The Larnachs

by Owen Marshall

  But reason is as yet no consolation: everything shakes about me. My mind veers from a crushing guilt that induces suicidal thoughts of my own, to the conviction that all I have done is fall in love, and love is the best of human emotions. The nights are the worst. My thoughts are most accusing then, and most irrational. That dreadful feeling that there is no light anywhere, no way out, and all is down, down, down, into the pit. Sometimes Annie, sleeping beside me, seems to take on the larger, inert form of William, and sometimes that of Dougie. Sometimes they talk to me, and my refusal to reply is the only denial I can make to their apparition. Dougie is the dreamer, and I rarely so, but now worse things appear.

  All this is the swirling, emotional consequence of grief, I tell myself, and will pass with acceptance of William’s death. Now that he is gone, it is his earlier self that I remember best: William as he was when first he came to our house as friend of my father’s, his openness and admiration in courtship of me, the pleasure he took in my companionship when we were first married, especially in society. ‘I am the envy of every man I meet,’ he would say gallantly. I remember his generosity, his optimism, his great love for his children. I remember that when the carriage overturned in the river during our return from Lawrence, his only concern was to ensure my safety. I remember the gifts he would bring me and, even more, the pleasure he took in my singing and playing. I remember the confidences early in our marriage, in which I glimpsed the natural man. That is the William Larnach to be upheld, and the man eulogised in the debating chamber by his colleagues.

  Alfred said the premier was greatly affected, and asked the members not to judge their brother, as all had seen his health was failing. He called William genial and imperious — the man with a master mind, and Captain Russell, leader of the Opposition, said he was ever kindly, courageous and cheery. Alfred, who greatly fears a scandal, was relieved by how it all went off.

  Those members too, however, were speaking of a William Larnach glossed with the attributes of his prime, while we who were closest to him know what sad decline there had been. Our home, our marriage, had not been happy for many months, and there were more causes of that than just Dougie and me. I believe now that the greatest mistake I made was not loving Dougie, but agreeing to wed William nearly eight years ago. I married him because I admired his achievement and was flattered by his attention. I married him to get away from a house of a widowed mother and spinster sisters, and because I had pretensions to live on a larger scale, and ambitions to be useful in the wider world.

  I understand at last that it may be a perfectly sensible thing for a woman to marry without love, but not before she has experienced it. The realisation is of no value to me now. William is dead. Without him I cannot live in the same house as Dougie, and for the sake of appearances Alfred is pressing me to leave the colony immediately the funeral is over. It is a grim irony that the letter sent by Dougie with the intent to allow us to be together has made the very thing impossible.

  So I lie here, Annie innocent by my side, and watch the dim shadows of the long bedroom drapes, and pale moonlight strips where they don’t quite meet, like unlit candles. William is dead by his own hand, and Dougie and I must live with that.

  Fourteen

  I was called to the telephone office early. It was Alfred, ringing to tell me that Father had shot himself at Parliament the evening before. Instantaneous death, he said, and Seddon had asked for an immediate adjournment of the House. The inquest was to be held that afternoon in the Metropolitan Hotel. Delay would only add to speculation and gossip, Alfred said, and Mr Ashcroft, the coroner, was a long-time friend of Father’s who would ensure that proceedings were discreet. Everyone knew Father had been in failing health, Alfred insisted, and the whole thing was a terrible tragedy that no one could have foreseen. I felt Alfred was coaching me for my reaction, but all I cared for was the chance to speak to Conny. She was too overcome to talk to me, Alfred said, and anyway she was not with him. He warned me that both families would be under scrutiny because of the event, and that our behaviour and demeanour must be appropriate. I told him I would pass the awful news to Donny and my sisters, and leave for Wellington that day if possible.

  Alfred and I have never been friends, and he resents the closeness between his sister and me. He’s full of his profession and public awareness as a former mayor of the city, and proud of the de Bathe Brandon name. As his father was, he’s a director of the Australian Mutual Provident Society, and he enjoys to strut in uniform as captain of the Wellington Rifle Volunteers. In his opinion I’m of little account and have achieved nothing of significance by my own efforts or talent. I know he’ll do his utmost to prevent Conny and me being together.

  At first, however, I was too bowled over to think of any of that. Father’s always occupied a huge part in our lives, while we struggled somewhat for breathing space, and now suddenly he’s gone. I left the telephone office and walked into the trees he had planted on the south side. Boylan was exercising three of the carriage horses on the track, and we talked briefly of an order for dry feed, and other trivialities, while I tried to keep my emotions to myself. He seemed not to notice the tears I could feel on my face, and went off with the animals, cheerfully enquiring after Father and Conny and saying that a small whale had been washed up at Broad Bay.

  I gave the news to those who had to be told, but requested no one come to The Camp, then prepared to catch the steamer. I asked our people to gather before midday and told them of Father’s death, with as little as possible of the circumstances. Jane was the most obviously affected. She put her hands to her hair, shook her head as if assailed by a swarm of bees, and sobbed. Of all the servants she is the longest serving, and remembers Father so genial and generous in happier times. The Camp fell silent after the news was known. It seemed I was the only person in the big house: the staff avoided the family rooms as if afraid they might meet me and have no adequate response.

  I found myself drawn to the library and the master bedroom: the two places that most strongly summon Father’s presence. So much that was personal to him was in those rooms, and like poor Jane, I felt tears start. The incidental and trivial things were the hardest to bear: a photograph of Father and Professor Black taken by a rough stream when he was touring mining sites. Although not included in it, I was there, pulling a face that accounted for their smiles. ‘The wind will change,’ the professor had said. How strong the memory of Father alive, how difficult and painful to realise him dead. His tobacco bowl stood within hand’s reach of his favourite chair, darkest wood with a band of carved leaves around its middle. How often when we talked there did I see his hand rest on it, or quest within, seeking fodder for his pipe. How often after dinner would I go with him and male guests to the library and see him settle with pleasure in his chair, ready for the chinwag in which he’d be supreme.

  In his bedroom the matching double-barrelled pistols always on the side table to remind him of the swashbuckling goldfields days he loved to talk about, when he slept with the bank’s money, and firearms, by his side. And also there in Father’s bedroom a photograph of Conny on her wedding day. Such things are now both mockery and accusation. His high, old-fashioned bed close to the big windows, through which he could see his beloved panorama of sea and hills when he awoke, and his property all around.

  After a hurried and careless packing, I went up to the tower and stood there alone, looking over the gardens, trees and beyond to the shifting shimmer of the sea. There was little wind, but the air was cool and carried clearly the coughing of sheep and the challenge of one of the Alderney bulls. I felt as alone and forlorn as often I had at St Leonard’s. Everything surrounding me was utterly familiar, yet how indifferent and unchanging it seemed. All that had happened there over the years — the building of the house and setting out of the grounds, François’s homeland songs, Donny and I setting ambushes amid the trees, the weekend parties and visits by people of note, or presumption, Mother’s walks with us when we small, and mine w
ith Conny years later when we were in love — washed off, and Father dead in Wellington and lost to everything.

  Thankfully much of the boat trip was in darkness. I locked my cabin and talked to no one. I lay in my bunk partly dressed and swayed with the motion of the swell, drifting sometimes into a fitful sleep from which I woke myself with jolts of realisation and half-sobs. How trite is the saying that life may become a nightmare, yet I’ve experienced it. On disembarking, I was amazed and somehow angry that the other passengers could laugh and complain at trivialities, greet those waiting as if nothing in the world had changed.

  I know by heart the letter I sent to Father: so many times I’d phrased it in my mind and rewritten it in his study. ‘It is the only honest and manly way for us to act in all of this. You and I must give Conny the freedom to choose between us.’ When I received the news of his death, my great hope was the letter hadn’t arrived and so played no part. Once in Wellington, however, I soon knew that wasn’t the case. Alfred and Richard Seddon had made close enquiries and Alfred took some satisfaction in telling me what they knew. Even before I had a chance to see Conny, he insisted we talk alone.

  On the day he died, Father had collected the afternoon mail at Parliament and the librarian observed how agitated he was about one of the letters. He wrote an immediate reply and asked the librarian to ensure it would catch the next mail to Dunedin.

  I asked Alfred what had happened to the letter Father received. ‘None was found as far as I know,’ he said, ‘and what point would be served by speculating? William was desperately unwell and his finances a shambles, as you know.’

  ‘But to shoot himself?’

  ‘Who knows the level of anyone’s endurance,’ he said. ‘Bankruptcy can’t have been far off, and he was ill besides. Everyone says so, even the premier. Nothing’s to be gained by poking and prying. My advice is to say as little as possible, especially to the newspapers.’

  Alfred is a cool customer and difficult to read. It’s impossible for me to confide in him. I think he may have the letter, keeping it as a weapon to use against Conny and me if he needs to. Maybe I do him an injustice; maybe Father destroyed my letter as soon as read. Whether it still exists or not, whether it will do me harm in the future, I must live with the understanding that he received it only hours before his suicide. I have given instructions in The Camp that any letter to me in my father’s handwriting should on no account be given to any other person, and I’ve asked Basil Sievwright to ensure the same for correspondence that may come through him.

  Had I fully realised Father’s frame of mind at the time, I wouldn’t have sent the letter. I still believe it was the right thing to do, but not just then. Had we been living in the same city, no doubt I would have seen how low he had become. My guilt and remorse is at the timing, not the nature, of what I told him.

  The inquest returned a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane. I’m told the jury did not even retire to deliberate. Thomas Cahill said he’d noticed a considerable deterioration in Father’s health in recent months, and had been pressing him to have an examination, but he refused. Thomas suspected heart disease and depression, he told the inquiry. If he had, then as both friend and doctor he should have done a damn sight more than he did.

  I loved Father greatly when I was a boy, and never ceased to love him, despite the deterioration he suffered and the circumstances between us. We were all happiest when Mother was alive: things went downhill after that. When I packed for Wellington, I took a photograph from Father’s room. It was taken in San Francisco in 1878 when he was colonial treasurer and we were on our way to London, all of us, including Aunt Mary, except that Donny was already at Oxford and Gladys unborn. Now Mother, Mary, dear Kate and Father, too, are dead. In the photograph he leans easily on the striped back of Mother’s chair, with his fob watch and chain across his waistcoat. Pater familias. All then was confidence and optimism and generosity. To the young, tubby photographer, whose manner Father later aped before us, he talked enthusiastically of the Californian goldfields he’d heard so much about when he was young. And he went to those Californian places and talked to me of his own years on the goldfields as he explored the old sites. ‘All manner of men follow gold, Dougie,’ he told me. ‘Every human behaviour is to be seen on the diggings.’

  I can’t believe he’s dead, although since Mother’s passing he seemed to become accident prone, always getting knocked about one way or another, but expecting the strength and resilience he had as a young man to last for ever. The times moved against him too. Financial speculation has not worn well over the last decade or so, but Father couldn’t give up the practices that made him one of the colony’s richest men by the end of the seventies. In the end I think he realised there was no going back. If he couldn’t maintain the life he had striven for and attained, he refused to continue a lesser one.

  The letter, though, was sent and received. I must live with that. I should have come up to Wellington and told him face to face, for maybe that way we could have got through without this awfulness, but it’s no use thinking of such things now, and Conny would’ve been there to persuade me to let things lie — and lie it was.

  Everything’s a sad muddle, and I have little opportunity to spend time alone with Conny: Alfred or Annie seem always to be with her, and acquaintances with pining condolences often call. The premier has been helpful in organising for Father’s body to travel back by steamer to Dunedin and I’ve been trying to settle the arrangements for the funeral there. It will be an occasion for pomp and ceremony, with ostentatious attendance by many of those who disputed with Father during his life.

  I see better now how great was Mother’s influence within our family, though overshadowed at the time by Father’s exuberant confidence. Since her death a centre has been lost and all of us pursue our selfish interests. Father’s marriages to Aunt Mary and Conny served to make the dissolution more marked, more painful. Conny, though blameless, has suffered much because of that. Maybe she and I can come out of it all into the light. That chance is what I cling to.

  It was the day after my arrival in Wellington before I was able to talk to Conny alone for any length of time. Annie had gone home to see her family and I said Conny and I needed to talk about the funeral arrangements. It was a warm, bright afternoon, and she and I sat on the wisteria seat in the garden, she in mourning dress and I also in sober clothes. Her brown eyes seemed larger than ever, her face thinner. At a little distance she could pass for a schoolgirl, so slight is her figure. I especially noticed the smallness of her hands, the pale wrists barely thicker than the ivory shaft of a riding crop.

  Despite everything between us, we couldn’t at first venture onto the most important concerns, but talked of events and planning and people who’d sent condolences, or come in person, and all the time, although even to hold hands was denied us, we yearned for the comfort of an embrace. Only we two fully understand; only we have all our happiness at risk. Our real world is a small universe of two, although so often forced apart, and other people move like mannequins around us.

  ‘Will you be able to keep The Camp?’ Conny asked.

  ‘The lawyers can’t find anything in writing. When we get back home I’ll make a thorough search for a will.’

  ‘Alfred found nothing here, but I’m willing to testify to William’s intention that the place be yours. Alfred says that if he died intestate then a third of everything will go to me, and the rest be divided among you all.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. The others will come against us, I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘Donny won’t arrive from Australia in time for the funeral, but soon after that he, Colleen and Alice will set the legal dogs on us, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ said Conny. I could see she found it distasteful to be picking over the family inheritance so soon after Father’s death.

  ‘When he married Mary, he made over his estate to her to protect himself in case of bankruptcy, and when she died so unexpectedl
y he found himself without control over his own affairs, because Mary, in turn, had made us children her beneficiaries.’

  ‘Well, you’re family so surely you’ll benefit from that.’

  But nothing of Father’s affairs is ever simple, as Conny should know. ‘Soon after Mary’s death he had us each sign a deed relinquishing our interest. He never explained the true significance of it, just that it gave him back the right to collect rents. I never questioned him. Donny told me that Father went up to Auckland with a copy of the deed for him to sign, and gave his word of honour that it contained nothing to his disadvantage, so Donny signed it without reading. Now they’ll contest the deed to keep you from getting anything at all.’

  ‘And did he deliberately hoodwink you all?’ A small, blue butterfly was jiggling between us and Conny waved it away vigorously. I wanted to reach out and clasp her wrist, and kiss it.

  ‘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.’