The Larnachs

by Owen Marshall

  ‘Fat and out of condition,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk with Boylan. Just a nag compared with Stockings, or Traveller.’

  ‘Horses don’t last for ever,’ I said. Father had a tartan blanket for his knees and wore a tam-o’-shanter. I knew some in Dunedin laughed behind his back at his devotion to Scottish custom and dress, but he had a vision of himself as laird, despite, or perhaps because of, those relatively humble Larnachs of Wick from whom he came.

  ‘I’ve no great stomach for more of Parliament, Dougie, but Seddon and Ward have been very pressing and the affairs of both the Bank of New Zealand and the Colonial Bank are dire. The government will have to intervene or all will be brought down. Ward’s heading for bankruptcy. Seddon doesn’t understand money and says he relies on my advice. But it’ll be no picnic for any of us.’

  ‘Surely the government will have to support the banks? Otherwise the colony will be just a shambles.’

  ‘But everyone wants to call in their money,’ he said. ‘People want it under their beds so they can sleep soundly on it. No one wants to lend.’

  ‘But there’s the ultimate value of property, isn’t there?’ I said. ‘You can’t gainsay that. You can touch it and walk over it, build on it and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can eat off it.’

  ‘Damn rabbits, though, and poor prices.’ He urged the horse to a brisk trot. ‘The money for development has dried up. Everything’s ready cash, and I’m as stretched as the next man. Confidence is going, and that’s what drives business and growth. It’s a mean hoarder’s world at the moment. No one’s safe. It’s look to yourself and damn the next fellow.’

  Father would rather spend all his time in Otago. He’s joining Richard Seddon not just from a sense of duty but because he hopes for the elusive knighthood. As his financial difficulties increase, so does his vanity.

  Robert says it’s the same story with everyone: businesses are finding everyone slow to pay. ‘It’s squirm time,’ he says. When he spent two nights with us last week we took the guns out twice and walked a long way, shooting gulls and even an albatross, for fun, and pigeons for the pot. Our game bags were a good load on our way back to The Camp. We also rode and raced along the bay tracks and clambered over the boat wreck at Portobello. He’s a carefree friend and we can have a grand blowout together, yet in the house he plays the gentleman for Father and Conny, while privately keeping the maids atwitter. As the two of us drank together until late, he told me of a governess he has conquered in Belleknowes. An absolute succubus, he told me with delight, who names his body parts in three languages. He finds life alternately a great lark and a bitter constriction. His company is a relief from the routines of The Camp, but strangely I now find more satisfaction in talking with Conny.

  Perhaps it seems ridiculous that, as a man in the prime of life, my favourite woman companion is my father’s wife. But it’s so, and why should I be ashamed of it? Conny and I find so much in each other’s company, and Father likes the three of us being together: he’s buoyed up by our talk. She would have me educated in music, and as keen a reader as herself of Austen, Eliot, Oliphant and Dickens, whereas my natural inclination is for Conan Doyle and Scott. And more than any reading, I enjoy being out and about.

  For my part, I persuade her to walk more, to enjoy the natural world. She’ll never make a farmer, but she’s increasingly interested in the grounds of The Camp and the wilderness of the peninsula. She encouraged Father to extend the glasshouses and to plant colourful flowers on the lower garden rather than native shrubs.

  The growth of understanding isn’t just on my side. Tuesday was hot and cloudless, and after working with others to repair stalls in the stables, I walked out to the front gardens with my shirt loose and the sleeves rolled up. I was standing by the wishing well to catch the breeze from the sea when Conny and one of the gardeners came past with their baskets of cut flowers. She complained of the heat. ‘Of course you’re hot, being all togged up,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea of the pleasure there is in the cooling feel of the wind on your skin. Watch sometime as a lathered horse turns into it for relief.’

  ‘The comparison isn’t a compliment,’ she said, with a quick smile.

  ‘I mean that you haven’t had the simple and natural satisfaction of the wind on your body when you work.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s a funny thing, but I’ve never thought of it before. I do believe that women must be allowed garments that give freedom to play sport, cycle or climb if they wish.’

  Conny has made me aware of a society of modern women unknown to me before. She, and her friends such as Bessie and Ethel, have a quality of understanding and conversation that is the equal of any man’s. What a gulf between her enlightenment and accomplishments, and poor Ellen Abbott, whose prattle is difficult to concentrate on once she’s been bedded.

  When Father and Conny leave I will be sole master here again. I’ve had good discussions with Father about my plans for the estate. Now that his investments are returning less, he’s particularly concerned that the peninsula property more than pays its way, and from the profits will come my return for overall supervision.

  In the grand times a great many staff were employed to maintain enterprises that were appropriate for a manor house but contributed little to funds: rather the reverse. The vineries, hothouses and fernery are largely indulgence, yet popular, but I see no need for peacocks and guinea fowl to roam the grounds. We’ve also dispensed with the cock-fighting pit, the llamas and monkeys of my childhood, and a boy whose occupation was to individually wrap coal pieces in tissue for the bedroom fires. There are far too many dogs. The Newfoundland is Father’s favourite breed, but he has reluctantly agreed to a reduction in the pack. I hope to sell a good number: like almost all of our animals, they are true bloodstock.

  We need to concentrate on the excellent Alderney herd that’s been built up, and the potatoes and oats that do well here. As Dunedin grows so will the demand for dairy products, vegetables and meat. Despite present conditions I agree with Father that the success of refrigerated cargoes opens excellent prospects for the colony. He was the managing director of the refrigeration company that sent the first frozen lamb to England, and still takes pleasure in telling how he stood at the high observation window of The Camp to watch the Dunedin sail from Port Chalmers. His vigour and enterprise have benefited so many, yet those gains tend to be forgotten in the present criticism many make of him. The ingratitude is, I think, one reason his interest and enthusiasm for further innovation are waning.

  I’m all for clearing more of the land, and wire-fencing paddocks rather than building stone walls, though I’m pleased that we have these on all the boundaries of our property. Before Father’s marriage to Conny, there was a large fire on an adjacent property, which did a good deal of damage to ours, and Father’s relationship with the neighbour has been frosty since.

  I believe there are too many people employed for the household and not enough on the farms. What need have I for a full complement of inside servants when I’m the only family member here most of the time? There are plenty of local men and women who can do part-time work when required. I’ve had all this out with Father and he sees the sense of it. I’ve started to use the stratagem with him that I notice Conny employs successfully — introduce proposals in such a way that he comes to see them as of his own devising. Patrick Sexton is a sound overseer and we work well together. I’ve a plan that will ensure progress while still maintaining the visible lifestyle so essential to William Larnach.

  It’s what I’ve looked forward to, yet now I think I would rather play second fiddle, as ever, to Father and still have Conny at The Camp. At first I thought her rather too sharp in her judgements to be ideal company, and too fine in proportions to be admirable as a woman, but my opinion has changed on both counts.

  She and her family have had little to do with open country and farming, but she shows a comradely interest in what is done here on the properties and what F
ather and I hope to achieve. On Tuesday there was a blue vellum sky and hardly a breeze. Conny came out with me to see the Clydesdales sledging timber from the cut below Fork Ridge. She marvelled at their size and strength, but wasn’t fearful, going right up to stroke them, and wasn’t repulsed by the froth of sweat they’d worked up. She was interested when I explained how calm and affectionate they are, and that size and strength in an animal don’t necessarily mean an aggressive disposition. ‘The runts in species are often worst,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been bitten and kicked more by damn ponies than any larger breed, and lap dogs have the temperament of frustrated spinsters.’

  ‘You want an argument, I know,’ she said, ‘but I’ll not rise to it’, and she smiled. ‘The horse is a fine animal.’ She bent down to stir the feathering on a hoof. And when she was standing by its head again, she touched the great, flat jaw, the white blaze and tousled forelock, and said, ‘What beautiful eyes it has.’ That perception pleased me, for indeed horses have beautiful eyes.

  One of the men was cheeky enough to ask her if she wanted to get on its back, but she said she wasn’t dressed for that. When the horses and men were back to work, Conny and I sat on the stone stile and talked. She said she’d been told by a tradesman that both Father and I were known to get hot at any cruelty to animals, which she regarded as a compliment to us both. She wore a large-brimmed sunhat, so sometimes her face was lost to me. She has the ability to draw people out, does Conny, and I found somehow the conversation came round to my school days at St Leonard’s and my deep unhappiness there. Never before have I spoken honestly about those years, but Conny was sympathetic and interested, her own education having been so different. When I told her of the desolation and loneliness I felt when Mother died, she took my hand and we sat there for a time without speaking, watching the great horses come down the gully, and admiring the skill with which men and Clydesdales managed the logs that constantly threatened to crush them.

  When we are together she is perceptive, as well as quick, in conversation, and encouraging of my opinions. We allow few barriers of gender in our talks; we are just as two people, equal and attentive. Yet, yet, I’m increasingly aware of the swell of her breast, the pale base of her smooth neck, the brown hair glossy above her ears, the fragrance that is part perfume and part herself — and sometimes, when we’re alone, there seems to pass a sort of frisson between us, so that everything I see has a momentary shimmer. Conny, I feel, is equally aware of it, but neither of us makes acknowledgement. Just to be in her company is pleasure, and there’s no awkwardness in any silence that we share. Somehow when she’s with me everything seems complete.

  Often I think of the spontaneous kiss I gave her at the lion steps on her return from Lawrence, the jolt it gave me, the look that passed between us, although we’ve not referred to it again. We’re the closest of friends, without guilt. We’re family, after all.

  Five

  This Christmas and the seeing in of 1896 have been a low point indeed for William, and threatened so for me. We were not long back to The Camp from Wellington at the beginning of December when William’s bad luck struck again. Horse transport bedevils the Larnachs. The three of us were travelling into Dunedin mid-morning when the axle of the buggy broke just as we came into Anderson’s Bay. Dougie and I were shaken, but uninjured, except for a bloody graze on the palm of his left hand. William was flung onto the hard summer road, breaking ribs and dislocating his shoulder. Rather than railing against yet another blow, he took it with an uncharacteristic and sad fatalism that has become one of the moods we see in him now. Thank God Dougie suffered nothing serious. I don’t think his constitution would stand another serious reverse. The shock of it, however, made him swear in a foul way I have never heard from him before, and for which he apologised later. There were the three of us, and a spooked horse, on the road quite bare of any other traffic or immediate help: William lying dazed in his suffering, Dougie swearing like a trooper, me close to tears, with my silk and cotton town dress, worn only once before, quite ruined and torn.

  Dougie was about to walk to the nearest dwelling when a timber dray came up the road from town. The driver turned around, helped push the buggy from the road and took us, jolting and uncomfortable, to the Lefroys’ home, from which Dr Langley was sent for. Despite his pain, William remarked with satisfaction that Traveller, walking tethered behind the dray, seemed unhurt. Mrs Lefroy was doing her own cooking, but broke off to make us comfortable in her front room, which cannot have been open to the air for many days. It held a fine old sea chest. She quite put herself out to be kind, but such occasions create the awkward obligation to afterwards acknowledge the benefactor when in public. Two days later one of the Crimmond boys brought back Dougie’s black bowler hat, discovered in the grass, and stood his ground until I sent him to the kitchen to get a pudding as reward.

  For two weeks after the hospital attention, William could do little else except lie in an armchair, claiming he was more comfortable there than in bed. His stoicism has been replaced with irritability, not so much from pain as from the confinement and the mounting and almost despairing worry he experiences because of the state of the Colonial Bank and the Bank of New Zealand. Ward’s excessive borrowings, and the political cover-up with Seddon’s connivance, add greatly to his concern. Their Banking Act, and the consequent merger of the two banks, will cost William personally more than sixty thousand pounds. The ins and outs are gibberish to me, but his financial fortunes, and those of the colony, seem to be unravelling. I am glad for even the small amount of money I have from Father.

  Colleen came home for a time, saying she wished to comfort her father, but in truth she was, as always, on a spying mission. She spends most of the year with Alice and travels about during the other months. Her sojourn was even less of a success than usual. She invited a Christchurch friend, which rather defeated the stated purpose of her visit. To me she is barely civil, and she pays attention to William mainly to ask for money. Although well aware of the hours I prefer for myself at the piano, several times she and her companion set up camp in the music room at just that time. Had they talent, or even serious intention, I would not have cared, but it was all chatter, laughter and mismatched instruments. Each morning when we were together at breakfast, she made an obvious appraisal of my dress and hair, and I think she went into my room on occasions when I was in town, for the jewellery in my drawer had been disturbed. How distasteful to think of her rummaging there, making a catalogue perhaps for Alice.

  Also she presumed to give direction to Miss Falloon and others, sometimes in contradiction to my own wishes. The Camp can have only one mistress, and I had it out with her. She knew better than to appeal to William, or Dougie, and brought forward her departure. ‘You make me very aware that I’m of no account in the home and family that I’ve belonged to for many more years than you,’ she said. ‘Alice calls you The Cuckoo. Did you know that?’

  There is no point in arguing with such entrenched dislike, and I think her sister, although younger, has a powerful influence over her. Perhaps marriage would ease Colleen’s dissatisfaction with almost everything, but she is no beauty.

  So there was little festivity in our Christmas and New Year at The Camp. Only Dougie and Gladys show any real affection for their father, and his varying moods of withdrawal and irascibility increasingly alienate even them. My playing no longer takes him from his troubles as it used to. Gathering misfortune is a severe test of his assurance and ability. He is not the man I remember from my father’s house; not the man I married five years ago. In that time I can say surely that I have been a supportive wife. Whether I can be a loving one, whether I have ever been, in a sense newly revealed to me, is a question I must confront.

  In past years we have had large gatherings for both Christmas and the New Year, with fireworks for the latter, which family and household staff would watch from the tower, several carrying kerosene lanterns. This year true celebration was lacking, and even the full meal and ent
ertainments on the 23rd for all who worked for him, in which William usually takes such genuine delight, seemed more a duty for him. Tables were set out in the ballroom and I had Jane and the gardeners create profusions of flowers and greenery in the fireplaces. Even the antlers of the stags’ heads were festooned with colourful Christmas decorations. But William made little effort to join in. He went to his study before it was all over, saying he was sore, and complaining of the slovenly dress of some of the men, despite them having been invited inside his house. I notice that many of our people lose their natural manner and confidence when their accustomed roles are altered: some become clumsy and gauche within The Camp, some quieter and ill at ease, a few loud with false familiarity.

  Yet William is still able to recognise that others have been equally buffeted by misfortune. At an evening at the Hockens’, soon after New Year, we met Charles and Bella Baeyertz again, and although he in particular was in good form, about both music and the slipshod pronunciation of colonials, we were reminded by Bella’s reserve that little more than a year ago their infant daughter fell into a well at their home and drowned. William remarked on it as we returned to The Camp the next day, and I knew he was thinking of Kate, although nothing was said directly. I think to lose an infant, and in circumstances that might imply some negligence, must be even more crushing than to experience the death of an adult child from disease. Earlier in our marriage, William and I may well have ventured upon the subject, but now we have lost that closeness and confine ourselves largely to the commonplace.

  Thomas Cahill came for a brief visit, which lifted our spirits. He said it would be unprofessional of him to make any judgement, or interference, concerning Dr Langley’s treatment of William, but he made an informal examination, and William was the better just for his company. Thomas regaled us with a scandal that arose from the Wellington Guards’ Ball in July and with an account of a walking tour in the Marlborough Sounds. He accompanied Dougie and me to a soirée at the Hockens’, and all three of us to a dinner party at the Sargoods’. And he encouraged William to be out and about with him and talk about his plans for grounds and farms. But he was soon north again, and William gloomy.