A baby cried then from somewhere behind him inside the cottage, a wail that split the night in two, and for the length of the cry they both stood in frozen muteness.

And then the wail stopped and the man’s arm shot out and grabbed the back of Alice’s neck and a blade flashed in the moonlight and Alice felt its edge at her throat.

‘I said no babies here. You show your face here again I will slice it right off.’

He let go of her and Alice fell backwards into the muck and the rubbish. She scrambled to her feet and fled.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: LARGE EVENTS AND SMALL DETAILS

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

LARGE EVENTS AND SMALL DETAILS

The Premier’s party took the midnight train from Cootamundra, arriving at Goulburn in the early hours. The mayor and various aldermen held a reception for them upon their arrival and members of the local Federal League gave a welcome address. The party lunched at the council chambers, attended by a hundred local gentleman and waited on by the ladies of the district. Toasts were drunk and the Premier made a speech. In the evening the Premier spoke at length at the Oddfellows’ Hall, which had been extravagantly hung with bunting and ribbons and flags, and the large crowd applauded him, and themselves, enthusiastically.

And afterwards what Alasdair remembered was the way an alderman’s wife had stifled a yawn at their pre-dawn arrival at the station and how a cockerel had crowed as they had sat in the carriage and travelled through the deserted streets. He remembered the line of native paperbarks behind the single row of buildings in the main street and the Premier stumbling as he entered the hotel and two porters exchanging looks of mutual disappointment that the Premier was, after all, just a man. He remembered the plate of mutton a woman had placed before him at the luncheon and the slight crack in the plate’s rim. He thought of the button that had come loose on his topcoat as he dressed and of the green baize that covered the speakers’ tables at the Oddfellows’ Hall and that hung in great folds and rubbed against his knees. He remembered that, as the Premier explained to the people why it was he had rejected the Federation bill a year ago and why he supported it now, a small piece of bunting above his head came unstuck and drifted to the floor.