Lying in that hotel bed in Parramatta, he felt he should be thinking of the world full with good things beyond their room, that blue sky just waiting to come again in a few hours, that great blue sky which in his mind was forever associated with the lost freedom of his childhood. Yet his mind could never stop seeing the black-streaked sky of the camp. Tell me, she said. It always reminded him of dirty rags drenched in sump oil. I want to know, she said. No. You don’t. She’s dead, isn’t she? I’m only jealous of the living.
