a Breed of Women (27 page)

‘Language,’ said a nurse reprovingly.

Emma emerged to a torrent of abuse, reproaches and weeping. No wonder she was such a shy nervous little girl, Harriet thought later. At least she had the stamina to stay alive, she refused to die, though her life hung in the balance for two days. Harriet knew she had no right to have a favourite child, but Emma had demanded a larger space in the scheme of things than the others. While she was still in hospital, Max broke his leg, a ridiculous classic accident in the home, standing on one of the children’s toys with wheels on it. One foot had shot out in front of him, the other had buckled underneath. When Harriet heard, she felt a certain smugness that she had been tucked up safely in her hospital bed when it happened. She knew she would have been blamed if she’d been around. Don broke the news to her, calling in to see her on the way to work. She was in the mood for dire news, with Emma still a fragile little bundle when she fed her. Don shambled in, looking awkward, as if suddenly wondering what on earth had prompted him into such an unlikely errand of mercy. She sat up, feeling starry-eyed and alarmed.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘don’t look like that, it’s only a broken leg.’ He was trying to give her as much reassuring information in one breath as possible.

She fell back on the harsh hospital-linen pillows. ‘You’re sure it’s nothing worse than that?’

‘I promise. I called into casualty on the way up here and they said it wasn’t a very bad break. They were just putting him in plaster.’

‘I’ll have to get out of here,’ she said looking frantically round the ward.

‘No, you don’t. Come on, relax, old girl, you’re as jittery as they make them.’

Harriet started to snuffle. ‘Oh, bloody hell. Get me a tissue, will you Don? Somebody should have told you I’m a weepy bird. Don’t worry, look the other way if you want to, it’s just the baby being such a sickly little thing. They tell me she’s going to be all right though.’

The nurse marched over, ready to take charge. ‘Come on, Mrs Taylor, your friend here said it was nothing serious.’

‘Would you pull the curtains, please?’ said Harriet. ‘Go on,’ she ordered as the nurse hesitated. ‘We’re not getting up to anything, you can just imagine how much fun we’d have with the condition I’m in.’

‘You are a one,’ said the nurse, whisking the curtains round the bed with a steely clatter.

‘You are a one,’ mimicked Harriet, half under her breath.

Don looked anxiously around at the enclosure they were sitting in. ‘You’re cruel to her,’ he said, watching her malicious look.

‘Nurses ought to have babies as compulsory military training for their jobs. They’ve got no heart.’

‘And you’re all heart,’ he said, attempting cynicism. He looked at her wan face, and relented. ‘What is it, Harriet?’

‘I don’t know, Don,’ she said, continuing to snuffle into her handkerchief. ‘I’m tired, and things are going wrong, and I was damn scared over the baby, I still am, and my milk’s not coming properly, and now Max, and everyone keeps saying everything will be all right and expecting me to believe them.’

‘Why don’t you try?’ said Don gently.

‘Because things do go wrong. You see, I know. Did you know I had a baby that died before I married Max?’

She was astonished to hear herself say this.

He was silent for a time. ‘Are you sure you want to tell me this?’ She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know why I said that to you.’

He took her hand and started to stroke it distractedly. ‘Your milk, is it clogged up?’ She nodded. ‘Has it happened before?’

‘No, that’s why it’s making me so miserable. Besides, this baby needs it more than the others.’

‘You should get them to give you hot flannels and express it very gently. You know how to express?’

‘Of course. I fed the others. Anyway, how do you know?’

‘Oh, it happened to Miriam,’ he said, surprised that she should ask. ‘Oh, and get them to give you some cream to rub on your nipples, they’ll get cracked if the baby suckles and there’s nothing there.’ He blushed, dull crimson seeming to seep even up to his high forehead, as they realised how closely they were studying her breasts, pushing blue-veined and swollen above her nightdress. He let go of her hand and got to his feet.

‘It took us a long time to find out what the trouble was,’ he mumbled. ‘They don’t always tell you in these places, but it’s simple, really, if you know what to do. I’d better go.’

‘Thanks for coming, Don. Really.’

With his back to her, he asked, ‘Would you like me to come again? If there’s anything you want, now with Max laid up?’

‘Yes, that would be very kind.’ She stared at him, helpless. ‘There’s nothing I want … I mean, need.’

Suddenly he smiled. ‘I’ll see if I can think of anything you might need,’ he said and disappeared.

‘He won’t come back,’ she thought all that day and the next It was just as well, perhaps, because in the afternoons nearly everyone in Weyville seemed to turn up to see her. Amazing how a disaster drew them, even a minor one. She tried to reject the uncharitable thought. Kind, that’s what they were.

The second evening, Don arrived. It was raining outside, a bleak, sleet-filled Weyville night The summer should have come, but spring had lingered on, retreating back into winter every week or so. His old brown mackintosh was dripping soggily.

‘I got in as a representative for your husband,’ he said, glancing at the other fathers in the ward, for only fathers were admitted at night. ‘They weren’t going to let me in.’

‘It should make a good item for the town crier.’

‘D’you mind?’

‘Do
you
mind?’ she repeated, inviting him to sit beside her.

He half-shrugged, and extracted a pot of jam from his pocket.
‘Japonica jelly, left over from last year. Miriam said it’s better for you than the jam they give you here, too sweet. She said you should keep off chocolate and stuff. For your — you know, your chest.’

‘Miriam knows I don’t eat chocolate,’ said Harriet indignantly.

‘I expect she means just in case. You could get a craving, couldn’t you?’

‘That’s before the baby, not after,’ she said crossly, beginning to wish he hadn’t come.

They sat saying nothing while he pushed a non-existent piece of dust round the floor with the toe of his galosh.

‘It was nice of Miriam to think of something you could bring.’

‘It was, wasn’t it?’ he said, brightening. ‘Actually, I was so pleased she suggested I come up. It was at tea time, and I was just thinking, “How on earth shall I tell Miriam that I’m going up to the hospital?” because if I say you need anything she’ll probably offer to come herself. She had some marking to do, and she said one of us should come and see you, so I said I’d come. She said if I was sure it wasn’t too much trouble, because I’d been in to see Max earlier. Did you see him before he went home?’

‘No. He rang me and said he’d come up if I wanted him to, but it seemed silly, that wing’s so far away. By the time he’d thumped through here on crutches he’d have woken every baby in the hospital. So you were going to come up?’

‘Oh yes. I had this for you.’ He fished through another coat pocket, and produced the
Oxford
Anthology
of
Modern
Verse.

They pored over the book. Don had marked poems he thought she should read with pieces of paper.

‘You don’t know what trouble you’re inviting,’ she said.

‘It’s a calculated risk,’ he said.

‘Do you always have to tell Miriam where you’re going when you go out?’ she said curiously.

‘There’s never any reason not to tell her,’ he said. ‘Habit, I suppose. Don’t you and Max tell each other where you’re going?’

‘Ye-es. Only I’ve just decided we’ll stop. It’s unnecessary, really, if you think about it.’

‘Much safer if you do.’

‘Safe? In case of accidents? You don’t have to worry. Miriam always makes sure you have clean underwear, just in case. She’s told me.’

The next evening she had a present for him. It was a poem about Emma’s birth. ‘Women’s trash,’ she said, averting her face.

She had never shown anyone a poem before.

‘It’s good,’ he said quietly.

‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘You’re just saying that because you see yourself as my mentor.’

‘Had you rehearsed that? What if I’d said it was bad?’

‘I’m sorry. I — it did take an effort, you know … to show you.’

‘Yes. I should know that. All right, it’s not perfect, but I think it’s very good. I’m probably biased, you’re right of course, but for what it’s worth I think it’s good. Why don’t you get it published?’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ she asked curiously. When he nodded, she added, ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘That’s not good enough. Look, I’ll get it typed up at work, and you could send it away. I’ll bring you a list of addresses you could try. What d’you say?’

‘I say, do you seriously think you could get your typist to type up something like that? She’d think you were round the twist.’

‘Well,’ he said, avoiding her eye, ‘I’m not a bad hand on the typewriter myself. I thought maybe in my lunch hour

‘You’ve convinced me,’ said Harriet. ‘I must be mad.’

As he was leaving he said, ‘That’s not the first poem you’ve written, is it?’

‘No. I took your advice.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Before you go —’ She called him back once more. ‘If you type it up, when you come to my name … could you put Harriet Wallace on it?’

When he brought it to her the next evening, she hardly recognised it as her own work. ‘Did I write that?’ she said, in wonder.

‘I told you it was good.’

‘I didn’t mean that, though it’s better than I expected, somehow. But disembodied. It doesn’t seem to belong to me any more.’

‘It won’t if I send it away for you,’ he said seriously. ‘Are you certain it’s all right?’

‘It was your idea.’

‘I’m bad at taking responsibility. Ask anyone, ask Miriam.’

‘I’d rather not. Does she know where you are tonight?’

‘No. Nor last night, either. You won’t tell her, will you?’ he said unhappily.

‘She’ll know,’ said Harriet.

‘I find it difficult, telling her I’m working late, you know.’

‘Never mind, you’ll be relieved of the terrible strain of being my surrogate husband as from the time you leave tonight. I’m going home tomorrow.’

She detected a note of disappointment in his voice as he said, ‘I was getting used to it.’

‘That’s as bad a habit as the one you’ve just broken. Go on, go home and take my poem with you. Don’t forget to post it … husband.’ She enjoyed watching him colour.

‘Take care of your tits,’ he said, boldly paying her back for his discomfiture. As all the other husbands were kissing their wives goodnight, he pecked her on the cheek.

She didn’t speak to him alone for a long time after that Her poem was accepted by the magazine he had sent it to, and she rang and told him. He said he was pleased and looked forward to seeing ‘their baby’ in print.

They saw each other as a fact of their everyday lives, practically day in and day out He would be passing her house or she would be passing his, or they would have drinks together on Saturday afternoon, a beer after all the lawns were done, or lunch on Sunday. Harriet would wheel the baby down to Miriam’s in the afternoon when her friend arrived home from school. Miriam would throw the washing on, talking as she went, lighting cigarettes, leaving them to burn on the bench and catching them just as they were about to scorch the formica, throwing Don’s grimy underclothes into the machine. Then Harriet could see him, sweat, grubby crotch, the lot, or their striped flannel sheets lying on the floor. Miriam and Don. An unlikely combination.

The poem’s publication had a strange effect on Harriet Nobody in Weyville appeared to notice it, so she went through some of the other verses she had stored in the mending cupboard, and now some of them seemed better than they had before. She asked Max if she could have a second-hand typewriter for her birthday. She felt compelled to show him the poem that had been published. He looked at it for a long time, and said at last, ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Thought you might laugh at me,’ said Harriet, carefully arranging chrysanthemums.

‘When have I ever laughed at you?’ he said angrily.

‘Never, but I thought there might be a time to begin.’ She inserted the fifth flower into the arrangement and added greenery at the back.

‘You don’t trust me much, do you?’

‘Do you like it then? The poem?’

‘I don’t understand it. But that doesn’t matter. It’s the showing that matters.’

‘Have you tried to understand it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s like asking me to understand you.’

‘And that’s hard?’

‘I don’t know … can’t explain …’ his voice faded away into the distance. Realisation through flowers, something she had been taught, an acquired skill, nearer my God to thee. Max, where are we going?

M
ICHAEL
CAME
TO
her when he said he would. On the evening appointed in late February, she had met him at the same hotel where they had first introduced themselves to each other. Harriet, who worked on contract and was not required to report daily, had spent much of the day in a state veering between lethargy and frantic activity to ensure that she would be prepared for the evening’s encounter. She bathed in the morning, shaving her brown legs and afterwards rubbing oil into them till the skin shone like silk. A man had once told her her skin was like silk. That man. Yes, well he was better forgotten about, he belonged in yet another place again, somewhere in the gap between Denny Rei and Michael Young. That was a big country to cross. It didn’t bear too much thinking about, not on a day like today.

Then she lay in the sun again, knowing that in a way it was the last day of the summer as he had created it for her that year. From that evening on, they would enter a new phase of this relationship. Yet those past months had been so beautiful that now at the last moment she didn’t really want to give them up. After she had lain in the sun, she decided to shower, then decided against that and bathed again, this time pouring lavish amounts of scented bath oil into the water. She’d washed her hair in the morning. Was it right? She wondered now, standing in front of the mirror. Surely this was how teenagers went on. Genevieve came to the door of her bedroom and irritably demanded what had happened to all the hot water. She’d had physical education at school, and on a day like this was she expected to go without a shower? The girl flounced to her room, and Harriet felt guilt-ridden and anxious.

Would they be all right tonight, the children and Max? It was a
ludicrous thought from someone who came and went as she was in the habit of doing. And yet, during one of the active frenzies of the day she had prepared a handsome meal, made special things that all of them particularly liked.

Now, her daughter made her angry. She had no right to make her feel guilty. She must have noticed something about her mother, something that made her insolent She knew how to get under Harriet’s skin, did Genevieve.

She walked through to the sitting room. Emma was trying to do her sums. Her small face was frowning with effort and unhappiness. ‘Oh God,’ thought Harriet, ‘don’t tell me I’m going have to sort this one out I can’t, I don’t have the patience.’ But despite herself, she tenderly looked down at this most vulnerable and most gentle of her children. Don’t let me make her a target, Harriet begged of herself.

The child looked up. ‘You look pretty tonight, Mum.’

Harriet dropped on her knees beside Emma, persevering with the sums that neither of them could do. But it was a help. Emma stopped frowning and seemed to care less whether they were right or wrong.

‘What a thing to feel grateful for,’ Harriet’s inner voice nagged her.

But at last she was away from them all, her conscience as clear as possible. With luck, she would relinquish it altogether by the time she got to the hotel.

As she parked, she gathered together her armoury of small talk. Much as she had waited for Michael, now she was in a state of acute nervous tension. They were to meet in the bar, and she assumed that they would have a drink, then make their way to a slow and leisurely meal, and then? Well, she’d thought so much about that, now she wondered how she could go through with it.

Books, politics, plenty to talk about there. The summer had been rank with discontent on the political scene; the country’s sour mood was continuing. Her cocoon of the past few months hadn’t excluded the influences that had started to colour people’s thinking. And reading, she’d done plenty of that Indeed, she kept finding things in books that had made her think ‘I must tell him about this’, or ‘I wish he were here now, so that I could tell him that’. She had thought out whole conversations dealing with his imagined responses — he’d disagree here, concede ground there. It had all been very interesting.

Now she supposed they would talk, but was it to be a carefully charted course that would lead to the bedroom? If that was the sort
of conversation it was going to be, she was sure she didn’t want to have it For a moment she thought of not going in. In panic, she decided that he wouldn’t be there, that he might have missed his plane and not been able to get in touch with her, been ill, or never really meant to see her at all. His presence in the bar was, after all, something of a shock. She walked in looking for him, and somehow he was behind her and she hadn’t seen him.

‘Hullo.’

He wore the air of someone vaguely exasperated, as if she were late, perhaps. ‘Am I late?’ she asked uncertainly, sure that she wasn’t, but needing to have it confirmed that there had been no mistake.

‘Of course not. I’m just very hot and tired. I really didn’t think Wellington could be such a miserable hole in the summer, it’s usually so bloody cold. I need a shower. Are you going to sit here and have a drink, or come up to the room?’ he asked abruptly.

As she hesitated he said, ‘Good. I’ve got a pile of manuscripts, for the magazine, you know. I wouldn’t mind you looking at them.’

In the bedroom, he threw her a bundle of papers and said, ‘There you are, amuse yourself with those.’ His tone was downright rude.

‘What do you expect me to do with them?’ she called as the shower began to run in the bathroom a moment later.

‘Tell me what you think of them,’ he called.

She flicked through them. Perhaps she had imagined the summer and their meeting the time before. He could be just a rude, rather arrogant young man trying to leech a bit of her time and energy into something she had no desire to do.

‘They’re junk,’ she called.

The shower was turned off. ‘If you say so.’

‘When are you going to get this magazine off the ground, anyway?’

‘Possibly never. As you say, that’s a pile of junk. About the standard of the average New Zealand manuscript. If there’s no talent here, how the hell am I supposed to put together a New Zealand-orientated periodical?’

‘That’s arrant nonsense,’ she retorted. ‘You simply haven’t approached the right people.’

‘Well, maybe the right people aren’t very co-operative. Too damn scared of their own skins, from what I’ve noticed.’ His mouth was apparently full of toothpaste.

He emerged, bare to the waist and barefooted, and started
scrummaging around in a suitcase, apparently for a clean shirt and socks, not looking at her.

‘D’you feel better?’ she asked coolly, wondering how soon she could leave.

He swung round. ‘Don’t go away. Please.’

‘How did you know I was thinking that?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you through that. Nerves, I suppose.’

Somehow she found herself flat on her back with him between her legs. Most extraordinary. He was such a very large man that she found him quite discomfiting physically. Her legs wouldn’t encompass him, and waved feebly in the air like those of a praying mantis. She saw, to her dismay, that the heel of one of her best summer shoes was coming adrift. It really looked quite tatty. She tried to shift, but it was impossible under his weight. ‘I wonder if I’ll be able to iron my skirt,’ she thought. ‘I can’t possibly go out to eat looking like this.’ And then, ‘How appalling if this is merely going to turn out funny.’

‘Would you mind if I took off my shoes, please?’ she asked him aloud.

‘Do you mind about all this?’ he said. There didn’t seem to be anything much to mind so far, so she said that she did not.

‘Before dinner or after?’ he asked politely, in his creamy English voice.

‘Can’t we do both?’ she said, and that was the first moment that it stopped being ludicrous.

So the summer began to make some sense, as their voices and their touch turned to tenderness. He undressed her, and she, loving him, helped him, taking off her bracelets and watch so that they would not catch on his beautiful skin, standing still for him so that she could reveal her breasts with pride, lying down and opening out her arms to him, and lying there, looking up into his face, seeing for a moment his blue eyes receding into a skull that seemed to be covered with translucent parchment, as if some terrible storm was taking place within.

‘God, I need this,’ he said.

Only long afterwards did she remember that he had said ‘this’ and not ‘you’.

Later that night, when they returned to the hotel room after dinner he lay waiting for her, and she, astride, came, calling on him to join her. So they had entered the lovely and treacherous sea, and
she was abandoned to it, her blood singing Michael, Michael, Michael, in all the cadences that water or blood might sing.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ she whispered to him.

‘So are you,’ he replied, not challenging his own grace.

Let the tide stay high, we have such a short time, Michael, my golden eagle. You are only a passing visitor to these shores. I will say goodbye when the time comes without weeping.

‘I love,’ and his voice faltered, ‘I love to watch you come.’

‘I love you. I just love you.’

‘Do you?’ he had asked alarmed.

‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘How will you cope, then?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Emotionally? Will you be hurt?’

Harriet had rolled over onto her stomach, her arms pushed up under the hotel pillow. ‘He has a right to ask me,’ she thought, and remembered how long it had been since she had surrendered herself without reservation like this, feeling a part of her slipping out of her control. Oh, she’d loved, yes, but she’d been the dominant one. Nobody owned Harriet Wallace. They might have thought to, but there was always a reserve, a part that stood back and said well, well, well, Harriet Wallace, so here you are and there you are.

‘You’ve nothing to fear from me,’ she said fiercely.

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ he said.

‘Yes, you are,’ she said. ‘listen, I tell you, there’s nothing to worry about in me. I wouldn’t try to possess you. I won’t ask anything of you, I don’t want my life changed, my patterns are made, do you understand that? Nothing changes anything, only death, and I ask nothing, there are no demands to be made or met. I only want you to come to me for as long as you can.’

‘Can you be like that?’

‘Can’t you?’ she said.

‘I’ll try, if you can.’

‘I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to know about your family, I don’t want to tell you about mine. I only want to exist in the time we make together.’

‘Why this?’

‘You came to me, remember?’

‘Yes. I remember.’

‘Then why you, any more than me?’

‘Oh God, then what sort of an animal does this make me?’

‘You mean that?’ said Harriet, frightened for him again.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

As they rose to shower together, she glanced at the initials on his suitcase, M.S.Y.

‘What does the S stand for?’ she asked while he was finding spare towel for her.

‘Seamus.’

‘Michael Seamus Young.’ She fitted them together. ‘You’re Irish, then.’

‘You could say so, Colleen,’ he said, trying to make light of it ‘A distant ancestry.’

‘You don’t sound it.’

‘I’ve never lived there.’

‘Which side do you belong on?’

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘My interviewing technique.’

‘Interview me under the shower, then — or, better still, let me interview you. What would you like to do next week?’

‘You’re coming next week?’

‘Mm-hmm, and the one after that.’

‘Make love,’ she said, the water splashing over her face. The top of her head was level with his shoulder.

In the following weeks they continued to see each other, as he had said they would. When they were together they lived in a private world of great pleasure and intensity, tempered from time to time with anxiety about his work. At first she let his concern flow round her, happy to listen and talk, but not to suffer it.

It assumed a greater importance, however, as the implications of what was happening to him began to sink in. It was starting to look as if the market was wrong for the magazine. The financial situation was tightening, potential advertisers were not as enthusiastic as they had been when the idea of the magazine was first mooted, and with the prospect of increasing inflation it appeared unlikely that many prospective buyers would be prepared to spend money on a quality magazine. He talked anxiously about cutting production costs. He was visiting Wellington to pursue possible leads with different printers, but lower pricing invariably indicated an inferior product. It was becoming more and more evident that the magazine simply might not eventuate. Bleakly Harriet faced the prospect that this
might involve his early return to England. He would feel that he had failed.

They talked for hours over this point at dinner on his third visit. It was not, she insisted, a personal failure. He couldn’t have foreseen the decline in the economy and it hadn’t been his idea to come out here in the first place. His bosses might at least have realised that New Zealand, behind the rest of the world in most things, had been behind other Western countries in its economic recession, and must now be hit at a time when the rest of the world was starting to recover. Michael accepted this at a rational level but rejected it at a personal one. ‘He’s so young,’ Harriet thought ‘I forget how young he really is, the difference in our ages is more than years. He has the smell of success on him. He doesn’t understand what it is to accept defeat and start again.’

She sensed that he was rich. Whether or not he had always been rich it was hard to say. He had told her more about his background in their earlier meetings the previous year. She inclined towards the idea that he had been brought up in a comfortable middle-class atmosphere, where strong ambition prevailed. He had accepted the patterns of hope, and there had been enough money for him to receive a sound classical education. Nothing had been really difficult. The right doors had opened for him, and marriage to a very rich young woman had followed.