The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  There was a brief silence. Ruth blinked. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever learn to do it like her,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ Patrick said frankly. ‘And there’s no point in us trying to be like them. We’ll have to do things our way. I was a fool to wake him this morning anyway. If he’d stayed asleep we would have had loads of time.’

  Ruth poured boiling water on two tea-bags in mugs, added milk, and flipped the wet bags into the bin. ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘I married you,’ Patrick replied stoutly. ‘I could have chosen to stay at home and have real tea in a bone-china cup and a cooked breakfast every day of my life.’

  ‘But don’t you want both?’ Ruth asked.

  She saw it – the little flicker of greed that crossed his face, and his instantly smoothing it away. The momentary acknowledgment that yes, indeed, he did want someone to mother his child, and to be his lover, and to cook for him and care for him to the standard of his mother’s house.

  ‘No,’ Patrick said, as if he meant it.

  Ruth smiled. ‘Good,’ she said, as if she believed it.

  It seemed to take all morning to get Thomas dressed, and then she had to entertain him in one room after another, as she tried to get the household chores done. He had learned now to reach for something and grasp at it, and his favourite game was to be propped by pillows and offered one object after another to hold and then negligently drop. In the bathroom, while she dutifully cleaned the toilet, the sink, and the bath, Ruth passed him toothbrushes, flannels, and a box of dental floss. Thomas accepted them with pleasure and dropped them all, and looked around for something more. Ruth handed him the little duck from his bath toys, and his sponge. She was leaning over the bath, rinsing the suds away with the shower attachment, when she heard a muffled ominous choke.

  She spun around. Thomas had crammed most of the sponge into his mouth but was quite incapable of getting it out again. Yellow sponge bulged from his lips, his eyes were staring, his face flushed as he struggled for air.

  ‘My God!’ Ruth said and flew at him. She pulled the sponge from his mouth and Thomas whooped for breath, and then smiled. The incident had not disturbed him at all.

  ‘I could have killed him,’ Ruth said. ‘Oh, God.’

  She snatched him up and held him tight, and they walked downstairs together. Ruth saw her hand on the banister and it trembled so much that she could hardly feel the wood beneath her fingertips. She took Thomas into the sitting room and laid him on his back on the sofa, so that she could look into his inquiring face.

  ‘Oh, God, Thomas,’ she said. A sense of her passionate love for him set her trembling again. She took in his clear skin and his wide, innocent eyes. You could still see a little pulse in the top of his head; even his skull was vulnerable. ‘Such a little cough!’ she said, marvelling at the softness of it. ‘What if I hadn’t heard?’

  Behind her, the front door opened suddenly. ‘Hello!’ Elizabeth called. ‘Anyone at home?’

  ‘In here,’ Ruth said. She had a sudden instinct to hide Thomas, as if Elizabeth would know, just by looking at him, that Ruth could have suffocated him.

  ‘I was just passing –’ Elizabeth stopped dead. ‘Good Lord, Ruth, you’re white as a sheet! What’s wrong?’ At once she looked at Thomas with an expression like terror on her face. She went straight past Ruth and picked him up. Thomas crowed with delight at her touch, and she turned with him in her arms, as if she were rescuing him. ‘What happened?’ she demanded tightly.

  ‘It was nothing,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Nothing?’

  Ruth faced her mother-in-law and felt tears coming.

  ‘Did he fall down the stairs?’ Elizabeth demanded.

  ‘No,’ Ruth said in a low, shaky voice. ‘He choked.’

  ‘What on?’

  ‘His bath sponge.’ Ruth swallowed down her tears. ‘I didn’t think,’ she said. ‘I gave him his sponge to look at and when I turned round he had crammed it all in his mouth. I just pulled it out.’

  ‘All of it?’

  Ruth gasped at a new fear. ‘I didn’t look. I didn’t think to look in his mouth. Could he have swallowed some? Could it be stuck in his throat?’

  ‘Look at the sponge!’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘Fetch it now!’

  Ruth ran up the stairs and came down with Thomas’s sponge. It was cut in the shape of a little boat. It was complete and intact. The yellow keel made of sponge, the orange superstructure, and the little green sponge funnel on top.

  Elizabeth looked it all over carefully. ‘Thank God for that,’ she said, her voice carefully controlled. ‘Why weren’t you watching him?’

  Ruth answered Elizabeth as if the older woman had every right to cross-question her. She felt so miserably guilty that the hostile interrogation was almost a pleasure. ‘I was cleaning the bath,’ she said. ‘I was just giving him things to look at.’

  ‘You have to have a little box,’ Elizabeth said with weary patience. She put Thomas against her shoulder and stroked his back in gentle circular motions. ‘A little box with his toys for the day. You swap them around every night so he has different ones every day. You take the box around with you, wherever you go in the house, and when you need a moment to do something, you give him something from the box.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ruth said numbly. ‘I didn’t know.’

  It was as if there were too much to learn. Ruth would never grasp it all in time.

  Elizabeth nodded, with her lips pressed together. ‘He’s nearly asleep,’ she said. It was true. Thomas, inhaling the familiar scent of his grandmother and held firmly in her arms, with his back patted and her voice in his ear, was drifting off into sleep.

  Without asking, Elizabeth went out into the kitchen and put Thomas in his pram. ‘He’ll sleep now, and you can get your chores done and then supervise him properly when he wakes up,’ she said. She glanced out of the French windows to the little garden, where the winter sun was bright. ‘He can go out,’ she decided, opened the doors and trundled the pram into the garden.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said.

  Elizabeth tucked the blankets closely around him, then put the waterproof cover on top, and pulled up the hood against the cold air.

  ‘Actually, I was just calling in to see if you wanted any shopping,’ she said.

  Ruth shook her head. ‘I’ll go later. I’ll take Thomas this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll have Thomas while you shop,’ Elizabeth offered. ‘It’s hard work doing it all with a baby as well.’

  Ruth flared briefly. ‘I can do it,’ she said. ‘I am perfectly capable of shopping and caring for my baby at the same time.’

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘You know where I am if you change your mind. We’re both in this afternoon. It will be no trouble if you want to drop him off on your way out.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she felt forced to say.

  Elizabeth slid past her and out into the hall. ‘I shan’t say anything to Patrick,’ she promised. At once Ruth’s mistake seemed infinitely worse if it had to be concealed from her husband. ‘He’d only worry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said again. ‘I’ll probably tell him myself, anyway.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’ll be sympathetic. We’re all aware how hard you are trying …’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Ruth said defensively. ‘It must happen thousands of times a day.’

  Elizabeth smiled coldly. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘It never happened to either of my children.’

  Ruth took Thomas with her to the shop, but Elizabeth had been right – it was a struggle to cope with shopping and a baby as well. For the first half hour everything went well. Ruth parked in the mother-and-baby space, and put Thomas in the reclining seat on the top of the trolley, and he observed with interest the bright lights of the ceiling and his mother’s head coming and going. But after a while he became bored and started to cry.

  Ruth was only halfwa
y around the store. She had bought vegetables and fruit and some cheese, but the aisles of cleaning powders and detergents and nursery goods were ahead of her, as well as the bakery and the delicatessen sections.

  ‘Shush, shush,’ she said putting her cheek beside Thomas’s hot face. ‘Soon be finished.’

  Thomas got a handful of hair and pulled.

  ‘Ow!’ Ruth said and unwound the determined little fingers. At once he yelled louder, his hands reaching out to grasp her again.

  ‘Shush!’ Ruth said less tenderly. She turned the heavy trolley and started to push it down the detergent aisle. Thomas’s wails grew louder and louder, his face was scarlet, he squeezed real hot tears from screwed-up eyes. A woman glanced sharply at Ruth, as if she were doing something wrong, something to make the baby cry.

  Ruth tried to smile unconcernedly, and leaned forward and patted the baby’s cheek. ‘Not long now,’ she tried to say.

  Thomas was straining against the safety harness, his little legs kicking irritably. His cry now had a desperate urgent quality as if he were in dreadful danger. The nagging, demanding shriek filled the store, and pulled at Ruth’s nerves. She felt every wail as if it were a physical pain.

  She abandoned the rest of the shopping list and abruptly headed the trolley to the checkout. A man went past her and looked at her irritably – as if she were disturbing the peace of his afternoon on purpose. Ruth felt enormously, absurdly angry with him, and envious of his carefree stride and his half-empty trolley. Thomas gave one last huge wriggle and then vomited up his entire lunch and his after-lunch bottle over the seat and over the shopping in the trolley.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Ruth said.

  Thomas screamed. Ruth unbuckled him and snatched him up. He was sobbing convulsively, drenched in sour-smelling vomit.

  With one spare hand Ruth pushed the shopping trolley to the checkout. Thomas wept gently against her neck as Ruth bent deep into the trolley to pull out the shopping and stack it on the belt. Some of it was sprayed with Thomas’s vomit. The cashier did not hide her distaste, holding the packages with a finger and thumb and wrinkling her nose. She pressed the intercom and asked for someone to come and clean the moving belt, which was now sticky from Thomas’s vomit. There was no one to pack. Ruth crammed the shopping into bags, working one-handed with Thomas held against her neck, her shirt and jumper getting steadily wetter with his tears and saliva.

  ‘Sixty-eight pounds ten,’ the girl said brightly.

  Ruth handed over her card, and then awkwardly signed one-handed. The girl gave her the receipt and the card without a smile, as if it were all Ruth’s fault. Her look was disdainful, but also pitying.

  Grimly Ruth pushed the trolley to the car, strapped Thomas into his baby seat, and unpacked the shopping into the boot. She pushed the trolley with unnecessary force into the line of waiting trolleys, and drove away.

  Thomas fell asleep at once, exhausted by his crying and vomiting. When they got home Ruth did not have the heart to wake him. She lifted him gently out of the car seat, and laid him in his cot. He lay sprawled, with his arms spread wide and his little hands open. His hair was plastered to his little head with sweat; his clothes were saturated with vomit. Ruth smiled at him with immense tenderness. ‘Oh, darling, darling boy,’ she said gently. ‘I’m so sorry. We’ll do it better next time.’

  She put up the side of the cot and went downstairs to unpack the shopping. Almost at once the telephone rang.

  ‘Is that Mrs Cleary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Saver Store. We have your handbag here, Mrs Cleary.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Ruth said. She had no recollection of her handbag at all. Then she remembered. She had put it on the roof of the car while loading Thomas and the shopping, and then driven off.

  ‘We found it in the car park.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said. ‘Can I collect it tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m afraid we are not allowed to keep lost property of value overnight,’ the man said firmly. ‘We will have to take it to the police station and you will have to apply and collect it from there.’

  ‘But you know it’s mine!’ Ruth said irritably.

  ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Cleary. And if you wish to collect it before four P.M. you can do so, provided you have some means of identity.’

  Ruth glanced at the clock on the microwave. ‘It’s three-thirty now!’ she said.

  There was an unhelpful silence.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m coming straight away.’

  She hung up and then dialled Elizabeth’s number. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said without preamble. ‘But I’ve left my handbag at Saver Store, and I have to collect it before four or they pass it on to the police. Thomas has just fallen asleep. Could you possibly pop down and watch him for me for three quarters of an hour? Just so I can go down and fetch it now?’

  ‘Of course,’ Elizabeth said pleasantly. She glanced at Frederick, who was pouring tea. ‘I can come at once.’

  Ruth slung the last of the frozen food into the freezer and pulled on her jacket. As she heard Elizabeth’s car pull up she went down the path to greet her. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Elizabeth said nicely. ‘But what a nuisance for you! Has Thomas slept long? Do you want me to wake him?’

  ‘He’s fine, he’s just gone off,’ Ruth said. ‘Just listen for him in case he wakes. I’ll probably be back before he has even stirred.’

  Elizabeth nodded and went into the house. Ruth got into her car and drove back to the shop.

  Alone in the house Elizabeth looked around the sitting room. The fire was not laid and the cold ashes and coals in the grate looked unwelcoming and frowsy. She rolled up some newspaper kindling, and laid a little fire and put a match to it. At once the room looked warmer and cheerful. She straightened the cushions on the sofa and drew the curtains. One of the hooks had come undone at the top and the fabric was falling awkwardly. Elizabeth fetched a chair from the kitchen and rehooked the curtain.

  She returned the chair to its place by the kitchen table and looked around. The dirty dishes from Ruth’s and Thomas’s lunch were sitting on top of the dishwasher, which had just finished its cycle. Elizabeth’s critical gaze took in everything: the stain on the new worktop, the spattered Aga, the kitchen curtains not tied back with their coordinating loops but left to hang. She glanced into the larder. Thomas was being fed factory-made baby food again; she looked at the rows and rows of expensive jars and frowned at the waste of money. The freezer door was not properly shut. Elizabeth got down on her knees and had to rearrange the boxes to make it fit. Almost unconsciously she moved boxes around until all the meat was together on a meat shelf, and all the vegetables, arranged in order of their sell-by dates, were stacked on the vegetable shelf

  The house was silent.

  Elizabeth thought she would check on Thomas and went soft-footed up the stairs to his bedroom. She acknowledged to herself that she need not see him. He would cry out when he woke and she could go to him then, but Elizabeth loved to watch Thomas asleep, she liked to sit in the chair in his nursery and sew, or write letters while he slept. She felt that his sweet, peaceful sleep and her patient watching cast a spell around the two of them.

  She opened his bedroom door and, smiling, approached the cot.

  Thomas, his face stained with tears and his clothes thick with dried vomit, lay on his back, his face pink and his head sweating from the heat of his outdoor clothes.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Elizabeth said. For a moment she thought that he was desperately ill. She picked him up and he stirred and opened his eyes and smiled to see her, then dropped his head down to her shoulder and dozed off again.

  He smelled awful. His nappy was dirty and his clothes were impregnated with vomit. He was still sweaty.

  Elizabeth’s face was like stone. She marched him out of the house and down the garden path and into her car. She strapped him carefully into the baby seat and drove back up the drive to the fa
rmhouse. She unstrapped him and carried him in.

  ‘Look,’ she said savagely to Frederick. ‘Look at him!’

  He came out of the sitting room, folding his paper. ‘Brought the little chap back?’ he started, but then he saw her face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look at him,’ she said through her teeth. ‘I found him like this in his cot. ‘God knows how long he’s been there. He’s obviously been sick all over himself and been left to cry. She didn’t even take his coat off after they had been shopping. She just slung him in his cot and left him.’

  Frederick’s face was shocked. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing! She told me not to disturb him; she said he’d just gone to sleep. I should think she didn’t want me to disturb him. I should think she was praying that I would just sit downstairs and wait for her to come back!’

  Frederick looked grave. ‘There may be an explanation,’ he said carefully. ‘Things do happen, my dear. Maybe the telephone rang and she was called away …’

  ‘I have just found my grandson, dirty, sick, and neglected, in his cot,’ Elizabeth said with emphasis. ‘There is no excuse for that.’

  She turned and went upstairs to the nursery, which had once been Patrick’s and now had Thomas’s name on a little china nameplate on the door. She sat in the low nursing chair and gently and efficiently stripped off his outdoor suit, and then his little shirt and his trousers. Thomas stirred but hardly woke. She undid his nappy and cleaned him and put on a fresh towelling nappy from the pile that was waiting. She wrapped him in a little blanket and laid him in his cot to finish his sleep. Thomas, dreaming of the fascinating lights of the store and his mother’s face swimming in and out of his vision, stretched out again and sank into sleep.

  Elizabeth came downstairs and took Thomas’s dirty clothes into the kitchen. The weatherproof suit, which was the worst, she laid to one side, and handwashed the rest.