Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  ‘Tomorrow, Conrad. We’ll do it tomorrow,’ she promised with a wild edge to her voice as she got out of bed to soothe David, tired to mindlessness with the strain of it all.

  She was still caught up in the paralysis of indecision, sick with dread and pregnancy, powerless and out of control.

  At daybreak they woke to teeming rain. Conrad threw his brawny forearm across his forehead and groaned.

  ‘Won’t be any harvesting today,’ he muttered, rolling over and promptly going back to sleep.

  Annie lay quietly, trying not to draw attention to herself, waiting for the time to come to start the daily routine. At seven she rose to get the children ready for their day. David said he felt well enough to go to Kinder. She fed her children and they dressed, the girls in their blue uniforms and yellow blouses for school and David for Kinder in his checked shirt and jeans.

  ‘Isn’t Dad going to work?’ the little wisp of a girl, Ruth, asked anxiously. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, her eyes round in anticipation of what would happen to her mother while they were all away for the day.

  ‘No, love. It’s too wet for him to work,’ Annie replied automatically, continuing to make the toast and cook bacon and eggs. Conrad had to have meat three times a day, meat at every meal. He showed no interest in what the other members of his family ate whether he was there or not.

  Ruth, immediately agitated, slammed the bathroom door too hard as she went to clean her teeth. Conrad stirred and swore an oath, immediately silencing the family.

  Sarah quietly placed her arms around her mother. The feel of her warm, protective little body brought tears to her mother’s eyes. Dear little Sarah, the other scapegoat in the household. Annie was cut to the quick every time Conrad referred to this little girl as a deadhead or dunce or thick or retarded. Both parents knew that Sarah suffered from a build-up of fluid in the eardrums that had to be drained every year. ‘Dumb’ was the very last thing that their daughter was.

  If he had intended it to be a label that she would carry with her into adulthood, then he had succeeded by the time she was still in Kindergarten. The poison inside him that caused him to be so cruel was the very thing that had killed every shred of love or affection, not to mention respect, that Annie had ever had for him.

  ‘I’m not going to school today, Mum,’ was all Sarah said, her hands tightening around her mother’s sides.

  ‘Come on, Pet. It’s all right,’ Annie comforted the worried little girl.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you here by yourself with Dad,’ Sarah said protectively, beginning to cry, huge blue eyes tormented in her little face as she looked up at Annie.

  ‘You’ll have to go to school, my darling. I’ll be fine,’ Annie assured her with a tired smile and a hug, smoothing the blonde hair back behind Sarah’s ears.

  Ruth emerged from the bathroom and whispered in a frantic, high-pitched tone,

  ‘Don’t stay here, Mum. Go to Grandma’s until you come to pick us up from school.’

  David sat at the table, busily following the conversation.

  ‘I’ll stay home and look after you, Mum’ he said with determination.

  Annie looked from one to another of her children, knowing their lives were spiraling out of control along with hers. She flashed them a quick, tired grin that didn’t take in her eyes. She was weary to her very bones.

  ‘We have to live an ordinary life, my little ones. We must pretend everything’s all right. And then one day, who knows, it might even become alright?’

  Perhaps their emotional difficulties would end when Conrad became satisfied with his lot and ceased reaching for the stars in his grab to go from pauper to prince. If and when he found out that money did not automatically buy happiness and could realize that the condition came more from within than without.

  What will become of us, she thought? Where do we go from here? Where do we start and how do we finish?

  ‘Come on, you twerps. I’m big enough to look after myself,’ she said with a show of merriment, her bruised-looking eyes glancing towards the bedroom where Conrad still slept. ‘Get your schoolbags and off we go.’

  Reluctantly, the children followed her out to the station wagon, a shiny new, V8 Valiant—Annie’s car—as Conrad called it when proudly telling anyone who would listen that he had bought it for her to drive around in.

  It refused to start. She rasped the ignition over several times until the battery started to grind.

  ‘Dead as a doornail,’ she announced to the children. ‘I’ll get Dad to have a look at it.’

  She ran back to the house through the pouring rain, approaching the sleeping Conrad with the caution one might approach an unexploded bomb.

  ‘Conrad, the car won’t start. I want to get the children to school.’

  ‘What’s up with you now,’ he muttered, emerging from sleep. He crawled out of bed, pulling on his green striped pajamas as he left the room barefoot to go out into the wet morning.

  ‘The station wagon. The battery’s flat or something,’ Annie told him in an agitated tone.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ His brief laugh was followed quickly by a sneer. ‘The station wagon. I had a look at the mileage last night before I went to bed. I thought you’d been clocking up a few too many miles.’ He laughed again, a harsh, barking sound full of venom and sarcasm.

  ‘So what did you do?’ she asked angrily. ‘You know I take the children to school in the mornings and pick them up in the afternoons, you brute.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were using too much gas and I’d stop your gallop for a week or two. Stop you from going to see your bloody old parents, for one thing.’

  He laughed spitefully and stared his wife straight in the eyes.

  ‘Come on. It’s pouring,’ Annie said frantically as she turned towards the door, toweling the water out of her dripping hair. ‘I can’t walk the children to school in this. It’s cold and they’ll get sick. Besides, the Kindergarten’s too far away for David to walk even if it’s fine. Please just fix whatever you did to the car.’

  She followed him out to the garage, the towel over her head for a little protection.

  He laughed at the sight of her so wet that she was dripping and at the children, sitting bewildered in the station wagon, wondering what was going to happen next.

  He felt a heady surge of adrenaline at the thought of his power over these four creatures of whom he was in charge.

  ‘I took the distributor cap off to stop you gadding about, but I suppose I can put it back on for today,’ he told her with a long-suffering sigh. He rummaged through the tools and bits and pieces he had on his work bench. In such ways he had his revenge on her for being what she was, a woman who was determined to fight for her rights and those of her helpless children.

  ‘I hate you, Conrad,’ she told him. ‘I hate what you do to me. I hate the way you make me feel about myself and the way you make me ashamed for reasons I don’t even comprehend. I hate how you make me into a person I don’t want to be. I hate the way you’ve always done it right from the time we were first married.’

  The rest of her life roared in her ears as she threw the wet towel on the bench and entered the car. Her face was white, her teeth clenched. How she would have liked to indulge her deepest impulse to kick him in the shin but she knew she would only come off second best in any such encounter.

  ‘Too bad,’ he sniggered as he located the distributor cap and then pulled the release catch for the bonnet of the station wagon. ‘That’s just too bloody bad. You’ll just have to put up with it for the rest of your life, won’t you? Because you know if you leave me I’ll get custody of the kids. No court would award them to a moron like you. You wouldn’t be capable of taking care of them on your own, would you, you cretin?

  ‘Look how useless your mother is at knowing how to start a car, David,’ he called to the little boy in the back seat. ‘Always remember your father’s lessons that women and girls are stupid and absolutely inferior to men. They’re only go
od for cleaning and cooking and bringing the next generation of men into the world.’

  ‘Don’t be teaching him that kind of drivel, Conrad, if you don’t mind,’ Annie shot at him.

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth and he’s got to grow up to learn that males are superior in every way,’ he laughed as he stood back out of the way of the vehicle.

  Annie’s face closed down with fury, having recently taken it on board that her husband was upgrading his lessons to David on the superiority of the male sex. His attitude was infuriating Annie and had become so much more marked since the little boy was growing into the serious, reasoning being that he was becoming. Annie had previously tried to discuss the matter with both father and son but Conrad only sneered at her and David looked at her wide-eyed, his love and trust for her plain in his eyes.

  The engine ticked over once the missing part was replaced and Annie slammed the gear shift into position, ready to race to get the children to school and Kinder on time.

  ‘I think I hate you, Conrad,’ she mouthed at him through the closed window. ‘In fact I’m sure I do. What’s more, I think I’ll always hate you till the day I die.’ These acts were the final straw that was driving her away, apart from the outright violence that was visited on herself and her children.

  During her words his face had frozen visibly. He watched sourly and stifled a snorting sound as she prepared to leave. Taking the children to school and kindy, flying on a wing and a prayer to get them there on time so they would not get into trouble and be punished for the sin of being delayed by a spiteful parent.

  She reversed the car out of the garage, her eyes puffy and red, her nose running with the cold morning air and the cold winds tearing thought her heart. He stood there in his summer pajamas, his thick, fatty-muscled legs braced against the elements, his eyes slit to keep the rain out, his mouth tight at the corners in a sneer.

  Often he would promote a melodrama, a confrontation or a crisis, simply inventing a cause for anger just to let off steam. He would snap her out of her routine and allow himself to feel a little better in the process of losing pressure while she struggled with her distress and attempted to function as a whole human being.

  We are at the heart of it now, she warned herself. Do you want to introduce another life into this maelstrom? Only another forty or so years of this. Or fifty. And to think she married him with high hopes in her heart but dread in her soul. And with every day we are drifting further and further apart. How can I bring another innocent child into this mix?

  On returning to the house she found that Conrad had gone back to bed to read the newspaper, silent and smileless as he concentrated of the sports page.

  ‘Do you want your breakfast now?’ she called from the kitchen as she gathered the dishes to wash.

  ‘Not yet. Soon,’ he replied amiably enough. More silence for a while as he studied the sports pages to the end.

  Then after half an hour, ‘Come in here, wifey,’ he called coyly as he heard her washing the breakfast dishes she and the children had used.

  ‘No Conrad. I’ve got work to do,’ she replied resolutely as she went from the kitchen to the girls’ room where she would make the beds and tidy up.

  ‘Leave it. Come in here. I want to talk to you,’ he ordered in a hearty, jovial voice.

  Reluctantly, she slowly walked through the hallway to the main bedroom. She knew as sure as the sun rose in the east each morning, that he had undergone a change of heart.

  ‘Sit on the side of the bed, here, near me,’ Conrad coaxed, patting the blue damask bedspread. All smiles now, he caressed her hand lovingly.

  She sat obediently, smiling gingerly at him. Sit, Rover, sit, thought she.

  He grabbed her, pulling her roughly down beside him in the bed, his expression benevolent, his attitude all soft soap. This time he would brook no avoidance or refusal.

  Afterwards she lay with her head on his arm and he held her tenderly, all love and concern for her in his voice.

  ‘Conrad, if you could be like this more often life would be so very different for us,’ she said, giving him a quick, nervous smile, ignoring the events of the morning and the previous night.

  ‘Hell, Annie, you want a man to go on like a bloody sook all the time. A man can’t act like a wimp! You’d have me pussy-whipped, wouldn’t you? Hen-pecked and under the thumb,’ he said roughly.

  Then, after a pause, ‘I know. I’m sorry. I make it hard for you but I do love you and I’ll give you everything you could ever want if you’ll just put up with me. Everything your heart desires,’ he promised, caressing her lovingly. ‘Just put up with me, Annie, please.’

  Certain memories began unfolding as she lay there, calm on the surface but like a duck on a pond whose legs went at a million miles beneath the water, her thoughts swirled and collided in their turmoil.

  ‘I try, Conrad. I really do. But all I truly want is love and peace and for you to act consistently. Consistently reasonable, I mean. If you can’t be pleasant, then at least be courteous and civil. Are you capable of giving me that? Aren’t you? Of giving civility to the children and me?’ Don’t you realize I’m tired of this rocky marriage?’ she asked timidly.

  ‘I’ve given you a good home, a beautiful new car there at your disposal at all times,’ he told her resentfully.

  ‘Like this morning,’ she interjected quietly.

  ‘I can’t help it if I show my feelings, you must realize. I’m a temperamental chap, I know. But I’m a good provider, Annie,’ he continued, passing over her small interjection while he introduced the magic formula of a ‘good provider.’ ‘You should be grateful for that. A wonderful provider. We started with nothing, practically in grinding poverty. Remember how I never had a bottle of soda for the first year or so. God that hurt. We’re really getting on our feet now.’

  ‘Yes, I know all that,’ Annie put in hesitantly. ‘All that is very well in its place but it can’t make up for peace of mind. I never know how you’re going to be when you arrive home. How your mood will be, Conrad.’

  ‘Later on,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, off in a world of his own by then, ‘We’ll have a big, flash house with all the gadgets. Carpets in every room, even the kitchen and bathroom if you like, a rumpus room, a swimming pool, everything.’ He promised this in all sincerity, his face glowing with anticipation of his grandiose plans reaching fruition, but did not realize this was not Annie’s priority.

  He lay contemplating the cream plaster ceiling, building his dream home brick by brick. Conrad had a single abiding obsession and that was to make as much money as possible as quickly as possibly no matter who got hurt in the process, especially Annie. Clearly that was his character and his goal in life.

  ‘We’ll put the kids through university whether they want to go or not.’ Here he inserted a hearty laugh at his own clever wit. ‘We’ll be rich one day. I have big plans to make a lot of money, Annie,’ he elaborated eagerly.

  Brash and cock-sure of himself and his hold over his wife, he had no concept that the relationship was a problematic one, as he was content with the way things were—the volcanic fits of temper, the wife and children who screamed and hid in fear. Had he been reared this way himself for him to see it as the ordinary way to live?

  ‘Conrad,’ she said sharply, ‘You’re missing the point entirely. Money can never buy happiness, although I know you believe it can. That’s how I feel but I know you don’t feel that way. You think if you’re rich you’ll automatically be happy. I never knew what it was like to live in fear until I married you. All the money in the world won’t cure that. You’ve got it all wrong but I know I’ll never convince you. Besides, you can’t undo the wrongs of the past. Things have happened that I can never condone. But I’m willing to try to get this marriage back on track if you are, too.’

  ‘Jesus, Annie, I’m the one who forgave you when you played up, remember?’ he recalled with bitterness swiftly coming into his voice.

  ‘How can you say
you forgave me? There’s never a day goes by when you don’t bring the incident up for inspection. You say you’ve seen his car parked outside the house or driving down the street, pulling away from our curb, even when you know it’s not true? Is that forgiveness? Doesn’t feel like it to me. He’s dead, Conrad, dead, I told you. I saw it in the paper. Anyway, I didn’t want to be forgiven for anything. You know I was finished with our marriage. It may not have been the wisest way to go about ending it but I just wanted out at any price.’

  She felt the bile of anger and resentment rising up in her throat.

  In the turmoil of wishing to get back at her no matter what, he had watched her change from a bright girl to a nervy, highly strung woman. She couldn’t seem to get her feet onto the path she had plotted in her head as her road for life and this brought him much satisfaction.

  She still had not found means to live an ordinary life either for herself or her children. By ordinary she meant ordered, civil, affectionate, even predictable, which was not a bad state of living to aspire to when one in raising young children. He knew he had succeeded in thwarting her in every way that mattered to her and his smugness knew no bounds over this.

  ‘Well, you didn’t get out, did you? And you’re not likely to now. I’ve got you by the short and curlies, your ladyship. We’re in a joint partnership with Arnold and Bertha. Your name’s on all the legal documents and tax returns. You can’t dodge your way out of that.’ He rolled away from her and searched for a magazine he had been reading prior to the interruption, showing her the interview was over.

  The plan for the partnership was neatly cut and dried. As the small company acquired more and more heavy machinery to make more and more money, Annie would be tied hand and foot until she was so deeply committed financially that she would not dare to escape. Eventually she would have no way of paying off the debts in her name.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ she answered quietly, lost in the futility of her wishes and lay still until the subject was forgotten after he had dropped the magazine and had a little doze.