They were unlike any women I had ever been in company with: garrulous and kind, but hard, in a way I could not fathom. They wore the same furred dresses I had seen on the girl’s mother. They drank like the men. When they squabbled they had a tendency to grab at one another. But they were also solicitous about small things—they tended well to their children, of whom I counted around twenty, including babes at breast. They were wilder than the Cooper children, and fearless before the authority of the adults. If they transgressed, the women roared at them and they scarpered with squeals and giggles. I saw them in corners and shadows, gorging on stolen food or curled around each other for warmth or sleep. As the evening wore on, they gradually disappeared to bed, and the women abandoned themselves to the revelry. A handful of the adolescents remained up, drinking with their parents but wary about inserting themselves into conversation.

One woman among them did most of the talking. She had parallel scars on her arms and legs, not evidence of trauma but ones that had been cut by her, or for her. Cicatrices, they called them back in Sydney: I did not know if that was the word here. Her name, she told me, was Pleenperrenner. She said it slowly, dealing the syllables like cards: Pleen. Per. Renner. ‘You met my husband,’ she said, and seeing my blank look, she added, ‘The mayor. Of the island.’ She studied me as she spoke, saw my continued confusion. ‘I’m with Mister Smith, the Scotsman. Your lot call me Mother Brown. Maybe try that.’

There was no reason for the party, Mother Brown told me. No occasion. They argued about whose idea it had been, but they agreed it was spontaneous. They wanted the girl to play the piano.

They were eager to talk about their lives, and interested in mine. A woman named Poll was the wife of Charles Peterson, the invalid I’d seen on the beach. Another woman, heavy, with hair in matted pipes, said her husband called her Peacock, but that on her country she was Ghoneyannener. I asked her where that country was and she lifted her chin to the south-west. ‘Port Dalrymple,’ she said softly. ‘Leetermairrener, my people. Stoney Creek nation.’

‘Do you miss it?’ I asked. I don’t know what I meant by the question. It was something my parents’ generation would ask each other—Do you miss Birmingham? Have you heard from Leith? Peacock looked at me gently, the same way I would look at the Cooper children when they came up with some gemstone of sweet naivete: ‘Hasn’t gone anywhere, honey.’