Minna speculates aloud on the direction in which her husband went and taps one foot against the table in a way that moves even the hair against her forehead. She’s in a hopeless fug of longing. Bear recognises this state because he’s felt this way about his own wife, who can be cold or shy or just resigned, but also sometimes pliant, warm and very, very sweet. After a bit of time with the tea he suggests walking with Minna a short way to watch for Constable Manning, a proposal of which his mother clearly disapproves; but allowances must be made for the fact that Minna is now a married woman, and can therefore be alone with a married man. He offers his arm, Minna takes it, and Joanna is left on the verandah with Mrs Wallace, who anyone can see is too exhausted to speak. When Bear looks back one last time at the table, his mother lifts her chin at him. His theory, shared with his wife, is that his mother expects too much of him because he looks exactly like his father; his actual fear, shared with no one, is that she simply finds him ridiculous.

  Minna was beautiful on her wedding day. Bear believes all brides are beautiful; if pressed, he would admit to finding himself beautiful at his own wedding. But Minna is even lovelier now, out here at Wallace’s. There’s something blurred about her, as if a painter has slipped with his brush and found a new effect. Bear is quite proud of himself for thinking something so poetic, and would like, if given the opportunity, to repeat it to Rapp, who paints just that sort of blurry picture. Bear leads Minna across one corner of the Wallace yard; in the other, a cow and goat stand in unusual communion. The animals look out at Bear from lowered lids. Because they require nothing from him, not food or water, not pity or affection, he feels judged by them. He’s happy to open the gate and usher Minna through it, although this means she’s no longer holding his arm. He offers chat—‘Watch your step, Mrs Manning,’ and, ‘Thank heavens for a clear day,’ and, ‘Those are handsome horses’—but Minna is distracted and only produces short responses accompanied, sometimes, by smiles. The further they walk from the house, the fewer edges Minna seems to have. There are no fences after the yard, and the wheat stands thin and green in the unmarked fields. It might be grass.

  ‘Wallace’s crop looks a little backward,’ Bear says.

  ‘Does it?’ says Minna, who plainly doesn’t care.

  ‘He needs a good rain. Once the boy is found, of course.’

  Minna says, ‘Of course,’ and Bear feels the panic of finding something to say that will win her true attention.

  ‘I’m part German, you know,’ he says.

  ‘Is that so?’ Minna looks out over the plain. ‘Which part?’

  Now Bear feels exactly like a schoolboy: his most terrifying master has just rapped him across the knuckles and said, ‘Axam will never have Latin, but then, Axam will never need it.’

  ‘Which part? Oh. Well. Oh,’ stammers Bear, and Minna turns to look now, her face blank, her gaze level, her expression not unlike those of the goat and cow in the paddock. ‘My great-grandmother,’ he says. ‘On my mother’s side.’

  Minna is still looking at him, now with an indifferent smile. It’s quite devastating to Bear, although he’s often the recipient of smiles like this one. What did I expect, when I am merely me? thinks Bear—thinks Ralph Axam, who objects to the use of his childhood nickname (his mother excepted) but in his own secret heart refers to himself by it. Minna walks out into the wheat. This distresses Bear—if it were his wheat, he wouldn’t want Minna crushing it. Nevertheless, he follows. The wheat is so green—unnaturally so in this dusty place, where green is usually muted; it’s quite obscene, and Minna is ravishing and edgeless in it, shaded under a wide hat. Bear’s wife often complains that he never notices what hat she’s wearing, but the hat she’s wearing, Bear protests, never notices him.

  ‘My parents were and are German,’ says Minna, and these two tenses make her parents seem like deities, who were and are and always will be, ‘and it doesn’t matter, it makes not one bit of difference to anything.’

  ‘How can it make no difference?’ he asks her.

  ‘Once you’re married,’ Minna says, ‘you’re reborn.’

  Bear laughs at this.

  ‘I suppose,’ she adds, with rueful sympathy, ‘it’s not that way for everyone.’

  ‘Who is it that way for, then?’

  ‘All women, certainly.’

  ‘Because women take their husband’s name?’

  ‘That’s the least of it.’

  Bear is on precarious ground; this is not an ordinary conversation. He has never felt himself entirely born, let alone reborn, and he entered into his own marriage with expectations of a domestic bliss that would require absolutely no change in his outlook, habits or behaviour. Now, he decides that the best strategy to take with Minna is a sort of fond worldliness. He says, ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘You think I’m silly.’

  Conviction always sounds silly to Bear, possibly because he hasn’t any; he’s unsettled by evangelists of any kind. He shakes his head. He feels much older than she is, much more wise, and would like to both shock and impress her. He smiles and says, ‘You may not always feel this way.’

  ‘Which way?’ asks Minna.

  ‘You may find,’ he begins. And stops. ‘You may find, well, that you don’t feel at every moment as you did on the day of your wedding, or the days immediately following. So giddy, I mean.’ Her face doesn’t change. ‘What I mean is, that’s quite natural. You mustn’t—well, rebuke yourself.’

  ‘Of course it’s natural,’ says Minna, and clearly means it; her voice is a little shrug. It’s as if he’s offered her a sip of sherry and she’s produced a cup, already full, of her own much stronger liquor, and is now drinking it down in front of him.

  So Bear must draw on something else, some larger claim that will surprise her, and he thinks of an extraordinary night he spent with his brother and Karl Rapp. They’d been drinking in George’s office, and Bear had been trying to goad Rapp into spouting the sort of ideas you’d expect from an artist: free love, universal pity, beauty, truth, and so forth. Rapp sat drinking, smoking, his face and hair reflecting the red-gold colour of the fire (in the weirdest way, like some sort of devil), and very smug—Bear dislikes good-looking men unless they seem either completely unselfconscious or appropriately apologetic—and all Rapp would talk about, and for a bloody long time, was the damn sunset.

  Finally, though, the talk turned to the subject of wives. Bear always likes to know how people came to meet their spouses, especially when a match involves a discrepancy of any kind: in this case, Mrs Rapp seems such a blessedly unremarkable sort of person for a man like Rapp to have married (though, thinks generous Bear, she does have a fine complexion, like most English girls). But having raised—tactfully, he thought—the question of unlikely unions, Bear found himself listening with astonishment while his brother laid bare his own marriage as if Ellen weren’t sleeping forty feet away. George spoke for a good ten minutes: at first about ordinary complaints (dress bills and petty servant squabbles), but then the torture of an attractive wife, of being away from her for weeks, of intercepting looks and making guesses, of never knowing but suspecting—all this while drinking, smoking, his voice rising and falling while Rapp nodded at him, his eyes all liquid pity, inviting confidences by saying nothing, until finally Bear’s loyalty, his embarrassment for his brother, overcame his natural curiosity and he said, ‘For God’s sake, George.’ And the spell was broken. A brief silence, followed by a minute or two of urgent talk about a troublesome heifer, until Bear yawned and stretched to indicate that it was time to sleep.

  Then, just before retiring—to the arms, presumably, of his mousy wife—Rapp turned in the doorway (not at all well dressed, and yet everything he wore seemed to fall lovingly on his body, whereas Bear and even his finest clothes have always been engaged in constant negotiation) and said, ‘Here’s what I think, if you would like to hear it: love contracts a man and it expands a woman. When you, a man, fall in love with a woman, you see it as an end of possibility. When a woman falls in love with you, she also falls in love with every other man there is. And you must let her. Because when it starts, she sees you in every one of them, but if you stop her, she’ll only see the part of them that isn’t you.’

  ‘You can’t mean,’ said George, ‘that you allow your wife to be unfaithful?’

  ‘My friend, you haven’t understood me,’ said Rapp, laughing. And off he went to bed.

  Can Bear say all this to Minna Baumann? Or does it require a European accent and an artistic reputation? Minna is still standing in the self-sufficiency of having said, ‘Of course it’s natural.’

  ‘Love,’ says Bear, and clears his throat—just the word ‘love’ has a promising effect; Minna is looking at him properly now—‘love contracts a man and expands a woman.’

  Minna’s smile becomes more private. ‘Mr Rapp said something much the same,’ she says. ‘He said that when women fall in love with one man, it’s with all men.’

  Bear, looking for something to do with his hands, removes his hat; then he thinks of the sticky band of red the hat will have pressed into his brow, and returns it to his head. Of course Rapp has been spreading his gospel far and wide, and of course—the devil—he got to Minna first.

  ‘What on earth can he mean by it?’ Minna wonders, turning away to look across the plain, one hand held up to shade her eyes, although her hat seems adequate to the task; her hat, he thinks—disloyally—looks like a jellyfish run over by a train.

  Bear, too, has been thinking over what Rapp could possibly mean when he says that women fall in love with all men. ‘It’s something like,’ he says, and clears his throat again, ‘looking at a mountain and thinking of God.’

  ‘But why of God?’

  ‘I mean a real, European mountain with snow on it, a snowy peak. You look at it with admiration and you think: God is the author of all things, including this mountain.’

  ‘But you don’t worship the mountain,’ says Minna. ‘You worship God.’

  ‘Precisely,’ says Bear, who fears that the analogy has got away from him. And also, he senses something behind him, something coming towards him through the wheat—fast and low and invisible; he doesn’t know what it is, just that its purpose is Bear, its intent is all Bear, it has no knowledge or desire outside of Bear, and before he has time to turn and see what it is, what fury or demon has been sent after him, it’s against his back and on his shoulders. He can’t help but stumble forwards and throw out his hands, and Minna can’t help but take his arm to steady him.

  The thing at his shoulders breathes and shoves and licks, and he realises that it’s Bolingbroke, suddenly active, suddenly playful, like one of those grandfathers you hear of who in their dotage begin to sing the bawdy songs of their youth. Minna is laughing, and all Bear can do as he tries, frantically, not to be pushed by Boley into the wheat, is take hold of her hat, so that he drags it from her head and she cries out. Then, in one glorious manoeuvre, he turns, takes Boley by the front paws, and calms him into a crouch. Minna, regrettably, observes none of this; she’s holding one hand to the side of her head, and when she brings the hand down to inspect it, it’s clear that there’s blood on her fingers and in her hair. She looks at Bear and says, ‘I think my hatpin has scratched me. It’s come loose from its cap.’

  Then comes the flourishing of Bear’s handkerchief, Minna’s acceptance of the handkerchief, a dabbing of the head and a wiping of hands. While this happens, Bear sees that he might reach out and touch the triangle of skin behind Minna’s left ear, as if the blood has travelled there. He does, and Minna is so soft that Bear realises, not for the first time (though it feels like the first time), that soon he’ll have a child; that he’ll be a father, despite being merely Bear. They step away from each other. Minna offers Bear his handkerchief, on which there is some blood (it’s remarkable, he thinks, how much blood can be produced by one trivial scratch); he indicates that she should keep it. Minna fusses with her hair, replaces her hat, adjusts it so that there’s no sign of any disturbance, and slides in the pin. Boley inserts himself between Bear’s legs.

  ‘Such a beautiful dog,’ says Minna. ‘Does he belong to you?’

  ‘No,’ says Bear. ‘To my mother.’

  There’s nothing then but to take her arm and walk without speaking back to the house.

  In the early afternoon, one of Mary’s telegrams finds its recipient: her father, Samuel Deniston, the Southern Shepherd. He sits in his study in Goolwa, three hundred miles south of Fairly, writing a strongly worded letter about the proposed steam railway that will connect his district to Adelaide; it’s so strongly worded that, by the time his wife comes into the study to give him the telegram, he’s short of breath and feels a feverish buzz in his temples. When he sees her in the doorway, he throws down his pen and says, ‘Well, Muriel, Bayliss is dead.’

  His wife, who tends towards the imperturbable, hands him the telegram.

  ‘Mary’s boy is missing,’ he says, reading it. ‘The younger one.’

  His wife, Mary’s stepmother, who has already read the telegram, answers, ‘Poor lamb.’ Then she looks at what Samuel’s been writing and says, ‘You’ll tire yourself.’

  He adjusts the woollen blanket on his lap. Here he is, the Southern Shepherd: this courageous figure, who brought his flock to South Australia, who sang and starved alongside them, preached to them and prayed for them; this tyrant, loved and loving, walking bruised and barefoot through the Promised Land, whose strength and whose sacrifice overwhelmed them all. He’s got old. What little hair remains to him floats about his head in a gauzy white halo. He’s always cold, keeps a vigilant watch on his bowel movements, and, having the sense that the world has begun to move too quickly, would prefer to hear no more than one new piece of information a day. He’s already had news about the railway today, so the arrival of this telegram would agitate him no matter its message—and this message is so distressing.

  And yet. Samuel’s position on his daughter is that she, by going into the north country with her husband, must accept everything that follows, including a lost child: good or bad, commit it to the Lord. He’s lived so long by this doctrine of God’s sovereignty that it brings him genuine comfort, and he expects it to do the same for Mary. Nevertheless, he grieves for her, and worries for the boy, whom he has never met; he’ll put aside all thoughts of Bayliss’s steam railway and dedicate himself solely to considering his response to Mary’s telegram. Why has she sent it? She’s never sent a telegram before. She must need something from him, although the message contains no request. Does she want money? She’s never asked for money. He looks out the window at the river and sees a barge sliding past, on which two men are fighting. It’s hard to tell if they’re playing or not. Mary won’t want money; she must want prayer. He will pray for Mary and the lost boy now, and also this evening and when he wakes in the morning, and every morning and evening until he has more news, and will send Mary a letter to tell her so. She knows the true value of prayer. He takes a new piece of paper and begins the letter.

  ‘I’ll have this ready for this afternoon’s post, my dear,’ he says.

  ‘Aye,’ says his wife, and leaves the room.

  As Samuel writes to Mary, he reflects that he’s already corresponded with her this year: a letter on New Year’s Day, as always; at Easter; and on his birthday. Age hasn’t affected his memory, and he enjoys writing the names of his grandchildren in the order of their birth: Joseph, Joy, Cecily, Ada, Noella, Deniston and Charlotte. He’s only met the two eldest. He’s never been to the town of Fairly, and as he writes the letter it occurs to him that Mary might have sent the telegram because she wants to see him—she wants him to travel to the Flinders Ranges. He considers the possibility of going to see his daughter. He knows that there’s a steam railway straight from Port Augusta to Fairly—he knows all about this railway, how many men are at work further north to extend it to Government Gums, exactly what rate the line is worked at and what the profit would be if the Goolwa railway were worked at the same rate. He’s firmly opposed to the Goolwa railway. But if there were such a thing, he thinks, he could conceive of travelling to Adelaide, from Adelaide to Port Augusta, and from Port Augusta to Fairly, all by train. As it is, he’s too old and unwell to make the journey. Just the thought of a carriage to Adelaide stiffens his bones.

  As Samuel writes, telling Mary that he will hold her in his prayers—and he will, dearly; prayer is serious with him, he’s both generous and disciplined with it—he imagines her standing in a neat room, surrounded by her children. The room has blue walls. All the children have light eyes and brown hair, just as little Mary did, and they gather around her like cherubs at the Virgin’s knee (an image he dismisses promptly as too High Church). The buzz in Samuel’s temples clears. The Lord didn’t bless him with offspring from his second wife, so Mary is his only surviving child. For a moment, his longing to comfort her and meet her young ones leaves him breathless. Well, why not go? And if it kills him, it’s the Lord’s will. He’s finished the letter, but he no longer needs it—instead, he’ll send a telegram to say he’s starting immediately for the north.

  Samuel calls for his wife, who opens his study door.

  ‘I shall travel,’ he says, ‘to Fairly. Book me a ticket on tomorrow’s coach to Adelaide.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ asks Muriel, solicitous as ever, but obviously approving; he knows her to have a childless woman’s reverence for family.

  Samuel hears a male voice resounding in the front parlour. ‘Who’s come, Muriel?’ he asks.

  ‘Mr Bayliss.’

  ‘Bayliss!’ cries Samuel, standing; the woollen blanket falls to his feet. His wife kneels down to retrieve it.