a Breed of Women

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘If you had, but you never have.’

  ‘Not really. Sometimes … oh, I don’t know. I think if we could maybe learn …’

  ‘But you’re not sure that you believe that, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t it just that you’re two people who like fucking, and if you ever stop liking it, there won’t be much going for you?’

  ‘Does it really look like that to you?’

  ‘I guess so. But what can I say? You think I’m prejudiced. God, that I should be, of all people. That’s the trouble, if it were Chas or Dick or anyone like that, you could say you’re just not suited for each other. It’s Denny being what he is makes it so hard.’

  Harriet groped for her hand. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just telling him. I wondered if I might do it tomorrow night … you know, if you go out with Selwyn, we could maybe talk here, I could make him some tea and tell him.’

  Harriet could feel Leonie’s stillness. ‘I expect you’d want him to stay the night.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that …’

  ‘No, I know you didn’t,’ said Leonie briskly. ‘It’s all right Probably be better though, wouldn’t it? I mean if I didn’t come back. Doesn’t put a time limit on you.’

  ‘Might persuade him it’s a better idea to come round here than spend the evening with the boys.’

  ‘Tricky cow, aren’t you? I’ll keep out of it then. That’s if you really, honest to God, cross your heart and hope to die promise me that you’re going to do it.’

  Harriet laughed. ‘You know that’s the worst sort of promise to ask me to keep.’

  ‘You will though, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘I could hug you.’

  The dark blanketed their quiet breathing.

  ‘At least I should kiss you goodnight,’ said Leonie at last. Her hand groped for Harriet’s. As they touched she flung herself into Harriet’s arms, her mouth seeking hers. They kissed in the gentle night, Leonie’s passion holding her to Harriet as if she could never let her go. Harriet felt her own deep cave pulsing as if she was waiting for Denny, and against her Leonie’s nipples were hardening.

  Leonie jerked herself out of Harriet’s arms, and threw herself away to the other side of the bed.

  ‘Is that what it feels like to want somebody?’ she cried in a strangled voice.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Harriet ‘That’s what it feels like.’

  ‘Forgive me, please say you forgive me.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Harriet ‘It’s all right, Leonie. We only kissed each other goodnight.’

  ‘You don’t want to go sleep in the other bed?’

  ‘No. I’ll stay with you all night Come on, give me your hand.’

  ‘I love you, Harriet,’ said Leonie. ‘I’ve never had a friend before.’

  ‘I never had a sister, but then neither did you.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I did, sometime. I hardly remember. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got you.’

  They dropped off to sleep, exhausted, lying on either side of the bed with only their hands clasped. When Harriet awoke, Leonie was already up and showering. Harriet went out into the kitchen and the kettle was just on the boil as she came out of the bathroom, fully dressed.

  Neither of them mentioned the night before. There had been a frost in the night, and it lay in gleaming wedges across Cousin Alice’s lawn, sculpturing the monkey-puzzle trees to brilliant and fanciful shapes. They sat, eating breakfast, talking again about the trip. On the Road had just become available in New Zealand, and they were full of its force. There seemed never to have been a book like it before, and they saw their journey across the world as some sort of similar adventure. Somewhere on a Mediterranean shore, in time to come, they would sit sunburned and sandalled, and thank Kerouac.

  Later they went to football, and Harriet returned with Denny. While she cooked him sausages and chips, he went around the house admiring things and picking them up. She found herself jumping as he picked up Cousin Alice’s Royal Doulton plates. It was hard to remember that he hadn’t been here before. It was all such familiar territory to her that it had not occurred to her that he might be fascinated with where she lived.

  ‘Someday you’ll have a house like this,’ he said. ‘All these beautiful things, I’ll get them for you. You wait and see.’

  ‘How do you propose to do that, Mr Moneybags?’ she asked as she put the food down in front of him.

  ‘I get what I want,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I’ve heard that one before, too.’

  ‘You want me, don’t you?’

  Faced with this inescapable question, Harriet looked down at her hands.

  ‘Time for us to settle things, isn’t it girlie?’ he said.

  She thought that it would be easier to talk to him in the dark. She did try to talk to him while he had his meal, but he didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he pretended not to. She could eat nothing.

  When he had finished they washed up, and she suggested they should sit and listen to the radio for awhile. Request programmes were on, she reminded him, although it was so long since she had spent a Saturday night at home that she had almost forgotten.

  ‘You want us to be just like any old married couple on a Saturday night?’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll never be an old married couple at all,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Come on, girlie,’ he said, leading her by the hand. ‘I know where that big double bed is. I went and had a look. D’you know it’s eight months since you and I slept next to each other all night? You think I haven’t been counting?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he went on as they undressed. ‘You’ve got to tell all these fellas where you and I stand. I know they won’t like it, but they’ll get used to it You think my people will be crazy about you for a daughter-in-law? Maybe you do. Lots of pakehas do, they think they’re a big white catch. Well, I tell you, girlie, you’re some catch all right, and you’re what I want for my own, but not for the colour of your skin. I’ll have a bit of explaining to do to the family, they had a girl or two lined up for me up home. I went back at Easter and I thought to myself, perhaps I should decide for them, and I went through a bit of hell for them too, and for you. And I come hurrying back here to be with you, because there was no way I wanted it to be anyone but you. I looked round me in the church in Kaikohe, and the girls all had white hats on, and I thought about you in your white hat that I bought for you to wear at Christmas, and I thought, yeah, okay Denny. You told me I bought that hat for myself, and I did too. I bought it for my woman to be in church with me, the one I picked.’

  Harriet gazed at him in fear. Fear for him or herself, it was hard to tell. She only knew that he was saying all the things that should have been said long ago. Why had he waited so long? Perhaps it was not too late.

  Her mind turned to Leonie lying in the dark beside her. ‘I love you Harriet,’ she’d said. Maybe there was some way that she and Leonie loved each other that excluded Denny, or any men. Perhaps somewhere, far away, they would discover what it was.

  ‘I love you.’ He’d never said that. Just, ‘I want you.’ Did they mean the same thing?

  She reached for the light above her head. ‘Don’t turn it out,’ he said harshly. ‘I want to watch us do it.’

  ‘I’ve got things to talk to you about too,’ she said.

  ‘They can wait,’ he said, rising on her.

  This was how Cousin Alice, who had been prevented from getting to the wedding by a car breakdown, and who had spent hours in a small town waiting for repairs, walked in and found them in her bed.

  In the morning, before she and Denny headed north in the pick-up, Harriet called on Mr Whitwell at his home and then visited Leonie.

  At Mr Whitwell’s house, a plain, ageless woman answered her knock. She led Harriet down to a threadbare room, lined with books from ceiling to floor, where Mr Whitwell was sitting reading a book about the Carthaginians. He introd
uced the woman as his sister. At another time, Harriet might have paused to reflect that this was the first intimation she had ever had of Mr Whitwell’s domestic arrangements. As it was, she was so barely able to return an audible greeting that Mr Whitwell, noting her distress, asked his sister to leave.

  When she told him what had happened the previous evening, he shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Ah yes, Harriet,’ he sighed, placing his long slender fingers together, ‘yes, the conflict of body and mind. Here,’ and he rose to his feet, and went to one of the bookshelves. He scrabbled round for a moment, and produced a book. ‘Take it. Frost. Put down by some of the critics, but never mind that, revered by others. Read ‘The Road Not Taken’.

  ‘I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood …’ and his voice broke. ‘Take the thing and get out of my sight.’ He pushed the book into her hands, and opened the door. She saw that he was convulsed with silent shaking tears. ‘Get out. I’d have helped you, you fool,’ he said, his voice rising. As she went down the passage, he shouted after her, ‘I wouldn’t have cared whether he was black, green or pink. Fool!’

  And the door slammed behind her.

  Harriet had rung Leonie and warned her of her arrival, and the fact that she was leaving town and why. The woman who answered the door told Harriet that Leonie was ill and had asked that she be left to sleep, as it was Sunday morning. Harriet pushed past her.

  Leonie was lying with her face to the wall.

  ‘Leonie. Please,’ said Harriet. ‘Please speak to me.’

  The other girl rolled over in the bed, turning a stony face on her.

  ‘I don’t want you in here.’

  ‘There’s nothing I could do,’ said Harriet.

  ‘We could go away, you and me,’ said Leonie. ‘That was what we were going to do.’ Her voice, hard as it was, held a hint of pleading.

  ‘We haven’t enough money. You might get the welfare back on you.’

  ‘Excuses.’ Leonie’s mask fell.

  ‘Have you been crying?’

  ‘I don’t cry.’

  ‘I wish I was like you, then,’ said Harriet.

  ‘But you’re not, are you?’ said Leonie. ‘Now please leave me alone.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’

  Leonie rolled back towards the wall, her fingers white round the edge of the blanket. After a few moments, Harriet left without either of them speaking again.

  Denny and Harriet drove out of Weyville, past Cousin Alice’s house, and headed north. There was no movement behind the lace curtains. They had said their goodbyes, quiet and polite on Cousin Alice’s part, but as implacable as she’d been when she had telephoned the Wallaces to tell them their daughter would be coming back the following day.

  At Ohaka, Denny went in with her and met Gerald and Mary. He promised to return on the Thursday with the arrangements made.

  On the Thursday afternoon, he, Harriet, Gerald and Mary went to the church together. The spring was coming earlier here in the north than down in Weyville. Little had changed since the year of Harriet’s confirmation, except that the lichen on the graves had grown a little longer. A faint wind stirred the grasses and blew a shower of petals from an early flowering tree, the same one where she had leaned her bicycle years ago when she was a girl. A girl? Now it seemed she was a woman.

  That was what Father Dittmer said. As though in a trance Harriet heard him say, ‘We are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation …’ He faltered, his eyes resting on Gerald and Mary, the whole congregation, ‘to join together this man and this woman …’ and she knew that the woman must be her. She had graduated to fullblown adult status. She would follow the responses through, there was no turning back. ‘I, Harriet Wallace, take thee, Dennis Matiu Rei …’ She hadn’t known his full name till that morning. ‘I pronounce that they be man and wife together …’ Catching her eye in a fleeting glance, she thought she could feel him saying, ‘And who wouldn’t have known it.’

  When they emerged from the church she knew that she was now Mrs Rei.

  Nobody had discussed what would happen next. Very little of any substance had been discussed since Harriet’s return the previous Sunday. During the week she had sat dully in her bedroom, while her equally uncommunicative mother had sat in the kitchen, or dragged herself to do what had to be done round the place. On the Wednesday she had gone through Harriet’s suitcase, mended and ironed her clothes and repacked them. When she spoke her voice had been monotonous, seemingly without emotion. Harriet hadn’t offered to help, nor had she been asked to.

  Gerald spoke to give orders and to tell them what arrangements had been made. They didn’t sound like arrangements — more like military drill. The night before the wedding Harriet had caught him alone.

  ‘Dad,’ she’d said, and then, hesitantly, as he didn’t reply, ‘Father.’

  He’d turned towards her with fierce contempt in his face. ‘Bitch,’ he said, and walked away. And she’d started crying. Oh, she always cried in front of him, he was the master of her tears.

  Now, as they stood outside the church, he said stiffly, ‘I think your mother and I will be getting back to the farm, Harriet. We don’t want to be late with the cows coming in and all.’

  It was a dismissal. Not that Harriet altogether blamed him for that. If they returned to the house, sleeping arrangements might have to be made for them, and even Harriet, dazed as she was, could see that this would be a quite impossible dilemma for them all.

  They shook hands all round. Harriet ached to have her mother hold her, but already Gerald had shepherded her away, and she saw them drive off, a cloud of dust following them up the metalled road towards the farm. Denny and Harriet climbed into the pick-up and he said, ‘Where to, now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you?’

  ‘We could go to Kaikohe, but it’s a long drive.’

  ‘To your parents?’ She recalled what he had said about them, possibly having reservations about her too.

  ‘We’ll leave it for today, I think. I rang a mate of mine in Auckland and he said he could jack up a job for me to tide us over till something else turns up. I reckon he might put us up for a couple of nights while we have a look around. What d’you say?’

  So they headed for Auckland and arrived late, when the diamond sky was alight.

  7

  THE MARRIAGE OF Harriet and Denny lasted fifteen months. It might have lasted longer, but a number of factors contributed to its collapse.

  They had difficulty finding accommodation. After the episode at the hotel the Christmas before, this hardly came as a surprise to either of them. Harriet assumed that it wouldn’t have surprised Cousin Alice or her parents either, but then, like everything else, no one had discussed anything like that with her. In fact, Denny’s race had not been mentioned by anyone. This seemed quite extraordinary, when Harriet considered it, as she did more and more often during the following months.

  She sometimes wondered if she had imagined their wedding, people having said so little at the time. It even passed through her mind sometimes that her own inertia had led to all this. After all, she had simply followed a series of tacit assumptions that she would adopt a certain course of action.

  Denny’s friend put them up on a creaky sofa in his three-roomed Auckland flat for a week. Neither of them slept, and Denny was bad-tempered and tired out with his job at the freezing works at Otahuhu.

  Harriet looked at flats, agreed to take one or two rather pleasant ones, and then found there had ‘been some sort of misunderstanding’ when she turned up with Denny. It was finally agreed that she should take what she could get without Denny showing up. The place she took near Parnell wasn’t marvellous, because the owners wouldn’t risk letting you have the really nice ones without looking you over as a couple, but it wasn’t too bad either. It was furnished, but without linen. Gerald had pushed a ten pound note i
nto her hand before they left for the church, so she bought a pair of blankets, and Denny had enough money over from his pay for a pair of sheets.

  They seemed to need a lot of other little things. A lot of towels, for instance, because Denny needed a bath every day. He came home clean, but the smell of the meatworks seemed impregnated into his skin within a week or two. She would have liked a bath every day too, but there wasn’t enough hot water unless they shared it. That was something she couldn’t get used to because she’d never had to share anything in her life. Spoilt, some might call it. Looking back over her life, she couldn’t quite see that it was so. But she supposed that’s what people would call it. Denny did.

  In bed at night Harriet would feel her stomach heaving at Denny’s smell, and often she would turn her head away while he made love to her. He, offended, rolled sullenly over to the other side of the bed and sank into a weary sleep.

  She did think of going to see Wendy and Marie at Training College, but the idea was unattractive. She represented failure, they success. Later she thought that everything was her fault for being so negative. She could have tried harder. If guilt were to be the price, she would pay it in full.

  The decision that she should take a job was made after Denny came home one evening and found her with a pile of library books. At least reading seemed a sensible refuge, and coming back to books, she had been spellbound all day. When he came in, exhausted as usual, dinner was not ready and she hadn’t even shopped.

  He was grim and angry when they went out to find somewhere to eat After their meal, he told her, ‘If you want to play fancy games, you’d better help me pay for them.’

  She took a job the next day in a Queen Street milkbar. Let the punishment fit the crime, she thought.

  Every night after that they both came home tired, and there was little to talk about. They could have talked about something, she thought later. If they’d really wanted it to be good, they could have told each other what they had been doing and about the customers that came into the shop, and about the men that Denny worked with.