Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  ‘But how could he think that?’ Annie asked in astonishment. ‘There was never any question of that. It simply wasn’t possible. I’d never even met the man when Sarah was conceived. I was stuck out in the country for those early years, waking up with a sickening dread of each day stretching endlessly before me, just tending to you two dear little girls. Hardly saw another human being let alone a man I would have had an affair with. Heavens, Ruth. He’s lost the plot.’

  ‘He says that Sarah’s not like any one in the family. She’s taller than you and me and thin like the man was.’ Ruth felt as though she were walking on eggshells, wanting to discuss the matter with her mother without upsetting her.

  Annie’s heart had begun to hammer so violently that she was feeling as though it would burst from her chest.

  ‘My God, your father’s bitterness and venom and foul-mindedness never cease to amaze me,’ she whispered. ‘He’s held onto the information about the affair for all these years and now he’s brought it out all twisted, just like he always does. He could never deal with the truth or even get his facts straight. He had to embroider it beyond all recognition.’

  She sat on the chair, her head in her hands. Ruth went to stand beside her to give what comfort she could. Annie felt herself to be a ruined woman once again, her agony gaining momentum even as she sat there tortured more than fifteen years after parting from the man who had been determined to drive her to insanity.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter, Mum, none of it matters a rap. It’s not worth upsetting yourself over. But for Heaven’s sake just don’t tell Sarah. She would be devastated.’

  ‘No, but I’ll talk to him about it. Maybe I can settle him down a bit,’ Annie said, dissolving into tears.

  ‘Do whatever you think best, Mum,’ Ruth told her sadly, embracing her warmly. ‘Just don’t let Sarah hear a word about it. That’s crucial. It would destroy her.’

  Annie spent the rest of the day in a total daze of bewilderment and anxiety. The fact that Conrad had finally taken it upon himself to inform their children of her ancient affair didn’t surprise her when she thought about it. She had always felt that one day, purely as an act of spite and in a final effort to split her from her children, he would do so. At that moment she wondered why she had not been forewarned and told her children the story of the marriage breakdown and the affair herself, years ago.

  But she was completely taken aback at the information he had given regarding Sarah’s paternity. She reflected on the early days of their marriage, the first clout across the mouth after being married for one month. Then slightly later, when she had told Conrad that she was expecting their second child with Ruth only a few months old.

  How he had said, ‘It’s not my brat. Couldn’t be mine. You’ve only just had one kid and we were using those pessaries. It couldn’t be mine. You’ve played up on me and run around.’

  Tiny Ruth, premature and only a few weeks out of hospital had taken all of Annie’s devoted mothering. As well, they lived on an isolated farm where Annie never saw another soul except Conrad’s relations for weeks on end. How was it possible, Annie wondered as she was destined to do a million times? Who’s baby was Sarah supposed to be?

  The time frame for Conrad Blumberg was way out of reality as Sarah had been eighteen months old at that time. Where had Conrad’s flight of fancy taken him some twenty-five years down the line? God alone knew what Conrad, stout, heavy and red-faced with bad temper written all over him, had concluded. Mind addled from regular bouts of heavy drinking and daily steady quenching of his thirst. Constantly having mind-altering substances like alcohol fogging up the brain must have unfortunate effects on a person’s thinking, Annie reasoned.

  Why didn’t I tell them the story years ago, she wondered. Why didn’t I have enough faith in their love for me to take my courage in both hands and tell them exactly what happened, why it happened and how I suffered for it for years?

  Now he’s told them his version of the story. He’s got his dates all mixed up, for one thing, whether accidentally or on purpose, who would know? What will happen if Sarah finds out what he’s saying?

  She had not the vaguest idea how to handle the matter. After some consideration she thought that perhaps now that Conrad had had his say he may let the subject rest, satisfied with himself for informing Ruth and David of his version of the ‘truth.’

  Conrad had never been able to understand how corrosive and wasteful bitterness was, indulging in it, wallowing in it, making him feel better about himself as it seemed to. Annie resolved not to let bitterness fill what was left of her repaired soul has her ex-husband had, to the detriment of those in his first family.

  She finally decided to do nothing, hoping that matters would settle down without having to have a confrontation with her dreaded ex-husband. She was aware that he would use any ammunition at his disposal to separate her from her children. He had always used techniques of rationalizing and self-justifying all his actions until they were turned into appalling acts, the consequences of which he told her she had brought upon herself.

  Would the final layer of her soul that she had been trying so hard to regenerate be removed, leaving only the essential core exposed? Would it go into the final stages of disintegration with this new blow after twenty-seven years of being tortured by this man? She had left him fifteen years previously in the hope of having peace from him and his vicious tongue for the rest of her days, but it did not seem to be as simple as that.

  One morning some six months later David and Stephanie’s little son, James, was delivered by Caesarian section. Afterwards David came to have breakfast with Annie. They sat at the kitchen table, happily discussing James’s arrival and the impact it would have on all their lives.

  Finally, Annie decided it would be as good a time as any to discuss David’s father with him and to see if things were settling down at all. As David sipped the last of his coffee, Annie regarded her beloved son quietly and taking her courage in both hands, said,

  ‘David, Ruth told me some time ago that your father informed you both about an affair I had. He’s making claims that Sarah is probably not his child. Is not his child. He says she belongs, he thinks, to the man I was involved briefly with when the girls were little, a man called Jacob Blumberg.’

  She held her breath, her cheeks flushed, floundering, feeling like a criminal.

  David looked at his mother with an expression of disgust and replied,

  ‘That’s right, Mum. That’s what he said. He’s still saying it, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Is he, indeed? Seems as if he’s not going to let it rest, doesn’t it?’ Annie poured herself another cup of coffee and stared into the cup as she stirred her coffee absently, moistening her lower lip with her tongue.

  ‘No, Mum, I don’t think he will let it rest,’ David informed her, reaching out to give her hand a squeeze. ‘Look,’ he added angrily, ‘We don’t give a damn what happened. If you had an affair, that’s your business. Knowing Dad, you would have had your reasons. No doubt you were provoked beyond measure. As for Sarah not being his, all of us that he’s telling about it simply don’t believe it. He hasn’t said anything to Sarah and probably won’t. It will all be behind your back and hers. That’s the way he operates. Don’t worry yourself over it any more. It’s not worth it.’

  By this time Annie was quietly sobbing. She gripped her son’s hand desperately.

  ‘He’s got the whole thing out of context, David, I swear. None of it happened the way he claims. He’s done it for spite, twisted the truth the way he always did and used it against me. Yes, I did commit the unforgivable and have an affair but I was finished with your father. As far as I was concerned it was all over between us.

  ‘But that was well after the two girls were born, I swear to you, David. Ruth was two and a half and Sarah was one and a half. How could Jacob Blumberg have fathered her?’ she sobbed distractedly. ‘And who else could he pull out of the thin air to blame? Ruth was just a tiny scrap
of a thing home from hospital and we lived in almost total isolation out in the plain when Sarah was conceived. The suggestion is absolutely ludicrous.’

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ David said softly, sadly. ‘Don’t cry any more. Don’t let it affect you like this. We all love you. We always have and we always will. Whatever you did, you had your own causes for and none of us blame you. Forget it. Just don’t tell Sarah about it, that’s the important thing. It will all die down in time.’

  Annie went to have a rest when David left, in preparation of going to see Stephanie and the new baby when her daughter-in-law was up to having visitors. As she closed her eyes, childhood visions of her children gradually replaced all thoughts drifting through her mind. She recalled her tiny daughters playing in the sandbox, splashing in the bath, listening to bedtime stories, then a little older, wheeling their baby brother around in their dolls’ strollers.

  She remembered David ill with Glandular Fever, the fights, the fears, the nights without rest, the hand striking out like forked lightening to smash against her cheek, the girls screaming, the little boy trying to defend his mother. Typical chaos followed as sure as day followed night. She wept unashamedly and without restraint.

  The next evening at about the time she thought Conrad would arrive home, Annie rang the house to remind Conrad of dates and facts which he should already know. The beautiful and charming Girda, (she of the cold potato soup fiasco), answered the phone.

  Annie tried, between sobs, to explain to Girda, hoping to elicit a little help from another woman who may have been able to protect Sarah from this horrible onslaught on her sense of identity. Gradually she quietened, realizing that Girda on the other end of the phone line, had not spoken a word beyond the initial ‘Hello.’

  After some cool and distant preliminaries, Annie told her,

  ‘I would like to speak to Conrad, please.’

  Girda went away to fetch him to the telephone. Annie could hear loud conversation punctuated by many a ‘No’ in a male voice that she knew of old.

  Eventually Girda shouted, ‘So I’ve got to do it, then?’

  Annie gathered from the tone of the conversation what the conclusion would be.

  ‘Heil, Hitler,’ she murmured to herself as she waited for a reply to her request.

  ‘He won’t speak to you. What do you want?’ asked Girda sourly.

  ‘I want to discuss what he’s saying to Ruth and David about Sarah. He is lying to them. He’s got his dates mixed up or something. He knows as well as I do that Sarah is his child. Please tell him if he won’t come to the phone to talk to me about it I’ll be forced to come out there to discuss it with him.’

  Girda put the phone down. After another loud, prolonged interval she returned and said,

  ‘Conrad says he won’t discuss it with you and he will not have you out here causing a scene. We don’t want you to come here. If Conrad says Sarah is not his child, then she is not his child. Conrad ought to know.’

  Annie thought, What would you know about it you supercilious so-and-so, only the lies that Conrad had been telling anyone who would listen for years.

  Finally, Conrad come to the phone, purple-faced with rage as well as half drunk and abused Annie soundly. With that, he replaced the receiver resoundingly in Annie’s ear. So this second wife of Conrad’s who knew nothing about the subject except for Conrad’s twisted version and his vile hatred of his first wife was presenting a united front with the Creature who had turned Annie and Sarah’s lives around completely.

  Annie did not quite know where to go from there but severe depression set in and she found she could not function normally. She was unable to sleep despite an increased dose of sleeping tablets. Many nights she lay awake until it was time to go to work. When at work she could not concentrate and would finally lapse into a state of misery which would end with her sobbing as if her heart would break.

  Although there were some women who decided she was not worth a cracker in the work force, her supervisor and some friendly work colleagues were sympathetic to her even though they did not know the root cause. Her supervisor would send her home for the rest of the day.

  The unfortunate Annie, seeing herself as unworthy in all departments of her life, could never bring herself to confide the bare facts to anyone at work regarding her personal history.

  Finally, during a period when she was taking sick leave and being treated by a psychiatrist, she wrote Conrad a long letter giving dates and details of the subject in question. She reminded him of the impossibility of Sarah being conceived by anyone other than himself and threatening him with legal action if he continued in the vein that he was taking.

  Fit for nothing, she tried to find her feet again during her month’s leave of absence from work, battling hard to come to terms with her grief. Annie attended all her appointments, cried her way through the first few sessions, took her medication and tried to pull herself together and be a functioning human being again.

  ‘It’s only natural that you feel as you do,’ the psychiatrist told her as she sobbed her way though the second session. ‘Tears are a part of the healing process. Think of them as washing your grief away.’

  Her family was sympathetic, gentle, loving, encouraging. They did all they could to stand by Annie and firm her resolve to get better. She knew she still had some unfinished business to attend to and as she started to feel a little more even, she began to try to work up the courage to tell Sarah.

  Sarah knew only that her mother was suffering severely from ‘nerves’ brought about by menopause and had not the slightest idea of the true cause, nor did she know what was being said about her but if her mother did not tell her, her father would one day in a drunken stupor. He would tell her his garbled version and she would be devastated.

  Annie was unable to drive her car at this time, as she was too heavily sedated. She asked her mother to drive her to Sarah’s house one morning. The three women settled in the lounge room, Sarah breast-feeding her infant, Paul. Sarah had regained her former slim figure since the birth of her son some eleven months before and was beginning to consider weaning the baby.

  ‘Darling,’ Annie said to her through a frightening sense of fear and humility, ‘There’s something I have to talk to you about.’ Her courage that had brought her to reveal all the nastiness to Sarah, was completely gone by this time.

  ‘Hmm?’ said Sarah pleasantly. ‘What’s the trouble, Mum? I know there’s more going on than I’ve been made aware of but I asked Ruth and she said not to be so silly, you were just going through a difficult menopause like a lot of women do. That everything was all right but it’s not, is it? Then I rang David and asked him and he said not to be a worrywart.’

  Sarah smiled tenderly at her mother and waited until she was ready to have her say.

  Finally, with her heart pounding in her ears, Annie said softly, ‘No, my darling. Things are far from all right. They’re all wrong and I hardly know where to begin.’

  ‘Go on, Mum,’ Sarah suggested hesitantly. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell me. Whatever’s the matter I’d much rather know than be wondering all the time.’

  ‘Try not to be upset by this, Sarah,’ Annie’s mother put in mildly, looking with concern at her granddaughter’s puzzled face. ‘Your mother feels you should know, but try to stay calm about it.’

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Annie began again, twisting her fingers together then untwisting them agitatedly as she spoke. ‘When I was a young woman almost twenty-one, I had an affair.’

  She stopped, waiting for this to sink in.

  ‘Did you?’ Sarah said interestedly. ‘Wow! I never knew that.’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘I suppose living with Dad would be enough to make anyone kick over the traces.’

  ‘Perhaps so. I didn’t love your father by then. Maybe I did at the start but everything had become so bitter and jumbled that I just wanted him to let me go. We had been married for three years and I feared and hated him, wanted nothing more to do with him. He was away
up north and I made my mind up to tell him our marriage was over as soon as I could.

  ‘I had a short-lived affair with a much older man, which was very wrong as I probably hadn’t made it clear enough to your father that I considered our marriage over. Or if I’d made it abundantly clear, Conrad had not accepted the decision and had gone on pretending the marriage wasn’t giving way at the seams.

  ‘I’m guessing that’s who he’s blaming your paternity on but when I was carrying you he denied that you were his baby, so it goes back a long, long way and has become very convoluted over time. And spiteful. He’s a master of spite and lies.’

  Annie faltered to a stop, hideously afraid of what this news item would do to her beloved daughter and her sense of identity. Our birth is not really our beginning, she thought. It’s only a continuation of someone else’s story, in this case a made up bit of trumpery plucked out of the blue and embroidered to suit this evil little man’s purposes.

  ‘Well,’ said Sarah as her heart jumped up into her throat and hammered there, ‘How about that.’ She sat silently, caressing her baby’s downy head, her furrowed brow the only sign that she had heard what was said.

  ‘You must surely remember your father taunting me with the name Jacob Blumberg?’ asked Annie. ‘No? Surely not. His name was forever on Conrad’s lips but maybe he waited until you were out of the room to have a go at me.

  ‘Anyhow that was his name. Your father found out, came home and there was hell to pay. The upshot of the whole episode was that I was persuaded to go on with the marriage against my better judgment. But that’s not where is all began. It began when you were in utero. He said it was impossible for you to be his as we were using some pessaries that were obviously ineffective. But he thought they had worked well enough to prevent you being conceived by him. Such malicious thinking, but he was a master of that. He’s not a reasonable man in any way, darling, you already know that.’

  Annie could feel her cheek muscles tightening as she clenched her teeth, prepared for the worst. She thought how no two people every see or experience things in the same way and when Conrad had been taunting her all during the marriage, the aspersions had gone straight over Sarah’s head. She hadn’t understood what her father was referring to or doing or was capable of, while Annie had been mentally brought to her knees on so many occasions that had gone over the children’s heads. Thank God for that much, Annie sighed, knowing that they had taken much that was damaging on board.