‘Richie and Natalie have invited us out on Sunday. I said we could make it — there was nothing in your diary.’ It was often this way, Helen making the social decisions because Pearly was so tied up with his various responsibilities. She joked that sometimes she had to make an appointment just to get time to talk things over. Pearly was happy for her to run their personal life and appreciated her efficiency in doing so. She understood him, the nature of the pressures he had from time to time, the manner in which his personality responded, the intrinsic self-centredness that was not greatly more pronounced in him than in others. And he liked going to the farm: it was removed from his urban life by emotional context as well as time and space: the place where he could meet the self that once he’d been. He liked his brother and so did Helen. Even more important, perhaps, she and Natalie got on well. They were comfortable as a foursome and also as pairs of common gender. They had several times holidayed together with no more than the occasional and passing disagreement. They led different lives and were not in competition; they had individual interests and personal protocols yet valued their links as family.

It was windy that Sunday. A nor’wester that came sometimes in the summer. The antipodean equivalent of the sirocco, damaging and unpleasant, wearying on the nerves. Helen hated the way it flogged the new growth and flowers of the garden. ‘It’ll be pouring on the West Coast,’ said Pearly as they drove. It was a sucking wind that his father had always disliked because it took moisture from ground that couldn’t afford the loss. Just as the Inuit understood a score of different forms of snow, so his father knew the varying and individual personalities of the winds, although to most townies the direction and degree of force are the only attributes they recognise. The new poplars along the roadside of the farm were flexing in the nor’wester and the sky blown clear and blue. Pearly was pleased to see the fresh growth on the trees and wished them well. ‘Bloody wind,’ he said. ‘I’d hoped to have a wander about, but it’s not much fun being out in this.’

He parked as close as he could get to the house gate, and they hurried up the path to the door Richie held open for them. ‘Sorry about the wind,’ Richie said, as if there were some way in which he could be held accountable. Richie’s son, Matt, was there, home from Australia and for good. Tall, brown and, after shaking hands, folding easily into a sitting position because he had no belly. He asked after Kevin.

‘Still in Auckland,’ said Pearly. ‘Still running charter launches and yachts and tours to every place you can imagine.’