A History of Silence (34 page)

Then I recognise a gesture of my own—a distribution of body weight as O.T. leans against a fence, again, of course, in a dark suit, and hat. And then he appears for the last time, driving a tractor across a paddock. He comes closer and closer into view. One of his grandkids is parked on his lap. He turns his head to look behind at what he has ploughed. And then he is gone.

AFTERWORD

Late one Monday afternoon in March 2013 I returned to the Karori Cemetery with Eleanor Gwendoline Jones's plot number. This time the woman in administration altered her directions—‘turn right at the last street light and look for her in public section 2 next to Hearn and Eliot'. Fallen leaves covered the walking area between the graves and there was a strong smell of eucalypt in the air. I found Eliot, then Hearn, covered in eucalypt leaves. Next door was Eleanor's plot, little more than the collapsed side of a bank. One hundred years after she was interred she at last had a visitor.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of the workhouse women on page 195 is from
The English Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne
, Vol II, Riverside Edition, Houghton, Mifflin & Co, Boston, 1883.

The cures for melancholia described on page 236 are from
The Anatomy of Melancholy
by Robert Burton, George Bell & Sons, London.

The land where O.T. Evans once farmed has passed into new hands, and I am very grateful to Jenny and Alex Fergusson for allowing me to poke around in O.T.'s crumbling farmhouse.

I am extremely grateful to the Evans family for their good grace and generosity, and for their hospitality. In a letter circulated to the wider Evans family, Wylie concludes, ‘We now all have some relatives of which we weren't previously aware, something I personally think is a bonus.' I concur.

I wish to thank the office of Chris Finlayson, Minister for Culture and Heritage, for putting me in touch with the staff at CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority) who made so many things possible at a difficult time.

Thanks also to Gareth James from Transpacific Waste Management for providing access to the tip operation out at Bottle Lake.

The staff at Archives New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development showed remarkable patience and I thank both institutions for the documents their searches produced.

To Juliet Nicholas and Ken McAnergney, and Morrin Rout, and Marion Hargreaves, thank you for your hospitality, local knowledge and excellent company in Christchurch. Photographer Anne Noble was a great companion on two trips to the earthquake zone. Christchurch landscape architect Di Lucas generously provided invaluable insight. I am indebted to John Harper who made the initial approach to the Evans family. John guided me around the district and kindly opened the local museum. In 2008, I was fortunate to have Pieter van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, guide me through an exhibition of William Hodges' paintings and show me the sketches of the icebergs.

A heartfelt thanks to my first reader and agent, Michael Gifkins, and to my publisher at Text, Michael Heyward, for their tireless efforts on my behalf, and to the wonderful Jane Pearson for her astute and close reading.

Finally, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky's customary wisdom, in this instance a line from an essay, kept me on track: ‘If art teaches us anything, to the artist in the first place, it is the privateness of the human condition.' From
On Grief and
Reason—Essays
, Penguin Modern Classics, 2011, p. 40.

The author's grandmother, Maud.

The author's mother, Joyce, aged four.

The author's father, Lew.

Lloyd Jones.