She’d support him in whatever choice he made. He knew that and took it for granted. Too much so perhaps, he thought after they had talked a little more and Helen had resumed reading. Many of their friends had enjoyed lengthy overseas holidays recently, and he knew that she wished for the same. They could do that if he didn’t stand again: Anne was quite capable of running Rawleigh and Gates for a couple of months. Maybe it was better to go out on a high after two terms than face an election and leave local government a loser. Pearly wasn’t one to back off a challenge, but he was a pragmatist and more sensitive to image than most people realised. As an old warhorse, however, Pearly naturally began to think of the tack he could take if Utterspan were an adversary. The lack of business and financial acumen, the slightly alternative flavour of some of his fringe activities that could be a drawback as far as more conservative ratepayers were concerned. And Deidre Utterspan, who was opposed to fluoridation and enthusiastic concerning euthanasia, who created art works from discarded clothing and wrote haiku, was too outspoken to be a comfortable spouse for a candidate. Pearly had come to believe that most voters were instinctively drawn to those who most reflected themselves.

When Pearly passed into sleep, however, nothing in his dreams was of politics. Instead he was the number eight in a forward pack otherwise all Fijian: titans with halos of wild hair, ever advancing so that Pearly and the halfback took turns to scoop the ball unopposed and spin it or break around the scrum and have a go upfield. Pearly’s legs twitched beneath the covers, and his face assumed a grimace of endeavour as he experienced again the fierce joy of youthful strength, skill and risk. He ran hard, he fended, the green of the playing field and the blue of the sky rolled equally around him, and the spectators on the sidelines were a multicoloured stream between the two. Go hard, Pearly. Jesus, rip into it. He had recaptured for a moment the exultant sense of youth itself. Go, Pearly, go, the watchers shouted, and Pearly did go, storming on like a young bull, fearing nothing, ready for all. Go, Pearly, go.

Selling people’s homes is a form of dispossession far more personal than Pearly realised when he first took up the occupation. He found that at times he was parting folk from a source of profound life experience. Some people, old and young, were happy for that release; others were lastingly conscious of the loss. Despite years in a business often mundane, Pearly could still be disconcerted, amused, saddened or educated by the process.