Now they were more inclined to talk: the sickness had made them outcasts and they were lonely. They told him it had started in the early spring; at first just cramps and flux. Then the suffering had taken all sorts of bizarre turns: the sores on their skin, strange feelings of numbness, terrible itching—even fits. But it was not until they began to exhibit ferocious manias that they were separated from the community. The anguished shouting, the delirium, filled the night and terrified their children. People did harm to themselves, swearing and racking and convulsing. The rest of the islanders had abandoned them, fearful of contagion.

The doctor was listening to all of this, as before, but only half-listening.

‘So you say, you said to me, that the symptoms had advanced to mania before the patients were quarantined?’

The islanders took a moment to unpick Gideon’s terminology, then agreed.

‘And the infant?’ he asked brusquely, addressing himself to the mother. ‘It still feeds at the breast?’

She lowered her eyes and nodded faintly.

Until now, Gideon had been addressing them from a distance of perhaps ten yards: now he crossed the threshold of the gateway in the wall and stood closer among them. The sun lit upon the broad base of his neck, above the collar where the skin was tanned like leather. He showed no fear of transmission: he approached without hesitation a man who appeared to be the woman’s husband, and with a cursory May I? began to probe at the suppurating wounds on his face.

‘Perfectly safe,’ he muttered in our direction.

We edged forward, none too keen to take him literally. Nor did the patients move from where they stood.

‘Come,’ he said impatiently, ‘we have things to examine.’

He strode off ahead of us, following the faint foot-track that led back to the two houses and some outbuildings, adjusting his stride to walk next to the man of the house.

‘Why do you grow rye here?’ he asked him. ‘Why not wheat or some other cereal?’

‘It’s tougher,’ said the man, perhaps curious at the choice of subject. ‘It don’t mind the cold wind or the blowing sand.’

‘So you sowed it when? May, June?’

‘Aye, two weeks afore the solstice. Same every year.’

‘I see. And what was the year like?’

He laughed bitterly. ‘Terrible. Cold and wet, everthin come up late.’

‘Late? Interesting…it was very dry in Sydney.’ We had reached the houses, and now stood beside a small vegetable patch that had been carefully tilled and was protected from the birds by a fishing net strung across stakes. Bright young shoots of green speared in neat rows through the soil.

‘Would you show me about?’ the doctor asked.