The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  She fell silent.

  ‘I’ll make the tea,’ he repeated. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Everything is in the cupboard above the kettle. The milk is in the fridge.’

  David nodded and went to the kitchen. When Ruth heard him filling the kettle and switching it on, she quietly took the bottle of pills from her pocket and took one. Within moments she could feel her anxiety melting away. She leaned over Thomas and smiled down at him. She blew into his little face and watched him pucker in surprise at the sensation. When David came in with the tea she was rosy and smiling.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a shift.’ He handed her a mug.

  ‘What’s going to happen about your work?’ she asked.

  He was pleased to see her taking an interest and looking more like the old Ruth. ‘I’ll get somewhere,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an interview in London next week. Something will come up, and I’m staying in practice and my voice is heard. Something’ll come up.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Don’t go missing on me, will you? Don’t go without giving me your address. I don’t want to lose touch.’

  He nodded, getting to his feet. He thought that in all the years that he had known her Ruth had never invited his attention. He had always been pursuing her, and she had always been casually indifferent as to whether he was there or not. Now it seemed that she needed him, and he was guiltily aware that this tearful, plump, white-faced housewife was not the woman he had desired.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Give me a ring when you’re free and we’ll go out to lunch.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, but she knew that she would not dare to ask Elizabeth to baby-sit while she went out to lunch with a man. Patrick obviously would not baby-sit under those circumstances, and naturally enough, with a mother-in-law next door, Ruth had no other baby-sitters. ‘It’s a bit tricky to get out while Thomas is so young,’ she said. The Amitriptyline had steadied her: she did not feel like crying, she managed a smile. ‘In a couple of years I’ll be out dancing every night.’

  He patted her on the shoulder in farewell. He did not want a closer embrace. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said. ‘You stay there with him. He’s a lovely baby.’

  ‘I know he’s lovely,’ she said. She sounded uncertain. ‘I know he is.’

  David let himself out and closed the front door behind him. The air was sharp and cold. He felt a sense of release and an elated awareness of his own youth and freedom. He was deeply glad that he was not Ruth, trapped in the little house, waiting for Patrick to come home, seeing no one but a baby. He was even glad that he was not Patrick, coming home every night to a plump, white-faced woman who cried for nothing, and a baby that never slept. He went quickly down the garden path, as if he were afraid that Ruth might call him back and he would see her crying again.

  As he was unlocking the door of his car, an Austin Rover pulled in and parked in front of him. The woman driver, an elegant, attractive woman, gave him a friendly smile.

  ‘Are you going? Have I left you enough space?’ she asked.

  The mother-in-law, David thought. And me creeping off like a clandestine lover. ‘That’s fine,’ he said boldly. ‘I’ve just been visiting Ruth Cleary.’

  ‘Oh! I’m Mrs Cleary,’ the woman sounded convincingly surprised, as if it had not occurred to her that he might have come from the cottage. ‘How nice for Ruth to have some company.’

  ‘I’m David Harrison. I used to work with her, at Radio Westerly.’

  ‘I’m sure she misses her work a lot,’ Elizabeth said. ‘She’ll have enjoyed hearing about it. Are you still working there?’

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘She seemed a bit tired.’

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘A new baby can be absolutely exhausting,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought her down some supper, and I’ll take Thomas back home with me to give her a little break.’

  David brightened. ‘I’m sure that’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t seem to be getting much sleep.’

  Elizabeth’s charming smile never wavered. ‘Actually,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘I’ve been rather worried about her. I was afraid she was getting depressed.’

  ‘She seemed very weepy,’ David said.

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And she’s on anti-depressants, but they don’t seem to do her much good.’

  ‘Ruth is taking anti-depressants?’ He was shocked.

  Elizabeth nodded sadly. ‘It’s her choice. And I can hardly interfere.’

  David shook his head incredulously. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s very low.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought she was the type …’ David was adjusting his view of Ruth from the confident, bright journalist, the quickest, most able worker in the newsroom, to the sad housewife on pills. ‘They can be addictive, can’t they?’

  ‘The doctor prescribed it,’ Elizabeth said doubtfully. ‘He must be aware of the situation.’

  ‘But Ruth!’

  ‘I know, it hardly seems possible does it? She’s just finding motherhood terribly hard going.’

  David thought for a moment. ‘Is it the baby? Is there anything wrong with him?’

  ‘No, that’s the absurd thing. He’s an absolute peach. He sleeps well and he eats well and he’s no trouble at all. I think she may be one of those women that simply never take to motherhood.’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if she planned it …’ David said indiscreetly.

  Elizabeth’s face gave nothing away as she registered this crucial piece of information. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But she was quite happy about it, wasn’t she?’

  David grimaced. ‘I never thought so. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, and she’s a natural journalist …’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ David asked.

  Elizabeth hesitated for a moment ‘How kind of you to offer,’ she said coolly. ‘But I’m sure we can manage.’

  David heard the snub, and opened the door of his car.

  ‘It’s been so nice meeting you,’ Elizabeth said. Her smile was warm. ‘I hope to see you again.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Cleary,’ David said. ‘I’d like to keep in touch with Ruth – and with Patrick too, of course.’

  ‘Oh, but you must!’ she said earnestly. ‘Poor Ruth needs all the friends she can get.’

  David blinked. He had never thought of Ruth as ‘poor Ruth’ before. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Cleary.’

  ‘Call me Elizabeth! Please!’

  ‘Well, thank you, Elizabeth. Good-bye.’

  Elizabeth watched him pull away and then went into the cottage.

  There was no one in the sitting room but there were wails of distress coming from the upstairs bathroom. The sitting room smelled of vomit.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Elizabeth said softly, and went up the stairs.

  Ruth was trying to undress Thomas, who was liberally covered in regurgitated milk. Ruth’s hair and shoulder and the front of her shirt and trousers were sodden.

  ‘He just threw up!’ she said desperately. ‘He was drinking well, a whole bottle, and then the whole lot suddenly came up. Is he ill?’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth said reassuringly. ‘He’s fine. He just probably overdid it a bit.’

  In her haste Ruth had not undone all the buttons on Thomas’s shirt. Pulling it over his head, she had got his head stuck. He was shrieking piercingly from inside the garment.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Ruth cried above the noise.

  ‘Shall I?’ Elizabeth asked.

  Ruth shot a desperate look at her.

  ‘You go and get changed out of those dirty clothes,’ Elizabeth commanded kindly. ‘And leave Master Thomas here to me. I’ll bath him and change him and take him up to the farm. When you’re ready there’s supper for you downstairs in the warming oven. Patrick can collect Thomas on his way home. You have a quiet evening on your own for a change.’ She moved forwa
rd and took Thomas – vomit and all – onto her lap.

  Ruth hesitated, glancing at Elizabeth’s immaculate slacks and cashmere sweater. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ Elizabeth laughed. ‘Ruth dearest, I have nothing else to do and it is my greatest treat. He’ll be fine once he’s clean and dry again, and his grandfather will play with him all evening. Just relax and leave it to me.’

  She slid her fingers inside the narrow neckband of the shirt and undid the buttons. Thomas, suddenly released, came out red-faced and tearful.

  Ruth slipped from the bathroom as Elizabeth stripped off the rest of the wet, foul-smelling clothes, wrapped Thomas in a warm towel, and started to run a bath.

  When he was washed and changed and sweet-smelling and sweet-tempered, she put him in her car and drove up to the farm. Frederick looked up as she carried the baby seat into the drawing room.

  ‘Hello, my dear! Hello, Master Thomas! All right?’

  ‘She was practically in hysterics because he had brought up his feed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘She really can’t cope at all.’

  Frederick unbuckled Thomas from his baby seat. ‘Well, that’s no good,’ he said, speaking half to the baby.

  ‘She’d had a friend call for tea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘David Harrison from Radio Westerly. Very charming, rather attractive.’

  Frederick turned his attention to his wife and raised his eyebrows. ‘Not quite the thing, is it?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s no harm in it,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And she’s terribly lonely.’

  ‘Better mention it to Patrick all the same.’

  ‘I don’t like to tell tales …’

  Frederick turned back to Thomas. ‘Us chaps must stick together,’ he informed him. ‘I shall tell Patrick.’

  Ruth was asleep when Patrick came in, and he did not disturb her. But in the night she woke, half listening even in sleep for a cry from the nursery. The house was silent; Patrick was breathing noisily at her side. The pillow and his hair smelled slightly of cigarette smoke. Ruth moved away. She glanced at the illuminated dial of her bedside clock. It was four in the morning. Thomas had never slept through till four in the morning before. She lay back smiling. Perhaps everything was working out at last. Thomas sleeping through the night, David calling to see her, perhaps life was returning to normal. She closed her eyes and dozed off again.

  She woke with a start. It was half past four. Thomas still had made no sound. A superstitious fear made her sit suddenly upright. She thought of cot death, suffocation, kidnapping, any one of the fears that new mothers carry with them all the time, wherever they are. She slipped out of bed and tiptoed along the dark landing. She listened at the door of Thomas’s room. She could not hear him. Usually in sleep he made little snuffling noises, or stirred. She could hear nothing.

  Careful not to wake him, she gently touched the door, pushing it open one silent millimetre at a time. The carpet under the door made a soft hushing noise as the foot of the door brushed against the new pile; but still Thomas did not wake.

  She crept forward so that she could see over the side of the cot. His little duvet was folded at the foot of the bed. Thomas was not there. The cot was empty.

  Ruth screamed. ‘Thomas!’ and scrabbled for the light switch. Frantically she looked around the room as if he could have crawled out of bed and hidden. The nursery was empty. She ran across the landing to the bedroom. Patrick was sitting up in bed, blear-eyed.

  ‘What the …’

  ‘Thomas! It’s Thomas! He’s gone! Oh, God, Patrick! He’s gone!’

  ‘No …’ Patrick shook his head.

  Ruth was unstoppable. ‘Christ, someone has taken him! Patrick, get up, call the police! He’s gone. I just woke up and thought he was quiet and went to his room and his cot is empty!’

  She could feel hot tears pouring down her cheeks and hear her voice getting louder and higher in panic. ‘I thought it was funny that he hadn’t cried but then I went …’

  ‘Ruth, get a grip!’ Patrick shouted over the tide of her hysteria. ‘He’s quite all right. He’s at home. He’s with Mother. I left him up there! We thought you’d like the break.’

  Ruth was screaming but the words slowly penetrated. She fell silent, she stared at Patrick, but oddly the tears did not stop, they still poured down her cheeks. ‘He’s where? Where?’

  ‘He’s at home,’ Patrick said. ‘With Mother. In my old nursery, in my old cot. Safe and sound.’

  Ruth whimpered, a soft animal sound. ‘I thought he’d been taken …’

  ‘I know. I should have woken you and told you. But you were asleep and I thought you needed your sleep.’

  ‘I thought he was gone.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We thought it was the best thing to do.’

  Ruth’s dark eyes were huge. ‘It’s worse than that,’ she said.

  ‘Shush,’ Patrick got out of bed and put his hands on her shoulders, drawing her back to bed. ‘Settle down, Ruth, I’ll make you a cup of tea. Have one of your pills.’

  ‘I thought he was gone,’ she said again.

  Patrick looked around for Ruth’s bottle of Amitriptyline and shook two of the little pills into his hand. ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Calm down, Ruth.’

  He offered her a glass of water and her teeth clanked on the glass; her hands were trembling so much she nearly spilled it. She took the pills and sipped the water. He thought that she looked old and haggard. He had never seen her less attractive. He had a headache from the wine at his dinner and he was deeply tired. He had a weary sense of one crisis following another, and everything left to him.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ he said. ‘Lie down. Go to sleep again. It’s all right now.’

  She looked at him with her enormous tragic eyes. ‘It’s worse than that,’ she repeated.

  ‘Worse than what?’

  ‘Worse than thinking he was gone.’

  ‘Shush shush,’ he said. He slipped into bed beside her and drew the covers up.

  Ruth felt the pills beginning to weave their sleepy magic around her. Already her terror felt as if it had happened to someone else, as if it were another woman who had woken in the night to find her baby’s cot empty, and her baby stolen away.

  ‘It’s worse than that …’

  ‘What is worse?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘I was glad,’ Ruth said with bleak simplicity. ‘I thought, Oh, good, he’s gone, and at last I’ll be able to get some sleep.’ She smiled her misty, uncertain smile at Patrick, her eyes unfocused. ‘I told you it was worse,’ she said. ‘I thought he was kidnapped and I thought, At least I’ll be able to get some sleep now. That’s really bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Shush,’ Patrick said automatically. ‘Not to worry, shush, Ruth.’

  Ruth nodded, her eyes slowly closed, she slept.

  For more than an hour Patrick lay, with his head thudding and his eyes open, looking at the darkness and hearing over and over again in his mind Ruth’s slurred confession, and wondering what it meant.

  Patrick left for work at the usual time, leaving Ruth asleep and a note for her on the pillow. It said:

  THOMAS IS WITH MOTHER AT THE FARM. PHONE THEM WHEN YOU ARE READY TO HAVE HIM BACK. MOTHER SAYS SHE CAN HAVE HIM ALL DAY IF YOU WOULD LIKE A REST. I WILL BE HOME AT THE USUAL TIME, AND I WILL SHOP FOR SUPPER. TAKE IT EASY, DARLING. SEE YOU AT 6.

  He had written it in black felt tip, in printed capital letters, as if he could not trust her to read script.

  But Patrick did not go to work; he drove up to the farm and let himself in with his front-door key. His mother was in the kitchen in her embroidered pale-blue silk housecoat. Thomas was sitting, padded with a pillow, in Patrick’s old wooden high chair, watching her with quiet approval. Elizabeth was making toast for herself and baby rice for Thomas.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ she said over her shoulder as Patrick came in. ‘Come for breakfast?’ Then she saw his face, and turned quickly around. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Ruth,’
Patrick said the one word as if it would explain everything.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said automatically. ‘I’ll make you some breakfast. Tea? A couple of boiled eggs?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘I have to phone work. I have to tell them I’ll be late.’

  She heard him go into the hall and telephone his office. Swiftly and efficiently she put on the kettle, set a couple of eggs to boil, and sliced bread for toast. Then she sat before Thomas and spooned baby rice and milk for him. When Patrick came back into the kitchen it smelled warm with the familiar smell of breakfast. His son turned a wobbly head and looked at him.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He went out with his gun to get some rabbits, early,’ his mother said. ‘He should be back soon. D’you want to talk to him?’

  ‘To you both,’ Patrick said.

  She nodded and wiped Thomas’s face with a square of soft muslin. She set the table before Patrick and poured his tea. The last of the sand fell silently through the egg timer, and she brought two eggs out of the saucepan. She put them in the egg cups of his childhood, a set of little friendly-faced china animals. Patrick managed a wan smile.

  ‘Thomas will enjoy these when he’s a little older,’ she said. ‘He likes it here.’

  ‘Sleeps well in my cot?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘He only woke once,’ she said. ‘And then he went straight down again.’

  Patrick nodded and ate his toast and boiled eggs. She watched him chewing and carefully swallowing, and she felt her throat tighten in sympathy.

  ‘You never really let go,’ she said looking from her son to her grandson. ‘You never stop loving if you are a mother.’

  Patrick glanced up at her, and she was shocked at the strain in his face. ‘Really?’ he said doubtfully.

  She nodded and put her hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Well, I never will.’

  The back door opened, and they heard Frederick ordering the dog to his basket, shucking off his boots, racking his gun, and locking the case. He padded into the kitchen in his shooting breeches and thick socks. ‘Hello, old man,’ he said. ‘Come for a bite to eat?’