The Larnachs Read Free Page B

I said.
    ‘And he loves you. He’s been lucky and unlucky, hasn’t he. Nothing’s just ordinary for Father, but a lot of people don’t realise all he’s been through,’ Kate said. ‘What happens to him often seems to be on a bigger scale — the good things, but the bad too. He’s happier with you than he’s been in a long time.’
    That was Kate. She could not have known how much it meant to me to have that support, and she gave it while suffering from high fever and stomach pains, and being unable to eat. Even in her own agony, she worried about causing distress to her father, whom she loved above all. Some people recovered from the fever, the doctor said. Would that Kate had been one of them. What purpose is there in such a death?
    William suffered enormously, despite an effort to be manly. Sometimes in the evening I would look across and see his tears glistening in the light, though he would be talking of public matters,or I would come into his study, and find him in the darkness with head bowed.
    We came down south with the casket on the Hinemoa , and I kept close to him for the whole voyage in case he leapt overboard. It sounds absurd, exaggerated, but not so. Once we reached home he was in virtual seclusion at The Camp for three months. All the money worries he has are nothing compared with the loss of his daughter. I know some acquaintances consider him a blustering and vain man, but if they could see him mourn his daughter, they would understand his capacity for feeling. After Kate died he laid flowers on her breast. Her body was placed in a glass coffin, which was displayed in the ballroom before the funeral. It was overly dramatic perhaps, but the emotion was completely sincere.
    Most people see him as the big man, with resources and abilities beyond their own, but the risks and the shocks are greater also. Two wives lost through sudden illness, then Kate as well. Her death is a blight on all of life. William never expresses it, but I think he fears it is in some way a punishment for our marriage; for disregarding convention and gossip, for trusting to fortune and the goodwill of others.
    ‘Were we too happy, Conny?’ he asked. ‘Why to God does happiness demand such a high price?’
    ‘You did everything a father could,’ I said. ‘You did all possible and Kate loved you for it.’
    ‘I still hear her voice. I hear the footfall that was hers alone.’
    ‘Because you loved her.’
    ‘How she suffered at the end, my poor girl, and there wasnothing I could do,’ he said.
    In the Molesworth Street house we sleep in the same room. At The Camp William has his own room on the second floor, flanked by bedrooms that had belonged to Eliza and Mary. Does a man ever understand how a new wife feels when brought into the home of her predecessor? The Camp is a mansion laid out like a huge stage set for a company of actors to which I do not belong. And so solid, personal and numerous are the props that they seem to call up the presence of those who have moved among them. Not just the phantom of one wife, of course, but poor Mary too. I say poor Mary because I can never see her memory a threat. Mary, who lived on the margin of her half-sister’s life with William, who married him after Eliza’s death more from mutual convenience than passion, who had no children, and who followed her sister to the grave within six years. And she occasioned the rumours that give people such pleasure, even as they feign reluctance to credit them, or pass them on. The servants sniggered about the sisters’ two rooms, one each side of the master bedroom, and wider and better society discussed the propriety of a man marrying his deceased wife’s sister.
    People from all stations in life thought to make insinuations in my presence, but I responded sharply. I make clear that casting aspersions on Mary, or Eliza, is not a means to my favour, and I will not collect gossip about William’s past. He and I begin life anew. I sent away