The Larnachs

by Owen Marshall

  In other circumstances I’m sure James would find something for me to do in connection with horses, but it would be too much for even his liberal sentiments if I came to Brambletye with my father’s wife. How much better and more naturally everything would have turned out if the old man had resigned himself to widowhood, and I’d met and married Conny myself.

  I can’t be with Conny at The Camp as often as I’d like, and if I can’t be with her then I’m happier outside the house, and away from the damned telephone office. I like to be about the farm. I ride Tarquin on the roads and tracks of the peninsula, usually alone, since I can’t share with my friends what’s most important to me now. Life is at once fuller, yet narrowed down to Conny and me.

  Yesterday I took the gun out for pigeons, walking from The Camp to the bush ridges. The New Zealand bird is heavier and easier to shoot than the English one: it’s slower in flight, and even when disturbed doesn’t go far before settling again. I imagine the Maoris made the most of them. I’ve no trained dog, and lost some birds in the undergrowth, but it was easy enough to get as full a bag as I wished to carry home.

  The bush is cool and dark, even in summer, and I enjoyed the secrecy of it. Every part of England has been stood on, I imagine, but here, even at walking distance from roads and the partly cleared farms, you feel you may be the first man on a particular spot: the first to lean in rest on a tree trunk, to piss on a fern, or to fire a gun into the branches. Why that should increase the pleasure I experience I’m not sure, but it does. The bush here is very different to the open forest of England: the foliage uniformly darker, the undercover close and thick, with brown, furred fronds like monkey tails, and beneath your feet the damp give of rotting vegetation.

  The shooting startled all the birds, not just the quarry, but when I had enough pigeons, I turned back down towards the sea and the smaller birds came back on song. I walked the roughly cleared edge down to Barrett’s mill so that I would be in the afternoon sun. In time, I suppose, most of the bush of the peninsula will be felled and good farms will cover it. They were working at the mill, four men loading drays, and they waved and called out when I held up the leather game bag. Father complains sometimes at the damage the drays do to the roads, and of the smoke from the burn-offs that follow logging, but farmland is being won from the bush for better use.

  I didn’t mention to Father that I’d been shooting. Perhaps he’ll make some comment when the birds appear upon the table. I left the bag at the kitchens and went directly to the telephone office to relieve Walter. He’s an odd boy, recommended by Professor Black because of his quick wits and lack of a father. He has hopes of going to university and has his books with him at the office so he can study them between calls. Conny says I should take more interest in him, but I’m too distracted by my own concerns.

  Conny and I make our fun and seek our satisfaction when we can, and it’s more to me than anything else in the world. How shrewd she is, how attuned to the undercurrents around us. She said we must have an argument apparent to the staff, as a counter to any gossip and spying that might be going on among them. It would concern my failure to collect articles from dress shops in Dunedin, she decided, and she enjoyed setting up the little play beforehand. So we seemed by chance to pause unseen outside the room where Jane and a maid were changing linen, and have a sharp exchange while trying not to smile. Later in the day we met, touched and laughed together. How close we are against the rest of the world. And how accustomed now to deception.

  Conny has far more imagination than I have: a marvellous sensitivity, which may be the same thing, but strangely she doesn’t dream much, while I, ever since childhood, have had the best and worst of dreams. At St Leonard’s they were a form of escape from the misery I often endured there, even the nightmares providing at least a variety in unhappiness. The happy dreams were a great solace, though I spoke of them to no one, not even Jeremy. Often they took me to Brambletye, especially the brick and slate stables and the long Park meadow, or the old nursery room that James and his brothers had made a den in which to smoke and drink; Aunt Jane knew to keep away. What a stink it had — of pipe tobacco, port, horsehair furniture and our indolent bodies.

  Some of the happy dreams were of us all at The Camp before Mother died, some of the expedition to England across America. Only nights ago I dreamt of Kate, first and best of my sisters. We were in a train, travelling across the continent from San Francisco, and all was as I experienced it as a fourteen-year-old — the jogging motion and clatter over the tracks, the landscape streaming past, which became, as days went by, as accustomed as a life settled in one place. How plush those carriages were compared with trains here, and how well appointed and serviced: velvet backings, ornate mirrors, polished wood and brass cuspidors, yet all with the finest grit on every surface that’s the mark of coal and steam.

  Kate, only a year older than me, was always a close companion, and in my dream we sat together and she told me she wanted to be a nurse. I saw again her homely face with its high brow, and her hair tightly pulled back. She said that no doubt she’d marry a very poor man and have to depend on me to support their numerous children. The idea set her laughing, and that’s the best part of the dream. Kate’s long, open-mouthed face tipped back in laughter, and behind her a country strange to us in apparent motion. Only in the no-man’s-land between dream and memory can I meet dear Kate now, and see her still laughing.

  I have such dreams still, but more special now are the visions I have of happiness for Conny and me. I dream of us meeting and she is unmarried; I dream of us having begun a new life in a foreign, but welcoming, place; I dream even of Father having died, and so freed us to be together.

  Nine

  I have never been happier than I am now, and don’t expect to be so in the future. William, Dougie and I are in Queensland in consequence of William being appointed by Seddon as the colony’s commissioner to the Brisbane Exhibition. My happiness has nothing to do with the exhibition, or the people. Here Dougie and I are released from the constant scrutiny we bear in New Zealand, the ever-present need to maintain the appearance of a conventional relationship between stepmother and stepson. In this place being a Larnach is of little concern to anybody, and we have a freedom that is heady indeed. So liberating, in fact, that I remind Dougie we must not relax entirely and be discovered.

  We have three months here. William is less pleased: he sees the position as a sop and remains put out that, despite his letters to Seddon before he went to London for the Queen’s diamond jubilee, no knighthood has eventuated. William and Richard Seddon are in many ways alike. They have known each other a long time, and there is competition as well as companionship in their friendship. They are both what the papers call ‘big men’ in the colony, but it is Seddon who holds the ascendancy now, and William chafes at that, while still valuing the bond. Both have the common touch, both are ambitious and with a natural instinct to dominate, both are talented and had great energy in their prime. And it must be admitted they share a certain coarseness and blustering conviction that they know best what should be done in the lives of others as well as their own.

  The premier has been a frequent visitor to 45 Molesworth Street, often part of the group singing around our piano. He unbends among society he trusts, and I have seen tears in his eyes when singing popular songs of pathos, and also when telling his sentimental tales of the ordinary people he had much to do with as a younger man. As well he loves to laugh, and like William, and as my father used to, takes delight in practical jokes. He knows all the words to ‘Daisy Bell’ and ‘After the Ball’ and sings them with greater gusto than tunefulness. He likes to drink too, and thinks rather less of William for having put that aside. I hear rumour of his other manly interests, but gossip surrounds every person of note and is often exaggerated, or unfounded. In my company he is no more than tolerably suggestive. Had he had the opportunity for a university education, I’m sure he would have taken great advantage of it, for he has a quick and or
iginal mind.

  Once, when we were travelling by carriage to an evening civic function with my brother, a group of larrikins in Lambton Quay shouted at Seddon, calling him a fat bastard. One man with a great moustache, but no hair on his head, even jumped onto the carriage and held the door for a time, then spat a great gob inside that barely missed my dress. As he fell back, laughing, a few stained and broken teeth showed in his open mouth. No doubt he was drunk. I expected Seddon to be loud and angry, but he apologised to me. ‘Unhappy people endeavour to make others unhappy too,’ he said. ‘What they really hate is their predicament.’

  ‘So what must be done for them?’

  ‘Decent jobs, Conny,’ he said. ‘Work gives self-respect.’

  Like William, he has, beneath his personal ambition and vanity, a sincere wish to improve the lot of the colony’s most ordinary people. The incident reminded me also that he has a natural and shrewd perception concerning human nature. I did notice, however, that he had balled his hand and seemed tempted to strike out at the spitter. Had I not been with him, his response might have been different, for it is said that during his time on the Coast he often settled disputes, even debts, with his fists.

  William complains about the heat here, the lack of clean water, and having to spend his own money on the trip. He is not impressed with the city and its convict origins. The exhibition itself interests him in parts. He was delighted to see that the stand of our own Mosgiel Woollen Company was awarded two gold medals, and the bush house fernery took his fancy. He returned to it several times and Dougie and I accompanied him on one occasion, escorted by William Soutter, who is responsible for the display. More than three thousand staghorn, bird’s-nest and elkhorn ferns, and untold numbers of palms, orchids and potted plants. It was quite lovely, and our favourite of all the exhibits, but as we stood in the shade house among the greenery and listened to the curator’s recital of plants, it was Dougie’s discreet and passing hand pressure on my back I was most aware of, and which gave the greatest pleasure.

  He accompanied me also to the hall display of needlework samplers and silk embroidered memorials. Such painstaking and time-consuming work, that I wonder if it is the best use of women’s days, but there were some quite beautiful pieces, especially a series on classical themes from the French city of Lille. The colours are breathtaking, and the pride the custodian madame took in their charge made them even more impressive. I imagine that such work would be done by two very different sorts of women — those privileged and with infinite leisure time, and those skilled drudges paid such a pittance that the endless hours could be recouped in the sale. Such disparate origin, yet the beauty of each indistinguishable at the end.

  Many of the exhibits and activities, though, are crass and commercial, and loud with self-advertisement. I quickly tired of sitting in the heat to see troupes of animals circling to be judged, or standing to have the purpose and workings of some clacking machine explained in detail. There are the exceptions, but most of what I have seen is clearly of interest mainly to men. The importance and inclinations of women are neglected.

  But here Dougie and I have been able to live more the wished-for life. William has his official duties, so Dougie and I spend much time together. At The Camp we have always to consider the servants and guests, in Dunedin and Wellington we meet acquaintances everywhere, and are recognised by many people unknown to us. Here in the hotel, and in the city and the countryside, we experience comparative privacy. We have even remained together on several nights, when William has been away investigating the prospects of Queensland mining companies. Business opportunities are always uppermost in his mind. Gold has not been as plentiful here as in Victoria, but he has hopes for involvement in that as well as other ventures.

  Three weeks after our arrival he went to Laidley with a Mr Riddell, who is a leading Brisbane businessman. He was away two nights, and Dougie and I said we preferred to go north of the city to see the banana groves and pineapple plants. We stayed close in a bungalow at Kirri, set in a eucalypt clearing, with an Aboriginal couple as servants. Neither of them was disposed to work, and every task required of them had to be mentioned individually. They made no assumption that because we had needed breakfast yesterday, we would require it today, and even after having been given simple instructions, they would have a long discussion in their own language before the woman did the work.

  They came only during part of the day, however, and nothing could spoil the time Dougie and I had together. The privacy of a bedroom, humdrum for a married couple once the honeymoon is over, is bliss for us. It was a substantiation of what we could only dream about at home. Night and day together, free of constraint, able to laugh and tease and touch, to be a man and woman in love.

  On the first afternoon we paid a courtesy call to the Noakes family, who owned the property, and came away as soon as we decently could, strolling together along the farm track and through trees. We walked slowly, for it was exceedingly hot despite the shade: even in my lightest clothes I perspired unpleasantly. Dougie took my hand, and for once I could be at ease with that, gently scratch his palm with a finger. There were brightly coloured parakeets with discordant cries, and heat hung heavy in the air. The clouds seemed to move faster than at home, rolling across the sun suddenly and away again.

  Such was my pleasure that I had an almost physical pang of regret that the moment could not be indefinitely prolonged, despite the heat: Dougie and I walking happily and close together in a place quite strange to us, and totally unknown to William. My mind seemed to lift from my body, and from a distance I could see the two of us walking side by side, as another quite separate person would do, and see how well matched we were, how intent upon each other, how obviously in love. And yet behind the joy of that realisation was the shimmer of the knowledge that it must pass, that even devotion and completeness cannot hold back time.

  We were caught in a cloudburst not far from the bungalow, yet walked calmly through it without caring. When we got back Dougie sent the Aborigines away and they wandered into the downpour just as unconcernedly as we had arrived. The sun was out again even before they were lost to sight among the loose-barked trees, and a soft haze of steam obscured their legs so that they seemed to be walking on their knees.

  In the bedroom the shutters were still open and the sunlight made bright oblongs on the matting. We took off our wet clothes quite freely before one another and stood there in the warmth. Dougie picked up my chemise and put it briefly to his face. ‘Take off the ring too,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything of my father about you. Not his house, not wearing clothes he bought you, not within miles and miles of him.’

  How easily the wedding ring came from my finger; how readily I put William from my mind. There are moments of such fulfilment that their blaze makes past and future immaterial. We stood for a long time together before going to the bed. Under my hands I could feel the structure of Dougie’s body, so much younger than his father’s, and more responsive. Even the bumps where the bones have roughly healed after his terrible accident and the succeeding operations. I know the contours of his body better than I know my own, and he is equally familiar with my form. There is a gratefulness in Dougie’s embrace that I never feel in his father’s, or experienced in Josiah’s unsought advances. What relief and release to be able to relax completely: to lie on the bed with Dougie without a part of myself alert for interruption by the servants, or William’s unexpected return, even the anxiety that Dougie might leave something in my room that would be noticed. For once there was no hurry to make love and part, no furtiveness. Anticipation could build beneath our quiet talk, and the gentle, companionable aspects of real love could be expressed, as sometimes we had enjoyed them on our buggy rides about the peninsula, or into Dunedin. The days at Kirri will live with me always. Benjamin Disraeli said the traveller sees more than can be remembered, and remembers more than can be seen. Such is my experience here.

  ‘This is the way it should be,’ Dougie said. �
��How it should be all the time for us.’ He bent my leg up at the knee and ran his hand back and forth on the flesh behind the bone. ‘We’ve got to be together somehow. It’s the only right thing for all of us. My God it is. Life’s unbearable otherwise.’ I could see he was close to tears, which is unusual in him. Although he is a man of feeling, his school and family life have accustomed him to affect a bluff, conventional manner as protection.

  ‘Oh, let’s just enjoy this while we can,’ I said. ‘Make the most of what we have, and don’t ask for more. ‘

  ‘But we must have it all — be brave enough to declare what’s most important for us. Robert told of me of a saying from his home in Yorkshire: take what you want, and pay for it. He lives by it, and so should we.’

  Of course it was as it should be, but Dougie refuses to see that so much in life is not as it should be, and that it cannot be, because of the maze of decisions and happenings from the past that restrict our choices now. There is no socially acceptable way I can leave William and be with Dougie. And although I love him, I know too that there is a feckless quality to his nature, as with Robert’s, that will prevent him from succeeding in the world. I am sufficiently his senior, in judgement rather than years, to understand that.