The Larnachs (20 page)

There have been hundreds of bad speeches recently as some in the House attempt to stonewall the Old Age Pensions Bill introduced by the government. Seddon knows he will win in the end, and sleeps through the worst of them, a possum-skin rug over his lap and his head resting on a crimson cushion.

When I’m in the gallery I often think of my father, and how he would come home fatigued from a long sitting, yet still entertain us with tales of the most silly members and their fatuous behaviour. He was a fine, kind man and father, and I wish I had told him so more often. Perhaps, however, it is better that he is not with me. I could tell him nothing of what closes on me now, despite the trust and love we had. Like those who presently hold his place in the affairs of the colony, he will no doubt be forgotten soon enough, but I miss him hugely, especially now that all is so close to disaster. When I recall him, tears come easily. Partly they are from love of him, partly for my present predicament. When he died, it was as if a primary colour was lost to my world, and vividness did not return until I fell in love with Dougie. Annie once said she thought I married William partly to replace our father, but motivations are far more complex than that — often unclear even to ourselves.

William spends a lot of time alone now when he is home, but not in the cheerful industry that marked his time in the crowded library at The Camp, or in the Molesworth study, several years ago. It is instead a sad withdrawal. He will sit with a book, or his papers, before him, but pay them no attention. He talks mainly of the past when he does seek conversation, and I think he goes there in his mind while sitting by himself for hours. He rebuffs me if I show concern, and will no longer share with me the closest things.

The generosity of spirit he once had has largely left him and he takes others’ achievements as a reflection on his own misfortunes.

Edward Cargill is a most popular choice of Dunedin mayor for this, its jubilee year, not just because his father helped to found
the colony, but also because of the contribution he himself has made and the esteem in which he is held. William, who measures himself against all other men of note, begrudges him the success and claims it is due to the family name rather than talent or any conspicuous service.

The memory of Kate seems very strong in William again, almost as affecting as when we took her casket home seven years ago. He talks of her, and to her as well. One evening as I passed the study I heard him repeating her name and when I stopped at the partly open doorway, I saw him standing at the mantelpiece. He had taken her photograph down and held it close to his face, as if to kiss it, and he spoke her name over and over in the gentle voice I have not heard for a long time. The voice he used when we were first married: a voice of trust and love and promise. I did not feel able to go in to him, for that would have been hypocrisy. This is where my love for Dougie has taken me — a marriage in which my husband pours out his heart to a daughter in the grave while I stand mute and unobserved in the hall.

Even when we are together in society, William now withdraws the small attentions that used to mark his affection for me. At the John McGlashan Caledonian Concert he managed an animated voice for those of his acquaintances we met, but had in his brief replies to me only a flat, offhand tone, and when we met Cecilia he barely listened to what she and I were saying, looking past us to watch others. His marked indifference spoiled the whole evening for me, though it was largely for his pleasure that we attended. McGlashan, whom we have visited in Wellington Terrace, is
originally from Elgin, and enthusiastic for Scottish music and songs, as is William. His songs, ‘The Lad that Comes at E’en’ and ‘Ken ye the Glen’, are popular here, but William was not roused by them.

In one’s unhappiness the least attractive aspects of any scene, or experience, crowd to the fore, and I was conscious of the unpleasant compound smell from gas lights, face powder and the stale air of the large, insufficiently ventilated building. The potted palms in the foyer were sickly, the carpet threadbare on the stair cusps, and there seemed a vacuous silliness to people’s laughter. As we were coming out of the theatre, I asked William if he had enjoyed the evening. ‘No better and no worse than most I’ve sat through,’ he said. ‘At least you’ll have the satisfaction of being seen to support the thing that gives you the greatest pleasure.’

‘I hoped you would enjoy it. It’s more your taste than mine,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s kind of you to consider my feelings, but maybe a little late in the piece, don’t you think.’ The sarcasm was marked and he fidgeted with the brim of his hat.

‘But I do consider you.’

‘Oh, don’t put yourself out. We’ll rub along as well as most, I dare say,’ and he went off after a cab.

His place was taken almost immediately by the clergyman who had once been my suitor. He wrinkled his face in an awkward smile, asked my opinion of the evening’s entertainment and introduced me to his fiancée, a gauche, large-nosed woman obviously older than either of us. Perhaps he wished me to see that, despite my
refusal of him, he had achieved someone’s love. He was not to know how little feeling of superiority I feel towards anyone at this time. I was close to tears and gave way to them when later by myself at home.

My music is increasingly a refuge. Even my reading at present has that bent: a book on the life of Mendelssohn. While the colony’s legislators argue about introducing a pension for the destitute, and Kruger’s insolence in the Transvaal, I sit in the wives’ gallery, but inhabit the halls of Leipzig and hear the string section of that orchestra.

Young Fanny Neubridge is to give private and public concerts in Auckland next month and asked me to be her accompanist. I said I could not be away for so long, but I have been playing for her in practice until she finds a suitable pianist to travel and perform with her. She sings lighter songs, rather in the manner of French soprano Antoinette Trebelli, who visited here two years ago, and whose ‘Penso’ from Tosti, and ‘Song of Solveig’ by Greig, were wonderfully rendered. Fanny has given recitals in Melbourne and Sydney as well as here. Her soprano is true, but she will benefit from further tuition if the right teacher can be found. It is to her advantage, also, that she is an attractive woman not yet thirty, and married to a husband of means who is quite easy that their small son is given over to the nursemaid.

Because Fanny knows little of my circumstances, I find her company a relief from politics and family concerns. Her confidences are so free and innocent, her life so lacking in complication, her marriage so straightforward and her interest so centred on herself
that I find myself almost relaxed during the two mornings each week she comes to sing.

I hear little except formalities from my Dunedin friends. Bessie allows long interludes before she answers my letters, and when she does reply there is scant of the old warmth and humour. She must know the situation, and is silently alarmed and disapproving. I miss our closeness a great deal, for I have few such friends, but I understand the cause. Ethel Morley continues to correspond in her typically flippant and wry manner. As her own marriage is unhappy, perhaps she has a greater feeling for what has happened to me, but I cannot broach it with her, or even Annie.

William Hodgkins died just a few months ago, and that has added to the gloom I feel. I am unhappy here, yet strangely not eager to return to The Camp, even to my own dearest Dougie. Nowhere is there solace, or escape.

Two days ago I received a letter postmarked from the south. It was a most unpleasant shock to read, as it damned me for things that are true, and for incest and unnaturalness that are not. ‘God will not be mocked,’ it said. ‘Wanton pleasures of the flesh lead to a moral pigsty, no matter how grand and superior you like to think yourself.’ It was signed, ‘An honest Presbyterian’, and must have been written by someone known to me, because there was mention of two functions we attended, and the hotel in Palmerston where Dougie and I once met was also named. I must face now the realisation that rumour and slander are abroad concerning us. Almost as painful is the self-righteous glee apparent in those who have found us out. Such people will never be persuaded of the
purity of our feelings. I burnt the letter immediately after reading it, and will say nothing of it to Dougie, but the taint of it seems with me still.

Twice before leaving Dunedin, I told Dougie that it must stop, but could not maintain my conviction. His misery and mine were insupportable, and surely love denied becomes a sort of poison for the soul. Yet the tension is palpable, and the agony is growing for all of us. A commitment to love, I now realise, means giving up control of one’s life in so many ways. The prize is the greatest a man or woman can hope for, but the price for some is everything they have. In the night I lie awake and wonder how it has come to this. How I, accustomed to comment on the foolishness of other women, find myself caught in a situation that would delight a gothic novelist. When I do sleep, it is to wake with only the briefest serenity before the persistent anxiety returns. How will it end, how will it all end, is the growing pulse behind all my thoughts. Sometimes I wish I had Dougie’s dreams, no matter what their content.

Last night a memory returned that was almost a vision. Months ago Dougie and I were coming back to The Camp after I had been to the dressmaker’s, and he to a birthday lunch for Hugo Isaac, who was shortly to be married. Hugo is pleasant company, but I fear somewhat for his bride. He is younger than Dougie, very selfish and drinks a good deal. He affects superiority, and, like Robert, talks of his wish to go ‘home’ to England, although he has never lived there.

There was a sea fog through Macandrew Bay that grew so thick we soon could not see the road at all, and Dougie got
down and led the horse forward. The fog seemed to turn our own voices and the noise of horse and buggy back on ourselves. Dougie held the horse’s bridle close to its head and walked on, turning occasionally to grin, or make light of the situation. Even his smile was difficult to make out, but in a way the fog was a comfort. It made a world of our own: just Dougie and me with all the rest of life blocked out. The strange privacy and intimacy of it on a public road, Dougie guiding us home and the fog conjuring moving walls around us. Something half realised brought me close to tears then, and did so completely in recollection last night. I so love my Dougie, despite all.

C
onny’s gone and it’s not to be borne. Life is hellish without her. She feels she must be in Wellington while Father’s there and Parliament’s in session. I tell her that the wives of many other representatives aren’t always in the capital with their husbands, but I think she sees her presence with him as a way of avoiding resolution. Father’s realised that Conny and I have an attachment that goes beyond family friendship, although he’s perhaps not aware of its full nature. He’s made no open challenge to either of us, not even made mention of any incident, or suspicion, from our time in Queensland, but Conny fears what she terms exposure, and has become determined to maintain appearances at all costs, to play the dutiful wife. Father takes increasing satisfaction in scathing comments on my inability to work financial miracles at The Camp, and the frustration I feel at being so much tied to the telephone office.

He and I seem barely able to stand each other’s company. We argue, we ignore, or avoid, each other. The disagreements are apparently trivial enough but they represent something sadly wrong between us. I understand that his financial affairs continue to go very badly, that political life disappoints him and that he’s uncertain of his wife, but still I find myself unable to bear his comments and manner without retaliation. Even the billiard room has become a place of ill grace and sour competition, rather than companionship and frank conversation. We seldom play, and if we do it’s with constraint between us and bare civility. His habit of standing close beside me when I’m lining up a shot is an irritation now. I see in it an unpleasant element of gamesmanship.

We no longer ride together, and go separately with our own friends to the Taieri races. We used to seek out tobaccos on our travels to bring back to each other: unusual brands and aromas that we would talk about. Often he brought back a pipe for me from his trips: most of unusual shape, or odd material. It was an insignificant enough connection, but in itself spoke of affection we left unsaid. That’s over also now.

One evening at dinner, in Conny’s presence, and shortly before they went north, he reprimanded me for leaving young Walter in charge of the telephone office for much of the day. ‘Gallivanting around when there’s a job to be done,’ he said, ‘as if we don’t employ enough people as it is.’ Conny tried to divert the conversation by talking of Walter’s scholastic abilities, but I wasn’t going to be unfairly put down, and in front of her.

‘Most of the morning I was working on farm accounts with
Patrick,’ I said, ‘and in the afternoon I looked over the yearling bulls, sorting for the sale. You said you’d come, remember, but you obviously forgot. However, the job’s as good as done now.’

‘I had papers from Wellington,’ said Father, ‘and anyway, I’ll go down when I’ve time and check for the sale.’

‘Then I’ve wasted my time if you follow and go over every decision I make here.’

‘You’d have done better to stay in the office. Boylan said you went off riding in the afternoon.’

‘So I did,’ I said, ‘but only after I’d seen to the cattle. I’m not going to spend all my days sitting in the damned telephone office taking calls at threepence a time. A monkey could do it.’

‘Perhaps I had that in mind,’ he said with humourless smile.

And so it went on, until Conny broke in and said she’d leave the table unless the argument stopped. The bitterness continued, however, and later that evening he and I continued to slash at each other in the library. ‘Dougie,’ he said, ‘if you don’t like what I provide for you here, out of my resources, then you’re welcome to strike out on your own. Go on and show us all what a clever chap you are, so superior to the rest of us that working is beneath you. Go and stay with Alice in Naseby. Skip to Argentina with your flash Harry friends.’

‘It’d be a damn sight happier anywhere but here, that’s for certain. Do you ever bother to think why none of the others come here unless they have to? Even Gladys prefers to be with Alice, or her friends. This bloody great stone pile on the hill has more ghosts than living family in it. You’ve driven us out and it will end
up an empty and lonely place. Donny says …’

But Father raised a hand as if shooing away disagreement. ‘Donny says. Donny says. A lot of rubbish is what Donny says, and all of you still come with your hand out, though, don’t you. You’re not too proud for that. You’re full of talk,’ he said. ‘I’ve done too much for you all and you’ll never amount to anything. Had it too easy too long. You and Donny have lived in a namby-pamby world. You’d have been eaten alive in Ararat.’

‘I could’ve struck out on my own, but you asked me to run things here when you went back into politics, and promised me the place in the end.’

‘Things change though, see, and they’re often not as we would have them. Don’t look to me for a soft life any more. It’s every man for himself now, you must understand that. Anyway, leave me alone, I’ve work to do.’ He turned away deliberately to give attention to his desk, just as he would when dismissing someone in his employ, and I almost smacked his silly head.

All that keeps me at The Camp is Conny, yet she is the fundamental, unspoken thing in our dispute. As we argued I looked at his flushed face with its ugly twitches and felt a sort of loathing. This petulant old man is no longer my father.

Anger, love, despair are all jumbled now, and have made me restless. I can’t concentrate on anything for long apart from Conny and our predicament, and find myself roaming, driven to any movement as if to escape the stalemate. I look forward to meals as a distraction, but when I’m at the table I can’t wait to be finished; I begin conversations, and wish them over before the other person
has fully replied. I drink eagerly and find no consolation in it. Alone at night I think of her, picture us making love, she wide-eyed and with her face flushed as when she’s sitting astride me. When I’m about the properties with Patrick, I feel disconnected from the farms and people once so vital to me, so much in my thoughts and plans. Patrick has noticed it, I’m sure. He’s made no complaint, but we’re not as familiar with each other as before, and he goes ahead and makes most day-to-day decisions without bothering me.

At night I go up to the tower, or out into the grounds where there are shadows set firm by the moon, or flitting because of the wind, and sometimes all is dark and only the trees talk in the night, and the morepork. I know the grounds so well I can walk them in the least light, and often go far down the track towards the sea. The knowledge that I will meet no one at such an hour is a safeguard, and the physical act of walking a relief. I talk to myself, and to Conny as if she were with me, and hear myself make noises that aren’t words, strange expressions wrung from the tortured mind.

On other nights I stand outside the big house and look up at Conny’s room. I haven’t been so miserable since my school days at St Leonard’s. Conny and I have had such times, such love, and now she is gone again. Until now, I never understood that two people can so grow into each other that it’s a sort of death to part.

All my other friendships have suffered, even that with Robert. Less than a week ago he rode out to The Camp, appearing without warning at the telephone office. I hadn’t seen him, except briefly at the club, for a long time. He wore his riding clothes and a bowler hat. ‘I’m supposed to be working too,’ he said, slumped in his
typical way in the only other chair, ‘but what the hell. It’ll all be the same in a hundred years.’ A professed part of Robert’s philosophy is that nothing has as much significance in the present as we give it, because it will have none in the future. It’s a sort of cynicism that prevents him from achieving what he could with his considerable abilities, yet part of what makes him entertaining company — sometimes frivolous and other times piercingly perceptive. Had Conny and I not come together, Robert would have continued my closest friend. In his own way I know he’s concerned for me.

He made a knee with his left leg and put his hat on it, drumming his fingers on the taut fabric. ‘So what’s going on,?’ he said. ‘You’ve gone away to some odd place in your head, and you won’t let anyone in.’

‘It’s Conny.’ It came out before I made a conscious decision to be honest. Came out because I felt so alone, and knew Robert cared above mere curiosity.

‘Of course it’s Conny. But it’s been Conny, Conny, Conny for a long time now, so what’s different?’

‘This time I can’t bear her being in Wellington.’

‘You should’ve married one of the Cargill girls,’ said Robert, ‘then the combined dynasty would have controlled Dunedin’s business almost totally, and had all of society nodding respectfully before it. Those daughters weren’t so rigidly Presbyterian that their knees couldn’t be parted. Margaret even married a Catholic, and that put the cat among the pigeons. I would’ve loved to have heard old Edward’s prayers before he sanctioned that.’

‘It’s not funny,’ I said.

‘But it is funny in a way, watching what a fellow will do when he’s really hooked, hard hooked and nothing else matters.’

‘You’ve known for a while, I guess.’

Robert looked at me levelly, then gave a brief, tight smile. ‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself, boyo,’ he said. ‘You’ll bear it because there’s no other way. No other way for you, or Conny. It’s always a woman, isn’t it, and you find yourself in the damn jaws of something. You’ll bear it because you must, and if you’re lucky, and hold your nerve, it’ll all blow over with nothing more than gossip and rumour left — nothing to permanently harm any of you. Get your horse, for Christ’s sake, man, and let’s have a ride. Let’s get out of this place and into the fresh air, and when we come back we’ll find some good stuff of your old man’s to drink.’

We did ride, and we drank, played billiards and talked. I enjoyed all, and he stayed the night, but even that could provide only a temporary distraction. Whatever Robert says, there must be another way. The situation is both intolerable and dishonest. Conny’s been physically sick sometimes because of it, and Father’s by turns cold, irritable and cutting. I must be with Conny yet she can’t be here and Father resists my visits to Wellington. I’ll have it out with the old man whatever the consequences. I won’t give her up.

Conny and I had a frightful argument two days before they left for Wellington. All three of us had gone down to the Stars and Stripes field late in the afternoon. Father and I had decided to sell two of the carriage horses and a young Clydesdale, and Mr Simmond from Dunedin, who deals in them, had come out. He’s a canny man and someone to be watched. Once he tried to chisel
extra payment by claiming for feed before he sold on, but I stood up to him. I know a first-class heavy draught can fetch thirty pounds or more, good hacks and carriage horses between fifteen and twenty, and spring-cart sorts somewhat less. We stood beneath the archway of whalebones at the entrance while Boylan brought the horses up. The great bleached bones were strangely pitted and porous, and the heavy wire through the bored holes at the apex much rusted.

I remember the excitement when the bones were erected all those years ago, Donny and I eager to help, and Father and the men using the wagon as a work station. What enthusiasm Father had for the venture then, but on this much later day he stood hunched by the bones, showing little interest in anything around him. Once we had many horses of all sorts, and Father knew them all, but there are fewer now, and he spends little time with them.

Conny was cold and soon eager to return to The Camp. Father and Mr Simmond went into the field to inspect the animals and as we waited for a price to be settled, I told Conny I couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving for Wellington, and that we had to plan for a future together, no matter what that entailed. She flinched visibly; her face became even more pale. I put my hand out to her but she turned away slightly. ‘Be quiet. How can you think of starting to talk about that here,’ she said, ‘with William only a few yards away. You aren’t the only one with feelings, the only one suffering, or with so much at stake.’ I told her that it seemed she’d been avoiding any opportunity for us to talk before she travelled north and that we mustn’t part without reaching some decision for our future. ‘After the meal then,’ she said. ‘We can talk in the drawing
room when he goes to his study. Not here in this cold, open place. Not like this. Not with him standing there.’

A stiff wind from the inlet sea, over the dark bush and fluffing the long grasses. Conny and I have often been happy at the Stars and Stripes field, but not then. She was a slight figure despite her full outdoor dress and long green coat, and she hugged herself and lifted her shoulders to create warmth. I wondered if she wished we’d never come together, but what’s done has to be accepted, and the true unhappiness is to let go of love.

Father and Simmond finished haggling. In earlier years Father would happily have sought my opinion, but now we do nothing together. If he’s been bettered by the dealer that’s his lookout. They walked back to the gate and Simmond made some polite comments to Conny before beginning his ride back to Dunedin. The three of us had no conversation once he left, except for Father saying Conny would’ve been better not to have come. For the first time the great arching whalebones seemed to me a folly rather than a sign of optimism and allegiance to the place.

At the table that evening Father grumbled about Gladys’s reluctance to spend time at home, her giddy friends and his disappointment at the progress she’d made at the convent. He’d several times written to the mother prioress to point out deficiencies in the teaching, and his disappointed expectations. It’s all in the past, and Gladys now almost twenty, but it’s become a habit with him to worry at old bait. We had to listen yet again as he wondered bitterly who had poisoned his two favourite Newfoundlands, Stella and Shelly, when he’d had them with him during a stay at Windsor,
near Melbourne, more than a decade ago. Who cares about such things so far in the past? What possible use in brooding on them now? So much of what he says is just drivel.

Quite soon Father did go to the study. He was to have a meeting with Basil Sievwright the next morning to discuss business here before leaving for Wellington. I asked if he wanted me to be there as well, but he said I’d have plenty to do when he was away, with running the property and the telephone office. Father knows I despise my menial function there, and often mentions it as a way of gaining perverse satisfaction.