the all-night loo sessions in the card rooms at the club. ‘Ride hard, live hard, die hard,’ he says.
I’d been on the water the day I received the news of Kate’s death in Wellington. It was fine, but cool, with an incoming tide making the dinghy strain at anchor. I was in the boat alone, and I remember that as I looked at the headlands on both sides, the wildness of them, the almost total absence of habitation, I was struck by the contrast with the beach at St Leonard’s on Sea, where Jeremy Pointer and I would row back and forth on half-days, happy simply to be beyond the school grounds. There was noise andbustle on the shore, and the huddled buildings, and boats coming and going, and the two of us determined not to think of classrooms, house matches and dormitories, as if hopeful forgetfulness might prevent their return.
So much a contrast to Dunedin’s channel, with its currents and sand bars to be avoided and no other vessels to be seen. The cod hadn’t troubled my line that day, yet I sat contentedly enough with the anchor rope refracted beneath the water surface, and a light slapping on the clinker sides of the dinghy. Kate was dead, but I still unaware of it, safe with the sounds and colours and smells of everyday life around me. Odd, those small overlaps of time, when we are still happy, yet tragedy has already come.
Father’s too restless for fishing. He needs movement and talk and people when he’s well. He loves to go to race meetings on the Taieri, and often challenges his friends to better his times into town from The Camp. He’s an unorthodox rider, but a skilled one from his rough and ready days on Victorian farms and goldfields. When he visited Uncle Donald in England at Brambletye the local horse and hound people joked about William Lanarch’s colonial style, but he was seldom unhorsed, and was invariably in the vanguard of the hunt. In Sussex, to ride well is as important an indication of position as having a suitable tailor. Donny and I learnt there the more correct style, but that means nothing here.
When I came back to the colony, Father was upset by the obvious signs of my injury, yet neither of us blamed the horse and I still love to ride. The effects of the fall are always with me, and a reminder to be cautious, yet what moments of exhilaration I haveare almost all when I’m riding. Donny says that’s because I lack experience with women. He means just to provoke revelation, as well as suggesting success on his own account — those trips to London with Pembroke College friends he likes to refer to, and the social freedom of Auckland’s more bohemian elements. I’ve my own club and riot stories, but prefer not to share them. Everything a Larnach does in Dunedin tends to be known sooner or later, and we have our enemies. Conny will be subject to that now like the rest of us. Her dress and speech, her deportment, her manner with equals and inferiors, her choice of friends and charities, her influence with my father, even her teeth and jewellery, will be assessed. It’s people’s nature to look enviously at those above them, rather than be satisfied that so many are worse off than themselves.
Tomorrow I’ll go in and visit Ellen Abbott, with whom I’ve been keeping company on and off. Her family has been to The Camp several times, and I’m in good standing with her parents. Mrs Abbott has perhaps some suspicions of my intentions, but she’s a woman keen for social advancement. On Wednesdays she visits her elderly mother, and after I’ve sat with her and Ellen for morning tea, suffered the conversation while disguising boredom and impatience, she will leave, and Ellen and I will be alone. I will persuade Ellen to come with me where we can hear the door, but not be seen from it, and we will hug and kiss, standing hard against the wall, and I will lift her skirts. If I’m lucky, and their housekeeper is out shopping, I might have her come with me to her bedroom and do the whole
I’d been on the water the day I received the news of Kate’s death in Wellington. It was fine, but cool, with an incoming tide making the dinghy strain at anchor. I was in the boat alone, and I remember that as I looked at the headlands on both sides, the wildness of them, the almost total absence of habitation, I was struck by the contrast with the beach at St Leonard’s on Sea, where Jeremy Pointer and I would row back and forth on half-days, happy simply to be beyond the school grounds. There was noise andbustle on the shore, and the huddled buildings, and boats coming and going, and the two of us determined not to think of classrooms, house matches and dormitories, as if hopeful forgetfulness might prevent their return.
So much a contrast to Dunedin’s channel, with its currents and sand bars to be avoided and no other vessels to be seen. The cod hadn’t troubled my line that day, yet I sat contentedly enough with the anchor rope refracted beneath the water surface, and a light slapping on the clinker sides of the dinghy. Kate was dead, but I still unaware of it, safe with the sounds and colours and smells of everyday life around me. Odd, those small overlaps of time, when we are still happy, yet tragedy has already come.
Father’s too restless for fishing. He needs movement and talk and people when he’s well. He loves to go to race meetings on the Taieri, and often challenges his friends to better his times into town from The Camp. He’s an unorthodox rider, but a skilled one from his rough and ready days on Victorian farms and goldfields. When he visited Uncle Donald in England at Brambletye the local horse and hound people joked about William Lanarch’s colonial style, but he was seldom unhorsed, and was invariably in the vanguard of the hunt. In Sussex, to ride well is as important an indication of position as having a suitable tailor. Donny and I learnt there the more correct style, but that means nothing here.
When I came back to the colony, Father was upset by the obvious signs of my injury, yet neither of us blamed the horse and I still love to ride. The effects of the fall are always with me, and a reminder to be cautious, yet what moments of exhilaration I haveare almost all when I’m riding. Donny says that’s because I lack experience with women. He means just to provoke revelation, as well as suggesting success on his own account — those trips to London with Pembroke College friends he likes to refer to, and the social freedom of Auckland’s more bohemian elements. I’ve my own club and riot stories, but prefer not to share them. Everything a Larnach does in Dunedin tends to be known sooner or later, and we have our enemies. Conny will be subject to that now like the rest of us. Her dress and speech, her deportment, her manner with equals and inferiors, her choice of friends and charities, her influence with my father, even her teeth and jewellery, will be assessed. It’s people’s nature to look enviously at those above them, rather than be satisfied that so many are worse off than themselves.
Tomorrow I’ll go in and visit Ellen Abbott, with whom I’ve been keeping company on and off. Her family has been to The Camp several times, and I’m in good standing with her parents. Mrs Abbott has perhaps some suspicions of my intentions, but she’s a woman keen for social advancement. On Wednesdays she visits her elderly mother, and after I’ve sat with her and Ellen for morning tea, suffered the conversation while disguising boredom and impatience, she will leave, and Ellen and I will be alone. I will persuade Ellen to come with me where we can hear the door, but not be seen from it, and we will hug and kiss, standing hard against the wall, and I will lift her skirts. If I’m lucky, and their housekeeper is out shopping, I might have her come with me to her bedroom and do the whole
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