The Purvis parents had walked on towards the farmhouse, and Pearly had looked at Toni to find she was in tears. She covered her face with her hands, and when her parents were gone she ran outside without a word. Pearly and Richie had followed slowly: too young, too naïve, for any means of comfort to occur to them.

TWENTY

Andrew Nisse wasn’t at the sports event day. He told Pearly when they were together at the decade photographs session that he’d been in discussion with a couple of people from Statistics New Zealand who had flown down to consult with him. At the closing dinner, however, at which Pearly was to propose a toast and Andrew would reply on behalf of the old boys, they were seated close together. Partners were invited, and so to accommodate everybody, three marquees had been erected end on end across the sports field and festooned with cables for lights and sound. Andrew, on his own, sat between Helen and Nancy at the top table with the Hollisters and Jardines across from them.

It was a calculated gamble to use the tents, but Pearly’s committee had been keen to have the final event at the school itself, and the east coast summer was normally reliable. At nearly seven o’clock the sun was still well up in the cloudless sky, the marquee skirts barely moving, the parched grass a thin carpet on the hard ground. The school buildings had been open since midday, and many of the dinner guests had made a tour, the last of them straggling back, the old boys’ spouses having evinced sufficient enthusiasm for the gymnasium, the library, the new art block, the ranks of photographs within the memorial auditorium. Pearly had done a round with Helen despite having made inspection twice before, the first time with Gumbo two days previously to check the condition of the grounds. Gumbo’s team, in co-operation with the school groundsman, had made a fine job: the lawns trim, garden plots weed-free, toilet blocks devoid of graffiti, rubbish stashed out of sight. A once-over-quickly coat of paint for the tractor shed and canteen building. A cracked window replaced in the latter as well. Everyone knew it was a temporary spruce-up and that customary, cursory care would resume, but it was indication of the occasion’s significance, like the white lace-edged tablecloth a hostess brings out for a tea party. Even the school flag was hoisted, and at the main gates was a welcoming billboard that the senior art class had worked on for weeks, and which was so admired that it was subsequently stored upside down in the caretaker’s shed for several years.