by Fiona Kidman
Oh, how the mighty had fallen. She was careful and guarded with some of her more forthright friends who had forceful views about men in general. She was in love, helplessly, day by day, hour by hour, even minute by minute, it seemed. She was grateful for the drives backwards and forwards to the studio. They gave her time in the car alone. The music she chose to put into her car cassette had become sentimental. Gliding, driving, dreaming music she called it, and felt she ought to be ashamed of herself. To be so helpless was certainly to be on a perilous edge.
She wondered how much of her feelings he guessed. After her admission that she loved him, she had tried by implication to steer a middle course, though it had nothing to do with the abandon of their nights together. But she was sure he knew. At times he let his natural arrogance take its course. Deliberately? It was hard to tell. They would be dining somewhere and she would have her hand resting on his knee under the cloth, amazed at their daring, being in public together, so obviously together. People would look at her and look away, or sometimes say with apologetic half-greetings, ‘Oh excuse me, but you are Harriet Wallace aren’t you? Sure I’d seen you on the telly,’ and she would incline her head and withdraw to safety.
The way in which she was known presented both a threat and a source of pride to him. He couldn’t always cope with it, and he would sometimes put her down — ever so gently so that at first she wouldn’t know it was happening. He did it superbly, by means of little things, such as testing her New Zealand schoolgirl French, which had been brushed up in recent years so that she could acquit herself well in restaurants. She would stumble, humiliated, and everything would falter — the cutlery in her hands, the way she ate her food. She hated him when he did that to her, and herself for caring. Then he would seek her forgiveness and order a fresh bowl of strawberries, one of his favourite foods, urging her to have some too. For some reason she had refused them on the first evening they had been together, and he had urged her to try one from his spoon, and another and another, so that amidst the low lights and the silver and the flowers he had fed her delicately piece by piece like a bird feeding its young, sharing the fruit with him. Now they finished their meal like that, and it was his apology. He was a moderate drinker and they would leave soon after the strawberries ritual, provoked by it, rather than by the wine, to return to his room. Then they would forget his business worries, his edgy pride, the small hurts he could inflict on her.
The room was always as good as you could buy for his night in town. If the company was in a precarious state, it certainly didn’t show in his personal finances, reinforcing her opinion that he was wealthy and that his pride was being affected by this business reverse rather than his pocket. She felt like Cinderella in more ways than one as she scurried off home to the children and Max, ever patient with her ‘business commitments’ that kept her out long past the time that he had given up and gone to bed.
Shortly after Michael’s return to Auckland on the last of the trips, he rang, buoyant again. The newly established Auckland office was not closing, the magazine was on. The company had elected to gamble on a return to stability in the economy. The only thing was timing, and the launching, it had been decided, should be held over till later in 1978, maybe even early 1979. By that time, they prophesied, going on the performance of other countries, there should be an upswing. Harriet suspected that the company had already invested a considerable amount of money in the venture, but dismantling the operation at this stage would probably also be highly expensive. In the meantime, the magazine and a number of subsidiaries were to be consolidated on the local market and Michael would be briefed on this when he returned to England.
‘You’re going back to England, then?’ Her voice sounded rigid with fear.
‘For a little while, just a couple of months,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And not yet, not till winter. The London office is going to be short of an editor for a couple of months, and I’m replacing him, that’s all. There’s a lot of things to sort out on this scene, the two tie in together, all right?’
‘Is your family going?’ she heard herself ask, and wanted to tear her tongue out for breaking the rules.
‘No, they’ll stay behind. It’s not really sensible for that length of time. Not when we’ll be going home maybe six months afterwards, anyway.’
At least that much was a reprieve. If he was leaving them in New Zealand, then it really did mean he was coming back. Harriet felt she could breathe again. She had news of her own for him too.
‘I have to come to Auckland soon,’ she said. ‘In about a fortnight’s time, to make some programmes. Will I stay in a motel or with friends?’
He hesitated on the other end of the phone. ‘When will you be up, Harriet?’
She gave him the dates in late April.
‘I’m going to be pretty frantic round then, with going away,’ he said.
‘You won’t be able to see me?’ she said sharply.
‘Of course I will, but maybe not very much. Well … you’d better stay in a motel then.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Sounds a bit like some low-grade novels or a B-grade movie, doesn’t it?’
‘Why?’ she wondered as he hung up. ‘Why, because now he has to visit a motel instead of me having to run backwards and forwards to hotel bedrooms?’ She tried to push the thought to the back of her mind, and by the time she arrived in Auckland a week or so later it had gone away.
She arrived at the motel when it was still quite early, having caught the first morning plane. The studio had sent her to interview a number of people for background in a new series of programmes they were doing, and the morning involved checking that all her subjects would be available at the right times, going over her research material, and gearing herself for the next few days. It was always difficult fitting oneself into a totally new situation with technicians and crew that you didn’t know, a strange studio, and so on. You had to be on your mettle just that little bit extra.
Before she set down to work she called Michael. She was put through a switchboard, and then to his secretary, who sounded totally cool and protective. ‘Is it urgent?’ asked the girl. ‘Mr Young is rather tied up at the moment.’
‘Well …’ Harriet hesitated, and then thought, why shouldn’t I? What’s to stop me giving my name? ‘Could you just ask him if he has a moment to speak to Harriet Wallace, please? If he hasn’t, I’ll leave a number for him to call.’
After a minute or so, Michael’s voice came on, cooler, more careful than usual. ‘Nice to hear from you, Harriet,’ he said, as if it were a surprise.
‘When will I see you?’ she asked frantically, after she had told him where she was staying.
‘I’ll have to give you a ring back on that. Can you leave a phone number?’
She hung up, feeling numb. He must have had someone there, maybe even his wife. Perhaps the secretary was really untrustworthy and listened in on his calls, maybe he was in the middle of negotiating something important.
Trying hard to concentrate, she sat down to work. The bits of paper in front of her kept floating away from her range of vision. The white concrete walls of the motel seemed cold and unwelcoming and she was stuck here on her own for days. None of the friends she would usually see had been contacted, she had wanted to keep each day whole and perfect for him, outside working hours. She had even dreamed extravagantly that he might drive her up to Ohaka one day, and that she would be able to show him something of the countryside that she knew so well; it was something she could teach him about.
It was eighteen years since she had been back to Ohaka. To have returned with Michael would have been to share with him something so private, so increasingly necessary to her, that it would have singled him out forever in her life. She and Max had never gone there together, for by the time they had met, the Wallaces had left the farm. They often talked of going together and, as the children grew up, they asked her about going there, but somehow they never did. It would have been a small detour on one of their trips to Whangare
i, but on the trip north the children were always tired and anxious to complete the journey. On the way back after the anxious visits to the Wallaces, when the children would be too noisy for Gerald, and Mary was valiantly trying to keep everyone happy, but getting frailer and vaguer in her attempts, there would be a feeling of relief about getting on the road again. Faced with an 800-kilometre journey home, it would be a case of putting as much time on the road as they could before the day was too far advanced and the traffic got heavy. She and Max would share the driving all day to save the expense of an overnight stop, and there was really no time for side trips.
She harboured a suspicion that these were all excuses. They could have made a day trip from Whangarei, but they hadn’t. That was because they were, in theory, preserving their energies for the trip further up north which, in fact, they usually made. The real reason, Harriet believed, was that once there, she didn’t know what there would be to show them. All that way for a paddock or two, a tree perhaps? Where would one start? They might be disappointed in Ohaka. She had talked to them about it, but what, after all, would it mean to them? Perhaps it was better just to leave it in limbo, the place where Mum had come from. Yet, more and more, she had formed a private desire to go there. Perhaps Michael would take her. Since she had met him, it had become an obsession, so that she almost believed it would happen, like his coming to her after the long wait.
She had brought a bottle of gin with her, on impulse. That in itself was an admission that something might go wrong. Tucked conveniently in the back of her mind was the thought that naturally he wouldn’t be able to come every single night she was in Auckland, and a couple of drinks would help to put her off to sleep if she was lying there thinking about him; better than having to hover round some bar by herself. She had never liked that much. Didn’t know why she thought she’d be short of company. That never happened much either, there was sure to be someone around or if she really needed to, there were the friends who hadn’t been warned of her coming. What a surprise Harriet is, they would say, pleased to see her.
So why had she brought a bottle of gin? Because of that hesitancy on the phone when she had told him she was coming to Auckland?
She poured some gin into a thick motel glass, and sloshed some water over it. It steadied her slightly, and she had a second drink. God, how easy it would be to wipe herself out now. She remembered the interviews she had set up for the afternoon, and turned as resolutely as she could back to her papers. As she did so, there was a knock at the door.
‘Harriet?’ His voice held a note of question in it
She started to tremble violently. It was him, and here she was, smelling of gin, scratchy with worry about him.
‘Just a minute,’ she called. In the bathroom, she flushed the toilet to cover her rinsing her mouth and squirting it full of breath freshener. She undid the door a moment later to let him in.
He was coatless, tieless. It was still like high summer here in Auckland, the day hot and still. Having left Wellington in a cold southerly that had had her panicking that the plane might not take off, she was overdressed and sweltering. He burst into the room looking like summer itself.
‘You came. You came,’ she said, collapsing against him, weak with relief. His arms closed around her as she reached up, dabbing at him with kisses, the wide column of his neck, the side of his face, wherever they might land, until he bent his head to kiss her properly. Did she imagine it, or was he straining away from her? Was there ice in the blue chips of his eyes? She backed away from him a little.
‘I’m so glad you came,’ she said faintly, at the same time desperately flicking her eyes around the room to make sure that she had put away the gin bottle. She had.
‘I can see that,’ he said, with a semblance of the tolerant amused look he produced for her when she was volubly grateful for his presence in Wellington.
‘What shall we do? Where shall we go?’ she said, taking his hand and leading him to the bed to sit down. ‘By the way, welcome to my place for a change.’
‘It’s a bit grotty, isn’t it?’ he said, looking round.
She was stung. In fact she had paid extra to come to such an expensive place, more than the television corporation’s standard accommodation allowance, so that he wouldn’t feel out of place. ‘It’s no worse than the places I come to you in,’ she retorted. ‘Come on, you’ll get used to it’
‘Not this time, I’m afraid.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, although she knew already.
‘I’m really flat out, love … I had to make time this morning. And the evenings are difficult for me.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before, then?’ she said. ‘I could have made other arrangements. Didn’t you know that I’d have made every moment free for you?’
He looked despairing, touchingly so, and she started stroking his face trying to translate her love into comfort She wanted to hold him like a child, he looked so unhappy.
‘When could I have told you? I didn’t know till you told me on the phone, and I haven’t seen you since.’
‘You could have rung me before I came up, so I wouldn’t have built on it so much.’
‘It seemed better to tell you to your face.’ Tell her to her face. Really, what did he mean?
‘Hadn’t you better get to the point?’ she said.
‘I don’t think I can go on with this,’ he said miserably.
‘Why? Why not?’ Her voice was a tiny whimper.
‘I’m no good at it. I’m hurting you too much.’
‘You’re not Please, Michael, you’re not, you’ve never hurt me until now. Only the thought of not being with you hurts me.’
‘Then don’t you see? It’s no good, because we can’t be together.’
‘Didn’t you believe me,’ she said slowly, ‘when I told you that I didn’t want to possess you? That I only wanted to be with you for as long as it’s possible? Do you think I want to take you away from your wife and children? That I want to — to marry you or something?’
‘I’m not that arrogant,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you! I don’t think you believe that it’s possible that I might want to give you something without asking for a tangible asset in return.’
‘That’s not true.’ He got to his feet, walking round the motel room in long agitated strides, bumping his huge frame as he went. ‘You said you wanted to be with me while it was possible.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I feel it’s impossible, that’s all.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because I’m no good at coping emotionally, that’s why.’ And his eyes seemed to retract into his skull again as they had done the moment before he had entered her the first time.
Her heart lifted. This, then, meant that he loved her. It must ‘Come to bed,’ she said, starting to tremble again. ‘Please, darling, it’ll be all right’
He looked like a man drowning.
She said again, ‘It’ll be all right’ She started to slip out of her clothes. Wanting her and showing it, he followed her. She lifted back the covers on the bed so that they might lie on the cool sheets. With sudden violence he turned to her, insisting that they make love dog fashion, as if to humiliate them both. Afterwards he lay staring at the ceiling with unshed tears behind his eyes.
It was nearly midday, and Harriet realised that she was due in the city in less than an hour for her first appointment She would have to dress and find a taxi.
Michael said that she need not worry, he would take her into town. They dressed, hardly speaking to each other, he seemingly irritable. He felt a migraine coming, he said. He found the place claustrophobic.
The car was a handsome new BMW.
She wondered if it was the company’s, and decided that they surely couldn’t be out to make that big a splash on the New Zealand scene. She wished she was better at wearing riches. If he had to pick her as his woman, that was all very well, but surely he could have
found someone to go with his image better. Mug shots on television every week hardly added up to the beautiful people, however much they, the performers, might sometimes like to project themselves as such. If she hadn’t been competent, she would have lost her job by now. Even so, a few pointed remarks had been made about her weight from time to time, and if she hadn’t been looking so well in recent months she would probably have been due for a general tidy-up. Her image had been due to slip sideways around the time she met Michael. She had been revamped by him, but it was an illusion. When he went, she would slide into middle age. For a little while he held her in aspic.
She didn’t want to keep him forever and had never anticipated doing so; she could wear his youth and his wealth for a certain amount of time, and then the affair would be over. The short time that they had together, its prospects, this was what she could cope with; something that would last for a specified time, never to be given too much time to disintegrate, to sour, for them to see through each other.
She remembered a conversation they had had in a restaurant some weeks before. She had been reading a contemporary English woman novelist, and told him about her. To her surprise, the next time he saw her he said that he had read a couple of the woman’s books.
‘They’re fun,’ Harriet had said, ‘but so unreal. All the women are rescued from their predicaments by money. They have inheritances or their mother’s jewels to flog off when the going gets rough. They cheat, they create honest situations and then find dishonest escape routes. Real life isn’t like that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he’d replied, quite seriously. ‘I read one in which the girl was very poor all the way through. It was very good I thought.’ He named the book.
‘But don’t you realise, on the last page someone rich walks in and promises to rescue her, so she can get away from the disgrace of being poor? The whole book’s a diatribe against people who aren’t rich.’
‘Well, being poor is rather boring, isn’t it?’ he’d said. ‘Why do you have to be so bloody virtuous about it?’