‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Pearly. ‘The din in here’s unbearable. I’ll just go and tell Helen where we’re going.’ The two of them went back to Pearly’s table, and Pearly introduced Gumbo to the Hollisters. Stephen had left school before Pearly and Gumbo had begun. ‘We’re going to take a walk outside,’ Pearly told Helen. ‘I’ll get Gumbo to drop me home if you want to go soon,’ and he gave Helen his car keys.

‘We’ve left the library open,’ volunteered Warwick, ‘because there are civilised toilets there. I can see the lights of the gym too, so that hasn’t been locked yet.’

Both Stephen and Andrew said they’d like a walk as well, and although Pearly would have preferred just himself and Gumbo, it was okay. At least Mrs Hollister didn’t ask to join them despite complaining that the chairs were reason enough to leave the table. Pearly led the way into the coming darkness, and the breeze was a pleasant coolness. Behind them the marquees were lit up almost like a carnival, a flexing blend of noise, light and movement set against the background of the far trees. A few people had begun to leave, straggling across the playing field towards the carpark, their voices pitched up against the night air, the colour of the women’s dresses brief flashes in the night as they passed through light spilling from the entrances. A group in the third tent began the school haka, greeted with cheers and laughter even from those in the gloom. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Gumbo.

‘That’s something I haven’t heard for so many years,’ said Stephen. ‘I remember when we were juniors the prefects used to make us line up and practise.’

The four of them strolled towards the buildings and talked of their time there. A knight of the realm, a captain of industry, the town mayor and Gumbo the school caretaker. They were equal in reminiscence. They went past the fives courts, the junior locker bay, the wooden canteen building with its fresh paint and newly replaced window, and into the new gymnasium, the wooden floor gleaming and boldly marked with court lines, its mesh-guarded lights high in the vaulted ceiling. ‘I can have a smoke in here out of the wind,’ said Andrew, and he took out his small silver case with a lighter built in.

‘Sacrilege, smoking in the gym. Straight to the principal, Nisse,’ said Stephen accusingly. Pearly hadn’t smoked since he left school, a discipline to assist fitness rather than safeguard his general health, but he felt an odd envy as he watched Andrew light up, draw in deeply, his eyelids dropping briefly as the smoke hit deep in his lungs.

‘I never shone in the gym, I’m afraid. PE wasn’t my thing,’ Andrew said. The cigarette smoke drifted upwards in slow dispersal.