Read Online a Breed of Women by Fiona Kidman - Free Book Online Page A

adolescents from all the outlying churches of the scattered parish. The amount of preparation that had gone into the affair hardly seemed worth it. Allthat catechism for this. One moment you were outside, next moment inside, and all for some rote chanting that everybody could do. Did it place her above God, she wondered, knowing the vicar had his weaknesses? She hoped not, it seemed a perilously high place to occupy, and one supposed that He must know every bit as much as she did, and more.
    The bishop was a tired, gentle old man. He said something about ‘Home is Heaven, and Heaven is Home’ and begged them to remember it all the days of their lives, and she liked the man because he truly seemed to believe it. In a moment of sudden and frightening clarity, it occurred to her that she was not above God, not alongside, and still not inside like this kind man, but still an outsider.
    Harriet glanced sideways at Father Dittmer, who had not directly acknowledged her presence, though he had shaken her parents warmly by the hand and said vaguely that of course he would be delighted to call at the farm someday for afternoon tea. She wondered if he knew that she was still locked outside — somehow, she guessed that he did.
    As the words of the service flowed on, she thought of her tree and the voice of God. Years later, someone propounded theories to her about adolescent religio-sexual fantasising. Even at that moment, the tree was fading as a real symbol of anything more than a place to cool herself in the fast-approaching summer — the summer she already expected to be her last one at the farm.
    For among the other things she found surprising at high school had been the realisation that she had friends. She had defended herself at primary school for so long that when she had tackled high school with her aggressive saunter, the following she accumulated in her wake had seemed unreal. Gradually some of these followers had demonstrated a loyalty for her which in the end she gratefully acknowledged to be friendship.
    Among these was a girl called Wendy Dixon, whom Harriet had befriended because she was secretly in love with her elder brother Francis. Francis had little to do with the carnal interest of ‘it’ in Harriet’s eyes, though she supposed that if she ever got to know him well enough, ‘it’ would probably be a pleasant part of their relationship. She thought that he was quite simply the most beautiful person in the whole world. He also seemed to be rather more intelligent than some of his contemporaries, though this was something that Harriet could only judge from afar. He would walkslightly stooped, contemplating some inner secret she could only guess at, but sometimes she suspected that some of the perplexity of her own life sat heavily upon him too. She longed to ask him, to see some sign in someone that she was not alone in all the things that puzzled and bewildered her.
    When Wendy first made friendly advances to her, she accepted them with a secret glee that she was getting closer to the object of her interest — desire was too strong a word. Once Wendy invited her over to the house. It was a long journey on her bike, but she devoted a whole Saturday to it. Francis was not there. Harriet learned that he was working somewhere, up the farm and that he wouldn’t be back till after the evening milking. As Harriet had to be home for milking herself, there was no possible hope of waiting for him.
    As the year wore on, Francis seemed quieter, even more remote. She knew that he was aware of her, for sometimes, idling by the places where she expected to find him in the school grounds, they would meet. His heavy-lidded dark brown eyes would flicker wide for a moment, then he would raise his cap gravely and pass on. Whatever was troubling him, Harriet was not told.
    At the end of the year Francis left not only school but the district as well. Wendy told Harriet that her parents were angry, and seemed reluctant to discuss