The Silence of Lady Anne

by Saki

Edward came into the large, dark living room. He looked very uncomfortable. He did not seem to know if he was entering a room in his home or a battlefield, but he looked ready for both. There was a little argument with his wife at lunchtime about something unimportant, but they separated without agreeing and so he did not know if the problem was over or not. Was Anne going to argue again or was she happy to forget about it? She was sitting by the tea-table and looked very formal. In the bad light of a December afternoon, Edward could not clearly see his wife’s face and so did not know if she was smiling or bad-tempered.

Edward made a joke that the couple often shared, but there was no answer from Anne. That was usual. The joke was an old one and they often did not answer it or laugh.

Donaldo, their cat, was lying on the carpet in front of the fire. He did not care if Anne was angry, sad, happy or asleep. Edward poured some tea for himself. He saw a cup in front of Anne and so he did not offer her any. He got ready to try another conversation.

“I was speaking generally at lunch, but you seemed to think it was personal”, he said.

The bird in the cage next to Anne started to sing a popular song. Edward recognised it immediately, because it was the only song that the bird knew. They bought it because it knew that song, but it never learnt any more. Edward and Anne did not like it and preferred a very different kind of music. In art, their taste was the same. They liked honesty. They liked paintings where you could see what was happening: a horse without a rider with guns and soldiers in the background, with crying women all around it, and the title ‘Bad News’ to help you if you could not understand the painting. Sometimes they explained these paintings to their less intelligent friends.

The silence continued. Usually, Anne’s unhappiness became very loud after three or four minutes of silence. Edward poured more milk into Donaldo’s bowl, although it was full already. The milk went on the carpet – quite an expensive carpet. Donaldo looked with surprised interest but looked away again, when he saw that Edward was expecting him to drink it. Donaldo was happy to play many roles in life but not a vacuum cleaner.

“Don’t you think you are a little stubborn not to speak to me?”

If Anne thought she was stubborn, she said nothing.

“Probably, it is my mistake – at least partly my mistake”, continued Edward.

The bird started the only song it could sing again. Edward felt very unhappy. Anne was not drinking her tea. Perhaps, she felt sick, but usually when she felt sick, she was very loud about it. How many times had Edward heard her say, “Nobody knows how much I suffer from my health”? It was one of her favourite statements. Clearly, Anne was not feeling sick.

Edward began to feel that this was very unfair and so he started to say sorry:

“I expect I was wrong.” He tried to stand with his feet apart in front of the fire, but Donaldo was lying there. “I promise to try harder to make you happy and to be a better man in the future.”

Edward did not believe this. In his middle age, he sometimes thought things that were not quite right, but he never did anything about them.

Anne did not move a hair on her head. Edward looked at her nervously. To lose an argument with Anne was nothing new, but to apologise when he did nothing wrong and for Anne to stay silent was upsetting.

“I am going to change before dinner”, he said in a decided voice. But before he opened the door, he had to say, “Aren’t you a little unkind?”

Donaldo looked at him like he was an idiot. The cat then slowly got up and walked towards the bird cage. Anne said nothing as he put his paw into the cage, although the bird was very expensive.

She couldn’t. She was dead.