Eloquent Silence (11 page)

White-faced, she walked over to speak to him in a low voice so that the neighbors would not hear. ‘No, George. It would be the finish for me. Of me. I’m sorry I can’t go along with your plan for this. It would be more than my life is worth.’

There had been no chance of persuading Annie after that, even though both men tried for days to get around the words Conrad had spoken on their return from inspecting the property. Joking and making small talk over drinks in the evening until both were perceptibly tiddly while making all kinds of futile promises to Annie, cut no ice. She knew her husband well enough by then to realize the truth of the earlier conversation.

Several days later, Conrad, who had been listening to the latest of many exchanges between Annie and George, peeled himself away from the door frame and walked off in disgust, making a kick at the dog as he passed. Fortunately, the dog, Mitzi, knew him well enough to remove herself from the area as quickly as possible.

Foiled again by that miserable bitch of a wife of his, thought Conrad in displeasure. A man must have been crazy to marry the bastard. When I met her she was a positive and lively-minded girl. What happened to turn her into what she is now? Grimacing disapprovingly, he took a can of beer from the fridge and had a good swig. She won’t hold me back forever. I’ll beat her into shape yet and make her toe the line.

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B
ut on the night when Annie was trying to make up her mind how to break the news of the new pregnancy to seething Conrad, suddenly he stood in the kitchen doorway on his sturdy, stocky legs like tree trunks. He was glowering a further fierce warning at his wife whose face was streaked with tears and whose chin ran with blood.

‘Don’t tell anyone I hit you,’ he threatened ominously. ‘You’ll be sorry if you do.’ He looked straight at Annie who was pale and silent and wordless. His eyes glittered with barely suppressed rage. ‘Don’t you dare say anything,’ he repeated through set teeth.

‘There’ll be a bruise there tomorrow,’ she answered with as much defiance as she could muster. ‘They’ll be able to see for themselves.’ She knew that nothing could assuage his black moods once they set in and that she would simply have to grin and bear it to be able to come out the other side without further violence.

Her arm was smarting where he had grabbed it to pull her towards him for the slap. To finish off, he gave her a deft backhand blow to the head to be going on with. She thought that should just about do it—just about work the poison out of his system for that night.

‘If you tell anyone you’ll be sorry, I’m warning you, Annie.’ His face was set in the usual grim line and the aura of danger still surrounded him. ‘Don’t antagonize me any further if you know what’s good for you.’

He still spoke through his teeth in a low, slow, threatening voice and moved towards her, sour and overweight, with a glint in his eyes that made her flinch. A surge of bright-eyed rage quivered through his body, ready to resume the punishment if she didn’t agree to his suggestion.

‘I won’t. I’ll say I fell over and put my teeth through my lip,’ Annie assured him uneasily, her instinct for self-preservation telling her to take the violence quietly for the moment.

My God, who in their right mind would want to live like this? She shook her head briefly as her vision swam back into focus after the clout on the side of her head. Even though this type of episode was enacted on a fairly regular basis, Annie never failed to be surprised and anxious that it should not occur again.

He stood there quietly for a minute, eyeing her critically, watching as she mopped up the blood and tears with her handkerchief. She was wondering how to escape unscathed next time, hoping a better course of action would suggest itself to her.

‘Hell, love, I’m sorry.’ He was using his loser voice, weak and wheedling as he walked to the kitchen and slumped into a chair, all the wind temporarily gone out of him. ‘I don’t know what gets into me. You make me so damned mad I can’t control myself. It’s your own fault, you know.’

His hands hung between his legs dejectedly as he tried to rationalize his actions, to justify himself in his own eyes.

‘All I said was....’Annie began, her face gaunt and strained, pale as a sheet of paper. His aggression made her stomach churn and she was almost delirious with fatigue after having been up most of the night with David in a bout of fever.

‘You shouldn’t annoy me. You bring it on yourself by being pig-headed,’ he said, trying very hard to place his small burden of guilt from his shoulders to her own.

He gestured with his meaty arm, a wave of disgust that she should bring out the worst in him simply by being present when he was looking for an outlet for his temper. She watched his knuckles whiten and cautiously moved beyond his immediate reach.

‘I only told you his crop was ready and I said you would ring him. That’s all. Where’s the crime in that?’ she said, determined to defend herself verbally, seeing as she couldn’t do it physically. She was nauseated and headachy, her stomach cramping with tension and a sense of the utter forlornness of the situation warning her to keep her own counsel.

‘But it was the look on your face or something that must have stirred me up,’ he mumbled, his eyes slitted as he thought through the best way to avoid any blame in this regular scenario.

She tried very hard not to comment but Annie needed to defend herself at all costs.  In order to conquer the sense of abject humiliation she felt at the hands of this profane little man who thought his authority was undisputed in his cringing household, she must stand up and be counted.

‘Conrad, you had your back to me,’ Annie told the bigshot. ‘You wouldn’t have had a clue as to how my face looked. Just have your bath, will you? And have your dinner and make your phone calls,’ she finished wearily, light-headed with anger and grief as well as lack of sleep.

She gave a short shuddering sigh. Whatever she had said or not said with regard to the evening phone calls, the outcome would have been the same, as she knew from long years of experience.

I can’t go on like this. I simply can’t, she thought, sensing the impending end of the doomed relationship and wondering how she could safely leave and take her children to sanctuary without causing him to seek her out and take his revenge on them.

Sometimes when the tortured aspect of her life became too much for her she walked outside to take a break. He never failed to come after her immediately and herd her back into the house like a cattle dog herding up its charges.

Sometimes at night when the children were asleep and he ranted or droned on interminably at her, she took to the streets, running frantically through the night, hiding in an empty paddock down the road from the house. He never failed to drag the children from their beds and drive around until he found her, roaring the car through the long grass until he located her. Many times he resorted to hauling her parents out of bed as well in the middle of the night to check if she was at their house.

One way and another he always forced her home from her hiding place, wherever it might be and ordered her to get into the double bed and take her sadistic medicine. The reason she returned with him had only to do with her motherhood.

Tears were shed and shared with her parents should he find her at their house. He congratulated himself on making her return to the marital home, never failing to realize she went because of three little souls lying half asleep in the back seat of the car. For years her return had nothing to do with her feelings for him.

After he had succeeded in getting her into the marital bed and doing what he had to, they would lie there in the dark, all alone and hating each other. Annie had heard the ancient maxim that love and hate were two sides of the one coin but for her this platitude no longer applied. She could not forgive, nor could she forget.

Her soul, falling apart, was burning to ashes.

The train wreck was just over the next hill.

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T
ime for a change of tactic, Conrad decided as they were side by side in the kitchen after the latest brutality. He knew he wasn’t winning any trophies as the world’s greatest husband. By this time her eyes were puffy and red, her nose running miserably.

‘I love you, Annie. Do you believe me?’ Tears welled into his china blue eyes, rolling down through the dust on his cheeks. He reached for her but she moved further away, trembling at the thought of his touch, freezing to the core of herself.

‘I believe you, Conrad,’ she answered with resignation. Once again he had knocked the wind out of her, literally and figuratively. He was so adept at the swift slap that she never saw it coming until the deed was done. An innocent remark about a job of work for him to do had brought out his worst side, the side that lurked just beneath the surface, longing to hit out at her for the slightest reason. Where did such rage come from?

‘You love me too, don’t you?’ he implored her guiltily.

‘Mmm,’ she answered almost inaudibly. She hated his acne-scarred skin, his contemptuous attitude, his barely-controlled rages and eruptions of uncontrollable temper. She hated his outbursts of violence, the impotent anger he stirred within her, the shame she felt at being part of each and every debacle She loathed the indignity of her children seeing her trying to defend herself, the humiliation of knowing the neighbors heard the ranting and raving and screams of the terrified children. Left behind in the wake of all this impotent sorrow was just pure unadulterated grief.

Could anything be salvaged from this mess? He had adamantly refused to go to marriage guidance counseling with her, saying there was nothing wrong with him and the way he acted. This was the way people lived and she had better learn to accept the truth as told by him.  She was the one at fault.

Stunned by this latest outburst of temper, she had no reply to his accusations. Always of a strong Christian faith, she no could no longer detect any presence of God in what was left of her soul. Layer by layer it was peeling away like the layers of an onion until all that would be left would be a useless core.

How could I help but love you? she wondered to herself in answer to his eager question. Who would not find you the most lovable of husbands? She stood still, frozen, waiting for him to make the next move knowing that, as always, he would be ready to cut her dead with a quick sneer. But this was not to be his tactic on that particular occasion. He made a few hasty, jerky, meaningless gestures while gathering up his words for the next onslaught.

‘Say it. Say you love me, say you forgive me,’ he begged, his hangdog attitude completely changed into one of sorrow and remorse. Suddenly he was overcome by guilt, rising to gather her to his side where he sat at the table.

Annie continued to stand silently beside him as he turned to engulf her in his arms, burying his head against her stomach. Oh, yes, flashed through her mind with an internal gasp of sheer fright, the stomach with the time bomb in it, I think. She could feel his tears on her hand where it rested as lightly as possible against his shoulder.

‘Say it, Annie,’ he repeated emotionally. She could smell his sweat, a sharp, strong male smell, unpleasant in its staleness. He was slobbering into her skirt and she was revolted. Knowing if she did not agree to how much she loved him, he would be off at a tangent again, a whirling dervish in the little blue and white kitchen in Bergen Street.

‘I love you. I forgive you,’ Annie whispered resignedly, unemotionally. Cut to the quick, she would not let on to him how much he distressed her, so she smiled at him. But her eyes were cold with a chill that was hard to remove now, even on her best days and she was full of emotions that she could not afford to let loose. Her pulse was hammering in her head as she fought to regain her composure.

Anything to get the scene over with. Silently, she thanked whatever God there might happen to be that the children had been too wrapped up in the television program hear the ruckus. Either that or they were too afraid to appear. Who knew? At least they were not crying audibly, a blessing in itself.

The important things were unsayable between them. She did not have the words to convince him that she was unable to live like this after coming from a home where voices were never raised in anger and blows were not dealt out willy nilly. Nobody called the other derogatory names or stooped to violence in order to control.

Although she had tried numerous times to tell him this was not the way of life she was used to, he merely sneered and told her it was time to get used to it. This was the way the world turned. She felt betrayed and helpless, consigned to a life she could not bear.

She knew in her heart of hearts that he would not support her decision with regard to the pregnancy, would not be on her side no matter what road she chose to go down. The choice would be hers to make and God help her whichever choice she made.

If she had a disagreement or a difference of opinion with a neighbor or a friend she could guarantee he would take the other person’s side, going against her in any possible way. This was a source of great satisfaction to him, just another way for him to keep her in her place.

Just like he relished going against her in whatever matters she told the children they could or could not do, could or could not have. He was triumphant when he opposed her in either forbidding or allowing her decisions in direct opposition simply for the sake of undermining her attempts at being a competent parent. The children did not understand the emotional complexities of the situation. They only knew that whatever their mother had decided, either for or against, their father would give directly opposing views. And, as children have since time immemorial, they made the best of this.

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A
s for his failure to support her in and difficult matter that arose, she recalled a time when the girls had been little a few years previously, she sent them to Sunday School each Sunday morning. They loved this little outing in their frilly dresses and their lace-trimmed hats. Whether they absorbed any religion beyond the very basics, Annie was not sure but she hoped they were learning about kindness in the outside world, tolerance and acceptance from other people besides herself.