a Breed of Women

by Fiona Kidman

  At Christmas there was a break of six weeks or more because of school holidays, but it was not intolerable, they agreed. The Everetts went away on a family expedition to the South Island, and the Taylors went north to Whangarei to see the Wallaces for the first time since Emma’s birth. Mary and Gerald were pleased to see their daughter looking so contented and Gerald went so far as to take his son-in-law aside and compliment him on taming his daughter, ‘after all the trouble we had with her, you know.’

  After their return, towards the end of January, something upset Max. He suddenly became profoundly irritable and morose. Harriet treated it as of no consequence at first, but after a few days she began to panic. Had he found out about her? she wondered. Had someone talked? She had come to take her luck for granted. She was unfair and she should be made to pay. It didn’t matter how one might toy with the concept of emancipation; she was a cheat and the penalties were bound to be extracted.

  She tackled him one evening in early February. They had been gathering plums from one of the first trees they had planted on the section, and in the gold, still evening, life looked peaceful enough on the surface. Had she done something, she asked him? Why was he so unhappy?

  He turned on her with a look of what she read as pure hatred.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, leave me alone,’ he said.

  She heard the car backing out of the garage a few minutes later and he didn’t return till late that night. She had gone to bed but was lying awake, tensed and waiting for him to come back.

  ‘Are you awake?’ he said, as he came into the room.

  ‘Yes.’

  He switched the light on. His face was wan and he looked old. ‘Harriet, it’s nothing to do with you. Please believe me, I can’t say anything more than that.’

  ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

  He hesitated briefly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say that I’ve got a few of my ideas mixed up.’

  ‘Like I did last year?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  The next morning he behaved as if nothing had happened, although he still looked pale. The matter wasn’t mentioned again, and he made what she believed to be a deliberate attempt to be pleasant to her. His expression in the garden that evening continued to trouble her. That was not her only problem. Don hadn’t been in touch with her since the Everetts’ annual holiday.

  She was in the butcher’s shop one day, and just as she was buying her weekend roast, she glanced sideways and saw Miriam and Don sitting in the car outside, watching her. They waved when she turned around, but had driven off by the time she paid for the meat. It was disturbing and she decided to ring Don at work the following week, now that Miriam was back at school.

  But it was Miriam who rang her first, on Monday after school. ‘You haven’t been down for such a long time,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you pop over and tell me how Genevieve’s getting on at school.’

  Genevieve was, in fact, tired, and Harriet wasn’t enthusiastic about trundling everybody over to Miriam’s, but on the whole it seemed to be a good idea to go. Miriam appeared delighted to see her. She talked with great enthusiasm about what they had done on their holidays. It all sounded terribly energetic. Harriet thought that if she were married to Don it would be a terrible effort to keep up with him on holiday. Marry Don? What on earth was she on about? ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said to Miriam, having missed entirely what she had been saying.

  ‘I said, we saw you in the butcher’s shop on Friday.’

  ‘Yes, I saw you too, you’d gone when I came out.’

  ‘Such a pretty outfit you had on. You’re getting quite daring, taking your skirts up as high as that, aren’t you?’

  ‘They do seem to be the fashion.’

  ‘You’ve got the legs for it, but my dear, if I may say so, I think you may be going a little far. Your suspender was showing underneath the hem. You can get those panty hose now. If you’re going to wear them quite as short as that, I really think you should see what you can do about it.’

  ‘Is that what you were looking at?’ She had nearly said ‘staring’.

  ‘Well, yes, actually it was. Don noticed first, he said she can’t get away with that, someone should tell her. So I thought, well, for your own good Harriet, better for me to tell you.’

  Harriet rang Don the next day in a bitter fury. ‘How dare you discuss me with your wife like that?’ she shouted into the phone.

  ‘Hush, I can’t talk to you now.’

  ‘Don’t you want to talk to me at all?’ He hung up. A few minutes later as she was preparing another onslaught, he rang her back.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m in someone else’s office now. I couldn’t talk to you before. Don’t take any notice of Miriam, she was putting words in my mouth and she repeated them back to you to be a bit spiteful.’

  ‘Why should she be? Does she suspect us?’

  ‘Well … she did say one or two things on holiday.’

  ‘I see,’ Harriet whispered. ‘Can’t you come over and see me? I need to see you terribly. I could make a bit of free time tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promised as he hung up. She rang Cousin Alice and asked her if she could bring the children over. She rarely did this, for it seemed as if she was imposing on her ageing relative. Cousin Alice said she loved to see the children, but Harriet knew she couldn’t cope with them for long. She had given up golf the previous year, and her step was much slower than Harriet remembered it from the days when she lived with her.

  However, on this occasion Harriet was desperate enough to ask her to have Emma for an hour or so in the morning. Just one child didn’t seem too great an imposition.

  After she had left Emma with Cousin Alice, she rang Don and told him that she was free. He appeared furtively at the back door twenty minutes later.

  ‘What did Miriam say?’ Harriet asked almost immediately.

  ‘Nothing much. She just threw out a few hints that she had her eye on us. I thought I’d let the dust settle a bit before I came back.’

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘I was going to, but it sounded cold over the phone, so I thought when it was safe I’d come and tell you.’

  ‘Everything’s safe now,’ she said.

  In bed, she said, ‘Would you like to be married to me?’

  ‘Is that a proposal?’ he asked, trying to turn away the question.

  ‘Would you like to be?’ she persisted.

  ‘Well of course I would,’ he said, ‘but you don’t want an oldie like me.’

  ‘I do, I do,’ she said. It all seemed so sane, so reasonable; she didn’t know why she hadn’t been able to see it before. She and Don had lovely times together. Max didn’t love her any more, he might even hate her, and she gave Don a better time than Miriam did. Obviously they should be married to each other.

  ‘I’m serious, Don,’ she said. ‘Please, the children would love you.’

  ‘Yours might at their age, but mine wouldn’t. They’re too old.’

  ‘You’ve thought about it, then?’

  ‘Dreams are free.’

  ‘You dream about being married to me? Then we could, don’t you see?’

  Don shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t work. You’d get tired of me and we’d get pulled apart by our children.’

  ‘We could have some more. I could have a baby with you.’

  ‘Is that your answer to everything Harriet? Just have another baby?’

  She sat up, as hurt as if he’d slapped her. ‘I thought you liked my babies.’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘But sooner or later you’d have to stop having them when things went wrong, and I’m sure there could be plenty to go wrong with us.’

  ‘Are you breaking it off, then?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You mean you want to have your cake and eat it too? We just go on and on sneaking a bit of afternoon here, a bit of morning there, a quickie in the back seat of your car? God, what s
ort of a life is that?’

  ‘It was all right before.’

  ‘But it’s stopped being all right, don’t you see? What are you afraid of, the scandal?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to hurt Miriam,’ he said.

  ‘Miriam! I thought you liked being with me better.’

  ‘I do. But Miriam’s my wife.’

  They seemed to have reached a stalemate. Don asked if he could come back next week if she could make some time.

  Through the weeks that followed, Harriet continued to fight internal battles. She wanted him, she wanted to possess him, she seemed to have always lived half a life, and Don would give her a whole one. She and Max were barely speaking to each other. He came and went, and was gone more often than he was home. She was too wrapped in her own misery to notice properly. It was the silence of mutual self-absorption rather than of open hostility.

  They were into April when Miriam rang one afternoon and said that she and Don would like them to come over that evening. They had something to talk over with Harriet and Max. They would send one of their boys over to babysit for a while.

  Harriet smelt so much danger in the air that she was, once again, going to say no, but she said yes because it appeared a safer decision. She told Max, who said he was too busy to go. It was only when she pointed out that they hadn’t been anywhere together for a long time and she didn’t often ask him to go places with her that he finally agreed. Besides, on second thoughts, he seemed to be interested in what the Everetts wanted to talk to them about.

  By the time darkness fell and the children were asleep, it was raining outside. The Everetts’ elder son John turned up to babysit about eight o’clock, and even though they were only half a block away, Max suggested that they take the car. There seemed no point in getting drenched, and he could run John home if it was still raining later.

  The lights were all on in the verandah of the Everetts’ brick bungalow. There was an air of permanence and solidity about the place, as if it were an impregnable part of the landscape, an enduring symbol of suburban Weyville. Like a fort, Harriet thought foolishly as they splashed across the concrete drive, water running in a steady stream as the rain pelted down.

  At the door Miriam greeted them too brightly, or so it seemed to Harriet. Yet everything looked the same; the pictures hadn’t shifted, the bright scatter rugs on the polished floor were all in the same place, the comfortable big linen-covered armchairs hadn’t been shifted. Only Don looked out of place in his own home. He was sunk on one of the chairs, all angles, hands and feet not knowing where they should be. He looked at Harriet abjectly when she came in.

  It was too late to run. There was nowhere to run to. But before she had come, there had been nowhere to go. The feeling had communicated itself to Max. He looked edgily at the door, and resigned himself. Whatever was to be could not be stopped. Nice for him, thought Harriet — what does he have to worry about except knowledge. Yes, Max was going to have to wear knowledge.

  The rituals were beginning. Miriam poured them all sherries, rather large ones. Harriet didn’t like Miriam’s taste in sherry, which was too sweet for her, but still it was a drink and there was no denying that she needed one.

  The opening gambits were performed by Miriam too, once she’d settled herself in an armchair. They were all seated now, Miriam contriving to look relaxed, with a cigarette, blowing fine blue smoke out of her nose, cradling her sherry in her hands.

  ‘Don and I think it’s time we had a little talk to you two,’ said Miriam, finally having arranged the scene to her satisfaction, or perhaps as for as was possible without prolonging things any further.

  Max said stiffly, ‘If it’s about our personal lives, don’t you think that’s between Harriet and myself?’

  ‘I wish it was,’ said Miriam. ‘But life is never as simple as that, is it, Max?’

  Harriet was looking at Max in surprise. It was almost as if Miriam and he were sharing knowledge from which she, Harriet, was excluded. That was impossible. Whatever secrets there were in the room were between her and Don, or should have been.

  ‘You’ve got yourself in quite a mess, haven’t you, Max?’ Miriam was saying.

  ‘Your grapevine seems to be working efficiently,’ said Max. ‘Is that what you brought us over here for? So you could tell my wife what your rotten little network’s come up with? I suppose this is what you call coming out with things in the open. Not talking behind my back.’

  Miriam was starting to unwind now. She was getting the bit between her teeth.

  ‘You young people,’ she said. ‘So self-centred. It affects us.’

  Harriet looked from one to the other of them, bewildered.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Max, starting to get to his feet. ‘What goes on in our household has nothing to do with yours.’

  ‘Just a minute, we’ll come to that,’ said Miriam, mysteriously. She was taking on the appearance of a soothsayer, sitting under the lamplight She appeared to have inhabited her chair forever.

  ‘What does Max know?’ said Harriet sharply. ‘If you don’t say what you have to, I’m leaving. Don’t think I don’t mean it, because I do. Don’t underestimate me, Miriam.’

  ‘Nor you me,’ said the other woman. Then, ‘All right, Max, about the suit Roy Mawson’s filing against you. What are you going to do about it?’ It was out, or part of it. Max looked at Harriet.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘Suit, what suit?’ said Harriet.

  ‘There you are, are you satisfied with what you’ve done to her?’ Max said to Miriam. ‘Go on, tell her the rest.’

  ‘Like you said, that’s for you to tell Harriet,’ Miriam responded. It was like some crazy game.

  Max cupped one hand and squeezed the other into a ball, banging them together. ‘Elaine Mawson’s husband is petitioning for a divorce. Roy’s named me as co-respondent. We spent the weekend in Taupo last year … he found the receipts.’

  ‘The fishing weekend?’ Harriet asked. He nodded. ‘And the gun-club nights?’ He didn’t need to reply.

  She sat, stunned. Twice in a lifetime? Surely not. What sort of woman was she? Not one that kept her man, that was for sure. She looked towards Don, hunched in his chair. Perhaps she was to be allowed this one. She wanted him. Loved him? Perhaps. They could be all right together. If he’d let them be. But would he? He looked away from her.

  ‘I don’t know why you had to interfere,’ Max was saying Miriam.

  ‘Because I don’t want to lose my husband,’ said Miriam, rising from her chair and pouring more sherry, for herself first, and for the others by way of token. ‘We have a good life, Don and I. We’ve got two sons, we’ve a good home, we have a good compromise. I saw him restless, and I let it go. It’ll pass, I told myself. The girl is unhappy too, and who’s to blame her, always a fish out of water in this neighbourhood. There was a time when I was a bit like her myself, all past now, I’ve felt — sorry for her? Yes, I suppose I have. If he has to choose someone, I should be glad it’s her. So I let it go.’

  Neither of their names had been spoken, yet everyone in the room knew that it was Harriet and Don of whom she was speaking. Don said, ‘Miriam, you have no right,’ and broke away.

  Max looked at Harriet with disbelief and scorn. ‘You wanted him? You’ve had him?’

  ‘And I said to myself,’ continued Miriam’s relentless voice, ‘her husband’s playing the field, not that one could altogether blame him either, so why shouldn’t I let it go a bit? But Max was silly and got caught. So he’s going to have to make some decisions. So I wanted to tell you, Harriet, that if you’re on your own, I’m sorry, but you don’t get my husband.’ She polished a fingernail delicately with the hem of her dress. ‘He’s had his bit on the side.’

  ‘She knew all the time?’ said Harriet, appealing to Don, asking him to tell her that it wasn’t true. He nodded.

  ‘Pretty well,’ he said.

  ‘You told her things about us?’

/>   Don continued to sit, his head bowed now, seeming to shake, as if he was weeping.

  ‘You’re sick,’ Harriet said to Miriam.

  Miriam raised a pencilled eyebrow. ‘Possibly, though some people enjoy bad health,’ she said.

  ‘That’s disgusting.’ Harriet stood up. ‘I am leaving.’ At the door she stopped and turned. ‘What made you think he was so safe with me? He might have left you for me.’

  ‘It was always a risk,’ said Miriam. ‘I considered it Oh yes, I thought about it a lot But you see, Harriet, it seemed to me that he had less to concern himself about making a respectable woman of you.’

  ‘You bitch. Oh you bitch,’ said Harriet softly.

  ‘Whereas Max has a different problem. The opposite, one might say. I must admit, Harriet, I couldn’t risk your availability.’

  Harriet ran out into the driveway. The rain was still teaming down. Don caught her up at the edge of the verandah, as she backed away from the downpour. She didn’t have the car keys, and the only escape route was through the rain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, piss off,’ she shouted. The Everetts’ milk bottles were standing on the side of the porch waiting to be put out for the night. Harriet stooped, swiftly taking one by the neck, and, as she straightened, she smashed it on the side of the house. Glass broke around them, rain, explosions. She half crouched in the rain, ready to pounce on Don with the bottle.

  ‘The other answer, Harriet?’ said Don, his eyes a mixture of courage and fear.

  A hand like a steel band gripped her wrist, squeezing it until her fingers opened in spite of herself. The broken milk bottle fell out of her hand, tumbling away into the begonias.

  It was Max. ‘I’ll open the car door for you,’ he said. He frog-marched her to the car without speaking to Don, holding on to her arm until he had thrown her into the car and shut the door on her.