The Larnachs (10 page)

When we are together she is perceptive, as well as quick, in conversation, and encouraging of my opinions. We allow few barriers of gender in our talks; we are just as two people, equal and attentive. Yet, yet, I’m increasingly aware of the swell of her breast, the pale base of her smooth neck, the brown hair glossy above her ears, the fragrance that is part perfume and part herself — and sometimes, when we’re alone, there seems to pass a sort of frisson between us, so that everything I see has a momentary shimmer. Conny, I feel, is equally aware of it, but neither of us makes acknowledgement. Just to be in her company is pleasure, and there’s no awkwardness in any silence that we share. Somehow when she’s with me everything seems complete.

Often I think of the spontaneous kiss I gave her at the lion steps on her return from Lawrence, the jolt it gave me, the look that passed between us, although we’ve not referred to it again. We’re the closest of friends, without guilt. We’re family, after all.

T
his Christmas and the seeing in of 1896 have been a low point indeed for William, and threatened so for me. We were not long back to The Camp from Wellington at the beginning of December when William’s bad luck struck again. Horse transport bedevils the Larnachs. The three of us were travelling into Dunedin mid-morning when the axle of the buggy broke just as we came into Anderson’s Bay. Dougie and I were shaken, but uninjured, except for a bloody graze on the palm of his left hand. William was flung onto the hard summer road, breaking ribs and dislocating his shoulder. Rather than railing against yet another blow, he took it with an uncharacteristic and sad fatalism that has become one of the moods we see in him now. Thank God Dougie suffered nothing serious. I don’t think his constitution would stand another serious reverse. The shock of it, however, made him swear in a foul way I have never heard from him before,
and for which he apologised later. There were the three of us, and a spooked horse, on the road quite bare of any other traffic or immediate help: William lying dazed in his suffering, Dougie swearing like a trooper, me close to tears, with my silk and cotton town dress, worn only once before, quite ruined and torn.

Dougie was about to walk to the nearest dwelling when a timber dray came up the road from town. The driver turned around, helped push the buggy from the road and took us, jolting and uncomfortable, to the Lefroys’ home, from which Dr Langley was sent for. Despite his pain, William remarked with satisfaction that Traveller, walking tethered behind the dray, seemed unhurt. Mrs Lefroy was doing her own cooking, but broke off to make us comfortable in her front room, which cannot have been open to the air for many days. It held a fine old sea chest. She quite put herself out to be kind, but such occasions create the awkward obligation to afterwards acknowledge the benefactor when in public. Two days later one of the Crimmond boys brought back Dougie’s black bowler hat, discovered in the grass, and stood his ground until I sent him to the kitchen to get a pudding as reward.

For two weeks after the hospital attention, William could do little else except lie in an armchair, claiming he was more comfortable there than in bed. His stoicism has been replaced with irritability, not so much from pain as from the confinement and the mounting and almost despairing worry he experiences because of the state of the Colonial Bank and the Bank of New Zealand. Ward’s excessive borrowings, and the political cover-up with Seddon’s connivance, add greatly to his concern. Their Banking Act, and the consequent
merger of the two banks, will cost William personally more than sixty thousand pounds. The ins and outs are gibberish to me, but his financial fortunes, and those of the colony, seem to be unravelling. I am glad for even the small amount of money I have from Father.

Colleen came home for a time, saying she wished to comfort her father, but in truth she was, as always, on a spying mission. She spends most of the year with Alice and travels about during the other months. Her sojourn was even less of a success than usual. She invited a Christchurch friend, which rather defeated the stated purpose of her visit. To me she is barely civil, and she pays attention to William mainly to ask for money. Although well aware of the hours I prefer for myself at the piano, several times she and her companion set up camp in the music room at just that time. Had they talent, or even serious intention, I would not have cared, but it was all chatter, laughter and mismatched instruments. Each morning when we were together at breakfast, she made an obvious appraisal of my dress and hair, and I think she went into my room on occasions when I was in town, for the jewellery in my drawer had been disturbed. How distasteful to think of her rummaging there, making a catalogue perhaps for Alice.

Also she presumed to give direction to Miss Falloon and others, sometimes in contradiction to my own wishes. The Camp can have only one mistress, and I had it out with her. She knew better than to appeal to William, or Dougie, and brought forward her departure. ‘You make me very aware that I’m of no account in the home and family that I’ve belonged to for many more years than you,’ she said. ‘Alice calls you The Cuckoo. Did you know that?’

There is no point in arguing with such entrenched dislike, and I think her sister, although younger, has a powerful influence over her. Perhaps marriage would ease Colleen’s dissatisfaction with almost everything, but she is no beauty.

So there was little festivity in our Christmas and New Year at The Camp. Only Dougie and Gladys show any real affection for their father, and his varying moods of withdrawal and irascibility increasingly alienate even them. My playing no longer takes him from his troubles as it used to. Gathering misfortune is a severe test of his assurance and ability. He is not the man I remember from my father’s house; not the man I married five years ago. In that time I can say surely that I have been a supportive wife. Whether I can be a loving one, whether I have ever been, in a sense newly revealed to me, is a question I must confront.

In past years we have had large gatherings for both Christmas and the New Year, with fireworks for the latter, which family and household staff would watch from the tower, several carrying kerosene lanterns. This year true celebration was lacking, and even the full meal and entertainments on the 23rd for all who worked for him, in which William usually takes such genuine delight, seemed more a duty for him. Tables were set out in the ballroom and I had Jane and the gardeners create profusions of flowers and greenery in the fireplaces. Even the antlers of the stags’ heads were festooned with colourful Christmas decorations. But William made little effort to join in. He went to his study before it was all over, saying he was sore, and complaining of the slovenly dress of some of the men, despite them having been invited inside his house.
I notice that many of our people lose their natural manner and confidence when their accustomed roles are altered: some become clumsy and gauche within The Camp, some quieter and ill at ease, a few loud with false familiarity.

Yet William is still able to recognise that others have been equally buffeted by misfortune. At an evening at the Hockens’, soon after New Year, we met Charles and Bella Baeyertz again, and although he in particular was in good form, about both music and the slipshod pronunciation of colonials, we were reminded by Bella’s reserve that little more than a year ago their infant daughter fell into a well at their home and drowned. William remarked on it as we returned to The Camp the next day, and I knew he was thinking of Kate, although nothing was said directly. I think to lose an infant, and in circumstances that might imply some negligence, must be even more crushing than to experience the death of an adult child from disease. Earlier in our marriage, William and I may well have ventured upon the subject, but now we have lost that closeness and confine ourselves largely to the commonplace.

Thomas Cahill came for a brief visit, which lifted our spirits. He said it would be unprofessional of him to make any judgement, or interference, concerning Dr Langley’s treatment of William, but he made an informal examination, and William was the better just for his company. Thomas regaled us with a scandal that arose from the Wellington Guards’ Ball in July and with an account of a walking tour in the Marlborough Sounds. He accompanied Dougie and me to a soirée at the Hockens’, and all three of us to a dinner party at the Sargoods’. And he encouraged William to be out and
about with him and talk about his plans for grounds and farms. But he was soon north again, and William gloomy.

With all of this I should be cast down. I am not. I float and dance within myself, for Dougie has said he is absolutely in love with me, and I find I cannot refuse him. My God, what a declaration: at once the most unexpected, and yet the most natural, outcome of a true and deepening friendship. Everything has an added sparkle and significance that even William’s moroseness cannot destroy.

Tuesday began in an ordinary enough way with the ordering of linen and a discussion about laundry. In the afternoon Dr Langley came to make a routine examination of William and I stood at the steps to farewell him as he waited for his horse to be brought. ‘Please go inside, Mrs Larnach,’ he said. It was not cold, but a fine drizzle came in from the sea, hazing the fruit trees planted beyond the glasshouses. The slight dampness was drawn into my throat as I breathed, and there was the smell of pine resin and the newly cut grass.

‘He’s started riding again,’ I said.

‘He says it gives his ribs no pain, unless he trots.’

‘So you don’t advise against it?’ I said.

‘Pain is the body’s message, but your husband has always pushed himself. Better that he use the buggy or carriage. I’ve told him so.’

‘You know William. He won’t be told.’

‘That’s true, but I’m sure you have influence and will persuade him to take greater care of himself. He’s not young any more, yet makes the same demands on himself.’ And when Boylan came with his roan, the doctor swung up and said goodbye. William had
taken to him after the recommendation of Dr Hocken. A straight talker, William said, and a keen rugby man. Personally I find him rather too fond of himself, and entrenched in his opinions of social development, which are not progressive.

I went back in to the library where father and son were talking in tones of mutual impatience. William was seated close to the window, Dougie standing with his hands in his pockets as is his way when nettled. They were arguing about the financial returns from the property. William’s own resources are diminishing, but he is still free with advice and criticism concerning Dougie’s management. William arranged for a telephone office to be set up at The Camp last year to serve the peninsula and Dougie is expected to be the telephonist, being paid threepence by the post office for each message he receives. He hates it because it is such a tie, and even more because of its menial nature. ‘This is what I’ve become,’ he said to William, ‘a bloody clerk.’

‘And who’s to blame for that? After all the opportunity I’ve given you, still you can’t make something of yourself.’

‘You kept saying you wanted me to look after things here, didn’t you?’

‘What else were you going to do?’ said William harshly.

‘What would you know about my ambitions, and what would you care!’

They stopped their argument when I joined them but the tension remained. Their feelings towards each other have soured, as has so much else in William’s life. It saddens me. What an unhappy house it has become, with even Gladys and Gretchen
preferring the homes of their friends.

When we talked a little of Dr Langley’s visit, William said he was physically recovered, but found it almost impossible to sleep. He began again with his complaints about Ward and Seddon, how his political contribution went unappreciated while at the same time preventing him from concentrating on his business interests. ‘I’ll resign within the month,’ he said, as he has so many times before, but he will not, of course, as long as Seddon continues to flatter and use him — and dangle the promised knighthood before him.

I left them, went upstairs and was about to enter my room, when I realised Dougie had followed. ‘The old man’s become almost unbearable,’ he said, trying for light-heartedness. He came closer. ‘You’ve got quite wet,’ putting his hand on my shoulder to test the dampness.

‘I was outside with Dr Langley,’ I said. ‘I’ll change before the meal.’

Dougie said nothing, but his hand remained on my shoulder and he gave slight pressure. ‘I don’t think I can stay here much longer,’ he said, ‘not the way things are. It’s become unbearable. I so need to talk to you. I’m going to the vinery now. Come and meet me there.’ And he put his other hand on my other shoulder, leant forward and kissed me full on the mouth, as he’d done well over a year ago when William and I returned from Lawrence after the by-election. Yet this kiss was more than a welcome back and an expression of friendship. It was a long, ardent kiss with his breath held and his hands steadying me against the door jamb. William’s kisses have become abrupt, almost cursory: Dougie’s was both declaration and
proposition. I could feel the insistent movement of his lips, taste the saltiness of spit and smell the slight tobacco mustiness of his wide moustache. None of them was at all unpleasant. Within me was the giddy instinct I had felt when pressed against Josiah at the Wellington party before my marriage, but Dougie was someone I trusted and liked so much more.

‘Please come and talk, Conny,’ Dougie said. Knowing that the maids could be anywhere about the house, he stood back, and when I made no answer he went down the staircase with just one hurried glance behind him, a look of vulnerable entreaty on a face so disturbingly a youthful version of his father’s. I made no promise, or reply, gave no commitment. Had I rebuffed him then, who knows the outcome? Maybe we could have carried on as the close confidants and supporters we had become, knowing that a boundary had been drawn; maybe our closeness and our trust would have ebbed away. A Tuesday of drizzle, a doctor’s visit and an admonition to surly laundry staff came to a moment right then that formed a clear crossroads in my life, and in those of others.

I changed into a dry dress, pretending to myself I was deciding whether to go and meet Dougie, but I knew I would go. I knew without any rational toting up of pros and cons that I needed Dougie in a life becoming more unhappy and lonely day by day, and I felt almost an exultation that he had felt the same so strongly. For the first time, there in my room, with the mist silently clustering on the window like insistent, liquid insects, looking at myself in the mirror, I felt all the world except us recede a step, and Dougie and I come forward, magnified and in brighter light.

With an umbrella, but wearing only house shoes, I went out through the little courtyard with its servants’ rooms and across to the vinery. Dougie was standing at the far end, his face slightly upturned in his typical way. ‘I was about to go,’ he said.

‘I’m not coming in,’ I told him. ‘Let’s not be ashamed of anything we have to talk about. I don’t want to start by hiding away out here. Come back to the drawing room and let’s be together,’ and I turned from the door and returned to the house.