Eloquent Silence Read Free

your day, regardless of not being able to see out of one blackened eye or chew on one side of your mouth because your jaw is bruised and swollen.
    If a woman is wrested to the floor with a man’s hands around her throat as he kneels over her to choke her, she may feel less than amicable towards him if and when he lets her up. Only ‘may’ mind you. Behind him on the floor the little boy tries to pull the man off his mother. The man flings out an arm. The child goes flying across the room. His temple connects with the corner of the piano leg. He falls to the floor, stunned. Is he concussed? Unconscious?
    Perhaps that night the woman may not feel inclined to make love with her husband who is suffering from a fleeting sense of guilt and wants to make amends by having intercourse. If she is reluctant following the evening’s activities she will have to be prepared to pay a price, naturally enough. Rape is not illegal within the bonds of marriage.
    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