A train travelling in the other direction sped past, causing the windows to rattle and the compartment to fill with noise. They passed large merchants’ houses with long, shady gardens that dipped down to the railway line. In one of these gardens two little girls in white dresses and wide straw hats waved at their train. Eleanor watched the two little girls, their smiling, upturned faces, the shady strip of lawn dotted with trees on which they stood, the solid respectability of the large merchant’s house behind them, and she felt that she envied them a little. In an instant the two little girls had gone and she had not returned their wave.

‘How dare you rebuke me in front of others, Alasdair.’

She turned to face her husband as she spoke, not knowing, really, that she would speak but, now that she had, a great flood washed over her and it seemed the few words she had spoken barely touched on all she felt, all that she had endured.

Alasdair did not move and it seemed that he would make no reply. But his hands, shuffling through the pile of papers, became still. ‘You are my wife. I shall rebuke you if I choose.’ He did not look up.

She turned away and stared straight ahead at the window and another train rushed past with a whoosh of steam and noise, and when the train was gone the whoosh of steam and noise went on, it seemed, inside her own head.

The houses were less densely packed now, the streets wider. The train stopped at Granville and Mr Greensmith re-entered the compartment triumphantly with tea that no one drank. They went through Blacktown, Rooty Hill, St Marys and Werrington. Now the streets were unpaved, then there were no streets at all, just tracks, and the trees were all eucalypts and paperbarks, the creeks dry, the homesteads sparse.

Outside Kingswood the train screamed to a halt and the undrunk tea spilled from the cups and splashed onto Alasdair’s papers and Eleanor was flung forward and only Mr Greensmith’s quick thinking saved her from falling.

‘Good God, what the devil do they mean by stopping so suddenly?’ said Alasdair.

‘I shall go and see, Mr Dunlevy,’ said Greensmith, already pulling open the door.

Eleanor regained her seat. Some part of her was bruised and tender though she did not attempt to find out which part.