‘Bob had a stack of battens in there, just as a temporary storage, and whoever did it used petrol or diesel anyway. The rafters went up and the roof’s collapsed. The door’s burnt too.’ Richie was angry. The cottage wasn’t on his land, had no hereditary connection with the Gates family, but it was part of the wider locality that they knew and loved. ‘Not many people go there, and why would you do that, for God’s sake? I thought you’d want to know. Maybe you could get something going at council level — a renovation project before it’s too late? Bob and I have rigged tarpaulins over the roof as temporary protection. We’re both really pissed off.’

‘I’ll get onto the paper,’ said Pearly, ‘and I’ll have a talk with my people here about the best approach for a restoration drive. I think people will respond well if it’s pitched the right way and leadership is enthusiastic. I’ll get onto it. Maybe go out to Purvis’s with someone from the paper. There’s always some silly bugger isn’t there. It’s like what happened to Kevin’s launch in Auckland. Anyway, you’re right. It’s important. I’ll see what I can do and get back to you tomorrow.’

Pearly was impressed by his brother’s vehemence. Richie was a practical man with no academic pretensions, but he had a strong sense of continuity, of the close bonding of people with the land and the features that were evidence of it.

Pearly took up the phone to ring Paul Wrinskley, but paused as a memory of the clay cottage welled up from over fifty years before. He by the old stove with his brother and blonde, chunky Toni Purvis, the birds’ nests in the eaves, the window sun like a bar of gold through the hot, still air, grain sacks beneath them on the collapsed totara floorboards, a barley grass head caught in his sock and pricking his ankle with any movement. And outside, Toni’s parents talking with no idea they were overheard.

‘We’ll all go in tomorrow,’ Mr Purvis had said. ‘I’d say it’ll be the last time the girls see him. They said it’s very near the end.’

‘Don’t tell them, though. I don’t want them to be upset. It’ll be awful enough when it comes.’

‘If he’s very bad you can take the girls home and I’ll stay.’

‘He loves them so much,’ she said.

‘But now he just wants to go. He’s had enough. It’s not fair.’

‘He said yesterday he’d run out of things to say.’

‘He’s signed off,’ her husband said.