The Little House Read online

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, for Christ’s sake do you have to make so much noise? I’ve been up all night with him. He’s only this minute gone off.’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ Patrick said reasonably. ‘I heard him cry out at about four, and I listened for him. I was going to get up, but he went back to sleep again.’

  ‘He was awake at one, for an hour, and then again at three. He didn’t go back to sleep at four, it was you that went back to sleep at four. He woke up and I had to change him and give him another bottle, and I was up with him till six, and I can’t bear him to wake again.’

  Patrick looked sceptical. ‘I’m sure I would have woken if you had been up that often,’ he said. ‘You probably dreamed it.’

  Ruth gave a little shriek and clapped her hand over her mouth. Above her own gagging hand, her eyes glared at Patrick. ‘I couldn’t have dreamed it.’ She was near to tears. ‘How could I have dreamed anything? I’ve been awake nearly all night! There was no time to dream anything, because I’ve hardly ever slept!’

  Patrick pulled on his shirt and then crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, touching her gently on the shoulder. ‘Calm down, darling,’ he said. ‘Calm down. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d had a bad night. Shall I call Mother?’

  ‘I don’t want your mother,’ Ruth said fretfully. ‘I want you to be quiet in the mornings so you don’t wake him again. I want you to get up without waking me. And I want you to come home early so you have him this afternoon and I can sleep then.’

  Patrick got up and briskly pulled on his trousers. He hated demanding women, having had no experience of them. ‘No can do, I’m afraid. I’ve got a meeting at six. I was going to be late home anyway. I’ll call Mother as I go out. You get your head down and get some sleep. She’ll be down straightaway and she can get Thomas up and dressed and take him up home for the day.’

  ‘I don’t want your mother,’ Ruth insisted. ‘I want you to look after Thomas. Not her. He’s your son, not hers.’

  Patrick smoothed the lapels of his jacket down over his chest and glanced at the pleasing reflection in the mirror. ‘I can’t be in two places at once,’ he said. ‘Be reasonable, Ruth. I’m doing my best, and I’m working all the hours God sends to make a go of this documentary unit. If I get the pay rise I’ve been promised we could get some help, perhaps a girl to come in and look after Thomas a couple of mornings a week.’

  ‘I don’t want a girl,’ Ruth said. ‘I want us to look after our son. Not a girl, not your mother: you and me.’

  Patrick said nothing. The silence seemed to be on his side.

  ‘So I’ll call Mother, shall I?’ he asked, as if she had not spoken.

  The temptation of a morning’s sleep was too much for Ruth.

  ‘All right,’ she said ungraciously. ‘I suppose so.’

  Five

  ‘IT’S RUTH,’ Patrick said without preamble when his mother answered the phone. ‘She’s not up to managing Thomas this morning, and I have to go to work. Can you have him?’

  ‘Of course,’ Elizabeth said easily. ‘You know how I love him.’

  ‘Weren’t you doing something today? Isn’t it your day at the church for flowers or something?’ Patrick asked with belated politeness.

  ‘Yes, but Thomas can come too. He’s so good. He’s no trouble at all.’

  Patrick felt himself relax. The sense of permanent crisis that eddied around the little house was calmed by his mother’s competence. ‘I wish you could teach Ruth how to handle him,’ he said suddenly. ‘We don’t seem to be getting on at all.’

  There was a diplomatic silence from his mother.

  ‘She can’t seem to settle him at night, and then she’s tired all day. She wanted me to come home early from work and I simply can’t.’ Patrick realized he was sounding aggrieved and at once adjusted his tone. ‘I suppose we’re beginners at this,’ he said, the good humour back in his voice. ‘Apprentices.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘Apart from her being tired?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just wondered if she was perhaps a little depressed. Baby blues or something?’

  Patrick thought for a moment. If he had been honest he would have known that Ruth had been unhappy from the moment the pregnancy had been confirmed, from the moment she gave up her job. She had been unhappy at the move to the little house, she had been unhappy at living so close to his parents. And now she was unhappy with being left alone all day, every day, with a new restless baby.

  ‘She seems to be making very heavy weather of it all,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know if she’s depressed. She’s certainly making a meal of it.’

  ‘I’ll come down at once,’ Elizabeth said. ‘See what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Patrick said with real gratitude. Then he put the receiver down, picked up his car keys, and drove to work with the agreeable sense of having done all that a man could be expected to do for his wife and child.

  Elizabeth tapped on the front door very gently, and when there was no reply let herself in with her own key. In the kitchen Patrick’s morning cup of coffee was cooling on the table. Someone had forgotten to switch on the dishwasher the night before and the plates were still dirty. The kitchen curtains were closed, and the room looked shadowy and hungover. Elizabeth drew the curtains back and fastened them with their tiebacks. She moved around, easily, confidently, clearing up and wiping the worktops, admiring the colour scheme, which she had chosen. The sitting room was reasonably tidy, but it had the neglected appearance of a room that was seldom used. Elizabeth picked up the evening paper and put it in the log basket for lighting the fire, put the Radio Times tidily beside the television. She plumped up the cushions on the sofa and moved the coffee table into place. There were no flowers in the room, just a dying African violet in a pot with browning leaves and dry petals. Elizabeth frowned slightly, fetched a glass of water and dribbled it onto the thirsty soil.

  She heard a movement and a little cry from the nursery upstairs and went soft-footed up the stairs. The Berber-twist carpet she had chosen went well with the William Morris wallpaper, which Ruth had insisted on using. Elizabeth took it all in with the pleasure of a house owner.

  The cry from the nursery grew louder as Thomas woke.

  ‘Coming! I’m coming!’ There was an exasperated yell from the bedroom, and then the bedroom door was flung open and the two women suddenly faced each other.

  Ruth was in a dingy maternity nightgown, her body, still fat with the weight of pregnancy, only partly masked by its folds. Her feet were bare, her hair limp, her face a mask of tiredness, dark shadows deeply etched under her eyes. She looked exhausted and unhappy. Elizabeth was trim in grey wool slacks with a pale cashmere jumper. She had a light-coloured scarf pinned at her neck by a small expensive brooch; she wore the lightest of makeup. Her perfume, as usual, was Chanel No 15.

  ‘Oh,’ Ruth said blankly.

  ‘Patrick phoned me to come. He said you wanted to sleep.’

  The wails from the nursery grew louder. Both women checked a move to go, deferring to each other with careful courtesy.

  ‘I was up all night,’ Ruth said. To her own ears she sounded as if she were making excuses to a strict teacher.

  ‘Of course, my dear, and I love to have him.’

  ‘I wanted Patrick to come home early …’

  ‘Well, men have to work.’ Elizabeth stated an inarguable fact. ‘And I’m just up the road doing nothing. Let me get him up and give him his bottle and get him dressed, and I’ll take him up to the farm with me. And when you’ve had a good sleep, and a bath’ (and washed your hair, she mentally added) ‘then you can come up to the farm and fetch him, or I’ll bring him back.’

  ‘I don’t like to impose,’ Ruth said awkwardly.

  ‘Nonsense. If it were your mother within walking distance, she would be caring for you both.’

  At the mention of her absent m