‘He was a functionary,’ Don said. ‘He had none of Malinowski’s flair.’ For fieldwork, Don had chosen the very islands and exact village where the great Malinowski had worked.

‘Williams’ portraits are of character,’ Rika said. ‘They’re of people he knows. You see it in the way they look at the camera. Malinowski may have been a better anthropologist, I don’t know, but he’s not a better photographer.’

Don’s eyes narrowed.

‘He named the people he photographed,’ she said. ‘How many anthropologists do that? Do you?’

‘Rika.’ Leonard put out a restraining hand.

‘Have you noticed how he framed his shots, the way he went in close? Malinowski kept his focus in the middle distance – most anthropologists do – as if you can explain everything by putting in more of the surrounds. How do you say, context?’

The smirk had gone from Don’s face.

‘Well done, Rika,’ Gina said, lifting her glass. ‘Well done!’

Don, conceding nothing, shifted to the safer ground of Williams’ work during the war, when he was liaising between the villages and the army with its great need for labour.

‘He was trying to get the soldiers to understand the local people? Yes?’ Rika took up the challenge. ‘He spoke on their behalf?’

‘Quite right,’ the historian said.

‘He was getting them to fight his war.’ Don’s voice was steely.

‘It was more complex than that,’ Leonard said. ‘Given your interest in social change, I’d have thought you’d find him helpful. He faced the dilemma more acutely than any of us ever will.’

‘He was manipulating the terms of change.’

‘Isn’t that what you say we all do?’ Leonard said. ‘We anthropologists?’

‘That’s what I’m working on.’

‘I read your thesis,’ Leonard said. ‘It was impressive. There are ideas there that need considerable testing.’

‘Where better to test them than on the mountain?’ Pounce. Poor Leonard. He was accustomed to deflecting, but useless when it came to a direct assault. Laedi looked down at the table. Rika’s attention turned to her, leaving Leonard to argue on in his measured way. If he was to film the bark-cloth as a living part of the mountain culture, and not as an object, he knew from experience that the fewer strangers there were, the less disturbance there would be. Don answered as if an intellectual puzzle had been posed. Would another ‘stranger’ mean ‘disturbance’? What were these terms? How did a living culture understand them? Respond to them?

The dinner came to an early end.

‘What happened to Williams?’ Laedi asked Leonard at the door. She was wearing a red satin dress patterned with golden dragons. It was tight across her bust.

‘He died in 1943,’ Leonard said. ‘He was in an army plane that came down. Not far from the mountain.’

‘Terrible flying weather,’ the historian said. ‘It took a month to get confirmation of his death from the Americans.’

‘His widow didn’t get a pension,’ Leonard said, ‘because that one month put him short of the twenty years’ service required.’