Only long afterwards had he realised how selfish he’d been in the farewell, making no enquiry of Jasper’s own plans after thirty-two years, giving insufficient gratitude for the hundreds of unpaid hours of coaching in the cold winter gloom, the encouragement, the trust and preferment. Pearly was to have better coaches in the future, and worse, but he still remembered J. A. S. Peters with affection: the chalked dispositions on the blackboard in the old storeroom, the lined face surmounted with grey, startled hair, the long, skinny legs scissoring in baggy black shorts or faded trackpants.

He’d never seen him again. Whatever ambitions for retirement Jasper had, they were cut short. He died during Pearly’s first year at varsity. His father told him when Pearly was home for a weekend. ‘Pretty sudden,’ his father had said, having known Jasper a little through his son’s sport. ‘Went down in a heap while painting his fence, they say. Heart attack or stroke, I suppose, though he always seemed a fit sort of rooster.’

Pearly reached the Falcon but didn’t drive away from the school immediately. He couldn’t recall feeling any great sorrow concerning the coach’s death, but he’d been young then and with the truculence that young men have in regard to death. It was different now: death became more significant as it came closer, as it claimed people from his own generation. He had chipped in for the briefcase, though, that Jasper was given. He’d put in more than the other kids from whom he collected money. He was pleased to remember that. It would have been money he earned from carting hay on neighbouring farms or potato picking. It would have been money that represented something to him.

Driving home, Pearly wondered how many of his classmates would come to the 125th. When the lists were made up he would get out the photographs to remind himself of the former appearance of those choosing to attend. Form photos with the students in rows with their arms folded as they had been directed, team photos in playing gear, but the poses just the same, Jasper with the first fifteen and the year’s inter-school results displayed beneath the photograph. Photos of the prefects with the principal as gowned centrepiece.