Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  Unsuccessful at finding more, in the course of time he returned to the burrow where I was keeping watch, and to my amazement and horror, set off a flash in the little creature’s face.

  I yelled at him, ‘Don’t do that. You shouldn’t do that.’

  I ran off towards the car but paused beside the burrow of the pair we had seen earlier in the day. Graeme caught up with me and shone his torch into their Lilliputian faces cringing in fear inside the burrow. They had been running in and out of their nest before he arrived while I watched them in silence.

  They were frozen, terrified when he flashed the torch into their nest. Next, he flashed the camera into their petrified little faces.

  Graeme said it was the only way he could get a photograph and laughed with his mouth wide open in delight to think he had managed to capture the birds on film. I knew that come Hell or high water he would want a photo for his family back home in the Alice, proof positive that we had seen these diminutive creatures on our trip to Victoria.

  When we got home he must have hot-footed it off to tell the rest of his family about the episode the way he bolted off to tell them about every tiny incident in our lives,. I can just imagine him entertaining them with his anecdotes about my semi-hysteria over frightening the little creatures with bright lights.

  At the next family gathering fairy penguins were mentioned and much sniggering behind hands ensued. At a later date, Marvin sent a message to say he would try to get a photo of fairy penguins during the three weeks holiday Gordon and Carla spent with them in the south. The message caused more hilarity and hoots of laughter.

  So letting a flash off in the face of these miniature creatures became the in-house joke for Graeme’s clan that season. Call me dim-witted, but I simply can’t see the humor in terrifying these tiny birds with a torch or a flash, nor even, for that matter in my getting upset over the same. I fail to see humor in torturing defenseless animals but obviously I’m on my own there.

  How much of our relationship was private and how much was common knowledge, seeing as Graeme felt called upon to visit his local sons and their wives every day if possible? I suppose he had to talk about something to pass the time away. Our discussions or differences of opinion as well as my idiosyncrasies would have been as interesting as anything else when news was a little on the scarce side. It all helped to keep the fire of righteous indignation going when it came to getting me out of their lives.

  I soon learned after our marriage that he told every blessed thing to his family immediately, things that I often thought were too personal. Like how I had purchased new multi-colored briefs for him. I was bemused as to why anyone would care to discuss their underwear with their grown children.

  Unfortunately, they never learned to keep this exchange to themselves, but had to sneer, roll their eyeballs or suck in their cheeks and blow out hard to show they were in the know about our personal discussions.

  I found this habit annoying and trivial in the extreme, and his family’s tendency to display their knowledge tasteless and crass. I waited for some brilliant comeback to arrive into my head ready to be delivered but nothing ever did until three days later.

  And yet he respected their privacy, never telling me personal details of their lives or their business. Not that I wanted to know. Why the difference in attitude? Was he displaying his broadminded acceptance of my triteness? With the air of condescension, was he making excuses for me in my eccentricity and asking them to forgive the strangeness of the company he chose to keep and the woman he chose to marry?

  I wonder did he care about me for myself or was I only there to make up the numbers so his children could live their lives without worrying about his being lonely? Was he trying to make their perceived judgment of me turn me into a normal seeming person in their estimation? Trying to help them forgive him for allowing my muscling in on their precious group?

  At first he would come back and repeat their comments about my peculiarities and oddities until he got his head bitten off a few times. But I know that didn’t prevent him reporting every incident to them verbatim. I could tell by the expressions on their faces when certain areas of our lives came into discussion that they knew more about me and my family than I probably did myself.

  After twelve years I hadn’t gained a place in anyone’s heart. Not a chink had been opened to me. I was still the eccentric outsider while they all clutched together in loyal style and laughed at the peculiarities of me and mine. They had a few of their own that wouldn’t stand too close scrutiny. I remained politely remote, determined not to allow them to upset my equilibrium although this was done with difficulty at times. In my heart of hearts I knew that our days together were numbered.

  Being a second wife is ‘for the birds.’ Stress had become my constant companion and I was sick unto death with the whole set-up.

  Or maybe it was the Chicken Kiev that finalized the marriage as it staggered on to its inevitable end. While we were on this same jaunt in Victoria—the holiday featuring the fairy penguins—for some consecutive days Marvin reported that his children wanted Chicken Kiev for dinner on Thursday night. I said I would provide the ingredients.

  After trying to purchase fresh Chicken Kiev, I found I had to purchase frozen ones. I didn’t cook the meal, knowing this would contaminate the chicken with my unseemly germs and make it inedible, leaving the preparation to Wendy, who cooked the pieces with vegetables.

  Marvin tasted his chicken and left it on his plate, choosing to fill up on vegetables only after a loud and resounding ‘Harumpf!’ He rose and retired to watch ‘The Simpsons’ marathon week on television. The Simpsons roared on while the rest of us found the Chicken Kiev palatable enough to eat, but perhaps our tastes were not as refined as Marvin's.

  Was I surprised that he refused to eat the food I provided?

  No, indeed I was not.

  Was I insulted?

  Yes, indeed I was.

  In the twelve years I was with Graeme, Marvin and Wendy never ate or drank anything prepared by me. The exception was lunch one Boxing Day when they all brought various food for a shared lunch and the only thing they ate that we had provided was ‘Father’s ham’.

  My potato bake sat untouched by human hand and when I checked it out with Graeme who had been in conference with his children at a later date, they told him they had not eaten the potato bake because the weather was too hot for it. Yet at every gathering his family had, potato bake was cooked by one of the women, served and eaten. Trivial, I know, but nudging always at my awareness on a deeper level.

  For years neither Marvin nor Wendy accepted anything from me, not even a drink of water. How often was I affronted, enraged?

  Christmas presents were always vouchers to the local hardware store for Graeme to buy the nuts and bolts and ironmongery that his little heart desired. Sweets for Easter, for instance, were not chocolate (which I enjoyed and ate), but licorice which I abhorred, causing me to chuck up just at the smell of it.

  Nor, in all the time we were together, did anyone every write ‘love’ on a card to me. Oh, they all wrote it to each other, but to me it was ‘Best wishes,’ ‘Regards’, ‘Cheers’ or something equally impersonal such as one would write to a stranger, reinforcing my feeling of being outside the Pale, as I said. It wasn’t that they had conflicting feelings about me. They simply had few feelings at all except negative ones.

  Graeme and I married fairly soon after the gristle and fat on the lone slice of meat episode. We didn’t have any blessings, nor did we have open opposition. Covert? Graeme didn’t seem to notice one way or the other and I was determined not to let anyone get under my skin.

  I sold my house and Graeme provided the cash to build a new home for us. He didn’t want me to contribute financially, refusing my offer to go halves with him when my house was sold. Thus, he reasoned but did not say, the house would go straight to his family without allowing me to make any claim. There would be no complications in my expecting to claim a share on his d
emise. I was to be allowed to continue to live in it until I ‘married again.’ Fat chance.

  When I found out after selling my house and moving into his, thinking it would be ‘ours’ but found that it was not, I felt like the original Patsy. The house was entirely in his name instead of joint names.

  Something in me began to die that day.

  Someone, probably the universal anonymous sage who knows all once said and I quote, ‘Writing is easy. Just open up a vein and let the blood flow onto the page.’ Unquote.

  Once installed in the house, Graeme formed the habit of calling everything, ‘mine.’ ‘My house, my garden, my shed, my this, my that.’ Nothing, but nothing was ‘ours’ regardless of who fronted up at the cash register. I bought plants, shrubs for the garden. Immediately they were dubbed, ‘my pines, my May bush, my palms.’

  To his family everything around the place was ‘Father’s.’ Or ‘Grandfather’s.’ I felt myself becoming nameless, faceless, a non-entity. You could say I was developing some issues as I had pinned all my hopes on this being a fair and equitable marriage after the earlier experiences of my life. He always just flashed a quick, tired smile at me and refused to voice an opinion one way or the other as he went on his way.

  I cried about the difficulties I was experiencing to Graeme as I have grieved so many times about so many things. Graeme had nothing to say. In other ways he was supportive of me and I thought for a time he was my rock. But were his feet made of clay?

  I had found out that I was in the presence of something that could not be altered or avoided but only endured if I had the will to do so. I found I could not remake the world simply by wishing it so and did not want to live out the rest of my life in tight-lipped resentment.

  There has been too much ‘Sturm and Drang’ in my life and I will not be a second wife a third time. About as much chance of repeating this exercise in futility as putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. In fact, assembling the bits of Humpty would be easy compared with the difficulty I had in steering my way through that maze. I have experienced a huge wash of relief at being out of the whole controlling sideshow. Knowing now that I cannot remake the world just by willing it so, I am resigned to my fate and at peace at last.

  I have a little bungalow near the beach where I can see the fairy penguins come and go at dawn and dusk. Killer and I have tomato sandwiches for lunch and we doze in the afternoons. We don’t need to know how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. We are simply too laid back to care.

  So there you are. That’s my story. No plot. No theme. No moral. Nothing except a little slice of real life. The format is incorrect but so is the outcome. Graeme and I thought because we loved each other we could make a go of the thing called ‘love and marriage.’ But I found in the interim that even love can have a life-span and the world would not cave in if I turned my back and walked away from my expectations.

  A second wife comes in as an unknown quantity, often bringing a whole new family into the equation. She brings her own baggage and her own family and a certain lack of interest and tolerance from those who silently set themselves up to judge her, knowing that she has already been found wanting before she even opens her mouth. She’s a dispensable commodity and must earn her place if she wants to stay within the pecking order without becoming discombobulated. When its season was over the love was gone but not forgotten. However, trying to maintain it was just too difficult.

  In the final analysis the effort can become a touch too much.

  Move fast and travel light, that’s become my motto, one way and another.

  ‘Don’t hoard the past,’ Killer whispers to me in the twilight evenings as we watch the fairy penguins scatter hither and yon along the beach. How clear it has all become without the others while behind my eyes I can see peace and permanence.

  Killer and I are a family on our own. He has steel shutters behind those tiny black eyes and he knows he can shut out all the things that bother me.

  17. Ringing The Changes

  In one form or another cruelty by humans against humans has always existed. Violence against women and children has always been a common enough norm, unfortunately.

  I remember my grandmother telling me how her mother would whip her with a stock-whip. This woman even went so far as to take the stock-whip to her own mother who had come over from Ireland to live with her daughter and grandchildren. Not the wisest choice of ways to live out one’s twilight years.

  My grandfather told stories of the merciless floggings they received from their father at the behest of their stepmother in 19th century South Australia.

  A cousin in her nineties speaks of her own grandfather and his habit of kicking his crawling babies across the width of the room on the toe of his boot.

  Dreadful as all of this was and is, rarely did deaths occur. People may have been traumatized for life but they did not die. The perpetrators stopped just short of taking the lives of those they were ill treating.

  Nowadays the aim is to kill. The woman must be murdered for leaving. The children must die rather than be brought up by their mother, usually, or occasionally by their father. Domestic violence has reached extremes and death is seen to be the only answer in many cases while in others, women are carrying life threatening injuries.

  Violence against women is particularly prevalent. Just this week a sixteen-year-old girl was murdered by an eighteen-year-old boy who took her out onto a country road and killed her. The reasons are yet to be revealed.

  A couple of weeks prior to that another sixteen-year-old was murdered by a sixty-year-old man to whom she was going to sell herself for sex. She was five months pregnant and had a boyfriend who knew nothing of her money-earning activities.

  What is happening to the men of these generations who believe that it is acceptable for a woman to die at their hands for reasons unknown to the rest of the human race?

  And the children. God help the innocents. Around midnight last night a man poured gasoline over his three children and set two of them alight. Men are supposed to protect their children. What is this all about?

  I think I was a feminist down to my bootstraps before the term ‘feminism’ was coined, but being of a similar age to Germaine Greer and must have heard the idea being cast abroad in the general public at around the same time she did. Never anti men in the sense that feminism can be meant to be understood these days, I was livid at the notion that women were not equal to men in any way except for the physical fact that men were the stronger of the two.

  Women, however, were clearly equal in every other sense and I was infuriated should anyone try to tell me other wise. To think that men are using this physical advantage to kill women and children is anathema to me.

  Much is being said and written about the current culture of killing people while drunk or under the influence of drugs or both. This can and is used as an excuse. It is no more valid than the ‘coward punch’ defense.

  This way of life has been coming on for a couple of decades when some thug would ‘king hit’ another in a fight or just for the sheer hell of expressing their deep-seated rage. Now it’s called ‘a coward’s punch’ but that doesn’t alter the outcome in any way. Nor does it seem to have made any difference in the amount of unprovoked attacks taking place.

  The behavior is exacerbated by the drug and alcohol factors but the rage does not seem to be instigated by that. Our young people, or at least some of them, are angry, dangerously angry. As an example, note the amount of road rage now being exhibited but this does not only apply to the young.

  No doubt this anger needs to be tamed and directed towards healthier outcomes than domestic and family violence, road rage and brawling.

  My objection to violence against women is not limited to what takes place within the family but to within society as a whole, including rape and merciless of treatment of all kinds. The rights of women and children are, and always have been, worth fighting for.

  Yesterday, the body of a litt
le two-year-old girl was found in her home, murdered by her mother’s de facto. Children have been found to be most at risk from the mother’s de facto. These men have no real regard for a child who is not of their own blood, as indeed many do not have regard for their own children.

  Youngsters must be taught another way of thinking and must be educated from the cradle that it’s not okay to treat others as you would not want to be treated yourself. Hopefully, this is the only way to halt the culture of cruelty and brutality reinventing itself with each new generation.

  If these angry people punch or hit someone and the victim dies, whether it’s on the spot or by having their life support switched off, then they should be charged with murder, as murder is what it is. Eight years of jail time is not enough for the brutal taking of another’s life. Manslaughter is just that—slaughter—and needs to be treated as murder.

  Provocation for the murder of a woman is no defense. It’s merely a coward’s way out.

  Sadly, many young women have also been caught up in the drinking mindset, wanting to drink simply for the purpose of getting drunk and passing out.

  What is driving this mentality?

  When the English sought to destroy the Irish they claimed that by destroying the youth of the nation, the culture would eventually be destroyed.

  I wonder if this applies here and now to the culture in which we live?

  Magistrates are losing their credibility because of light sentencing. Police are frustrated and becoming powerless because of the way sentencing has been altered, as being arrested is often little more than a joke. Loss of respect abounds as well as having no fear of the consequences of violence. Teachers have no authority because of the loss of respect by their students. Parents’ powers have been severely curtailed.

  Women’s rights and children’s survival are a battle worth fighting towards betterment in this precise time frame. Education in these issues needs to begin in Kindergarten. A wise old philosopher whose name I don’t recall said,