I turned back to my father, and once again I tried not to think of the face that had looked on me as a child, smiled upon me, loved me. I called inside myself to summon fury for his insults, his abuses. I needed it: I did not want to use it. It made me a stranger to myself.

I slapped him as hard as I could, laying the blow on his cheek where I thought I would do him the least damage. Something like shock passed across his face as his body rippled once or twice more and then was still. The blow had stunned him. It stunned me, for that matter, and it hurt my hand, although I had been weeping before the stinging even registered. The intimacy of the connection, the stubble under my palm, the recognition of having deliberately hurt the one you love most. The ragged sawtooth of his breathing abated, and now he looked almost peaceful beneath the damage he had done himself and the accusing red image of my palm on his skin. He was stunned or asleep or in some similar state: consciousness had burnt out of him and he lay still.

‘Well done,’ the doctor said over my shoulder. ‘Awful thing to have to do.’ He removed his shirt and bent down to pass it under my father’s body. He tied it off over his small, round belly so that his hands were pinned in there.

‘Mister Argyle, do you think you will be able to assist me taking him back down?’

They trudged out of the cave, the doctor leading the way with my father face-down over his right shoulder, and the master following close behind, grappling with his slumped and flailing legs. The doctor’s powerful shoulders, the white hair on his sternum and the bright sway of the master’s dress: I see them still.

They picked their way, grunting, over the tussocks, flushing out small birds. Down and winding down towards the jolly-boat, the afternoon tinting yellow around them.

At the cleft in the rocks where we had tied up, we found the little boat hanging from its mooring line: stern resting on the sand, bow wedged into the crevasse in the rock. The tide had emptied and left a sand flat that extended half a furlong or more. The sea level had fallen eight feet in our absence. Even Argyle, who had sailed these waters many times, seemed shocked.

‘Lesson for next time,’ he muttered, as the doctor lowered my father down the boulders and onto the sodden expanse of sand. We untied the boat and dragged it over the flats, beset by flies and covered in sweat, until a thin film of water appeared and began to lift its weight.

~

The Moonbird remained at anchor off the island while my father slept during the afternoon.