‘Forgive me,’ he hurried. ‘Terrible intrusion.’ It was the most urgent thing I had yet heard him say.

I wept for some time, unable to dam the flow that had caught me by surprise. I was not in the habit of crying over my mother: I had steeled myself against it, devoted myself to carrying the old man through the remainder of his life, loving him despite himself.

‘It was his drinking,’ I said eventually. I wondered if he could hear us, even through the sturdy structure that separated the helm from the cabin’s interior.

I decided there was nothing I could say that I would not also repeat to him. ‘He was drinking so much, he was, was causing trouble. At the inns, in the streets. People remembered who he had been, that he was very senior under Governor Hunter and, you understand, that brought him a great deal of respect and also hatred. Macarthur’s people, all the politics…Any old drunk is good for mockery, of course. But people laugh a little harder at a drunkard when they sense it’s a fall from grace, don’t you think?’

Why was I telling him all this? Why was I trusting him? Sometimes only instinct guides us.

‘The people who cared would lead him home, clean him up. And the people who hated would get him locked up, and I’d have to go and have him released. Or they’d beat him. He was a fine man in his day, and I believe he could acquit himself in a fight. But they hurt him, they hurt him.’ I was clenched up again, took a breath, slowed down.

‘We made a decision. Me, the handful of friends he’d kept. We had him banned from the inns, and the commissariat were told not to sell him liquor. Most of the time they honoured the bans…But even then, we could not foresee where it would lead. You know the lags make stills in the bush and they bottle their own stuff. They call it rum—it’s made from potatoes, mostly. He’d been buying it a week or so, that was all. He didn’t appear for a while and I thought he’d just gone to ground after we had him banned, but he…They made a batch out at a creek-head, “Barrington’s Old Farm”, they called it. He bought a lot of it and he drank for several days and…’

I couldn’t continue.

He looked at me and nodded slowly. ‘Back-country stills…’

‘He lost consciousness for a week. By the time he recovered his sight had gone. They caught the distillers and flogged them, as usual. Then the inns went back to selling him their stuff and he went back to drinking it. Macarthur knew, King knew. They were happy to have one of Hunter’s allies crippled. Other people, I suppose they took pity when he pleaded for it.’