‘Oh, Dougie, Dougie. You’ve no idea of all that would follow: the heartache, the difficulties, the guilt. You don’t realise, do you? So much in our lives would be disconnected at a stroke. Our families have given us position and comfort we take for granted. Everything would let go, and we’d be pariahs. Can’t you see that, for goodness’ sake?’
‘I don’t care. It must be done. Come on, come on, admit it.’
‘It’s rash and stupid not to care,’ she said, ‘and it’s not your decision alone anyway. Everything depends on care, enormous care. One mistake and everything will be carried away helter skelter.’
I do care. More than anything else I want us to be happy. The bond between Conny and me will be even stronger because of the sacrifice we’ve made to achieve it. Separation from Conny will bring Father temporary pain, but they’ve already drawn apart in private. Continuing the marriage won’t bring them any closer, and will mean lifelong agony for us.
As I spoke, Conny sat very upright, hands folded in her lap with conscious calm. How trim, lovely and resolute she was, even in the midst of argument, and not afraid to meet my gaze. Other women grow heavy, but Conny remains youthful. ‘It has to be done,’ I told her. ‘My God, it just does.’
‘Destroy him publicly, and we’ll bring everything down,’ she said. ‘Even what’s between you and me.’
‘He’s a tough old man. He’s survived the loss of two wives already, and he’ll cope with the separation from you. He needs only himself as the centre of the world.’
‘You don’t really think that, Dougie. He’s not well. You know that. He’s not well, and he’s worried about money, and he’s disappointed about almost everything in his life.’
‘Nothing’s going to change that.’
‘Maybe not for the better, but it can for the worse. Anyway,’ she said, ‘if you really want to be honest, let’s admit we need him. How in heaven can we get by in any bearable way if we leave The Camp? What money or prospects have we got without him? Some horrid life in a dreary town with you working for some inferior man in business, and I teaching music to schoolgirls. I get sick thinking about it.’
‘It won’t come to that, and anyway we’d be together.’
‘I’m his wife and you’re his son.’
I was angry with her then. She sees me as dependent on Father, fails to understand that it’s only her presence that keeps me tied to The Camp. I could make my own way in the world, and will, if only she’ll come with me. ‘You’re afraid,’ I told her. ‘With all your high talk of the rights of women to have an equal education, votes and lives of their own, you’re scared. You won’t give up the advantages of being the wife to a husband you don’t love. You’re afraid, and that makes a coward of me too.’
‘I’m afraid because I know more. It’s so much more difficult for a woman — so much harder to recover any position, or respectability, once it’s lost. Better for us to take happiness when we can and not threaten what we have.’
‘It’s not enough. He’s got to be told.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said. ‘Not now. Nothing’s to be said to him,’ and when I kept arguing, she moved to the piano stool and began playing. Sullivan it was, and when I came and put my hand on her arm to prevent her playing, she shrugged me off and continued. Had we been alone in the house I may well have shouted at her, or forced her to stop, but I had to stand apart a little, angry and bewildered. Conny’s so clever at controlling a situation, so accustomed to starting or finishing a conversation when she wishes, or deciding what will be talked about.
We love each other, without a doubt, but we can’t agree on how we live with that love. The pain of our disagreement is all the greater because we’re so close, and I recognise that my anger is more despair and longing than any wish to hurt her. I leant towards her. ‘We mustn’t fight,’ I said. ‘Not you and me. Dear Jesus, we’ve only got each other.’
‘We must accept what’s possible,’ she said, ceasing to play, but leaving her hands on the keys, fingers moving slightly in agitation. ‘You can be such a fool about some things.’
‘And that’s all I am to you. A fool?’
‘I love you, but you’re not always right. That’s what I mean.’
‘You just don’t want to see it.’
‘I don’t ever want to see what it leads to, and that’s clear to me in a dreadful way.’
‘There must be some way out,’ I said. ‘Somehow we must be together.’
‘But just not now. Not now when William has put me to the test.’
I could see she was on the point of tears and said no more.
So we parted that evening, and again two days later when she and Father took the steamer to Wellington, with things not right between us. Our kiss to the cheek was formal, and her eyes were down. She can’t quite bring herself to let go of one life and seize the other. Despite all her intelligence and independence she still can’t do that, so I must make it inevitable for both our sakes.
The night she and the old man went north, I had a dream — a release from the turmoil I experience. I was a boy again, before we all left for England in ’78, before Brambletye and St Leonard’s, before I grew up and realised that Father has his share of very human failings, before I had any understanding, or fear, of the power of death and love in one’s life.
He and I were standing on the cobbles of the stable yard while a groom took the saddles from our horses. The sky was clear blue and the wind from the sea was cool on my sweaty riding trousers. The boy was about my own age, with long, straw hair and thin, bare arms, the skin of which seemed laid directly to the bone. He looked like a Lefroy, though I don’t recall we ever employed one of that family in the stables. He was clumsy with the girth strap of my horse, causing it to shy, but Father said nothing until we had walked beyond earshot, and the boy had led the horses away. He held one hand as a shade for his eyes in the slant sun of evening.
‘You could’ve been him,’ he said, ‘living a life of trivial service. Birth for you and me has been a happy accident, an opportunity to show our mettle to the world. A good start, what a lucky thing it is, but then again a man can do almost anything with pluck and endeavour. Remember that.’
In the dream I had no reply, for he was suddenly my father of old. He stood looking at me with a smile that bushed out his moustache. The blue of the sky and the green of the trees were presences, not merely colours, and leaves scuttled on the cobbles. ‘Eh?’ he said, but I still had no answer, just the powerful sense of him. His hand was still raised, resembling a salute, and then he reached out with it and gave me the slight squeeze above my elbow that was his typical sign of affection. ‘Never mind, Dougie boy, never mind,’ he said finally. ‘All’s well.’ And I woke with tears on my face.
Thirteen
Wednesday the 12th of October 1898 was the day hell burst upon me. William has killed himself.
Things rage in my mind and I struggle to survive. Everything is sucked into the whirlpool. I cry out against what has happened, but cannot change it, and know I must bear some responsibility for the agony that drove him to this. I grieve for the husband I once admired and was close to, and feel anger that he has taken the weak man’s way out.
It was just another evening in the lives of most people, but the end for William, and for me too in a real way. Every day marks some cataclysm for people somewhere in the world, yet presents a benign countenance to all the others.
In my mind’s eye I see the coloured window on the staircase of The Camp, with the cat and the motto that William chose for the Larnachs — Sans Peur, without fear. What irony and sadness that he did not have the courage to face what life has brought the three of us, and now lies dead with a bullet in his brain.
There were signs, of course, and I did my best to show William I would not desert him. He had forbidden Dougie to come to Wellington, claiming that The Camp and Otago business matters were being neglected, although he allowed only limited collaboration between Dougie and Basil
Sievwright. There was a desolation in the struggle between father and son, and no solution that could fit us all. Several times over the weekend before, I thought William was about to accuse me directly of being in love with Dougie. He asked me if I’d received any letters from him that might have interesting news, and on the Sunday morning he twice wandered into the room I was in, seemed as if he was about to say something of consequence and then went away without doing so. I learnt later that on the same day he asked John Costall at the parliamentary library if there were any suspicions that his mail was being tampered with. It was surely the letter from Dougie he was expecting.
When we were changing for the evening meal, he stood behind me at the mirror for a time and watched our reflections as I brushed my hair. In the last few months he had become much thinner, and the spark so typical of him quite gone. Even his voice was unusually subdued and hollow with disillusion. ‘We should have travelled more,’ he said. ‘Instead of just Parliament and The Camp, we should have gone to places fresh for both of us. We needed more that was just between ourselves. I realise that now.’
‘Maybe, but there’s never time,’ I said. ‘Politics and business matters always crowd each other in your life.’ And had they not, would it have made any difference? Would Dougie and I not have found each other anyway?
‘Business has tides that go out and in. If you hold your nerve you’ll be all right, but if others panic then everyone can be dragged down. I haven’t been treated well, even by Seddon, but my value’s less to him now. Anyway, family is more important. I know you understand that.’ He waited a while, as if hoping for a reply, but what answer could I make that was sincere? Then he left without saying more, and at the table spoke only briefly about blocked guttering at the front of the house, said that we had forgotten to send birthday greetings to his sister and that Thomas might be with us later that night.
On Tuesday he was particularly despondent and I told him I would put off the practice arrangements I had made with Fanny and sit in the gallery. ‘You’ll see and hear nothing that you haven’t experienced before,’ he said flatly.
‘But we’ll be aware of each other,’ I said.
‘Which one of us will gain most from that?’ William was looking at me with a strange intentness, and I was unsure of his meaning.
‘Don’t you want me to come then?’
‘If you think it your place to be there, and want to be there,’ he said.
He didn’t return home for lunch, or dinner, and Molly said he had left no message. In the evening I sat in the gallery until long after they had returned from supper. William looked up only occasionally. He took no part in the debate.
He didn’t come home that night, and again there was no message. There had been occasional times before when he had slept at the club — if he had been particularly busy, or needed to attend some late-night haggle to be ready for a political foray the next day. But I knew, this time, that something was wrong, some dipping down of spirits that was both immensely sad and impossible for either of us to prevent. I hardly slept at all and spent the time in the blue velvet chair by the window, wrapped in a rug and watching the leaping shadows of the shrubs in the windy darkness of the garden. My own voice seemed to be in the skirl of the wind. Everything was being hurried on and unravelled: nothing could be retrieved, and I was sad and helpless.
When William did not appear on Wednesday for lunch or dinner, I sent a message to Alfred asking him to go to Parliament and find him. I had not the courage to go myself. What he had to tell me on his eventual return I would have given my life to undo. The shock was great, but it was not altogether a surprise. After being away for a long time, Alfred returned hatless and agitated to tell me William had been found dead in one of the committee rooms. ‘He’s shot himself in the head, Conny. My God, what a thing it is.’ I told him I couldn’t bear to hear the details. ‘No, no, I understand. It’s beyond belief. I’ve sent someone to tell Annie and she’ll be here soon to be with you. Seddon himself wishes to come and see you tonight. As soon as Annie arrives, I’ll go back to Parliament. Seddon was called out at 9 p.m. and given the news. He’s gone back to the debating chamber to inform the House and ask the Speaker for an immediate adjournment. What an awful public business it will all become, but we’ll protect you.’
He gave me a quick, tight hug, then guided me to the sofa and sat down beside me.
‘The Otago family need to be told as soon as possible,’ I said.
‘Of course, yes, but best everything be done with despatch: the inquest and the funeral, all the farewells. The sooner it’s over the less gossip will be encouraged. William wasn’t well — that’s really all people need to understand. Overwork and that damned business with the banks. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s behind it. Anything else is unhelpful speculation.’
‘Can something so terrible be so clear?’
‘Be careful, Conny,’ he said. ‘All William has left now is reputation. Everything else is private to us in the family.’
‘Meaning?’ I said, but he wouldn’t meet my eye.
‘That it’s our grief, that’s all. Nothing to do with an inquisitive public. God, what an awful thing. To be driven so hard beyond endurance that there’s no other way.’
I was unable to reply. Anything I might say seemed inadequate and false. How sad and desperate poor William must have been, and with no one he could turn to. Even as we lived together over the last few days, this terrible decision must have been on his mind. As he looked at me across the table, perhaps he imagined lifting the pistol to his forehead.
When Alfred and Richard Seddon later came back to the house, Thomas Cahill was with them, and Annie met them and brought them through to me. With awkward gallantry the premier put his arm around my shoulders, before a word was spoken, and kissed my cheek. His sorrow and shock were manifestly genuine, and I was surprised at the pleasure I took in that, even in my own turmoil. The pleasure was not for myself, but for William, who would never feel it. Increasingly he had considered himself inadequately appreciated by his friend, but Seddon’s sincere affection was clearly evident that night. Several times even his robust voice shook as we talked quietly in the room where so often William had laughed with us all. ‘My resources are available to you,’ he said. ‘It’s the least we can do. I’ve been talking with Alfred, and we’ve agreed the inquest will be held as quickly as possible, probably tomorrow. Nothing is achieved by a long police investigation in such a sad case. In the House tomorrow I shall speak of William’s contribution to the country and our close friendship for many years. Some members have already said they wish the opportunity to record their appreciation.’
I imagine I thanked him. I do remember for some reason how his beard rustled on his waistcoat as he spoke, and the discomforted face of my brother over his shoulder. I would have liked the opportunity to talk to Thomas alone — he was closest to William and most likely to know the truth of his death — but Seddon was to the fore as ever. Thomas did give a word of real comfort as they were leaving. ‘There was no suffering whatsoever, I can swear to that,’ and he took my hand with a brief pressure. Often he had enthralled us with stories of the macabre deaths he had been called to, and now William himself was added to the list. Yet I cling to Thomas’s assurance that William’s death was instantaneous. He was the closest of William’s friends, and very much shaken despite his professional experience with such tragedies.
Grief’s immediate effect is often a deadening of response, I think. I experienced that when Father died, and now again I find myself sad and shocked, but also oddly distanced, so that in the midst of company my attention will be momentarily caught by an ornament askew, the flight of a bird, or scuff marks on my shoes. My vision has been affected: things alter suddenly in perspective, so that objects near to me suddenly recede and those at a distance rear up for a moment.
Annie is closest to me of all my sisters, and being unmarried she is able to stay with me, even sleeping with me when I’m at m
y lowest. Not that I have been able to sleep much. In the night more than the day I have sudden fits of vomiting, and even when there is no food to come up the paroxysm causes considerable pain. I find when lying, or sitting, that suddenly my legs will start an involuntary twitching. Now that William has gone, the things I most admired in him are fresh in my mind, and the grievances and disappointments of more recent times fade somewhat. I meant him no harm. No harm. I can swear to that.
Dougie left The Camp as soon as he had news, and is with us here, but we manage little time together. He is involved with the arrangements to take William home to Dunedin on the Hinemoa, just as we took poor Kate’s casket some years ago. Alfred dislikes us being in public together. Dougie did come to see me as soon as he arrived in Wellington. Naturally he was agitated and upset, yet still trying to give me support. There was a strange reserve between us, even though we were alone in the drawing room, almost as if William still stood between us. Dougie kept asking about his father’s personal papers at the time of his death and the whereabouts of his attaché case. When I told him that Alfred had brought it back to the house, he insisted on being allowed to see it.
I knew then that Dougie had written the letter to his father that I had feared and vehemently opposed. I brought the case from the study: worn, brown leather and brass catches speckled with age. Dougie rummaged through it, half turned away, but took nothing. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked. ‘No envelopes in his pockets?’
‘You told him,’ I said. ‘After all you promised, you told him.’
Dougie was shaking, but he didn’t reply for a time, then tried to take my hands in his. ‘All I wanted was to act in an honourable way and to be able to be with you. By Christ, I swear to that,’ he said finally.
The pendulum of one’s life must sometime pass the lowest point, and in that moment, with dear, foolish Dougie weeping silently beside me, I knew I had reached the nadir. Despite the sunlight through the large window and quietness in the house, there seemed a wind roar in the distance and a grimace on the outlines of the furniture. My stomach knotted, but would not allow the relief of regurgitation. This awful time is where love and life have led us. It must be faced, not denied. The buggy rides Dougie and I took to and from Dunedin and about the new roads of the peninsula, the times together at the piano, the glances exchanged when in tiresome company, the assignations in the big house and more occasionally here, the wonderful naked freedom in Kirri, the support and loyalty one to another, were all steps on the way to William’s death, though in none of it was there intention to do harm. What responsibility does one have for the decisions of others? Dougie need not have written to his father as a challenge to the marriage: William’s response was not in character if he had been in full health and financially secure.
The Larnachs Page 21
