‘The Walbanja came and met me. I knew from their faces, straight away. They took me to a place where they had buried him in a tree, bundled him, I suppose you would say. We wept together. They were very kind.’

The other lascars, his father’s companions, had been taken in by the Walbanja, he said, and he was reunited with them. While he did not think they were contented with living in the forest, they were well settled with the natives by then, and the shipwreck was old history for them. They would not take Srinivas to the place where his father had perished. They had seen it, back at the time it all happened; out in a dark gully in the forest. They told Srinivas it was a dreadful place, a place they would not otherwise go. He stopped at this point in the story—we were again alone in a quiet lane—and took hold of my arm so firmly it hurt.

‘Figge had led my father there and cut his leg so he would scream in pain, and the screams would lead them all to separate from the party and search for him.’

The horror of that day was vivid to him, even now; he carried it like a blade broken off in his flesh. The other lascars told him they heard his father’s cries: they wanted to go and find him. But Srinivas had stayed with Clark, because that, his father had told him, was his duty. Clark had insisted on it, in any event. It seemed the boy’s father bled to death, in dreadful pain, alone and cold.

Walking beside me now, older in all likelihood than his father had been when he disappeared into the forest, the poor man let out a strangled sob. He’d been tormented by that wretched day for more than half his life.

‘Mr Figge took my father to a place filled with bad spirits, he said to me. I think about it…often.’

He released my arm and I saw the white points where his fingertips had pressed. The blood returned to them but left the crescents of his nails there. ‘There is a rage inside me, miss. I cannot rid myself of it.’ His eyes were holding me as he said it: they demanded my understanding. ‘Rage is for the young. It is painful to live this way.’

I stroked the mare’s muzzle while I thought. When we resumed walking, I saw my questions had been feeding his hurt, and his hurt was a wounded dog: offered pity, it might attack the hand of kindness. Silent, I left him the option of talking. In due course he took it, mouthing some Vedic voice in his head, it seemed, as much as speaking to me.