The Larnachs (18 page)

I have grown more detached from William, and critical of his views, but I still admire his toleration and support for other races. His time on the Victorian goldfields among men of so many different backgrounds, races and stations in life shaped his opinions of intrinsic worth, and although he is now accustomed to be with the foremost of the colony, and to be one of them, he has not lost the ability to separate appearance and reality.

Brisbane women are not at all fashionable, and seem unaware that feathers and velvet are the rage in London at present. The dress of many considered society here would be laughed at privately in Dunedin, or Wellington. Mrs Wevets, whose husband is rich and influential, invited me to play at a soirée. She and the other women were overcorseted and wore dresses with bustles far too pronounced to be in fashion. All their buttons were small and dark. The piano was an inferior instrument and out of tune. Mrs Wevets and her dowdy friends talked loudly during my playing, and afterwards could
prattle only of servants, food and children with colic. I endeavoured to bring the conversation around to books, mentioning Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the wonderful Margaret Oliphant, who died only a few weeks ago, but all they were familiar with were the sensational novels of Marie Corelli and Mary Braddon. A distinctly spreading woman with a freckled face told me that
Thelma
was the very best book in the world. I had to bite my tongue and keep to myself the conviction that Corelli’s sentimental and false stories will be forgotten, despite the huge present sales, and that Dickens and Oliphant will live on. I came back to the hotel and told Dougie and William that our acquaintance in Dunedin and Wellington had never seemed so congenial.

Both newspapers here are very bad, full of dull commercial facts and figures, and arch, overwritten accounts of European doings. When I said as much to Dougie, he justly reminded me of an article in the Christmas issue of the
Otago Witness
, giving instruction to young ladies to improve their voices. Recommended cures for hoarseness had included preserved apricots, the inhalation of myrrh on a hot shovel and a teaspoon of syrup of squill and marshmallows. There was also the instruction never to read aloud, or try to speak, in a railway carriage. Dougie and I delight in such absurdity.

The Brisbane tradespeople also show to disadvantage in
comparison
with those of our own colony. Many in the shops demonstrate, by an odd combination of truculence and familiarity, that they resent any implication of inferiority because they serve. There are all sorts of people from all sorts of places, and getting ahead is what matters. On one occasion, when I was returning to the hotel alone,
the cabby asked if I would be willing to come with him for pie and a drink. ‘I’ll show you a good time, lady,’ he said, and no doubt had more to offer. No more than thirty, he was strongly built, but
gap-toothed
, and wore brown boots, a gentleman’s cast-off waistcoat and his trouser ends were tied with leather laces. I got down and left him without word, or payment, and he went off discomforted.

When I told Dougie, he said that so many here are coarse and full of cheek. While at one of the livestock exhibitions, he saw a line of men heading behind the tents, and followed in expectation of a refreshment booth, but found instead a small crowd laughing at the spectacle of a donkey that had been sexually excited. ‘Where else but here, Conny,’ he exclaimed. ‘Where else. We say we’ve freedom and opportunity in the colonies, but my God, there’s still so much ignorance, presumption and cruelty. So many loud, poorly mannered people. God knows what sort of a society will come of it all in a hundred years. And the origins of so many people here are of the worst possible kind: criminals and defectives cast out of England.’

I imagine that in time there will be improvement, and even in the old world, I am told, there is plenty that remains barbarous. Not everyone is intolerable, of course, and my impatience of people is increased by my wish to be with Dougie rather than anyone else. At the luncheon William hosted on behalf of our country, on what was thankfully one of the cooler days, I had a long and pleasant conversation with Ida Maslin, the daughter of the magistrate. Not only was she an attractive young woman in crisp blue muslin with puffed sleeves, but she had only recently returned from France
and Germany, where she had received excellent instruction in languages and music. We quite neglected others at the table and afterwards sat together under a striped awning. So much did we relax in our talk that before we parted she confided to me she had received a proposal of marriage from the son of her tutor in Bordeaux. How entertaining it is to have young and attractive people talk about their flirtations. We agreed to write to one another, and I invited her to visit us. I suppose I will never see her again, but I will remember her gaiety and intelligence.

Whatever my reservations about the general run of society here, at least I am free from the gossip, and the apprehension of gossip, that I face increasingly at home. Nothing has been said to my face that gives me an opportunity to challenge, but nevertheless the tittle-tattle and scrutiny are real. Shortly before we left Wellington, William and I went to a dinner party at the Plimmers’, and after the meal, which had an impressive array of courses, but was marred by the long delays between them, the women went to the drawing rooms and most of the men to the billiards room. In the larger room I enjoyed a lengthy catch-up with Cecilia Higginson, and Violet Enright, then, as courtesy demands, went through to spend time with the other ladies. Mrs Taine, and a Mrs Poole, recently out from Manchester, had their heads together in urgent whisper as I came in, and from Sophia Taine’s momentary confusion, it was clear I had been the topic of disclosure.

I could have turned away, but was resolved not to be intimidated. And how much was my own assumption rather than the truth? Maybe they had been taking satisfaction in criticism of my dress,
or hair, even the disparity in ages between William and me, rather than any unnatural closeness with Dougie.

‘The very person,’ said Mrs Taine, quickly recovering her natural boldness. ‘We were talking of your success in maintaining households both here and in Dunedin, and your favour with William’s children. Not an easy thing to come into a family where the children are already adult.’

‘Indeed not,’ said her companion.

‘Gladys was little more than a child when we married,’ I said, ‘and we have been close.’

‘Yes, of course. The baby of the family. Do come and sit with us,’ said Mrs Taine. I did so, and by design disagreed politely with most of what she said. She accepted each correction meekly, and so confirmed that she had indeed been speaking badly of me. After ten minutes of such strained conversation I excused myself and sought other company.

‘Such a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk,’ said Mrs Poole. ‘We were so far apart at dinner and beforehand that we exchanged little more than introductions.’ And no matter what we had said to each other since, she would go away with Mrs Taine’s opinion of me as her own, such is the fascination of scandal.

William tires more readily now, especially in this unaccustomed heat, and is often happy to go to bed before ten o’clock. I use that as excuse to turn down as many invitations as I can without offence, and Dougie and I wait out his father, then settle to talk. It is a good time of the day, and although Dougie is disappointed we cannot go to the same bedroom, I tell him love expresses itself in many
forms. I enjoy these talks, during which we discard superficial topics and convention, talk quite candidly of things close to our hearts. Light commentary, too, which amuses Dougie. William has rather lost his taste for it. My reflections on other women especially intrigue Dougie: often he laughs out loud. He says he had no idea that women, so correct in public, could be so scathing in their confidences. I do not think I flatter myself when I consider that I have been able to open Dougie’s eyes to the true feelings of both women and men.

I am aware that Dougie’s love entrusts to me a power over him, but the very completeness of his affection is also a reason he might destroy everything. The growing happiness we have in one scale increases the risk and guilt to balance it in the other.

We must both remember that what seems most natural to us is not necessarily so to others. On Tuesday evening the three of us attended one of the better civic dinners put on by the exhibition backers. The tables were mismatched, but with fine enough white and pale blue covers, and the dinner service was of good china, made in England especially for the colony and bearing its own crest. A handsome, dark-haired man, recently arrived from Brussels, had concocted wonderful displays of fruit that were greeted with applause when brought out: pineapples, apples, pears, plums, peaches, melons, apricots, green and black grapes and others I could not recognise. Some were dried or candied, some fresh and cut, some whole and perfect.

The pity was that the speeches lasted longer than the courses, and had less flavour. Dougie drank more claret than was wise,
and towards the end of the night, when a man with mutton-chop whiskers was appropriately enough talking about sheep, Dougie leant over to say something to me, and placed his hand on my lap. Just for a moment, and in the familiarity of it, he flexed his thumb and fingers so that I could feel the pressure on my thigh. So slight a thing, and inconspicuous, but I saw that William had noticed, and his gaze remained steady on us when Dougie had removed his hand and finished talking. Trivial, perhaps, but I have told Dougie to be more careful: our time here must not lead to our undoing.

That night in the restricted hotel bed, William insisted that we make love. He was adamant, too, that I take off my nightdress, so that we were naked on the bed, with the window wide, and little relief in the hot, listless air. His breath was heavy with the banquet; the grey hair of his chest was slicked with sweat. He plucked at my nipples with thumb and finger, and didn’t answer when I said it hurt. ‘Husband and wife. Husband and wife,’ he exclaimed several times as he lay on me, until it was almost part of his urgent rhythm. There was a possessive roughness in his taking of me, and we had little to say afterwards. He turned away and fell asleep, snoring loudly. I lay a long time awake. Somewhere in the heat of the night a dog was barking stubbornly, and I felt tears on my face. What sad places our lives lead us to sometimes, even among days of happiness.

O
n Tuesday Mr Fox took Father and me to see the electric trams that are this year replacing the
horse-drawn
ones here. Fox is a member of the Queensland Parliament and a big-wig among Brisbane businessmen. He has considerable civic and personal pride in the switch to electricity, which he sees as a great leap forward. I didn’t say that horses are a great love of mine, and to have them dispossessed gives no pleasure. Electricity, steam, internal combustion — for me none of these can compare with the living thing, none of them has the brain that allows a horse to make judgements of terrain and distance. Surely no sense of partnership can be possible with a machine.

As we went about, Fox and Father spent some time attempting to impress each other without wishing to appear too obviously vainglorious. Like two bulls in a paddock, they had to test their strength. I couldn’t give a damn about the trams, electric or
otherwise
,
but Conny insisted that I go with them so Father wouldn’t notice that I always prefer to be with her. I find little satisfaction in trailing around with him, being introduced to people I’ll never see again, and who have as little interest in me as I have in them. Now that I have Conny, I have little patience with other people.

After the tram house, Mr Fox took us close to the river, where he described the ’93 Black February floods that devastated the city. From the very spot we stood on, he said, he’d watched whole houses coming down in the rushing water and crashing into the Victoria bridge until it collapsed and was swept away. Dead cattle, sheep, trees and human corpses too. It must have been a terrible time, even allowing for any exaggeration on the part of our guide, but all I could think about was Conny, who had gone into the shops with several ladies of the city. She told me later that she took no more pleasure in the clothes and gossip of her outing, than I did in the trams and stories of the flood.

A few years ago, I would never have believed how completely my life has become centred on one woman. Nothing else is as important to me now. It’s almost as Hugo describes his passion for gaming, which has never much interested me. Riding, fishing and races I still much enjoy, working with stock, billiards with friends, but even in the midst of those, I’ll abruptly feel a sense of loss and longing: a conviction that happiness is elsewhere. Even when with others at the club, my thoughts are often with dear Conny. These few months here, while Father carries out his light official duties and squirrels for business prospects, are a wonderful opportunity for us to spend time together, and maybe she’s right to say we
should be thankful for that, and not push things beyond what is propriety as viewed from the outside.

When the trip was first mooted, Father assumed I would remain at The Camp, running it and the telephone office while they were away. Conny and I couldn’t reveal to him how important it was that I travel with them, but we worked on the angle that unless I accompanied them to Brisbane, Conny would be left alone too often while Father was working and, even more significantly, taking his trips to mining sites up country.

It was a game of subtle manoeuvre at which Conny is most adept. Father had to fall in with our purpose, while thinking it his own idea. I remember the evening clearly. The three of us were coming back from the curved vinery at The Camp that held the Black Hamburg grapes sent out from Brambletye years ago. Father was complaining of the time he would have to spend away, and the insignificance of his appointment. He’d been one of two New Zealand commissioners to the Paris Exhibition nearly twenty years ago, and said sourly that Brisbane could be nothing but a come down.

‘Seddon expects, though, that you’ll find many opportunities to do business,’ said Conny. ‘People from all over Australia and New Zealand will be there, and from Britain as well.’

‘What a focus for trade,’ I put in. ‘And even more to your liking, there’ll be the chance to see for yourself if there’s money to be made by getting in early on prospects up country.’ Nothing interests Father more than the thought that, as in his younger days, he might be in at the beginning of some rich enterprise. And rough
country has a fascination for him too, as he showed during his extraordinary and extended expeditions when minister of mines. ‘You’ll be Johnny on the spot,’ I said.

‘You won’t want me tagging along all the time, or relying on strangers,’ Conny said.

He stopped by the dairy, peered in to take satisfaction from his own produce, then walked farther to look beyond the windbreak trees of The Camp towards the sea. He stood quietly for a moment, puffing air through the characteristic droop of his thick, soft moustache, as was his habit when making a decision. He knew Conny couldn’t be expected to take part in rough and ready trips, despite her vigour and fortitude.

‘It would be best for us all if you came, Dougie,’ he said. ‘Then Conny won’t be dependent on people she doesn’t know. With three of us we have more choice, more alternatives, for each,’ and he lifted his head, a problem solved.

‘It’s the best idea,’ said Conny, as if surprised by it. ‘Yes, quite right.’ She took Father’s arm, not such a common gesture as formerly, and they walked together across the gravel sweep towards the lion steps. It wasn’t that she or I took any pleasure in the deception, but that it was a necessity in both our lives, and no hurt to Father.

How important that decision was. And I’ve reminded myself, during the many boring and trivial events of this trip, that they are merely intervals in the real life that is time with Conny. While looking at the river and listening to the prattling Mr Fox, while sweating in shirtsleeves to watch the exhibition cattle circle, or listening to some pomposity with a chain across his paunch, I know
these are the price of admission to days and nights with my Conny.

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.’