Eloquent Silence Page 2

  Perhaps the usual harmony may be missing from the home for a day or two but the couple have married for keeps, even if someone dies in the process. It will be the woman or a child. It will not be the Man Of The House, the MOTH.

  Maybe I was slow on the uptake but I found it hard to accept the fact that this had to be our future because we were married for life. I was committed to this man for better or worse. So were my children who had come innocently into the world as beautiful, beautiful babies and did not ask to live that way.

  How can a beloved, screaming, terrified little girl comprehend why you reach past the man to grab a bottle of sleeping pills out of the medicine cabinet so that you can escape everything, drift away into oblivion? How can the little child comprehend that even though you love her and her sibling with every fiber of your being, you cannot live in the manner in which you are being forced to live? You would simply rather be dead? By your own hand, though, not his.

  The man is a sporting type and has football connections. He enjoys a ripping sporting life. Going to the Landsdown Football Club Dinner Dance is mandatory and the little woman must go too, like it or lump it. One of his drunken friends asks for three dances during the course of the evening. How to refuse without this being considered a downright insult to the drunken friend? The drunken husband? Impossible. Do the dances, don’t rush off when the drunken friend mauls you on the dance floor within everyone’s gaze. He’s your husband’s good buddy, for God’s sake.

  Realize payment will be exacted later and it will not be easy.

  Returning home in the early hours of the morning the husband starts—

  ‘Whore. Slut. Cunt. Bastard.’ Names he has bandied about a thousand times before. Run for your life. Head for the door. A scuffle ensues and suddenly you are whirling towards the far wall. How to get your head to miss the sharp corner of the wardrobe by a hair’s breadth? How not to have your skull split open like a ripe melon? How not to shudder and cower as you rise from the floor, the side of your face grazed against the wardrobe?

  Thank God your stupid head did not split open exposing your thick skull that allows you to believe you have the right to be sharing the same atmosphere as your superior husband.

  The next day the Missus is featuring another black eye, skinned cheek and huge bruises from the clutch marks on her arms.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. She bruises sooo easily,’ he tells her mother who is looking aghast at the injuries when she returns the children after babysitting them so the young married couple can have a nice evening out together. He is contrite, tears glistening in his eyes. It will never happen again. Until next time he goes off at a tangent.

  Having another lovely evening out with friends, the couple go to the Commercial Hotel for a drink before going to the Catholic Debutante Ball. While the group of six sit in the lounge having the drinks, the commercial traveler who has sold you a vacuum cleaner at 2pm that very afternoon, passes by and climbs the stairs to the second floor where the bedrooms are located.

  He says, ‘Good evening, Mrs. Schmidt,’ because he remembers you and the sale from six hours ago.

  You reply, ‘Good evening,’ as he continues up the stairs towards his room. Your memory allows you to recall the event six hours ago and you can see no reason to openly snub the man just because your husband thinks you should.

  At the ball, your husband refuses to speak to you. After a while, he commences nagging you, accusing you of an affair with the traveling salesman. On the dance floor, his voice is growing louder and louder and you are terrified that he will make a fool out of both of you before much longer.

  Hastily, you grab your evening purse from the seat beside your friends and run out into the night to go home, hobbled in your long blue evening dress that you have made for yourself out of curtain material. Your husband wants to keep abreast of his more wealthy friends but refuses to give you money to buy better material or, Heaven forbid, an evening dress. Luckily you can sew adequately and you hope that any of his friends do not recognize that the material was originally meant for curtains.

  When he notices that you have gone for the balance of the night, he comes roaring home and gives you the sound beating that you deserve for greeting the vacuum cleaner salesman with whom you must have had sex during the afternoon. He then forces you to have sex with him just in case you need further mastering.

  He awakes next morning and greets his children who have been brought home by their aunt. Bacon and eggs, tomatoes and toast, are tossed around with alacrity. He is happy because he conceives that he has won a victory over you for some insubstantial reason that you cannot understand.

  Your sister, who has had the children for the night and is placing their belongings onto the end of the kitchen table while eyeing him with hostility, asks how he enjoyed the ball.

  ‘I had a good time but Sylvia threw a wobbly late in the night,’ he says with a cheerful grin. ‘Cleared off and walked all the way home in high heels and her evening dress. Silly bugger.’

  ‘What about you, Sylvie. How did you enjoy yourself?’ your sister asks you.

  ‘Very nice thanks, Angela. Lovely ball, nice debs.’

  ‘Why are you limping?’ my sister asks me.

  ‘Oh I just had a bit of a fall,’ I reply a touch defensively.

  ‘Mmmm,’ my sister replies. ‘That would probably account for your black eye, your swollen jaw and the bruise on your arm, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, Ange, it probably would. Thanks for babysitting,’ I smile at her tentatively, trying unsuccessfully to stop my bottom lip from trembling.

  ‘You’re welcome any time. Anything you need, any time you want,’ she says, reaching out to pat my hand. She looks deep into my eyes and I choke back hot tears.

  ‘I know, love. It’s okay.’ My family know but they will not interfere unless I ask them to and I am reluctant to do so as he is twice as strong as either of my brothers-in-law and far more agile and abrasive than my father. I will let sleeping dogs lie for as long as I am able because I fear the consequences of stirring him up further.

  For a time he is in a condition of euphoric determination, resolving to be the best husband and father in the town. You know this will last approximately two days.

  Another misdemeanor unwittingly committed by the little woman. A television set left on when children were taken for their baths becomes an occasion for an outburst of incredible rage. A large electric bar heater is full on in the lounge room. In fury he kicks it until it comes apart while you stand by wondering where so much blind rage originated. Red-hot pieces of broken element burn holes in the carpet while he goes to collect his gun.

  The couple sit companionably together with the loaded gun against her temple for the next eight hours, all through the hours of the night as they tick slowly by, the children huddled in another room, asleep together for comfort.

  Togetherness is the key to holding a marriage together, to this particular couple holding a marriage together, especially. So much bonding. Such a treat. So glad this is a lifetime commitment. How long is the life going to be? You are twenty-eight. That’s that length of your life so far. Will you hit thirty without a hole being blown in your skull?

  At four a.m. he has fallen asleep. Fortunately, he has dropped the gun without its going BANG ! and blowing your stupid head off. And your stupid brains out. He must get some rest as he and his good buddy are going to the city in a few hours’ time to spend a week watching the bowls tournament in the capital of the state. Such a relief to see the tail end of him and his drinking mate. A few days peace from terror.

  You are finding this unendurable. Who could imagine why? You have been sooo committed to this man.

  And now you sit in this restaurant a decade later, still dragging your past behind you like ghost of a lifetime past. But it is never past and never will be while you draw breath.

  It’s two in the morning and he hasn’t come home from his shopping expedition to the nearby city. Staring into the darkness f
or hours, thinking and wondering, eventually you hear a car in the driveway. He enters the bedroom, turns the overhead light on, almost blinding you for a moment until you see he is ripping the bedclothes down. He thrusts his finger roughly inside you to see if a deposit of seminal fluid has been made by any other man during his absence. He is very aggressive but he hasn’t been drinking. Where has he been, you wonder as you mop up the blood from brutal intercourse.

  Or another night, drunk, he wakes and throws up all over you.

  Next day it’s time to do some laundry. On the collar of his shirt is a red lipstick mark. Not your color at all. A different hue seeming to be placed there deliberately, dragged across the collar as a branding of possession.

  Decision—next time he goes out at night he will be followed by you in ‘your’ car.

  He double parks outside a nightclub. His male companion leaves the vehicle and enters the nightclub. Your husband cruises down the street looking for a parking spot. Has he seen your car in the rear-view mirror? Probably not. Too intent on finding a park.

  Distraught, disbelieving, drive in futile anger to the edge of town, descend the steep range road, the children asleep on the rear seat of the car.

  At the bottom of the descent put your head on the steering wheel and cry. Cry for yourself, cry for your children, cry for your life, married to the man for life, committed to him for your little piece of eternity. Heartbroken, heaving sobs of fear and loathing and torment.

  Ten minutes, an hour later, turn the car around and head back up the range. Only when almost to the top of the ascent do you meet a down-coming semi-trailer and realize you have driven up the descending side of the double highway. Horrified, you drive to the verge of the highway and hope to God that there is enough room for the semi to pass you without wiping out your precious babies.

  Your children’s lives have been placed in mortal danger, the most terrible danger. The whole carload of your most priceless treasures could have been destroyed in one fell swoop!

  He is sooo not worth that! Your capacity for reasoning must be becoming diminished by the strain of it all.

  What next? Will he win his battle declaration to drive his wife insane and have her committed to a mental asylum out of his way? Will he shoot his wife? His children? He used to say he would shoot himself but he has changed that tune now. He doesn’t say that any more. It’s always his wife’s life he threatens.

  It’s sooo repetitive!

  The clock is ticking for all of us, his victims. Our lives are hardly more than hanging by a thread. Bad judgment could see my children destroyed before my very eyes or myself unable to care for them. Must you watch while your whole life is being bulldozed? Your children are exposed to unlimited danger. If they are killed they will never be unkilled. If you are killed you will never be there to protect them. Nor will you ever be unkilled. Undead.

  I, too, was young and in love and thought I was marrying for life. I had the beautiful white dress and veil, a glamorous bridesmaid dressed in pink. A lovely reception, a two week honeymoon at the seaside. I had a Glory Box full of linen, embroidery and china, lingerie accumulated during the time I was employed, all tucked away for this miracle marriage where we would live happily ever after.

  I’m glad you’re marrying for life, Honey, I think as I flash her a particularly sweet smile. I wish I’d though of that. My intentions must have been sooo temporary, even if my husband had been all or any of the above, which, of course, he wasn’t. It’s hard to imagine how any woman could have been so ungrateful as to divorce a real top guy like him. Who would want to burn their bridges and seek another life when this one was already so fulfilling? Every day rich with excitement and variety.

  Continue with your training, Honey. Eventually when you are a policewoman you will visit one such home one night, a place like that where a family is united for life...or death.

  Back in the restaurant we go on with our meal while I can hardly chew for biting my tongue. I look at my husband of two years sitting quietly beside me. He suffers from industrial deafness and has noticed nothing—not my discomfort or swift irritation and bitten bottom lip. He didn’t see me bite the inside of my cheeks. Nothing. Because of his own placid nature he seems to me to be oblivious of the mean or spiteful characters of others, nor does he recognize the willingness my first husband had to dispose of me and or my children like so much garbage.

  He smiles and asks me if I want the lamb chop out of his mixed grill. I accept it, as I accept all his generosity of nature and spirit.

  My slightly deaf daughter and I sometimes joke that she takes after him, ‘her father’ who is hearing-impaired like her. She loves him as she never did the man of her own blood.

  I concentrate on my meal while thinking about the previous week.

  He called me one morning a little earlier than usual. While I groped my way out of the drugged fog in which I have slept every single night for three decades, he prepared my breakfast, put my outdoor lawn bowls near the door. Greeted me with love when I emerged from my shower which finally brought me awake from my Rohypnol-induced slumber and entered the kitchen.

  I could pass my day with my friends pretending to be ‘normal’ like everyone else while he would probably do the washing and have a meal on the table when I arrived home in the late afternoon.

  He tells me he needs me, too, and I believe him.

  He took me home from a dance when I was seventeen and he was twenty-one. He asked me to go out with him but my mother said,

  ‘No. He’s so big. He’d be rough. Maybe wild. Please don’t.’

  She was afraid of big men for her own reasons. She thought he would probably be brutal because of his size.

  So I married a short, bulky man with iron-hard muscles and a mind to match.

  This ‘newish’ husband of mine married his first wife for life. Unfortunately for both him and his wife, she died. He had forgotten me but I had not forgotten him.

  I had faith that one day I would love and be loved in return. My faith has brought me home.

  3. People Like Us

  At twenty, Gretchen Pearl (known as Tootsie) von Hildebrand was undisputed Queen of the Household, which was not a simple task, all things considered. She often thought to herself, Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and her eyebrows were drawn into a habitual frown of concentrating on the running of the household.

  Tootsie had arrived at her exulted position mainly through default. Her mother had passed away some years ago leaving her father, Old Jerry von Hildebrand with a parcel of children, some of whose names he barely knew or could remember only with difficulty.

  Tootsie was tall and proud and strong like a heroic Germanic warrior woman come out of the forests and onto the steppes of Europe to travel across the world and call Australia home. Because of her manifold responsibilities she usually wore an air of aloof disdain.

  Or perhaps she was like a formidable, warlike Amazonian woman, totally in charge of all she surveyed, blessed with good, broad childbearing hips which would come in handy later on and muscular arms often akimbo as she gave her latest set of orders to her underlings.

  Large facial features and a heavyset body meant she could never be called dainty in anybody’s wildest imagination, but domineering, forceful and determined were the best ways to describe Tootsie. Bossy. Controlling. Complacent in her nobility, authority staring out of her long-nosed face and strongly set jawline.

  Boys and girls, youths and maidens bounced around the house in childish naughtiness, prepubescent moodiness, teenage angst and early adulthood self-awareness, all ready to question Tootsie’s authority at the drop of the proverbial hat. But Tootsie was not a woman to be tampered with easily. Her mindset was that of a controller. She could silence them one and all in a second with scathing remarks or a wrinkling of her eyebrows which seemed to be arched in perpetual inquiry. Then she could sweep on her way with a surge of self-satisfaction, a rather picturesque and imposing figure on the Perishing Plains horizon g
oing about her business of running the van Hildebrand family.

  Tootsie had put herself in charge of all those she saw before her, keeping order with her fault-finding tone raised at the slightest provocation. She had her finger on the pulse of the household and was aware of what was what and even what was about to take place before it did, it seemed to those of her minions who would like to question her authority if only they dared. She knew all the names of the various-sized people who passed her by and then some.

  No one could pull the wool over Tootsie’s eyes for longer than a wink and a blink. With a twitch of her lips she could bring a silence, immediate and profound, into the von Hildebrand household. Or if the worst came to the worst, she could alter the mood of the day with an exasperated roar that would bring younger von Hildebrands to an instantaneous halt, quaking in their shoes.

  Never in a devoted man’s wildest dreams could Tootsie be called sweet, cute or cuddly, but by virtue of her size and determination she was equal to the test of controlling brothers and sisters both small and large who tried in vain to dethrone her from time to time

  Her beloved, Bernard Abel, a short, square, thickset, red-faced farmer from further along Perishing Plains South Road, thought her the embodiment of all that a wife should be—frugal, hardworking, earnest and practical. Although he was aware she was not a woman to be trifled with and that her wit wasn’t scintillating, he didn’t see these items as a prerequisite in a farmer’s wife and knew she could slog it out on the farm with the best of them.

  Tootsie, naturally enough, allowed all this power to go a little to her chestnut colored head. She knew that if, in the fullness of time, some matter upon which the family may disagree should rear its ugly head, she would have the final say on whether the outcome was Yea or Nay. This power was hers by virtue of her force of personality and incorruptible, immovable moral stance and she would never allow the agony of indecision to sway her thinking one iota.