“Not now, it’s all over,” Ernie said.
Sam laughed, “All right: whatever you say.”
Now the twins came back and Saul said, “Pad, can Little go and have a shower now?”
Louie came to the back door and shouted indignantly, “Now Mother fainted! It’s your fault.”
“Good heavens, you mean wretch!” said Sam. “You’d think she enjoyed it! Can’t Little-Sam use his own tongue to ask his little father for a shower?”
Little-Sam said nothing.
“Eh?” inquired Sam, “did he cough up his tongue, too?”
“He’s got fish in his mouth,” said Saul.
At this the children burst out laughing excitedly again, and Sam had the sense to send Little-Sam away, for he saw that he was working up to a roar of misery. The old shower room opened on to the new cement yard. They could see the two butter-yellow boys standing under the shower, both scrubbing away at Little-Sam’s body and hair. Meanwhile Sam sat down to wait for lunch.
“Too much trubsy, love,” he said to Little-Womey, “do myed, love.” While she stroked his head, he watched the twins with pleasure and directed their operations.
“Drop your clobber [clothes] in the cornder, it’s washday tomorrow: rub yourself down. Twins is queer cattle,” he continued in a low tone to Evie, “there’s no hegsplaining twins. (Little-Sam, don’t make yourself too clean, you can get inside the copper and clean it after lunch: it’s very convenient.) Twins are not two children, but one, you see, love: one egg that has split and become two of the same. Twins have always known each other from the same moment, from the day they were jellies: yiss, love, Castor and Pollux were jellies and sardines and lizards and funny monsters all the time together; they had to fight for their life at the same time and came into the world at the same time, only twenty minutes’ difference.”
Ernie came up inquisitively, “And if one twin has a pain in his leg, the other feels it too: a boy at school got hit in the leg with a ball, and his brother had a pain,” he laughed.
“Wery inconwenient,” said Sam, “but wery mysterioso. But they mustn’t be sissies, just the same, neither one nor the other.”
Although they scrubbed the copper out with soft sand and kitchen powder, they could not get out the fish smell. It was in all the cracks of the old cement floor, in the hairy timbers of the walls and shelves, in the chimney, the washtubs, the mangle, wringer, clothes boxes, and the dirty clothes. The fourteen bottles were greasy with it; and Sam, at last giving up the job of cleaning, decided to try a few experiments with the oil first drawn off, from which a sediment was now drifting down. He oiled the bike with it, wiping off the excess on various bits of rag, oiled his old brown tramping shoes, cracked and stiff with spring mud, rubbed down a few bits of old iron going rusty, massaged Tommy’s legs to see if it would keep off the blains he usually got in spring, and sent in a bottle of the best to Henny to tell her to try cooking with it. After this, he suddenly felt very tired and said he must have a snooze before he went up on the roof again.
The sun had come out hot again; and the house settled down to a needed siesta, by which time the heavy reek of fish oil rose up, swirled quietly round, and invaded the timbers of the house. One marlin had been enough, with their kneading, manuring, trotting about, plastering, oiling, and dripping, to give Spa House a scent of its own for many years to come. When they were all resting, prior to the four o’clock snack, Henny came downstairs in one of her silk dressing gowns, to look round. At least they had cleaned the copper, and perhaps it was imagination when she thought she smelled it in everything. On the shelf in the washhouse were bottles neatly labeled in Sam’s capitals: FISH-FRY, BIKE-OIL, MARLIN-BALM, MACHINE-OIL, HAIR-OIL, LEATHER-GREASE; OIL, OIL, OIL on the rest. When she went back upstairs, she was conscious of the rich rotten smell and the softness of it in her hair; there was a faint mark already on the pillow where she had lain and a greasy finger mark on the library book. She lifted her old slippers and smelled it on their sodden soles; there was a dark mark on the light gray silk hem. Just when she had reached this point in her examination, Evie came panting up the stairs, holding a little medicine bottle in her hand.
“Daddy says, you can use this instead of cold cream: he says please try it, because whale oil is very good for the skin.”
Henny took it without a word and stood in the doorway while Evie deprecatingly climbed downstairs again. Then she marched into Louie’s room to show the girl how impossible her father was. Louie was stretched out on her unmade bed, dead asleep, with her legs resting high up on the back of the bed, and a book open on her chest.
4 A headache.
Henny frowned at the streaky creek through the window and turned back to her room, pulling the door after her. She began going through bundles of papers and old letters that she pulled out from long-closed drawers.
A telephone ringing without answer presently woke the house. Ernie came panting upstairs, excited, “Moth, it’s Miss Wilson, Tommy’s teacher.”
“Tell her I’m out.”
“She says to say can she see you for a minute if she comes over?”
“Tell her I’m out.”
“O.K.”
At the same time she heard Sam shouting outside, “Hey, Tommo! Your teacher is coming to pay us a visit.”
“Oh, keep your sticky beak out,” muttered Henny miserably. Louie, who had awakened, wanted to know if Miss Wilson was coming: “No, no, no, no,” Henny said.
Then there was Sam questioning Ernie in the hall and, “Your mother told you to tell a lie and you told it, despite what I’ve told you?”
Then some muttering. “More trouble,” said Henny to Louie. “Why doesn’t he drop down dead? Was he sent by God to worry women?”
Then Ernie coming upstairs and saying, “Mother, Daddy says you are not to make us tell lies,” with a very frightened face; and Henny screaming at Sam over the balustrade, and Sam shouting, “Shut up.”
Ernie was stuck on the stairs between them but Louie withdrew backwards into her room.
“You wanted to see the old maid so you could pour your woes into her ears,” Henny cried; while Sam, pushing Ernie aside, started to come upstairs, saying in a deep voice that she must close her trap.
But Henny went on laughing, “You can’t shut me up now. You want the truth, let it be the truth: he only wants the truth, but he wants my mouth shut. Why don’t you leave me alone? This is my house. Go and sit on the beach with your clothes. I’m sick and tired of washing the fish out and your dirty papers full of big talk.”
“Henny,” said Sam sullenly, “you be quiet or leave my house. I have the whiphand now, owing to your own deed; if you do not get out, I will put you out by the force of law.”
She screamed hoarsely, “You get out of here, get out, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you; you’ve only been waiting for this like a great foul monster waiting, sneaking, lying in wait to take my children away. If you touch them I’ll kill you: if you try to put me out, I’ll kill you.”
She turned quickly to Louie, who was standing thoughtfully in the doorway, and shouted, panting, “Louie, don’t you ever let a man do that; don’t you ever do what his women are doing—a woman’s children are all she has of her body and breath, don’t let him do that, Louie, don’t let him do that. He has been waiting for years to snatch them from me; now the dirty wretch has been watching me and thinks he has an excuse. Don’t let him.”
She picked up a slipper which had stood on the washstand since she had smelled the fish oil on the sole and rushed at him to strike him in the eyes with the heel. He seized her arm and tried to bend it down. “Put that down, you fool, you madwoman,” he bellowed. “You’ll push me downstairs, Henny—look out!”
“I’ll kill you,” she panted, “I’ll push you downstairs, I don’t care if I go too. I’ll break your neck.”
She suffocated, struggled as he put his large hand over her mouth, bit it.
“Henny, Henny,” he cried in desperation himself, �
�shut up. Don’t let our children hear.”
She tore the hand away in a violent spasm. “You rotten flesh,” she screamed, insane, “you rotten, rotten thing, you dirty sweaty pig. pig. pig.” She vomited insults in which the word “rotten” rose and fell, beating time with it.
“Henny, shut your foul mouth.” He let go of her and flung away to the doorway of Louie’s room, himself revolted by her and the terrible struggle.
The children who had crept into the hall below stood rooted to the floor, listening to this tempest, trembling. Louie sank down on her bed in a stupor, her heart beating hard. It was not the quarrel, nor even the threats of murder, but the intensity of the passions this time that stifled them all. And why, out of a clear sky? They never asked any reasons for their parents’ fights, thinking all adults unreasonable, violent beings, the toys of their own monstrous tempers and egotisms, but this time it seemed different.
Henny was shrieking, “Ernest, Ernest, Louie, your father’s struck me; come and save me, Ernest, your father’s killing me, he’s trying to kill me, help—”
Louie started up and rushed out into the hall, “Leave her alone.”
“Henny, Henny, be quiet, or I’ll knock you down,” shouted the desperate man.
She rushed to her window, which was at the back nearest a neighbor (though that was still a hundred and fifty yards distant), and cried, “I’ll call Mrs. Paine: I’ll tell everyone in the street, and you won’t get away with this, you rotten foul murderer. You think you’re so fine with your bragging and science and human understanding—oh, I’ve heard all about it till I could scream myself insane with the words; and you can run everything, and world problems, when all the time it’s other women, you hypocrite, you dirty, bloodless hypocrite, too good, other women, scientific women, young girls, and your own wife—I’ll write to all your scientific societies, I’ll write to the Conservation Department, I’ll tell them what my life has been—beat me, knock me down, I can’t stand it. You threaten but do nothing, nothing to give me a chance, to get out, not till you’ve got something on me to steal my children: you won’t—you won’t—I’m going to kill them all, I’ll kill them all tonight, I’ll pour that stinking oil on fire down your throat and kill my children, you won’t get them—there’ll be a sight tomorrow for the people to see: try to explain that away, try to explain it to God or in hell, wherever you go—”
“Louie,” said Sam sternly, “go and throw cold water over your mother; go and force her to be quiet. If she sees you—” But Louie had only entered the room, in her confused, embarrassed way, when Henny turned to her and began to vociferate abominable insults, and pushed her out of the room after which she locked the door, and shouted through the door, “I’m going to kill myself; tell your dirty father to go downstairs. I’ll kill myself, I’ll do it: I can’t stand it any longer.”
“Mother, Mother,” called Louie.
Ernie had come upstairs and now rushed to the door and beat on it, crying out, “Mother, don’t, don’t, please.”
Henny was silent. Louie sobbed brokenheartedly against the door, and Ernie seemed to have lost his wits. He sank to her feet and blubbered there.
“She won’t do it,” said Sam nervously.
They heard the children whimpering downstairs, and Sam with a gesture sent Louie down to them, but she clung to the door, “No, no, Mother, don’t!”
Suddenly, they heard the bolt being drawn: Henny stood there with chalk-white face, her great eyeholes, coal-black, “Get out of here, you lot of howlers, leave me alone.”
“Henny,” said Sam; but at that she screamed in such a fury, “If you speak another word to me in your life, I’ll slit my throat the same minute,” that they all retreated, leaving her again behind the bolted door.
There she stayed for hours. Louie, creeping breathlessly up the stairs, avoiding the creaking boards as well as she could, heard the tearing of papers stop and Henny call out, “Who’s that spying on me now?” and then would ask feebly, “Can I get you a cup of tea, Mother?” until Henny at last answered, “Yes, I’ll take a phenacetin: this headache is killing me.”
Louie saw her mother at last. Henny was dressed, as if to go to town, but only snarled when Louie showed her surprise. There was a smell of fire at which Sam bolted upstairs to thunder on the door and ask (without response) what Henny was doing; and at last, Henny came downstairs with her hat on, an old red hat, left over from the previous summer. At once Sam barred her way, asked her where she was going, if she was coming back to her home again, and particularly ordered her not to show herself in the streets, looking like a hag of eighty in that skittish little hat. Then he snatched it from her head. At once Louie ran up, full of indignation, calling upon Ernie to defend his mother, but Ernie was too overwhelmed to know how or when to defend her. As she at last ran jerkily down the avenue, in a black hat, sobbing and trying to fix the collar of her blouse, Ernie ran after her with a very pale, working face, to ask if she was going to come home again.
“I don’t know,” she replied stonily.
“Won’t I ever see you again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mother,” he burst out crying, buried his face in her waist, “are you going to kill the children?”
“Don’t be a fool; I’ll leave that to your father.”
“You won’t give me my money back, Mother?”
“Do you think I have any money, you poor wretch? I don’t know if I have any. Perhaps I’ll have to beg on the streets to get my train fare; perhaps I’ll have to go on my knees to Jim Lomasne to get a dollar; perhaps I’ll have to scrub a floor first for his wife. Where do you think money comes from? I’ll never be able to pay you any money in your life, Ernie, and you may as well get used to the idea now. I’m broke, so dead broke that I don’t know where to turn; I’m out of my mind, Ernie, and don’t pay any attention to what Mother says.”
“You won’t pay me,” he said, hanging on to the stuff of her dress, “Mother, you owe me so much, five dollars and eighty-nine cents. I can’t save it up any more, we’re so poor.”
“You poor wretch,” she said, bursting into tears, “you poor sniveling little kid: why do you have to get into my messes? Well, it makes me feel so rotten—go on, go away, go back.”
“Are you going to beg for money, Mother?”
“Yes,” she cried impatiently, “yes, yes, I am: I’m going down in the dirt. Now, leave me alone. Go back and tell Louie to give you something to eat.”
She forced him away at last and in great trembling herself made her way along the street. Ernie and Louie watched for a long time but did not see her cross the bridge. Louie was afraid she had gone to drown herself.
However, late that night, Henny did return, and no sooner was she in the house than Sam, fresh and angry, began a great scene asking where she had been; but to this he got no response. The children were asleep, but not so Louie. She was afraid that the man and woman would kill each other: yet the quarrel dragged on, with its long tedious conversations and spurts of drama, all through the night. She would hear Henny drinking tea, or Sam drinking coffee; each would retire to a separate room, but would come out again, to rage again, first one, then the second, as if they could never have enough of this rage.
“I look awful,” thought Louie, “and it is because I have no decent home; and the children are all getting sulky-looking too, except Evie, and she’s going to be browbeaten for life. They’re too cowardly to separate. If I killed them both we would be free. The only thing is, I don’t want to go to jail, I must get through school and go on the stage, so I have to go to dramatic school. All this quarreling and crying is just ruining my face for the stage too. I’m pretty stupid though, clumsy that is, and I’d be sure to make a mess of things, if I killed them with a knife. There would be the fingerprints and blood marks; I know myself, I’d never get rid of them, and I’d be sure to give myself away after. The thing to
do is to do something that is sure but looks like an accident. Poison! Permanganate, the thing that girl killed herself with when Uncle Barry left her with a baby, that’s no good; carbolic acid neither, because of the pain and the length of time. There is that cyanide, but it’s so quick—”
She paused for a while to wonder about the cyanide, frightened of it because it seemed too simple and quick. She went on to think that if the cyanide worked she would then have a houseful of children on her hands, have to explain things: “How did it happen?” “I don’t know; I wasn’t there!” “Where were you?” “In bed: Mother was making the morning tea.” (Absurd! How could she slip down unobserved, and slip upstairs into bed again, and yet be sure that none of the children got the cyanide?) No, “How did it happen?” “I was making the tea, and saw Mother slip something into the cup but thought it was for her headache.” (Absurd! The children would recognize the cyanide bottle, and she certainly would.) No.
The Man Who Loved Children Page 57