On the tape they sounded at first hesitant with one another, wary. He'd known it was because she distrusted him as an expatriate, expected him to be patronising. It had made it hard for him to get to the more difficult, and therefore more interesting, questions. But as the lunch went on, and she shared his wine, the exchanges had become more frank, less hesitant.

He ran the tape forward, and listened again.

'I keep coming back to your title. . .'

'Yes, it's bold, I know.'

'And it makes how the thing ends important.'

'Don't tell me about it. Terribly important. I spent so many months agonising over all that. I kept rewriting the end—it never seemed right. Then I'd give away the title-look for something more modest. But that seemed the easy way out. The cowardly ... You see I'd had the title in mind right from the start—before I'd written a word. That, and the basic story of the all-night chase, which was something that happened. I read about it in the paper, and straight away I thought this is a short history of New Zealand. But it had such symbolic force—too much. Pakeha chases Maori through his own land to enforce British law. Every now and then Maori rebels and page 102 turns on Pakeha, but then it's back to the old chase. That was OK in away- as a story—because it was real. It happened, and it was believable. But if it was to carry that symbolic load . . .'

'That's why the end. . .'

'Yes, because it's not finished, is it? I mean the history's not. It goes on ... So the end of the novel has to be—what's the word?'

'Tentative? Not definitive?'

'Yes, that's right, but ... Provisional That's the word. I had it on a piece of paper pinned over my desk. The ending had to be provisional. The first version ended with an arrest. They ran all night and then early in the morning Hemi just lost heart and gave up. Well, that might be how it happened-but as symbol . . .'

'No good. I can see that. They haven't given up.'

'And then I had him get away. No good again, you see. Too easy. Sentimental. Because the real history. . .'

'Yes, it's tougher than that.'

'Then I had them fight it out. But how does that end? Pakeha kills Maori? Maori kills Pakeha? They're both killed? They make friends and walk off hand in hand into the sunrise? You see? Nothing seemed to fit.'

'Not as things are right now. But they're all possible, aren't they?'

'You mean in reality.'

'I mean—what do I mean? They're possible ends, most of them, if you think just of the two men. Maybe the problem is there's too much conflict, d'you think? The story sets them too much in opposition. After all, it hasn't always been like that. If you think of our history. . .'

'Our?'

'Yes ... Oh, I see. You think as an expatriate it's not mine any more.'

And there the tape ran out.

*