That the play was reviewed by a visiting Australian journalist who said all Milton could have wanted, didn’t reduce the slight. The journalist from the Melbourne Age included the play in his article on the new university. ‘A new voice, a challenge to Australian colonialism. A people rising up in their own language.’ Two weeks later the arts editor invited himself up to investigate this new direction in Black Writing, but even that didn’t shift Milton’s mood. ‘May his penis refuse to piss,’ he said when he saw Eremiah strut across the road towards Simbaikan’s fire. Simbaikan’s view was that Milton had fallen into sickness from the bad thoughts of his play. They’d weakened him and left him wide open to any marauding spirit that passed.

The marauder Simbaikan had in mind was the niece of an Australian official in the colonial administration, who was in Moresby ‘killing time’ before starting at Melbourne University. Her name was Tessa, and her fingers were loaded with rings. She’d been at the play and had turned up uninvited at the cast party afterwards. Never mind the assassination, she was in party mood. Maybe Milton was particularly vulnerable that night with the off-balance atmosphere at the play, or maybe it would have happened anyway. Tessa went straight up to him, looked him in the eye, flicked back her hair, and that, as they say, was that. Another amour fou. He might as well have been drugged. Or sorcered by the rings on her fingers and the chain around her ankle with its little silver bells that chimed as she walked. She arrived in the garden on the night they heard that the arts editor of the Age was coming up. There was talk of taking the play to Melbourne. A good opportunity, Aro said. Tessa sat herself on a crate and crossed her legs. The silver bells tinkled. ‘You’ll like Melbourne,’ she beamed at Milton. ‘Cheer up,’ she said, rearranging her legs.

In the presence of this long-haired Australian girl, Milton fell into silence. He didn’t join the talk of touring plays to the remote villages, though it had begun as his idea. Otherwise, he’d said back in the days before he was dazzled, everything happens in Moresby, which just proves the fears out in the villages that independence will mean the rule of town sharps and raskols. If roots are to be grown for the future, they have to start in the villages.

‘Useless,’ Eremiah said. ‘They’re white-man plays, not village plays.’ Plays, novels, this whole idea of creating a nation through art, nothing would come of it. He had no time for James Baldwin. Self-indulgent. Drinking and fucking and killing off characters who should know better. ‘Art doesn’t change anything.’

He was a tall man with a long face and hair that grew straight up from his head, giving him a look of permanent outrage. He was one of the older students, in his late twenties, who’d been kept waiting for the university. He’d done a stint as a clerk in the colonial government’s administration, and had seen how entrenched the old attitudes were. From the island of Bougainville, his skin was true black, not the red skin of the mainland. ‘Black like a saucepan’s arse,’ Milton growled. He could jeer, but Eremiah was proud of his skin. Black skin, black power. There was nothing compromising about Eremiah. Not like Milton, leaning in towards Tessa.