That pattern, of course, had been repeated thousands and thousands of times during the twentieth century, when Scotland was bled of its people, as it had been bled before, when the Highlands had been cleared. The doctor had been fortunate; he came from a background that was economically secure; for most, the experience was a far chancier one: discarded by an industrial system that had prospered on their labour, they went with very little, scarred in body and soul by the hardships of the factories and foundries of Motherwell, of Glasgow, of the Clyde. He met these men on the boat, as they made the long journey south; men who felt privileged because they were heading for a place that people described as the lucky country after their own had treated them so badly.

Again, pure chance intervened. The ship’s doctor, who sat at the same table in the dining room, said to him: ‘You don’t have to take the job they’ve offered you, you know. I can fix you up with something far better up in Queensland. That’s the place to go.’

He should have said that he would think about it, but he did not. It was hot, and the journey seemed interminable. He accepted the offer, largely because he wanted to do something – anything – to break the tedium of the voyage. By this decision, taken so lightly, he dictated the course of his life, the life of his son, and that of his grandson. It was this decision that meant eventually that it was a Dr St Clair, rather than anybody else, who became Bertie’s psychotherapist, and therefore came into fateful contact with Bertie’s mother, Irene.

43. A Scotsman, His Life and Marriage

Dr St Clair’s practice in Brisbane flourished. People felt reassured by the quietly spoken Scottish doctor, with his habit of nodding sympathetically as people described their symptoms. He prospered and although he never forgot that he was a Scot, he never returned to Scotland. There were plans to do so, of course, particularly after his marriage; his new wife, who had never been out of Australia, liked to hear him talk about Dumfries and about Edinburgh, too, which he told her was more beautiful than Venice and Paris put together. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘We’ll walk through Princes Street Gardens together and have coffee in the Brown Derby. And we’ll go shopping in Forsyth’s, and Jenners too, and motor out to Gleneagles. And, oh, you’ll love it, my dear, and you’ll bless the day that you agreed to marry a Scotsman, for all his faults …’

‘Which are none to speak of,’ she said. ‘Or none that I notice, darling.’