To my horror, he began to cry. He wiped fiercely at his eyes with a sleeve and looked around.

‘Mister Connolly, you’re repeating yourself.’ It was a cold thing to say.

‘All wrong, what you done. That man’s a curse…’

A curse or accursed, I could not tell. There was background noise; and he slurred.

As he said it, he looked around and my eyes followed his. And we both simultaneously locked eyes with the doctor. He was standing ten yards away, with a clear line of sight through the thinning crowd. He looked at Connolly: he looked at me. His face did not change at all, and he held the gaze until we both had to break off and look away. Had he scowled, or shown temper in some way, it would have been expected. It was the calm in him that disturbed me.

Fuck him, whispered Connolly, and he stormed off.

The doctor did not approach me, and for some time I gazed uncomfortably at my lap. When I looked out over the crowd, the men had pushed the piano onto a pair of long timber skids and were hauling it back towards the complex of houses, as if they bore some kind of sarcophagus.

The doctor loomed in my vision now, occupying the space under the low roof. I knew the grog had got to me—I cursed my carelessness—but if the doctor had been drinking, there was no sign of it.

‘So lovely,’ he was saying. His smile was wide and generous and welcoming.

‘The place?’ I asked, confused. ‘Oh, you mean these people.’

‘I mean neither,’ he purred. ‘I mean you. To make such a lonely voyage and to have you beside me. Was the convict troubling you?’

‘When?’

‘Just now, when you both looked my way.’

I feigned surprise, poorly. ‘Oh no. Not at all.’

‘Good.’ He paused, smiling. ‘Please tell me you will come to me tonight.’

I must have blushed.

‘I need you,’ he persisted. He did not trouble to lower his voice.

I rubbed at my eyes. ‘I need sleep.’

But the booze had softened my resolve, even despite Connolly’s ardent words. The doctor had never harmed me. Indeed, he had pleased me a great deal.

His posture assumed a subtle formality. ‘And I want to make our love known to the others.’

‘What? No…no.’ This was too much. ‘They are not ready to know that. My father, he…’

‘We must! It is the honourable thing to do. I will want you to stay with me after this…obsession of your father’s is done with. We can send him home and go on ourselves.’

Now I felt irritation building. ‘You must see that I cannot leave him to survive on his own. You of all people should understand how vulnerable he is.’

‘…Well.’ He lowered his eyes as though I had wounded him. ‘You will come to me tonight, in any event?’