Free The Larnachs by Owen Marshall Page B

the farm, whereas I feel most at home at a piano, or with my sketchpad and books.
    In the winter especially I cannot be bothered with the constant change of clothing needed if one is going out and in. Yet in our friendship we are, I think, effecting a change in each other’s habits. Dougie, quite as much as William, now likes to hear me play and even has his favourite pieces and some interest in the lives of those who composed them. And I have taken more to walking in the grounds, and rides in the buggy around the property and the peninsula, sometimes with William if he is not occupied with business, sometimes with Gladys and Gretchen as well if they are home, often with Dougie. His manner is more confident when he deals with the estate workers without William’s presence, and more relaxed thanwithin the house. I have come to appreciate the somewhat austere beauty of the place, all the more perhaps because I know that Eliza did not. Dougie always sees something different in the countryside, no matter how many times he passes through it: noticing that a field has been worked, a barn roof neglected, the course of a creek changed, bush darkened by the shadow of the clouds, or the tide line altered by a storm.
    Boating is something I definitely dislike, and even Dougie’s encouragement does not overcome it. The steamer is trial enough and I find no enjoyment in the little craft that men take out for pleasure or fishing. The motion is unsettling, as is the smell, and there is always a slop of foul water in the bottom, and often sticky scales on the surfaces. I cannot imagine it a pleasure to sit for hours in a swaying dinghy, open to sun and wind, cramped and uncomfortable, and have as the uncertain reward a few odorous fish.
    William has as little time, or patience, for shopping, but Dougie often will take me into town, go on to the Fernhill Club awhile, then meet me at a tea shop and carry my parcels. He asks for my opinion as to his own clothes and often follows it. Together last week we chose a dinner jacket that had a shawl collar, silk and velvet facings and a single button. During the fitting the plump tailor’s digestion was rudely apparent several times, and although all three of us studiously ignored the sound at the time, Dougie and I laughed together afterwards. He is the only man I could possibly share amusement with over such a thing. But life is life after all.
    Dougie enjoys it most when the command at The Camp is his alone. He is no scholar, but from what he has told me the AdamsSchool at St Leonard’s on Sea did nothing to awaken his mind and he was miserable there. He resents his father at times because of it, although William made the decision to have the children educated in England and on the continent from the best of motives. Somehow, however, it seems typical of William’s generosity: a failure because he did not consider the recipient’s wishes when bestowing it.
    Dougie and I can talk about such matters and still not feel disloyal. I never criticise William, or enter personal dispute, within earshot of the household staff, or in the society of our friends. Dougie and I have come to trust one another and are free with confidences as close family should be. Both of us are concerned for William and the increasing pressures on him. He is not the man I remember in our Wellington home, laughing and reminiscing with Father, or ribbing my brothers about their dalliances. He is not the man I married. Kate’s death, the snide ingratitude of Donald, Colleen and Alice, and the difficulties he is experiencing in business, have altered and reduced him. Now entering his sixties, he expects his life to have a certain ease of accomplishment after his earlier spectacular successes, but finds himself beset by more difficulties than ever, and with his vigour impaired.
    ‘The times have moved against us,’ he said yesterday, as he prepared to go into Dunedin on business, ‘and I must fight to hold what I have, but