a Breed of Women

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘How do you two cope with Harriet’s public life?’ said Hamish.

  Leonie’s heart sank. The warning lights had just come on. Once they got into dangerous personal waters, there was no knowing what turn the conversation might take. She looked over at Harriet for the umpteenth time that night, but Harriet was looking steadfastly ahead. She knows, Leonie suddenly saw, she knows that I do not want her to persist with this exercise in front of Neil and Liz, and she’s going through with it.

  ‘We cope with it very well,’ said Harriet, ‘because we both believe in it.’

  ‘You have children, though. Who looks after them when you’re not around?’ asked Liz.

  ‘I have regular home help,’ said Harriet.

  Liz looked faintly disapproving and said she didn’t agree with that.

  ‘I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with it,’ said Harriet. ‘After all, you’ve all lived in different parts of the world, from what Leonie’s told me, where you had native help with your children.’

  ‘But this is New Zealand,’ Liz pointed out.

  ‘I had noticed,’ said Harriet, dryly. ‘I suppose you could say that one difference in New Zealand is that I have to pay the person I employ a wage in proportion to what I earn. I assure you it makes quite a hole in the forty-hour week, paying someone else at the same rate as myself for ten hours of that time.’

  ‘Our servants always enjoyed a very high standard of living,’ said Neil stiffly.

  ‘As high as yours?’

  Neil was silent.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Liz, with an air of finality, as if her pronouncement would settle the argument, ‘we weren’t working, we women. There is a difference, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Harriet. ‘A shame for you.’

  Hamish said, ‘It might suit Max, but some of us like our wives to be supportive to us at home.’

  ‘Oh, she’s most supportive,’ said Max, with a bit of a grin. ‘Her salary’s quite good, even when she has knocked off a few bob for the home help.’ Now he and Harriet really were conspirators.

  ‘It’s not what I’d want of my wife,’ said Hamish, applying the acid test.

  ‘Possibly not,’ Harriet replied, ‘but have you ever asked your wife what she would like of herself?’

  ‘Harriet, stop,’ said Leonie.

  ‘Well I’m sure my wife will tell you what she wants herself, won’t you dear?’ Hamish was saying.

  She was silent. The others waited.

  ‘I want to go back to Toronto,’ said a voice Leonie recognised from afar as her own. ‘I want — Todd!’

  She got up and left the room. At least she thought she had, but maybe it was later on. She must have done some time, because when she woke up it was morning, and she was in her room in bed, with her négligé on, and everyone had gone.

  Leonie stared around at the carnage in her kitchen. Waking had been a particularly dreadful experience for her this morning. Her hangover had been very bad — they seemed to be getting worse. The feeling of disorientation was acute to the point of being nearer to disembodiment. The old terrors crowded in, in a new and frightening dimension. When she had reached out to find whether Hamish was there or not, the bed was empty. Her relief lasted for only a fraction of a second. He should have been there and he was not. The night before closed over her.

  The house was very still when she got up. There were signs of Hamish and the boys having got their own breakfasts, amongst the chaos of last night’s leftovers and undone dishes. Hamish must have got the boys up. She looked round for a note, but there was nothing.

  She got a couple of aspirin from the cupboard and dropped them into a glass of water, watching them shoot to the surface and dissolve into white clumps. Not knowing quite where to start, she picked up a pile of dishes covered in the tiny fragile bones of chickens, the remains of the coq au vin. She was usually meticulous about tidying up from dinner parties before she went to bed, but she had been half drunk before this one even started. By the end it, even the rituals of tidiness had deserted her.

  The bones looked pathetic, so small. When the children were little they had saved the wishbones of chickens when the family had them, placing them on a sunny windowsill, in whatever house they happened to be living in at the time, till they were ready to be pulled apart between them and one of them could make a wish. Brittle bleached little witch-doctor’s fingers they would be reduced to. Leonie wished that she could find a bone amongst the debris now, instantly dry it, and wish her troubles away.

  Instead, she wandered out on to the flagstone terrace. It was spring, there was clematis growing thick around the pillars, the branches of a tree scraping against the side of the house were shot through with a pale cloud of green satin shoots, the scent of jasmine lay heavy on the air. Only a slight breeze ruffled the calm morning. Away to her left the sea shone in its many shades of blue. She might have called this place home, given the chance. But then had there ever been a home for her anywhere? Or would it be possible to find one still? She thought of her sons. What price, her leaving?

  She tore a piece of jasmine to shreds in her fingers, and the lemony perfume struck sharply in her nostrils. Inside, the phone began to ring. Perhaps if she let it ring it would go away. It stopped and she sighed with relief, but a moment later it began again.

  She gave in to its insistent clamour, knowing that the caller would be either Hamish or Harriet. She didn’t want to speak to either of them yet — it was too soon. She was filled with hatred towards them both.

  Hamish spoke when she answered the phone. He was off to Dunedin on a later flight that morning, he said. He had had an early call from the office. She’d been too heavily asleep for him to bother trying to wake her, so he’d collected up his things in a suitcase. He’d be back the following evening.

  ‘Do you think it’s a particularly good time to be going away?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

  ‘We have … some things to talk about.’

  ‘Why don’t you talk to your friend about them? You seem to have done quite a lot of talking to her in the past few months.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’ said Leonie.

  ‘Very little, to her credit. It was you who did the talking. She told you to be quiet several times before she left, but you weren’t content with a little bombshell, you were quite prepared to go on all night.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ whispered Leonie.

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t.’

  ‘Please, can’t you come home and sort things out with me? Talk to me, I need so much to talk to you. Things aren’t impossible. I need you with me right now. Please.’

  ‘It’s impossible. I’ve got to leave for the airport in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Can’t someone else go, just this once?’

  ‘For God’s sake, we’ve got a strike on our hands if I don’t go.’

  ‘Is that more important than us sorting things out?’

  ‘Leonie,’ he said, ‘I have nothing to sort out, except the mess you’ve made. You sort yourself out. As far as I’m concerned the only sorting out I’ve got to do is whether the Smythes are going to keep their mouths shut or not. Unless you felt it was worth the trouble to do something about it.’

  ‘In other words, whether my — my indiscretions are going to ruin your career or not?’

  His tone was deliberate. ‘Oh, they won’t do that, Leonie, I promise you that. I won’t let them.’

  He hung up, and she put the phone down slowly, thinking of the other wives who had been quietly dumped. He wouldn’t want that, he would make sure that didn’t happen. But if the worst came to the worst she supposed it was possible, though unlikely. What would he expect of her now? She should make her peace with Liz, perhaps. He had as good as suggested that. If Liz and Neil were allowed to adopt the role of counsellors and conciliators, they would stand behind them. A vicarious pleasure. Unless she felt it was not worth the trou
ble. That was what he had meant Good heavens, they’d adopted that posture themselves with a young couple once, out in the Middle East. Kept it in the family. It had been touch and go, that scandal, but the Coglans had seen them through it. They still got Christmas cards from them.

  She would have to ring Liz. That was what was expected of them.

  And Harriet? Why had Harriet done that to her? She must have been able to see. Was it because she was so wrapped up in her own unhappiness? Spite seemed low on her list of motives. She had no reason to be spiteful towards Leonie. They had been friends, hadn’t they? Yes, friends. For longer than she cared to remember.

  That seemed closer to the heart of the matter. Could Harriet see what she could not see, or refused to see? Their beginnings. I do not want to see my beginnings, I sought her out with the past as a reference only, not as a map. But she remembers, she wants me to face who I am. The yellow roses. The old room. The orphanage. Weyville. Her and me.

  Tomorrow she would ring Liz. She would sort something tomorrow. For now, she would think about Harriet.

  She cleaned the kitchen. It seemed to take hours. It was nearly midday when she put the last glasses back in their places. Her head had cleared by then, and she bathed and showered. Once she had talked to Harriet, things would start to take shape again.

  There was no reply to Harriet’s phone. She tried several times during the afternoon, until she knew that even if she did get Harriet, the rest of the family would be in by then too, and the conversation she wanted with Harriet was not a family one. She tried her at work too, but the girl in the office said that Ms Wallace wouldn’t be in that day. No, she didn’t know when she would be in, and yes, she supposed she was on an assignment of some kind. Perhaps she would like to try her at home if it was urgent. Would she like the phone number? Leonie thanked her and hung up.

  The boys came in, and she wondered if they knew anything of the events of the night before. It was hard to tell. Laurence’s face was totally non-committal. She would never read that boy. Brent seemed gentle and distracted.

  She got steaks out and started to prepare one of their favourite meals. They would sit and eat together, in front of television.

  ‘Will I get you a drink, Mum?’ Brent said.

  ‘Not tonight, son,’ she said.

  The boys laughed uproariously at the comedy programmes, and shushed each other through the news so that their mother could hear it properly. It all seemed very normal. Afterwards they took the plates out and stacked them in the dishwasher. Laurence went to his room to do his homework, but Brent came out and sat with her on the sofa. She put her hand on his and he returned her grip.

  ‘Everything all right, son?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve decided what I want to do when I leave school,’ he said.

  ‘That won’t be for a long time yet.’

  ‘I’ll be fifteen next year,’ he reminded her.

  ‘That still doesn’t mean you’ll be leaving school.’

  ‘Not for a year or so. But I had a talk to the careers advisor today. About getting a farm cadetship. I want to go on to a farm.’

  She was startled. ‘A farm? Here in New Zealand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dad won’t like that much.’

  ‘No, I know, but it doesn’t matter. I can cope.’ Looking at him she felt that he could. She loved him, but he was breaking the cord. He was telling her that he no longer needed her.

  In the morning she tried to ring Harriet again, but the phone continued to ring unanswered. It was becoming strange. By afternoon, she had still received no response, and she still hadn’t rung Liz. She wanted to talk to Harriet before she spoke to Liz. But why? It was all some strange nightmare. Hamish would be home in a few hours, and she had done nothing. It was nightmare, it was reality, she couldn’t turn the clock back on everything that had been said, and done, had still to be dealt with. What did she want to say to Harriet? How crazy to have delayed ringing Liz in favour of some nebulous conversation about the past. If this was facing up to things she must be crazy.

  She would try one more time. A woman answered when she dialled Harriet’s number. Mrs Taylor had gone away up north that morning, she told her. Away? For how long? She didn’t say, the woman, she came in to help. Gone to some place called Ohaka she thought, right away up the island.

  So Harriet had gone. Gone without even ringing to find out how she was. Wrought all that havoc, and gone away. She was on her own again. Fear nearly choked her.

  She lifted the phone once more, and called Toronto.

  After the dinner at Leonie’s, Harriet was upset. It had ended badly. Max had tried to comfort her, but coming so close to her own disaster, she felt as if her world was falling apart. It was impossible, of course, to explain this to Max. Nor did she care to tell him how she had thought it was just like the old days in suburbia. These people couldn’t see themselves like that, but that’s what they were. When you break the pattern, no one can picture the pieces. These people are no better at holding on to the pattern than anyone else. And Leonie, poor bewildered Leonie, had seen her sadness and thought that she was pitying her. She had read her face. In fact, Harriet pitied them both, they were more sisters under the skin than either of them could possibly have realised.

  ‘We’re instruments of our own destruction,’ Max was saying. ‘I’ve heard you say that. She did it to herself.’

  ‘I stood by and helped her make a good job of it, then,’ said Harriet.

  She was a destructive force in Leonie’s life. Leonie had been right in accusing her of that, she had been playing games in a far more complex situation than she had known. She would ring her to wish her well, and leave her to work out her own destiny. There might have been a time when they could have helped each other, but that moment seemed to be past. Fleetingly, she wished that she could simply confide in Max all that had happened to her in the past year, that he would relieve her of thinking of the causes and effects of her behaviour in other people’s lives, as well as her own. But by doing this, she would add to the destruction. Max was, after all, a human being. As was Michael. And Leonie. As she was herself. There was a point at which one could ask too much, and she kept silence.

  She intended to ring Leonie briefly and casually from work the next day.

  On her way to the office, she stopped in town. She had remembered that it was Mary’s birthday soon, and she would have to get her present away that day if it was to arrive in time. Her mother depended more and more on her contact with her daughter. Harriet often felt guilty that she could not see her more often, especially as Mary wrote to her that Gerald’s health was failing and he was becoming more cantankerous. It was becoming more difficult to buy a present for her, but she expected she would find something. She settled for a pair of fluffy slippers, and made her way to the greeting card section. She stood, hovering undecided in front of the section labelled ‘Mother’s Birthday’, remembering that Mary and Gerald actually read the words inside the cards she sent them.

  A voice behind her said, ‘Harriet Wallace? It is, isn’t it?’

  She turned round, expecting to see someone who had watched her on television. She was quite sure she had never seen the man before in her life and, expecting to have her assumption confirmed, she composed a polite but firm dismissal. He was tall with a beard shot with grey, and his slender nervous hands reached to take hers.

  ‘I’ve always hoped I might meet you again somewhere,’ he was saying as she avoided his hands. ‘I’ve heard you’re quite famous now. Who would have thought it? But of course I should have known. You don’t remember me do you? Francis Dixon.’

  It took seconds for the name to register, then it came flooding back. Francis. Beautiful remote Francis, Wendy’s brother, had walked, stooped and withdrawn, round Ohaka School. It was almost unbelievable. Francis of the dark secrets, the one who had gone away.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she said, accepting his hands now. They stood like that in the shop, tr
ansfixed, trying to roll back the years and find points in each other’s features with which they could identify.

  ‘Come on, we can’t stand here all day,’ he said. ‘Let’s go some place and have coffee.’ He had a slight drawl in his voice.

  ‘Please. But first,’ she indicated her mother’s parcel, ‘I have to send a birthday present to my mother.’

  ‘Your mother? How is she?’

  After all these years, here was someone she could tell about her mother, here in a Wellington department store. All the people she had met, who had passed through her orbit, and not one of them had ever been able to say, ‘How is your mother?’ knowing her as a real person.

  She started to tell him, and at the same time he was agreeing of course the parcel must be sent. He chose wrapping paper and said that she held the nicest card in her hand. She always chose things well. In the same breath he demanded of the shop assistant all the requirements for wrapping the parcel, and he did the job right there on the counter, as beautifully as if wrapping parcels was the special task for which his long well-manicured fingers had been designed.

  There was news to exchange as they made their way along the street Wendy was married and lived in England, though she had been back to New Zealand a couple of times. That’s how he knew about Harriet; Wendy had seen her on television, and had thought of getting in touch but supposed Harriet got besieged by people like her and hadn’t liked to bother her. ‘I’d love to have seen her,’ Harriet cried, and found that she meant it.

  ‘I’ll write and tell her that, she’ll be pleased,’ said Francis as they settled themselves in a coffee bar.

  ‘You’ve been out of the country, then?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Almost forever,’ he said. ‘Australia. I fiddle for a living.’

  ‘A musician?’

  ‘Not a very illustrious one. Symphony orchestra, second violin. I thought I was going to be great, I was quite promising, you know, but I’d left it too late to be a prodigy. My parents never approved of me.’

  ‘I remember that. I remember so much about you now. Mind you, I’m surprised you remembered me,’ said Harriet. ‘You never let on that you even knew I was alive when I was a kid.’