She sees, or thinks she sees, a look pass between him and Bili, who has taken a chair opposite Milton; a slight nod of her head.

ON THE WAY DOWN THE HILL JERICHO POINTS TO THE CLOUDS THAT are billowing out on the horizon.

‘Did you see them this morning?’ he asks. ‘They were like breasts. Or a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois.’

Martha laughs at such odd, incongruous remark, and then she realises it’s his way of bringing Rika onto the path with them. ‘I’ve seen Rika’s portraits of her,’ she says. ‘I’ve got the Artists Series.’

‘Did you know that she went to some of her Sunday salons when she was in New York?’

No, Martha didn’t know that. But she did know that Leonard met her husband, the art historian Robert Goldwater, and she’s read his Primitivism in Modern Art.

‘Did Robert Goldwater ever come here?’ she asks. ‘To New Guinea?’

‘No,’ Jericho says, matter-of-fact.

‘He became a leading authority,’ Martha says, her voice incredulous. ‘He became the director of the Rockefeller Collection, and he never came here?’

‘He went to Africa,’ Jericho says, as if that will help, and asks if she knows Bourgeois’ early Personnages, the tall wooden beings she made on the roof of the building where they lived in Manhattan, vertical creations she moved around in groups. ‘When I first saw them,’ he says, ‘those tall vertical sculptures with carved faces, I thought of the Asmat spirit figures Michael Rockefeller collected.’

Martha has only seen the Personnages in reproduction. ‘More like vertical slit drums, the ones I remember,’ she says.

‘Don’t you love the way this place works its way into the western imagination? The way you encounter it in the strangest places.’

‘It’s rarely acknowledged. Even in the case of Louise Bourgeois.’

‘Still, it’s there in us in ways we don’t know,’ Jericho says. ‘Rika has one of her Paddle Women. Bronze and wood. Did you know?’

She didn’t know, and envy gives a sharp kick. Rika’s done well for herself during these years of silence.

The water is silky clear. They climb down the ladder from the wharf and Martha follows Jericho past the damage that was done by the building of the wharf. Chunks of coral have been blasted off to make way for the pylons, and the reef beneath the wooden platform is littered with rusting cables, soft-drink cans. But the mess doesn’t spread much past the wharf, and then they are swimming along the silvery rim of reef that extends, cuticle-like, a few metres out from the cliff before the drop into deep water. Bright squadrons of fish flash past, just as Martha remembers. Brilliant blue starfish and fat sea cucumbers lie on reef ledges that are bleached a disappointing white with only occasional blooms of colour. Warming waters, Jericho says. Long, thin strands of an elegant weed wave upwards in a graceful plume. Jericho dives down to take a closer look and when he comes back up and his head bursts through into the air, he says that the weed grows so slowly, this one could be older than he is.