The Man Who Loved Children (66 page)

Henny rang up every few hours to ask about Charles-Franklin and find out what the “children’s father” was doing today, and what Louie was giving them for lunch, and whether they stayed up late singing and jigging with the children’s father, or whether they went to bed, and how was Little-Sam’s earache. At night she tossed, and would put on her bedside lamp at all hours of the night while she tried to read popular novels which she called, universally, silly rot, muck, and a lot of hooey. She was really waiting for Sam to come to get her, or for him to send a letter saying he had started divorce proceedings. She did not much care. Her life was such a ruin that she preferred not to think about it at all. But on the third day, she took the train back to Annapolis. It was Saturday. She saw the little ones on the lawn jumping up and down and for all she had to face, her heart beat faster: how odd that this tumble-down windy mansion in which she had to live with a despised man was home! But her heart sank as she came up the drive. The children, seeing that unusual sight, a taxi, serpentining into the drive, ran to it with screams and halloos and started tumbling all over her. She brushed them off, paid the taxi driver, and went in, saying, “Where’s your father?”

“Oh, the marlin’s coming: Mr. Pilgrim is sending Dad the marlin—they caught a marlin,” Henny heard. “Why did you stay away, Moth? Why did you stay at Aunt Hassie’s, Moth? It’s coming by the ferry: they’re sending it in a car to Matapeake, ooh, we’re going to boil it!” Henny took no notice of this, but with a grim expression on her face went into her room. There she had a great shock: the little fairy daughter of “Coffin” Lomasne was standing at the dressing table prinking before the glass. Henny sank down on the bed, putting her hand over her heart. The little girl turned round guiltily and flushed.

“Who let you in?”

She said shyly that Mr. Pollit had let her come in to breakfast to play with Tommy. Henny sneered and laughed. For weeks, Tommy the boatbuilder had done little but think about Lomasne’s baby girl, and could not understand why she could not come and live with them. Now, thought Henny, no sooner do I turn my back than even Tommy gets in another woman; what a pack men are! And of all little girls it has to be Sam’s “Little-Fairy” Lomasne.

Sam came up from the tool shed where he had been arranging Ernie’s bottles in a row, preparatory to washing them and stalking into the hall outside Henny’s room said, “I see you’ve come back.”

Henny was silent, but in a minute walked out of her room softly as a ghost, and passing him with a black look, but a distant pasty one not like her old recriminatory ones, went into the baby’s room. Here she sat down, and Sam, having nothing to say, went outside again and began singing, “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone, dare to have a purpose true and dare to make it known.”

Baby Chappy was on the front veranda, playing with his blocks without saying a word. Henny sat in the room he shared with Tommy in the front of the house and looked round. Louie had not yet made the beds: the twisted week-old sheets and battered pillows, the faded flannel pajama suits and ragged bedside mats with sand and loam ground into them, lay about in mild disorder, while the single finger of sun in the far corner sought for them and moved delicately towards the center of the oilcloth. Flies buzzed inside the wire screens on the windows. On Monday all that would have to go into the wash, and Henny had not paid Mrs. Lewis for the last Monday’s wash. Louie came into her with a cup of tea. The room smelled of babies’ dirt and babies’ effluvia. Over Tommy’s bed a great sun-tanned girl with wild curly hair grinned down from a grove of oranges—a poster that Tommy had fallen in love with at the age of one year. Over Charles-Franklin’s bed was the picture that someone had given Henny on her wedding day, a brown man and a white-skinned girl kissing in a field of poppies at sunset, in a gilt rococo frame. Pollit art had never gone beyond this. On each side of the door was a sketch in water colors, one a sunken garden with trees by the Monocacy as it winds through Frederick, and one of the old Chesapeake and Ohio bridge which crosses the Monocacy River, with the low bushy landscape and the stones spouting water. Henny had only learned three things in her school life—watercolor-painting, embroidery, and the playing of Chopin, and her children could not do one of these things. Instead, they were carving boats, painting outhouses, putting in rubble for cement floors. But she did not think about her futile, anemic youth now. Instead, she looked vaguely about, sniffing that familiar smell of fresh dirtiness which belongs to mankind’s extreme youth, a pleasant smell to mothers. Henny had spent twelve years in that atmosphere.

“Poor Chappy,” she thought mildly, “of course, he’s just a Pollit like the rest: only Ernie is a Collyer, and he doesn’t like me so much since the red money-box business—I don’t blame him! Well, Tommy—but I don’t want to see a son of mine to grow up getting women into messes; I’m not sorry for the stupid girls, but it’s not sugarplum for either side. How tired I feel!” She was surprised to feel tired after a holiday. She thought, “I can’t bear to get old, lose all my energy, not be able to sleep because I’m too weak to sleep, and snivel along after life. Oh, why shouldn’t I live with Sam?—he’s as good to me as any man would be: men are all the same. To beat them, you have to have so much energy—I haven’t got it.”

For a long time she thought of nothing but found it sweet to sit there and think of her boys’ future: strange to say, Evie never entered her mind. She had never bothered about Evie, or tried to dress her well, or taught her household matters or manners, for she regarded such a nice, obedient, pretty girl as cursed from birth: “Some man will break her or bend her,” she always said to Hassie bitterly; while about Louie she always said, “I’m sorry for the man
she
marries!” About the girls she only thought of marriage, and about marriage she thought as an ignorant, dissatisfied, but helpless slave did of slavery. She thought the boys would get on by the brutal methods of men, Pollit or Collyer. She fingered the little, dirty, glazed-chintz cover, the thin summer blanket with matted spots, the cotton sheet. Before she was married she had made up her mind never to have anything but linen sheets, but it was four years since she had had one, and the present sheets were of the shoddiest cotton, and Mrs. Lewis, who turned them yellow, with her conceit, kept saying, “I’m sure you never had whiter sheets, Miss!”

Henny thought, “I like a baby’s room best: there are no books, no lead, no nonsense,” and she thought of evenings when she had come in to see the usual sight, a baby’s head lying sideways, the eyes closed, the fine dark hair growing thicker over the thin-skinned oval skull, the little nightgown frill, the eyes closed, and one fist clenched on the pillow. She pulled the edge of the blanket straight thoughtfully, “A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not. That poor miserable brat of his is growing up, and I certainly licked the hide off her; and she’s seen marriage at its worst, and now she’s dreaming about ‘supermen’ and ‘great men.’ What is the good of doing anything for them? Anyhow, He always wins! Well, that girl has been cooking for them for three days: I suppose I’d better see about some lunch.”

She looked out of the kitchen window and saw Louie lying on her back in the orchard, waving her arms in the air, with Sam and Saul sitting on her belly jigging up and down while she shrieked and laughed. The screen door swung, and Evie’s pattering came down the hall, “Mother! Mother! You came home! Oh, Mother, we had such fun last night—we all had dinner in our bathing suits and after we had a water party; and the people over on the houseboat had a party too, in bathing suits, and Louie and Ernie swam over and looked in.”

“Very nice. Did Louie tell you what she got for lunch?”

“Sausages and apple fritters; and last night we had ‘cah-nah-pay.’ ” Evie giggled, “It was raw bacon and almonds out of your drawer, and Saul spat it out.”

“I see you’re living on Pollit distinction,” said Henny. Sam’s voice on the heavy, electric summer air sang out, “Megalops, Megalops! What are you donin?” Henny heard him going past the back veranda with the three boys, saying, “See what Megalops donin: he don’t say nuffin, maybe he thinkin; wook [look], Little-Sam, Megalops drornin [drawing] designs in the dirt.”

“He’s eating dirt, Pad,” shrieked Saul appreciatively. Louie, who had been trying to swing on a branch of a peach tree, desisted and looked soulfully after the three boys and their father.

“The baby’s eating dirt, Looloo,” shouted Ernie.

“Well, stop him,” she shouted back, at the same time walking after them nonchalantly.

“Of course he’s eating dirt,” said Henny. “Who is looking after him? I’d give a lot to know what he’s eaten the last three days.”

There fell round the corner of the house a scatter of guffawing children, turning up the corners of their eyes and holding their hands over their mouths, “Moth! Oh-ho-ho! Mothering! The baby’s eating—shh!—well he is!—shh!—Megalops is eating—she doesn’t like you to call him that!—Daddy says to come and see, Mother: the baby’s eating his own crap—shh!—excrement, Mother.”

“Don’t be silly, that’s not a joke,” Evie told Saul severely.

“He is, he is, go and see!”

“Didn’t your silly fool of a father stop him?” cried Henny.

“Yes, Mother, but Daddy says its natural, it’s no harm, only he stopped him too.”

“And yesterday he ate a caterpillar,” said Ernie gravely. The boys burst out laughing, again holding their sides and each other. “Ooh,” cried Evie, “it’s so dirty, it squidged out. …” They shrieked with laughter. “And Louie ate a snail to show it wouldn’t make you sick,” Ernie said, “and Daddy said it didn’t matter.” Little-Sam dropped suddenly to the ground and began rolling about holding his belly, in a paroxysm of laughter. “We had a good time, Moth, we had such a good time,” Saul said hopping about, trying to convince her she should have been there. “But Louie made some nasty things, and I got sick.”

“I firmly believe that,” Henny said grimly. “It is quite a pity I came home: Mr. Lomasne could have done a nice business in a few days. Evie, why haven’t you emptied the slops? The little boys’ room hasn’t been touched. Has any work been done since I left? You’ll all have cholera or typhoid yet.”

“We have a schedule,” Ernie cried, “and we’re going to make a new bartenoom [bathroom], Moth: and I’m making the frun television.” (The twins chanted, “Front elevation, frun television, from Tilly Buzzum!”) “And next summer, Ermo is going away with his sissy Mervyn for a walking tour,” cried Little-Sam. “Oh, Mervyn the Pervyn sat under a tree, and Ernie the Mernie said, ‘What do I see?’ ”

“You shut up,” said Henny, “before I go mad. I don’t know why I came home. Why isn’t someone doing the potatoes? So you have a schedule? Get out of here before I scream.”

A great shout blew round the house, and they heard the sound of pelting footsteps. Sam was calling, “Kids! Kids and goats! Whistletime! Worktime! Gotta make da layout for da new bartenoom. Whar you got to, fellers?”

“Comin’! I’m a-comin’! O.K., Pad!” shouted the boys, running out and leaving Henny and Evie to get the dinner. Tommy burst in through the other door calling, “Molly! Molly!” looking wildly for the little blonde Lomasne girl; and at the same moment Ernie rushed in through the western door shouting, “I see Auntie Jo’s car! She’s coming to lunch! Auntie Jo’s coming!”

“Go and stop her at the gate and ask her if she got any choc?” shouted Sam. The children rushed off to meet her. Henny worried, “I wonder what the silly old upholstered frump wants at this hour in the day? Does she expect lunch? Did you expect your Auntie Jo? What can she expect coming without notice?” Henny sliced away at the apples anxiously.

“I wish I could go and see her car,” poor Evie pouted. “Look, Moth, I cut my finger.”

“Oh, then go and don’t drive me mad,” cried Henny, more vexed than ever. “God knows what the Man of Sorrows has been up to! What the deuce is his big slummicking sister down here for before lunch?” She went impatiently to the baby’s room to look out and saw Jo in great excitement walking about with Samuel, who seemed depressed; Jo expostulated, was bright with indignation; Sam put his hand to his eyes and brushed them. They turned and came towards the house.

“That’s it,” thought Henny, with indignation, “she pried and poked, and she found out—let the old maid go home, she knows nothing.”

But when the yellow-haired couple came towards her, she saw they were both crying; and Sam said, “We found Bonnie, or rather—she came to Jo.”

“I didn’t recognize her,” said Jo. “I opened the door and there was a terrible-looking woman, thin, with hair in a knot and looking”

“She got a taxi to bring her to Jo’s house because she knew she was going to be ill.” Sam looked humbly at Henny, with a face tortured by shame and distress. “Bonniferous is there now, in Jo’s flat: she had a baby there. I am going up to see the man.”

“Where is the baby?” asked Henny.

“I don’t know,” Jo said.

“It’s dead!”

“I don’t know!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone came and took it away: I don’t know. It wasn’t I that arranged it. I won’t keep her there, either. What am I to say? What can I tell them? She hasn’t even a wedding ring.”

“Where is the baby, Samuel?” Henny asked angrily. “What is it, a girl? A boy?”

“I didn’t look and I didn’t ask. Someone came last night and took it away and it may as well be dead: she will never see it again. I had to pay to have it taken away, and I don’t wish to hear any more about it. I’ve never seen anything like it: she tried to kill herself, and she asked me to kill her. I didn’t know what to do. She kept shrieking so loud you could have heard it a block away, and I tried to keep her quiet by putting a pillow over her mouth, but she was so strong I couldn’t hold her down. They came at the door knocking, too. She got there at four and she kept it up till eleven-thirty, and there was I in jail with this horrible thing going on and people knocking at my door. At last the woman on the floor underneath got her husband to break in the door. She said she would go and get a woman, but I said, ‘I would never allow my sister to be seen like that’; but she went anyhow. Think of my horrible position! She came back with a woman who did something—I don’t know what; I never looked towards her. Then she asked me if she would send the baby away and told me what it would cost. I told her I would never pay for it, I knew nothing about it; but she insisted—I would have to pay for its keep, if there was no father, as it seemed—” Jo’s voice broke in a sob.