Eloquent Silence (20 page)

My husband tries to stem his snorting laughter. His days are numbered, I warn him crisply as I try to salvage anything from the mess.

4 p.m. The dog’s nails need clipping and I persuade her to put up with it by rewarding, translation—blackmailing) her with doggie choc bits. While struggling with her I drop the tin of choc bits and she’s on them in a flash, devouring the lot, then walks away with a patronizing grin.

Ten minutes later she throws up in the laundry in several repulsive deposits. My husband is drawn to the site by the sound of muffled moans and someone gagging. He reminds me wistfully that I am the dog’s mother and that cleaning up vomit is what mothers do best.

I am rendered incapable of speech by a surge of emotion, but feel I should be alert for unusual goings on as I am beginning to feel the house is demonized or at least haunted.

What, I ask myself, is the point of living at all if it has to be conducted like this?

5 p.m. Time for our afternoon walk around the block and across the undeveloped stretch of grassy territory where someone was recently bitten by a king brown snake. I go to the garage to fetch my lace-up shoes, place my right foot into the shoe and feel something wriggling. Further investigation reveals a medium-sized scorpion. I do not wonder for one second if scorpions are a protected or endangered species but send it to an untimely end with the shoe.

Returning from the walk I again collect my bowls T-shirt from the line, only to find a very large bird has done a very large whoopsie down the front of it. I feel quite beaten and ready to submit to The Fates.

I am disproportionately distraught because another club T-shirt cannot be obtained. The manufacturer did a special job for our orders and there are none left in my size or any other size, for that matter. My husband holds to the unwarranted assumption that I’ll be able to buy another. A chance would be a fine thing!

6 p.m. Happy hour. We open the refrigerator to find a suitable beverage and find that the fridge and freezer have not come back on after the morning blackout. Investigation reveals that no other appliances have, either. I have rescued the raw poppy seed muffins from the oven hours ago and dispatched them to the compost bin. Our neighbors have power but we don’t. Furthermore, we hardly seem to care after the day we’ve put in. 

My hero checks the meter-box and find that the safety switch has tripped when the power went out. He reverses it and we are in business again, hopefully. We drink our beverages at slightly below room temperature, thankful that they have remained a little cool due to the fact we haven’t been opening the fridge door.

7 p.m. Suffering from a sensation of being caged, we are finding our lives are beyond our control and we need to get out of the house which is threatening to destroy us. In desperation we go with our friends to night bowls as an escapist exercise. Bowls has been advertised in two newspapers as being ‘on.’ I am grateful that we don’t have to wear our club T-shirts to night bowls.

No one turns up to let us into the clubhouse. We lollygag around for an hour and a half until someone of high rank arrives and gets the greenkeeper to open up the clubhouse and switch the bowling green lights on. Bowls is not ‘on’ but we play amongst ourselves anyway. We need it. It’s been a long and trying day!

Now if someone would just come and open the bar, we might survive.

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J
ulia thought the experience was somewhat like the scene in ‘South Pacific’ when the hero and heroine belted out:

‘Some Enchanted Evening, you may see a stranger...’

And so forth as each smiled charmingly at the other. A lovely little piece of frippery and music to the ears of many a damsel in the dating stakes who wished for themselves a life of living happily ever after to a degree, if such a thing were still possible in the twentieth century.

Only the scene wasn’t a crowded room but a crowded dance floor where Ronnie and the Rebels were playing at a country dance. Their eyes met across the room, he asked her for the next dance, a Pride of Erin, and their fate was sealed, or so it seemed at the time.

She had met Ralph Prosser at a time of exceptional vulnerability. Utterly furious at the treatment received at the hands of her longtime companion, a little twerp who fancied himself as a ladies’ man supreme who had flitted around behind her back like a little butterfly, sipping from other honeycombs, she had gone along blissfully unaware until being informed by an anonymous letter-writer about what was going on without her knowledge.

Disillusioned from the encounter, she was grateful for Ralph’s company and attention. He was a jolly kind of man who sang and whistled constantly while seeming to fill a room with his pleasant presence. As the weeks went by Julia supposed him to be enough for her for the rest of her days, as she had decided he had lit her life up sufficiently for her to weather any emotional storms that may arise.

She had learned to live in a world of comprises after being so badly let down by her husband of ten years and to add further insult to injury, her companion of two years, Felix Fox. Foxy Felix. Felix the Fox. Thinking about him, she often remembered what a spiteful-looking little man he was, although she had not recognized this trait at the time as he had carefully hidden his spite behind a veil of loveableness, a thin veneer only, so it turned out in the long run.

Ralph had a rather loud, hearty voice, bright green eyes and pale brown hair with just a touch of gray peeking through. Occasionally she thought she glimpsed something steely in his face but she assured herself she was only being fanciful. What was showing was merely his strong character. Ralph had the best of intentions as he had told her time and again and she could do nothing less than believe him. But he would never make the slightest attempt to answer any questions he did not wish to, leaving the subjects that were taboo to him hanging in the air, wearing a look of condescension as he gazed at her over the top of his half-spectacles.

The potential to trust was long gone from Julia’s repertoire of capabilities and she felt overdue to attend to attend to its resurrection, as this frightening fact made her aware that she may possibly never be able to have a meaningful relationship again.  Regaining the capacity to count on people once more, to believe they meant well towards her and would not willingly tramp her feelings into nothingness, grinding them into dust seemed essential to the healing of her psyche. Surely two such experiences would be adequate for this lifetime and third time would be lucky. Everyone knew that was a fact. Or did they?

Belief in the sincerity of others had completely disappeared for her when she had found out what Felix was up to, lost by the wayside somewhere between doubt and experience. However, if she wanted to have a long term companion again she would have to take the chance on Ralph’s sincerity and forget how her trust had been sacrificed on the road from flirtation to deceit. To believe in him was necessary. Doubt would destroy yet another attempted association and that could make her bitter, she reasoned.

Basic trust had been swept away by the maelstrom of male ego asserting itself in the whirlpool of choices at their fingertips where the odds of courtship were one man to ten women and loyalty seemed to be lost by the wayside for her as she thought about meandering men.

Or she recalled how deception was lurking on the other end of the telephone in those days of multiple partnering for the second time around when people were hurt, their egos bruised and their attitudes sadly much changed from when they were young and open to the world. She must forget the treachery and learn that not all men would do her wrong if she let go and trusted again.

Somehow she must find a way to believe and have faith in another again before the iron settled into her soul, causing her to become cynical and skeptical for all time. Julia was at the magical age of forty-five, a time when a lonely woman can feel the rest of her life bearing down on her, crushing her into brutal loneliness of the rest of her days.

She had hair the color of dark honey and eyes to match, with feathery little lines appearing at the corner of her eyes, while traces of laughter lines stretched at the corners of her mouth.

Her philosophy of life had assured that she would survive the sadness experienced over the loss of a beloved baby who had died from whooping cough at one month of age, too young to be immunized against the dreadful disease. Painful and difficult as the baby’s death had been for both parents, the loss had formed a wedge between her and husband, Sonny, which had eventually widened into a breech and then a gulf which could not be healed by either party. Julia knew the sadness and futility of breaking up a marriage in this way but neither could build the necessary bridge towards the other and any endeavor seemed only to make matters worse.

They had gone their separate ways with a certain amount of hostility, as Julia had discovered the ugly truth of Sonny’s infidelity when she had found him with a much younger, very pregnant woman in a restaurant one evening when he had failed to return home for dinner.

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R
alph was large, tall and well-padded, more muscular than simply overweight, as his body was toned from long days in the construction industry in which he had a vested interest. He as conversational and friendly but only at a certain level, Julia discovered over many following meetings. Beyond that, no connection. He could make eye contact without revealing anything of himself one way or the other, a gift that Julia was certain would hold them back from gaining any traction in the relationship. Yet he seemed to really like her company and sought her out repeatedly, which she really appreciated.

She told herself she could find a way through his obvious guardedness, thinking she could love him if he let her as he was bright, good-looking, firm and strong, humorous and upbeat. And handsome. But had possibly been hurt as much as she had.

Julia admired his rugged looks, his broad shoulders and large, sinewy hands with their long, strong fingers. Each time she saw him she felt a sudden rush of affection towards him along with the surety that they would get closer and closer as time went by, simply convincing herself that it was only a matter of time and patience and that worrying about it would not achieve anything.

Telling him of her perplexity regarding his guardedness, she begged him to always be honest with her.

‘Please just tell me the truth, whatever it may be,’ she entreated him through a tight throat. ‘Some men are less than honest with their partners, you know.’

He threw back his head and roared with laughter, a laugh so meaningless that Julia would wonder later on what the attempted relationship had been all about.

‘That’s a good one, that is? Seriously? Ha ha, Oh, ha ha. Do tell.’ With difficulty, he pulled his face back into some semblance of seriousness and ran his hand over his receding hairline, turning his face away from her. ‘You do have some issues, don’t you?’

She felt slightly deflated but thought perseverance would probably win out.

Fond of him after some months of going out and about together, she needed to get closer to him, deciding to confide matters about her life experiences, hoping he would do likewise and they could build a mutual bond.

He listened to her stories, made little or no comment, never confided in return. She decided he was a difficult man to draw close to but time would doubtlessly remedy that as they really were enjoying their shared experiences.

They continued along with their relationship, loving their outings, singing loudly together as they drove along, making much small talk, but with few further confidences exchanged. They loved each other, they said, and both agreed that what they had found was precious. They saw a great deal of each other and spoke almost daily on the telephone.

However, she ceased confiding in him, thinking she couldn’t afford to take the risk. What if he never started to confide in her? There was no single incident that brought the knowledge to her that he was not playing straight, that she was in trouble and could have the rug pulled out from under her at any moment. The irrepressible doubt had simply crept up on her as one closed door followed another. He had made the mysterious transition from married to single without seeming to have left a trail worth talking about.

She knew he was single or at the very least separated. She had been to his house many times. But he was hiding something. Having met his mother at his house, she wondered about Mrs. Prosser’s line of questioning.

‘So who are you? And what do you do? Where do you work? Where do you live? What did your former husband do? Who are your people? What business are they in?’ asked the hard-faced woman in her seventies with jet black hair in a lacquered beehive style reminiscent of some decades previously.

‘I’m Julia Henry; I work for an insurance company; I live in Berry Street; my former husband was an insurance broker; my people, as you call them, are on a property at Black Plains; they farm alpacas and llamas and grow crops,’ Julia informed her with foreboding.

Mrs Prosser sniffed loudly.

She gazed at Julia from head to toe through her hard, almost black, beady eyes. A trim, tight-lipped woman in a tweed suit kept in mothballs since of World War Two with the obligatory string of pearls around her crêpy neck, all of which were her last link with the fashion of a time when she had been Queen Bee in the town of Rushmore.

She had sat as still as if she was carved out of stone while Julia explained her place in the world and her right to breathe the exalted air in Ralph’s house. When she had finished listening to Julia and eyeing her with that sweeping, steely gaze, the Queen Bee rose and sailed majestically into another room.

Julia had the feeling that she didn’t measure up to the old girl’s expectations for her middle-aged son but nothing was said either way.

At least, not to Julia.

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J
ulia’s slightest queries to Ralph were met with,

‘What’s this? Forty questions? One day I’ll talk to you.’