Eloquent Silence (33 page)

‘God, God, where are you,’ she shouted into the black night as she shot along the highway in her little car. It was currently very trendy to believe that God was dead. Her friends at University claimed the veracity of the theory all the time. Peg’s mind could not accept this, but she didn’t know the current whereabouts of God just as He didn’t seem to be at all concerned about her whereabouts.

Perhaps Mitch will be so good to Michael that he will choose to go and live with him? Mitchell had intended to sue for full custody when Michael turned ten, but as matters had turned out he knew that he would never have stood a chance. The boy had wanted nothing at all to do with him at that time. Absolutely nothing.

I must have been crazy to stir Mitch up again, she told herself. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? We were all right the way we were. Sweet Jesus, what have I done now? Financially, Mitch got the cake when the break-up came and I got the crumbs. Can he buy Michael’s love with all his assets and ready cash? Surely my boy wouldn’t fall for that.

On arrival at the student’s apartment she was greeted by the woman’s housemate, who was really quite into trendiness. The young woman wore an embroidered peasant blouse, a long, floral skirt and high boots, her version of the University uniform currently being featured. The hippie-cum-intellectual look was very ‘in’.

‘Do come in,’ said Linda, a tall, blonde girl/woman who wore her hair scooped back from her face and hanging in a lackluster bunch from a knot at the rear of her head. ‘We’ll get going soon and have us a party, I think. Have a drinkie-poo.’

She stretched out her long fingers and took Peg’s coat from her, draping it over the back of a kitchen chair. The room was like being on the inside of an icicle and Peg wished she had the nerve to take her coat and put it back on.

Trendy speech, also. Drinkie-poo. Peg smiled, wondering what would happen when we ‘got going.’

Linda ushered her through to the living area, a tiny spot full of recycled bits and pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac. Is this shabby chic? wondered Peg. Or just out of date?

The mature age student, Carol, was sprawled flat out in her saucer chair, wrapped in a drunken haze. So this was the party, Peg decided after a further hour of waiting brought no more guests; Carol, Linda and Peg. Wow! This was really worth getting ready and driving into an arctic night for!

Carol drank heavily on, slipping further and further into an alcoholic daze, new bottles of red wine appearing like magic just in time for her to top her glass up constantly.

A knock at the door brought young Linda into an instant, wide-eyed state of anticipation. She jumped up from the pouffe where she had been perched sipping wine and studying record album covers, and dashed to answer the door.

A tall, thin man in an Air Force uniform was ushered in by a very excited Linda, smile beaming from ear to ear.

‘I’d like you to meet my friend, Michael. Michael, these are my fellow students, Carol and Peg. Carol is my housemate. She’s napping at the moment.’ Linda bounced around in front of him hospitably, indicating left and right as she described various matters such as her fellow party-goers.

A loud shore issued from the saucer chair followed by a mumbled, ‘What this shit’s about now?’

Michael, his name is Michael, too. Why does he have to have that name out of all the names in the universe? I care too much. I will crucify myself, thought Peg miserably.

‘How do you do?’ asked Peg with a wan smile.

‘Pleathed to meet you, I’m thure. It’th nith to be inthide out of the cold,’ said he from beneath his blond mustache.

Carol, the hostess with the mostest, snored on. She had woken briefly for several refills in the previous hour and consumed two whole bottles by herself since Peg had arrived. Totally inebriated, she was once more in a state of heavy slumber.

‘What’th the matter with your other friend?’ Michael asked Linda. ‘Lookth thick to me.’

Why ever did I come? Peg wondered. She gazed around the tiny apartment with its sparse furnishings, bare walls and cold, vinyl floor. Bored Peg. Boring Peg. Empty, wooden, hollow.

Suddenly, with a resounding snort Carol woke up and started paying attention to her guests.

‘Oops! Was I asleep? Done your assignment, Peg? Started mine this morning but after a couple of wines to pep me up I had to have a sleep after lunch, so that was the end of that,’ she said, pouring herself another glass of red wine.

‘No,’ Peg replied tersely, staring off into space. ‘No, I haven’t had time to start it yet.’

Peg chain-smoked. Carol, when awake, chain-smoked. This was very ‘in’ behavior for the time of which I write, the 1990s, before people became aware that they were slowly poisoning themselves and others around them.

‘I started mine,’ Linda offered. ‘Shit, I hate Freud. He’s a bloody pain in the arse.’ She was growing perceptibly drunk as she sipped determinedly at her wine, flicking her hair back while glancing seductively at Michael and singing along to the music.

It was also very ‘in’ to swear when attending University, especially if battling to obtain an Arts degree.

‘Do you have a degree, Michael?’ Linda asked after a gigantic pause in the conversation, in an effort to get Michael to do something besides drinking beer.

Damnation, thought Peg. I was about to hot-foot it out of this hole when he arrived. Now I’ll have to stay on for a decent pause or they’ll think I’m rude. As if I give a continental. What the Hell! Buggeration!

At about twenty-five, Michael was handsome in a soft, squishy sort of way, seemingly poured into his uniform like a sausage into its skin. He was very aware of his own importance with the three stripes on his highly-pressed sleeve.

What does that mean, Peg wondered. Three stripes? Three strikes and you’re out? Stop meandering on in your mind and just get away from this lisping dude.

He wore the obligatory slim-line mustache as featured by so many officers in the armed forces. Arrogant, totally concerned with his own ego, Peg thought as she buzzed on thinking about the return trip through the pitch black night, not interested whether he had a degree or not. Self-involved bastard.

He was muscular and well-built as well as having a very pronounced lisp which would have amused her or gained sympathy from her if she were not so unhappy. Why didn’t he get some speech therapy? Surely if the armed forces thought enough of him to give him three strikes.....stripes, they would have enabled him to pronounce the letter S. You would have thought so, she assured herself. As if I give a rat’s arse! Her edginess turned to distaste as she tried to think of an out.

‘Yeth,’ said he, ‘I have theveral degreeth but I won’t bore you with the detailth.’

Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t
give
a shit, thought Peg, underwhelmed with almost fatal disinterest. You’re making me terminally ill, you trumped-up asshole.

Carol, who had been awake for fully ten minutes, swamped her drink and promptly settled in for another snooze.

‘Wake me in there’s anything I should hear about,’ she moaned as she slipped away again into semi-consciousness, hanging ever lower in the saucer chair.

The evening wore on and dragged on. Peg wished herself anywhere in the universe except at the miserable party. She drank the obligatory wine, ate the obligatory dip and biscuits and watched the clock.

Carol woke occasionally to curse the world, have a quick swig of wine and nod off again. Linda played records to her heart’s content and flirted unmercifully with the straight-laced Michael, who seemed to be as taken with his whereabouts as Peg was with hers. Passive Peg. Bored and boring.

This is absolutely and positively the worst night of my life, thought Peg, ever more bored and still more boring, suffering through the monotony of the evening with her blue eyes full of disappointment over the afternoon and the way her son had not seen her.

What a pushover Mitch must have thought her to invite him back into Michael’s life after fighting so hard to stop all access, blaming his heavy-duty bullying behavior. She had warned him that she would brook no ill-treatment of her son this time around.

No use brooding over it. Time to discuss it when Michael got home tomorrow. Surely with a new wife present and a few small children added to the mix, Mitch would keep a civil tongue in his head for a couple of days if push came to shove.

Carol stirred, kicked out with one boot-clad foot, upsetting the fishbowl on the side table. It clattered to smithereens on the floor and several tiny fish gasped and flung themselves around distressingly.

‘Christ!’ she muttered in disgust and refilled her glass with red wine yet again.

Linda, Michael and Peg scattered to rescue the fish, return them to the safety of a small mixing bowl and clean the mess up. Little bits of pretend seaweed lay forlornly on the ancient carpet, sadly soaking the pretend wool feebly.

‘I’d thay Carol ith her own wortht enemy,’ commented Michael to Peg as he wrung the sopping dishtowel out into the sink in the kitchenette.

‘Is she a friend of yours?’ Peg asked disinterestedly.

‘Heaventh, no,’ said he primly. ‘I met Linda at a party latht week and she athked me to come tonight. Carol’th your friend, I gather?’

‘I know her from Uni. Pick her up sometimes when our lectures coincide. I had no idea she had such a drinking problem, though. Poor Carol,’ Peg remarked reflectively. ‘Sometimes when I call to collect her in the mornings she seems a bit under the weather but then again, that’s pretty much how I feel and I don’t have a drinking problem. Just studied half the night.

‘Yeth,’ he agreed. ‘I’d thay it’th a drinking problem, Peg.’

‘Bloody men!’ drifted in Carol’s well-modulated tones from the lounge room.

Linda replied with some psychological jargon about Karen Horney’s pet theory on penis envy.

‘Oh no!’ shouted Carol, conscious enough to get the gist of the hypothesis.

About this time, with the big hand on the twelve and the little one on the eleven, Peg’s mind woke up, clicked over and moved into first gear. Time to escape without appearing too rude.

‘I think it’s time I left,’ she said quietly to Linda who had come to the kitchenette with yet another dripping tea towel. Who would have thought that small fish tank could hold as much water as the Mediterranean Sea? And how I wish I’d never come.

‘A coffee before you go, perhaps?’ asked Linda politely.

‘Oh, no thanks all the same,’ Peg replied quickly, anxious to put the whole experience behind her.

‘Linda thaid you live out of town, thomewhere near the Airforth Camp,’ said Michael.

‘That’s right,’ Peg replied stiffly.

‘Can I athk you for a lift?’ Michael queried, handing Linda his wet tea towel and donning his blue cap at a jaunty angle, then straightening his mustache deftly with an agile lower lip. ‘I came to town with a friend earlier and he’th already gone back to the camp.’

‘Sure,’ said Peg briefly. She took her heavy coat from the back of the kitchen chair and put it on in haste, anxious to be up and going. She walked over and shook Carol gently by the shoulder.

‘Thanks for the lovely night, Carol. I’m going home now and Michael’s getting a lift with me. See you in class on Monday.’

‘Thanks for coming, Peg..er..Michael. Michael?’ mumbled Carol with a wobbly smile.

They almost ran from the front door through the chilly air, climbing into the cold and running the motor for a few minutes to take the chill off the interior of the vehicle.

The two drove out along the dark, almost deserted highway silently, except for the radio blaring at full volume again. Great little conversation-stopper, thought Peg.

Eventually Michael became tired of the blasting music, asking if her could switch it off.

‘I suppose so,’ said Peg with bad grace. She jilted her chin in the air as a sign that he could do so. He smiled at her but she ignored him, wanting no further conversation.

He left like chatting, so tried a little light conversation.

‘I get a little lonely at the camp. Not too many of uth live in.’

‘Shame,’ replied Peg, trying in vain to show an interest but preoccupied with her own thoughts.

‘Yeth. My fianthee ith in Thouth Authtralia. Port Auguthta to be exatht, actually.’

‘Uh huh.’ If I can get through tonight I’ll feel better in the morning. If I get through tonight I can get through the rest of my life, I think. I hope.

‘Yeth. We write regularly but it’th not the thame. I ring her every Thunday evening but it’th thill pretty lonely.’

‘True. Not the same,’ she replied flatly, trying her best to summon a smile.

Everything seems different in the mornings. I’ll feel better then and my boy will be coming home at the end of the day.

‘I get leave in Augutht and I’ll fly over,’ he informed her, making rather juvenile hand gestures imitating a plane.

‘Great!’ It came out as almost an explosion.

Surely after all these years he won’t be won over by his father? Want to live with him?

‘Are you married, Peg?’ he inquired pleasantly.

‘No.’ Barely a restrained whisper.

We’ve been such good pals, surely he won’t want to leave me now when he’s getting close to being reared.

‘Widowed?’ he continued, pressing the point.

‘Divorced.’ Dear God, please don’t let us discuss
that.
Please let him leave it alone.

‘Oh. I’m tho thorry.’ He looked towards her sadly. Don’t look at me like a bloodhound, she wanted for all the world to say but held back as he glanced at her with quiet pity. Almost home and rid of him now.

‘I’m not. Sorry is about the last thing I am,’ she assured him in a tone full of meaning while giving a slightly unhinged laugh.

She roared along to the next corner and threw the gear stick down a notch. Have to get off this topic. Something stony gathered around her heart as she recognized the fact that he was intruding on her personal emotions. She did not like the intrusion and she did not like him. The sooner I can unload this joker the better, ran through her head.

‘I live along that street down there,’ she put in quickly. ‘I’ll just zip out to the camp and drop you off. It won’t take long.’