a Breed of Women (25 page)

There were films to go to, and a play at the Opera House. The crowd at library school were pleasant enough company too, and on the last weekend she was invited to a party with them all. There she met Max Taylor, a shy and pleasant young man who was the brother of one of the girls on the course. He was pleasant to look at, though Harriet thought his crinkly sandy hair and fair skin that burned too easily in the sun would not have made him stand out in a crowd. She enjoyed his company and they sat on the floor in a corner while the others played loud music. She and Max were among the oldest there, and acknowledged it in quiet conversation apart from everyone else in the room.

Afterwards he walked her home along the sea front. The tide was full in and slapping gently on the seawall as they balanced their way along the top of it, laughing and mildly drunk. She took him up to her room, and they made love, the first time she had been with a man since Denny. Their lovemaking was timid to be sure and tentative at best, but she was glad to have him against her nestling into the small of her back afterwards, his sex still fluttering like a small trapped bird against her buttocks, his hands cupped around her breasts.

She saw him once again before she left Wellington. Over lunch he asked what work was like up Weyville way. He was a draughtsman with a government department, and the Forest Service were always calling for people in that area; maybe he could get a transfer. Anxious not to commit herself too far with him, she gently discouraged him. He asked her why, and she told him that she’d been married and didn’t want to get involved. He said he understood, thanked her for her honesty and the time they had spent together, and kissed her cheek when they finally parted on Lambton Quay.

The morning she left there was a wild storm blowing. She had seen some less awesome indications of the sort of weather Wellington could turn on, but this was what the locals termed ‘a southerly buster’. As the northbound train pulled out of Wellington she felt she could love the place in its fury. A stormy petrel among the doves, she thought. And then, I’ll come back here, yes I will.

Weyville was a challenge now. She joined its small theatre group, got Miss Mullins to agree to special projects for children in the library, arranged that a writer visiting the country from abroad should make a special trip down from Auckland to give a lecture. A mad project, Miss Mullins said, but Harriet approached the English departments at the local high schools, and to everyone’s amazement,
four hundred people filled a school assembly hall to hear him. The local paper said it was ‘a red-letter day for Weyville when its young people started to play such a leading and inspiring role in community affairs.’

Her bank balance was growing, and the idea of going abroad was beginning to take definite shape. The thought of going on her own was daunting, but she told herself that she was an adult woman now who was capable of handling whatever she tackled.

In the middle of the year, Miss Mullins became ill, and querulous and sad, she had to go on extended leave. Harriet was appointed acting librarian in her absence. She had become a force to be reckoned with in Weyville, her salary was stepped up, and her bank balance continued to grow.

Came the end of winter, and with it Max Taylor. He walked into the library one day, saying that he’d come to look the town over. It was obvious he liked what he saw, even if he went no further than the library to inspect the view.

Harriet supposed she loved him. He certainly loved her and they talked idly about travel over the next few weeks. The possibility that they could travel together was raised. Certainly it would solve the difficulties that Harriet had envisaged about travelling alone.

She married Max in the Weyville Registry Office a few months later. Some of the elderly regulars at the library thought it was a funny thing, her getting married in a registry office, a lovely girl like her, but they brought her wedding presents of crochet work and hand-stitched linen wrapped up in tissue paper, and wished her all the luck in the world. This time her parents and Max’s were there, as well as his sister from library school, Cousin Alice and a couple of her friends with whom Harriet had played golf. Cousin Alice gave the wedding breakfast back at the house afterwards.

A sort of churching, thought Harriet. Take, eat, this is the making of a respectable woman.

Genevieve was born towards the end of 1963, the same year that Kennedy was shot. There were no complications and the baby was perfect in every way. Harriet could only look at her and Max with gratitude that other needs, if they existed, had simply melted away.

G
ENEVIEVE
W
AS
F
OUR
when Harriet began to feel restless. The whole nature of Weyville was changing. In place of the old shops faced with plate glass, two-and three-storeyed concrete buildings had started to create new façades of their own. Suburbs were springing up at random round the outskirts of Weyville and the right and the wrong sides of the tracks had been defined more positively than before.

When Max and Harriet built their modest but attractive little ranch-style house, designed by Max, Cousin Alice indicated the areas where she thought the best buys could be found, a section in an area that would hold its value. They never had cause to doubt her advice for as long as they remained in Weyville. When the subdivision had first been opened in 1960, the city fathers had dubbed it Camelot. It was where the brightest and nicest people of Weyville made their homes. Max and Harriet qualified for a five per cent loan, Max let the building of the house on a labour-only contract and was able to save enough money for ranch sliders and a patio immediately. They planted silver birches and silver-dollar gum trees round the section in the very first year, and before long they were flourishing and seemed to be taking over. The ice-pink glimmer of their sasanqua camellias shone from corners of the garden, and they drank wine as well as beer with their barbecues when the neighbours dropped over on Saturday nights.

There never seemed to be a quiet moment From the beginning of her residence in suburbia, Harriet was keenly sought for committees. Genevieve was a Plunket baby, and it followed that Harriet would be invited to go on the Plunket Committee. Peter followed a year later, so she was asked to become president. During her year as president, the first rift developed between her and the women in her community. The occasion was the annual money-raising effort, which was traditionally a jumble sale held in a local Maori pa on Family Benefit Day. The theory was that Maoris never had any money except when the welfare handed it out, and if you could catch them before
they went to the pub and blew it all, they would spend it on cast-offs for their children.

Harriet objected and said she felt that this was an insult to the Maoris. A committee member raised the point, quite reasonably, that the jumble sales had always been a success in the past and that they had raised a great deal of money. This was a fact, and Harriet could look at the records and see for herself. In that case, said Harriet, they should either hold the jumble sale in their own community where the locals could have equal access to the bargains, or they should go to the pa on a non-Family Benefit Day. As long as she was president of the local committee, there would not be a jumble sale on Family Benefit Day. The committee was of course entitled to take a vote on the matter, and she assured them that she would not interfere with the outcome. When asked to vote for or against, those in favour raised their hands, tentatively at first, but seeing that they had friends, one by one the whole committee voted in favour, with Harriet’s being the only dissenting vote.

Harriet did not tell Max about this, knowing that she was supposed to have put her past behind her. For all she knew, he might have agreed with her — after all, he appeared to agree with most things that she did or said, so why not this? It was just that she knew that he could only relate it to her past, something so dead and buried between them that she could not resurrect it.

Harriet only partly attributed her attitude to Denny, supposing in a confused kind of way that he had made her think about issues that she might otherwise have ignored. But if she’d been a different sort of person, she might never have noticed. Yet the thought of Denny and his family being expected to hunt through other people’s castoff clothes haunted her.

At any rate, she kept away from the jumble sale, which was, as usual, an outstanding success. One woman, who thought Harriet was totally in the wrong but who nevertheless liked her style, told her that she had got into just about as much hot water as Harriet herself. It seemed that she had given away her husband’s rugby blazer, which had been collecting mildew in the wardrobe. Unfortunately, it was covered with sew-on badges of past triumphs. Her husband hadn’t known about it going to the jumble sale until he was driving through the Maori area, and suddenly looming on his horizon was a big fat Maori with his blazer on; it was too short in the arms and he could only do up one button across his great beer-filled belly. His wife was
in big trouble, and she said she wished that she’d gone along with Harriet and boycotted the jumble sale altogether. If she was looking for sympathy from Harriet she didn’t get it, so she retreated to her other friends and took comfort in the hilarity her story generated. It appeared that Harriet didn’t have a sense of humour.

She resigned as president, but Genevieve was due to go to kindergarten and she was asked to go on that committee.

So it went on. Harriet supposed she was happy enough in the suburbs. She was known to be a woman with a mind of her own, and she took a secret pride in that. There was also a slight element of mystery surrounding her. One or two people appeared from the old football club, and vague rumours circulated about her from time to time when the coffee cups were rattling. She had a past, it was said, though substantiating it proved difficult; the gossip simply died a natural death, without anything positive to feed on. Harriet avoided the women who were married to members of the old crowd, cultivating a formidable aloofness.

Sometimes when the children had been tucked up for the night, she would see Max looking at her reflectively. She would wonder what he was thinking and then decide against asking him. She had nothing to hide from him, he knew her, she had never lied to him. He seemed to her a plain man in his needs, and she tried to provide for them. One night, however, he asked her, ‘Harriet, are you happy here?’

She had been folding nappies; Peter, her second child, acted as if he was going to wear them for the rest of his life. Surprised, she put down the pile she had been about to take to the airing cupboard.

‘I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it. Do I seem unhappy?’

‘No,’ said Max, thinking as he went along. ‘But I remember you in Wellington, when I first met you. You’ve changed since then.’

‘Of course I’ve changed, silly,’ said Harriet, laughing at him. ‘I didn’t have you and the children then.’

‘But you were going to do so many things with your life then. You were very excited. And you haven’t done any of them.’

‘I opted for something different.’

‘Not quite,’ said Max. ‘Most of it’s just happened. I think you thought I’d share some of the things you wanted to do.’

‘And did you mean to?’ Harriet sat watching him. Something was happening between them, but she didn’t know what it was.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I thought all of this would just follow the way it has, and that it’d be what you wanted anyway.’

‘Well then, are you trying to tell me it’s not what I want? What are you trying to talk me into, Max?’

‘I don’t know.’

The moment had passed and they were both backing away from it. However, Harriet never forgot what Max had said. He deceived me, and he knows it, she thought. He was trying to be honest now, but perhaps it was a little late for honesty. He was a perpetrator of some great lie, like all the other men who lived in the suburbs of Weyville. True, he was vaguely aware of it without recognising exactly what he had done — but then, neither did Harriet. She told herself that she was happy; she was, she knew it. Then she began to have flashes of anger against Max, who had tried to provoke her into thinking she was behaving badly because she didn’t fit exactly into the mould that all the other women did.

This led her to believe that Max observed her more closely than she realised. Had he wanted a totally conventional woman? She supposed that he must have done. Maybe he hadn’t known what he wanted at that time any more than she had. She decided to ask him.

‘Do I seem different to other women round here?’ she said.

‘Yes and no,’ he replied defensively.

‘What do you mean, yes and no? What sort of an answer is that? Do I embarrass you? Aren’t you comfortable with me? Don’t I preserve enough fruit? Aren’t the children clean enough?’

‘Of course they are, sweetheart. You know they are.’

‘The children are clean enough, we’ve established that, but what about the other things? You haven’t answered any of them.’

‘Well, that was the last thing you asked me. Logically it was the first one to answer.’

‘Logic,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’re fencing. You started all this.’

‘I did?’

‘Asking me if I was happy. You know you did.’

‘What in God’s name is wrong with asking your wife if she’s happy? If you love her, of course you want to know that she’s happy.’

‘Some men don’t.’

‘All right then, you want me to be like some men. I’ll try harder.’

‘Max, you’re twisting what I say.’

‘Why don’t we just leave it?’

So she did. She felt as if she was walking through cobwebs. It must
be her fault, turning that brief moment of his self-revelation and doubts into a crusade, worrying over it, blowing it out of proportion. She must try harder, do better, not rouse such strong feelings in people. Because she did. She’d split the kindergarten committee down the middle on what, looking back, had been a fairly minor issue. There had been no need for it and she could have avoided taking it so far, but she hadn’t.

It was the same when they went out to dinner. Harriet was lively and more widely read than many of the people in Weyville, so they came to be included in the dinner parties given by the town’s intellectual set, or those who saw themselves as such. They were schoolteachers, a few scientists who were gathering round the milling complex, lawyers and doctors. But whereas the rest of the company was content to follow well-laid conversational tracks, Harriet was unpredictable. Often she would seize like a terrier on any issue that interested her, shaking it and everyone present, and refusing to give up till an opponent was routed.

One night she took issue with a middle-aged lawyer who had been defending a rape case.

‘Of course, my dears,’ he said, looking round conspiratorially at them all in the candlelight, ‘you know she asked for it. Women nearly always do.’

‘That’s an absurd generalisation,’ said Harriet sharply.

There was a quickness in the air around the table. Max moved uneasily, for the lawyer was considered the best in town, and as sharp as a flick knife. If Harriet was about to take him on on his own ground, she was obviously due for her comeuppance. The women sat back to enjoy the sight of blood, though only half believing that Harriet would pursue such dangerous quarry. The lawyer, Nick Thomas, waited; it was clear he expected the battle to be brief.

‘Come, come my dear girl, a woman like this one sets up her charms to attract men. If she succeeds, then she can hardly complain, can she?’

‘Presumably most women set out to charm men at some stage of their lives. Haven’t we all?’ said Harriet, looking round the women. ‘Or did all the men here simply come and take you off a shelf marked available for marriage?’

The women smiled tentatively. ‘I suppose we must have,’ one of them said.

‘The point is, we had the right to choose who we slept with, didn’t
we?’ She knew she had reached the point where Max would like her to stop.

‘Of course you did,’ said Nick. ‘But then you must realise that this — lady, if you like to call her that, had chosen to sleep with many men.’

‘I can’t see what difference that makes,’ said Harriet.

‘It makes a great deal of difference in the eyes of the law,’ said Nick.

‘Then the law is an even greater ass than some people already suppose,’ said Harriet. ‘She didn’t choose to sleep with this particular man, did she?’

‘We don’t know that. We don’t know whether in fact she’s simply paying him back for a tiff they had afterwards.’

‘But you said she was covered in bruises.’

‘Possibly self-inflicted.’

‘Do you honestly believe that?’

Nick shrugged. ‘My client denies it, and although he was foolish to become involved, I consider him of better character than the witness.’

‘Because he’s a man. Look, Nick, what d’you think about uninvited guests in your home? Would you let them stay?’

‘Of course not. I’d throw them out.’

‘Because you’ve got the right in law to choose who enters your home?’

‘Obviously.’

‘But you do, do you not, invite many people into your home?’

Nick, still not taking her seriously, walked into the trap before he was aware she had made one. He smiled assent

‘Then don’t you think that whether a woman has one man or many enter her body, the choice is even more important than who should enter your house? Or do you place respect for possessions ahead of respect for a woman’s body?’

Nick flushed angrily. The anticipatory fidgeting had stopped and there was a fixed stillness in the room.

‘I see. I see,’ he said sighing heavily. ‘Well, as we’ve established a philosophical principle, do I have the permission of counsel for the prosecution to make one or two practical points?’

‘Please do,’ said Harriet.

‘Very well then. This — lady, open, one might say to many men, claimed that she was attacked in her home, on the other side of Weyville. She screamed, she struggled, she fought and she bit, but in
the end despite all her protests, she was overpowered and …’ his voice sank, ‘ravished. What sort of a town is Weyville, I ask you, where a young woman could scream her lungs out and not be heard and helped by her neighbours? If any one of you people here were to hear a woman screaming in her house, would you not immediately rush to her assistance?’

They reflected. Elaine Mawson said tentatively that perhaps some of them might think twice about interfering in a domestic dispute. After all, people did get mad at each other on occasions.

Nick fixed her with a stern eye. ‘Would you be prepared to take that chance if you heard another woman in distress? Would you not at least approach the house and try to determine the nature of the crisis? Especially if that woman was shouting for help? As this person claimed she was doing?’