The battle regarding the phantom relative in the west and a proposed reunion with him continued to simmer in the background of all their lives for several months. The vast majority of the family wanted to meet their long-lost sibling but feared to do so because of Tootsie’s rages.
They argued about it for months while Brian kept putting his holidays off time and time again, waiting for the moment to suit them all and Tootsie in particular. Her reputation went before her and he knew he had to curry favor with this person who held his fate in the palm of her hand. Unfortunately, he did not know how to do so, as all attempts to contact her were thwarted. She did not reply to him or acknowledge his existence in any way.
‘You can’t come over here, mate,’ Douglas told Brian on the telephone one night for the seventh time. ‘Our sister is so furious about meeting you, even about your existence, that we dare not upset her further. Sorry, old fella. We’re real sorry about the whole thing. We would have loved to have met you but we have to consider Tootsie’s feelings. She could have a nervous breakdown over this. She’s teetering on the bridge of the abyss as it is.’
‘You won, Tootsie,’ Douglas told her on the weekend before Brian and his wife had been determined to start out for Queensland. ‘They won’t come near us. Won’t even come over to have a look around, thanks to you.’ His nostrils extended, he trailed off lamely as Tootsie began to show signs of annoyance.
‘Just as well. I hope you’ll all stop agitating now,’ she snorted as she stomped around her kitchen making tea for her visitors. ‘People Like Us don’t want anything to do with the likes of him. He’s probably shifty-eyed and ignorant as a pig. Probably had no proper upbringing whatsoever if he was a cast-off, brought up by God knows who. Never taught right from wrong. Not knowing B from a bull’s foot.’ Her big, smooth face was damp with perspiration as she folded her arms over her belly. She really found the topic too hard to comprehend and was so absolutely tired of it all.
Suddenly she sat down heavily, with an expression that could have been called crestfallen on anyone else beside Tootsie. Sitting in a heap, she felt loose-jointed and rubber-limbed, unable to do anything but smile with clenched teeth at the thought that she had succeeded in settling the hairy question to her satisfaction. She had known of her own particular potential for power, but this went to prove it once and for all.
The strained moment passed when one of her grandchildren burst into the room being chased by his older brother waving a cricket bat.
‘Hoy,’ she shouted at the children. ‘Get outside and play like normal human beings. Can’t you see we’re in conference in here?’
After deep reflection she added to her brother, ‘That settles the issue at hand once and for all,’ as she took a noisy sip of her tea.
There was no further contact until a few months later when Douglas had to ring the branch in Perth where Brian worked, seeking out a rare part for a crawler tractor. He asked to speak to Brian, just to say ‘Hi’ and pass the time of day.
‘Sorry,’ said the sales assistant sadly. ‘Brian’s no longer with us. He passed away a few months ago.’
‘Oh. Something sudden?’ asked Douglas, sucking in his cheeks in anticipation of the worst. His curiosity was mounting as he wondered what could have caused such a sudden demise for the long-lost relative in Perth.
‘You could say that. He became severely depressed. Seems like it was overnight although his wife said she had seen signs for some time. But I can’t tell you any details. Sorry. I know he was planning a trip to Queensland, really looking forward to it, said he was going to meet some of his family, but then something went wrong. Didn’t turn up for work one day with no hint to any of us that he was on his last day here. His wife just went to pieces and had to leave town. All very confidential and hush-hush.’
The conversation was reported to Tootsie, who gave a little moan of impatience.
‘Is there no end to this blessed man and his interference in our family’s business? When will we get some peace from him? Sounds fishy. Uncanny,’ she admitted, prim-faced and disapproving of the whole episode.
For a minute she rocked on her large, flat feet, sucking her bottom lip in against her pearly white teeth. She stared around the gathering with considerable coldness, jutting out her chin defiantly.
‘Still, it just wouldn’t happen to People Like Us. We don’t take the easy way out. Not my fault, anyway. I’m a reasonable person and don’t try to influence others one way or another. It’s a free country. He could have come to Queensland if he liked. That’s not to say we would have entertained him. But what was to stop him and his wife from coming to see the countryside?’
A sudden stiff smile was pasted on her mouth. No one replied either Yea or Nay. All sat stock still contemplating the fly crawling feebly on the tablecloth. With a loud, exasperated sigh, Tootsie sunk into a chair, swiped out with the fly swat and annihilated the defenseless insect.
‘Humpff! That appears to be that. At last I’ll have some hard-won peace of mind. Coffee, anyone? Tea? Biscuit?’
4. Dilemma
The three children had consumed their dinner amidst various complaints about pumpkin, Brussels sprouts and the lack of their usual scoop of ice cream. Banana custard and jelly was acceptable but it was much better topped with ice cream. They were not impressed but had finally finished their meal and left the table to go their various ways.
Annie supervised the girls’ bathing. At nine and ten Ruth and Sarah were well able to bath themselves but forgot small details like scrubbing the red-brown Birkenwald Downs soil from the soles of their feet or washing behind their ears, typical childhood avoidances.
Searching for the busy four-year-old David, she found him in the next door neighbor’s yard in the red pedal-car he had inherited from the younger of his two sisters, Sarah. Annie was glad her little boy felt well enough that day to seek the company of the two small neighboring children, as he had often liked to play with them in the days before he became ill. They were closer in age to him than his sisters and he had been in the habit of seeking them out at some time during most of the long days in early summer.
But then Glandular Fever had taken its toll on him, changing his little life almost beyond recognition.
It had been a sluggishly warm and hazy afternoon on the down side of the Christmas holidays, heading into the new school year. The girls would return to Primary School and if David happened to be well enough, he would go to Kindergarten.
The sisters, Ruth and Sarah, separated in age by only one year and three days, appeared more like twins than sisters. Ruth had been born prematurely, taking quite some years to catch up to ‘normal’ size for her age and was still a smidgen behind in height. Sarah was a lovely-natured, nicely-covered child, apparently placid and secure until her father hit his straps. He would proceed to scare the living daylights out of her with his temper, pulling a mind trip on her by telling her how stupid and unwanted she was.
Annie collected David, biding him to say goodnight to the neighboring children, Katy and Barry Simpkins, and come home for his bath. He objected quietly in his easy, pleasant way, but soon gave in and drove his pedal-car down the Jacksons’ driveway and back into his own yard.
Annie was determined to stick to her guns with David, as hard as she found it to refuse him anything, even an extra five minutes to play with his friends. He was heartbreakingly thin and pale. Annie was filled with sickening dread every time she thought of David’s future health or lack of it.
My God, he looks exactly like those pictures I’ve seen of the little Jewish children in the concentration camps that the Nazi’s had during the war, she thought as she followed the little boy back into their own yard.
His sickness was so horrendous for the small boy and his recovery was so prolonged that Annie felt compelled to be lenient with him until he recovered a little more. He was plagued by bouts of recurring fever and pains in the joints of his arms and legs. At his worst he had suffered episodes of such a high
fever that he had felt spiders crawling all over him in his delirium. Annie could still hear his terrified screaming as she relived the horror of his illness. In her mother’s heart she wanted him to rest while at the same time she wanted him to participate in rough-and-tumble play if he so chose.
His recuperation from the debilitating and horrendous Glandular Fever had been slow and although not fatal in itself, it was quite terrifying for a parent to watch. Annie sometimes blamed herself for David’s illness, as she had been in the habit of buying milk from a local dairy farmer; beautiful, rich and creamy but unpasteurized.
But then Annie sometimes blamed herself for everything. That was how she had been taught to function by her loving, faithful husband in the days before Domestic Violence became recognized for what it is, becoming a monstrous public issue. For the longest time she had been blinded by what she had wanted to believe, that he was a good man and that the marriage could be made to work if she tried hard enough, despite all signs to the contrary.
She firmly believed that much of the problem was hers, that she angered him simply by being the way she was, because it was not the way he wanted her to be. She reminded herself that if she did not cause annoyance to him he would not lose his temper and hit out at her. The brutality was mostly her fault as she brought on herself because that was what he told her to believe.
There were times when her mind was repulsed by his expressions of intimidation but she knew that if she were to continue with the marriage she had to accept his theories for her being as he told her as much as possible. To try to defend herself only caused extra tension and led to even worse outcomes. It was imperative to accept what he said as law and to try, (although so far it had been in vain), to change herself into what he wanted her to be, once she found out for sure what it was.
David’s illness had taken their country doctor in Belsen by surprise, causing him to give several diagnoses ranging from Rheumatic Fever all the way to Leukemia. Each new diagnosis filled her and Conrad with ever mounting fear.
Never one to admit to a misdiagnosis, the doctor blustered on attempting to give the impression he knew far more than he obviously did. Annie’s fears dominated every waking moment and some of her sleeping ones as well when she woke in terror for the wellbeing of her son, staring into the dark, silent, pitiless night. It had been a year of sorrow for Annie, who was deathly afraid of losing her ill child.
Panic-stricken by the mystery of David’s recurring illness, she and her husband, Conrad (Con for short) Himmlar, had taken the very sick child to Dachautown. There they had consulted a specialist who had told them that the boy was suffering severely from Glandular Fever. The doctor said that his attacks of hallucinations that overcame him when the fever raged and were absolutely terrifying to watch, would eventually pass.
Nothing, he said, but time and rest would cure the illness which continued, even after six long and tense months, to flare up regularly, taking his mother to the brink of Hell.
David was skin and bone, two huge blue eyes dominating a poor, fleshless little face with skin that was so tight it seemed almost translucent. His thin arms and legs with knobbly joints were like those of a third world child. He had no appetite and it was all Annie could do to get him to eat half a can of strained baby food, or, on a good day, a slice of bread and Vegemite. He seemed to exist on Milo with an occasional addition of tomato soup and Annie was grateful when he took any nourishment at all. Sometimes he merely existed on milk.
Pasteurized, of course. Annie had been to Hell and back with regards to unpasteurized milk and it would be a long time before the children would have access to the like again.
There are women who bloom during pregnancy. Their skin glows, their hair shines and they say they have never felt better in their lives. Annie was not one of those. Nausea fluctuated constantly and swept through her body, causing her to pause beside the Simpkins’ back stairs, to lower her head and wait for the rush of giddiness to pass. She stood still then, shoving the long, brown hair back from her face. Sadly, she was watching her boy pedaling his red car home as fast as his little legs could go, his thin face flushed with the pleasure of having played with his friends.
My God, he looks terrible, she thought. When will he be better? I can’t be pregnant again. It’s not true, can’t be! My sickness is psychological because I’ve been so worried about David. Who feels the worst between David and me is a toss-up.
Once he’s better and I’m more relaxed my period will come on, surely, she reassured herself in a vague, distracted manner. She was exhausted and demoralized, all energy zapped from her bony body by the elaborate tirades her husband served up to her on a regular basis.
Conrad? What about Conrad? The thought of him caught in her throat, bringing with it a stifling sensation like a hand grabbing her across the windpipe. How prone he was to sudden variations in mood, swinging unaccountably from happiness to anger. Conrad Himmlar? She was deluged by fresh waves of fear and regret at the thought of her husband and his reaction to the news of a possible pregnancy.
No, she decided. She must be brave. Despair was the killer that would bring her down if she let it. He was not so bad. Surely he was not so bad? He could even be kind if the mood took him even though he often wore that dangerous mad-dog look after he had been drinking rum.
But when you are tied to a brash and cock-sure critical man you live your life with that person’s voice forever in your head lecturing you about how you will next fail to live up to their expectations and the ramifications of how badly this latest venture will turn out.
Usually he seemed to be in a rage, this short, red-faced, angry man. His fury exploded without a source known to her, but forever continued to smolder just under the surface, ready to ignite into flame for little or no reason that Annie could comprehend. She would stare at him, regarding him with blank astonishment as he ranted and raved, pushed items of furniture about and generally caused as much ruckus as he could without having the men in white coats come and take him away.
At this time Annie was living mostly in her head, aware of forces within her life that could sweep her up and have her reeling out of control if she were to make a mistake of any description within this minefield. All he was lacking to make him a facsimile of Adolf Hitler was the toothbrush mustache.
‘Into the bath with you, my lad,’ she told David gently as she caught up to him on the back stairs of their house. ‘If you hurry you’ll be in time to watch Noddy.’
Cries of, ‘Oh, no, not Noddy!’ issued from the girls’ room to greet this remark. From their superior viewing standpoint David’s sisters felt duty bound to complain about their acute attack of Noddyitis each evening. Even so, there was no end to the lengths to which they would go to pamper and amuse their precious little brother, especially since he had been ill.
The three children, their faces scrubbed and shining, their tummies full, (with the possible exception of David’s), lined up in their plaited plastic saucer chairs to take their daily dose of Noddy, Big Ears and Co. The girls smiled tolerantly. David viewed the program with a huge amount of interest, being heavily into Noddy’s adventures.
‘I’m going to jump into the TV and play with Noddy, Mum,’ David would often tell Annie during the exciting evening program.
His mother would laugh at her beloved little boy and tell him that wasn’t the way things worked. But David knew better and was aware that if he could manage to get inside the set, he and Noddy could race their pedal-cars all around the village to their hearts’ content.
Annie, in her reclining chair with her eyes closed, her stomach heaving ominously, snatched a quiet moment. Soon Conrad would be home for his dinner. What would have gone wrong during the day? What sort of mood would he be in tonight?
She moaned softly to herself, ‘Dear God, let it be all right. And if it isn’t, let me be able to handle it.’ Eternity seemed to drag by as she awaited her husband’s return for the evening.
This had been her girlhood dre
am come true or should have been. To have babies and grow flowers and sew clothes for her children. To bake cup cakes for them, go to their school concerts, make their school uniforms, watch them walk down the aisle, hold their babies in her arms with a loving, sensitive man by her side.
She exhaled deeply, trying to rid herself of the tumult in her mind as she waited for the next event of the evening to happen, nauseated and headachy, her life falling into pieces around her, she felt intuitively without knowing what form the disaster would take.
With gritted teeth she remembered the previous evening. That episode had included his bowling pal delivering him to the back door, and Conrad, thoroughly, sloppily drunk, unable to negotiate the steps, had tripped up them and fallen face first onto the landing. That was ten o’clock and he had spent the next hour with his head down the toilet bowl.
Yes, those special lawn bowls days produced a significant attack of illness, especially if he happened to be the trophy winner, as was often the case. Conrad, burly and muscular, was extremely competent at any sport he decided to take up, and mans’ man as he considered himself to be, he enjoyed nothing so much as celebrating after the game.
And the evening before when she had left the kitchen mop leaning against the house after cleaning the floors. Infuriated at the sight of the wet mop leaning on the weatherboard, he had whirled inside and hit her across the face with it. She had cowered away from him as he had slung the mop onto the floor and stalked off on his stumpy legs to open the refrigerator and collect a can of beer.
Annie forced her drowsy eyes open and looked at her three children lined up at her side—Ruth, her first-born, petite, loving, excitable and busy almost to the point of hyperactivity.
Eloquent Silence Page 5
