‘Should we stop it?’ Rika asked Leonard.

‘We can’t,’ he said. They wore the shame of Don’s skin colour.

When the boy was whimpering, his hands over his head, no longer moving under the lash, the chief Nanaji walked across and put up his hand. Hunter’s uncle stepped back. Nanaji helped the boy to his feet and took him to the chiefs’ house.

‘Should we see if he needs medicine?’ Rika asked Janape, as people trailed away to their houses.

‘He must walk with his shame,’ she said. ‘In two days we can go to him.’

Josephine had vanished from sight.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Rika asked Leonard when they were alone on their platform.

‘You’re a friend of Laedi’s,’ he said.

‘So?’

‘I didn’t want to put you in the position of knowing something you couldn’t tell her.’

Fury rose in Rika as the policeman came across the amorire calling out to them, and climbed the steps to the platform. Behind him Albert swaggered with his stomach stuck out and an imaginary rifle the size of a bazooka on his shoulder.

‘Come in,’ Leonard said, putting out his hand. ‘Leonard’s my name.’

‘Sergeant Thomas,’ he said, shooing away the boys.

‘It’s okay,’ Leonard said. ‘They can stay.’ But the sergeant persisted and the boys trailed reluctantly away.

‘You here to look at paintings bilong sampela?’ the policeman asked.

‘That’s right,’ Leonard said.

Sergeant Thomas looked at the bark-cloth nailed to the walls and pulled at them, demonstrating to Leonard that the fabric was out of shape and the designs were crooked. He shook his head. ‘Nogut tru,’ he said, sorry that Leonard had come all the way up here – bad road, steep mountains, bringing missis with him, a big trip too much.

‘You come to my village,’ he said. ‘My people make very good cloth.’ He squared off his hands to demonstrate the regularity of his people’s cloth. ‘All the same, square sides, and the pattern very good, all the same, this way, this way, all the same.’ Plenty of kiaps had bought it, and the missions too, and a tauba had come to see about sending it to a shop in Moresby. ‘With independence coming up,’ Sergeant Thomas said, ‘plenty tourists will come. Come to my place, we will give good rates, very good deal.’ Leonard could make a film for the tourists so that everyone would know where to buy good cloth, he said. ‘No good buying cloth like this. It goes crazy in the corner.’ His eyes were glittery and unblinking.

‘That’s very kind,’ Leonard said, ‘but I am filming for the university, and the university likes this art. They are thinking about it in a different way.’ He started a speech about the record he was making of bark-cloth in a place where there hadn’t yet been other influences.

Sergeant Thomas was unimpressed. As far as he was concerned it was no good keeping the villages the same as yesterday. Independence was coming and progress with it. Only old men wanted the villages to stay the same. Old men and bush kanakas, he said, gesturing towards the village. It took several cups of sweetened coffee and a stick of tobacco before he accepted Leonard’s answer. He shook his hand, called him a friend, and agreed to take a batch of film down to Tobias, where it could be kept cool in the gas refrigerator at the aid post.