I should probably say i've no desire to stir up a witch-hunt or make an already unhappy man's life any harder than it is, but i feel i have to share this here as i need some objective opinions.
As a few MNers will know, dh, dd (3.8) and i have been living in a small coastal village on the edge of the known universe for the past year. There are a few 'characters' shall we say, one of whom is a widower in his 60s whom various villagers have described to me as 'a bit odd, since his wife died 8 yrs ago and he's had to bring up 2 boys by himself'.
His kids are now in their mid-teens and known locally as giving him a pretty tough time. Obviously all this must have been incredibly hard for him to deal with, and it's no wonder they have had their problems growing up, considering what they've been through.
What worries me is that this man seems increasingly obsessed with dd. At first it was something you could laugh off; if he stopped dead in his tracks passing our house and said to another passer-by 'Look at that hair!' 'Look at that hair!'(she's a redhead) whilst staring at her , i'd just end up thinking 'that's just old Dave' (as i'll call him for argument's sake) but soon it became him stopping us, quite agressively (his social skills are pretty nonexistent) and demanding to know her name, where she went to nursery, etc etc. When i challenged him (quite tactfully) as to why he wanted to know all these things, he said 'Oh, i like to know about all the children in the village'. Which made me vaguely uneasy.
Now every time we pass him in the street he stares and stares at her like she's some small kind of prey. He only lives round the corner but he seems to walk up and down our road even more than you'd expect. Quite often, as he did this morning, he'll announce 'here she is!' as he sees her, with really victory in his voice, not in the way a kindly relative might to a small child he knows well. as in he's been walking up and down, waiting to see her (or so it seems to me, admittedly my late pg hormones could be blowing this out of all proportion, as it does seem to have escalated since he announced he had found out i was pregnant, but that's another story).
A couple of weeks ago, he came round to the back of our house (we're end of terrace) saying he'd been looking for one of our neighbours. dh said the bloke in question wasn't in, and tried to engage him in polite conversation about his other interest, bird watching. He didn't really respond to these overtures but replied very abruptly, staring up at the house 'Where is she?'. Dh was a bit taken aback and mumbled something like, 'er she's just playing...' then tried to change the subject. Dave returned to the subject of dd again 'it's amazing when you see little children and they're just so full of life' and in the next breath 'I think about death a lot, since my wife died. When you see old people, and they haven't got much hair, sometimes you can see a trace of the child they used to be...' Dh faltered and tried again to change the subject. Dave replied, again staring up at our house 'Hmm, how many bedrooms has this house got?' At this point i was listening to the exchange and it occured to me, maybe he was trying to work out which bedroom was dd's so i interjected with 'what an odd question!' before dh could tell him it only had 2. What gets me is there's no facade of friendliness towards dh (or me particularly, he actually seems to look at me like i'm a nuisance and never addresses me) he's very direct about the fact he's only interested in dd.
After he'd gone, i mentioned my uneasiness to dh and he agreed it had been a particularly odd conversation 'even for him'. We decided to keep a civilised distance from him from then on, however it doesn't seem to have deterred the bloke from just 'being there' almost every time we venture out. If we drive past him he just stares and stares into back of the car. I can't quite describe his look, but it chills me to the bone.
I'm nearly 7 months pregnant, dependant on waddling up and down on public transport with her during the week, and feeling pretty vulnerable, i suppose. I've lost count of the number of seemingly 'close to the bone' comments he's made about her over the months and it's freaking me out. I'm sure you'll all knock some sense into me anyway. I should add that like most mums i'm well used to dd getting all the attention from passers by and being made a fuss of generally (it's largely a retirement village, so you can imagine) but this feels very different somehow.