The Man Who Cried Read online

  After what seemed almost a whole day he rose from the ground and began to walk back through the copse and into the hazel wood. His father called it the dirty wood because the trees were thin and jammed together. If the place was his, he’d said, he’d have all these trees down and decent ones planted. But there were decent ones in the big wood which was separated from the hazelnut grove by a right of way that led from well inland through two farms until it came out on the cliff top.

  He stood on the path and looked upwards. The sun was directly overhead, which meant that his father had been gone over two hours. And yet he had imagined it to be much longer. It would be dinner-time, but he didn’t feel hungry and he should do because he hadn’t eaten any breakfast.

  Twice he had heard his mother calling him but he had taken no notice. He wasn’t going to go back into the house until his father returned; that’s if he returned, for although he had gone to the main road to catch the bus into Hastings he had the feeling that he wouldn’t come back that way but would return through the glens, and if he did, this would be the path along which he would come from the top of the cliffs.

  He didn’t know how long he wandered about, sat, lay on the grass both on his back and his face, he was only aware that he was tired of waiting; and he was frightened because he knew he couldn’t follow his father as he didn’t know which way he had gone; and he was frightened too because he must now return home to his mother and her yelling and her talking at him, her face close to his, her mouth opening and shutting and her grey-coated tongue wobbling about in it, and her hand coming across his ear, and the pain going through his nose and into his throat.

  He had actually turned towards home when he saw away along at the far end of the path, where it turned round Farmer Wilkie’s yard, the figure of a man, but it was so far away that at first he couldn’t make out whether or not it was his father. It might be just one of those hikers, or a man on the road begging. There were lots of men on the road begging, but not many came this way, it was too far off the beaten track.

  His heart leapt when he recognized his father while still some long way off. He was walking with his head down. Slowly now he went towards him, but stopped of a sudden when he saw him turn abruptly off the path and run into the wood. He stood still, his head moving in perplexity. Why had he gone into the wood like that? Did he want to go somewhere, the lavatory? Well he wouldn’t have run like that, would he ?

  Jumping a narrow ditch, he, too, went into the wood. The trees were large here, oak and beech, but there was a lot of scrub that had been allowed to grow in between them, mostly brambles and young struggling oaks that had no hope of reaching maturity.

  He made his way in the direction his father had taken and after a while came on him; but he heard him before he saw him and the sound brought his eyes wide, his lips apart and his fingers pressing on them. Carefully he moved in the direction from which the sound was coming, and then he saw him. He had his arms halfway around the bole of an oak tree and he was beating his head against the trunk while he cried aloud.

  The sight and sound was something so painful it was not to be borne; he wanted to turn and run from it but all he could do was

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  bow his head on his chest and stand as if he, like the saplings, had taken root in the earth.

  His father was moaning now, saying over and over again, ”Oh, Alice! Alice! ... Oh, Alice!

  Alice!”

  From beneath his lowered lids he watched his father cling helplessly to the tree now as if he were drunk, then slowly turn around and lean his back against it. The bark of the tree had opened the small cut the jug had made above his eyebrow and the blood was trickling over his eye and down his cheek, but he made no attempt to wipe it away ; he just stood there, his shoulders against the tree, his head moving slowly from side to side, his features no longer expressionless but contorted and so twisted that he appeared at this moment like a very old man.

  Slowly lifting each foot well from the ground, he walked towards his father - he did not want to startle him - but when he reached his side, his father looked at him with no surprise. It was as if he expected him to be there and now he groaned, ”Oh, Dickie ! Dickie !” then dropping on to the ground, he put his arms around him; and the boy hugged his face to his own, and as his father’s tears and blood spread over him there opened in him an awareness of anguish and compassion that should not have been tapped until he had tasted wonder and joy, the natural ingredients of childhood and youth.

  ”Oh, Dad! Dad!”

  ”It’s all right, boy. It’s all right. Here, dry your face.”

  Abel took out his handkerchief and dried his son’s face before drying his own; then holding the handkerchief to his brow to staunch the blood, he asked in a broken voice, ”Been waiting long?”

  ”Yes, Dad; all the time.”

  Abel nodded slowly; then taking the boy’s hand, he rose to his feet and stood looking about him for a moment before he spoke again; and then it was not to his son but more to himself that he said, ”It’s over, finished. Come.”

  Dick didn’t speak, not even to ask one question, on the journey back to the house. He knew that something was going to happen, that his father was going to make something happen, and from his silence he knew it would be something big

  The kitchen door was open. Abel pushed the boy before him and into the room where his wife was sitting at the far end of the

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  bare table. It was as if he had left her presence only two minutes earlier for she started immediately: ”So you went then? Lot of good I hope it did you. You should be ashamed of yourself. If I was to tell Lady Parker the truth you’d be out of a job tomorrow, she would throw you out on your neck.” She paused; then her eyes narrowed before she shouted on a laugh, ”My God! you’ve been cryin’.”

  As if to protect him, Dick pushed his hand back until it touched the front of his father’s thigh and he felt a tremor running through the leg as his mother added now in deep bitterness, ”Y
  ”Shut your mouth !”

  ”What did you say ?” She was on her feet. ^ ”I said shut your mouth. If you don’t I’ll shut it for you.”

  ”You and who else ? I told you what would happen if you ever attempted to lift your hand to me again.”

  ”Perhaps if I lift my hand to you this time, Lena, it’ll be final. I was a conscientious objector in the war, I went to prison because I didn’t believe in killing, but now I’ve changed me mind, in fact I changed it some time ago.”

  During the silence that followed Dick saw fear on his mother’s face for the first time. It caused her to move back a step until she was leaning against the small sideboard, and when his father moved forward one step he grabbed hold of his hand and pressed his nails into his palm. The action seemed to check his father’s movement but his voice went on, and the words coming slow and flat were more frightening than if he too had shouted.

  ”You know how he killed her, but did you know he did it slowly ? He must have thought it all out for he peppered her feet first with shot, and when her brother from next door tried to get in he found the whole place barred. The police even couldn’t get in, for between times he had the gun levelled at them, and he told them what he was going to do to her bit by bit. He next shot her in the stomach.” There was a break in Abel’s voice now, and his lower lip trembled before he went on, ”I don’t know whether she was dead or alive when he emptied the gun into her face. And he did all that, Lena, because of you. Do you realize that? Because of you.” There was a long pause, so quiet that their breathing could be heard; and then he said, ”You were very clever, very thorough, you didn’t send your letters to the house, you sent them to the 12

  shipping company. You did your work well. The only thing you didn’t do was to mention my name. Why ? Because if you had, as you said, those blokes down in the Old Town would have finished me off, an’ you didn’t want that, did you? No, you wanted to
blackmail me for the rest of me life. Well, it’s not going to work, Lena. No, it’s not going to work. And don’t worry” - he put out his hand palm upwards towards her - ”I don’t intend to murder you; what I intend to do you’ll see in a minute.”

  At this he turned about and pushed Dick before him towards the stairs, and when they were on the landing he said hastily, ”Get your things together, boots, clothes. Roll them up as tight as you can into a bundle.” Then going into the bedroom he took down from a peg in the makeshift wardrobe his working clothes, then from a drawer he took underwear and socks and two working shirts, and from under the bed he pulled out a rucksack, and after stuffing the clothes into it he gripped it by the straps and went out on to the landing and into the tiny boxroom that served as a bedroom for his son, and without a word he grabbed up the two sets of underclothes, the two pullovers, socks and shirts that were in neat array on the bed and, stuffing them unceremoniously into the top of the rucksack, he said harshly now, ”Don’t waste time, come on.”

  Dick paused and looked towards the narrow window-sill on which was standing an array of clay birds and animals. Swiftly now his hand went out and grabbed up two ducks, one which was standing on one leg while its other webbed foot scratched its wing, and the second one a smaller model of the same bird, its legs out behind it, its neck craned forward, caught for ever as it would appear while swimming. As he stuffed these one into each pocket of his breeches his father said nothing, but he whipped from the back of the door a small topcoat. Then they were going downstairs again.

  ”What you up to ? What do you think you’re up to ? You’re not goin’ anywhere, an’ you’re not takin’ him with you.”

  ”No? And who’s gona stop me?”

  ”I’ll have the polis on you.”

  ”You do that.”

  ”You can’t leave me, not out here on me own.” She was moving sideways towards the door now, blocking his way. ”You know I can’t work.”

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  ”You can’t work because you’re lazy.”

  ”I’m not lazy. Look how clean I keep this place.”

  ”A child of five could do the work of this place in half an hour. Lady Parker’s been wanting help in the house for years. The kitchen maid’s post is open, she’ll take you on. When you go after the job tell her I’ve left; she owes me three days’ pay.” ’

  ”Damn and blast you! I’ll be no kitchen maid.”

  ”Then you’ll have to starve.”

  ”I won’t starve. By God ! I won’t starve. You’re me husband, you’ve got to support me.”

  ”I’ve done supporting you.” His voice was coming from the scullery now amidst the rattle of pans.

  ”I’ll get you for abducting him.”

  ”I can counter that with the fact that I’m savin’ him from being knocked stone deaf by you.

  You’ve never wanted him and you’ve showed it from the day he was born.”

  He was in the kitchen again staring at her where she was standing in the doorway, and as he looked at her he was seeing her as she had looked ten years ago when at twenty-four she had appeared years younger. She had always managed to look pathetic.

  As a boy he had warned himself not to be taken in by his overwhelming feeling of compassion.

  He had warned himself that compassion was only safe to be bestowed on animals ; yet the devious Lena had recognized his weakness and used it. By God! how she had used it. She had aligned herself with his principles of nonaggression, she had made him feel the big man, the wise man. His disillusion had come so quickly it had been sickening, so much so that for a time he had lost his self-respect and seen himself as a big, gullible fool. Even now the cock in the yard was likely to find itself knocked flying when in the process of treading the hens. All she ever wanted from life was ease, someone to work for her; respectability, oh yes, the respectability of being called missis, this desire having grown in her as the result of her having been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

  And because of her birth and her early environment, at the beginning he had made allowances for her peculiarities, but no amount of talking or reasoning could get it into her head that the sex act was anything but dirty. How he had ever managed to give her a child he didn’t know.

  ”Get out of me way !”

  H

  ”I’ll follow you. I’ll find you. I know where you’re goin’; you’re heading North, back to the scum there.”

  ”That’s the last place I’ll go. Try Canada or Australia or America. . . . Out of me way!”

  When she didn’t move his hand came out like an uncoiling whip and, catching her round the neck, flung her to the side, where she fell into a heap on the floor.

  He stood looking at her for a moment; and now his voice trembling, he said with deep bitterness,

  ”When you’re lying alone up there at nights think of what it would be like to have your body sprayed with buckshot until you died, just think on’t and know that it wasn’t him who did it, but you. You killed them both. . . .”

  His father had already lifted him over the stile when they heard her voice again and Dick knew that if they were to continue straight on towards the road she would catch up with them. The same thought must have been in his father’s mind because, gripping his hand now, he pulled him to the right and so across a stubbled field, then into the hazel wood and on into the big wood; but not straight through it. Twisting and turning and out of breath, they came to a by-road, and here Abel paused a moment and, sitting down on the grass verge, he said, ”I’ll have to spread this load out.”

  When he opened the rucksack the boy saw the pan and kettle and the two tin mugs that had been kept under the sink in the scullery. Presently his father paused in his arranging and looked at him and asked quietly, ”You wanted to come, didn’t you?”

  ”Oh yes, Dad, yes. Oh yes, I want to be with you.”

  ”Good.” He nodded at him, then added, ”I’ll get you a smaller rucksack somewhere along the road and then we’ll be fitted up for tramping, eh?”

  ”Yes, Dad Where we goin’, Dad?”

  Abel rose to his feet, swung the rucksack up and thrust his arms into the straps before saying, ”At the present minute you know as much as I do about that, lad, but wherever we’re going we’ll arrive safe, you’ll see.”

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  «ys later they took the ferry from Gravesend to Tilbury.

  walked through Sussex into Kent and were now about

  They j Essex. Dick was so fascinated by the docks, the ships, the to entf ^at momentariiy he forgot about his skinned heels, his to entf ^at momentariiy he forgot about his skinned heels, his ”anf sj toes, and his tired legs.

  Three nights they had slept out. It was, June and the weather r_jtn. His father had told him last night that they were, after was ^ ,(ig to make for the North because sht wouldn’t believe they

  ^ >!° t’iere now’ ^ut ^y weren’t g°in.g to° far nortn> not to ^yOUi ,]£, which was a river and the place where his grandfather r^TV born. Somewhere in the country, his father had said, had ffiey’d find a farm. He would like that wouldn’t he ? He had whe«;would.

  s ”f hoped it wasn’t a long way to walls because his feet were , He hadn’t told his father about thtf blisters, not the first

  SA SCv^ause ne was a^ra^ t^1 ^ne di^ ^V ^ght go back. Then

  •^ ,.; realized that was silly, his father would never go back. aea/”’/ getting off the ferry, Tilbury proT ed disappointing, flat,

  ’ytiere were a few shops.

  I^’,, went into a café and had a cup of tea and Abel bought

  ’,od, sausages, bacon, lard, potatoes, sugar, tea, and a big

  ^ome, bread. Once clear of the town, Abe] picked a place where oa l” i make a fire and brew up, and then fry sausages and bacon.

  cc:f their fill. And when the meal was finished and the uten-

  •1H;’ keen cleaned witn newspaper and stowed away in the
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  s jis Abel sat down on the grass and, taking his son’s hands f11^; -e said, ”We’ve crossed the river, w.e’re never going back.

  I”, ^.fig to be a new life for you and me, Dickie. You under-

  it S t- t,

  Sta£f,:’0y nodded at him, then asked a question that had been in 16

  ,j y

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  his mind for the last day or two. ”Will I ever go to school again, Dad?”

  ”Why, of course you will. Once we get settled you’ll go to school, boy; and you’ll learn. You’ll learn quick; you’ll make up for lost time because you’ve got it up top, not like me, my brains are in my hands.” He unloosened his grasp and looked at his hands, turning them first one way and then another. Then as if to himself, he said, ”I could have done things with them, with training I could, carved things, got somewhere.”

  ”You make lovely animals, Dad. Look at me ducks.” He now reached over into his rucksack and, unfolding a small cotton vest, he revealed the two ducks lying as if in a nest, and his father, lifting the tiny model of the scratching duck on to his palm, nodded at it as he said, ”It’s got life but it’s only in clay, ordinary river clay. It was never fired; it’s a wonder it’s stood up to your handling all this time.” He smiled at his son, then handed him back the model and, getting to his feet, said, ”Well, let’s see this fire is well and truly out, and then on our way again. Your feet feel any better?”

  ”Yes, Dad, a bit.”

  ”Don’t worry, they’ll harden; the more you walk the easier it’ll be. And we won’t be walking all the time; I’ll get work on the way and you’ll be able to take it easy.”

  ”How long will it take us to get there, to the North, Dad ?”

  ”Oh, it all depends on what jobs I get on the way. A month, two; but we’ll be settled before the winter sets in, don’t worry. Come on.”

  As they entered Brentwood it began to drizzle and they took shelter in a church porch. There Abel took out a tattered map and having studied it, looked down at Dick and said, ”We’ll make for Cambridge.”