The Larnachs (23 page)

‘I suppose he saw it as merely reclaiming what was his, but yes, there was something underhand about it. God knows he was desperate about money by then. I only care that you get what you’re entitled to.’

‘I hate it all,’ Conny said, shaking her head fiercely. ‘It feels so sordid to talk about possessions before William is buried. He has no debt to me, and I won’t pretend otherwise. I can’t bear to think of the manner of his death, and it’s all there, the blood and the agony, for everyone to gloat over in the papers.’

‘It’s not our fault,’ I said, more to give her reassurance than from conviction. ‘Not at all your fault, and you must believe that absolutely. Everyone knows how sick and unhappy he was, and how distraught about his affairs. And if it is somebody’s fault then it’s mine. You never wanted to tell him. In the end, though, it would all have come out just the same. I’m convinced of that. None of us could have carried on much longer as it was.’

Conny didn’t reply. She made a small fist around a lace
handkerchief
but didn’t cry. It was warm in the garden and the walls gave privacy from the street. Molly, who was always about the house, or other servants, could have seen us from the windows, but there was no impropriety. A widow and her stepson talking on a garden seat, and nothing to show there was agony of love greater than the agony of grief. ‘Whatever happens,’ I said, ‘we’ll find a way to be together.’

‘I don’t think there is a way. Not for us to ever live together here in this country. Maybe nowhere.’

‘Don’t say it. Don’t think it. Later we can go some place where no one has heard of William Larnach, or us, and we can be just two people together.’

‘It’s your dream, isn’t it.’

‘I hope to God it’s yours too,’ I said.

‘But so much stands in the way of dreams. Just being in love doesn’t solve everything that comes against one in life. Being in love isn’t always a justification, or a reprieve.’

I’m not sure what Conny meant by that, but I wasn’t going to spoil what few minutes we managed together by argument. That quiet meeting in the garden is the best we’ve had since Father died. She’s right that, until he’s buried, he should be given the prime place one last time. We sat silently together for a little, but with sympathy for each other, and she reached out and touched the silver cufflinks set with blue stones that were her birthday gift to me. ‘You do wear them always,’ she said.

‘Ever to remind me of you,’ I said. ‘I still feel the same.’

Conny remained quiet for a time, then she took my hand for a moment. ‘And so do I,’ she said.

Conny and I haven’t slept together since Father’s death, and not because of the difficulty in finding opportunity. I miss the closeness, the fierce pleasure, the reassurance, but she has a fastidious sense of appropriateness. When everything has become calm, I’ll find a way for us to be together as it should be. I know that as I know nothing else. We have been through too much not to finally have
some benefit of Father’s terrible act.

He was in despair concerning his finances, whatever else troubled him. My conscience may not be entirely clear, but I, too, can sincerely grieve.

At present I can’t settle to anything. I find myself rising from bed or chair, or excusing myself from casual company, to walk the Wellington streets as if that allows me to escape the sudden waves of despair that threaten to overwhelm me. I’m in the pit: slaughtered, as Father would say. Grief, and guilt too perhaps, have caused despondency, and also a strange anger that has no immediate object or release. I swear aloud when by myself, or burst into tears. Last night I heard Mother’s voice. ‘It’s not true. It’s not true,’ she said. There was no image in the dream, if that’s what it was, but her voice as I knew it, and I woke in agony of longing and recognition. Where in the mind is the voice of a lost mother held, and what truth can it speak?

D
espite spring it is cold here at The Camp, as it has been so often during the time I have spent on the peninsula. I am looking from the high observation window across the lawns and gardens towards the harbour, and mist is blurring the native bush beyond The Camp. Strange that it might be almost the last time I have this vista. The day after tomorrow Annie and I leave to begin our trip to England, as Alfred has insisted. It is difficult not to feel I leave in some disgrace, at least as far as the two families are concerned, though Dougie and Annie, the best of both, remain totally supportive. Alfred, with his maidenish fear of gossip, wants Dougie and me as far apart as possible in the aftermath of William’s death.. That led first to a raging disagreement between them, and then an almost total lack of communication. Although I have no wish to go, I do see the benefit of a temporary separation and have tried to convince
Dougie that restraint now might work to our advantage in the end.

The wind is quickening and the mist also, some seeming snagged in the treetops and shredding away. It is quite certain and natural that the same wind will always return, and I shall not be here, not in the end be anywhere. Quite certain, but unimaginable all the same. Whatever the mass of evidence against it, we all secretly believe the world begins and ends with us.

The last few days have been an appalling strain for us both. I have suffered vomiting bouts again and cannot sleep. In a sense I have endured two funerals. The first was in Wellington, where Seddon and the entire ministry, and many members of both legislative houses besides, accompanied the coffin procession from the Metropolitan Hotel to the railway wharf where the
Hinemoa
was moored. Annie kept close to me, and Doris too, until we boarded. Both were of my bridal party on that day of gaiety and promise, and it has all come to this. We sailed at three in the afternoon and were a small, sad group for the long hours of the voyage, during which Dougie and I were never alone.

When the
Hinemoa
arrived in Dunedin with William’s body, there were crowds at the wharf. No doubt, for many people, the funeral was a spectacle and entertainment to fill their day. Seamen carried the coffin to the hearse, which was drawn by William’s own carriage horses, and the procession made its dreary way to the Northern Cemetery. Dougie, Alfred and Walter Inder led those walking behind the hearse; Alice, Colleen and Gladys were with me in the mourning coach. Donald had not then arrived from Melbourne. Alice and Colleen remain hostile to me, but Gladys has
been kind. She is not greatly forthcoming, but I sense sympathy, and we have at times been able to give each other more than just public comfort. Only twenty years old, and already she has lost both mother and father. Almost as unfortunate, she has grown up in a family of increasing unhappiness. She is the only one of Dougie’s immediate family who shows any support for us and will, I think, take his side in the looming squabble for inheritance. Never has she questioned me about the relationship with her brother, though I have no doubt her sisters have done their best to turn her against me. I wish she had spent more time with us during my marriage with William, whatever extra scrutiny that may have meant, and I sincerely hope the future is good to her.

All the leading Otago families were represented at the funeral, even those who had withdrawn invitations from me in recent years, and selected men from among William’s peninsula tenants and workers were the pall bearers. Basil Sievwright was especially sensitive in his behaviour. He had close dealings with William for many years, and knew how difficult he had become towards the end of his life; had indeed suffered, like us, his unjustified criticism and impatience. Bessie Hocken and Ethel Morley also proved true friends: Bessie came and stood with me as the coffin was carried from the hearse to the ostentatious family mausoleum where Eliza, Mary and Kate already lie. Then and there I made a pledge to myself that I would never join his women in that place. Bessie has withdrawn intimacy over recent times, disapproving of my closeness to Dougie, but she was generous with comfort then, realising my desolation. And Ethel, a picture as ever, stood close
and gave me a cluster of daffodils from her garden, where we have often sat and shared views on everything from colonial goose to the poetry of Tennyson.

William would have approved of the pomp and circumstance of his funeral: he would have regarded it as a sign of the respect people had for him, and his place in the history of the colony. And to an extent it was. The Reverend Hewitson took the service, yet I thought how much I would have preferred dear dead Dr Stuart, and Edward Cargill, the mayor, laid a special wreath from the miners of Kumara and spoke generously of William’s contribution, while white clouds tumbled in the sky and people shifted about at the back of the crowd to obtain a better view. I experienced again that odd sense of disengagement that is a safety mechanism of the emotions. The sight of the coffin reminded me of the discussion Dougie and I had had concerning its composition. He said his father would have wanted kauri, because of the importance of that timber when William was in business as a partner in Guthrie & Larnach. He had insisted on heart kauri for the splendid main gates of The Camp. High above the cemetery, with wings unmoving, was an albatross, as if an envoy from the peninsula. I distinctly heard Mrs Reginald Preece complain to the woman alongside that she had stood on her hem. No doubt that will be her lasting impression of the occasion.

Dougie told me later that sadder for him than any eulogy was the sight of old Traveller, William’s favourite buggy horse, in the hearse team. The animal seemed downcast, he said, as if realising the loss of his master. Since William’s death, Dougie has not criticised his
father, despite the difficulties between them. He talks mainly of how things were years ago, when the family were together and all seemed set fair.

I am going away because it is prudent and Alfred demands it, but I will come back, and I know Dougie will be waiting. I am not afraid to stay, but I shall be pleased not to be here when the ugly competition for William’s diminished assets begins. I seek nothing from William now. Both the Wellington house and The Camp have been well searched and no will found, and none is held by solicitors. Nor has there been any sign of the letter William gave the librarian for the southern post on the day he died. Dougie has cause to conceal it, but he has told me he has received no mail from his father. My intuition, and hope, is that Basil Sievwright intercepted it and destroyed it unopened. I find him a caring man, as well as prudent. My prayer is that I will never know what William wrote about the three of us before he went into the committee room and locked the door.

By leaving I also avoid the continuing heaped detail in the
newspapers
concerning William’s death. Columns overflow with accounts of the inquest, the witness reports, the observations of friends and associates, the speculation of those who pander to the morbid pleasure of their readers. Nothing, it seems, is to be reserved for private knowledge and grief: there are accounts of William’s agitation on receiving the southern mail on the day of his death, even a description, from those who found him, of the blood that had dripped from his head onto his collar.

I have received a great many comforting letters expressing
sympathy and praising William. A few vile ones too, referring to me, that I read no more of once I perceived their drift. People of all stations have come to The Camp to tell me of the part William played in their lives, and I see through their eyes those attributes that drew me to him first of all — the vigour, unselfishness and sense of fair play; the intelligence and resolution. An elderly stonemason appeared just days ago and wished to pay his respects. He wouldn’t enter the house, even by the servants’ door, but stood outside with his cap off, fingering his bushy eyebrows, to tell me how, during the construction of The Camp, William gave the workmen a whisky each morning, and on the completion of the building presented each of them with a patent lever watch and chain. He held his out to me with pride. On it was inscribed ‘A souvenir for good and faithful work at The Camp for W.J.M. Larnach 1876’.

Two days and I will be gone for many months. I have a premonition I will not return to The Camp: not again ascend the lion steps as mistress, welcome guests to the gracious drawing room and imposing dining room, never look down on the magnificent hanging staircase spiralling into the depths of floors beneath — a polished whirlpool of art and craft. No longer sit by myself playing the grand piano while dusk gathers in flounces among the gardens and trees outside. Never again relax in one of the verandah cane chairs and watch the rainbow hues stream in through the coloured glass panels as Dougie tells me of a dream.

I have not yet begun to pack, and have even less enthusiasm than usual for the task. Most of my dresses will have to be left, and I will gather and secure all my personal things so that they are
not pawed over in my rooms while I am away. Donald, Colleen and Alice will all unite against poor Dougie, I can see, and despite William’s promises he will be driven from The Camp. He will face their hatred, and the satisfied gossip of all those who take an interest in the fall of the Larnachs. And I will not be with him for support and consolation.

Mrs Oswald Harman, who has a square dinner set as her claim to fame, inflicted her company on me yesterday, a presumption arising because she chances to be taking the same ship to England. Her husband is a lawyer, but is better known for adultery than professional diligence. She rattled on about the oddity in William’s failure to make a testament and offered platitudes. Things always happen for a reason, she said, and God’s plan is revealed in time. There is no God, but what she says is half true. There is a reason for everything, but it lies in the past, not the future.

I shall be a nobody in England, and happy to be so. The name Larnach will create no interest whatsoever. Dear Annie will be with me for company. We will live quite decorously, I imagine, and be patronised by our relatives as colonials. My financial dependence on Alfred, at least in the short term, will be almost complete, yet to escape that was one of the reasons for my marriage. Little turns out the way we wish, or expect. I am determined to advance my music in England, taking advantage of the opportunity to hear
first-rate
artists, and I am equally determined to take some part in the suffragette movement there. In that respect New Zealand shows the way splendidly to the home country and I have knowledge of the manner in which the franchise was won here. As long as I have
access to a piano in tune, I am not entirely alone. Unlike Annie I am not religious; unlike Dougie I feel no sustaining closeness to nature and animals: music is my faith and consolation, and I must be true to it.

And Dougie will wait for my return. I have no doubt of that. His devotion, which has driven us to the place in which we find ourselves, will be constant. What form of contact, what continuance of love, we will have I cannot tell, but he will be there, and we will have time together.

I doubt, however, that we will ever be together again here. I will always have special memories of The Camp. This is where I fell in love for the first time, and Dougie also, I believe, but there are too many ghosts in the big house now. It will always be William’s house: Dougie and I must find a place outside his shadow.

Gladys and I cleared William’s wardrobes yesterday. It was a painful task, but not one I could leave to any of the servants, even Jane, out of respect for him. Many of his clothes evoked memories for me, some I had chosen in his presence, all carried to greater or lesser degree his own smell. Had Gladys not been with me to keep up a brave conversation, I would have been in tears. What could be more personal than a man’s smell, which lingers even after death. None of the clothes will be given away, and when they are burnt, that last natural taint of the body will be gone also. How sad it is, how many mixed emotions well up. Gladys and I remember the same man in different ways: such is the distinction between wife and daughter.

When even his clothes are gone, William’s presence at The
Camp will be strong, however, for he shaped it so much with his vision and personality. It doesn’t matter who else may own it, or live in it, what use it may be put to, it is William Larnach’s house. Only the grand piano I hope to have made my own, so that the keys will always remember my touch, and the dark, burnished wood hold a faint image of my face to intrigue someone a hundred years from now.

There will be places in the gardens though, and on the quiet peninsula roads, where Dougie and I will always be present, and happy together. At the lookout turn he told me the original meaning of his Christian name — black water. It is unlike him to make such a study, and whenever I pass there I think of that conversation, and the particular way the breeze played in his hair as he talked, his intentness on my response. The derivation of my own name has something of irony in it now.

At the old jetty in Broad Bay he gave me a gift of pearl drop earrings as we stood looking over the water. When I asked him what was the occasion, he said the pearls were just because he loved me. The perfect answer, and it comes to me every time I pass by. He held my hand and we stood close. There was moving cloud, the strong smell of the sea, and the swell was jostling in the clusters of small, dark mussels on the piles.

The coachman’s house has a confined, dark scullery, and one wet winter day Dougie suddenly drew me in there and kissed me hard against a wall. The rain was insistent on the low roof, and Dougie’s face was cold, but how he wanted me. That memory too has permanence.

Once, after an unusually heavy snowfall had blanketed the lawns, Dougie and I went out before others were about and, starting from opposite sides, walked through the snow to meet in the middle. Afterwards we went to the observation room and looked down at the shadowed tracks in the otherwise unblemished white. I like to think that after future such snowfalls our prints might reappear, showing each of us coming from a different direction, meeting, and then walking away together.