a Breed of Women (32 page)

She got into Weyville in the early hours of the morning, and sat huddled in the station waiting-room until morning broke, then she rang Max, and asked him to come and take her home.

It was nearly ten years since Mr Whitwell had offered her the less-travelled road. At last, she had set foot on its narrow and dangerous way.

F
OR NEARLY A
month after her return, Harriet lived in a state of profound shock. For days at a time she sat, listless and withdrawn.

Max clearly resented the money spent on her adventure, whatever it was. She had told him little about what had happened in Wellington. She had said that at Helen’s place she had simply felt homesick and decided not to go on to Christchurch, that she had wanted to come back to him and the children. In a sense, it was the truth, and it was also inarguable. Her new clothes had been put away in a drawer, and she moved from day to day, doing what had to be done for the children, like a sleepwalker. Max would enquire if she was still ill, and she had said that she supposed so, but that it would go away.

And she did feel as if she had some sort of sickness. There must be something wrong for her to reject her surroundings so completely. She had helped to make this home, she had borne these children, chosen to marry this man. What aberration was she suffering, that she now felt out of place? Some days she would shout at the children, as she had never done, and afterwards she would sit rocking backwards and forwards with one of them in her lap, particularly Emma, who was too small to resist and the most amiable about her mother’s strange behaviour.

Slowly she began to feel better, to accept that she was a changed person and must face who she really was. She took out her new clothes, started to wear them, and, as winter was coming on, she made herself a couple of warmer garments, fashioned like the one she had bought in Wellington. She took up the skirts she already had, for women were now wearing either long dresses or minis. Genevieve and Peter were both going to morning kindergarten and Emma slept well during the day, so that she began to organise her time better. The first day that the house was quiet she got out her typewriter and laboriously typed out some new work, the first she had tried for a long time. A neighbour rang while she was working to see how she was —
she had heard, she said, that Harriet wasn’t quite herself these days. Harriet told her that she was very well indeed, thank you, and that she was working at the moment. The woman at the other end sounded mystified, and said how dreary it must be. Housework did get to you, and she’d pop down and have coffee with her to give her a break. Harriet had replied firmly that she was working at her writing, and that it really needed absolute quiet. Though she was grateful for the offer of company, she said she would rather be on her own. As her caller was quite unaware that Harriet had this ‘little interest’ as she later called it, she hung up somewhat offended. Harriet had been amazed at how easy it was.

This became the pattern of her days. From time to time she emerged in what the locals of Weyville described as her ‘weird gear’. Harriet Taylor had always been difficult, they agreed, but now she was eccentric.

Max’s behaviour in the face of these changes was strangely ambivalent. He made no comment, even appearing not to notice particularly. He took his trip to Rotorua, and came back as edgy and difficult as Harriet had been when she returned from Wellington. She supposed they had grown apart.

One morning she was sitting at her typewriter, picking away, trying to recall what little she had learnt at the Weyville College night classes, when the phone rang. She cursed it, even though it rang little these days, for the word had gone out that she was not very approachable. It was Don Everett. She gave a guilty start knowing that she had been very neglectful of Miriam recently, who had been nothing if not kind to her through many trials.

She could hear herself being over-effusive. ‘I’ve been meaning to ring Miriam for ages,’ she said. ‘She must have written me off. You must call in and have a drink with us some evening, both of you. I don’t know, Max and I seem to have been a bit preoccupied lately.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot, that’s all. I’m very proud of all the work you’ve been publishing.’

‘And so you should be, it was you that gave me a push in the right direction. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten that. Anyway, where are you ringing from?’

‘Home, actually,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘I had a couple of clays’ leave that I had to use up or I’d lose them, so here I am. Why don’t you come round and see me? Have a cup of coffee?’

‘I can’t do that, Emma’s asleep.’

‘Oh yes. Emma. I shouldn’t forget her, should I?’

‘Why don’t you come round and see me then?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Of course not I’d love to see you.’

When she hung up she thought wryly, ‘Now there is a turn-up for the books, asking Don Everett round to have coffee in mid-morning, for all the women of Camelot to see. And why the hell shouldn’t I?’

It was almost as if Don had been waiting in the wings, she reflected later. As if there was a point at which he had said to himself, ah, yes, now she’s ripe for the picking.

She felt that Don’s arrival demanded some special effort on her part After the last time they had been alone together something was surely required. God, sitting up in bed in the hospital looking lumpy and tearful, with her great swollen boobs. There didn’t seem to be a lot to do besides taking her apron off and putting some lipstick on. She wondered if he would prefer her crouched over the typewriter or looking domestic. A bit of both, perhaps. She left the typewriter out on the table, and started grinding the coffee.

She let him in a few minutes later, wearing the same battered mac that he had worn to the hospital. ‘I’ll take your coat,’ she said, assuming that he’d stay a long time.

As she hung it in the hall rack he said, ‘And how is Emma?’

‘All right. She’s different to my other babies. Would you like to see her?’

‘We won’t wake her?’

‘Not a show, she keeps her waking up bits for the middle of the night You don’t really want to see her though, do you? You were just being polite.’

‘I think I would like to, actually. After all, I stood in as her dad.’

‘Oh … you’re not going to let me forget that, are you?’

‘How could I? It’s something I can’t forget’

He followed her into the child’s toy-strewn bedroom. No wonder Max broke his leg, she thought And I bet Don thinks so to. Miriam would never leave a room littered like that. Emma slept peacefully, sucking the edge of the grubby blanket that she always kept with her.

‘Is she walking?’

‘Just.’

‘She’s lovely,’ he said. ‘I’d have liked a daughter.’

‘Well,’ said Harriet as they closed the door, ‘what a pity we don’t give our children godparents, you could have been hers. Max would
like it if I suddenly started bestowing godmothers and godfathers on all our children. It would make them more respectable.’

‘But you’re not, are you, Harriet?’

‘Respectable? Probably not. Though I tried it for a while.’

‘And didn’t like it?’

‘I did it badly. I suppose you know I had a … crack-up, I think Max calls it.’

‘Well, I did hear something.’

‘I’ll bet you did. What are they saying about me out there in the wasteland?’

‘You’re hard on them. They do like you, you know.’

‘Oh I know,’ she replied impatiently. ‘I like them, too. I just don’t want to do the same things that they want to do.’

‘You’ve changed,’ he said.

‘Yes, I’ve changed. But don’t tell me that’s a brand new discovery.’ She poured coffee into pottery mugs.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

‘You know perfectly well you wouldn’t have come round here in the middle of the day like this to sit and have coffee with me if I was just the same as before.’

‘Am I that transparent?’

‘I don’t know, Don. All right, I’ve changed. I can’t gauge how much, except through other people’s reactions to me. I suppose I watch them a bit harder now. Narcissism. I expect to see a reflection of my own behaviour.’

She shifted a pile of yesterday’s unfolded washing so that he could sit down. ‘I’m a slack housewife,’ she observed. ‘Miriam’s a much better doer than I am.’

‘It’s not the be-all and end-all.’ He stirred his coffee more than was necessary. She saw that his hand was shaking. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you,’ he said miserably.

‘If it’s about going to bed with me, don’t sound so unhappy about it. The worst may never happen. I might say no.’

He shook his head. ‘I really don’t understand you.’

‘No. Well, that can’t be helped. The point is, you want to, don’t you? All right, I can see the answer’s yes, but you feel really bad about it, and terrible about Miriam and Max. If I said no, you’d be awfully relieved and you could go on lusting innocently after me, if there is such a thing as innocent lust. I suppose not, what’s the Bible say? He who commits adultery in his heart is just as guilty …’ she broke off.

‘Then how do you feel about Max?’

‘Oh, all right We’re just not — very together at the moment.’

‘I wouldn’t help that then, would I?’ he said.

‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t know what you’re like.’

‘Where would we …?’ He searched round desperately, seeking an escape. Serves you right, she thought, serves you darn well right if I do go to bed with you.

As she helped him undress, she reflected that so far she was making a fairly conventional mess of being different There wasn’t much she could do about it, though — she had to start somewhere. He got his zip caught in the corner of his singlet, and they had to perform a delicate operation to get it undone without breaking it completely. She knelt on the floor so that she could get a better grip on it, and thought she might lose an eye in the process. They were in Peter and Genevieve’s bedroom and a rubber toy squealed as they collapsed on a bed.

‘You’re so maternal,’ Don panted as they began their exertions.

It turned out to be much more successful than either of them had anticipated. The difference between herself and Miriam turned out to be quite simply that Harriet enjoyed making love and Miriam didn’t, according to Don. Judging by the initial urgency of their encounter, it was probably true that Don had a fair bit of lost time to make up.

Being a scarlet woman in Weyville proved easier than Harriet had imagined, at least for a while. Don would take an early lunch, park his car down the road and walk up to Harriet’s. She kept the curtains closed in the children’s bedroom until he came so that the neighbours wouldn’t see them being drawn after his arrival. Not that she had any illusions that they didn’t notice him mooching towards her place at regular intervals.

They tried to devise different ways for him to come; some days he parked his car in the opposite direction so that he had to pass a different set of neighbours, then they thought of the back way, but that was more obvious than subtle. The people at the back certainly had food for thought when they saw Don Everett climbing the Taylors’ back fence.

There was always the terrifying thought that Max might slip home for some reason or other. He was not in the habit of doing so, and yet there was always the nasty thought in the back of her mind that he might forget his wallet, or spill coffee over his trousers and have
to come back and change them. There were endless variations on this theme, but Max never appeared, and as the affair continued and prospered, these thoughts receded and were finally shelved.

Difficulties arose when Emma decided to take her nap in the afternoons. Harriet had been afraid of this, and was surprised that she had taken so long to conform to the others’ pattern in this respect This meant that there was nearly always a child awake in the house somewhere. The first few times that Emma woke up from her morning sleep, if they were still in bed, Harriet would say that she’d be all right in her cot. She started to get nasty suspicions that there might be a God lurking around somewhere, despite her attempts to exorcise Him (or Her, a recent notion). Surely there must be some just being who would strike down such a wanton woman as herself, fornicating in the house where her child was. Don found it difficult to resist Emma’s urgent pleas for Mum-mum to come and rescue her, and Harriet, too, would begin to imagine that she might have her fingers jammed or be choking to death with her head through the bars. With sighs and embraces they would extricate themselves, and Harriet would go through to rescue her child. Then they would sit around the kitchen table like any good family, and Harriet would make coffee while Don fed the child pieces of biscuit and baby-talked to Emma. There were times when she thought he really did believe he was Emma’s father.

Harriet had alienated herself from the neighbourhood to the point where asking people to have the children was difficult except in emergencies, and she didn’t think it would be clever to draw more attention to her activities by inviting any of the women round about to look after her children at the same time that Don was beating a track to her door.

The whole matter demanded an unexpected amount of ingenuity and resourcefulness. On the weeks that it was her turn to do the kindergarten run, for she did still have that link with a few nearby families, she took to spending quite large parts of the morning helping out at kindergarten and chatting amiably to other mothers. People were generally surprised. Harriet was coming right again, they said, she’s making an effort In the rush to be supportive, a number of them responded to Harriet’s rediscovered warmth. Some of them had children who were friendly with the two older Taylor children. It took only a week or two for Harriet to come up with the idea that what they all needed was a proper break from the children
every now and then. A whole day would be wonderful. Absolute heaven, agreed the other mothers. Then why, Harriet suggested, with a low cunning that astounded even her, did they not arrange a day or so a week when she took someone else’s child, or children, home in the afternoon, and they could do the same for her on other days? As they said, only Harriet could have thought of an idea like that.

It meant of course that Don couldn’t come quite so often, but it worked. Instead of having an early lunch hour, he took a late one on the afternoons that Harriet’s children were playing in another part of Weyville, and Emma had been put down to sleep.