Free I'm Dying Laughing by Christina Stead Page B

Perhaps the landscape and thick bit of woodland could not be fitted into these long but too narrow windows—something of the air of a citadel hung about the place.
    ‘A nice little shack situated in its thousand-acre backyard,’ said Emily.
    ‘Three hundred acres,’ said Stephen, ‘unless you’re counting the lake, not ours yet! Actually Anna is thinking of selling off twenty acres so that neighbours, the Littles, can get to their stables from the road.’
    ‘I’m simply not telling my folks anything about this. They wouldn’t believe it. Not for Flop-eared Emily, the family white elephant. Supposing I told them that this slum was occupied by a red, someone with his name at the masthead of the leading conspiratorial weekly, an agitator mumbling slogans to truck drivers, taking down in shorthand the beefs of striking seamen about pork chops—that’s what you do, isn’t it? Clasping the horny hands of the sons of Casey Jones, pulling the forelock to the Central Committee—they know I’m a liar, but they’d think I was mad. For journalism is one thing, but reality—no.’
    ‘Well, we will manage without troubling their dreams.’
    ‘Yes—but Stephen, listen, last night I had an idea! About Lennie.’
    ‘Who’s Lennie? Oh, yes, the Irish lad, possible nephew.’
    ‘Well, we’ll see if he exists. We’ll ask him over. They haven’t room. He can stay with us. It will cost less, too. He won’t take up room. He’s only four.’
    ‘H’m. Wait a bit.’
    They got an apartment on Twelfth Street, three rooms in a row, bath at the side, kitchen at the back. They divided the big front room with a large steel Venetian blind; they furnished the place and bought a Chinese carpet which Emily called ‘tray raffeenay,’ and went to work. Emily joined the Communist Party, went to classes for new members, stifled what she called her ‘ignoramus objections,’ read serious books, sold newspapers, and attended meetings; a very serious learner.
    Stephen even tried to restrain her. But she was in a fever. ‘I must learn all, everything—for the truth will make us free.’
    ‘We will see what the truth will do to us,’ grumbled Stephen.
    Stephen had first married Caroline, a young heiress. Her will left everything to her daughter, Olivia, now aged two. Part was to come to her on her sixteenth birthday, the rest at twenty-five. Meanwhile, the trustee, Anna, paid out of the estate all her expenses. Caroline, knowing her death to be near, had also asked Florence, Stephen’s sister, to take care of the baby girl; for Stephen, she said, did not understand children and had an indecisive nature.
    ‘Why did Caroline disinherit you?’ asked Emily, ‘disregarding the gracious words about understanding children, for the moment.’
    ‘I had my allowance. She was afraid I would become a drone, an idler, a rich louse and she had an ambitious conscience. She wanted to do me good; she wanted me to have a clean name. Even at noonday she saw the red muckraker in the shadows. You must understand that we, the Howards, are mentioned in The Jungle, under another name of course; but every social-minded citizen knows. And we all know. I think she married me to keep me straight. She didn’t want a servant, a class enemy in the house. She wouldn’t cook or clean for me, because I didn’t do the same for her. I pointed out that we would be in each other’s way dusting; but she thought I was unserious. She threw herself into social work to forget the misfit at home; she got her MA, studied law, to fight class injustice. We lived in a California bohemia, marched for causes with placards, threw parties for Negroes, Mexicans and others who had no reverence for our coronets and kind hearts; they simply drank up the hooch, went away and forgot our names.’
    ‘I can’t understand,’ said Emily, ‘why you rich are all such do-gooders. Not one in my bailiwick. Arnold’s just a Village Pink. The rest discuss the baseball scores over the