The last year has not been an easy one, but Dougie’s love has been unwavering. Despite his obligations at The Camp, he came up several times to Wellington during the months William and I were there. He would have come more, regardless of the cost and wearisome travel, except for my remonstrance that it might occasion general gossip, and arouse suspicion in William. And the visits provide so little time for us to be alone. We did, on his last trip, have a wonderful meal at the Trocadero restaurant, which I consider Wellington’s best. William was to be with us, but had stomach pains, so Dougie and I went together. What talk and laughter we had, while maintaining a family appearance and showing nothing of our true feelings to the world.
Also we went together to a chamber concert presented by Maughan Barnett, not so long ago appointed organist at St John’s. Wellington is crowded with music teachers, and the newspapers full of their solicitations and extravagant claims. Unfortunately, most are both poor practitioners and inadequate teachers, yet they gather in coteries to flatter and support each other and their students. Many are little more than housewives looking to make pin money from the ever-present demand as every socially aspiring family scrapes together the funds to ensure their daughters have the right genteel accomplishments to bring to the marriage market.
Barnett, although he cannot be much more than thirty, is one of the few with true talents as a player, composer and teacher, and he has formed an excellent musical society here. I adore his piano playing, and if my life was more tranquil would myself seek lessons from him, for I am never satisfied with my own performances. He is originally from England, where he was briefly appointed to St Mary Magdalen at St Leonard’s on Sea. What wry delight Dougie took in that, especially as Barnett’s health collapsed while he was there: the reason he is with us now. ‘You see what sort of a place it is,’ Dougie exclaimed. ‘Only broken men escape St Leonard’s.’ The composer played some of his own pieces — ‘Serenade’, ‘Chanson Sans Paroles’, ‘Valse’ and ‘Albumblatt’. The first was especially affecting, and as we listened, Dougie and I clasped hands beneath his street coat, which lay between us.
There are few opportunities for lovemaking in Wellington: the house is so much smaller, the servants are always about, the neighbours are close. Callers are frequent, and even when William is away little can be ventured. To have proximity without release goads Dougie into a strange tension, although he tries to restrain himself for my sake, and says just to be with me, even in company, is pleasure for him.
At the end of the parliamentary session, Dougie also joined us for several days in Christchurch: William and I were travelling south and Dougie was up on estate business. We were the guests of William’s acquaintance, Joseph Palmer, at Woodford House. Mr Palmer was once the chief officer of the Union Bank and he and William have had many dealings over the years. William says he is a very clever man, and one who sails close to the wind. His wife, Emily, is the daughter of Sir James Fisher of South Australia. Woodford House, which has forty rooms and stands in extensive, well-kept grounds, is very much at the centre of Christchurch society, and during our five days there we enjoyed a garden party, tennis games, a musical afternoon with pipers and even a pony race in which several women, including me, took part.
The chief subject among the women seemed to be the scandal surrounding a certain Arthur Worthington and his Temple of Truth. I gather that he was an American, a religious charlatan and multiple bigamist, who had built up a substantial following, and personal fortune, by promoting promiscuity under the guise of universal love. Emily said that last year he entered yet another illegal marriage, with a girl of fifteen, fell into debt and final disrepute, and just a few months ago fled Christchurch to Australia. The fierce interest that respectable women take in such sexual imbroglios makes me wonder if the cause is a lack of physical satisfaction in their own lives.
I like Emily, and there was a novelty to mixing with an almost entirely fresh set of people in Christchurch, but a greater pleasure was having some time with Dougie among folk who saw nothing at all unusual in the three of us together, or Dougie and I without his father. The Palmers put a gig at our disposal and we went into the city. How regular and even Christchurch is, and what foresight the city fathers have shown in the provision of that fine Hagley Park. Donald attended Christ’s College, but Dougie and William neither know the city well nor have much affection for it. As we came back to Woodford, Dougie drove down a track behind a disused brickworks and halted the horse there. We sat close and kissed and marvelled at how much flat land stretched away before the mountains in the distance. Canterbury’s landscape is so entirely unlike that of Otago and Wellington. Dougie would have done more, but it was too dangerous, and too undignified.
At such times I think any risk and sacrifice would be worthwhile if it enabled us to be together, but perhaps our feelings would then subside into the humdrum practice of couples accustomed to each other’s company. How much of the intensity Dougie and I experience arises from the brief focus of time we have alone?
I was at least able to come south nearly four months ago for Dougie’s birthday on August 27th. I made no pretence to William that there was any pressing reason for a return to The Camp other than to ensure Dougie had family with him on his special day. William would have travelled himself had parliamentary duties permitted, but of the others only Gladys bothered to be present for her brother’s celebration. The weather during the steamer trip was foul, and I was quite unsteady for a day afterwards, yet all was worth it to see dear Dougie’s face when I arrived. During the long buggy ride home we seldom stopped talking and laughing, despite the cold, and any silences welled with unspoken pleasure in our being together.
During the ride I gave Dougie his gift: oblong silver cufflinks set with bright blue stones the jeweller told me came from northern India. Dougie said they were the finest he had ever seen, that he would never wear any others, and kissed me. All was as it should be when lovers come together once again after being parted.
He wore the cufflinks the next night at the dinner to mark his birthday, happy among his own friends such as Robert, Hugo and Ted, and some we held in common such as the Hockens and Morleys. And afterwards, instead of the men going into the library, or the billiard room, we all went to the large music room that I had ensured was warm and welcoming. Robert had prevailed on Jane to create a surprise: he called her in to tell tales of Dougie’s childhood in order to embarrass him and entertain us. Standing there in her apron, she spoke with considerable seriousness and seemed surprised by the laughter created by almost everything she said.
When she was released, Dougie wanted me to play, and I did, all of us joining in to sing, first to wish him a happy birthday, and then on to other songs with great volume, but little melody.
Dougie stood close to me, resting his hand on my shoulder until he caught my eye. But much later I denied him nothing when he came to me, despite the full house, quietly opening the bedroom door and slipping in beside me with a sigh of satisfaction. It was a birthday night as I knew he wished it, and so did I. Hail rattled on the windows, the wind swirled among the jutting chimneys and around the small turret above the tower, and Dougie and I lay in each other’s arms, warm and loved. He had brought the blue ribbon that had tied his birthday present, and he looped it about my neck, saying I was the gift he valued above all. When I woke he was gone as I knew he would be, creeping back before dawn to his own room, but the silk ribbon was still around my neck, and his soft words still with me. ‘Nothing else matters, thank God,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing in the world matters except us.’
When William first returned to Parliament, I looked forward to the sessions — my city, my friends and family around me, the political life quite familiar. The cultural life is more various, too, and visiting performers are common. At The Camp I am in the Larnach world, and have felt sometimes almost under siege by William’s daughters in the flesh, and by the shades of his former wives. Although Colleen and Alice seldom visit, they have their spies at The Camp and in town.
Dougie has changed my feelings towards Otago. We are so happy when we are together, and Dunedin and the peninsula are the only places where it is fully natural for that to be so. Even my sister Annie’s long and special affection does not compensate for Dougie’s absence, and now I cannot share with her what has become the central part of my life. So with inner eagerness I came back with William as he prepared for the December election campaign, and we planned another Christmas and the festivities of the ’97 New Year.
This time I spent little of the campaign on the hustings with William. His manner at the meetings has become increasingly aggressive and dismissive, and there is not the pleasure in the visits to Naseby and Lawrence that I felt over two years ago. His absences provide the opportunity for Dougie and me to share our lives: not just the matching of our bodies, but the talks and walks, the buggy rides and entertainment of friends. I know Dougie would go all out and make a break with family and society so that we could be always together, but he fails to realise the full consequence of that: the terrible blow it would be to William and my family, the smirking satisfaction of Donald and his sisters, the loss of position and resources that would undermine our love in the end, and lead to rancour and disappointment.
There is a sort of dangerous blindness in Dougie’s love that I admire for its completeness, and fear for its unworldliness. What is love? I am unsure if Dougie’s dedication is the sign of utter selfishness, or the reverse. To have a man want you is a flattering, but commonplace, experience; to have a man truly care for you is indeed special. I tell him that we must fit our affection within the lives we have, bearing with the compromises that permit its continuation. After all, so much of what we share is quite open and legitimate as family and friends. The other is of concern only to ourselves. For Dougie, love seems an all or nothing thing.
William was re-elected for Tuapeka, but even that gives him little joy. He became involved in a war of words with the editor of the Tuapeka Times over the coarseness of his language, and to a considerable degree was in the wrong, whatever the provocation. Bitterness now seems to seep into everything for him, replacing the generosity and goodwill that attracted me when I first met him. Money matters continue to plague him, and his investments are increasingly difficult to realise in cash. Seddon still demands support and advice, but holds off on the knighthood that is justly due. William is also becoming more and more accident-prone, almost as if he defiantly offers himself to the fates. In the middle of the year he scalded his hand so badly that Thomas Cahill made him spend time in the hospital, and not long after, while briefly back at The Camp, he was laid up from a kick on the knee by a cattle beast. Dougie said had it been a shod horse he would have been lame for life. At times, both of them seem walking exemplars of past misfortunes.
This year, too, William’s uncle Donald died. He had been hospitable and helpful when William was in England many years ago as colonial treasurer, and was equally supportive of the children after William and Eliza returned to the colony. It is a disagreeable surprise to see how little William mourns his uncle, how scant the sympathy he expresses for his Aunt Jane. Although he has never quite said as much, I think he is disappointed he received nothing of substance in the will.
In adversity some men show to advantage, while others retreat from the best principles they once held. I try to continue to be a good wife to William, but things are not as they were. The change is as much in him as me, and I confess to myself that I no longer love him, not in the way I thought I once did. I think that would have happened whether or not Dougie and I became close. In a strange way, perhaps what Dougie and I have enables me to be a more stoical and sympathetic companion for his father. I no longer expect, or need, William to be the close confidant I sought in marriage.
Our disagreements grow, often concerning things apparently unconnected with our feelings for each other, yet reflecting in some way what has gone wrong. Last week we had a party for William’s Dunedin political supporters — all male, and mainly crass people seeking some advantage from the association. I was pleased not to spend much time in their company, and happy to stand with William at the lion steps to see them leave. On such a sunny afternoon the grounds were an attractive prospect as the buggies, gigs and carriages wheeled away. The trees and shrubs planted over twenty years ago now give The Camp a settled, attractive appearance, in contrast to the stark, raw wilderness of the first photographs. In another twenty years it will be quite as it should, whether I am here to enjoy it or not.
It was warm and pleasant standing there, but watching the businessmen go reminded me of the times guests had scurried down the steps in rain, wind or hail. The Camp lacks a carriage cover, such as the best private homes provide, that would allow women in particular to come and go with comfort and dignity — and the weather is often unfavourable. On dark, inhospitable days, when I stand on the foreshortened steps and look up at the lowering sky, it seems the great stone mass of The Camp is about to come down in turmoil upon me.
I mentioned it again to William, not as any reflection on his planning of the place, but his reply was impatient and unpleasantly sharp. It would spoil the appearance of the front, he said, and would be ridiculously expensive beside. ‘A minute in the rain isn’t too much to ask even of pampered women in society,’ he said. ‘You won’t melt, you know.’ So we went up the steps and inside — William to his library, I to the drawing room — and nothing more was said.
How passing and inconsequential such a brush of different opinions might seem, but every exchange in a marriage is a signal of its underlying strength, or fragility, of positions taken and grievances maintained. The dismissal in his tone stayed with me, and we barely spoke to each other during the evening.
On another occasion he rebuked me for not wishing to accept an invitation to a soirée at the McGeadons. Mrs McGeadon is a Dunedin woman of considerable wealth, but little understanding or talent, who has taken it upon herself to be a leading hostess in the community. Her gatherings are staid and the attendance, predictably, confined to families of influence. Bessie, Ethel and I have to some extent set up in competition to her and several others of like ilk, and I believe we have brought a breath of fresh air to social and musical gatherings. Earlier in our marriage, William would have been supportive of my decision, for he, too, is easily bored, but he complained that a refusal would give needless offence. ‘You need to consider our position, Conny,’ he said, ‘and not merely your own preference for variety. Many of these people are my business associates in one way or another, or political supporters. I wish you’d realise that the choice of our company can’t be solely your estimation of people’s wit and talent.’
‘By all means go yourself then. We’re not joined at the hip.’
‘But we are joined by marriage,’ he said, ‘and each of us is judged partly by the attitude and behaviour of the other.’
There are more subtle indications that we have grown apart. We no longer ensure that each knows what is important in the other’s life. When we were first married, almost everything of import that William spoke of in company had been shared with me beforehand, but increasingly my knowledge of his feelings and doings comes from what he says in the presence of others, and I suspect that if they were not there I would not be told at all. William does not do it deliberately, I am sure, but it is painful to be relegated in this way. His thoughtlessness makes it the more telling and distressful, and I find myself in turn reserving all that is important of my inner life for Dougie alone.
So William and I have reached the tolerated and baffled partnership that always has appalled me when I recognise it in others: a fortitude of composure lest expression of real feelings release pent-up disappointments. Ethel Morley shares this with me, I know. When they were last with us, Lowell contradicted her brusquely at the table concerning some matter of their proposed trip to Sydney and she gave way graciously. When I mentioned it afterwards, she seemed resigned. ‘Oh, we rub along together. That’s the way of it for most women in their marriage, I suppose.’
William seldom comes to my bed now, and though I have rarely refused him, I am glad of that. When he does come, he begins with a sort of desperate urgency that has no satisfying outcome for either of us, and afterwards he will mumble something and return to his own room rather than lie with me and talk as once we did. And how predictable he is always in lovemaking, with none of his son’s exhilarating and impulsive ingenuity. William seems quite suddenly to have become an old man, and to be both aware and resentful of it. Small things, such as the hairs growing in his ears, the cracking of his knuckles, the sleep residue at the corner of his eyes, and his open-mouthed breathing and puffing moustache, irk me now. The tolerance of such things, which is part of love, has gone.
I endeavour to encourage him in most things, but not in coupling. Dougie is the only man I welcome in that way, though the situation holds special penalties for me. The most dismay and self-reproach I have experienced since accepting him has been in those times when, after some fervent tryst with him, carefully organised within The Camp, or the town, his father has come to me in the night, and I have taken the weight of a husband after that of his son has barely lifted. I have wept when by myself after such encounters, and made pledges to tell Dougie all is over, but they are never kept. He said one night that if I conceived a child, it would not matter who in appearance it favoured, because of his similarity to his father. He meant it as humour, but I felt only pain and anger, and told him so.
There are, though, wonderful and open times with Dougie that require no subterfuge and make all difficulties worthwhile. Yesterday afternoon we sat in the cane chairs on the northern verandah, which looks out to the great stable and the glasshouses. The sun was warm through the glass and the sky powder blue. This is one of my favourite parts of the house. High up are slim panels of green, blue, red and yellow Italian glass, which were made jewels in the bright light. William was with us for a time, talking of Ward’s bankruptcy and Justice Williams’s part in forcing it. Expressing bitterness and hostility has become one of the few remaining ways in which he gets satisfaction. But then he went and Dougie and I were left to talk together. ‘He’s stirred up,’ said Dougie. ‘He’ll off to the den and write to Seddon, telling him how the finances of the colony should be managed while failing in his own affairs, and asking for his knighthood.’
‘Yes, but let’s talk about us,’ I said. William occupies enough of our lives as of right, without being the subject of the time we have together. ‘What dreams have you had that we can puzzle out an explanation for?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t dream. You have them, but won’t share them, or you wake too slowly and they drain away before they’re fixed in your memory.’
‘I never seem to dream. I do sometimes have a sense of their experience fading, like colours walking off in the distance.’
‘I don’t always dream,’ said Dougie. He feels, I think, there is something childish in the nature of dreams; in the discussion of such things that are not practical. He reveals them to no one but me. William never talks about his dreams, and I don’t ask.
‘No, but tell me your last one,’ I said. Dougie has full cheeks like his father, and a full moustache also. His skin has a slight, attractive burnish from the sun. The light caught his strong hands resting on his lap, a curved pipe in one. I felt a passing frisson at his obvious delight in our being together there: our sharing, the trust we have in each other. We are a lucky couple, here, now, despite our odd situation, of which, I hope, the world knows nothing.
‘It was St Leonard’s again. I was standing in the cold shadow of the chapel,’ said Dougie, ‘and I could see Roper, the classics master, in a singlet and long, soft trousers, doing exercises in the quad. He was a sort of muscular Christian who believed strongly in original sin and he had a fat wife who hardly ever appeared outdoors. No one saw her. Anything that was very rare, we used to call a Roper’s wife. Anyway, in the dream he was doing these exercises, clapping his hands above his head and jumping astride at the same moment, then bringing his legs together and hands down again. And he was calling out, “I see you, boy. Come here at once, boy”, but moving his head about as if blind.’
‘Did you hate him?’
‘Not really. Almost all the teachers seemed in some way preposterous.’
‘And that was all the dream?’ I asked.
‘Well, it got dark suddenly, as if there was an eclipse, and even colder. I couldn’t see him any more, but I could hear his hands clapping above his head, and his voice calling out to me, “I see you, boy.”’
‘You’re free of all that now. You have a life among people to whom you matter.’
‘I suppose he’s dead now and left a fat widow in hiding.’ Dougie waved a hand as if brushing aside unpleasant memories, diminishing their power.
So we sat in the warmth and security of The Camp verandah and talked of Dougie’s cold dream of unhappy school days. How altered the Dougie I know now from the diffident yet inwardly sensitive person I first met. Then he was on the periphery of my concern, now he is essential to it. Gradually his life is revealed for me in his confidences, his behaviour, his lovemaking, the places dear to him. Our affection has given us another sense with which to understand each other, and now we cannot live without it.
‘I’ve been reading of Phaedra,’ I said.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Her. Another sign of the deficiencies of your Mr Roper.’
‘In what way?’ Dougie had a hand up as a sun visor so that he could read my expression.
‘Phaedra was the wife of Theseus, King of Athens, and she fell in love with her stepson, Hippolytus.’
‘And they had a damn good time of it, I imagine,’ Dougie said.
‘They both died.’
‘Everybody dies,’ said Dougie. ‘Just tell me that they loved.’ He lay well back in his chair, relaxed, happy and vulnerable.
‘You’ll have to find out for yourself,’ I said, but I knew he was unlikely to bother. Dougie is not much of reader, certainly not the classics. He might dream of Mr Roper, but he developed no enthusiasm for the subject he taught.
‘Tell me about it tonight,’ he said with purpose. William was to be in town.
Now that we are lovers in all respects, there is a change in Dougie. He laughs more often, is more optimistic, seems younger. I am reassured and gladdened to see how happy my affection makes him. He likes to create small secrets and signs between us, code words only we two know. He has christened one of the young Newfoundland dogs Potf, and likes to have it with us when we walk in the grounds. ‘What?’ said William on first hearing it. ‘What sort of a name is that for dog? No meaning and unpronounceable as well.’
‘It’s Egyptian,’ said Dougie. He and I know that it stands for the pleasures of the flesh, so important to him that he burns to seize me at every opportunity. Potf is a silly joke between us, but there is a childishness to love that speaks of trust and spontaneous happiness.
In our case, however, there is apprehension too. The bond Dougie and I share has become the focus of my life, but a price of anxiety must be paid for it. In moments of despondency I envy those women who have given up expectation of a close understanding with a man and reveal their true selves only to women friends. They are free from the scrutiny of connection between the sexes that society delights in, and the emotional dependence, painful rebuffs and misunderstandings. It must, though, mean the loss of the most fulfilling and natural relationship of which we are capable.
Not long ago, when Dougie and I were walking by the raised Italian garden, he told me that only when with me did he feel a complete man. What a lovely, flattering paradox, and all about me seemed the brighter, fresher, for it: the sun, the colours, the fragrances. A single seabird, high in the sky, was wheeling freely, as if from some natural joy of flight. I would have kissed Dougie had we been in private. ‘Pick me some flowers,’ I said.
‘Anything but foxgloves,’ he replied, for they are William’s favourite.
On the 17th of December Dougie and I attended a pre-Christmas entertainment in the Choral Hall, put on by the Dunedin Shakespeare Club. Several times over the last few years, its president, a Mr Wilson, has invited me to join, and once to be its patron, but besides being too busy, I have heard reports that the club consists almost totally of middle-aged women more interested in the social cachet of membership than in study of the great man. The evening proved to be rather like George du Maurier’s curate’s egg. Professor William Salmond, small, thin and yet another Scotsman, gave an excellent lecture on the uses of poetry, but the readings from King John were a trial to sit through and the musical selections mediocre. Dougie said I could have played Grieg’s ‘Auf den Bergen’ so much better myself, and although love makes him partial, it is true.
On the way back with the Morleys, with whom we stayed the night in their Forbury Road home, Dougie amused us by talking of ordinary things in an outrageously theatrical voice, and would have attempted to come late to my room had I not made it obvious, in a brief moment apart from the others, that the risk was too great. He consoled himself by drinking excessively with Lowell at a late hour and had a heavy head on our ride back to The Camp the following day. I had little sympathy. Not only is drunkenness unappealing, but who knows what Dougie in his cups might say about us. The trip home lacked its customary pleasure.
I visited Ethel again just a few days afterwards. The Morley shipping money has provided one of the finest houses in the town, but it is Ethel’s taste that sets it off to advantage. She is one of those women nature has fashioned to a man’s inclination: tall, olive-skinned and full of figure. It is no surprise that eligible Lowell Morley chose her from among her rivals. Her more enduring asset is intelligence. Appearances would suggest she has everything, but her marriage offers little apart from position and security. While we were walking in her garden, Lowell came out briefly to say he was leaving for the club and to remind her of an evening engagement. Wealth dresses him notably, but it cannot give him presence, or sensibility. Already balding, he has a mole-like, protuberant face and a humourless laugh. He is all physicality, lacking the perceptive response to life and his fellows that would bestow character.
‘I am married to a silly man,’ Ethel said when he had left us. It was not said with malice, or particular disappointment, but with candid resignation. She had weighed up the advantages and drawbacks of the life he offered, and made her choice. She stood with me in the lovely garden before her fine house, dressed in a manner admired and imitated by other women, and admitted she was tied, of her own will, to an inferior person. William is admirable by contrast, yet I also find myself in a trap of my own choosing. My advantage is that I have someone to love, my dilemma that it is forbidden.
Ethel and I walked through to the gazebo, wreathed with dark red and yellow roses, and sat on the shady side. Her gardener was working close by, but had the sense to take his sack and tools and move out of earshot. He is a Lefroy from the Anderson’s Bay family that assisted us following the buggy accident. He himself sustained an injury years before, Ethel said: assaulted while working as a prison officer in Christchurch. Ethel wanted to confide in me concerning her grandmother’s decline. Some collapse of reasoning and memory seems to be taking place, even an alteration of character. She cannot recall whether she has had her dinner ten minutes after eating it, and roams anxiously, seeking the small children she loved more than fifty years ago and does not recognise in the adults they have become. All I can offer is a sympathetic ear.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a child. I married William with no great need, intention or expectation of having children, but there are times when I glimpse a powerful affection and fulfilment that seems to belong to motherhood alone. One afternoon when I was visitor there, Mary Sanford brought her small son to her aunt’s house. The fair-haired child could barely walk, but plunged about the drawing room with chortles of delight. In all our conversation there was nothing that could distract Mary from loving attention to her child, and her love for him gave her the radiance of a Madonna. I experienced an odd yearning that was almost jealousy.
Many women of my age and more are in the midst of producing families, often so large that domestic responsibility has taken over their lives and their independence. I have seen it in my own friends, even when there were ample means for nursemaids and governesses, and the drag of constant child-bearing ages a woman and spoils her figure. More than any of that, I would fear for the happiness of any child born into the tightrope world that is mine at present. Containment is the great necessity, I tell Dougie. The world will not understand us.
‘How much advantage you and I have,’ said Ethel, ‘and Bessie, too. Unlike so many we don’t have any day-to-day struggle, spend much of our time in chat, or vanity, or telling others how to do tasks we don’t wish to do ourselves. Yet I’m not sure we’re any happier for it. We take all we have for granted, don’t we, and what’s denied becomes the thing we most urgently desire.’
‘And what’s that for you?’ I asked, but Ethel just raised her eyebrows and smiled. To ridicule her husband any more served no purpose, except to question her own decisions. What would she have said I wonder, if I had told her Dougie and I loved each other, and expressed it fully? What might that confession have released of the innermost secrets of her own life?
I have also had the pleasure of Annie’s visits. Of all my brothers and sisters she is most dear to me. We have a special closeness, and although over the years there have been disagreements, they have never involved malice, and have never disturbed our love for each other. William pays her little attention, but Dougie puts himself out to squire us about the town, and accompany us to functions and family homes. His courtesy and attention are mainly on my account, I know, but he and Annie find themselves easy companions. He likes to tease me by asking Annie to reveal harmless family secrets about my nature and doings as a girl. Also he flatters and amuses her by claiming that several eligible bachelors of his acquaintance are eager to know more of this new arrival on the Dunedin scene. Annie is willing to play along, but is sensible at heart, and marriage is not everything to her, despite a natural impulse to find a suitable husband. She has a great fondness for gardens, and considerable knowledge too, and is trying to persuade Alfred to help her establish a superior florist shop. He in his conventional way sees the prospect as beneath the dignity of the family, rather than considering what pleasure and usefulness it could provide for Annie.
Annie likes to be here, I think, and is impressed with the Larnach world. When on the last occasion Dougie and I were farewelling her at the steamer, and William had sent in the carriage and four because of her cases, she said, ‘How grand you’ve become, Conny. I’m sure the rest of us must seem quite quaint to you now.’
‘You know better than that.’
‘Of course I do. You’re still the same sister, but I can’t help feeling sometimes you’ve left the rest of us behind, no matter what Alfred says. Everything seems at a gallop at The Camp — so many comings and goings, as if some big event is always in preparation.’
‘Yes, but I’m just the same,’ I said.
Even with Annie, however, there is a difference now. She is still unwed and at home, while I am married, in love with Dougie, in charge of a very considerable household and in the van of society, both here and in Wellington. When she earnestly tells me of the trivial comments, glances and situations into which she reads flirtation, the joys of her reading and music, or the round of her family life as a spinster, I realise how far I have come emotionally since leaving home: how much greater is my understanding of the real forces between men and women. I have two lives now, one quite public and conventional, one in which only Dougie and I exist. So even Bessie, Ethel and Annie are denied a true comprehension of what it is to be Conny Larnach.
Christmas and New Year are almost here. I look forward to neither, except that Dougie and I will be close. This warring family of Larnachs will gather again: Dougie and I will be under malicious scrutiny; William, subject to demands and ingratitude, will respond with alternating high-handedness and sullenness. Alice and Colleen are particularly petulant at present, and I have long given up the hope of amicable relations with them. When Colleen is here she is a constant obstacle to happiness for Dougie and me, and I am glad she prefers to stay in Naseby. One of the few pleasures of unhappy and bitter people is to damage the lives of others.
So close are they, that Colleen recently wished to marry Alice’s brother-in-law, Alfred Inder, which occasioned another shouting match with her father. One would think that the nature of her sister’s marriage would be a warning against such folly, but then Colleen is a plain woman and having her younger sister married before her must be discomforting. Naseby is not a town of universal reputation, but I hardly think it deserves two such pairs as the Inders and Larnachs. Putting my own welfare first, however, I was for once on Colleen’s side in her dispute with her father. Even this unnatural alliance has not been successful.
I have already talked several times with Miss Falloon regarding the meals for ourselves and our guests, and the Christmas party dinner for all The Camp staff and farm workers the day before. William insists on keeping up appearances despite grumbling at the cost. Because whole families will come I have decided the ballroom is again the most convenient place. The weather here cannot be relied on for an outside feast and I do not want some last minute difficulty with arrangements. When fed, the ordinary people can enjoy themselves on the lawns if they wish.
My first Christmas at The Camp, some of the men raced horses through the grounds and around the cottages, and, despite damage to the lawns and gardens, William cheered and gave bottles of claret to the winners. There will be none of that this year. We will invite fewer friends for Christmas Day than formerly. There will be the Larnach family gifts, the protracted meal, the formal toasts and studied good wishes, but there will be little real joy — apart from the secret happiness Dougie and I share. Nothing much else is important to me now, except ensuring other people do not pay the cost. And at New Year we will gather on the tower again to watch the fireworks, and each of us, I imagine, will have apprehensions, even as we profess to have seen the very best of auguries.
I suppose the Larnach Christmas has always been one of outward show as well as family concern. How different was Christmas in my own family home when Father was alive. He had a busy and successful public life, but took special delight in our birthdays, holidays together and at Christmas. He used to call me the second mother, because I was the eldest of his daughters, and long before I was old enough to be of any practical use, he would solemnly ask my opinion on arrangements for festivities: what games, decorations and table treats did I suggest. And no matter what strangeness I offered, he would consider it with judicious approval and ensure that something of it appeared on the occasion. Where did he learn that affirmation is so valuable for a child? He rarely spoke of his own parents, or his early life in London. I miss him still, for there are attributes in a loving father that even a husband, or a lover, cannot possess.
I see him at the Christmas tree when I was small, pretending not to be able to make out my name on those parcels meant for me, and professing surprise at their contents, his eyebrows lifting. In later life he was like one of those ever-kindly benefactors in a book by Dickens, with a shock of pure white hair extending to full sideburns, and then up to a bushy moustache, only his chin clean-shaven. Unlike some adults, who are bored and impatient in the company of children, he loved to witness the joy with which we greeted small treats and minor happenings. Maybe such simple and open emotions were a counter to the complex machinations and cynicism he dealt with in his legal and parliamentary work. What a wonderful kite he could make from sticks, paper and string, and how deliciously terrifying was his voice for the Goldilocks bears. Mother said he spoilt us, especially the girls, but even as a child I was aware that the pleasure he took in this indulgence was quite equal to our own. Only as an adult have I come to realise that happiness is not the condition of every family.
This morning when I woke, there were bright bars of sunlight in the room that should have pleased me, but I lay and wondered how my life has come to this — how small decisions and great ones, some mine, some made by others; how accidents, luck and coincidence, had all contributed to bring me here to The Camp, my husband in one room and my lover, his son, in another. Nothing can be turned back. Even God cannot change the past, Agathon said.
How different my life was in Wellington before I married. I would sit with my sisters and we would talk of the novels we read, and even the most extreme and shocking of their implausible plots were less fraught than the life I have now. It would take a Brontë to tell of my situation, and only Emily’s imagination, surely, could encompass it, yet once I thought her creations overwrought. A true love, though, is the most important possession in the world: the things of greatest value are beyond our ability to purchase, and are gifts of sacrifice. Without love we are just a great mass of people walking through life to our deaths.
However, whatever one’s actual situation, no matter what the perils, or rewards, it is of necessity accompanied by the usual and the everyday: the plod of things of no lasting significance yet impossible to ignore. The choosing of the new season’s clothes, the search for satisfactory servants, the supervision of Miss Falloon’s supervision, the shaping of nails and the brushing of one’s hair, the leaving and receiving of calling cards, the choosing of curtain lengths, the instruction of the tradesmen. Today I will go with Gladys to buy further Christmas presents, try to enter her open enjoyment of it, yet always at the back of my mind will be the sense of a double life, and the absolute need to keep them apart.
Disunity is an attitude that has a natural inclination to spread, and the lack of common purpose between William and me seems to have infected the servants. I have had many talks with Miss Falloon about the petty squabbles and feuds among the women in particular. The garden staff are seldom at fault, but the laundry women and maids rarely seem to have their minds on work, and there is persistent pilfering in the kitchens. Jane came to me in private and gave an opinion that Miss Falloon plays favourites, and that too many we employ inside come from the same local homes. In the past this was because of William’s loyalty to those families associated with the building of The Camp, but it has led to assumptions of preference, and even to indolence. My own observation supports Jane, so I went through all the household names with Miss Falloon and consequently sent away the Murray sisters and Becky Lefroy. All three are flirts and chatterboxes. Becky burst into tears before me, but when I wouldn’t relent flounced out, quite the lady. Young women these days think much is due to them no matter what their station in life.
It has been more difficult to detect disloyalty among the kitchen staff, but we know that some have been stealing tinned goods for their families and even perhaps selling them to acquaintances. At my instruction, Miss Falloon and Jane made an inspection of the servants’ rooms, and a quantity of stuff was found, along with a fine pair of London boots that William has never worn, and embroidered cushion covers that were gifts to Eliza Larnach from a Dunedin supplier to The Camp. As a consequence of all this tiresome and unpleasant investigation, another woman, and Morton de Joux from the stables, have been sent packing without any testimonial, and there is a certain sullenness among some of the remaining staff. William complains of waste and expense but has done not much to diminish them, and shows little interest now when I talk to him of household matters. Dougie, in contrast, is entirely sympathetic.
I find to be in love is a sentence on all other friends, and that is especially so because of the secrecy Dougie and I must maintain. I recognise in myself some drawing back from those who were closest to me here, Bessie Hocken especially. It is not just a matter of with whom I wish to spend time, or even a lesser need for other confidants now that Dougie and I are so close in all things. It is also, I must confess, a fear that I might reveal too much, and a guilt that my life now would be repugnant to them if they knew it fully. But they could not, of course, know it fully. Only Dougie and I understand where we stand and why. Only we can judge what is justifiable for love.
Whether it is my sensitive conscience, or a reality, I have a feeling that Bessie has some inkling of how things now are with Dougie and me, and, if so, where else has an undertow of gossip and aspersion been sapping? The gradual withdrawal may not be all on my own side. Bessie has not made any open reference, or enquiry, but things are not the same between us. Twice she has found reason, or excuse, not to come to The Camp. I am not invited to her house as often as before and when we do meet there seems some slight measure of reserve.
At the recitations and musical evening held at Oaklands, when we were talking of the praise given to Frances Hodgkins in the Triad magazine, Bessie told me of the continuing gossip concerning Grace Joel, another very promising young painter whose father owned the Red Lion Brewery. ‘She has given herself to Girolamo Nerli,’ Bessie said. ‘It’s common knowledge and it will be the ruin of her career and acceptance in society.’ Both of us were acquainted with Nerli, who established the Otago Art Academy. He is an unconventional, talented man not long among us from his own country, whom I could quite see taking advantage of a young woman, but I didn’t say that.
‘Maybe it’s all just envy and speculation,’ I said. ‘Assumptions made because she has painted and exhibited the female nude figure. People are so easily shocked at any move to give women artists a greater share of the freedoms permitted their male counterparts.’
‘A woman is allowed less latitude in her actions, Conny. You know that. It must be recognised even as we fight against it.’ It was not so much what Bessie said, but that she put her hand on my wrist and gave it a brief squeeze. I passed off the moment with some general comment about unfairness, but assumed some personal criticism and warning all the same.
I hope I have guessed wrongly in all of this: when you have something to hide it is easy to imagine others have secrets also. Bessie here, and Annie in Wellington, have been the closest to me, but friendship and kinship are never the equal of love. Those who cannot understand the imperative of love have surely never truly experienced it.