a Breed of Women (34 page)

‘Not exactly.’

‘You mean you want to have your cake and eat it too? We just go on and on sneaking a bit of afternoon here, a bit of morning there, a quickie in the back seat of your car? God, what sort of a life is that?’

‘It was all right before.’

‘But it’s stopped being all right, don’t you see? What are you afraid of, the scandal?’

‘I wouldn’t like to hurt Miriam,’ he said.

‘Miriam! I thought you liked being with me better.’

‘I do. But Miriam’s my wife.’

They seemed to have reached a stalemate. Don asked if he could come back next week if she could make some time.

Through the weeks that followed, Harriet continued to fight internal battles. She wanted him, she wanted to possess him, she seemed to have always lived half a life, and Don would give her a whole one. She and Max were barely speaking to each other. He came and went, and was gone more often than he was home. She was too wrapped in her own misery to notice properly. It was the silence of mutual self-absorption rather than of open hostility.

They were into April when Miriam rang one afternoon and said that she and Don would like them to come over that evening. They had something to talk over with Harriet and Max. They would send one of their boys over to babysit for a while.

Harriet smelt so much danger in the air that she was, once again, going to say no, but she said yes because it appeared a safer decision. She told Max, who said he was too busy to go. It was only when she pointed out that they hadn’t been anywhere together for a long time and she didn’t often ask him to go places with her that he finally
agreed. Besides, on second thoughts, he seemed to be interested in what the Everetts wanted to talk to them about.

By the time darkness fell and the children were asleep, it was raining outside. The Everetts’ elder son John turned up to babysit about eight o’clock, and even though they were only half a block away, Max suggested that they take the car. There seemed no point in getting drenched, and he could run John home if it was still raining later.

The lights were all on in the verandah of the Everetts’ brick bungalow. There was an air of permanence and solidity about the place, as if it were an impregnable part of the landscape, an enduring symbol of suburban Weyville. Like a fort, Harriet thought foolishly as they splashed across the concrete drive, water running in a steady stream as the rain pelted down.

At the door Miriam greeted them too brightly, or so it seemed to Harriet. Yet everything looked the same; the pictures hadn’t shifted, the bright scatter rugs on the polished floor were all in the same place, the comfortable big linen-covered armchairs hadn’t been shifted. Only Don looked out of place in his own home. He was sunk on one of the chairs, all angles, hands and feet not knowing where they should be. He looked at Harriet abjectly when she came in.

It was too late to run. There was nowhere to run to. But before she had come, there had been nowhere to go. The feeling had communicated itself to Max. He looked edgily at the door, and resigned himself. Whatever was to be could not be stopped. Nice for him, thought Harriet — what does he have to worry about except knowledge. Yes, Max was going to have to wear knowledge.

The rituals were beginning. Miriam poured them all sherries, rather large ones. Harriet didn’t like Miriam’s taste in sherry, which was too sweet for her, but still it was a drink and there was no denying that she needed one.

The opening gambits were performed by Miriam too, once she’d settled herself in an armchair. They were all seated now, Miriam contriving to look relaxed, with a cigarette, blowing fine blue smoke out of her nose, cradling her sherry in her hands.

‘Don and I think it’s time we had a little talk to you two,’ said Miriam, finally having arranged the scene to her satisfaction, or perhaps as for as was possible without prolonging things any further.

Max said stiffly, ‘If it’s about our personal lives, don’t you think that’s between Harriet and myself?’

‘I wish it was,’ said Miriam. ‘But life is never as simple as that, is it, Max?’

Harriet was looking at Max in surprise. It was almost as if Miriam and he were sharing knowledge from which she, Harriet, was excluded. That was impossible. Whatever secrets there were in the room were between her and Don, or should have been.

‘You’ve got yourself in quite a mess, haven’t you, Max?’ Miriam was saying.

‘Your grapevine seems to be working efficiently,’ said Max. ‘Is that what you brought us over here for? So you could tell my wife what your rotten little network’s come up with? I suppose this is what you call coming out with things in the open. Not talking behind my back.’

Miriam was starting to unwind now. She was getting the bit between her teeth.

‘You young people,’ she said. ‘So self-centred. It affects us.’

Harriet looked from one to the other of them, bewildered.

‘That’s nonsense,’ said Max, starting to get to his feet. ‘What goes on in our household has nothing to do with yours.’

‘Just a minute, we’ll come to that,’ said Miriam, mysteriously. She was taking on the appearance of a soothsayer, sitting under the lamplight She appeared to have inhabited her chair forever.

‘What does Max know?’ said Harriet sharply. ‘If you don’t say what you have to, I’m leaving. Don’t think I don’t mean it, because I do. Don’t underestimate me, Miriam.’

‘Nor you me,’ said the other woman. Then, ‘All right, Max, about the suit Roy Mawson’s filing against you. What are you going to do about it?’ It was out, or part of it. Max looked at Harriet.

‘I was going to tell you,’ he said.

‘Suit, what suit?’ said Harriet.

‘There you are, are you satisfied with what you’ve done to her?’ Max said to Miriam. ‘Go on, tell her the rest.’

‘Like you said, that’s for you to tell Harriet,’ Miriam responded. It was like some crazy game.

Max cupped one hand and squeezed the other into a ball, banging them together. ‘Elaine Mawson’s husband is petitioning for a divorce. Roy’s named me as co-respondent. We spent the weekend in Taupo last year … he found the receipts.’

‘The fishing weekend?’ Harriet asked. He nodded. ‘And the gun-club nights?’ He didn’t need to reply.

She sat, stunned. Twice in a lifetime? Surely not. What sort of
woman was she? Not one that kept her man, that was for sure. She looked towards Don, hunched in his chair. Perhaps she was to be allowed this one. She wanted him. Loved him? Perhaps. They could be all right together. If he’d let them be. But would he? He looked away from her.

‘I don’t know why you had to interfere,’ Max was saying Miriam.

‘Because I don’t want to lose my husband,’ said Miriam, rising from her chair and pouring more sherry, for herself first, and for the others by way of token. ‘We have a good life, Don and I. We’ve got two sons, we’ve a good home, we have a good compromise. I saw him restless, and I let it go. It’ll pass, I told myself. The girl is unhappy too, and who’s to blame her, always a fish out of water in this neighbourhood. There was a time when I was a bit like her myself, all past now, I’ve felt — sorry for her? Yes, I suppose I have. If he has to choose someone, I should be glad it’s her. So I let it go.’

Neither of their names had been spoken, yet everyone in the room knew that it was Harriet and Don of whom she was speaking. Don said, ‘Miriam, you have no right,’ and broke away.

Max looked at Harriet with disbelief and scorn. ‘You wanted him? You’ve had him?’

‘And I said to myself,’ continued Miriam’s relentless voice, ‘her husband’s playing the field, not that one could altogether blame him either, so why shouldn’t I let it go a bit? But Max was silly and got caught. So he’s going to have to make some decisions. So I wanted to tell you, Harriet, that if you’re on your own, I’m sorry, but you don’t get my husband.’ She polished a fingernail delicately with the hem of her dress. ‘He’s had his bit on the side.’

‘She knew all the time?’ said Harriet, appealing to Don, asking him to tell her that it wasn’t true. He nodded.

‘Pretty well,’ he said.

‘You told her things about us?’

Don continued to sit, his head bowed now, seeming to shake, as if he was weeping.

‘You’re sick,’ Harriet said to Miriam.

Miriam raised a pencilled eyebrow. ‘Possibly, though some people enjoy bad health,’ she said.

‘That’s disgusting.’ Harriet stood up. ‘I am leaving.’ At the door she stopped and turned. ‘What made you think he was so safe with me? He might have left you for me.’

‘It was always a risk,’ said Miriam. ‘I considered it Oh yes, I thought
about it a lot But you see, Harriet, it seemed to me that he had less to concern himself about making a respectable woman of you.’

‘You bitch. Oh you bitch,’ said Harriet softly.

‘Whereas Max has a different problem. The opposite, one might say. I must admit, Harriet, I couldn’t risk your availability.’

Harriet ran out into the driveway. The rain was still teaming down. Don caught her up at the edge of the verandah, as she backed away from the downpour. She didn’t have the car keys, and the only escape route was through the rain.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, piss off,’ she shouted. The Everetts’ milk bottles were standing on the side of the porch waiting to be put out for the night. Harriet stooped, swiftly taking one by the neck, and, as she straightened, she smashed it on the side of the house. Glass broke around them, rain, explosions. She half crouched in the rain, ready to pounce on Don with the bottle.

‘The other answer, Harriet?’ said Don, his eyes a mixture of courage and fear.

A hand like a steel band gripped her wrist, squeezing it until her fingers opened in spite of herself. The broken milk bottle fell out of her hand, tumbling away into the begonias.

It was Max. ‘I’ll open the car door for you,’ he said. He
frog-marched
her to the car without speaking to Don, holding on to her arm until he had thrown her into the car and shut the door on her.

He backed jerkily and very fast down the driveway, forgetting to put his lights on until they were some distance up the road. Then he accelerated away past the turn-off to their house, at the end of the block. Harriet lay back in her seat, dazed. They were heading away from the town in the direction of the mill. The car ran along a road bordered by the brooding spikes of pine trees. The windscreen wipers didn’t seem to be working properly so that the water bucketed across on to her side and she could hardly see where they were going, just moving into the great menacing dark outside with no relief, no holes in the black. He is going to take me into the forest and kill me, she thought. She wondered if she should jump out of the racing car, but she felt too tired. She might live, and then they might expect her to cope with pain. More pain. It might, conceivably, be worse than this.

After what seemed a long time, but what was probably no more than ten minutes or so, Max pulled the car over to the side of the
road, under a clump of pines that grew close to the road. They formed a shelter, easing away the rain, and Harriet could see that the car was on a rise overlooking Weyville. She supposed that he was going to be angry with her. It occurred to her that she could as easily be angry with him. Elaine Mawson, for God’s sake. That mousey permed little blonde. Still, she had spoken up for her at a dinner party on the night she and Nick Thomas had done battle. It seemed like a different lifetime.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Isn’t everybody?’ he replied.

‘Are you going to go with her?’

‘I wanted to.’

‘I won’t stop you.’

‘Past tense. I stopped, oh, a long time ago. It seemed to have gone too far. Meant to break it off after Christmas. After we’d been away.’

It seems everyone meant to. The great summer reunion. What happened?

‘I got caught Very conventional — angry husband. When I was getting round to finishing it.’

‘Funny how they never cotton on until the fun’s over, isn’t it?’ Harriet said.

He grimaced. ‘I thought you’d appreciate that Even before I knew about Don. Don!’ he repeated in amazement ‘For God’s sake, Harriet. You can’t want him.’

‘Probably not. It would mean more babies. He’s right. I don’t really want them.’

‘Babies. You and Don. Christ.’ They sat in silence for a while.

‘They won’t do anything,’ he said. ‘The Everetts. But I’m in trouble. I’ll go away if you want the house.’

‘D’you really want to go away?’

‘I don’t want to stay here.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Harriet.

They looked at each other, the lights from the dashboard throwing them into profile. Harriet thought, you wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. But we noticed each other. Somehow we noticed each other. He spoke first.

‘Shall we leave Weyville?’ he said.

She looked out across the flat plain below them. The lights were like smudges on the horizon. Somewhere down there her children were sleeping. She’d had the full toll extracted from her in that town.

‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ she said. ‘Things can’t be the same between us. There would have to be change.’

‘I could say the same. I can survive without you. I have been by myself before.’

‘What’s the price?’ he said.

‘Your life and mine.’

‘You strike a hard bargain.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but we don’t have much choice, do we? You no more than me. You can change the order, but in the end it’s much the same.’

Max organised a transfer to Wellington; one presented itself as if by magic within days of their decision to leave Weyville. They lost heavily on the house. A tavern had been built nearby when they sold up and for the time being it had depressed values in Camelot. The buyers of their house were in a position to beat them low, and they had no idea what they would be able to purchase in Wellington. There was no other place that Harriet could conceive of going, once the proposition had been put to her. It was the right place for them; somehow they would contrive to begin again.

Miriam and Don offered to have a farewell party for them, but after effusive thanks, they turned the proposal down. Cousin Alice was Harriet’s main concern in leaving the town. Very early on the morning that they left, she drove over by herself, to say goodbye. Her cousin, on sticks now, was wearing her dressing-gown. The monkey-puzzle tree, a little ragged these days, glimmered in one of the winter’s first frosts. Max and the children had been in for a meal the night before and they had all said their farewells then. The old woman clung to her, dropping her sticks. Harriet had been more than a daughter to her, she said.