Everything and Nothing

by Araminta Hall

  Christian toyed with the idea of telling her that Betty still never slept through the night or that Hal had never eaten one morsel of food even though he was nearly three and existed on an average of about twenty bottles a day. But it seemed too much of a betrayal to his family, as if sitting with Sarah wasn’t enough.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘It’s been great, but I’ve got a meeting at three and, you know . . . ’

  ‘Oh yes, okay.’

  It was awkward leaving. Neither of them knew how to end it. Christian saw a pigeon with a broken leg in the gutter as they were saying goodbye and it looked so miserable he wanted to find a brick and bash it over the head. Its grey feathers were matted and it had a bald patch on its back and he worried that it had been abandoned by the other pigeons. As he watched Sarah walk away self-consciously he hoped she was leaving his life.

  On his way back to his offi ce Christian checked his phone and saw he had three missed calls from Ruth. There would be a certain irony to something bad happening to a member of his family while he was having a disastrous lunch with his old affair. He called her back immediately and she answered in two rings.

  ‘Ruth, what’s wrong?’

  Her voice cracked as soon as she heard him. ‘Oh God, it was awful. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages.’

  ‘What was?’ Panic rose like bile in his chest as he depicted terrible fates befalling his children, each racing heartbeat showing him a different image of terror.

  ‘The nutritionist.’

  He relaxed. ‘Oh, of course, what did he say?’

  ‘I can’t talk now. You know, little ears and all that.’ Her voice shook and he could almost see her trying to hold herself together for the sake of the kids. She’d done a lot of that when Hal was a newborn baby. ‘I wish I hadn’t gone, though. The whole day’s been a disaster. I don’t know if I can do this any more.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Be a mother.’

  ‘Come on, Ruth, calm down. Why don’t we go out to dinner tonight and talk about this properly, see if Aggie can babysit?’

  ‘I’m so tired, I don’t know if I’ve got the energy.’

  ‘Come on, just somewhere local. It’d be good for you.’

  Ruth sniffed heavily down the phone. ‘All right.’

  The death of the Brat had been a bad omen. Betty’s hysterics had only gathered momentum the further they got away from the scene of the crime. Nothing Ruth could say would calm her down so that by halfway there Ruth thought she might have a panic attack. The walls of the tube were too tight a fit and she was acutely aware of the bumps and grinds of the tracks. She wondered what she was doing, taking her children on this hurtling mass of metal deep underneath London. Everything seemed terrifying.

  Betty had reduced herself to dull whimpering by the time they arrived in Oxford Circus but she was petulant and stroppy and hung off the buggy like a damp rag. The street was thronged with young girls waltzing carefree into Topshop, their skinny hips unscarred by child-bearing. Any of them could have been Viva models and yet the magazine was aimed at women like her. Well, not like her. Viva women juggled everything successfully, whilst also looking flawless.

  The nutritionist’s offi ce was in a thin, tall building between Oxford and Regent Street and looked as imposing as a giant headmaster. Ruth had expected to press a buzzer and be shown up to a floor, but she was able to walk straight in and up to the reception desk because the nutritionist seemed to command the whole building. The receptionist gleamed, like a woman in a cosmetic surgery advert in the back of a magazine. Ruth felt grimy and under-nourished as she said Hal’s name.

  Dr Hackett’s offi ce was bigger than her sitting room and furnished in a parody of the image of a successful private doctor, with gilt-framed paintings, a large well-polished wooden desk and two deep leather armchairs positioned on either side. He sat in front of two floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a private garden which seemed an impossibility in the middle of the city. Ruth couldn’t hear any traffic noise.

  Ruth had fixed Dr Hackett in her mind as a friendly, slightly hippyish but very posh man with longish grey hair and gangly legs which he would cross and uncross incessantly. Never had he been a paunchy older man with spectacles on the end of his nose and a ludicrously expensive-looking three-piece tweed suit. He also shouldn’t have been sitting on the other side of a heavy desk and he shouldn’t have looked so bored by the whole encounter.

  As she sat down, Ruth could see herself and her children through his eyes so exactly the recognition hurt. Betty’s face was smeared and dirty and blotchy from the excess of tears; Hal looked nonplussed, stuck to her hip with a bottle in his mouth; and she looked too thin, with straggly hair and an air of neurosis resting on her like most women wore perfume. I’m not really this person, she wanted to say, you’ve just caught me on a bad day.

  ‘So, Mrs Donaldson,’ he said, ‘what seems to be the problem with your son?’

  Ruth immediately felt defensive. ‘I don’t know if it’s a problem.’

  The doctor sighed. ‘If it’s not a problem, then can I ask what you’re doing here?’ He made her feel stupid just as she supposed he’d meant to. She wondered how on earth he had ended up being a nutritionist.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just meant we don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Please, put that down.’ Ruth jumped, only then noticing that Betty was pushing an enormous glass paperweight perilously close to the edge of the desk.

  ‘God, Betty, what are you doing?’ she shouted. Betty’s lip started to tremble. ‘Sorry,’ she said to the doctor. ‘Hal has never eaten anything solid. Ever. He lives on bottles of milk.’

  ‘How many does he have a day?’

  The truth seemed suddenly untenable in this pristine office and so Ruth pointlessly lied. ‘About ten.’

  ‘At least they’re sustaining.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s nearly three.’

  The silence was broken by the sound of Hal’s sucking. It could have been funny.

  ‘Do you offer him food?’

  ‘Every day. Every meal.’

  ‘Do you eat with him?’

  Ruth rubbed the side of her neck. ‘No, not often.’

  The doctor wrote something down. ‘Do you work?’

  ‘Yes, but my nanny is brilliant. She knows what to do. In fact, she’s recently planted a vegetable garden which Hal helped with because she read that if you get kids to see the whole process of growing food, they’re more likely to eat it.’

  ‘That’s not a theory I’m aware of.’

  ‘It’s not just Hal’s garden. I helped too,’ said Betty, slipping from her chair onto the floor and starting to cry. Ruth decided to ignore her.

  ‘And how’s the rest of his development?’

  Ruth estimated she had about ten minutes before Betty launched into a full-scale tantrum. ‘It’s not great. He’s well behind where Betty was at this age. His speech is still quite limited and he doesn’t have many friends.’ Ruth thought she might cry. Her stomach felt as though it had been clasped in a vice.

  ‘Were you aware that refusal to eat can sometimes be a symptom of more serious physiological disorders?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. Do you think Hal’s got something like that?’ She heard the pitch of her voice rising.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I have no reason to suspect that at the moment, I’m just saying it might be something we should explore further down the line.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Betty, from under the chair.

  ‘But are there any tests we can run?’

  ‘Not yet, Mrs Donaldson. One step at a time.’

  You can’t do that, Ruth wanted to shout. You can’t dangle a piece of information like that and not follow it up. She wanted to stand up and shake the stupid man until he told her every possibility.

  ‘Have you tried not giving him bottles?’

  ‘No. My husband did suggest that, but it seemed too cruel.�
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  Dr Hackett looked at her over his glasses and a look of pure contempt clouded his features. ‘Cruel to be kind, I’d say.’

  ‘Mummy, I want to go. You said I could get a new Brat.’

  Ruth looked down at her daughter sprawled on the floor, her face turning red as she worked her way up to a howl and momentarily hated her. ‘Not now, Betty, I’m talking. You won’t get a new Brat unless you behave.’

  ‘Do you work full time, Mrs Donaldson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you heard of separation anxiety?’

  ‘Well, sort of.’ Of course, of course. How stupid of her not to realise that this too was going to turn out to be her fault.

  ‘When did you return to work after Hal was born?’

  ‘He was about five months.’ Ruth nearly apologised but managed to stop herself. She felt very hot.

  ‘Five months is a bad age to be separated from the mother,’ said Dr Hackett. ‘There are lots of key developmental stages that can get missed.’

  Ruth’s mouth was dry. ‘Really?’ Why didn’t he ask when Christian had gone back to work or how much he was at home? Or if he had fucked his secretary whilst she was pregnant?

  Betty was wailing. Ruth had a terrible urge to kick her. It reminded her of how she had lain in bed next to them when they were tiny newborn babies and wondered how she would stop herself smothering them with a pillow or throwing them across the room. It wasn’t that she had wanted to do it, in fact the opposite had been true. But it had seemed so unlikely that she was up to the responsibility it would take to sustain and nurture a whole life. Hal had fallen asleep on her shoulder and she could feel the sweat from his head seeping into her shirt.

  ‘Are you going to do anything about her?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘I’m afraid she has these tantrums. There’s not much you can do.’

  She could see the doctor abandoning them to their fate. ‘The best I can suggest for now is that you start limiting his bottles. Stop offering him food. Then, when he gets hungry, give him some things he’d like. Biscuits are good, or chocolate cereal. The important thing is to get him eating, we’ll worry about the nutritional side later.’ He was having to shout now to be heard.

  Ruth stood up. She had received the same advice from her very understanding GP, but she couldn’t take good advice even when it was given freely and without prejudice. Her limitations were stifling. She lugged Hal over to his buggy and strapped him in, then went to Betty and pulled her up by the arm, dragging her across the floor. It took all her energy to stop herself from smacking her daughter across the face.

  ‘That sounds sensible. I’ll get right on to it.’

  Dr Hackett was open-mouthed and Ruth presumed he had never seen a family like hers.

  ‘Come back and see me in a month,’ he said, recovering his composure. ‘Verity will make you an appointment.’

  ‘Yes, fantastic.’ Ruth was manoeuvring herself out of the door, one hand pushing the buggy and one dragging the hysterical Betty. ‘And I’m so sorry about this.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d be best advised to leave her with your amazing nanny next time,’ said Dr Hackett as she shut the door.

  Ruth didn’t bother to speak to the gleaming Verity as she left. Betty was by now screaming for a Brat. Ruth bent down next to her daughter and hissed, ‘You are not getting a Brat. I told you to behave and you didn’t. We are going home.’

  Betty wailed harder. ‘I hate you, Mummy. I hate you.’

  White specks danced in front of Ruth’s eyes and she was painfully aware of her own heartbeat. I hate you too, she wanted to scream at her daughter, as she’d once seen a mother say to her child in the playground. Big red buses roared past her and glass shop doors swished to and fro as customers ebbed and flowed. People bustled past, tutting at the woman unable to control her children on the pavement. A thin man with a massive placard reading ‘Golf Sale’ brushed past her and she caught the pity in his eyes. The ground vibrated beneath her feet, sound coming at her from above, below and the side. She was acutely aware of herself as if on a map, a tiny speck on a rabbit warren of grey streets. She could imagine all the boilers burning in all the houses, all the wheels of all the cars turning relentlessly on the tarmac, all the voices shouting to be heard, all the babies crying, all the bins that needed emptying, all the lives that had to be lived. Ruth stepped into the road and stuck out her hand, willing a taxi to stop.

  By the time they reached their house, Ruth felt as if her shoulders were locked tight. Betty had quietened to a whimper and Hal was still asleep in his buggy. They made it through their front door in one piece, which was, Ruth felt, as much as you could say about their day.

  Agatha was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a magazine and she looked shocked to see them. ‘I thought you were going to feed the ducks,’ she said. ‘I was just on my way out.’ Ruth looked at the clock, it was ten past one. She probably hadn’t used up more than fifteen minutes of her hour’s appointment.

  ‘Could you put on a DVD for Betty,’ she said, slumping at the table. She wanted a cup of coffee but found she couldn’t move. Agatha had been reading a story about a well-known TV presenter’s stalker nightmare. It seemed refreshingly tame to Ruth.

  Agatha bustled back into the kitchen. ‘She says she’s hungry. Haven’t you had any lunch?’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I’ll make her some cheese on toast. Do you want some?’

  Ruth looked at the capable young girl standing in her kitchen, still ready to take on the world. Maybe they should go back to having children at sixteen, it was about the only time in your life you felt optimistic enough and had the energy.

  ‘No thanks, Aggie,’ she said, and then she started to cry.

  Agatha came and sat next to her. ‘What’s wrong, Ruth? What’s the matter?’

  The urgency in Aggie’s voice was especially touching to Ruth; it was as if she cared. It made her momentarily aware of how child-like Aggie was. ‘Everything,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m a terrible mother.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Agatha put her hand over Ruth’s. ‘You’re great. What’s made you say that?’

  ‘The nutritionist blamed me for Hal. He didn’t even ask me about Christian. Why does it all have to be my fault?’

  ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know anything. Come on, Ruth, the kids love you.’

  ‘But why doesn’t Hal eat? And why does Betty cry all the time? Why won’t she bloody sleep?’

  Ruth looked up and saw some starlings playing in the blue sky out of her kitchen window. She felt jealous of their freedom, their lack of responsibility. She turned her attention back to Aggie, who she could tell was trying to say the right thing.

  ‘You can tell me to butt out if you like, Ruth, but I’ve listened to you and Betty at night. And I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything, but you know, sometimes when you’ve been in a situation too long it’s hard to see a way out . . . ’

  Ruth’s heart clenched. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it’s only a theory, but you could try taking her into bed with you.’

  ‘She used to sleep with us every night,’ said Ruth. ‘She didn’t even have a cot for the first year. But then Christian insisted we move her.’

  Aggie blushed. ‘Yes, but she never wakes up till midnight. You could start her in her bed and then let her come in to you in the middle of the night. I think she’s scared. That’s what it sounds like when I listen to you.’

  ‘Scared?’ Ruth tried to remember her daughter’s cries in the night, tried to make sense of them the way Aggie seemed able to do.

  ‘Yes, it’s like she’s got herself into this cycle and she knows she makes you angry and now she’s scared. I don’t know, it might be worth a try.’

  ‘Anything’s worth a try,’ said Ruth.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying anything,’ said Aggie. Ruth put her hand over the girl’s. She felt ashamed for bitching about her to Sally, ashamed for ever having thought badly of her. She
was a sweet young girl wanting the best for them. ‘Don’t be silly, Aggie. It’s so kind of you to be thinking about us. I’m the one who should be apologising for keeping you awake.’

  Aggie shook her head. ‘So you’ll try it?’

  Ruth smiled. ‘I will. Tonight. We’ll do it tonight.’ She moved her hand and laughed. ‘So, now we’ve sorted out Betty, what are we going to do about Hal? He’s going to be three in a few weeks and he doesn’t eat.’

  ‘It’s his birthday soon?’

  ‘Yes, and I haven’t organised anything.’

  ‘Oh, would you let me, Ruth? I’d love to organise him a party.’

  ‘Oh no, Aggie, you’ve done enough. I couldn’t possibly.’

  But she looked so keen, like a puppy. ‘Oh, but I’d love to. I love organising parties. I once had a job as a party planner.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, I did loads of kids’ parties. I love them. I’d love to do that for you.’

  Ruth laughed, pushing the hair out of her eyes. She felt tired to her bones and the offer sounded as sweet as nectar. ‘Is there no end to your talents, Aggie? What would we do without you?’

  By the time Christian got home Ruth looked as though she had been beaten up. In the low half-light he could see her reading to Betty, who wasn’t listening but instead complaining that she didn’t want them to go out. Ruth soldiered on with the tale of the Princess who could feel a pea through twenty-four mattresses; it was one of Christian’s least favourite stories. He peeked in on Hal, who was sucking silently in his dream. He found that he loved his children so much more when they were asleep. He would gaze on their little faces, so earnest and content, and feel the emotions coursing through his body. Christian had believed this to be the most profound type of love, when you loved someone even at the moment they needed nothing from you. But as he stood over his son’s cot he wondered if he had got it the wrong way round.

  He went into their bedroom to get changed and saw the towel he had used that morning lying damply on his side of the bed. His side of the bed had felt soggy for weeks and he wondered if Ruth was trying to tell him something. But before he could properly articulate the thought Ruth was standing in the doorway saying she felt too tired to go out.