Derek was at the opening of Village Shots with a bureaucrat from Treasury and an advisor from Canberra. They stood in the middle of the room and it was clear to everyone that they were more interested in Aaron than anything up on the wall.

‘You’re not getting him,’ Rika said, warding him off with a smile.

‘The time will come,’ Derek said, also with a smile. The new prime minister in Canberra, Labor for the first time since 1949, wanted independence soon, and he wanted it fast. ‘“Australia is no longer willing to be the ruler of a colony”,’ Derek quoted. ‘Remember?’

Rika needed no reminding of the cheers on their veranda when Gough Whitlam had been voted in as prime minister. Or of the doubts that followed and the questions that were now being asked. ‘Divest’ – what, exactly, did that mean? ‘Gearing up’ for independence was one thing, but who would control the ‘terminal arrangements’? Not Derek.

Rika shook her head. ‘Didn’t you once teach that the future is formed of the past? That it needs to be understood? I’ve heard you myself, I’ve hear you say Aaron’s lecture on the Treaty of Versailles is essential for anyone wanting to work with the government.’ Her face was flushed. ‘There are plenty of others to work for the government. Who else has Aaron’s mind?’

‘It’s his mind that we need,’ Derek replied.

Rika looked at him with a stubborn eye. Didn’t he understand that it was a matter of pathways? Besides, she didn’t think Aaron was strong enough. Physically strong enough. She hadn’t forgotten Simbaikan’s prophecy of an early death. Laedi said most of Simbaikan’s predictions were wrong, and anyway she changed them to suit the way she was travelling. ‘She was right about you coming back,’ Rika told Laedi, whose reply was that any fool could have known that.

‘He works hard enough as it is,’ Rika said to Derek.

In the celebratory atmosphere of the opening, Derek backed off, biding his time. But as she danced that night, Rika could feel a crack in the happiness that had come with Hohola.

ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON THE FOLLOWING JULY, SOME YOUNG MEN came crashing up the hill through the houses, scaring the chickens and setting off the dogs.

‘The Highlanders want to kill us all,’ one of them shouted to Rika. It was Doug from Mary’s house opposite, the youngest of her boys to start on the wharves. He was back from the rugby league match.

‘What’s happening?’ She went out into the yard and called across to Mary.

‘They riot,’ she said. ‘Hear them.’ From somewhere distant they could hear a dull roar of voices. Glass breaking.

‘Where are they?’

‘At Four Mile,’ Mary said.

‘Did New Guinea lose again?’

‘Papua won,’ Doug was flushed with excitement. ‘Papua kill them.’ There was a cheering roar from his brothers, who came running out of the house carrying knives.

Mary shouted at them to stop, to give over the knives, but the boys were already whooping down the hill. That in itself was an indication that this was no squall, that a storm was blowing their way.