‘You were young yet,’ Obi says. Like Napo, he has a thick beard. ‘You are a man now.’

‘A good man,’ Milton says as they go into the house. ‘You’ll see.’

‘You are here,’ Obi shakes his hand again. ‘You are welcome.’

Jericho puts the kettle on the stove, spoons powdered coffee and sugar into the cups, and while they wait for Meg to come home and the boys to return from the school, where they are doing prep with the boarders, or are meant to be, and not swimming in the river, or climbing up in the bush to catch lizards, they sit at the table and Jericho feels the old anxiety knocking at his chest.

‘Any trouble on the road?’ Milton asks.

‘Nogat,’ Napo says. ‘All is good.’

Obi is looking at the Post-Courier on the table, a few days old, with a story on the front page about a confrontation between landowners and the government over a nickel mine that’s planned for a river to the north-west. Inside he finds a photo of Laedi opening a community centre in Madang.

‘Laedi,’ he says. ‘She is not corrupt.’

Jericho is not sure if it’s a question Obi is asking, or a statement. ‘No,’ he says. ‘She’s not.’

‘In Popondetta,’ Obi says, looking at Milton, ‘there is much corruption.’

Again Jericho doesn’t know if it is a question or a statement. Obi doesn’t come down much any more, he is telling Milton, and he’s taken his sons out of high school in Popondetta. Even with Leonard’s help, the money is too much, and they learn bad ways in the town.

‘They should come here, to Martyrs,’ Milton says. ‘Out of town.’

‘They catch the PMV. It is better on the mountain.’

‘They need education too,’ Milton says, and Obi sighs.

Napo starts to talk of Port Moresby, and visiting Laedi’s house with Young Albert, telling Milton about the bark-cloth on the wall; how, long ago, it was made by Nogi chief. Jericho knows where this is heading, but before Napo gets to the question of bisnis, he is saved by the sound of Meg’s car coming down the road, rounding the corner and stopping in front of them. ‘Ai, ai.’ Milton goes in, puts the kettle on the gas ring, his daily contribution to the domestic economy, and Jericho goes to the car, offers to carry Meg’s string bag full of vegetables from the market. But no, a man doesn’t carry a woman’s bilum. Meg heaves it onto her head and goes inside.

The next morning, Napo says, ‘You come to the mountain. The chiefs, they wait.’

Jericho does not know if he means now, or later sometime.

‘Now?’ he says, before he has time to compose a better answer.

‘It’s okay,’ Napo says. ‘All the same.’

‘I mean,’ Jericho says, ‘first I must go to Moresby.’ The Collingwood Bay case is finally to be heard in the national court. He’s promised Bili he’ll be there. It was back before, when he made the promise, but he wants to keep it. Like she said, he owes her one. And himself. Besides, he met the landowners, and was in the court with them last time the case was adjourned. He watched Jacob sweep out, and saw the emotion in the eyes of the elders when proceedings were postponed again: the indignation, the disbelief, the fury that they have to fight like this to save their own land. Not someone else’s land. Not disputed land. Their land. Jericho had been round the hotels with them while they sold the tapa cloth hats made by the women back in the village to raise money to pay the lawyers. And now, after four years of waiting, at last there’s to be a full hearing. The date is set, and this time they’ll get the fight they’ve been waiting for.