The Larnachs (24 page)

Such times and places belong to us as surely as the big house does to William. Perhaps something of that happiness will remain when we have gone, to be felt by couples there who know nothing of us, but share love nevertheless.

Yesterday in the afternoon I spent hours at the piano, alone in the large music room, drawing around myself that sustaining cloak of glittering notes and spilling cadences. Last of all I played the first movement of the ‘Moonlight Sonata’, and although there was no critic to substantiate my opinion, I believe I captured the truth of it better than ever before. The sound seemed drifting to the high-beamed ceiling and out into the other rooms and the glassed verandah. I sat until all was quiet, then went up to the observation room, where William liked to sit with a spyglass, and I looked right over the grounds and trees of The Camp to Dunedin, and across the shifting, deep colours of the channel to the dark, bushed hills on the other side. There was beauty to it, but also, it seemed to me, a studied indifference to what people might do within its natural frame.

Wellington is where I will return, I imagine. Everything we have
been through, the joys and the suffering, makes it more important that there is an outcome, a continuance, a resolution even, so events have not been in vain. ‘For God’s sake make sure you come back to me,’ Dougie said when I told him of Alfred’s decision.

Sensation and tragedy are superseded by more lurid versions of the same. All that has happened to us will be forgotten absolutely, buried in the rush of time and the fall of others’ lives. Dougie’s story and mine is not told in the history of William Larnach. It is our private journey, and only we understand how it came about; only we know the fitness and the wonder of it. It doesn’t matter what people say, it matters only that you live fully and yet not wholly selfishly. Love is a world free of morality. No one else can judge it — or us. All of it for love. That is what I cling to, Dougie. All of it for love.

Judgement against Douglas J. Larnach

His Honor Mr Justice Williams yesterday morning delivered judgment in the case Douglas John Larnach v. Basil Sievwright and others, which was heard in Dunedin in December last.

T
he plaintiff’s statement that his father all along intended The Camp property to ultimately belong to him, I see no reason to doubt; but it was not his assigning his interest under the settlement to his father which prevented his father giving effect to that intention. Indeed, in order to enable Mr Larnach to give the property to the plaintiff it would have been a necessary preliminary that the children interested under
the settlement should assign their interests back to their father. Whether the deeds of assignment stood or were set aside, The Camp would not belong to the plaintiff, because, whatever Mr Larnach’s intentions may have been, he did not give effect to them by making a will, but died intestate …

It appears that until a fortnight after Mr Larnach’s funeral, in October, 1898, all members of the family were on friendly terms. Then a breach took place, owing, as the plaintiff says, to Mr Solomon, who came out to The Camp with the girls, having demanded the keys. This was about Sunday, the 28th October. Then, the plaintiff says, ‘I heard the next day, for the first time, they were going to try to set aside the deed …

‘I was indignant with them for setting aside the deed. I might, before the trial, have discussed the matter with my stepmother. I went with her to Mr Woodhouse’s office several times. Every time she went to see him. I knew she was interested in the defence of the actions brought by the three. I knew the law that the widow got one third if no will. I went into Mr Woodhouse’s office to assist her in her defence. I had not then heard the story set up by my sisters and brother that they had been deceived by my father. I only knew they were trying to do my stepmother out of every farthing they could, and I stood by her.’

Otago Witness,
8 February 1900

C
onny and Dougie never again lived together at The Camp, or openly anywhere else. Conny returned from England to live with Annie at 15 Hobson Street, Wellington, next door to Alfred, who supported them financially. Dougie moved to the capital and for some years lived close to Conny at 3 Pipitea Street. All of that, however, is another story.

LIZ MARCH

Owen Marshall has written, or edited, twenty-five books. He has held Fellowships at the universities of Canterbury and Otago, and in Menton, France. In 2000 he received the ONZM for Services to Literature in the New Year Honours, and in the same year his novel
Harlequin Rex
won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards Deutz Medal for Fiction. Marshall is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, which awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 2002.