The Larnachs

by Owen Marshall

  Ethel and I walked through to the gazebo, wreathed with dark red and yellow roses, and sat on the shady side. Her gardener was working close by, but had the sense to take his sack and tools and move out of earshot. He is a Lefroy from the Anderson’s Bay family that assisted us following the buggy accident. He himself sustained an injury years before, Ethel said: assaulted while working as a prison officer in Christchurch. Ethel wanted to confide in me concerning her grandmother’s decline. Some collapse of reasoning and memory seems to be taking place, even an alteration of character. She cannot recall whether she has had her dinner ten minutes after eating it, and roams anxiously, seeking the small children she loved more than fifty years ago and does not recognise in the adults they have become. All I can offer is a sympathetic ear.

  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a child. I married William with no great need, intention or expectation of having children, but there are times when I glimpse a powerful affection and fulfilment that seems to belong to motherhood alone. One afternoon when I was visitor there, Mary Sanford brought her small son to her aunt’s house. The fair-haired child could barely walk, but plunged about the drawing room with chortles of delight. In all our conversation there was nothing that could distract Mary from loving attention to her child, and her love for him gave her the radiance of a Madonna. I experienced an odd yearning that was almost jealousy.

  Many women of my age and more are in the midst of producing families, often so large that domestic responsibility has taken over their lives and their independence. I have seen it in my own friends, even when there were ample means for nursemaids and governesses, and the drag of constant child-bearing ages a woman and spoils her figure. More than any of that, I would fear for the happiness of any child born into the tightrope world that is mine at present. Containment is the great necessity, I tell Dougie. The world will not understand us.

  ‘How much advantage you and I have,’ said Ethel, ‘and Bessie, too. Unlike so many we don’t have any day-to-day struggle, spend much of our time in chat, or vanity, or telling others how to do tasks we don’t wish to do ourselves. Yet I’m not sure we’re any happier for it. We take all we have for granted, don’t we, and what’s denied becomes the thing we most urgently desire.’

  ‘And what’s that for you?’ I asked, but Ethel just raised her eyebrows and smiled. To ridicule her husband any more served no purpose, except to question her own decisions. What would she have said I wonder, if I had told her Dougie and I loved each other, and expressed it fully? What might that confession have released of the innermost secrets of her own life?

  I have also had the pleasure of Annie’s visits. Of all my brothers and sisters she is most dear to me. We have a special closeness, and although over the years there have been disagreements, they have never involved malice, and have never disturbed our love for each other. William pays her little attention, but Dougie puts himself out to squire us about the town, and accompany us to functions and family homes. His courtesy and attention are mainly on my account, I know, but he and Annie find themselves easy companions. He likes to tease me by asking Annie to reveal harmless family secrets about my nature and doings as a girl. Also he flatters and amuses her by claiming that several eligible bachelors of his acquaintance are eager to know more of this new arrival on the Dunedin scene. Annie is willing to play along, but is sensible at heart, and marriage is not everything to her, despite a natural impulse to find a suitable husband. She has a great fondness for gardens, and considerable knowledge too, and is trying to persuade Alfred to help her establish a superior florist shop. He in his conventional way sees the prospect as beneath the dignity of the family, rather than considering what pleasure and usefulness it could provide for Annie.

  Annie likes to be here, I think, and is impressed with the Larnach world. When on the last occasion Dougie and I were farewelling her at the steamer, and William had sent in the carriage and four because of her cases, she said, ‘How grand you’ve become, Conny. I’m sure the rest of us must seem quite quaint to you now.’

  ‘You know better than that.’

  ‘Of course I do. You’re still the same sister, but I can’t help feeling sometimes you’ve left the rest of us behind, no matter what Alfred says. Everything seems at a gallop at The Camp — so many comings and goings, as if some big event is always in preparation.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m just the same,’ I said.

  Even with Annie, however, there is a difference now. She is still unwed and at home, while I am married, in love with Dougie, in charge of a very considerable household and in the van of society, both here and in Wellington. When she earnestly tells me of the trivial comments, glances and situations into which she reads flirtation, the joys of her reading and music, or the round of her family life as a spinster, I realise how far I have come emotionally since leaving home: how much greater is my understanding of the real forces between men and women. I have two lives now, one quite public and conventional, one in which only Dougie and I exist. So even Bessie, Ethel and Annie are denied a true comprehension of what it is to be Conny Larnach.

  Christmas and New Year are almost here. I look forward to neither, except that Dougie and I will be close. This warring family of Larnachs will gather again: Dougie and I will be under malicious scrutiny; William, subject to demands and ingratitude, will respond with alternating high-handedness and sullenness. Alice and Colleen are particularly petulant at present, and I have long given up the hope of amicable relations with them. When Colleen is here she is a constant obstacle to happiness for Dougie and me, and I am glad she prefers to stay in Naseby. One of the few pleasures of unhappy and bitter people is to damage the lives of others.

  So close are they, that Colleen recently wished to marry Alice’s brother-in-law, Alfred Inder, which occasioned another shouting match with her father. One would think that the nature of her sister’s marriage would be a warning against such folly, but then Colleen is a plain woman and having her younger sister married before her must be discomforting. Naseby is not a town of universal reputation, but I hardly think it deserves two such pairs as the Inders and Larnachs. Putting my own welfare first, however, I was for once on Colleen’s side in her dispute with her father. Even this unnatural alliance has not been successful.

  I have already talked several times with Miss Falloon regarding the meals for ourselves and our guests, and the Christmas party dinner for all The Camp staff and farm workers the day before. William insists on keeping up appearances despite grumbling at the cost. Because whole families will come I have decided the ballroom is again the most convenient place. The weather here cannot be relied on for an outside feast and I do not want some last minute difficulty with arrangements. When fed, the ordinary people can enjoy themselves on the lawns if they wish.

  My first Christmas at The Camp, some of the men raced horses through the grounds and around the cottages, and, despite damage to the lawns and gardens, William cheered and gave bottles of claret to the winners. There will be none of that this year. We will invite fewer friends for Christmas Day than formerly. There will be the Larnach family gifts, the protracted meal, the formal toasts and studied good wishes, but there will be little real joy — apart from the secret happiness Dougie and I share. Nothing much else is important to me now, except ensuring other people do not pay the cost. And at New Year we will gather on the tower again to watch the fireworks, and each of us, I imagine, will have apprehensions, even as we profess to have seen the very best of auguries.

  I suppose the Larnach Christmas has always been one of outward show as well as family concern. How different was Christmas in my own family home when Father was alive. He had a busy and successful public life, but took special delight in our birthdays, holidays together and at Christmas. He used to call me the second mother, because I was the eldest of his daughters, and long before I was old enough to be of any practical use, he would solemnly ask my opinion on arrangements for festivities: what games, decorations and table treats
did I suggest. And no matter what strangeness I offered, he would consider it with judicious approval and ensure that something of it appeared on the occasion. Where did he learn that affirmation is so valuable for a child? He rarely spoke of his own parents, or his early life in London. I miss him still, for there are attributes in a loving father that even a husband, or a lover, cannot possess.

  I see him at the Christmas tree when I was small, pretending not to be able to make out my name on those parcels meant for me, and professing surprise at their contents, his eyebrows lifting. In later life he was like one of those ever-kindly benefactors in a book by Dickens, with a shock of pure white hair extending to full sideburns, and then up to a bushy moustache, only his chin clean-shaven. Unlike some adults, who are bored and impatient in the company of children, he loved to witness the joy with which we greeted small treats and minor happenings. Maybe such simple and open emotions were a counter to the complex machinations and cynicism he dealt with in his legal and parliamentary work. What a wonderful kite he could make from sticks, paper and string, and how deliciously terrifying was his voice for the Goldilocks bears. Mother said he spoilt us, especially the girls, but even as a child I was aware that the pleasure he took in this indulgence was quite equal to our own. Only as an adult have I come to realise that happiness is not the condition of every family.

  This morning when I woke, there were bright bars of sunlight in the room that should have pleased me, but I lay and wondered how my life has come to this — how small decisions and great ones, some mine, some made by others; how accidents, luck and coincidence, had all contributed to bring me here to The Camp, my husband in one room and my lover, his son, in another. Nothing can be turned back. Even God cannot change the past, Agathon said.

  How different my life was in Wellington before I married. I would sit with my sisters and we would talk of the novels we read, and even the most extreme and shocking of their implausible plots were less fraught than the life I have now. It would take a Brontë to tell of my situation, and only Emily’s imagination, surely, could encompass it, yet once I thought her creations overwrought. A true love, though, is the most important possession in the world: the things of greatest value are beyond our ability to purchase, and are gifts of sacrifice. Without love we are just a great mass of people walking through life to our deaths.

  However, whatever one’s actual situation, no matter what the perils, or rewards, it is of necessity accompanied by the usual and the everyday: the plod of things of no lasting significance yet impossible to ignore. The choosing of the new season’s clothes, the search for satisfactory servants, the supervision of Miss Falloon’s supervision, the shaping of nails and the brushing of one’s hair, the leaving and receiving of calling cards, the choosing of curtain lengths, the instruction of the tradesmen. Today I will go with Gladys to buy further Christmas presents, try to enter her open enjoyment of it, yet always at the back of my mind will be the sense of a double life, and the absolute need to keep them apart.

  Disunity is an attitude that has a natural inclination to spread, and the lack of common purpose between William and me seems to have infected the servants. I have had many talks with Miss Falloon about the petty squabbles and feuds among the women in particular. The garden staff are seldom at fault, but the laundry women and maids rarely seem to have their minds on work, and there is persistent pilfering in the kitchens. Jane came to me in private and gave an opinion that Miss Falloon plays favourites, and that too many we employ inside come from the same local homes. In the past this was because of William’s loyalty to those families associated with the building of The Camp, but it has led to assumptions of preference, and even to indolence. My own observation supports Jane, so I went through all the household names with Miss Falloon and consequently sent away the Murray sisters and Becky Lefroy. All three are flirts and chatterboxes. Becky burst into tears before me, but when I wouldn’t relent flounced out, quite the lady. Young women these days think much is due to them no matter what their station in life.

  It has been more difficult to detect disloyalty among the kitchen staff, but we know that some have been stealing tinned goods for their families and even perhaps selling them to acquaintances. At my instruction, Miss Falloon and Jane made an inspection of the servants’ rooms, and a quantity of stuff was found, along with a fine pair of London boots that William has never worn, and embroidered cushion covers that were gifts to Eliza Larnach from a Dunedin supplier to The Camp. As a consequence of all this tiresome and unpleasant investigation, another woman, and Morton de Joux from the stables, have been sent packing without any testimonial, and there is a certain sullenness among some of the remaining staff. William complains of waste and expense but has done not much to diminish them, and shows little interest now when I talk to him of household matters. Dougie, in contrast, is entirely sympathetic.

  I find to be in love is a sentence on all other friends, and that is especially so because of the secrecy Dougie and I must maintain. I recognise in myself some drawing back from those who were closest to me here, Bessie Hocken especially. It is not just a matter of with whom I wish to spend time, or even a lesser need for other confidants now that Dougie and I are so close in all things. It is also, I must confess, a fear that I might reveal too much, and a guilt that my life now would be repugnant to them if they knew it fully. But they could not, of course, know it fully. Only Dougie and I understand where we stand and why. Only we can judge what is justifiable for love.

  Whether it is my sensitive conscience, or a reality, I have a feeling that Bessie has some inkling of how things now are with Dougie and me, and, if so, where else has an undertow of gossip and aspersion been sapping? The gradual withdrawal may not be all on my own side. Bessie has not made any open reference, or enquiry, but things are not the same between us. Twice she has found reason, or excuse, not to come to The Camp. I am not invited to her house as often as before and when we do meet there seems some slight measure of reserve.

  At the recitations and musical evening held at Oaklands, when we were talking of the praise given to Frances Hodgkins in the Triad magazine, Bessie told me of the continuing gossip concerning Grace Joel, another very promising young painter whose father owned the Red Lion Brewery. ‘She has given herself to Girolamo Nerli,’ Bessie said. ‘It’s common knowledge and it will be the ruin of her career and acceptance in society.’ Both of us were acquainted with Nerli, who established the Otago Art Academy. He is an unconventional, talented man not long among us from his own country, whom I could quite see taking advantage of a young woman, but I didn’t say that.

  ‘Maybe it’s all just envy and speculation,’ I said. ‘Assumptions made because she has painted and exhibited the female nude figure. People are so easily shocked at any move to give women artists a greater share of the freedoms permitted their male counterparts.’

  ‘A woman is allowed less latitude in her actions, Conny. You know that. It must be recognised even as we fight against it.’ It was not so much what Bessie said, but that she put her hand on my wrist and gave it a brief squeeze. I passed off the moment with some general comment about unfairness, but assumed some personal criticism and warning all the same.

  I hope I have guessed wrongly in all of this: when you have something to hide it is easy to imagine others have secrets also. Bessie here, and Annie in Wellington, have been the closest to me, but friendship and kinship are never the equal of love. Those who cannot understand the imperative of love have surely never truly experienced it.

  Eight

  Conny’s back at The Camp, thank God. How I miss her when she’s not here. The place sinks back into monotony and trivial malaise. My life now is marked out not by birthdays, or business appointments, not seasons, or nights and days, but by the times I have Conny in my arms, and they are fewer than I wish. Almost fewer than I can tolerate. It’s damnably difficult to get her alone in Wellington when I do manage to have reason to be there, and even when all three of us were guests of the Palmers
in Christchurch, opportunities for the greatest of pleasures were few.

  On one evening, when Father was with our host in the city, and Conny had gone early to her room, I took the risk of going to her, with the pretence, had I been asked, of enquiring if she had any message she wished included in a letter to Gladys. She was reluctant to let me in, but only because we were within a family home. She knew my fervour and need. We made love on a multi-coloured rug rather than the bed in case the springs betrayed us, although the rooms on either side were unoccupied. The rug smelled of camphor, and was rough on my elbows and knees. Conny made me go soon after, and I stooped at the door before opening it, listening for anyone moving in the passage. Love often means a strange, almost comic, loss of dignity, but what the hell.

  I went out onto the verandah later with a fellow guest who was a judge from Auckland, and we drank good whisky and talked. He was an amusing companion and keen on racing, but it was all anticlimax after being in Conny’s room. Each time I lifted my glass to my mouth I could smell her on my hands, and the faint fragrance of camphor as well. No erudition, or goodwill, on the part of the judge could compensate, though we stayed talking for some time, with heavy moths swirling into the dim light from the window and through our pipe smoke. I’d be surprised by how many opium dens there were in Auckland, he told me.

  There was only one other chance. Conny and I had taken a gig to the town, enjoyed the opportunity to talk and laugh, and because we were together even the shops of dresses and ornaments were places I was happy to linger in. On the way back I drove behind a derelict brickworks, half covered with undulating, blue-flowered creeper, and halted there in privacy. While the horse grazed in harness, tugging the gig this way and that, Conny and I held each other and kissed. She wouldn’t allow me more, but to put against that disappointment was the joy we always have in just being alone together. I told her I intended to take rooms with a private street entrance in a business block close to First Church, so that we could meet there and spend time without anybody knowing. ‘It won’t do, I’m afraid,’ she said, shaking her head firmly. ‘Too many sharp eyes to notice and malicious minds to wonder why Mrs Larnach goes there often.’