He did sleep, awaking at dawn to a clear sky and a shaft of early daylight that struck his pillow an inch from his head. He lay for a moment, as one did as a small boy on birthdays and other important days, not wanting the day to start and fearing it never would. He must tell Alice he would need a new set of clothes for the trip to Bathurst, and whether the Premier intended that Alasdair continue on with him to Wellington and Orange he did not know but it was well to assume he would.

The importance of it, this building of a nation and his part in it, struck him afresh and he basked, for a moment. The Premier’s comment about his wife could be ignored, could be discounted for the joke it undoubtedly was. It would not spoil this moment.

And Alasdair lay, stunned by the sunlight, by the clearness of the sky, by the chorus of jubilant currawongs outside his window. When at last he sat up it seemed to him that the room must have changed in some subtle way as he had changed, but there was nothing different. He dressed and roused Alice for his coffee and his breakfast and gave her instructions for his departure. She got in a muddle with it all as though she did not have the space in her head for more than three things at once. She had a small cut, he saw, on her throat, and the imperfection of her, of Alice the maid, was for a moment dispiriting. When he had sent her away he got up and went to stand at the window so that he might view the bay through the bare branches of the winter frangipani, something he had never before done.

It occurred to him he must be gone before Eleanor came downstairs, and now that he had had this thought it became, suddenly, imperative. He chased and cajoled the unfortunate Alice until all was done to his satisfaction then sent her out to find a cab. He stood at the front door surrounded by his bags. He listened for Eleanor’s door to open upstairs but no sound came. Was she awaiting his departure, he wondered, before venturing downstairs? And, perversely, he had a mind to hold off his departure.

But the cab was here and his bags stowed. He climbed in and told the driver to take him to the Sydney Hospital.

‘Driver, wait! Alasdair! Where are you going?’