The Larnachs (11 page)

I knew William would be in his library until the meal, and if he should come into the room, what of that? How often Dougie and I sat and talked together, walked in the grounds, took the buggy into town. Our conversations were sometimes flippant, but also often confiding. Why should we feel guilt?

Dougie came in not long after me and we sat in the high-backed chairs close to the unlit fireplace, where he’d told me Mary used to spend much of her time. For a house little more than twenty years old, what a deal has happened within it; what vain dreams and aspirations have gathered, and how little affection it created in its first two mistresses. ‘I’m not angry that you kissed me,’ I said. ‘I take it as a true and natural expression of our feeling for each other — our closeness and trust.’

‘I need to be with you. It’s as simple as that,’ said Dougie. ‘I realised it when you went back to Wellington, and we no longer had so much time together. Although I was free of Father’s interference, nothing seemed to matter here afterwards. No one could replace you, and everything seemed flat and humdrum. I couldn’t even write to you as I wished. You must know how I feel.’

‘There’s love and love, Dougie,’ I said.

‘No one else means as much to me. I miss you so much. When we can’t talk often, life gets out of kilter somehow. So much of our lives is connected now, so much understood is between us. I need you. We need each other.’ His face was pale and his eyes insistent.

‘We couldn’t be closer friends,’ I said. Our life had been busy in Wellington, and the trips back had been few and hectic, but I had missed Dougie’s company, and his declaration made me realise how much it meant to me.

‘But we could,’ he said. ‘We could be closer, and we should.’ And he reached out, took my hand in both of his and kissed it.

People who do not know him well would form a completely wrong assessment of Dougie’s nature from his appearance and manner in society. He is not as handsome as Donald — has his father’s less regular features. Unlike William, however, Dougie has a fine head of hair. To be honest, he looks more than his thirty-two years. The lasting effects of his injuries have no doubt contributed, but there is also a striving for dignity that disguises uncertainty. Uncertainty arising from his experience at his English school, an awareness sometimes of alienation here, and living in the blaze of his father’s personality and achievement. Colleen told me once, with considerable satisfaction, that her friends think him pompous and ordinary. If that is so, and not merely an expression of her malice, it shows how little of the real Dougie they understand. The true man revealed sat before me. We looked into each other’s face and admitted how much we valued each other, how significant was the understanding we shared. ‘It’s a damned predicament, isn’t
it,’ he said with an uneven laugh, ‘but I had to tell you. I’m not ashamed of it. I refuse to be.’

‘Why should you be? Love’s always a tribute. It comes from admiration and respect.’

‘Damned if I know where it comes from, but I feel it,’ he said. ‘I hope you do too.’

So there it was, his statement of love for me, and my welcome of it as a natural thing with no guilt attached. After all, we are family, and only seven years separate us. We are united by circumstance, by the need for support, by enjoyment in each other’s company. Nothing was said then of what the kiss at the top of the stairs conveyed, the pressure of Dougie’s hands on my shoulders, the closeness of his body. Nothing was said, but a possibility was clear to both of us, and it vibrated so in the quiet room that when Jane came in with a question from Miss Falloon, I half expected her to become aware of it. ‘Tell her I will come myself presently,’ I said.

‘You must have known,’ said Dougie when she had gone.

‘You’ve been the only real friend to me in the family. The only one who gave thought to what it meant for me to marry William, to have regard for my feelings, not just your own.’

‘But it’s my own feelings I’m talking about now.’

‘We have to be so careful, though, in everything we do. Careful not to deceive William, but still share what we’re entitled to.’

I believed that when I said it. I believed it as we sat at the table later, just the three of us, and Dougie was in high spirits, joshing me about the Brandon family pretension in passing on the eldest son’s name. My brother bore our father’s name and passed it to his own
son — Alfred de Bathe Brandon. Even William seemed enlivened despite the earlier argument, and joined the banter, seeing no irony in laughing at the vanity of my family, while sitting in his great house some derided as a castle, and having commissioned a family sepulchre. William and Alfred presently have disagreements about mutual investments. This no doubt inclines William to welcome Dougie’s fun.

When a man has declared love that is not repugnant, he seems quite different afterwards, seen and judged with emotions not extended to other men. The feelings may change, or ebb away, but he will never be seen in the same way again. For a woman, there is a transformation, and to be honest, part of that is a sense of power.

I think of Josiah’s intent face so close to mine in the cloakroom, and another time beneath the dim archway of Mulvey’s carriage cover, as he urged me to come to him secretly, of the bobbing Adam’s apple of the vicar with aspirations beyond his station, and of William’s somewhat contrived naturalness on the beach at Island Bay as he suggested marriage. What woman is without a sense of theatre at such times, of an intense focus on herself from which everything else fades for the moment. And all immensely gratifying to one’s
self-estimation
. That Tuesday, so ordinary in its start, became for Dougie and me the beginning of something greater than any friendship. It proved the sea change that altered the direction of our lives.

We have not dared yet to talk much of it together, for then
complication
and evasion, expectation and justification begin. When in this little village of The Camp, I have had only two consistent companions of my own station in life — William and Dougie. Both are unrelated
to me by blood, and Dougie is closer to my age and less preoccupied with public matters. After seeing the best and worst of both men, I have come to enjoy the trust and companionship of Dougie even more than what I share with his father. How difficult it is to admit that even to myself, but it is the truth, and if I evade it I betray my character. I see, too, that I have been in danger of confining the inner me to my music. Dougie’s avowal is an illumination that makes me realise how false my life had become, how tied to the material and mundane.

When I think back, perhaps there was an earlier clear sign of Dougie’s feeling for me. There was the evening he told me he was no longer considering an engagement to Ellen Abbott. Dougie had made it plain to me that he was no longer serious about that match, or any other. At the time I thought he intended me to feel complimented that he would share such personal decisions with me; now I see that the intention was to show I was his choice.

The bond I have with Dougie makes most of the time spent with William barren in comparison. Less and less does William enquire about and support my life and needs; more and more he is concerned with maintaining his position as a man of influence and wealth. He takes less interest in his Central Otago land, and even in his peninsula properties, except for the profits and rentals to be gained, which are below his expectations, and spends much of his time in the study writing his long letters to Seddon and parliamentary colleagues, or disagreeing with Basil Sievwright and business associates concerning what can be saved from his affairs. Everything seems to be about the banks, and Ward’s indebtedness,
which threatens to bring the government down. William has been a man of friends, yet now he talks mainly of enemies, and has found a new one in Mr Justice Williams, who is attempting to bar him from continuing as one of the liquidators of the Colonial Bank. It is all sad, selfish and boring. He and I now share few of the
light-hearted
and confiding moments we enjoyed immediately before our marriage and for some time afterwards.

Sometimes I think the buggy has become the centre of my true life: riding with Dougie about the properties, or back and forth to town, a drive of more than an hour. Then we can talk and laugh quite openly, showing the affection always consciously muted at The Camp and in society. We can sit close, and Dougie will lean across for a kiss so long that it becomes both a risk we will be observed, and a defiance of that very thing. The horse walks or trots on. Were it heading for a precipice, Dougie wouldn’t care, and I must push him away for safety, although his ardour stirs powerful feelings within me. Even when William is with us, if Dougie isn’t driving he will often seek my hand beneath the rug, or move his knee against my own. And he will call our attention to particular nooks and stopping places, praising them in an apparently innocent way while knowing that I recognise them, that there we have kissed, held each other, shared confidences. I am sure that Dougie does this not in any triumph over William, but to remind me of our love.

All of that has led in the end to us making love physically, as we knew would follow. It was a night when William was in Timaru on business. We took him in to the train on a lovely, bright day with the green sweep of the peninsula bush in contrast to the gentle,
blue-green undulation of the calm harbour. Even William felt his mood lifted and was amused when Dougie advised him to eat nothing in Timaru, because of the scandalous Tom Hall poisoning case there. William claimed that after the foods he had survived while on the goldfields and in mining camps, he wasn’t shy of a dose of antimony, and told us a good deal about the poisonings passed on to him by Professor Black, who had been consulted as an expert witness, and Robert Stout, who led the prosecution. What a cause célèbre it all was, because of the connection to Sir John Hall, and the monstrous betrayal of the wife. ‘There are always people so much worse off than yourself,’ William said, as we passed through the bay and on into the town. He was roused by the prospect of his trip, Dougie and I by the thought of his absence for the night.

Dougie and I came back to The Camp almost as if we owned it: came back with a sense of closeness so special to lovers, as if, apart from the strangely distanced and impersonal world, existed a place of brightness and warmth for us alone. Dougie told me how he loved to stand by the piano when I played, and that no matter who else was there, it was my perfume he was aware of, my voice among the singers, my hands moving on the keys. When no one else was in the room, he would come to the piano, he said, and be aware of my fragrance there. He joked about my feet, saying that he had never seen them, and that perhaps my toes were webbed. I told him I had never seen his, and that if they resembled his father’s they were not at all aesthetically pleasing. How close and safe and correct we appeared there in the buggy, returning home from delivering William to his train. Mrs Constance Larnach and
her stepson, with a civil nod or wave to the few who passed us, and no way for them to know that our hands were clasped beneath the rug, and our hearts close also.

As we went up the hill towards The Camp, wood pigeons flew so near that the whoosh of noisy flight startled the horse, which reared in the traces. ‘I’ll take a gun and bag some,’ said Dougie when things were calm again.

‘You should,’ I said. Pigeons made good eating and one of the cooks has a pie recipe from her whaler father that William especially enjoys. Such an ordinary topic, and one we had no real interest in, yet perhaps it helped us to keep some grip on the everyday. He gave me a last kiss before we turned into the gates.

For everyone else at the house it was an evening much like any other, perhaps rather more relaxed because of William’s absence. There is no doubt that he has become more tetchy, even with old friends and acquaintances. Dr Langley believes he has a stomach ulcer, but I think disappointment and worry are more the cause. Although I must perhaps take some blame for the disappointment, more should be laid at the door of Donald, Alice and Colleen. All he has done for them, and they have been ungrateful, demanding and vexatious in return.

As there were no guests we had an early meal. Before it, Dougie and I had claret in the drawing room. Nothing out of the ordinary to cause comment among the staff. William stopped drinking before our marriage and preaches temperance to Dougie, who resents it because of William’s own indulgence when younger. We had a nice beef, and fish that amorous Mr Tremain had brought to the house
as a gift. Perhaps he still hopes to soften Miss Falloon’s heart. My only cause for small complaint was that several pieces of cutlery were dull rather than gleaming.

Afterwards I played for Dougie as darkness deepened outside and we sang ‘The Kerry Dance’ together:

Oh, to think of it

Oh, to dream of it

Fills my heart with tears.

His voice is true, but unremarkable. At least he doesn’t sway, or bellow, as Richard Seddon does at our Molesworth Street evenings. For my sake, Dougie has made a considerable effort to extend his knowledge of music. He can play no instrument, but we talk together about the nature of music and the merits of the best composers and performers, and he attends Dunedin events with William and me, and in Wellington when he visits. It is a game with the two of us that I play a piece with the music hidden from him, and he must guess the composer. That night I played light pieces from Sullivan, who is one of Dougie’s favourites, and will surely stand the test of time.

When I said goodnight, he told me he was going to work in the library for a while, then said quietly, ‘I’ll come tonight to make sure you’re all right.’ Only if I wished to refuse him was there any need to reply. I am not a girl, and had been aware all day, and beforehand, what the night of such an opportunity would bring. We had allowed our feelings for each other to become so intense, so complementary, that only lovemaking could make us feel complete.

A wind was getting up in the darkness, and I knew it was from the south because of the particular noise it made in the turret and
chimney stacks. The mournful calls of a morepork were clear, but I was far from sad. As I lay in my bed, and my eyes grew accustomed to the dim moonlight from the windows, I could see the softened outlines of the furniture and the low wainscoting, still much as Eliza would have seen them from this bed over fifteen years ago. There was very little risk in Dougie coming to me late once his father was absent. The servants sleep far from this part of the house, perhaps with their own assignations in their own quarters to satisfy gossip. Here was a small, quiet world for Dougie and me.