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shed beside the tractor and Mr. Coles began to fiddle about with some welding gear. There were bits of broken metal from a plough or something and he was trying to weld them together. He didn’t seem to expect the youth to do anything, except hand him tools now and then. The youth gazed out at the mud and the drizzle. The shed was dim and cold, with a smell made up of metal and petrol from the tractor, grain and chaff from the saddle room, and a particular fetid odour which the youth thought was the smell of rats.
    Every so often the welding gear did not do what Mr. Coles wanted and he would yell at it that it was a blasted swine of a turnout and not worth having on the place. The youth had got used to the yelling and was starting to be able to hear it without a clutch of fear in his stomach.
    The youth needed to go to the toilet, but did not know where it was. When he finally asked, Mr. Coles waved his hand vaguely. “Just go round the side of the shed, lad.” The youth went round the side of the shed in the drizzle but could see no toilet. The dogs saw him and began to bark. Mr. Coles called out to him to let Dolly off the chain. The youth hobbled across and looked at the three dogs. One was a big yellow thing that barked more savagely as he approached. The second was brownish and seemed to follow the lead of the big yellow one. The third was a nice black-and-white collie. She stopped barking and began to wag her tail cautiously as he approached. “Dolly? Are you Dolly?” the youth asked her. She wagged harder and looked up at him with soft intelligent eyes. He unfastened her chain and they went back to the shed. Mr. Coles slapped and patted Dolly and the dog wagged and twisted her body and made little swooning sounds as though being in Mr. Coles’s presence was the sweetest thing that ever could be.
    â€œUm, I couldn’t see the toilet,” the youth said.
    â€œAh,” said Mr. Coles, realising that the youth didn’t just need to pee. “There’s the old outside loo of the house for you to use. Up the rise at the back. But try to be quiet, lad. Mrs. Coles might be having a lie-down.”
    The rain had got harder, so the youth went to his room and put on his new army disposals greatcoat. It felt stiff and heavy, like a coat of iron. He trudged through the mud, sinking deep with every step and having to pick his feet up carefully lest he step right out of the gumboots, tight as they were.
    The loo was an old upright wooden dunny on the slope about twenty paces from the back door of the house. A big bush grew up against it, the leaves pressing round it on two sides, shielding it a little from sight. There was a horseshoe nailed above the door. Inside was a flat seat with a hole above a big tin container. In the corner was a bucket of sand and a drum of disinfectant. On the back of the door hung a hand-printed notice in capital letters: SPREAD SAND AND DISINFECTANT AFTER EVERY USE. WE DON’T WANT THE SMELL AT THE HOUSE THANK YOU! It was signed with the initials “C.T.C.” The youth knew that Mr. Coles’s first name was Howard, so they weren’t his initials. Instead of toilet paper there were squares of cut-up newspaper skewered on a piece of wire. The youth wrestled the skirts of the greatcoat up and undid his other clothes and sat. Then a thought struck him and he got up hurriedly. He peered down through the hole. He could see no movement there. The youth knew vaguely that snakes went to sleep in cold weather. He wondered whether they chose dunnies to sleep in, and how much disturbance it took to wake them up. He sat again.
    Up there on the slope a wind was blowing and it made the branches of the bush rasp and grapple against the dunny walls. The mournful sound of it was quite soothing. The youth read some of the squares of newspaper. There were bits of information about wool prices and cattle sales, and ads for sheep-dip, and stuff about export prospects for