A funny word, constitution, used in that way, Pearly thought as he began to work.

Almost anything can be found online, but as he worked Pearly was annoyed by the incongruous and uninvited small bar pop-ups that appeared. Three signs you have a fatty liver, how to improve your chances of workplace promotion, what Sigourney Weaver looks like now is insane. ‘No thank you, bugger off,’ said Pearly.

Selling property was what Pearly did, and much of his life was concerned with it, yet it was an occupation that he’d never considered as a young man, and no one in his wider family had any connection with it. At university his course choices were made on the basis of congeniality rather than their usefulness for a career. Sport was where his ambitions lay in those years, and there was always the farm to go back to if nothing else came his way. Earl Rawleigh had been president of the Old Boys’ Club and keen to get Pearly as captain of the senior team when he finished his degree. Pearly had considered going to training college, which was an obvious choice for someone who had taken history and geography, but Earl offered him work and said that he’d be able to take time off pretty much when he liked for travel and game time. And Earl paid him more than he was worth in real estate terms because of what he could bring to the club.

Initially it was merely a convenience for Pearly, and he treated it as such, but increasingly he came to realise it was a career that suited his personality. He also became aware that quite a lot of money could be made in the simple transfer of buildings and land from one person to another. And so much of it was about people, as it is of any business. Pearly was accomplished with people, always had been, but only recognised the quality in himself when it was commented on by others, especially Earl Rawleigh, who enjoyed sailing his yacht and following sport more than selling houses. Pearly found people interesting, and his confident, open manner appealed to most he had dealings with. He was ordinary, but better at being ordinary than many, so they could both relate and look up to him. There was nothing arcane about Pearly, and his fellows felt confident in an understanding of his straightforwardness and his endorsement of those values and interests they had themselves. The reach and success of his ordinariness were explicable to them.

Despite all of that, he might have gone somewhere else and done something quite different if it hadn’t been for Helen. In fact he lived a year in Dunedin when he made the Otago team, and may have stayed there if he hadn’t been injured. Helen, though. He’d wanted to be where Helen was.