It’s a long time ago now, toward the end of 1953. I know that because Kevin was one of the star turns of our local Coronation concert. Kevin played both piano and saxophone and had a reasonable singing voice as well. Admittedly our artistic and musical standards were not particularly high. The outstanding item at that concert was the Womens’ Institute 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 ground, 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 sports teams, indoor bowls, dances, amateur dramatics, and of course both the Country Women’s Institute and the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers. Mum was in both. And we had pictures at the hall on Friday night. The single projector was owned by a 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, much too interest in each other’s affairs, and too ready to decide what other people should do. When Bob Whelan 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 thought to ask Molly what she wanted to do. It simply became an immutable fact that she was going to sell 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 for her 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 about nothing else for weeks.. The women were agreed that it could not 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 head 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 districts older marriages where romance was long dead and therefore something to be disparaged. But it couldn’t last, everyone said that it couldn’t last. Give it a couple of years at most. By then, Molly would begin to show her years and Kevin would be at that restless age when a man begins to regret being tied down, and particularly so 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 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 attention 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 than was justified into his actions to find a 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 in central Asia where she had fallen victim to one of those unpronounceable tropical diseases. She was in her late twenties, a bit of a looker, and unmarried, and everybody said, “This’ll be worth watching.” This would be where Kevin would clearly see his mistake. I don’t think that anybody really imagined at the start that anything would actually grow up between the two but that view changed. We had a number of marriageable bachelors and each had a mother who was determined to see her son settled. They had a difficulty because quite a few of the local girls headed for the brighter lights and never came back. 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 could be quite short, verging on rudeness at times. But…how could any girl not jump at their son? Logic then told them that this had to mean that Jenny was sweet on somebody 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 to hell.’ But Jenny, standing on her dignity, told Nola that she was an interfering old cow, and angrily insisted that it was all purely platonic, nothing more. Some people had nasty minds. She was just pleased to see the happiness that Kevin had brought her mother and was 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. But no-one was willing to give her credit for her pleasure in the union and her rudeness to Nola and the slander of her own 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 its output. Sad to say, I think she was somewhat relieved when Jenny left even if it was only to still the gossip. It was Kevin alone who ran Jenny over the hill to catch the Road-Services bus to Auckland. She was due to sail out the next morning and her next letter would probably be months 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 an indisputable fact that Kevin did not come back. That did not become known until the evening when the neighbours were alerted by a 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 bring herself to admit even to close friends that Kevin had not come back. I would think that we all felt sympathy for her even while agreeing privately that she only had herself to blame. She must have been a fool not to have noticed what was going on. It had really been too much to expect that she could hold on to this much younger man. The contrast between herself and Jenny had been just too great. And, of course, Kevin had been 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 their work 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 ready for planting, and had ended up in a gully. From the road, there was no sign that anything 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 had not 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 fortnight hundreds of cars had come over that hill and rounded that very same 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 can be very supportive of its own it can also be unforgiving. Once you are out, you are out for good and will be made to feel it. Molly finished the season with a succession of farm workers from outside each of whom quickly found themselves unwelcome locally. That might have been entirely unfair but 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 and moved. Her neighbour took the opportunity to get the place for his sons. His offer was fire-sale but Molly accepted. There was not much else that she could do.