a Breed of Women (13 page)

‘Do you play that?’ asked Harriet, running her finger across the strings and making them twang.

Sydney shrugged. ‘Used to. Nearest my mother ever got me to learning music.’ He pulled off his shirt.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

He looked faintly exasperated. ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’

‘I just wondered,’ said Harriet.

‘Twenty-three. Are you going to take your things off?’ He seemed much more in command of the situation now that he was shedding his clothes. He abandoned his socks quite briskly.

Reduced to his underpants, he observed her standing motionless. ‘You’re a cool one, aren’t you? Look, do you want me to do it for you, and all that stuff?’

She thought of Jim and standing naked before him. It seemed to have happened a hundred years ago. She remembered his gentle finger stroking her where the hair had started to grow; now it was a wild bush.

She wondered if Sydney would be as gentle. Something told her that he might not be, for he was beginning to look decidedly impatient.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I can do it myself.’ Quickly she took off her clothes, until she was down to her brassière and panties. Sydney still
had his underpants on. ‘Shall I go first?’ she enquired, noting that his bump was most pronounced. She sat down on the bed and watched him, pleasantly fascinated that she was about to see what the thing actually looked like uncovered.

‘God, you’re cool,’ said Sydney again, with some agitation. He pulled his underpants down, and Harriet gave a startled cry. The revelation of this very large piece of apparatus pointing at her like a witch doctor’s bone was quite terrifying.

‘Ah, you want it, eh,’ said Sydney, pleased. ‘Come on, get them off.’ Obediently she took off the rest of her clothes. What did she do now?

Muttering a series of ahs and ohs, which she took as an indication that he was pleased, Sydney sprang on her and threw her backwards onto the bed. Remembering her previous effort with Jim, she settled herself back while he rolled onto her.

As it was quite obvious that he expected her to know what to do next, she felt somewhat embarrassed at the prospect of asking him. She really had no idea what was expected.

‘Come on, get ’em up,’ said Sydney. He was crouching intently between her legs. Harriet put her arms around his neck, as she couldn’t think what else to put up.

‘You do want to do this, don’t you?’ said Sydney.

‘Oh yes,’ she said fervently.

‘You don’t seem all that keen. You going to make me work for it? Here, let’s see if we can work you over a bit.’ He fastened his mouth on hers, grinding away with determined licking and snorting. His skin felt very sweaty against the palms of her hands.

Suddenly he grabbed her under the knees and pulled them up into the air. This seemed an extraordinary posture to Harriet, who began to laugh.

Sydney froze. ‘What’s so bloody funny?’ he snapped.

‘Nothing. I’m sorry, I was just … thinking.’

‘Just thinking, were you? Don’t you like me?’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Harriet assured him.

‘You looked me over enough — didn’t you fancy what you saw?’ Never had a girl looked at him like that before. ‘It’s bad manners to look at a bloke the way you looked at me. Oh, damn,’ he suddenly groaned. He levered himself up on his hands and knees, and they both inspected the splendid penis he had been sporting a few moments earlier. It hung limp and shrivelled, like a fleshy little carrot that had been kept too long. Harriet wanted to laugh again, but she
had the nasty feeling that Sydney might hit her.

‘Will it come back?’ she asked, now genuinely interested.

‘You could help,’ said Sydney.

‘Could I?’

He shook his head in wonder. ‘Christ, you’re not frigid, are you?’

‘It’s not very warm in here,’ Harriet admitted.

‘I don’t know whether you’re putting me on, or what. I’ve never met one like you before.’

Harriet toyed with the idea of confessing all, but before she could say anything, he got to his feet and said huffily, ‘I’ll do it myself.’

‘Will you? What will you do?’

‘Are you going to watch?’

‘Shouldn’t I?’

‘You’ve got no feelings at all have you,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the bathroom to do it.’

At the door, he turned and said, ‘Don’t try any funny tricks, will you. I’m not going this far without getting it up. No going off on me, just because my hard’s gone. It’ll come back, you know.’

‘Of course not,’ said Harriet. She was beginning to feel quite sorry for him. It seemed that even if she didn’t know what to do, he wasn’t much better off than she was. Curiosity was getting the better of her, and the wish that he had correctly guessed to dress and get out as quickly as possible was fading. She pulled an eiderdown from the end of the bed and lay there in a small cocoon. Nestling against its feathery warmth, she felt almost luxurious. Taking her clothes off had always been a pleasure, disastrous as the consequences could apparently be.

Soon Sydney returned, holding his penis carefully in one hand. It seemed respectably large again, though somewhat softer than the first time it had come in contact with her legs.

He climbed under the eiderdown, and pressed himself over her again. He continued to hold his penis and said softly under his breath, ‘Grow, grow.’ Interested in this process, Harriet put her hand on it. Immediately it sprang to life.

‘Aah,’ sighed Sydney, ‘I knew you were all right. Let’s get it up before we have any more problems, eh?’

Following the previous course of action Harriet raised her knees as far as they would go. This seemed to please Sydney considerably, for his penis started probing her with great enthusiasm.

‘Christ, you’re tight,’ he said with perspiring admiration.

Then the pain started. She had never been hurt there before, and now he seemed to be raining blows into her. Her body started to shake in anguish.

‘I — can’t get — into you,’ Sydney panted. ‘Ah, there we go. We’re away,’ and her body seemed to disintegrate in a great spasm of pain, so scaring, so terrifying that she screamed aloud, again and again.

‘Wowee, I knew you were great, whoo, you like it, don’t you?’ Sydney shouted. ‘Yah, that’s right, writhe, I love it, God that’s beautiful, keep it up baby, that’s great stuff.’

Is this what it’s always like? moaned Harriet to herself. Does this pain happen every time? Is this what sex is? Why does he keep moving in and out like that? I thought he just put it inside me. Perhaps he’s doing something else to me — am I having sex? When’s he going to stop?

Finally Sydney did stop, after a lunge that seemed to go right up to her breastbone. He lay on top of her, panting and exhausted.

‘Worth it, eh?’ he said when he had recovered a little. Harriet whimpered in reply. He pulled himself out of her, and for an instant her body exploded with quite a different sensation. She supposed it must be the relief of being unpinned from the bed, but years later she recalled that feeling, and thought with a kind of wonder that that miraculous little orgasm had saved her from instant retreat to a nunnery. Certainly she regarded Sydney with a tender and more forgiving glance than she would have thought possible moments before.

As they disentangled themselves, Sydney looked down at the bed. It was covered with blood.

‘Ker-ist,’ he yelled. ‘Why in the hell didn’t you tell me you had your period?’

‘I didn’t know I had it,’ Harriet said, as startled as he.

He looked at it furiously, then disappeared, coming back in a moment with a damp towel. He started dabbing at the blood on the bed, but the stain seemed to spread more widely.

Harriet had started putting on her clothes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘So you bloody well ought to be. Haven’t you been watching your dates? You must have known it was due.’

‘They don’t always come right on the day. If you know so much, you ought to know that,’ Harriet pointed out acidly.

He pulled on his clothes, and stood staring morosely at the bed. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Harriet, beginning to feel cross with
him. If you wash it, it’ll be dry long before your parents come back.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Sydney. ‘But I’m picking up my girlfriend when she finishes work tomorrow night. I won’t have it fixed by then.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Fiancée.’

‘You’re engaged to her?’

‘Yep. Getting married at the end of the year. I’ve got a section, nearly saved up for the deposit on the house. We’re going to have ranch sliders and things like that so it’ll cost a bit Still, I reckon I can get it together by the end of the year. Not bad, eh?’

‘No. Not bad,’ said Harriet numbly.

‘Still, it’s not going to help her seeing that, is it?’

‘Take it to the dry-cleaners in the morning and tell them it’s a rush job,’ said Harriet.

‘I can’t,’ wailed Sydney. ‘She works in the dry-cleaners.’

‘Oh, that’s really too bad, then. For goodness sake! Change the covers over on the beds and put the eiderdown over the spare one.’

‘Hey, that’s good. That’s a swell idea. Thanks, Harriet.’

‘Glad to help. D’you mind if I go home now?’

‘No, sure I don’t.’ His spirits had recovered quite remarkably, and her crime seemed forgiven.

As they drove past the milkbar, Harriet felt the cold despair of loneliness descend again. They’d know, they must have known, that Sydney was engaged to be married. They’d set her up with him. There was no way back to the milkbar. She had been betrayed.

‘Please don’t stop outside my gate,’ said Harriet, as they approached Cousin Alice’s house. Sydney parked the van a couple of doors up the street.

‘Next Thursday?’ he asked.

‘Night school’s finished for the term. I can’t get out. Unless of course you like to call on Cousin Alice and ask her if I can go out with you!’

‘Oh, come on now! Jeez, I can see why the kids call you Twanky Doll. You’re putting on the dog a bit, aren’t you?’

‘I think I’d better be going in,’ said Harriet.

‘Well, look, Harriet, you know I can’t do that What would your — what would Mrs Harrison think of me, with a fiancée and all that?’

‘Quite,’ she said coldly.

‘So if you knew I couldn’t, what did you want to say a thing like that for?’

‘I really had better go in.’

‘Hey.’ He suddenly caught her arm fiercely. ‘You won’t tell them about you know what?’

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Oh, Ker-ist! Me not being able to get a hardie, you know. I mean, I did in the end, didn’t I?’

‘I won’t tell,’ Harriet promised wearily. ‘Now, please … I’m late.’

Another thought struck Sydney. ‘That blood. You weren’t a virgin, were you?’

Harriet hung her head. ‘Oh, Ker-ist,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have let me do that to you.’

‘I thought men were supposed to know all those things.’

‘Yeah, well, I never … you know, with one before. I just didn’t think. You know, you stuck round with those kids.’

The last part was an accusation. She said nothing.

‘I didn’t hurt you or anything, did I?’

The pain was solid, from sore heart to aching genitals. Harriet climbed out of the van without another word. If there was any point in what had happened, she couldn’t see it.

As she walked up to Cousin Alice’s front gate, Sydney cruised beside the footpath, the door of the van swinging open. He was calling out, anxious little noises asking for reassurance. She turned into the driveway and didn’t look back.

In the night she wondered again if that was what ‘it’ was really all about. She wondered if she had really, at long last, done ‘it’, and if so whether she might ever expect more from ‘it’ than she had had tonight. For a moment she recalled the strange pleasure right at the end of the act, but the memory was swallowed up in a great black hole of grief and loss. And there were Ailsa and Julie to consider. If, indeed, all the correct steps had been taken to fulfil the act of sex, then there was pregnancy to consider.

Fortunately, and capriciously, her period arrived in full flood the next morning while she and Mr Stubbs were setting out a new and tantalising assortment of the latest in safety-pins. At lunch time, on an inspiration, she retired to the public library to find a book that would set her mind at rest once and for all.

At the library, for the first time, she met Leonie.

L
EONIE AND
H
AMISH
had survived. Sometimes Leonie would pretend that if she were someone different, someone she recognised from long ago, all would go on for Hamish as it did now, but she knew that this was not true.

She had to wake with care every morning, to remember who she was and where she was. This sense of displacement took one permanent form. When she was a child there had been a room, a tatty ugly room with frayed curtains, the hems down, and rotted patches where water had seeped through. They had yellow roses on them. They had been the first things she saw each morning.

It was merely by accident that years later when she and Hamish lived in a company house in America, their bedroom had had curtains with yellow roses. They conceived Brent in that room and brought him home there. How could she explain to anyone that Brent was the first creature she had ever had to herself, whom she could love passionately and possessively and by whom she could be loved in return, without question or fear? The bad old life that still haunted her, the life of which Hamish knew almost nothing, would go away. The child was everything and Hamish could come and go, light years away in his world of business and deals, politics and intrigues, and she and the baby would grow together with a boundless mutual fascination.

Every morning she woke to the curtains with yellow roses, and thought for a second of the old room. The curtains seemed symbolic of how she had overcome that other world, and now had this one. Nothing could take it away or destroy it, for she had arrived from some other place and was safe.

It shattered her to leave that house in America. When they moved
to England, their bedroom curtains did not have yellow roses. They had been easy enough to replace, though Hamish had thought her absurd, but as their next child was on the way, he regarded her desire for them as a whim.

The curtains belonged to them now. When they left England they replaced the company curtains and took the yellow rose ones to the Middle East. They were unsuitable, but Leonie insisted on having them. By then Hamish had come to accept that his wife, who was doing so well at so many things, felt some private unreasoning terror connected with the curtains. It roused in him some unnamed fear of his own, so it was better to let the curtains go up and come down from house to house.

It was done then, each time they moved, quietly, without comment. Life proceeded, there seemed no problems. Over sixteen years, Leonie became the asset that took people like Hamish to the top.

Finally, when they were living in Australia, the curtains wore out and the material became unavailable. Leonie convinced herself one day that she had given them the value of a superstition. It all seemed like a silly game and with relief, she agreed to an alternative. For a time, it was a valid choice; she seemed to forget that she was afraid to wake up in the mornings — that is, until they came back to New Zealand.

On the evening she made the phone call, she had started to drink between eight and nine in the evening. Laurence, her younger son, was closeted in his room doing homework. Brent had been on the phone most of the evening. She wondered whether to demand the phone from him so that she, too, could ring friends. However, since their return to New Zealand, there were few people that she knew well enough to ring in the evening. She had wined and dined what seemed an inexhaustible number of business people, mainly colleagues of Hamish’s. The women had talked about husbands being away on business. She had felt an empathy with one or two, as if they might quietly conceal some private anguish, some hollow in their existence, as she did. They might have carried their loss privately and well-packed, from country to country and continent to continent, as she had done, but she wasn’t sure. And even if she had been sure, the acknowledgment of that mutual recognition could well be the threat that might topple them — topple her, too, for that matter. She had no right to ring. Nor did she know whose husbands were away; she might ring and the husband would be home, and the
private horror tucked out of sight for a few days. They might be having a company dinner party, and they could be embarrassed by her call, at her having caught them at a private revelry to which the Coglans were not invited.

And that left almost no one to telephone, except perhaps Harriet. Perish the thought. Harriet was a link with the past. A difficult, prickly, sometime feminist who seemed to have had some sort of extraordinary success. Harriet might be doing anything — addressing a rally, launching her latest book, or appearing on television. Almost certainly the last, for that was her job. Not to mention fighting with her husband. Or making up with him — both facets of Harriet’s relationships sounded equally terrifying.

Perhaps she would ring Harriet tomorrow. In the meantime, there was television. There was a current affairs programme on, and Harriet was on it. She decided to have a drink.

She was onto her fourth gin when she rang Todd Davis.

In Toronto it would be 5 a.m. Todd answered so quickly that the time of day or night hadn’t occurred to her.

His voice was sleepy and husky. She remembered that there was a phone beside the bed.

‘Hullo, it’s you. Where are you?’

‘What time is it?’

‘You are in Wellington, then? Really?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ll hang up.’

‘What? Don’t be crazy. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ She started to weep. ‘Is there someone in bed with you?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘There could be. You don’t have to be alone.’

‘No, that’s true.’

‘We agreed that it was over. I expect you to take other women to bed.’

‘I know. I do. But there isn’t anyone here now.’

‘It was stupid of me. What is the time? You didn’t say.’

‘Five o’clock in the morning.’

‘I suppose it must be. Is it going to be a good day?’

‘I haven’t looked yet. But I think it might be. It’s spring, you know.’

She was quiet.

‘Are you just unhappy?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you rang me?’

‘The winter’s just starting here,’ she replied hopelessly. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Don’t hang up. Leonie. I want …’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you all right?’

She put the phone down. Why had he asked such silly questions? She had no idea whether she was all right. She had no idea whether anything had ever been wrong.

‘Why did you ring Todd Davis last night?’ asked Brent the following morning.

Leonie put down the lunch packet with care.

‘I didn’t ring Todd Davis,’ she answered. And inside her head she was saying to herself, I did, I did, I did.

‘You rang him last night,’ said Brent. ‘It was a person-to-person. I heard you put it in.’

‘No. You’re mistaken. I rang Mr Hicks, to cancel the paper when we go away next weekend.’

‘Laurence heard you, too, didn’t you?’

Laurence raised his eyes covertly from his fried egg. She handed him his orange drink.

‘I can’t remember,’ he said.

‘Yes, you can,’ said Brent. ‘You said, that’s Todd Davis that used to work in Dad’s lab. That’s who she’s ringing, that’s what you said.’

‘I must have made a mistake,’ said Laurence. ‘Like Mum said. Is my lunch ready?’ he asked Leonie, as he swallowed the last of his breakfast.

She handed it to him silently.

‘See ya.’ The door slammed behind him.

‘He did hear you.’ The boy stood there looking at her, waiting.

‘You’ve got no right to listen to my telephone conversations,’ she said at last.

‘I didn’t. I just heard you putting it through.’

‘I don’t listen to yours,’ she said, aggressive and self-righteous now. ‘What business is it of yours who I talk to?’

‘Why did you ring him?’

‘Please don’t tell Dad when he comes home.’

Brent smiled, a secret pleased smile, having won an admission from her. ‘Would he be angry?’

‘Possibly. A toll call to Toronto costs a lot of money. I was being lazy. Todd Davis wrote to me to get some information, and I simply hadn’t got round to answering his letter, so I rang him up. Dad would be cross with me for spending all that money.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Oh … he was thinking of emigrating here.’ By what wild flight of fancy have I uttered such nonsense? she wondered.

‘He wanted to know whether it was a good idea or not.’

‘He could have asked Dad. He used to work for him.’

Leonie wondered how much longer she could stand the interrogation without screaming at her son. It was too much. She had to hold on, there would be no way back once it was done. ‘Dad didn’t like him much. I think he thought it was better to ask me.’ Getting in deeper. Damn. A bad line that. Why should she like Todd Davis better than Hamish? Why should Todd Davis trust her to like him if her husband didn’t?

Brent shrugged and turned away. ‘I’d better be getting off. I’ll be late for assembly.’

She wanted to yell at him. He couldn’t do that now, so casually abandon her without committing himself. Learning the power game. Hamish was a good teacher; both these boys of hers were quick. ‘Then is it between us?’ she asked.

‘Eh? Oh yeah. Of course.’

‘What about Laurence?’

‘He’ll be okay.’

‘How can you be sure? I don’t want to discuss it with him any more.’

‘Easy.’ Brent was filling his bag with books, and his lunch, taking apples from the sideboard. ‘He doesn’t like Dad.’

‘Brent.’ She stood still, shocked. ‘How do you know?’

‘He doesn’t have to like him, does he?’

‘I don’t know. Do you?’

‘Better than Laurence. Yes, I guess he’s okay. I reckon he gives us a pretty neat time. None of the kids have got as many things as we have.’

‘And that’s important?’

‘Don’t you like things?’

‘You can get by without them. I haven’t always had things.’

‘Sure you haven’t, but you never talk about when you didn’t. Dad hasn’t always had things either, but he talks about when he was a kid and didn’t.’

‘Maybe Dad had a happier time than I did. It … it doesn’t always have to do with things.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

‘Anyway, it’s an awful reason to say you like Dad.’

‘Tell me the other ones when you’ve got an hour to spare. Bye.’

At the door he turned and smiled. ‘It’ll show up on the phone bill, you know,’ he said, and then he shut the door behind him, and she heard his feet running up the path.

Dully she started cleaning the kitchen. Was it good luck to have a dishmaster, a wastemaster, a juice extractor? She repacked steaks methodically in a freezer tray, and put them away, then took them out again, removing two, replacing one, red, lonely and decidedly alive-looking. She shuddered. Perhaps it was contemplating eating her.

The boys would have their steaks in front of the rumpus room telly. Again.

Her head was burning. She walked to the window and leaned her forehead against the cold pane of glass. The chill seemed like an extra ache. Obviously the pain was behind her eyes, heavy tears. They wouldn’t fall, she knew that; they had never fallen when she most wanted them to, not even in the old room long ago. Harriet would cry now, she was sure. In rage and fury and frustration.

She wished she could get Harriet off her shoulder. The wretched woman seemed to have no intention of leaving her this morning. Well, she had decided to ring her today, hadn’t she? Perhaps she might even tell Harriet what had happened last night, and this morning. She could make it sound like a joke.

She might tell her, or again she might not. It was almost Harriet’s fault, what had happened. Or so it seemed. She dialled Harriet’s number.