It’s a long time ago now, toward the end of 1953. I know that because Kevin was one of the star turns at our local Coronation Concert. He played both piano and saxophone with some degree of competence and had a reasonablr singing voice as well. Admittedly, our artistic and musical standards were not particularly high. The outstanding item at that concert was the C.W.I. cow that tripped about the stage to the strains of ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’. It received rapturous applause even after its second encore. My mother played, or rather danced, in the back legs.
The greater part of my youth was spent in the Claris district. There was a strong community spirit, a sense of belonging, in those pre-television days. Claris itself was nothing more than a hall, a tennis court, a rugby field, and a school. The nearest store was fifteen miles away and the nearest town thirty but we didn’t consider ourselves isolated. There was always something going on. We had a full complement of sports’ teams, indoor bowls, dances, amateur dramatics, and, of course, both the C.W.I. and the W.D.F.F.
And we had the pictures at the hall on Friday nights. The single projector was owned by our local enthusiast. The lights went on between reels, cigarettes were lit, and everyone had a bit of a natter. It was normally the week’s big social event..
If we had a collective fault in Claris it was probably in being too inward looking, too interested in each other’s affairs, and too ready to decide what other people should do. When Bob Whalen died, the consensus was that his widow Molly should take on one of the local boys to help with the milking, put the place on the market, and move out at the end of the season. She had many genuine offers of help, the district was good that way, but nobody ever thought to ask Molly what she wanted to do. It simply became an immutable fact that she was going to move out.
But she surprised everyone. In the off-season, she left the boy in charge, disappeared for a month, and returned with a new husband, Kevin. And, if it wasn’t enough to remarry with Bob scarcely five months in the grave, her new husband was young enough to be her son and….distinctly good looking. Molly was approaching sixty. Kevin was only thirty eight.
The district was scandalised, the women particularly so. My mother could talk of nothing else for weeks. The women were agreed that it couldn’t be a love match. Kevin had married the farm, not Molly. On one occasion, at the dinner table, I was foolish enough to suggest that with some of the women there might be more than a little unacknowledged jealousy. My mother really chewed my ear off for that. Even though she herself may have suspected as much, pack loyalty demanded their defence.
The initial view continued even though time showed the couple to be very close and affectionate. Much closer than in most of the district’s older marriages where romance was long dead and therefore something to be disparaged. But it couldnt last. Everybody said that it couldn’t last. ‘Give it a couple of years at most.’ By then, Molly would be starting to show her years and Kevin would be at that restless age when a man begins to regret being tied down, and particularly to an older wife. The age when he needs to reassure himself of his virility and attractiveness to the opposite sex. The scales must eventually fall from his eyes and then ‘poor Molly’. But under the ‘poor Molly’ there was more than a hint of ‘it’ll serve her right.’
It is unlikely that anyone ever expressed these views directly to Molly herself but in that closed community it was impossible not to know what other people were saying or even what they were thinking. She could hardly miss the significant glances when Kevin danced with, or shared a joke with, another woman. Kevin could not be faulted on his close attendance to Molly on social occasions but he was the open friendly type, always in the forefront, at ease with both men and women. But his auditors read far more into his actions to find sure proof of their prior conceptions. Later events would show that Molly was well aware of what was being said and that, despite an unruffled front, her confidence in holding Kevin was severely undermined.
And then Jenny came home to recuperate. Jenny was Molly’s daughter back from several years with Volunteer Service Abroad in Asia where she had fallen victim to one of those unpronouncible tropical diseases. She was in her late twenties, a bit of a looker, and unmarried, and everyone said, “This’ll be worth watching.” This would be where Kevin would see clearly his mistake.
I don’t think that anybody imagined at the start that anything would actually grow between the two but that view changed. We had a number of bachelors of marriageable age and each had a mother who was determined to see her son settled. Difficult this was because quite a few of the local girls had headed off for brighter lights. Jenny received an avalanche of invitations but all to no avail. Jenny had a second-class honours degree and had seen the wider world outside Claris. She had no wish to be bounded by the narrow horizons of a farmer’s wife. The mothers could not understand it. They were upset when she sidestepped their rather obvious attempts at matchmaking.. Actually she was quite short, verging on rudeness in several cases. But how could any girl not jump at their son, they wondered??
Logic told them that this had to mean that Jenny was sweet on someone else and it must be admitted that she did display an obvious affection for Kevin. Nola Friedland, our local dragon, actually challenged her on her ‘shameless behaviour’ in this direction and pointed out that she was ‘heading straight for hell.’ But Jenny stood on her dignity, told Nola that she was an ‘interfering old cow,’ and angrily insisted that it was all purely platonic, nothing more. She was just pleased to see the happiness that Kevin had finally brought her mother and grateful to him. Everyone must know that her mother had led a dog’s life with her own father. He had been a humourless pig of a man. The age disparity didn’t worry her at all she claimed.
But no-one was willing to give her any credit for that and her rudeness to Nola and the slander of her father told against her. The district’s rumour mill geared up to run three eight-hour shifts and Molly could not have missed catching some of the output. Sad to say, I think she was somewhat relieved when Jenny left even it was only to still the gossip.
It was Kevin who ran Jenny over the hill to catch the service car to Auckland. She was due to sail out the next morning and her first letter would probably be weeks away. She was a poor correspondent at any time. Molly stayed at home. She was finding it uncomfortable to ride in the car. She was rather coy about the reason but it was hard to keep anything secret around Claris.A boil on her bottom that she was too embarrassed to get lanced was what people reckoned. True or not, I do not know, but it was indisputable that Kevin did not come back.
That did not become known until the evening when neighbours were alerted by the vacuum pump running long after all the others had stopped and then noticed the cowshed lights. They found Molly distraught and trying to put the herd through by herself. She had not been able to admit even to close friends that Kevin had left.
I think we all felt sympathy for her even while agreeing privately that she had only herself to blame. She must have been a fool not to have noticed what was going on. It had been really too much to expect that she could hold onto this much younger man. The contrast between herself and Jenny must have been just too great. And, of course, Kevin was at that time of life. There was no point in reporting him missing. There could be no doubt as to where he was or at least who he was with. Our predictions had been fully justified.
And justified they remained for just over a fortnight at which time tree-planters began working on the Clarkson Estate on the Claris side of the hill. They found the car. The hill was all loose metal and Kevin had run off at a corner, gone down a long slope with brush already crushed for planting, and ended up in a gully. From the road, there was no sign that anything untoward had happened.
Kevin had been alone, on his way back, and within two miles of home. The car roof was flattened to seat level and Kevin had been trapped inside. He had broken both legs and bled somewhat but the worst aspect of the whole affair was that he had obviously survived for some days, possibly for as much as a week, in pain, waiting for the rescue that never came.
Any latent sympathy for Molly immediately evaporated. Kevin’s death became her fault. Suddenly, she had no friends. Kevin was dead because she hadn’t even bothered to report him missing. That no-one else had done so and that the whole community had a basic responsibility for Molly not doing so was easily overlooked. Everyone was now convinced that a hunt would have been started and that Kevin would have been found within hours. This in spite of the fact that in that ortnight hundreds of cars had come over the hill and rounded that very corner without anyone noticing anything amiss. The womenfolk also now expressed their amazement that any mother could believe so ill of her daughter.
While Claris could be very supportive of its own, it could also be unforgiving. Once you were out, you were out for good and would be made to feel it. Molly finished the season with a succession of farm workers from outside each of whom in turn quickly found themselves unwelcome. That might have been entirely unfair but we….we because I must include my family in this…we didn’t see it that way. If there were any among us who did think it unfair, they kept silent, unwilling to break ranks.
At the end of the season, Molly sold out and moved. Her neighbour took the opportunity to get the place for his sons. His offer was fire-sale but Molly accepted. There was nothing else that she could do.