Eloquent Silence (34 page)

‘I wouldn’t mind the coffee we mithed out on before. I don’t actually feel like going back to camp jutht yet.’ He smiled across at her gingerly, perhaps aware that he was skating on very thin ice. He had small greenish eyes that were neither sensitive nor perceptive.

She felt her cheeks turn hot with a swift anger that she realized he had not been aware of  but she felt no compunction in blaming him for it having arisen.

‘Okay.’ Maybe we can find
something
to talk about over a cup of coffee.

He followed her inside the house then into the kitchen and sat silently while she, just as silently, made the coffee. She sat down opposite him at the pine table and offered him milk and sugar. They sipped their coffee and talked in a desultory manner about Rumpty, the weather and the Airforce camp. Her face was composed, her anger driven down to an almost acceptable level.

Finally, he rose to go. She walked with him to the door—he had said he could walk back to the camp from her house. In the doorway he reached out and took her warily in his arms. He gazed adoringly into her eyes.

‘I find mythelf thrangely attracted to you,’ he said tenderly.

Peg didn’t speak, nor did she move. Oh, sure, and you’re only about thirteen years younger than me and engaged into the bargain. Bars of guilt and prohibition existed around her having a relationship with this egotistical man. Age difference, a fiancée in South Australia, absolute indifference to the man, longing to be left alone, missing her son to distraction and worried sick about him.

Mute, aching, painful Peg. Fractured Peg. Hollow. Hurting.

‘I’d like to make love to you, Peg. May I?’ This followed by the obligatory kiss.

You’re a prig. Pompous, jumped-up prig. Opiniated, arrogant arsehole. What about your fianthee waiting for you in Thouth Authtralia?

She didn’t reply, mute Peg, futile, powerless, empty. The image of her own Michael swam before her and she shut her eyes to block out the scene. The air force man gave a sensuous shiver as he held her close then released her to take a further drag on his cigarette, emitting a cloud of smoke around both of them.

If she lost her son she would surely die from grief.

Mitch’s house was huge, sprawling, brick. How well he could provide for the boy with his successful business. How satisfied was her son with the timeworn, weatherboard house and her straightened means?

Her son seemed to love her a lot. They were always the greatest of friends. When they had a car accident and she had cut her head on the steering wheel, Michael had been heartbroken and said he wished it had been him that was hurt instead of her. How touched she had been by that and how glad he was not the one to be injured.

But Mitch’s life was so glamorous by comparison to hers with her tightly budgeted way of living, existing on little while she reared her son and studied full time. Her ex-husband had so much more to offer financially.

Her eyes remained closed as the Airforce man held her and she tried her best not to cry.

The uniformed person reacted as if to a sign of passion from her, her deep-drawn breath, her tightly closed eyes. He took her hand and led her across the hallway to the bedroom with a soft, seductive smile on his face, assuming he had won out by the sheer might of his presence.

My son has gone with his father. He didn’t even see me at the football grounds. Maybe he just loves his father best, that’s all. He can give him all the possessions I can’t. Will that matter?

‘I am not normally the philandering kind,’ the spruced up person assured her as he slipped between the sheets of her narrow bed.

She looked at his burly, blond haired body and gave a audible sigh.

‘I don’t believe in philandering either,’ she said, staunching her anger that she had been brought to this incident when all she had wanted out of life was a peaceful, happy existence with a loving husband and her precious son.

The two made what can be roughly described as ‘love’, passionless reactions to each other, passing some time together in the night. Strangers filling a little loveless space, simply getting through the night, grappling in the bitter, sterile, dismal darkness.

Silent, hollow, numb. Fractured. She closed her eyes and thought about her misery. She guessed he closed his and thought about his fiancée, or his inflated ego.

Shapes and patterns in the dark, on the ceilings, on the walls. Shadows and shades, nameless fears and unmistakable ones intermingled. The silence was so deep she could hear her own heart pounding.

‘Please go,’ she said very soon as she climbed out of bed to don her dressing gown.

‘I’ll ring you thoon,’ he said as he left her in the doorway. ‘In a day or two, for thore,’ he added as an afterthought.

She suffered an acute attack of panic at the thought of David answering the phone to this man.

‘For sure,’ she replied, smiling thinly. God, how I hope he doesn’t! She was grimly silent as she ushered him into the freezing night.

There was nothing more to say in parting so he laughed uneasily, a laugh almost as hollow as Peg felt herself to be.

Crazy Peg. Futile, aimless, hollow.

––––––––

M
orning dawned, a golden autumn morning spun with tranquility, peace, hope, bright flowers and multi-colored leaves in a carpet on the ground.

Peg loved the autumn mornings. She spent the day writing her assignment. Freud, Jung et al. At four she switched the oven on and placed a rolled roast inside. Michael would be home soon. He would be hungry. She went back to her assignment.

Peg didn’t hear the car, didn’t hear a sound of her boy’s arrival until Rumpty lifted his head from Peg’s foot and waddled towards the door. Every joint in his short, squat body was alive with movement, his little tail going like a threshing machine.

‘Mum, I’m home. Hey, where are you?’ She heard the door clip shut and his overnight bag thump to the floor of his room before he came to seek her out.

‘I’m here, son. Hi, how are you? Hungry? Did you enjoy your weekend?’ She stopped her typing and opened her arms for her son to come to her and know how welcome he was. I am your home, Michael, she told him silently with a thankful prayer for his return to her.

‘Oh, sure, I had a good weekend but it’s great to be home with you and Rumpty.’ His face erupted in a wide grin.

He had grown from a quiet, thoughtful little boy into a tall and slender teenager with brown hair and sky blue eyes like her own. As he kissed her hello a sobbing laugh rose in her throat. He is home, my boy, home. She tacitly understood that he was as pleased to see her as she was to see him.

She held her breath all week. Every time the telephone rang she quaked inwardly and her mind swam as she rushed to answer it before Michael could get to it and ask about the mystery man with the lisp.

Each time she answered the phone it wasn’t him. Every day she relaxed a little more, knowing that the man had probably been as lonely and confused as she was, just trying to get through the night, blundering along without the aid of a moral compass, as she had been.

Saturday came around again. He hadn’t rung. She took her Michael to play football. This time after the game he climbed in beside her and they chatted and laughed as they drove away with Rumpty in the back seat, joyous.

––––––––

C
onrad Himmlar, short and squat, ageing and balding, sat in front of the solid laminex and timber bar sipping a rum and coke, perched on a bar stool swinging his stumpy legs, his feet not quite touching the floor while he gazed around in peaceful contemplation. His jaw was squarish and his eyes with their faintly blood-shot whites were cold, his lips fat and unsmiling. Little tufts of graying brown hair sat in splendor around the edges of his polished crown, his little tonsure.

As usual, he was suffering from an overblown sense of his own importance, being prepared to entertain his guests that night with the best of food and drink. He puffed out his barrel chest, master of all he surveyed. His face broke into a warm smile as he took in the satisfactory surroundings he had ‘worked his guts out’ to supply, constantly slogging until his retirement at around thirty-five.

Chewing noisily on a handful of nuts which he flicked into his mouth from his short, hairy fingers, he contemplated the wonderful little world of his rumpus room. The large, well-stocked bar was his special area, shelves laden with spirits, wines and mixers, glasses of all shapes and sizes. Also featured were stubby holders from all around Queensland where he had worked over the past years and ornaments such as a polar bear lying on its back holding a bottle of rum to its mouth, this last tastefully placed on the bar so that no one could miss it. As for his artistic choices, they ran to a  couple of nudie cuties with essential areas covered by various lengths of colored cloth and feathered fans.

The solid billiard table was made from the finest timber and slate available. Leather couches and chairs abounded. The table-tennis table was set up at the far end of the room.

A salute to the way a poor boy could rise to the heights of luxury, in a modest way, of course. To admit that there was any money behind the whole shebang could give the game away and cause his family to court him for more than his scintillating personality which could be unfortunate. He wanted to know that they admired him for himself and his success without actually knowing the extent of his bank balance.

All tied up in assets, he reminded himself. Yes, assets. No cash to spare at all. No liquidity, that’s a fact. Man’s got to keep his business to himself to a certain extent. Don’t want them courting a fellow just because they know he’s worth a fortune. Modest one, though. Still, more money than the old man had ever seen in a month of Sundays. He would have been proud of me and justifiably so.

Conrad was prone to sudden variations of mood and while for the moment he was proud as Punch of his success, in a trice he could be angry at the perceived neglect by wife or children, or alternatively, cantankerous because the day was not working out as planned. He wavered amongst these differing emotions as he worked his way through his days of recreation and retirement, never sure from one minute to the other of how his temper would be. Nor was anyone else within his orbit.

He wanted his visiting family to admire him as a successful business man while at the same time not getting any notions in their heads that he may be leaving something to them even though they were aware that their behavior could make or break their approval rating.

He assured them that they would not be in the line of succession if they failed to toe the line and dared to go to Annie on Christmas Day, for instance, rather than stay at his and Girda’s house all day and night.

Still, despite his luxury and satisfaction with his state of being, there was something within him that remained unsatisfied but he couldn’t fathom what it was. It was vague feeling, nebulous, he couldn’t track it down but it was right there at the back of his mind if he could just formulate it. The will-o’-the-wisp that would not let him rest.

There was a distinct possibility that he might decide not to die but to live on forever to enjoy the fruits of his labors. His barrel body shook with joviality as he thought of the consequences of taking it with him. That would discombobulate them if they had any definite plans as to what they would do if they should inherit a heap of money from him eventually. 

The television, video recorder and stereo equipment sat in an enormous wall unit to his right hand. To the left, through the large glass doors was the courtyard complete with barbecue, outdoor furniture, fishpond and two Old English sheep dogs lazing in the afternoon sunlight. For days the house and its surrounds had lain shimmering under a heat wave but finally the furnace-breath westerly that had been blowing for days had dropped and the afternoon was quite pleasant.

‘Little slice of Paradise,’ he mused. Then why in the name of God did he still feel so bloody lonely and dissatisfied? What was this curious sense of loss he felt at his core? He sat as still as stuffed man for a while, continuing to dangle one foot, his expressionless gaze drifting from object to object as he recalled what he had paid for each.

‘To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven,’ he quoted to himself aloud. ‘This is my season and my time under Heaven, my reward for slogging my guts out as a young man.’ His scraggy eyebrows drew together suddenly in a blend of irritation and annoyance. He had worked for all this and by God he was going to enjoy it, come what may.

Where was Girda and why hadn’t she come home on the dot of three? It seemed to him that an eternity had dragged by since Girda had left the house with the three girls in tow.

Conrad lived most of his life within this room and the courtyard next to it. And why not, he asked himself? I’ve worked hard for all this and a man might as well enjoy it. He sighed with satisfaction and sat for a while, simply enjoying being Conrad, just savoring it. Being Conrad was truly something to be enjoyed and I’m doing it, by Christ.

Time crawled by as he waited out the afternoon, looking reflectively in the mirror behind the bar, in spite of himself feeling listless and unsettled, that ever-present nagging bloody ache never letting go. Was it illness?

He had been sure he would die in his twenties when he used to cough up blood from the dusty, antiquated old machinery he had purchased to use, traveling around Queensland putting poison into grain and fumigating silos. However, die he did not and here he was two decades later, still expecting the Grim Reaper to come to collect him at any unknown juncture. Certain activities going on within him caused him to think his days were numbered but the doctor swore he was as sound as he could be. Huh! Stupid old guy with his tatty old beard and milk-bottle glasses. What would he know?

He turned to inspect the back garden again. From her self-contained granny flat at the side of the house he noticed his mother-in-law walk slowly and stiffly into the yard to collect the family’s washing from the clothes line. And about time, too, old girl, Conrad concluded. Getting lackadaisical in your old age, hey?