My father’s loyalties are always directed to men. Women are adversaries. One friend’s wife is a drunkard, and my father shakes his head in disgust when he hears what the friend has to put up with. He offers to talk to the wife, see if he can put her right. Another friend’s wife is a notorious nag. Dad commiserates. Whenever he talks to me of holidays, of just getting away from everything, it’s understood that he means getting away from Gwen and from women altogether. He speaks of camping trips up on Big River; maybe even going further, taking a look at the outback. You’d never want to take a woman with you on a long trip, he says. Women complain. They can’t help it.

Thinking of what Dad has said, I realise that he must have in mind the big trip to Eden he made with five mates back in the days when my mum was still around. I remember him coming back from the coast with a couple of hessian bags full of fish and ice. He dumped all the fish out on the kitchen table—fish galore, slithery and gleaming. Lumps of ice clattered off the table and whizzed across the kitchen floor. Dad was as high as a kite. He and his mates, filthy and unshaven and smelling of fish guts, shook their heads and grinned, delighted with their catch. My mother didn’t seem delighted at all. She didn’t actually complain, but she looked put out. So I get an idea of what he means when he says you wouldn’t want to take a woman with you on a long trip. They don’t get happy in the same way as a man.