The Little House Read online

  Patrick nodded. ‘Did you get anything?’

  ‘Couple of rabbits. We’ll have pie tonight, shall we, my dear?’

  ‘If you skin them,’ Elizabeth said.

  Frederick chuckled. ‘I will.’

  ‘Do you want any breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll take a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I went out with a roll of bread and cheese. I did very well, thank you, my dear.’

  Elizabeth poured the tea. ‘Patrick wants to talk with us,’ she said.

  Thomas let out a little squeak and Elizabeth drew up her chair beside him and gave him a wooden honey scoop to hold, her eyes on her son.

  ‘Trouble?’ Frederick asked.

  Patrick nodded. ‘It’s Ruth,’ he said. He paused, hardly knowing what to say. ‘She woke in the night and went to look for Thomas. I didn’t wake her when I got in; I thought I should leave her to sleep.’ He looked at his mother. ‘She was sound asleep; I thought I should leave her.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Elizabeth said briskly. ‘She was desperately tired yesterday.’

  ‘So when she woke she didn’t know where Thomas was.’

  ‘She must have known,’ Frederick interrupted. ‘She knew he was with us. If he wasn’t at your home, then clearly he was still with us.’

  ‘She panicked,’ Patrick said. ‘I woke up to hear her screaming like an express train in the nursery. She thought he was kidnapped. She was screaming and crying. She couldn’t even hear me when I told her that everything was all right.’

  Frederick exchanged a glance with Elizabeth.

  ‘I had to shout her down,’ Patrick said. ‘She wouldn’t hear me, she went on screaming and screaming. When she was finally quiet I gave her two of her pills and she went all soft and sleepy. But she kept saying there was something worse, there was something worse.’

  Thomas reached for the honey scoop where Elizabeth had placed it on the wooden table of the high chair. Elizabeth guided his little hand to it.

  ‘She was half asleep but I think she meant it,’ Patrick said. ‘She said that she wished that he had been kidnapped so that she wouldn’t have to look after him any more. So that she could get some sleep.’

  Elizabeth drew in her breath sharply. Frederick rose to his feet and stood, looking out of the kitchen window, his back to the room.

  ‘I see,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I didn’t know how seriously I should take it …’ Patrick began. ‘I thought I should talk it over with you.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Quite right,’ she said. She glanced at Frederick’s back. ‘Do you think she meant it, Patrick?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘We should perhaps talk to the doctor, but I didn’t want to take this any further without talking it over.’

  Elizabeth hesitated, glanced towards Frederick again. ‘Did she ever want him?’ she asked. ‘Did she ever want to be a mother?’

  Patrick shook his head in silence.

  Frederick turned back from the window. ‘I think we have a serious problem,’ he said. ‘And we’ve both seen it coming, Patrick. Your mother has been worried sick about Ruth’s care for the baby. When she collects him in the morning he’s been neglected all night. When she returns him in the afternoon, Ruth never seems to want him back. Frankly I think she’s rejected him. This comes as no surprise to me at all.’

  Patrick looked at his mother. ‘You never said …’

  She shook her head. ‘How could I? It’s not my place to criticize my daughter-in-law. And besides I kept hoping that she would get better. She started on the pills and I thought she would be less depressed. I made sure she could sleep during the day. I thought that things would improve. Short of taking Thomas away from her all day and all night I didn’t see how I could do more.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘She needs help,’ Patrick said. ‘Do I start with the GP?’

  Elizabeth said nothing.

  ‘He’s not been up to much so far,’ Frederick said. ‘Anti-depressants indeed!’

  Both men turned to Elizabeth. Still she said nothing.

  ‘I think we need something a bit more decisive,’ Frederick went on. ‘Get this sorted out once and for all. We’ve been worried sick, Patrick, I can tell you. We knew she wasn’t pulling her weight, but we didn’t know what more we could do.’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘But I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I suppose she should see a counsellor. Get some help. I could ask the doctor, and the health visitor was good, wasn’t she?’

  Elizabeth slowly shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that we want the health centre to know all about this.’

  ‘Why not?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘If we call them in – the doctor and the health visitor and the social workers, all of them – we can’t control what happens. What if they say that Ruth has to go to hospital for a couple of months? What if they say she has to have treatment?’

  ‘We could manage,’ Frederick said easily.

  ‘Yes, but what if they won’t let us manage? What if they say she has to take him with her? Or what if they say that he has to be put into care, that we’re too old to have him? Once you call these people in, they can do what they want. What if they say Ruth has been neglecting him or abusing him and they take him away from us?’

  The two men looked blankly horrified. ‘They couldn’t say that!’ Frederick exclaimed.

  ‘The authorities these days have tremendous powers,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘If they think that Ruth has endangered Thomas, they can take him right away from us all and we might never see him again. Once you ask them in, you give them the power to do what they want.’

  ‘But they couldn’t think that Ruth …’ Patrick broke off.

  Elizabeth looked steadily at him. ‘She has neglected him since the day he was born,’ she said calmly. ‘From the first days in the hospital when she wouldn’t feed him, till now when she says she wishes he was kidnapped. She never wanted him, did she? He was conceived by accident.’

  Patrick nodded. ‘It was my fault,’ he confessed. ‘I wanted a baby.’

  ‘Nothing wrong in that,’ Frederick said stoutly.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s not you in the wrong, Patrick, it’s her. She should have learned to love him. If the health visitor knew the half of it, I think she’d call in social services, and once they start, anything can happen.’

  Frederick looked absolutely stunned. ‘I’ve had no experience of this sort of thing …’

  ‘How should we have any experience?’ Elizabeth demanded, an edge of disdain in her voice. ‘No one in our family has ever been mentally ill. No one has ever needed health visitors and doctors and drugs and psychiatric treatment.’

  Patrick looked at her as if he were a naughty little boy but she might give him a note to excuse him from detention. ‘This is awful,’ he said.

  Her face softened. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said gently. ‘It’s not your fault, darling, I know how hard you’ve tried. And it’s not little Thomas’s fault either – a sweeter, easier baby never lived.’ She glanced out of the kitchen window across the fields to where the roof of the little house was just visible. ‘It’s Ruth,’ she said simply. ‘She’s just not up to it.’

  Patrick breathed slowly out and put his head in his hands. Frederick looked at his wife’s stern, beautiful face. ‘You’re right,’ he said unwillingly. ‘What d’you suggest, my dear?’

  ‘I think Thomas and Patrick should move in here, so that we can look after them. Patrick can have some regular meals and regular hours for a change, and Thomas can be properly cared for. This running up and down from one house to another is no good for him at all.’

  Frederick nodded.

  ‘And Ruth can come and live here or go to stay with her aunt. She needs a complete break.’

  ‘She hardly ever speaks to her,’ Patrick protested. ‘And she lives miles away.’

  ‘Are there no American relatives at all? Where she could go for