‘That man of hers is a pretender,’ Jacob said, when Rika had gone. ‘Did you ever hear anyone in a village talk like that? His elegant words are the white man’s words.’

‘Jacob!’

‘He’s doing the white man’s work, as we always have.’ His smile was at odds with his words. ‘They made this mess and we’re left tidying it up. We worry and grow old, we sit up at night devising laws. They don’t. While we imitate them governing ourselves the way they tell us to govern ourselves, they take the money and grow fat in their chairs.’

‘You haven’t softened your line with age.’

‘I know too much,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t working in the law put you on their side?’

‘It gives me a way of fighting.’

‘Fighting for what?’ Martha said. ‘You don’t seem interested in politics.’

‘I’m not. I’m in for the real game.’

‘Which is?’

‘Who mines this country for its minerals. Who takes its wealth.’

‘Isn’t that a government task?’

‘That’s what the white men want us to believe.’ He laughed so jovially that she wasn’t tempted to say more. ‘It’s good to see you, Martha,’ he said, and there was something in his tone that made her blush. ‘You’re looking well on Hohola life. Come and visit me sometime.’

OUT AT THE RIVER, MILTON WAS LIVING IN A SHACK LEFT OVER FROM the gold miners. They hadn’t grown rich, and Milton didn’t expect to. Money gave him bad thoughts. Melbourne had taught him that having it could do your character no good, and his sojourn on the back streets of Port Moresby when he first returned taught him that not having it wrecked you fast - body and mind. So he took himself off, out of town, and lived in the shack near the river. It had a dirt floor and flaps for windows that could be propped open with a pole. He built himself a table, a bookcase, a small sleeping platform. There was the river to wash in, a tank of sorts with enough rainwater to boil up a kettle; the fire was outside, an old grill set across stones he’d hauled up from the river.

Rifle had told Milton about the shack. He was planting a garden out by the river, in some complicated arrangement with the people whose land it was. He’d rigged up an irrigation system of bamboo pipes and he needed someone to keep it running. All Milton had to do was make sure that the section at the river was in place to bring the water to the vegetable channels overnight. In return Rifle kept him supplied with betel nut and beer. All in all a satisfactory arrangement, and Milton only came into town when he was bored of himself, or when he ran out of kerosene for his lamp, or exercise books for his writing. He’d arrive in Hohola, dishevelled and filthy. Laedi would send him into the shower and Bili would sit on an upturned bucket on the other side of the plastic curtain, waiting for him to come out. She wanted Laedi to marry him. She had plans, and would offer up eggs from her chickens, drawings from school, anything that she thought might tempt him. She even found him a typewriter, which Rifle put on the back of his truck and took to the river.