by Fiona Kidman
Another couple got up and joined them. The rhythm inside started to make sense as she followed Jill. ‘More, more,’ shouted Noddy. ‘Stay with it, Twanky Doll, you’re coming on great.’
‘You were my thrill … on blueberry hill …’
She was exhilarated, she was flying, she was suddenly dying, as Noddy whipped her body horizontal to the floor and flung her like a dart as far as she would go back through his legs. He pulled her back up as the record ended. ‘Well how about that,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder. ‘For a beginner, that wasn’t bad.’
‘Well, gee, thanks,’ retorted Harriet. ‘I guess you’re coming along quite good yourself.’
The others laughed and Noddy shook his head again, this time in admiration. Harriet wondered if he got his name from the number of times he waggled his head.
The proprietor of the milk bar had been watching more and more uneasily.
‘What say we have one more dance?’ suggested Noddy. ‘Really shape up.’
‘You kids made enough noise for one day,’ yelled the proprietor.
‘Ah, get knotted,’ Noddy called back.
‘I reckon I’d better be getting on, anyway,’ said Harriet. ‘The cousin I live with won’t like it much if I’m late for dinner.’
‘Yeah, come on,’ said Julie, ‘I gotta be on my way too. See you, guys.’
Everyone called back, including the girls, and Noddy called, ‘Come again, Twanky Doll.’
Outside, the air was still thick, but a slight breeze was stirring some life into the evening. At the lake, Julie stopped.
‘You have to go home yet?’
‘I guess not for a little while. But soon.’
Julie flopped wearily down on to the grass, and Harriet followed.
‘You did real good in there,’ said Julie.
‘Thanks. Are they milk-bar cowboys?’ It was an expression Harriet had heard and read in the papers up north. She thought they were supposed to have motor bikes as well, but couldn’t remember seeing any round the milk bar.
‘Milk-bar cowboys? Oh if you like. If you wanta put a label on them.’
The remark surprised Harriet. Perhaps there was more to Julie than met the eye.
‘I don’t believe in putting labels on anybody,’ she said.
‘Well, there you are. Didn’t think you would. Didn’t seem the sort.’
‘How can you tell what sort I am?’
Julie picked a piece of grass, stretched it expertly between her thumbs, and blew. A piercing whistle split the air. Both girls giggled as a duck flew up from reeds at the waterside, letting out a startled and indignant trail of noise.
‘I dunno that I can tell anything any more. I’ve never been much of a picker at things, for that matter. Took to you, though. See I’ve always had a big fat label stuck on me.’
‘You have?’
‘Yeah. No-hoper. They’re not disappointed now, are they.’
Harriet took it that she meant the baby, which Julie hadn’t mentioned to her before.
‘You’ll feel okay when you get married,’ she said.
‘Married?’ Julie laughed shortly. ‘You gotta be kidding.’
‘But … Cousin Alice said …’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Cousin Alice and old Elsie and my old woman and the whole darn town, they all said wah, wah, look at Julie Simmons, got herself up the duff, and I’ll bet she gets herself married in white and a veil and all, she’s just got the cheek to.’
‘They said … you said …’
Julie was quiet. Then she dropped her head forward on her knees and started to shake without sobbing, or even seeming to be crying outwardly at all.
‘Yeah,’ she said in a very low voice. ‘I did say it, too. But it’s no good, you know. I had to say something … like I couldn’t just say, yeah well, I’m going off to the home to have a baby and I don’t know whose it is for sure or nothing, could I? Not while I was here.’
Harriet sat very still. She remembered Ailsa prattling on. This seemed very different. Come to think of it, Ailsa seemed unreal, like a little girl playing out fairy stories. Only for her it seemed to have been all right. There were fairy stories after all, and she would live happily ever after. She looked at Julie’s bleak face and supposed that she was about to be admitted to some sphere of the adult world that she hadn’t seriously anticipated until now.
‘See, I got a boyfriend, well, we got on all right,’ Julie was saying. ‘Alf his name was. Not much of a name, like one of them jokes, eh, but he was a good sort. He wouldn’t set the world on fire but he was okay.’
‘Was he one of the crowd at the milk bar?’ asked Harriet.
‘Nah, not really. He used to come in sometimes, but he was older, see. That lot’s all the kids I went round with at school, most of ’em anyway, give or take a couple that come for the forestry. Mind you, that’s what Alf came here for, come up from Wellington, ’cause he likes the outdoors. Anyway, he went home over Christmas. I was mad as hell because I was looking forward to a good time then, but he said his family was kinda close. So-o I was on the loose, see. And so was Noddy.’
‘Noddy!’
‘Yeah. Nance, the girl that didn’t want you to dance with him, she got sick and couldn’t go out for a bit either. Well one night I was just mucking round the fairground … they have a fair here at Christmas, pity you missed it, it was great … and I run into Noddy. Well … I dunno, you kind of get used to it and I was missing not having a bit, so, you know … he had his brother’s car and we come down here.’
‘Right here?’
‘Yeah. Everyone comes down here to have it off. I tell you it’s something terrible in the moonlight, if it’s a bright night. A row of cars and a bare bum going for the record in every one of them. He was okay too, but I couldn’t go anywhere with Noddy. You know, not for a big deal.’
‘So you think the baby’s his?’
‘Dunno. No … that’s not true, I know darn well it is.’
‘You told him?’
‘Don’t be nuts. I haven’t told anyone. Not anyone — in the whole world. Not till you.’
‘Why me?’
‘Got to tell someone, don’t I? I mean, the whole thing’s driving me nuts. See, I told Alf, but he was too cunning. He was real careful about when we done it, and he reckons it’s a thousand to one it could be his unless I got my dates mixed up.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Mean? Well, rhythm, you know.’
‘No.’
‘Honest?’ As Harriet was obviously telling the truth, Julie elaborated. ‘You must know. You know … not having it off in the middle of the month. Alf was real good about that. He looked after me like that. That’s what he said to me too when I told him, he said, “I looked after you, Ju-Ju,” that’s what he used to call me — “and you done this to me.” Anyway, he’s buggered off now, I don’t know where he is.’
The lake stirred under chill little breezes. Harriet shivered.
‘Are you going to tell him, then?’
There was a long silence. ‘No,’ said Julie at last. ‘No, they might try and make him do something about it.’
‘You mean, get married?’
Julie nodded.
‘You wouldn’t have to,’ said Harriet.
Julie looked at her sideways. ‘Of course I would. You know that.’
There was such a simple inevitable logic about the way she said it that Harriet believed her.
‘Would it matter so much?’
The other girl stared out onto the ugly manmade stretch of water. Her face had a sparseness that Harriet had not noticed before, a kind of paring back of flesh to the essentials. Harriet had an odd sensation that Julie was, if not beautiful, at least fine, and that sitting here with her was good and that she wouldn’t forget it.
‘Yes, it would matter,’ Julie said. ‘I’m thinking about the kid. Someone’ll take it in that can afford to look after it, and who’ll really want to look after it properly, as much
… as much as I could, if I could.’ She started to cry hard, sobbing and shaking and snuffling, the fine spare look dissolving puffily into her sodden handkerchief. ‘Jesus, Harriet, I won’t even get to see what it looks like, they don’t even let you see it, but I will. Honest, I’ll fool them. No matter how much it hurts I’m not going to give in, I’m going to have a look at it before they take it away. They’re not going to fill me up with dope so as I can’t see anything. I want to see my baby. Wouldn’t you want to see your baby?’
‘Yes, oh yes,’ said Harriet fervently. ‘Couldn’t you keep it? D’you have to give it away?’
Julie got to her feet, still trying to mop up her face. There was air of finality about her.
‘No,’ she replied shortly. ‘Don’t you understand what I’ve been saying? I got to do what’s best for it. That doesn’t count keeping it. I love it too much. Always wanted a baby, all the time Mum didn’t want me, I used to think, well, some day I’ll have my own baby and then I won’t have to worry about anyone loving me because the baby’ll love me. Of course I knew I’d have to have a husband. Maybe I should have thought more about that part. Anyway, I’ve got my little baby inside of me, and I’m not going to be rotten to it.’
They walked along in silence. There didn’t seem much for Harriet to say. At Cousin Alice’s gate, they stopped.
‘Well …’ Harriet began awkwardly.
‘I’m finishing up at the shop tomorrow,’ said Julie. ‘Told old Stubbs to make up my pay for me. Should have seen how relieved he was, almost made me laugh. I’ll be around for a couple weeks till there’s a vacancy in the home up in Auckland. You want to go round with me?’
Harriet looked at her questioningly.
‘Well, go on, don’t look like that. You worried about your reputation?’
‘Of course not. I don’t have one.’
‘You might if you stick round with me. Well … seems to me you don’t have that many friends.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘Didn’t think so. The kids liked you. You could stick around with them after I’ve gone. Think about it anyway. There’s a party Saturday night.’
Inside the house, Cousin Alice said, ‘Who was that girl you were with?’
Harriet told her. Cousin Alice pursed her lips and said, ‘I thought as much. When does she finish at the shop?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Harriet.
‘Just as well. I wouldn’t like you to been seen walking home with her too often.’
‘She introduced me to some of her friends on the way home. They seemed nice.’
‘Did you go into that milkbar?’ said Cousin Alice sharply.
‘No,’ said Harriet, quickly. ‘Of course not.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘But she did ask me to go out with her on Saturday night.’
‘She didn’t! The cheek! Where to?’
‘Oh … the pictures.’
‘Really,’ said Cousin Alice. ‘You told her what to do with herself I hope.’
‘I thought I might quite like to go.’
‘You what?’
‘Well I don’t know anybody, do I?’ Harriet said defensively.
Alice looked shrewd. ‘So she’s not getting married, eh?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Because she wouldn’t have you in tow if she was.’
‘She hasn’t got me in tow. I like her, that’s all.’
Alice shook her head. ‘You won’t be going anywhere with that one. Not from this house.’
Harriet could see that she was deadly serious. It didn’t even seem worth an argument. She wondered what to tell Julie the next day, and settled for the truth. Julie didn’t seem at all surprised; in fact, she behaved very much as if this was entirely as she had expected, and Harriet was relieved that she had told her. She felt she would have seen through any lies.
That evening, when Harriet would dearly have liked to walk home with Julie, Cousin Alice was waiting in her little Morris Minor outside the shop. She had ‘just been passing by’ and thought Harriet might like a lift home. Julie hung back.
‘Could you drop Julie off, too?’ asked Harriet as boldly as she could, thinking that things had gone far enough, and after all it had been Julie’s last day at the shop.
Cousin Alice was obviously nonplussed, but her immaculate manners came to the fore. ‘Certainly,’ she said smoothly, opening the back door.
Julie hesitated a moment, then tossing her head defiantly she got into the car. ‘Drop me off at the corner milk bar, please, Mrs Harrison,’ she said, as she settled herself.
And that was really that, for the time being anyway. The day being pay day, Harriet bought herself a tight pointy brassiere, turned her cardigan back to front, pushing it up to the elbows, put a deposit on a tight skirt on store discount, and started training her hair into a pony-tail.
If Cousin Alice noticed, she said nothing, but she ‘just passed by’ the store more frequently. The risk of meeting her was great enough to make Harriet avoid the milk bar. On the days Cousin Alice didn’t pick her up, walking past was something of an ordeal. Julie vanished within a week or two, as she had intimated to Harriet she would. On the day before she was due to leave, Harriet had been walking home. Julie had ducked out of the bar to say goodbye, but when the two girls stood in the middle of the street, there didn’t seem much to say. They looked at each other awkwardly and Harriet said, ‘Good luck’. It seemed limp and inadequate, and from where she stood the whole situation looked decidedly unlucky.
From time to time, in the weeks that followed one of the milkbar crowd would call out, ‘Hullo, Twanky Doll’ as she passed. At first the greeting seemed friendly, but before long she detected a mocking note.
Easter came and went, and with it a small triumph for Alice. An ex-boarding school pupils’ reunion dance was held in the town, so that when the top brass returned to pay their respects to their parents, they were able to mix in seemly company. Cousin Alice’s own children had once belonged to such a group, and her contacts were still good enough for her to organise an invitation for Harriet.
Harriet suspected that Alice had said that poor little Harriet was so far away from her parents that she couldn’t get home for Easter. The thought of going home at Easter had loomed in Harriet’s mind but her finances were still precarious. They had been so severely hobbled, as her feet had been, by the purchase of a pair of stilletto-heeled shoes, that a trip home seemed more and more difficult. By the time her mother had written and offered her the fare home, the buses were fully booked and there was no retreat from Weyville.
Faraway Ohaka had never seemed more beautiful or tantalising, and the thought of the effort it must have cost her mother to find the fare quite desolated her. Yet, a small warning bell sounded inside her head, telling her that if she were to go back to Ohaka now she might never return to Weyville — and Weyville, limited though it was, still held vague promise of things to come.
So as Easter approached, Harriet and Alice found themselves companionably sewing and hemming some green chiffon stuff to be set over paper-stiff taffeta, Alice delighting in Harriet’s response to her instructions.
The dance was surprisingly successful from the point of view of Harriet’s social conquests. The accent which had dogged her for so long proved an advantage. She danced well, despite the fact that Noddy’s lesson in the milk bar had been her only contact with rock and roll. Music gave her feet wings, and dancing seemed as natural as breathing. The mothers of the young elite were enchanted, and told Cousin Alice, who was watching in the wings adorned in pale grey crêpe, that her relative was delightful, and what a pleasure it must be for them both to be living together. Alice smiled benignly and nodded her head, eyeing Harriet with brand-new approval.
Unfortunately Harriet found the company itself intolerably boring, as it was composed of aspiring and perspiring undergraduates, student teachers, and a trainee Presbyterian minister whose assumptions about God she made the mista
ke of challenging. He was a dark man with a long upper lip and a great deal of Brylcreem on his hair, and he managed to hold himself away from Harriet’s crotch in a way that clearly stated that he was doing social duty and no more.
After they had danced, an uneasy little knot gathered at one end of the room, and Harriet presumed from the sidelong glances in her direction that her conduct was being discussed.
However, the moment soon passed, for supper was approaching. Cousin Alice took her aside and said in a gentle reproving tone, ‘Harriet, dear, you’re doing beautifully, but don’t be intelligent will you? There’s a good girl.’
‘Of course not,’ said Harriet, understandingly.
The rest of the dance went well.
The following week, Cousin Alice was able to say with satisfaction that the dance had paid off well; one of her friends said that when Harriet had learned typing for six months, there might be a place for her in her husband’s office.
Harriet’s heart sank at this. There was a small matter which she had overlooked discussing with Cousin Alice. She and typing didn’t seem to get on very well, so much so that she had feigned headache twice in the past month and sat outside during the class. Worse, and much more dire in its implications, during the week after the dance she hadn’t gone at all.
On the Thursday night, instead of going on to the College and her typing class, she had suddenly balked in front of the milkbar. Music streamed out of the milkbar. The pale Weyville day was drawing to a close, lit by the neon interior of the shop. The jukebox shone with its row of numbers lit up, and cigarettes moved and glowed in circles in people’s hands, or just marked stars in the air. Like the weight of sorrow, loneliness overwhelmed Harriet She could never return to Ohaka and she was not a part of Weyville that made any kind of sense. She would never belong to the boarding school set, or to this crowd, who, with equal assurance, ran their own secret society. There was no halfway house, and she was alone.