The Little House

  ‘Well, I am,’ the health visitor said baldly. ‘And I want her to see the doctor.’

  Ruth ate breakfast cereal on her own in the quiet kitchen. Elizabeth had been right in seeing the potential of the cottage. In the autumn morning sunshine the little house glowed. Ruth looked around the new kitchen fittings and the bright pale walls as if they were the walls of a prison. She ate spoonful after spoonful of muesli and tasted nothing. She drank a cup of instant coffee, then she put her head down on the kitchen table and crouched quite still.

  She nearly dozed off, sliding from despair into sleep, but she roused herself and went up the stairs, her bare feet warmed by the thick carpet that Elizabeth had chosen. Their bedroom was untidy with cast-off clothes. Ruth walked to the bed, seeing neither the mess nor the pretty view from the bedroom window, which looked over the little garden up the hill to the farmhouse. She climbed into bed and pulled the duvet over her shoulders and closed her eyes. She was asleep in moments.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when she jerked awake with a gasp of terror. There had been a dream in which Thomas had been missing. She had been looking for him and looking for him. She had been searching the path all the way from the little house to Manor Farm House, and everywhere she looked she could hear his cry, just ahead of her. At Manor Farm, Elizabeth had been in the garden, pruning shears in hand. She had paused in pruning the roses and asked Ruth what was wrong. Ruth had been weeping with distress, but when Elizabeth asked her what she was searching for, she could not remember Thomas’s name. She knew she was looking for her baby, but the name had completely gone. She just stared at Elizabeth, speechless with anxiety, knowing that Thomas was missing and she could not remember how to call him back to her.

  Ruth gave a little gasp at the shock of the dream and then looked around her bedroom in surprise. The light was wrong for early morning, Patrick was not there, then slowly she remembered that Elizabeth was caring for Thomas, and that she had promised to fetch him from the farmhouse.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said softly and jumped out of bed, reaching for the bedside telephone. She dialled the number from memory and waited anxiously.

  ‘Manor Farm.’ It was Frederick’s voice.

  ‘Oh! It’s me!’ Ruth said. ‘I overslept, I’m so sorry. I’ll come up straightaway.’

  ‘Hold tight,’ he said. Elizabeth had told him that the health visitor thought that Ruth was depressed. He was not surprised, believing that all women were prone to anger and tears and unexplained grief. ‘Steady the Buffs.’

  ‘But I said I would come up … I thought I’d be with you before lunch …’

  ‘So when you weren’t I took him out for a little walk, he had his sleep, and now he’s out shopping with Elizabeth,’ Frederick said. ‘Nothing to worry about at all.’

  Ruth found that she was gasping with anxiety. ‘I just feel so awful …’

  ‘Steady the Buffs,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve had a lovely day with him. Elizabeth adores him. We’ll pop him down to you when they come home. No trouble at all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said weakly. ‘I was so tired I just slept and slept …’

  ‘Good thing too,’ he said kindly. ‘Best medicine in all the world.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said again. She could feel her eyes watering at the kindness in his tone. ‘I’ll wait for them to come home.’

  ‘You do that,’ Frederick said, and put down the telephone.

  As he did so, Elizabeth’s car drew up outside the front door, and he went out to help her with the shopping.

  ‘Ruth called,’ he said. ‘Apparently she’s only just woken.’

  Elizabeth paused, about to lift Thomas from his seat. ‘Shall I take Thomas down there? How did she sound?’

  Frederick hesitated. ‘A bit fraught,’ he said.

  Elizabeth unbuckled Thomas from his car seat. ‘I’ll take him down later,’ she said. ‘At bedtime. There’s simply no point in Ruth having him if she can’t cope.’

  Frederick held out his arms for his grandson. ‘Hello, young chap,’ he said lovingly. ‘Here for the duration, eh?’

  Ruth made the appointment to see the doctor, thinking that it was a routine check-up for Thomas, as the health visitor had advised. Elizabeth insisted that Patrick drive Ruth to the health centre and go in with her. After a cursory look at Thomas, Dr MacFadden suggested that Patrick take Thomas outside – ‘while I have a word with Mum.’

  Ruth flinched slightly at being called ‘Mum’, but she let Patrick and Thomas go.

  Dr MacFadden glanced at his notes. He was a young man, newly married and childless. He had endured sleepless nights himself when he was a young doctor on attachment to a busy hospital, but he did not think that dreary blending of night and day, that sea of fatigue in which all colours became grey and all emotions melted into weariness, was similar to the experience of caring for a small sleepless baby. After all, one was work and directed to a goal while the other was part of a natural process. He knew that women with new babies were always tired. He did not think of them as being sick with lack of sleep. He looked for another cause for Ruth’s white face and dark-ringed eyes.

  ‘And how are you?’ he asked gently.

  Ruth felt her face quiver. ‘I’m fine,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Tired.’

  He glanced down at his notes. He had not seen her during pregnancy, she had gone to the hospital for her antenatal care. He had seen her and Thomas only once before, at their six-week check-up, and had thought then that she looked ill and depressed.

  ‘Feeling a bit down?’ he suggested.

  ‘A bit,’ Ruth said unwillingly.

  ‘Are you sleeping all right?’

  She looked at him as if he were insane. ‘Sleeping?’ she repeated. ‘I never sleep. It feels as if I just never sleep at all.’

  ‘Baby keeping you up all night?’

  ‘I never get more than a couple of hours together.’

  ‘A lively one,’ Dr MacFadden said cheerfully. ‘Does Father take a turn with you?’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘He’s very busy at work …’

  He nodded.

  ‘Are you a bit weepy?’

  She turned her face away. ‘I’m miserable,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I think we can do something to help with that,’ he said. ‘I expect you feel a bit distant from the baby, do you? It’s perfectly normal.’

  Ruth turned her face back to him, questioning. ‘Is it? I just keep thinking how unnatural it is.’

  ‘No, no, lots of mothers can’t bond with their babies straightaway. It takes a bit of time.’

  ‘He just seems …’ Ruth broke off at the impossibility of explaining how Thomas – who had been born on his own and preferred to feed without her, and who now crowed and gurgled at the sight of his grandmother or his grandfather, or his father, without apparent preference – seemed so utterly independent of her and remote from her. ‘It’s as if he weren’t my baby at all,’ she said very quietly. ‘As if he belonged to someone else but I’m …’ she paused ‘… I’m stuck with him.’

  Dr MacFadden nodded as if none of this was so very dreadful. ‘I expect you resent having to care for him?’

  Ruth nodded. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered. ‘At the start of the day when Patrick goes, and Thomas is awake and I look ahead and it just goes on and on forever. I never know whether he’ll go to sleep or not. And if he does sleep during the day I can’t rest. I’m always listening for him to wake up. And sometimes he only sleeps for a few moments anyway, so just when I’ve gone back to bed and I’m dozing off he wakes up and I have to get up again, and then he cries and cries and cries,’ her voice rose. ‘And there are times when I could just murder him!’ She clapped her hand to her mouth and looked aghast. ‘I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to say that. I’d never hurt him. Never!’

  ‘A lot of mothers feel like this,’ Dr MacFadden said gently, retaining a sympathetic smile and holding his voice steady. ‘It’s perfectly normal, and it’s very good
to acknowledge it. You’d be surprised how many mothers I see who feel just as you do, and when they’ve had a bit of sleep and a bit of help they bring up perfectly happy children.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt him …’ Ruth repeated.

  Dr MacFadden nodded and wrote a note. It said: ‘? baby at risk?’ ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘But you’re obviously a bit overwrought just now. Have you ever shaken him or smacked him at all?’

  ‘No! No, of course not.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said soothingly. ‘No baby was ever hurt by a thought, you know.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘I wouldn’t hurt him,’ she said. She sounded less and less certain.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to write you a prescription that will help you feel more relaxed, and will make things a bit easier. I want you to take one in the morning and two at night, and come back and see me in a week.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Amitriptyline,’ he said. ‘Just to get you on your feet, to help you through a difficult patch. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Start with two at night, and then one every morning, for a week,’ he said. ‘And come back and see me next week.’

  Ruth nodded and rose slowly from her chair.

  ‘I’ll have a word with Dad about getting you some more help,’ Dr MacFadden said. ‘Sometimes us men can be a bit insensitive. We don’t always understand or make allowances. And a new baby in the house is a bit like a bomb going off, you have to take time to let the dust settle.’

  Ruth nodded, still saying nothing, and went out to the waiting room. Thomas was asleep in his carry cot, Patrick was leafing through a magazine. Ruth thought it was obvious to any casual observer that this was an easy baby to manage. Anything that was going wrong between her and Thomas must be her fault. Ruth sat down and looked at Thomas’s rosy, angelic sleeping face. Dr MacFadden nodded to Patrick from the door of his office and Patrick went reluctantly in.

  ‘She’s under a lot of strain,’ the doctor said frankly. ‘I’m glad we spotted it now. I’ll have the health visitor pop in every week, and I’ve put her on Amitriptyline to try and make life a little easier. Do you have help at home?’

  ‘My mother lives just up the road,’ Patrick said. ‘She’ll have Thomas any time we want, but she doesn’t want to interfere.’

  The young doctor shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about interfering just now,’ he said. ‘What Mum needs is as much help as she can get. Tell your mother not to be shy about chipping in. All help gratefully received. Mum needs a proper break and a couple of nights’ sleep.’

  Patrick nodded, only partly convinced. ‘I don’t see why she can’t cope,’ he said, and then corrected himself. ‘I’m concerned of course …’

  ‘Some women have the knack and others have to learn it,’ Dr MacFadden said airily. ‘This mum is taking it hard. She’ll settle down in a little while, if we give her the help now. Can you get home a bit more? Give her a bit more support?’

  Patrick shook his head, refusing. ‘I’ll try,’ he said.

  ‘Sounds like the best bet is Grandma then,’ the doctor said. ‘And thank heavens you’ve got a good grandma on the spot.’

  Six

  THE PILLS were innocuous-looking, friendly little pebbles. Ruth took two at bedtime and within moments felt a dreamy sense of release and calmness, as if she had just gulped down a schooner of sherry. She chuckled at the thought of it, and Patrick, getting undressed for bed, stared at the unfamiliar sound of Ruth’s sexy giggle.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Happy pills,’ Ruth said. ‘Now I know I’m a depressed housewife.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen you smile in months,’ Patrick commented. He got into bed beside her and pulled the covers over on his side.

  ‘I feel better,’ she said. ‘And your mother is coming early in the morning so I don’t have to get up. Heaven.’

  ‘How would you ever have managed without her?’

  Ruth felt as if she were floating in a warm bath. ‘How would you?’ she retorted, but her tongue felt slow, and nothing could threaten her good humour. ‘I don’t see you ironing your own shirts.’

  ‘Well, you should be doing them really,’ Patrick pointed out. ‘It’s not as if you’re working now.’

  Ruth chuckled again. ‘I’ll swap you,’ she said. ‘Eight hours a day, and half of those in meetings or chatting to people, against twenty-four hours a day on call with Thomas.’

  Patrick turned over and turned off the light. ‘Well, you’ve got tomorrow morning off,’ he said, ‘and every morning that you want, so you’ve not got much to complain about.’

  The pleasant drunken feeling was growing stronger. ‘I’ll complain if I want,’ Ruth said stubbornly, and then giggled at her own intransigence. ‘I bloody will if I bloody want to,’ she said.

  She slept for only an hour before Thomas’s loud wail echoed through the house. She got up and staggered down the stairs to where the bottles were ready in the fridge. She ran the hot tap and shook the bottle under the stream of hot water until the milk was warmed through, then she trudged up the stairs again to the nursery.

  Thomas was thrashing in his cot, arms and legs flailing, desperate with hunger and distress.

  Ruth did not feel her usual tide of panic at his cries. ‘Oh, hush,’ she said calmly. She picked him up: he was wet. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said. She wrapped him in a blanket and sat with him in the rocking chair. The rocking rhythm soothed them both. Ruth hummed quietly to Thomas. He sucked greedily and then more and more slowly, then his eyes closed and his head lolled away from the bottle. Ruth took it from his mouth and transferred him gently to her shoulder. She patted his back. Thomas burped richly but did not wake. Slowly, carefully, she transferred him back into his cot, putting him down as if he were a basket of fragile eggs, taking her hands away only when his full weight was on the mattress, first one hand, and then another.

  Only then did she remember that she had not changed his nappy. ‘Oh, damn,’ she said carelessly. ‘Never mind.’ She left him, wrapped in the damp blanket, and went back to her bed and fell asleep.

  Two hours later Thomas woke again. Ruth, dreaming of some strange street far away from Thomas and Patrick, with white clapboard houses and wide fresh lawns, got out of bed unwillingly. It was colder now: the little house had lost its overnight heat. Through the landing window a white moon sailed in a yellow aura of frosty clouds. Ruth trailed downstairs again, warmed a bottle, and trudged back up the stairs.

  Thomas was wet through, sodden nappy, sleep suit, blanket. Even his bedding was wet, his little duvet and his sheets. Ruth put him down on the cold changing mat and stripped off his clothes. He kicked and screamed in distress as she pulled the poppers apart and tore off the disposable nappy. His bottom was bright pink as if he had been scalded. She wiped it quickly with the cold, wet baby wipes and patted it dry and then smeared on some cream. He wriggled and she could not fasten the nappy properly. In the end she got it on his writhing body, and pushed his hands and feet into the arm and leg holes of the sleep suit. She did up the poppers and found they were wrongly fastened when she had two extra at the top.

  There was nothing she could do to the cot bedding, she thought. She settled back into the rocking chair. Thomas was too distressed to take his bottle. ‘Hush,’ Ruth said tiredly. She gave him a little shake to make him stop crying. ‘Be quiet, Thomas, your bottle is here.’

  It seemed to work. The baby clutched at her with frightened hands and latched onto the bottle. Ruth rocked in the chair, enjoying the silence after the painful crying. ‘Hush,’ she said.

  When Thomas fell asleep again, she remembered that the cot was damp. She took a clean blanket and wrapped it around him, leaving the wet duvet spread out on the landing to dry.

  In the bedroom Patrick had moved diagonally across the bed; there was no room for Ruth. She slipped in beside him and pushed him gently. He did not move. Ruth curled up in the small s
pace available and went instantly to sleep.

  Thomas slept for an hour and a half and then woke, thirsty, irritable, and sweating in the tight swaddling of the blanket. Ruth went downstairs to the kitchen again, heated up a bottle, and trudged back up. Thomas was damp with sweat, his dark hair stuck to his head, his neck and face moist. He cried desperately, irritable with the heat. Ruth lifted him up and unwrapped him. The chill air of the cold room hit him and he started to shiver. His loud, angry cries turned to despairing wails of discomfort. She cuddled him up to her warmth and pushed the bottle into his mouth. Thomas whimpered but then started to suck, and went quickly to sleep.

  This time she could not get him to go back into his cot. Every time she put him gently on the damp mattress he turned and cried again, and she had to pick him up, offer him his bottle, and rock him to sleep once more. Four or five times Ruth rocked him to sleep and then gently, carefully, put him down in his cot, and four or five times he started awake, and had to be picked up and rocked again.

  It was half past five before Ruth got back to bed. This time Patrick had moved over, taking the duvet with him, and there was a wide space of cold sheet. Ruth got in beside him and gently tugged a corner of duvet to cover her. She lay wakeful, her feet were cold, she was certain Thomas would wake again and cry. She lay, waiting for him to cry, knowing that she would have to get up, staring blankly at the ceiling. She knew she should sleep, she knew that she was tired. But she could not make herself sleep. She was certain that the moment she fell asleep Thomas would wake, and she thought she could not bear to be woken again. It was almost better to be awake, to stay awake all night, if needs be, than to suffer that terrible disappointment of being dragged from warmth and dreams.

  At half past six Ruth took her pill and at once felt the easy floating sense of release, and fell asleep. She did not even wake when Patrick’s alarm clock went off, and he got out of bed at half past seven. He went downstairs and made himself a cup of coffee. At a quarter to eight his mother’s car drew up outside and she came quietly up the path. He opened the front door to her.