The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  There was a silence. Frederick cleared his throat. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Everyone has a right to one mistake.’

  Ruth’s face lightened with sudden joy. ‘Frederick, you’re so straight!’ she exclaimed with pleasure. ‘Thank you.’

  Elizabeth recoiled slightly at Ruth’s easy use of his Christian name. ‘Of course, my dear,’ she said. ‘You know we wanted to help you with Thomas and we’ve been glad to do everything we can. I’m so pleased that you are home and completely cured.’

  Ruth hesitated at the word ‘cured’ with its implication of illness and a suffering patient, but she let it go. She was learning quickly that the outside world had retained its own codes and language even while she had been changing.

  ‘I’ll be a good mother to Thomas, and a good wife to Patrick,’ she promised. ‘And a good daughter-in-law to you.’ She looked from Frederick to Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, I’ll drink to that,’ Frederick said, robustly closing the conversation. He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to little Ruth coming home and looking like our pretty girl again.’

  The others raised their glasses to her, and Ruth – blushing slightly and smiling at the compliment – did not detect that she had been silenced.

  ‘Lunch is served,’ Elizabeth said, seeing Frederick had finished his sherry. ‘Only a casserole, I’m afraid. I didn’t know how long the journey would take you.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Ruth said.

  They ate in the dining room. The weather had turned wintry, and halfway through the meal Elizabeth put on the lights. The sky outside the windows was dark and brooding, and there was a sudden scud of rain on the panes.

  ‘I wanted to walk home,’ Ruth said in disappointment. ‘We’ll have to drive.’

  A sharp look of complicity passed between Elizabeth and her son. But neither of them spoke.

  ‘When will Thomas wake?’ Ruth asked. ‘I so want to see him.’

  Elizabeth glanced at her little gold watch. ‘In about half an hour,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t wake, you can pick him up. He sleeps for about an hour and a half morning and afternoon now. Any more than that and he doesn’t go off at night.’

  ‘You’ll have to take me through his day,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m completely out of practice. And Patrick said you thought he might have had a tooth coming! I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘It was a false alarm,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I don’t know how I came to mistake it. But one little cheek was scarlet and so hot! It must have been a little fever he had. It was all over within the day.’

  ‘Did you call the doctor?’

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘There was no need. I just gave him plenty to drink and kept an extra-special eye on him.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘And what’s his weight?’

  Elizabeth was vague. ‘Oh! I haven’t taken him to the clinic,’ she said. ‘Not since you went away.’

  ‘But you’re supposed to!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Every week!’

  Elizabeth’s smile was a little fixed. ‘They only weigh them and measure them,’ she said. ‘I could see myself that he was thriving.’

  ‘But they’re supposed to see him …’

  ‘It’s not so important after six weeks,’ Elizabeth said soothingly. ‘I’d have taken him if he’d gone off his food or anything. But he was obviously so well …’

  ‘I took him every week,’ Ruth exclaimed.

  Elizabeth had flushed slightly; she glanced at Patrick.

  ‘Well, Mother didn’t,’ he said flatly. ‘You can start again, now that you’re back.’

  Ruth looked from one to another, trying to read their expressions. ‘I don’t understand why not?’ she said, looking at Elizabeth. ‘Why didn’t you take him?’

  ‘I think I have explained,’ Elizabeth said. Her voice was slightly higher with irritation.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ruth said again stubbornly.

  ‘I was embarrassed,’ Elizabeth said, forced into honesty. ‘I thought they would ask where his mother was, and I didn’t want to say that she was mentally ill, that she was in a home. I thought it would go down in his records if I said that, and he would be branded, for the rest of his life, as a boy whose mother was mad.’

  Ruth gasped. Frederick turned his attention to the rim of his water glass, and examined it minutely.

  ‘They wouldn’t write such a thing,’ Ruth stammered. ‘And I was not mad … and in any case, it’s in the notes, in my notes. I had postpartum depression, there’s nothing shameful in it …’

  ‘It’s in your notes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But I saw no reason for it to be in Thomas’s notes too. I saw no reason for him to have that mark against him. I didn’t want them to know unless it was absolutely essential. And it was not absolutely essential. I didn’t want the nurse to know, or the health visitor, or any passing social worker. I believe that private things should be kept private.’

  ‘So where does everyone think I have been?’ Ruth demanded.

  ‘On holiday,’ Elizabeth replied concisely. ‘Brighton. A health farm.’

  Ruth gasped. ‘But surely no one would believe such nonsense! I’m not the sort of woman who goes for a month to a health farm!’

  Elizabeth shrugged and glanced at Patrick, handing the whole difficult conversation over to him.

  ‘What did you want us to say?’ he asked. ‘With my position, the press would have been onto me, wanting to know about you, and about Thomas. The social workers might have wanted to take Thomas into care. We had to think all this through, and we did the best we could. It’s a bit rich coming back, all full of good intentions, and then telling us we’ve done everything wrong.’

  Ruth recoiled at once from his anger. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be critical.’

  ‘Well, you were critical,’ Patrick said. ‘And to Mother who has worked to make Thomas happy night and day since you went off, and keep the family together.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘And it’s all very well saying it should all have been done differently,’ Patrick continued, his voice rising. ‘But we might as well say that you shouldn’t have given in to it. If you felt ill you should have told us. Taking handfuls of Amitriptyline and going out and getting drunk wasn’t quite the way to cope with it.’

  Ruth could feel her heart beating faster, and tears coming to her eyes. She had forgotten about the pub, about her car abandoned in the parking lot, about being drunk and drugged in front of her in-laws. She looked down at her hands clenched tight in her lap and felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘If there’s going to be any criticism …’ Patrick started ominously.

  ‘Steady the Buffs,’ Frederick said simply. ‘Water under the bridge, I think. Spilt milk.’ He looked at Elizabeth. ‘What about some coffee, darling?’

  She rose automatically and started clearing the plates. Ruth got up too. ‘Let me help.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Elizabeth said coldly. She cleared the plates in silence and took them to the kitchen. Ruth sat at the table like a naughty child, her eyes downcast.

  ‘You’ll never believe the weather we’ve had,’ Frederick said kindly. ‘I think it’s rained every day since the middle of November. All my late roses were completely washed out, and the river has flooded further down the valley.’

  Ruth took a sip of water. ‘Really?’

  ‘The lane was running with water last Wednesday,’ Frederick said. ‘I warned them, when they wanted to build that new estate on the lower levels – you can work with Nature but you can’t beat her. They bricked in the riverbank, and now it’s completely overflowed and there will be water all through the ground floors of those new houses if it doesn’t stop raining soon.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Ruth said automatically. She pressed her lips together to restrain the sobs, holding in her anger and her pain.

  Elizabeth came in with the coffee and put a cup precisely before each of them, cream and brown sugar in the centre of the table.

  ‘Yes, you can wo
rk with Nature but she always gets her own way in the end,’ Frederick said into the continuing frosty silence. ‘Still, it’s a black cloud that has no silver lining – the floods have done my willow trees no end of good. You should take a stroll down and see them, my dear. They’re very pretty, standing in the water. When the light is right you can see their reflection – rather picturesque.’ He nodded at Patrick. ‘You might take a snap of it. It might look rather well.’

  ‘Coffee?’ Elizabeth asked distantly.

  Mutely Ruth passed her cup and held it while Elizabeth poured with a steady hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth,’ she said in a little voice.

  Elizabeth hesitated. ‘I would much rather you called me Mother, as you did before,’ she said. ‘Or does that have to change too?’

  Twelve

  THERE WAS a little cry from the nursery. Ruth leaped to her feet. ‘I’ll go!’ Patrick wearily put down his cup and followed her. When he got to the nursery she was lifting Thomas from his cot, her hand under his firm little head, her arm around his compact body.

  ‘Oh, Thomas!’ she said. The ready tears were pouring down her face as she held his head to her cheek and inhaled the scent of him. His cry stilled as he was picked up, and he sensed the new feeling of being held by his mother, and the smell of her, and the gentle brush of her hair against his head.

  ‘My baby,’ she said.

  Patrick softened at the sight of them, at the tenderness in Ruth’s face, at the tiny movement as Thomas snuggled closer into her arms. In his first spontaneous gesture since she had come home, he stepped towards her and put his arms around them both. Ruth leaned back against him and tipped her head back against his shoulder. Patrick bent down and kissed her cheek, salty-tasting from her tears.

  ‘I love him,’ she said. ‘I really love him, Patrick, whatever it looked like when I was ill. The love was all there, just waiting to come out.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’

  They heard Elizabeth coming up the stairs, and Patrick immediately released her and stepped away.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you had everything you need,’ Elizabeth said pleasantly. ‘Patrick knows where everything is, I think. There are his clean nappies there, and a clean romper suit there,’ she gestured to the chest of drawers. ‘He’s generally wet through and needs to be changed at once.’

  Ruth looked around for a changing mat to put him down. There was none.

  ‘Oh! Of course!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘I sit on the chair and change him on my knee. I’m so old-fashioned!’

  Ruth smiled in relief at the warmer tone. ‘I’ve never learned to do it,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to put him on the floor.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Elizabeth said. ‘Too draughty with this miserable weather. Give him here, and I’ll get him dressed in a moment and bring him down to you.’ She took Thomas from his mother’s arms and sat on the rocking chair in the corner of the nursery. Competently, she stripped him of his damp romper suit, and unpinned the towelling nappy. Ruth did not leave, as she had been told to do, but stayed to watch.

  ‘A towelling nappy?’

  ‘I can’t bear the disposable kind,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I think it’s so unhygienic!’

  ‘Unhygienic?’ Ruth protested. ‘I don’t know anyone who uses real nappies these days!’

  Elizabeth, with the baby securely on her lap, looked up and laughed. ‘I just do it the way I always have done,’ she said. ‘In the old days we put the nappies in to soak and washed them through at the end of the day, and the baby had clean, warm, dry towelling nappies every time he needed them. You never run out when the shops are shut, you’re not putting chemicals against the baby’s skin, and you’re not polluting the environment with all that paper waste!’

  She wrapped the clean nappy around Thomas and pinned it skilfully with one pin at the front, and then tied a waterproof cover on top. Before he could protest, she had pulled a clean romper suit over his head and thrust his little hands and legs into the holes and fastened him up.

  ‘There!’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Now you’re ready to go to your mummy.’ She handed Thomas back to Ruth and busied herself with picking up the wet suit and clearing away the wet nappy. Ruth took Thomas back into her arms but he smelled different. There was the pleasing aroma of clean towelling and ironed laundry, but he smelled slightly of Elizabeth’s washing powder, and his head and hands smelled pleasantly of Elizabeth’s perfume. By taking him and changing his clothes, she had somehow made him her baby again; Ruth felt like an intruder.

  She turned and went slowly downstairs with Thomas held to her shoulder. ‘That’s a sight for sore eyes!’ Frederick exclaimed, and drew her into the sitting room. ‘Let’s hope he’s not forgotten you!’

  For a moment Ruth looked stricken, and then she cuddled Thomas a little closer. ‘Well, we’ll just have to start from the beginning again,’ she said. She sat on the chair and laid the baby along her knees so that she could look into his open clear face. ‘Hello, Thomas,’ she said lovingly. ‘Hello.’

  Elizabeth came in and smiled at the two of them. ‘I think we should light the fire, Frederick,’ she said. ‘It’s so dark and cold.’

  Frederick stepped forward and bent over the grate and started to lay the fire with kindling and small pieces of coal.

  ‘Perhaps you should have a rest, Ruth?’ Elizabeth offered. ‘I can have Thomas if you would like a lie-down. You’ll find all your things in your bedroom.’

  Ruth glanced at Patrick, who had followed his mother into the room. ‘I thought we’d be getting home,’ she said uncertainly.

  His quick glance to his mother should have warned her, but Ruth had spent four weeks with people who were committed to clarity and frankness, and she had lost the skill of decoding silences. ‘I want to take Thomas home,’ she said, after a moment.

  Elizabeth said nothing; she waited for Patrick to speak.

  ‘I thought we’d stay here for a while,’ he said. ‘The heating has been off at home, and the place needs to be warmed through and aired before we can take Thomas back, anyway. And there’s nothing to eat in the house. We’ve been living here. I just shut up the cottage.’

  ‘I’ve kept an eye on it, don’t fret,’ Frederick assured her. ‘When I take Thomas out on a walk we often stroll down that way. It’s safe and sound.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go down there now and put the heating on,’ Ruth said. She still had not understood. ‘It should be warmed up by this evening. We can go home at Thomas’s bedtime.’

  Patrick cleared his throat. ‘I thought we’d stay here for a while,’ he said again.

  Ruth looked from Patrick to Elizabeth to Frederick as she realized a decision had been made. ‘How long for?’ she asked simply.

  ‘A couple of weeks.’

  ‘Weeks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ruth had the strange sense of the ground falling away underneath her feet again. ‘What d’you mean, Patrick? Why can’t we go home?’

  At the sound of the alarm in her voice Thomas’s face puckered up and he let out a little wail. Elizabeth started forward at his cry and then checked the movement. Deliberately, she went and sat in a chair at the fireside and looked at the flames, which were curling around the kindling in the cold grate. Frederick sat back on his heels and looked at the fire.

  ‘Don’t upset Thomas,’ Patrick said. ‘Let’s leave it for now.’

  Ruth took a breath. ‘I won’t upset Thomas,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to go to our home. Is there something wrong, something you’re not telling me?’

  Patrick glanced at his mother.

  ‘We were just thinking what was best for you, Ruth,’ she said gently. ‘You’ve only come out of hospital this morning. You don’t want to overdo things in your first week.’

  ‘We thought you’d want a bit of help,’ Patrick agreed. ‘And Thomas is used to being here. A bit of continuity is what he needs, and I would feel much happier at going off to work and l
eaving you if I knew you were here.’

  Ruth nodded slowly. ‘I see that,’ she said. ‘But I am quite better now. I wasn’t in hospital because I had a broken leg, or a physical illness. I don’t need to rest. I was unhappy, but I understand it now. I feel quite different.’

  ‘Well, you may feel different, but we feel the same,’ Patrick said bluntly. ‘We saw that you couldn’t cope with Thomas, and it got worse and worse and none of us knew what to do. We don’t want that happening again.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Ruth said quickly. ‘It won’t.’

  ‘So it would suit everyone if we stayed here for a while, until we see how things are going. To reassure ourselves.’ He glanced at Elizabeth for confirmation. She made an infinitesimal nod. ‘Keep things under control,’ he said.

  Ruth thought of the lessons of her group. ‘And how will we know that everything is all right?’ she asked.

  Patrick glanced at his mother. ‘We’ll know,’ she said with a little smile. ‘We’ll all know that things have turned out perfectly, Ruth. We’ll just know it.’

  ‘Then how will we know if things are not going well?’ Ruth persisted.

  ‘Oh, I hope that won’t arise!’

  ‘But if it does arise?’

  ‘If you are ill again?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘I won’t be ill again. But how will we know that things are not going well enough for us to go back to the little house? Who is to decide? And on what basis?’

  Elizabeth shrugged. ‘I don’t even want to think about it,’ she said. ‘You tell me that you’re well now, and that’s enough for me, Ruth dear. You’ll be the one that decides. Let’s take it one day at a time and see how it goes.’

  Ruth paused for a moment, and then the warmth of Thomas against her shoulder gave her renewed strength. ‘The thing is,’ she said slowly, ‘that I don’t want to live here. I know you’ve been wonderful –’ she looked from Frederick to Elizabeth – ‘but we have our own home and our own lives to lead, and I want to go to our own home, and start again.’