The Man Who Loved Children (64 page)

“I don’t understand,” muttered Louie, “why you married her at all, if you felt like that. Mother told me she didn’t want to marry you.”

Sam’s face darkened; but after a moment he said, “And I was thinking of you, Looloo: you were a motherless little girl, and Henny seemed fond of you.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care,” suddenly cried Louie.

Sam stared at her, “What do you mean, you don’t care? You don’t care for my thought for you? You don’t care for my years of torture and what might well have been mental rot and spiritual death for me? You don’t care for what I have been through—hell is a very temperate word!”

Louie began to snivel, “I heard it too much, I heard it too much!”

Sam said gravely, “I looked forward to your growing up; I was so happy when you were born—I thought a little girl would be easy to bring up and would have such belief in me.”

“Oh, I heard it too often!”

He shrugged away angrily, “Control yourself: you are always so hysterical nowadays. If you didn’t get yourself into such darnfool psychological excitements with silly Clare—I thought
she
had more sense!—and silly calf loves for teachers, and even thinking about boys, no better than any man’s girl!—I can hardly bear to look at you! Get ready for school!”

“You don’t understand, Dad: I am sympathetic, but I heard it too often; I can’t stand it any more.”

“You only want to think about yourself, that’s the truth,” Sam said morosely and went out again to walk up and down the grassy orchard. Presently, to show he bore the world no grudge, he began whistling the children round him, and they ran out complaining, in all stages of undress.

Henny suddenly issued out of her room, with her empty cup; and no sooner saw Louie than she pounced on her and scolded her for her appearance, her dirty dress, her cobbled stockings and down-at-heel shoes, her loose straggling hair (“like your disgusting Auntie Jo’s”) and puffed expression (“you look as if you spent the night in self-abuse, I’ll make your father speak to you”). She rushed into the girl’s room to look out a clean dress for her, hoping against hope to find something, and suddenly came out screaming that she’d kill that great stinking monster, that white-faced elephant with her green rotting teeth and green rotting clothes, and she’d tear out her dirty filthy hair by the roots rather than let her be seen at school in that state, as if she had never a comb or brush at home to care for her; that Samuel Pollit, who thought all the Pollit breed so fine, had better look at his own stinking daughter who wore the filthy rags that were all he gave her until they were too black to be thrown in “Coffin” Lomasne’s black scum. She wanted to know whether Sam knew that his beautiful genius’ clothes were smeared with filth and that most of the time the great big overgrown wretch with her great lolloping breasts looked as if she’d rolled in a pigsty or a slaughterhouse, and that she couldn’t stand the streams of blood that poured from her fat belly and that he must get someone to look after such an unnatural big beast.

Sam had come into the house when Henny began her screams and stood there goggling, while Louie, going paler, stood petrified with horror and pride, looking reproachfully at her father and expecting him to scold Henny. But Sam goggled like some insignificant wretch crept in secretly on the Eleusinian mysteries, frightened but licking his lips. Henny went on to the worst outrages possible to her vivid imagination; though Louie went upstairs, blubbering so loudly that Sam at last had to go out and call up through the window that if she didn’t stop he’d have to come and beat her, big girl as she was, for she could be heard across the bay. Suddenly Sam could stand no more, but went into the kitchen, took a dash of tea in a cup, and began striding off, up the avenue and into the streets, after going softly up to Louie’s room and telling her that it would quiet down when he left, for Henny hated him so much that all this came from him. He had put his hand on Louie’s shoulder to comfort her, but she shook him off and looked at him with such hate that he shrank back to the door and, with one solemn, reproachful look, went downstairs into the torment that was raging down there, and so away.

Meanwhile, Ernie had come into the common room ready for school, as he thought, in a dirty shirt, and Henny rushed at her son with a slap, which brought out a howl from him. No sooner did she hear the howl caused by herself than Henny felt she could not stand any of this life any longer, nor any of her children, and she rushed at Ernie again and began to beat him across the head, screaming at him, “Die, die, why don’t you all die and leave me to die or to hang; fall down, die; what do I care? I beat my son to death: it’s no worse than what I have to endure,” and beat him still while her eyes started out of her head; her breathing became labored. She could hardly stand but had to clutch at the chair to support herself, screaming still, “I’ll kill you children that make me go out of my mind, I’ll beat you to death.”

Ernie meanwhile, frightened by this and not thinking of defending himself, had fallen to his knees where he cried brokenly, in a warm, pleading voice, “Mother, don’t, don’t, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, don’t, please, please, Mother, Mother!” but the noise of the belting went on until Louie, unable to bear it, rushed downstairs and caught her mother’s arm, “Mother! Don’t! What are you doing?” Then Henny, suddenly awaking from the horrible murderous delirium, looked at Louie, as if she were about to give an explanation, and fainted. Louie got a cushion and put it under her mother’s head, and then pulled Ernie up, from where he lay on the floor sobbing, “Oh, Mother,” and said to him, “Come on, get up, get up.”

“My head hurts,” said Ernie, refusing to get up; but at last Louie managed to drag him from the floor and to get him, still crying, into the boys’ room to comb his hair and adjust his clothes. When Henny came to herself, she got up slowly, wiping her wrist across her face, her eyes black and hollow as they had never been, and she, strangely enough, went to the telephone and asked for the cost of a call to Washington, D. C. She telephoned Washington but got no reply, and came away, muttering that she would get him again in the evening—she must see someone who understood her. She then shooed the children off to school, saying that that day she could not bear them round the house, for she might do herself some mischief if she looked at them; and Louie was to give them all their lunches.

Louie at last dragged off to school one hour and a half late, her cheeks scarlet and the whites of her eyes red, and, blubbering still, she walked to school, getting there just before lunch-time, and had been crying to herself all the way, not noticing how everyone looked at her or so much as wondering what she looked like. She came into the silent playground and went straight to the class that was being held at this hour, which happened to be Miss Aiden’s, not observing, still, how the few girls who passed her stared at her. She came slowly into the class, while Miss Aiden and all the pupils stared at her. Her dirty blouse, which lacked buttons, was open and showed a torn slip and foul underwear; her skirt, spotted with food, had a ripped hem at the bottom; she was slipshod, and her stockings had mud on them. Her long hair, usually plaited, hung all round her in wet streaks, and her face was twice its usual size, lobster-red and bloated with tears.

“What is the matter?” asked Miss Aiden faintly, after severely telling the girls to go back to their books.

“Nothing,” said Louie.

“I think you have been crying, Louie.”

“My mother is sick.”

“Go to your place,” said the teacher helplessly, with her clean, long fingers quickly fastening and tucking in the broken clothing. In the lunch interval she made the girl come to the empty classroom while with a borrowed needle and thread she sewed up the skirt.

Sam had stayed out all day in Baltimore, and for once did not come home to supper. In the evening, about seven, Henny rang again to Washington, to Bert Anderson’s flat where he usually was at this time of night, and made an appointment to see him the next day. To Louie, who happened to be cleaning knives in the kitchen, she came marching in, with her grimmest expression, and said,

“I’m going to Washington to see an old friend: I have to have some legal advice if I’m ever going to get out of this mess; and please don’t tell your father, or you’ll get me into some more trouble. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Mother.”

She than rang Hassie and asked her if she could see her in town (in Baltimore), the next morning early, to talk over something very important. She still had the season ticket to Baltimore, and as for getting to the station, “I’ll crawl there on my hands and feet, if necessary,” said Henny angrily, “if I can’t get the money for a taxi.” She left a note on Sam’s desk asking for money to go to Baltimore to see her lawyer, and after dining off a four-ounce-curry made for herself from cold meat and raisins, with chutney and tea, she shut herself into her room, determined not to come out again until it was time to leave for Baltimore. “I cannot go through such scenes and won’t,” said she.

Later, she made herself some tea, and then got into bed, to try and read the saga of upland Georgian gentility, which she had three times abandoned because she, Henny, had “no fancy big buck niggers to wait on her and lick her boots”: but once more she threw it away. Where, indeed, was she to find heroes to succor her and how could she succeed in business with her spendthrift ways. “I’m a failure all right,” said Henny; “and why don’t they write about deadbeats like me—only it wouldn’t sell!” Towards five, when the morning came, she fell asleep and when she woke up, Sam had again left the house to go to Washington and had left no money for her nor left her any word.

Thus, she had to set off in a great temper, to walk to the station by the poor cottages, the gas station, the wretched stores and whisky counters, by the boatsheds and over the bridge, by the Market Place, up the stony high street, round the State House and so to the low-set station, where some cars were standing without an engine, in an idle sort of way, apparently asleep and not dreaming of a timetable. But at the proper time they set off, just the same, and racketed through those stray houses, over the Severn and by those woody hills that Henny hated so much, in forty minutes or an hour arriving in Baltimore. As soon as she got outside the station, Henny saw the faithful green car and hobbled towards it. How her legs ached! Honest Hassie, more cushiony than ever, waited till her ant of a sister had got in and then asked,

“Well, my dear, what mess are you in this time? I suppose you want a drink? It’s too early for me, but if you want to, we’ll go to the Hi-Ho.”

“I want money, and I want to go to Washington, and I want never to see that hypocritical gasbag again, if I can help it,” Henny explained in her usual succinct way; “and I want you to lend me whatever money you can, Hassie, because I’m in one devil of a hole.”

“When were you ever out of the hole?” asked Hassie comfortably. “What’s the row?”

“Some son of a bitch wrote to that Forgotten Man that I married, an anonymous letter on a bit of newspaper and told him to wipe his whatyoumaycallit, with it, pardon me! and said Charlie was not Sam’s child! I’d like to find the man and send him to Alcatraz; such people should be punished with the worst the law allows.” Hassie was silent for a while as she maneuvered the car round a tricky corner and up a stony street, and then she said, mildly, “Well, old girl, not that I care, but what’s the story?”

Henny said angrily, “Do you think I’d be such a fool as to let one of those professional bachelors—?”

“I don’t know: I think you’ve been an awful donkey, Henny.”

“What would you do in my place, may I ask? Compromise? With what? With the West Wind? Compromise with Mr. Here-There and Everywhere? Am I to spend the next twenty years in the high-minded company of a smug Philistine who doesn’t so much as make me a decent husband? Have you any recipe for that? Don’t be so tiresome! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Gosh,” said Hassie, sighing, “I didn’t say anything; don’t get mad. You and Sam should never have married, that’s all.”

“Any marriage I made would have gone smash,” cried Henny, scoffing and throwing back her head: “I was born for excitement.”

Hassie brought the car to a stop, “Well, let’s drown our sorrows in drink. I really ought to be at the store, old girl, but now you can tell me what happened. What did the beast say in the anonymous letter? Oh, it really is too foul just the same, isn’t it?”

“I’d bet my bottom dollar that it’s old Middenway, dirty old leering goat,” said Henny, angrily staring at the bare table in the little booth. “I never could stand him, and I had to kowtow to him and ladida with his servant girl of a wife because I never could get enough to foot his dirty bills; and I left owing him ninety-four dollars if you want to know. I need that at once, but if I had a gun I’d go and shoot the rat. I wish I had a man and not a dishrag printed over with big words like ‘constitutional rights’ and ‘progress’! Did you ever know me to do anything right in my life? I should have been drowned when a pup.”

“You look so feverish,” said Hassie. “What have you been doing? Have you been drinking? Your eyes are so bright! Are you well?”

Henny tossed her head, “Where the dickens would I get the money for drink? I’m just boiling mad, I’m going out of my mind: I may look cool and calm to you, but inside I’m one blaze, I’m insane.”

“No, you’re not, you’re cool enough,” said Hassie; “you’re always pretty collected when you’re not in a tantrum. Now, don’t work yourself up.”

Henny pointed to her cheeks, “I’ve been up all night, trying to think what to do. I realized where I was the other week, with Tune week—we used to flounce along and think we were the pick of the bunch; I should have married a mud rat or one of the boatmen then and there and saved myself a lot of hard work and worry and travel. I would have had the same kids and ended up in the same slops.”

“Don’t you think everyone has troubles?”

“A lot of people have a million dollars.”

“How much do you owe?”