The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  He stopped, looking at what he had drawn out of the envelope. It was a triangle of newsprint dragged from yesterday’s paper; round the borders in heavy penciling were insulting words, and part of the message was written across the print.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  He held it close to the ceiling light and made out words,

  “You twofaced son of a bitch, would you like to know who was the dad of your last boy take a look in the internal revenue dept and you’ll learn lots your wife certainly put one over on you you lowdown bastard while you were getting hot with the chink girlies you sap everyone knows it but you who was away ten months you sap Im glad they threw you out on your can even if your wife owes me an everybody in shoeleather pullenty.”

  “What is it, Dad?” (They could see enormity in his face.)

  “It is one of the foulest things on this earth—” He was still puzzling it, hoping to read something different. His hand began to shake.

  “Pad—”

  “Get out!”

  They ran away, looking back over their shoulders with startled eyes.

  “Megalops!” cried Sam. (Megalops, infant crab, was his pet name for Charles-Franklin.) The children hid themselves, with receptive ears, round corners. But after this, Sam was silent. He had sat down on Louie’s bed, doing nothing, apparently thinking, while the lights blazed away, running up the electricity bills.

  It was a strange night: they were put to bed quickly, and Louie, with red eyes, leaned amongst them to tell them the story of Hawkins, the North Wind.

  Evie said, “No, The Spring House! Ooh!”

  Downstairs a great racket was going on, which was nothing but Henny and Sam going it hammer and tongs, with Henny saying, “You’re a sneak and always were,” and Sam shouting, “Indiscriminate sexual relations”; but the children paid no attention to it.

  Tommy shouted, “No, the Indian ghosts!” while Little-Sam called for The Invisible Snake. But Louie, insisting that Hawkins was her new story, because she had just made it up, made it Hawkins.

  “Chawkins?” queried Tommy with his invented foreign accent.

  “One evening in October a black man was working in his potato patch at Jones, over by Rugby Hall; the sun was a flare burning up the trees and smoke and flames came from it. That was because it was cold. Now a withered and warty horse came up through the hill, with a man on its rumpbones; the sun was so low and red, it looked—I don’t know what.”

  “My money box,” said Ernie: “it’s low and red.”

  “It looked like Ernie’s money box. ‘Peaslop,’ said the man on the horse, ‘I’m hungry and thirsty and I got to get down to the water tonight.’ Down by what water? ‘Down by Severnside.’ Then you better get going. ‘No, my horse’s got his night eyes.’ Then stay to supper. ‘Now what you got?’ Got plenty. The shack was all surrounded with garlic on strings and cobs of corn, beans in packets and black walnuts in bags, salt codfish in dozens and smoked shad in strings and black clove hams and black wild cherries. Then Ambrose, the man on the horse, wiped his hand across his mouth like this—whirrsh! (Now, Mrs. Peaslop, you cook a dinner for a man with an empty stomach.) The woman stuck her black head out of the window and yelled,

  “ ‘I lack one thing for my fry, Peaslop.’

  “ ‘And what’s that?’

  “ ‘That s my horse’s mane, man.’

  “The man came up quickly and cut off the horse’s mane and threw it in the kitchen window. The frizzling went on and in a minute the woman looked out and sang out, ‘I lack only one thing for my fry, Peaslop.’

  “ ‘And what’s that?’

  “ ‘That’s horse’s tail, man.’

  “ ‘I got horse’s tail.’

  “And the black man came and grabbed the horse’s tail, cut off a handful, and threw it in the window. The man on the horse’s rump meanwhile had gone right off to sleep, and he nodded, nid-nod, nid-nod, in the slight breeze that was coming up. Then the woman came to the window and yelled (though you couldn’t see her, the night had got so black):

  “ ‘There’s one thing surely I need for my baking, Peaslop.’

  “ ‘And what’s that?’

  “ ‘That’s horse’s warts.’

  “ ‘Now, that’s just what I got,’ said Peaslop, and he cut them off and threw a handful through the window.

  “But the woman yelled, though it was so dark you could see nothing but Peaslop’s eyeballs rolling, ‘There’s one thing would make my stew better, Peaslop.’

  “ ‘And what’s that?’

  “ ‘That’s horse’s hide; I do need that.’

  “So Peaslop took a skinning knife, and he skinned that horse as quick as lightning just as it stood there with its head hanging, asleep in the black night and so quick and smart that the horse didn’t know, but it shivered.

  “ ‘My horse’s catching cold,’ said the man on the horse, Ambrose I mean. ‘His teeth are chattering to themselves.’

  “ ‘Horse’s teeth,’ said Peaslop, ‘why that’s just what would flavor my old woman’s stew,’ and he wrenched out the teeth to stop them from chattering.

  “ ‘And my poor nag’s knees are just knocking together/ complained Ambrose, ‘and every one of his ribs are rattling.’

  “ ‘Now horse’s rib soup would make good stock for my old woman’s stew,’ said Peaslop. Without another word, so dark was it, he stole every horse’s rib and every horse’s shinbone without so much as tipping Ambrose a wink. But he left a hipbone for Ambrose to rest his weary bones upon.

  “ ‘Now, friend Peaslop,’ said the rider, ‘my horse’s flesh, it just quivers and quakes like a jelly without ice; and I’m very much afraid it’s getting colder.’

  “ ‘Then give me that flesh, it certainly will make a good roast for my old woman’s table,’ said Peaslop; and he snatched all the horse’s fine roast from underneath Ambrose, but he still left him a hipbone to sit upon.

  “Well, I don’t know how fine that cooking must have been, that frying and baking and stewing and roasting and broiling and boiling and basting, nor the feasting and guzzling and gourmandizing that followed. Perhaps they would have put up Ambrose for the night and given him his horse hale and whole again in the morning; only just at that moment was a low sighing moan.

  “Ambrose, the horseman, sitting on his hipbone, looked around. He saw the stars and the heads of the woods, he saw the dim shine of water, he saw the track very pale snaking it into the woods, he saw the lamplight falling through the window, and he heard the frizzling and frying, but he didn’t see Peaslop.

  “ ‘Is that you Peaslop? Is that you boy? Where you gone, boy?’ he asked. ‘Is that you crying and moaning, boy?’

  “ ‘No, sir, indeed, that isn’t me,’ said Peaslop. But it was so dark Ambrose couldn’t see Peaslop, not even his rolling eyes. There came another moan, and it didn’t stop. It went on softly, rising and falling, in the depth of the gully but rising more, till it had a high whine like a train under the hill.

  “ ‘Why, it’s nothing but the train going down to Annapolis,’ said Ambrose. Peaslop never said a word. He just breathed hard in the dark and flapped his hands and danced: but the bubbling of the stew in the kitchen went down.

  “ ‘I’m getting pretty cold, friend Peaslop,’ said the man. All this time the moaning and sighing and wheezing went on. It got louder, and animals began to scuttle through the grass. It wasn’t the wind, it was the animals, the groundhog, the weasel, the mouse, the skunk, and perhaps it was Peaslop dancing and flinging his arms. Now the crackling of the oven meat stopped, and it seemed the woman in the house was listening, too. But the moaning and crying went on and it rose always higher till suddenly it ended in a shriek.

  “ ‘Hawkins is calling,’ cried the woman from the window.

  “ ‘Hawkins is calling,’ cried the man from the potato patch. Then he took the hipbone in one hand and hurried to the porch and ran in the door and flung it shut, and the window went down with a bang, and the animals ran
into the wood, and Ambrose sat there in the dark, in the new cold air that was beginning to blow. His horse was gone, and he had to get down to the river that night. He ran and knocked at the door and listened. But there was no sound at all. Then a voice said, “What is it?

  “ ‘It’s Ambrose,’ said he.

  “ ‘What do you want?’

  “ ‘My horse,’ said he.

  “ ‘Oh, call next summer,’ cried Peaslop; ‘we’ll give you some pickings.’

  “Just then Ambrose thought he heard his horse neighing in the potato patch, and he thought he heard him snorting in the woods, and he thought he heard him trampling on the track, and he thought he heard him galloping down the hill; and when he looked back and felt with his hands, the shack had disappeared.

  “ ‘Peaslop,’ he said.

  “ ‘Hawkins,’ cried a voice.

  “ ‘Peaslop,’ he cried, wringing his hands.

  “ ‘Next summer/ said the voice.

  “And the keen north wind came up over the sickly yellow woods, shrieking, Hawkins!”

  Picturing the man on the horse’s rump against the stars, the children lay loosely in the warm night; while things just as queer as Hawkins went on downstairs: Henny, of course, it was not Hawkins shrieking, and Daddy was trying to give away Charles-Franklin, “Megalops.”

  “He is not mine!”

  “He is yours, I’ve told you a thousand times.”

  “How long was it going on?”

  “Don’t be a fool! I can’t stand any more of it; I’ll kill myself. You’re going crazy. No wonder you’re a laughingstock, believing every horrible bit of paper.”

  “There must be some basis for this; is Megalops mine? You haven’t answered me direct.”

  Why was Daddy trying to get rid of Megalops? They couldn’t understand it, but after listening for some time, they were too tired to puzzle over the whims of their fantastic father, and one after the other fell happily asleep. It had been a long and glorious day—Daddy’s birthday, the neighborhood kids, the chasings round the Wishing Tree, their presents to Daddy for which they had saved up so long, and Miss Aiden coming to see them. Then, soon the holidays would be there, and they would have a glorious time, especially as Sam was still at home; and Sam had promised to take them down to Ocean City one day during the summer to see the people and the fishermen.

  “You owe money still in Washington?—Megalops—he came early—who is the man?—” and they were all asleep but Ernie and Louie. Louie stood at her window, listening for a long time to the discussion downstairs (its tone had fallen now), and then she crawled into bed. After a while she lighted the candle she had sneaked upstairs and, pulling her diary out from under the pillow (for she resolved to carry it everywhere with her now), she wrote one line, “Married by misery, seeded by hate, bringing forth screams, feeding in insults.” Tired and fully content, she put out the light, when she heard Evie stir in her corner. Evie’s bed was hidden by the central chimney piece. Louie slipped out of bed, in the dark, and peered round the masonry. Evie was sitting up in bed. “Why aren’t you asleep, Evie?”

  Evie said nothing, but started to sniffle. Louie said sharply, “What’s the matter?”

  “I want to be sick,” said Evie, beginning to cry.

  “You mean in your stomach?”

  “No-ho-ho!”

  “Oh, stop it, you silly girl.”

  Evie began to sob inconsolably, lifting up her head like a little dog about to howl, “Ho-ho-ho!”

  Louie got angry with her, “Tell me what’s the matter? How can I do anything if you don’t tell me?”

  “I don’t know-ho-ho!”

  “I’m going back to bed!”

  “I’m too tired! There’s too much noise.”

  Louie instinctively took a quick step and put her arms round Evie and kissed her on the head, “Shh-shh! Go to sleep. You had too much fun. Ssh!”

  But Evie had opened the sluice gates, “I can’t, I can’t.”

  “Ssh! I’ll tell you a story.”

  This had no effect. Louie continued quickly, “I’ll tell you The Gunny-Wolf. ‘And the little girl went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat!’ ” Evie paused in her sobbing to listen, for this had always been her favorite ritual. “Ugh-huh!” she sobbed. “ ‘And the wolf came galloping pickety-pack, pickety-pack. “Good evening, child!” “Good evening, wolf!” ’ ”

  Presently Evie consented to lie down, and though she listened half resentfully, she stopped crying. Louie got back into bed as soon as she could, for she had to think about Miss Aiden.

  But the strange couple were still blackguarding each other below.

  “I was a goodlooking girl before I met you!”

  “Be quiet: perhaps the children are awake!”

  “Is there anything they haven’t heard? You tell them enough about your women: why can’t they hear what you have to say?”

  “Because I am an innocent father, and you are a guilty wife.”

  There was a cackling laugh, and Henny said, “It’s a dirty lie; who but a dirty liar writes anonymous letters?”

  Sam’s voice said, “Henrietta, I admit I despise the anonymous letter and its author—”

  “But this time it suits you because you’re playing around with one of your childlike souls, one of those innocent girls who go out with other women’s husbands.”

  “Henrietta, I forbid you to talk like that, with your dirty society-woman’s mind!”

  “You think I don’t know about Gillian Roebuck and your secretaries? If you didn’t go to bed with them, you’re worse still, you see, according to the way I was brought up.” Here came Henny’s high chromatic artificial laugh.

  Louie fell asleep. When she woke much later, there was a strange stillness in the house. She could see, through the open door, that the light was still on downstairs. Had they killed each other? She got up and stole to the head of the stairs; there was, in fact, a sort of scuffling, and Louie listened, in sacred terror, leaning on the stairhead: would they do for each other at last, would she come down and find them in pools of blood? She hoped so. She began to think busily—what would they do for food and shelter if both parents were gone? Aunt Hassie would take Evie and perhaps the little one, Chappy; everyone liked Ernie and he could find a home. Old Ellen would take one-there would be homes for all. (The twins were a problem—who wanted to be saddled with two boys at once?) She would, of course, go to the Bakens, live on the banks of the Jordan (the Shenandoah), and get a job watching the river rise and fall, and she would never have to think about the Pollits or Collyers again in her life.

  Henny gave a fretful hysterical laugh, “Oh, leave me alone, you make me sick,” and there was again a violent struggle, and then she heard Sam groan. That was it! She began to creep downstairs, expecting to see Henny kneeling in the lighted common room, with Sam’s old-fashioned razor in her hand and Sam lying on the floor, with a gaping wound in his neck. But there was nobody in the common room. A broken cloisonne vase lay on the floor. Louie stood at the door of Henny’s room for a while with her heart beating fast, and heard Henny weeping, but she did not dare go in and find out if and how murder had been done. She wandered out into the yard, while the breathing, warm, bloody house lay behind her. Presently she came back and crawled back into bed. In the morning she would look: she would be the first to find the bodies; now she was too tired to go through the melodrama of discovery and questions. She went to sleep with visions of herself comforting the children in the morning, running to the neighbors, sending telegrams. So sure was she of her role that when she woke in a sunny morning and heard her father’s crisp, gay voice shouting to the boys, and smelled the customary smell of fire, she thought she was still dreaming. She listened while her heart began to throb again! The night before had been a dream then. She got out of bed and looked out the window: yes, there was Sam as large as life, like a great red and yellow apple bounding about.

  When Louie came downstairs there was a letter for her from Clare (tho
ugh she had seen Clare at school yesterday and would see her today) with writing all over the envelope, in her tiny eccentric scribble. In one corner was written, “Haste post haste!”; in the second, “Oh, Louie, the night is long!”; in a third, “Toothache on the right side, knowing you are off at Spa House, that’s on the left side!” and round the stamp was written in minute letters, “Oh, little stamp, I have writer’s cramp, but I’ll put one thing yet there; though they bar, mark and blur you, don’t let it deter you, just stick till you get there!” On the stuck-down flap was written,

  Pity poor Clare! Her summers are spent

  In thinking of mortgages, paying rent:

  Not so Louie! With curtain furled

  On a stage well set, Lou shook the world!

  The children began gathering round like crabs after a piece of bait, to laugh and peer at Clare’s well-known comicalities. Sam came peering in, laughing, “She must be a nitwit to write to you in the evening when she’ll see you in the morning—why can’t it keep? And you must be a nitwit too: the Amorous Nitwits!” At which everyone crowed with laughter, and Louie laughed till the tears ran down her blushing cheeks. She was laughing to prevent further questions and to avoid saying that she had written Clare a letter in school yesterday afternoon and delivered it herself on the way home. In this letter she had mildly said, “Everyone thinks I am sullen, surly, sulky, grim; but I am the two hemispheres of Ptolemaic marvels, I am lost Atlantis risen from the sea, the Western Isles of infinite promise, the apples of the Hesperides and daily make the voyage to Cytherea, island of snaky trees and abundant shade with leaves large and dripping juice, the fruit that is my heart, but I have a thousand hearts hung on every trees, yes, my heart drips alone every fence paling. I am mad with my heart which beats too much in the world and falls in love at every instant with every reflection that glimmers in it.” And much more of this, which she was accustomed to write to Clare, stuff almost without meaning, but yet which seemed to have the entire meaning of life for her, and which made Clare exclaim a dozen times,