a Breed of Women (38 page)

The Smythes arrived first. Liz, amiable and placid, had earned her good service medal years ago and was comfortably installed in her seat of power. If she had an overbearing manner, at least it was not competitive. She had no need to be. Leonie felt reasonably at ease with her, though she knew well enough that Liz could cut the ground out from under her feet at a moment’s notice if it proved necessary. Neil was the suntanned, iron-grey-haired type who looked as if he spent his life in swimming pools or on a Bermudan beach, and who kept a deceptive veneer over his knowledge of the industry he served. The couple were, in short, the kind of people Hamish would most like the Coglans themselves to be in another ten years.

By the time Harriet and Max arrived, they were into their drinks. Leonie took Harriet through to the bedroom to take off her coat. She was about to ask Harriet not to discuss anything controversial, when Harriet turned to her and said, ‘I saw Michael Young yesterday. Last night.’ Leonie looked at her face. It was pale and strained.

‘It’s over,’ said Harriet flatly.

‘Why didn’t you ring me today? How long have you known you were going to see him?’ said Leonie.

‘I was busy today. I’ve known … a week or so.’

‘I see.’ Only Leonie didn’t quite see. She had thought she and Harriet had become closer, but perhaps that had been an assumption on her part. Maybe Harriet had regretted her confidences.

‘I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow,’ said Harriet. ‘I couldn’t before.’

The two women went through to join the others. Leonie noticed that Harriet had made a special effort to be conventional. She and Max looked exactly like anyone else they might have been entertaining, and Leonie silently thanked them for that. Though she was getting as bad as Hamish — had she expected them to come wearing love beads and jeans? she wondered. She accepted her drink from Hamish, her fourth already. It was easier to drink in private than to make phone calls.

Hamish seemed slightly nonplussed. He and Max were talking about the past rugby season in an amicable fashion and Max was giving sound advice on which clubs their son Brent might consider joining. Max had played for a couple of seasons in Wellington before meeting Harriet and going to live in Weyville.

It was sound advice too, Neil told Hamish. He didn’t know why they’d never talked about it before — after all, his boys played football. Harriet asked for a sherry; Leonie noticed that she sipped it very slowly. It was barely touched when Leonie asked Hamish to refill her glass. She glanced in the direction of Harriet’s drink and Max, following her look, smiled, and said affectionately, ‘I think it was a heavy night last night, wasn’t it, old girl? Business got a bit rough.’

Harriet turned her head towards him, a gesture of complicity. My God, thought Leonie, and she talks about other people as survivors. She’s a survivor from way back. Something I always knew, I suppose. Long ago I thought that I was the stronger one, but she has come through, not I. After what Harriet had said in the bedroom to her, the look she had cast at her husband was quite incredible. Perhaps she thought she was on television; surely she didn’t always feel as convincing as she looked on the screen.

The meal was almost dull — not in its presentation, for Leonie was a superb cook and hadn’t spared herself, but in its orderliness. She glanced at Hamish from time to time to see how he was taking his guests. Harriet was talking about television, describing the shooting of a particular documentary, discussing the logic of putting a certain emphasis on it as seen by the producer, agreeing politely with Neil that it showed a bias in some particular direction, but offering the alternative that was to follow and give it balance the following week. The Smythes were obviously fascinated by this inside glimpse into the studios. Equally clear to Leonie was the fact that Harriet was feeding them exactly enough to hook them without giving away her hand.
She had been through this a score of times; this was far from the first time that she had been set up. Hamish and Neil were enchanted, and Leonie knew that Liz would repeat the information she had been given, like a seer, over coffee.

Leonie had underestimated the Taylors as a couple. If anything, she, Hamish and the Smythes were being set up. The whole thing was a clever game, and they were losing. For once, she was glad to be a loser.

About ten o’clock, they took coffee through to the lounge, where a small television set had been brought in. Hamish suggested that it be switched on, not that they usually watched it of course, but it was Harriet’s night on, wasn’t it? It would be nice to get the double image.

When the pre-recorded programme was over they sat discussing it idly for a while. Harriet’s had been a straightforward small item amongst a number of other meatier topics, a lightweight assignment that week.

‘How do you two cope with Harriet’s public life?’ said Hamish.

Leonie’s heart sank. The warning lights had just come on. Once they got into dangerous personal waters, there was no knowing what turn the conversation might take. She looked over at Harriet for the umpteenth time that night, but Harriet was looking steadfastly ahead. She knows, Leonie suddenly saw, she knows that I do not want her to persist with this exercise in front of Neil and Liz, and she’s going through with it.

‘We cope with it very well,’ said Harriet, ‘because we both believe in it.’

‘You have children, though. Who looks after them when you’re not around?’ asked Liz.

‘I have regular home help,’ said Harriet.

Liz looked faintly disapproving and said she didn’t agree with that.

‘I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with it,’ said Harriet. ‘After all, you’ve all lived in different parts of the world, from what Leonie’s told me, where you had native help with your children.’

‘But this is New Zealand,’ Liz pointed out.

‘I had noticed,’ said Harriet, dryly. ‘I suppose you could say that one difference in New Zealand is that I have to pay the person I employ a wage in proportion to what I earn. I assure you it makes quite a hole in the forty-hour week, paying someone else at the same rate as myself for ten hours of that time.’

‘Our servants always enjoyed a very high standard of living,’ said Neil stiffly.

‘As high as yours?’

Neil was silent.

‘Anyway,’ said Liz, with an air of finality, as if her pronouncement would settle the argument, ‘we weren’t working, we women. There is a difference, you know.’

‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Harriet. ‘A shame for you.’

Hamish said, ‘It might suit Max, but some of us like our wives to be supportive to us at home.’

‘Oh, she’s most supportive,’ said Max, with a bit of a grin. ‘Her salary’s quite good, even when she has knocked off a few bob for the home help.’ Now he and Harriet really were conspirators.

‘It’s not what I’d want of my wife,’ said Hamish, applying the acid test.

‘Possibly not,’ Harriet replied, ‘but have you ever asked your wife what she would like of herself?’

‘Harriet, stop,’ said Leonie.

‘Well I’m sure my wife will tell you what she wants herself, won’t you dear?’ Hamish was saying.

She was silent. The others waited.

‘I want to go back to Toronto,’ said a voice Leonie recognised from afar as her own. ‘I want — Todd!’

She got up and left the room. At least she thought she had, but maybe it was later on. She must have done some time, because when she woke up it was morning, and she was in her room in bed, with her négligé on, and everyone had gone.

Leonie stared around at the carnage in her kitchen. Waking had been a particularly dreadful experience for her this morning. Her hangover had been very bad — they seemed to be getting worse. The feeling of disorientation was acute to the point of being nearer to disembodiment. The old terrors crowded in, in a new and frightening dimension. When she had reached out to find whether Hamish was there or not, the bed was empty. Her relief lasted for only a fraction of a second. He should have been there and he was not. The night before closed over her.

The house was very still when she got up. There were signs of Hamish and the boys having got their own breakfasts, amongst the chaos of last night’s leftovers and undone dishes. Hamish must have got the boys up. She looked round for a note, but there was nothing.

She got a couple of aspirin from the cupboard and dropped them into a glass of water, watching them shoot to the surface and dissolve into white clumps. Not knowing quite where to start, she picked up a pile of dishes covered in the tiny fragile bones of chickens, the remains of the
coq
au
vin.
She was usually meticulous about tidying up from dinner parties before she went to bed, but she had been half drunk before this one even started. By the end it, even the rituals of tidiness had deserted her.

The bones looked pathetic, so small. When the children were little they had saved the wishbones of chickens when the family had them, placing them on a sunny windowsill, in whatever house they happened to be living in at the time, till they were ready to be pulled apart between them and one of them could make a wish. Brittle bleached little witch-doctor’s fingers they would be reduced to. Leonie wished that she could find a bone amongst the debris now, instantly dry it, and wish her troubles away.

Instead, she wandered out on to the flagstone terrace. It was spring, there was clematis growing thick around the pillars, the branches of a tree scraping against the side of the house were shot through with a pale cloud of green satin shoots, the scent of jasmine lay heavy on the air. Only a slight breeze ruffled the calm morning. Away to her left the sea shone in its many shades of blue. She might have called this place home, given the chance. But then had there ever been a home for her anywhere? Or would it be possible to find one still? She thought of her sons. What price, her leaving?

She tore a piece of jasmine to shreds in her fingers, and the lemony perfume struck sharply in her nostrils. Inside, the phone began to ring. Perhaps if she let it ring it would go away. It stopped and she sighed with relief, but a moment later it began again.

She gave in to its insistent clamour, knowing that the caller would be either Hamish or Harriet. She didn’t want to speak to either of them yet — it was too soon. She was filled with hatred towards them both.

Hamish spoke when she answered the phone. He was off to Dunedin on a later flight that morning, he said. He had had an early call from the office. She’d been too heavily asleep for him to bother trying to wake her, so he’d collected up his things in a suitcase. He’d be back the following evening.

‘Do you think it’s a particularly good time to be going away?’ she said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘We have … some things to talk about.’

‘Why don’t you talk to your friend about them? You seem to have done quite a lot of talking to her in the past few months.’

‘What did she say to you?’ said Leonie.

‘Very little, to her credit. It was you who did the talking. She told you to be quiet several times before she left, but you weren’t content with a little bombshell, you were quite prepared to go on all night.’

‘I don’t remember,’ whispered Leonie.

‘I’ll bet you don’t.’

‘Please, can’t you come home and sort things out with me? Talk to me, I need so much to talk to you. Things aren’t impossible. I need you with me right now. Please.’

‘It’s impossible. I’ve got to leave for the airport in twenty minutes.’

‘Can’t someone else go, just this once?’

‘For God’s sake, we’ve got a strike on our hands if I don’t go.’

‘Is that more important than us sorting things out?’

‘Leonie,’ he said, ‘I have nothing to sort out, except the mess you’ve made. You sort yourself out. As far as I’m concerned the only sorting out I’ve got to do is whether the Smythes are going to keep their mouths shut or not. Unless you felt it was worth the trouble to do something about it.’

‘In other words, whether my — my indiscretions are going to ruin your career or not?’

His tone was deliberate. ‘Oh, they won’t do that, Leonie, I promise you that. I won’t let them.’

He hung up, and she put the phone down slowly, thinking of the other wives who had been quietly dumped. He wouldn’t want that, he would make sure that didn’t happen. But if the worst came to the worst she supposed it was possible, though unlikely. What would he expect of her now? She should make her peace with Liz, perhaps. He had as good as suggested that. If Liz and Neil were allowed to adopt the role of counsellors and conciliators, they would stand behind them. A vicarious pleasure. Unless she felt it was not worth the trouble. That was what he had meant Good heavens, they’d adopted that posture themselves with a young couple once, out in the Middle East. Kept it in the family. It had been touch and go, that scandal, but the Coglans had seen them through it. They still got Christmas cards from them.

She would have to ring Liz. That was what was expected of them.

And Harriet? Why had Harriet done that to her? She must have been able to see. Was it because she was so wrapped up in her own unhappiness? Spite seemed low on her list of motives. She had no reason to be spiteful towards Leonie. They had been friends, hadn’t they? Yes, friends. For longer than she cared to remember.

That seemed closer to the heart of the matter. Could Harriet see what she could not see, or refused to see? Their beginnings. I do not want to see my beginnings, I sought her out with the past as a reference only, not as a map. But she remembers, she wants me to face who I am. The yellow roses. The old room. The orphanage. Weyville. Her and me.

Tomorrow she would ring Liz. She would sort something tomorrow. For now, she would think about Harriet.

She cleaned the kitchen. It seemed to take hours. It was nearly midday when she put the last glasses back in their places. Her head had cleared by then, and she bathed and showered. Once she had talked to Harriet, things would start to take shape again.

There was no reply to Harriet’s phone. She tried several times during the afternoon, until she knew that even if she did get Harriet, the rest of the family would be in by then too, and the conversation she wanted with Harriet was not a family one. She tried her at work too, but the girl in the office said that Ms Wallace wouldn’t be in that day. No, she didn’t know when she would be in, and yes, she supposed she was on an assignment of some kind. Perhaps she would like to try her at home if it was urgent. Would she like the phone number? Leonie thanked her and hung up.