‘Unplaced’, he said.

‘Still, a big kick.’

‘Yeah, it was. A bigger kick was coming home through the States and seeing how they were organising things there. Business, I mean. You never saw anything like it. Marinas sprouting everywhere, airfields; lot of ex-service stuff going into recreational use. That’s where I got the idea for the leisure business. It was slow to take off here, but it has now. I built it up sure and steady.’

‘Well, the Yanks were always long on ideas. You certainly got in early.’

‘Right. Too early, I thought for a while. I worked like a dog at it. Blew a marriage to pieces in the process. I got married again ten years ago. She’s twenty years younger than me, and had two sons from her first marriage. They were about eight and nine at the time. I didn’t have any kids, and I helped to raise those two. I think of them as mine.’

The value of sentiments like that depends on the speaker. I rated Guthrie pretty high: he wasn’t big-noting himself about his business success, just filling me in. And he’d put it down to work rather than brilliance-always a sign that the person is a realist. Physically, he was impressive too; there was no fat on him and he looked as if he could still pull an oar. But his problem was eating at him, sapping his reserves.

‘The boys are the problem, that right?’

‘One of them, Ray-he’s the oldest, nineteen. Just under nineteen. I haven’t seen him for four months.’

‘That’s not so long.’

‘It is for the way it happened. The other boy, Chris, he went up to Brisbane at the beginning of the year. He’s all right- went to university there. They’ve got special studies in race relations-Aborigines, Islanders and all that. That’s what he’s keen on.’