Free a Breed of Women by Fiona Kidman Page A

to the farm to see the Wallaces, when the Teachers’ Training College selection panel visited the school.
    The teachers told the Wallaces that Harriet was wasting her life. She had no future outside of teaching, they had endured Harriet,they had coaxed her through high school for three years, they had given of their time to her because she was clever, it seemed, so that she might have a good future. What was it all for? What sort of gratitude was this? Had they been wasting their time?
    ‘Yes,’ said Harriet when the tirade finally came to an end, ‘as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been wasting your time all right. You started wasting it thirty years ago when someone persuaded you that going teaching was a good thing to do. You never taught me one single thing I couldn’t have found out for myself, except how to pass an exam.’
    ‘Which you haven’t passed yet,’ the headmaster pointed out, his eyes glittering.
    ‘No, but I probably will, and I need to, so that’s why I’ve put up with school this long.’
    ‘You’re arrogant,’ said the head.
    ‘I expect so,’ agreed Harriet.
    ‘Why do you need School Certificate?’ asked the history teacher.
    ‘I mightn’t need it, but then again, I might, to do what I want to do. I can’t afford to gamble on not getting it.’
    ‘And what do you want to do?’
    ‘Be famous,’ said Harriet levelly.
    ‘Immature,’ said the headmaster to her parents. ‘She needs all the help she can get. I suggest you send her back to us for another year.’
    ‘To knock into shape?’ asked Harriet as she walked out. At the door she stopped and said, ‘It’s a bit late for that now, don’t you think? After all, you’ve tried this long and failed.’
    She did pass her exam. It wasn’t the best mark in the school. Wendy did much better and Marie quite convincingly, while Harriet just squeezed through.
    Mary wrote to her cousin Alice Harrison who lived in Weyville, a prosperous and growing town south of Ohaka. Alice had lived there since her immigration and subsequent marriage more than twenty-five years before. Both her children were grown up and she was a widow. She agreed to take Harriet.
    She wrote that there were plenty of jobs going in Weyville, and she was sure she would know somebody who would know somebody who could get Harriet a job. It was a pity she didn’t have better marks in School Certificate, but there you were, she’d been lucky with her children, both smart, and Mary hadn’t had much luck, had she, so she was happy to do what she could for Harriet. At least she couldlearn to type at night school, and she might work up to something better than the process line at one of the factories if she put her mind to it. Not, Alice said, that she would put up with any nonsense. She’d never had any from her own two children and she certainly wasn’t going to take any from Harriet, especially after she’d seen the report that Mary had sent to show prospective employers. She could tell that Mary hadn’t been firm enough with the girl, but she supposed with all her troubles, what else could you expect. At least she had time now, and she would see to it that Harriet didn’t go off the straight and narrow. So it was decided.
    On the day before Harriet left, Ailsa was married in a great smother of white tulle and net that clouded the issue of her bulging stomach. At the wedding dance, Harriet waited for Jim to dance with her, but she only had him in a change-partners waltz, and he kept smiling idiotically over her head at the school dental nurse who had stayed on in the district at the end of the term.
    ‘Do you know her?’ Harriet asked, as all other conversation seemed to fail.
    ‘Know her?’ said Jim, with a huge complacent smile. ‘You’ll be dancing at our wedding in May, soon as the cows’re dry.’
    Harriet decided against telling him that she was going away the following morning; nor did she say that she wouldn’t be back for his wedding.
    On her last