The Larnachs

by Owen Marshall

  Here in Brisbane we move about without arousing comment, whether with father or not. Only when we accompany him to official events is it marked out that Conny is his wife, and I his son. Conny and I have greater freedom than ever before, and that’s an enormous boon. She thinks it a fortuitous sojourn, but I’m determined that somehow we make the break from father and have a life together even more complete than we experience here. It’s the honest way, and the only way we’ll be happy. Father will be hurt I know, and society enjoy the scandal, but it must be done, and I must persuade Conny of that. We belong together and only a certain boldness will achieve it. As the man, it’s a decision I must soon make, or live with a sense of cowardice as well as guilt. I’m more convinced than ever after the time Conny and I had at Kirri: nights and days when we could live as those who love each other should live.

  I wish we were still there, even though the black servants were ignorant and lazy, Mr and Mrs Noakes poor company and the heat oppressive. How wonderful to come into the bungalow after riding, walk up to Conny and embrace her quite openly. At night to talk in more than whispers and draw out our lovemaking without fear of discovery. Conny’s never been more relaxed, never more willing to indulge me as a man, never more open about her own pleasure and feelings. Even the casual signs of her presence are a satisfaction for me. I remember going into the bathroom on the second morning at Kirri, and seeing on the bare boards a scatter of powder left by her after she had bathed and towelled. And in the fine, pale grains was a single imprint of her foot, small and curved. Behind me I could hear the soft sounds as she dressed in the simple bedroom. I’ve never loved her more, and felt in the moment a sort of protective anguish.

  I remember how we undressed after we were caught in the cloudburst, the languorous anticipation finally beyond either of us to sustain. Never before, or since, have I seen a woman standing completely naked. Everything of her was natural, everything of her own growth and body, with not one hair clip, ribbon or piece of jewellery to mark her as belonging to any time, any family or any man. Ellen would remove only necessary garments, and the casual girls would have their dress hems under their chins like eiderdowns. How neatly formed Conny is, so slim yet womanly and with no ravages of childbirth. How much fuller her breasts are when free from the constriction of clothing, and how the nipples stiffened when mouthed and fingered. She stood in my gaze and smiled, as if she knew precisely the power of such a moment, and its rarity. No doubt old Roper, that zealous Christian and classicist, would decry such revelation as a challenge to the fates, but then he never possessed such a woman as Conny.

  My determination for change is not entirely selfish. Increasingly I see how marriage restricts Conny’s life and denies her the choices she’s entitled to. It’s not just that Father’s so much older, and in the foreseeable future she’ll be tied to a decrepit man, but that he doesn’t understand her need for intellectual challenge and cultural opportunity. Father sees music purely as a social accomplishment, and he has no comprehension of the true place of music in Conny’s life. It’s taken me several years, and the interpreters of my close affection and her confidences, to come to that recognition. Conny needs space and light and Father crowds those things out. All his life he has seized centre stage as his right. I don’t pretend to be her equal in sensitivity, but I truly support her talents.

  For some days Conny has been cast down somewhat because a Scottish woman novelist she admires has just died. Conny is like that, emotionally tied to eminent musicians and writers as if they were close friends. For myself I feel a bond only with those people I can see, talk to and touch, or have done so in the past — Mother, Kate, my cousins and Jeremy Pointer. Conny is tolerant of my talk of Mother, and of Mary. She feels sympathy for Mary as Father’s practical and inadequate replacement for the first wife he loved. Mary, the half-sister, her place in the household depending on my parents’ kindness. Mary, the wife of convenience and recognised as such even by the household staff, who thwarted her when they could. Mary, the unhappy tippler of wine and chlorodyne, with the pious silver cross around her neck when in society. Mother had her children as a recognised domain, Conny insists on intellectual independence, but Mary had nothing strong enough to withstand Father’s natural dominance, and was completely subjugated to it. Yet she and Mother had been true companions and sisters, and I remember the happiness with which they would take baskets and hats before setting off to gather mushrooms together while there was still dew on the ground.

  I surprised Mary tipsy once in the late evening when I’d returned unexpectedly from Dunedin. She’d come down from her room and was standing at the base of the stairs talking to herself. She came very close to me and looked up into my face. ‘Am I really part of this family?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. She took no comfort from it, and her hands trembled.

  ‘I’m just Eliza’s shadow,’ she said.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ I said falsely.

  ‘I know you all laugh at me among yourselves, when I’m not there. I don’t matter to anyone, not even William. I’m not in anybody’s heart, you see,’ and she put her hand to her mouth, before abruptly turning back up the stairs.

  She must have realised that, apart from the need for someone to look after little Gladys, her former brother-in-law saw the marriage as an economic advantage, even a necessity. Not that Mary had money of her own at all, but Father needed to be married so that he could make over much of his property to her and so protect himself from possible bankruptcy if Guthrie & Larnach failed as financial troubles grew.

  Only in recent years, with Conny’s place in the family so important to me, have I realised the full sadness of Mary’s lot. At the time of my return from England, not yet twenty, I was too preoccupied with my own grievances and prospects to give much thought to my first stepmother. She’d always been with the family, and always subordinate — the unwed sister in Eliza’s household. Marriage brought no real change, and I must admit to making little effort to become close to her. She was devoted to Gladys, but the rest of us were too old to transfer our affection.

  She suffered greatly from headaches and congestions and, she said, took fortified wines for medicinal purposes. Her persistent perfume after any length of time alone was alcohol, and Alice, who would not call her Mother, delighted in aping her vagueness and occasional unsteadiness. Often she needed to rest in her room, and all of us knew the reason. We showed little sympathy. ‘Poor Mary,’ Conny says when we talk of her, and is resolved to be a different sort of wife and woman. She’s independent and will determine her life by her own decisions.

  From the outside we must seem an oddly complex and entwined family, but we find ourselves where we are because of a chain of apparently unrelated decisions and varied personalities. Donny says we’ve all allowed ourselves to be swept along by Father’s vigour and ambition, yet he’s been more dependent on Father’s largesse than any of us. At Oxford he assumed a life he couldn’t sustain without Father’s backing, and everything since has been a disappointment.

  All of the Larnach past seems a long way from Queensland. There are no ghosts for Conny and me here, just opportunity. Even shopping, normally tiresome, I find a pleasure with Conny. She’s so quick with her comment that ordinary things are transformed, and here in Brisbane we have no need of pretence when out together.

  On Wednesday I carried parcels for her and afterwards we sat together in a tea shop, close to the wide and open doors to catch what stir there was in the air. There were starving, stiff-legged dogs in the street, and a brewery dray delivering barrels of ale. An overdressed, thin man two tables away cleared his nose by honking like a goose, while his wife looked away and repressed disgust. Nothing around us was memorable, but we talked and laughed incognito and her foot rested against mine beneath the table. We must have glowed, I think, among all that was so ordinary.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, breaking off from raillery.

  ‘It’s just so damn special, that’s all
.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and me. Just being here.’

  ‘We are special,’ she said. ‘Life’s special.’

  After such freedom I find it more difficult to accept the façade we must maintain when there are three of us. Despite Conny and Father being legally husband and wife, more and more it seems unnatural to me, and I’m almost rigid sometimes with the effort to restrain myself in his presence. His constant assumption of superior knowledge and entitlement, his lack of sensitivity, awareness even, to those things of greatest importance to Conny, his increasing conservatism, even his appearance as an old man, though I know that’s no fault of his.

  I still have love for Father, remember his generosity and affection to me over many years. I’m the favourite son who often took his part when Donny, Colleen or Alice rebelled against him. But now it’s hard to see him as anything but an obstacle to my happiness with Conny and I’m determined he won’t drag down Conny’s life with his own.

  Queensland is a huge colony, unspoilt and with some areas still virtually unknown. Father and I have taken trips well out of Brisbane, but I haven’t enjoyed them as much as I surmised, and not just because Conny wasn’t with us. The heat is terrible. I thought it might be good for the aches and pains of my old injury, but it isn’t. Even on horseback I’m uncomfortable, and think fondly of riding my own Tarquin on the tracks of the Otago peninsula in the bracing air, or trotting the buggy into Dunedin.

  Last month all three of us went to Caboolture by train to see the sugar cane and cotton on the flats. Father talked with people there on behalf of Wellington business friends, but wasn’t impressed by what he was told. We had planned to stay the night, but the heat was unpleasant, even though it’s not the hottest time of the year, so we returned on the same day, with Conny fretful and bored as night fell. The distances are immense: God knows what lies in the great heart of Australia.

  I think often of the time Conny and I had in the bungalow. I did some longish walks along the ridges and Conny came with me on a shorter one along the creek. The bush was quite open, the bird noise so much louder and more discordant than at home. Each place has its own chorus, doesn’t it? The soft call of doves and harsher derision of crows are Brambletye so clearly for me, and at The Camp the swishing flight of heavy wood pigeons, and the clear, pure notes of tuis and bellbirds. The garish colours of the birds and sunsets, and the bursts of mocking laughter from the kookaburras, are the strange fairground of it all at Kirri.

  Ewert Noakes said that farther north there are sea-going crocodiles bigger than canoes, whole beaches covered with giant turtles, and lizards that run on their hind legs and attack horses. He knew a prospector who went far up the coast, close to Townsville, with a partner, and in the night a crocodile came from the river to the tent and dragged out his friend to the water. In the darkness he could hear the croc turning over and over, and for a while the shouts of the man, but there was nothing he could do. Conny won’t go near the water after hearing the story. Camels, too, Noakes said. People use them in the desert. Surely they must have been brought here from Arab lands. I think Noakes something of a gabber, and he’s a little hairy round the fetlocks, as cousin James would say.

  Father says it’s a very different country from the Victoria he knows, and he doesn’t take much to it. If it wasn’t for the heat, and Conny being all that really matters to me, I’d spend more time out of Brisbane. But a few hours with Conny alone are worth more than several days’ travel in new country. At Kirri, and the times free in Brisbane, I’ve realised what it is to be completely happy, and focused on the present. Almost all my life, wherever I’ve been, some other place, time, some other company, has seemed to offer more. In the St Leonard’s dormitories, or the Top Field there, in the closed shop of Dunedin business chums, or the casual acquaintance of fellow bachelors, on the fringe of those more important people enjoying my father’s hospitality, I longed for some place and some person dear to me alone.

  Conny doesn’t like to talk about our lovemaking, though she’s usually eager in her response. I think she feels the pleasure of intimacy is cheapened when expressed in words. Maybe there’s suppressed guilt as well. After we are spent, she likes to lie quietly, sometimes with her eyes closed, and when she does speak, often it’ll be of music, or something of her day, perhaps some observation of a friend.

  Last night I had a dream of school — the first for some time to drag me back there. It was as much a suppressed recollection as a dream, but all too long ago to be sure now, and maybe the slight eroticism of it has been released by my time with Conny here in Queensland. Not much to it really, just Shillitoe’s mother taking him and me to the cake shop on the esplanade of St Leonard’s on Sea. Shillitoe was an unpopular junior in my house who attached himself to me in my last term, because, although equally unpopular, I was a senior. I imagine his mother thought the treat might buy whatever protection I could provide. I was aware she was a young mother, anxious for even my approval. When she leant over the table with cake her bosom pressed on my shoulder. In the dream I felt, even through her street clothes, the soft give of her flesh, and was aware of the downy hair at the nape of her neck, the fragrance she wore, and I woke aroused.

  I’ve grown up with companions who think that sex is something women possess, and somehow you have to get it from them. Conny’s revealed to me the wonder of lovemaking as a mutual gift. At the best of times with Conny I feel we are in a kind of trance, our actions quite open and deliberate as in the slow movement of one of her favourite symphonies, and quite as inevitable. All else falls away.

  Eleven

  I am now riding the tiger. Since our return from Queensland late last year, Dougie is insistent that he will not be parted from me for any length of time. He was distraught when William and I came up to Wellington for the ’98 parliamentary sessions, and says that a way must be found for us to be together. Our time in Brisbane, so precious, may now become the reason that everything topples into chaos. I have always known that risk, but have taken it for the sake of love and fulfilment. Now I am fairly caught in the conflicting obligations to William, Dougie and myself. Dougie and William argue increasingly, and Dougie’s erratic moods before we parted must arouse suspicion. Both he and I returned from Queensland with a terrible cough, and even that was an unwelcome indication to others of our closeness, though perhaps I am overly sensitive to the situation and no one else thought anything of it.

  William has asked me nothing directly, and made no open accusation to Dougie, but increasingly he criticises him before me, as if daring me to take his part. I have tried to be especially supportive of William, even dutiful, not from guilt, but because I don’t wish to bring on the heartache and scandal that separation in these circumstances entails. He has become more distant, rather than demanding, and his health problems continue. He has persistent catarrh and hacks phlegm in a most unpleasant manner. After New Year he had another long bout of influenza, and has lost weight and energy. His pride, I think, prevents him from facing the situation the three of us are in, and the fear too, of what confrontation may reveal. His formality is interrupted by outbursts of anger at trivial things.

  A few days ago a bird flew into his study while he was at Parliament, and he returned to find his chair and desk soiled, and the bird in fluttering agitation. He scolded Molly until she was in tears, yet had previously insisted that the room be kept aired, and when I intervened, he said he would express himself as he saw fit within his own home. ‘She was just doing what she thought right,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get me started on what a woman considers right,’ he said. ‘I might have truth to say that you’ll regret.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘You heard me.’ It was as if he had slapped my face, and for a moment everything was unnaturally still. The customary small noises of the household and the street must have continued, but I was unaware of them. William’s face was a confused study of defiance and anguish, but Molly was st
ill standing with us, and neither of us took it further. ‘It’s all right, Molly,’ he said, striving for control. ‘I’m damnably tired from the chamber. The imbecilic clamour is becoming unbearable for me,’ and he went out abruptly. Molly scurried away, embarrassed at the brief animosity between master and mistress, and I was left, sickened, in the darkening study.

  On Saturday evening the Seddons and Wards came for dinner. It was the first time for weeks that William has had any inclination for company. I spent a good deal of time beforehand with Cook to ensure the right dishes, and that they were served on time. The premier takes his food seriously, and in considerable quantity. He once mentioned to me that a lukewarm dish could spoil a meal for him. Mrs Charteris lent me her Bridget, who is something of a wizard with pastry. I think he was pleased with all that was put before him: at least he said so, but William ate little and with no comment, and for once made little attempt to compete with his old friend in reminiscence or anecdote. It made me sad, although I could not show it. I have never had any intention to do him harm, only exercised the right to happiness myself. And surely William’s state of mind is not entirely on my account. His financial affairs continue precarious; his health is failing, as is his political ambition.

  Richard Seddon is not completely immune to the years himself. His beard is now grey and strangely at odds with the colour of his hair. Louisa has told me privately that he has a heart condition, yet continues to work long hours. If he would agree to get rid of the incompetents among his ministers, the load would be lessened, but he is suspicious of talent and has entrenched loyalty towards old supporters. Unlike William, however, he continues to feel much satisfaction in his life, and is undisputed as leader despite his notorious pomp and verbosity. But he can play to the ordinary people as a larger version of themselves, and they love him for it. Among them he is known as King Dick, and the papers and cartoonists make play with it.