coast without his car, then?’

His father sat back, sniffed, gulped at his beer, and shrugged.

‘Did he still have a motorbike, or just the old Ford?’ James asked.

‘I dunno.’

‘Did you think to check while Tony was missing? Did anyone get over to the coast and have a look around his yacht?’

‘Why the hell should I be bothered doing that?’ his father muttered.