The Little House by Philippa Gregory
Dr Fairley, thinking of the several difficult phone calls with Patrick, nodded and reserved his opinion.
‘His parents adore him,’ Ruth said simply. ‘And of course they will never love me like that. It was unfair to them and unfair to myself to hope for more. I was playing happy families in my head. I wanted them to fill all the spaces of my childhood – I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. I wanted my own parents back so badly …’
She broke off and reached for a tissue from the box on his desk, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, without apology for the show of emotion. ‘They’re good people, and they love Patrick and they love Thomas and they love me too – up to a point – I’m going to go back and accept that limitation.’ She gave him a small brave smile. ‘And in time, when they see that I care for Patrick and I care for Thomas, they’ll respect me,’ she said. ‘They’ll see that I’m a good wife, and a good mother, and they’ll respect that.’
‘Good,’ Dr Fairley said with careful neutrality.
Ruth nodded. He let a little silence fall on her good intentions.
‘And what about you,’ he said. ‘As an individual?’
She spread her fingers out on her lap. ‘I’ll look after Thomas while he’s little, and I’ll do some freelance work,’ she said. ‘I might write, if I can’t get back into radio work. I might write magazine articles; I could do that. And when Thomas is older and goes to school then I’ll go back to radio work again.’
He nodded. ‘And how will you keep from being depressed, at home on your own with a small demanding baby?’ he asked.
She smiled her urchin smile. ‘I shall see the consultant that you have referred me to,’ she said, ticking off the tasks on her fingers. ‘I shall not ever take tranx or uppers or downers or anything again. I shall make a relationship with Patrick that is a real relationship between adults based on love and self-respect. I shall learn to enjoy being with Thomas. I shall ask Elizabeth for advice and help but I shall stop her invading my life, and I shall try to become friends with Frederick, and to see him as a real person, and to make him see me as a real person and not just as an adjunct of Patrick. I shall see my friends from Radio Westerly, and I shall find friends in the village, women who have babies like Thomas, and I shall spend time with them and talk about babies and child care with them.’
He nodded again. ‘That all sounds very practical and workable,’ he said. ‘And how will you know that it is working for you? How will other people know?’
She nodded at the lesson that George and the others in her group had taught her. ‘Oh, yes! I will know that I am OK because I will not feel the need for any kind of drug, and I will not be sleepy all the time. I will enjoy things like food and talk and jokes. I will feel joy and sadness. And I will start to love Thomas.’ She suddenly looked up, and her eyes were filled with unshed tears. ‘I want to love Thomas,’ she said suddenly. ‘I feel as if I have only given birth to him now, as if all the days before were just part of a hard pregnancy. I’m ready to love him now, and I want to see him and hold him and smell him and bath him and kiss him.’
Dr Fairley smiled for the first time since she had come into the room. ‘I think you will make an excellent mother,’ he said. ‘Thomas is a lucky boy to have such a loving mother, who has come through so much to be with him.’
She nodded. ‘I have,’ she said simply. ‘And I want to be his mother now, and I never did before.’
‘I think you have worked very hard,’ he said. ‘You’ve come through a great shadow on your life, and you will never be so alone and so unhappy again.’
She looked at him with hope. ‘Can you promise that?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. Not because I’m a magician, but because the loss of a parent for a little child is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen. And you were never allowed to acknowledge that loss until now. You’ve faced it now and started to deal with it, and it’s unlikely that you will ever have to face anything worse.’
She nodded. ‘I feel as if I’ve been crying non-stop ever since I arrived.’
‘Maybe you will cry some more,’ he suggested. ‘And there is nothing wrong with crying.’
She reached for the tissues again. ‘I cry all the time.’
He smiled gently. ‘Newly exposed emotions can be very sensitive,’ he said. ‘When I first did my therapy I went around weeping for months. I felt completely out of control and completely wonderful. Everyone else thought I was miserable, but it was a different feeling from sadness.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘Anything else?’ he asked, trying to read her face and the relaxed set of her shoulders.
She looked up and he saw she was smiling through her tears. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve finished. But I do thank you for having me here, and for all that you and everyone has done for me.’
He made a little gesture with his hands. ‘It is my job,’ he said. ‘And you have a right to the best treatment we can give.’ He hesitated. ‘If you ever need us, we will still be here,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel that this was like school that you have to leave and can never go back.’
‘I don’t think I’ll need to come back,’ she said. ‘Things are going to be different at home. I’m going to be straight and honest and adult with them, and things will be very different.’
Dr Fairley thought of the remorseless niceness of Elizabeth, and of Patrick’s little-boy charm. ‘I wish you the very best of luck,’ he said simply.
Patrick came to collect Ruth and was relieved to find her waiting in the hall with her small suitcase at her feet. There was no one to see her off. When she saw the car draw up outside, she rose and carried her suitcase down the shallow flight of steps. Patrick took it from her, feeling that she should not be carrying heavy weights, that she was ill. He put it in the boot and held the car door for her. Ruth got in and he slammed the door carefully. He remembered bringing her home from the hospital when Thomas was born and felt the same irritable concern, as if Ruth had just played a master stroke, which would ensure that all the attention was focused on her instead of him.
‘Thank God I don’t have to spend another minute in that place,’ he said abruptly as they drove through the tall gates.
‘Yes,’ Ruth said neutrally. ‘How are things at home?’
‘Fine.’
‘And Thomas?’
‘Fine.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘How d’you mean: “what’s he doing?’”
‘I mean, how does he look, what is he eating, how is he behaving?’
‘He looks just the same,’ Patrick said. He did not mean to be unhelpful, but the differences in Thomas’s development were too slight to be noticed by him. ‘Mother will tell you,’ he said.
‘Was it a tooth coming through?’
‘No, he was just a bit pink-cheeked and restless.’
Ruth nodded and looked out of the window. The easy tears threatened to come at the thought of Thomas’s being pink-cheeked and restless and her not there to comfort him.
‘So that’s that, is it?’ Patrick asked after a while.
‘What is?’
‘You don’t have to go back again?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll see a therapist in Bath for a while,’ she said. ‘But I don’t plan to go back to Dr Fairley.’
‘Does he say you’re completely OK?’
Ruth threw him a swift smile. ‘I don’t think he quite deals in those sorts of judgments,’ she said, amused. ‘I don’t think he would recognize the concept of completely OK.’
‘Well, he says you’re normal?’
‘I was always normal.’
‘Well, you’re better then?’
‘Better than normal?’
Patrick clicked his tongue. ‘Look, Ruth, it’s been a long worrying time for me, and I had to go in to work at seven this morning to get something out of the way so I could collect you today. I’ve driven two hours here and I’m driving two hours back, and I’m not
Ruth belatedly remembered her resolution to be straight and clear with Patrick and his family. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘What was wrong with me was a form of postnatal depression, which took me back to the loss of my parents.’ She could feel the tears coming and she swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘I have spent a lot of time grieving for them, and now I feel ready to take up my life again. I am really sorry that things went so bad with Thomas, and I want to start all over again with him. And I’m really pleased that, however bad it’s been, it’s happened now, and it’s over and done with now. He and I can start our relationship again. Agnes says …’
‘Who’s Agnes?’
‘One of the patients – Agnes says that her children were really wonderful from about six months, so I want …’
‘I hardly think her opinions would be very helpful.’
Ruth recoiled. ‘What?’
‘Well, what’s wrong with her?’
‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with her?’
‘What was she in there for?’
‘She has an addiction. But …’
Patrick snorted. ‘Well, I hardly think we need take some druggie’s opinion on child care, need we?’
Ruth paused for a moment before carefully replying. ‘She is a rather wonderful person, who is very brave, and who was very kind to me. I liked her a lot, and I’m going to stay in touch with her.’
‘In touch with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean write to her?’
‘Yes, and when she comes out I’ll visit her and I’ll ask her to visit us. I want her to see Thomas, and I want to meet her children.’
Patrick shook his head, but said nothing.
‘You don’t approve,’ Ruth said flatly.
He shook his head again; he was smiling.
‘You don’t want me to see her?’
Patrick was imperturbable. He watched the road with his level blue eyes.
‘Patrick, please speak to me,’ Ruth said, trying to keep her rising temper out of her voice. ‘Agnes is a friend of mine. Of course I shall want to see her, and of course I shall write to her.’
‘Fine,’ Patrick said flatly. ‘Fine. Whatever you like, Ruth, and I hope it makes you happy and helps you, and makes her happy and helps her. I don’t want to meet her, and I won’t meet her. And I don’t want her to see Thomas either. But you have every right to do whatever you like, pursue your new friends and life.’
Ruth felt an uneasy sensation of tumbling, as if her return to her stable marriage and life were a mirage, and that she had never been more insecure. ‘It’s not a new life,’ she said. ‘My life is with you and Thomas. I’m coming home to my old life, that’s what I want. But Agnes was a good friend to me, and I want to stay in touch with her. That’s all.’ Her voice was plaintive and she checked herself. ‘Come on, Patrick. We’re not even home yet. I don’t want to quarrel with you.’
He shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘There’s no quarrel. I said that you can have the friends that you want. But I don’t have to meet them, do I?’
‘No.’
‘And my family certainly won’t meet them,’ he said. He leaned forward and switched on the radio, drowning out any further conversation. ‘D’you mind if I catch the news?’
Elizabeth was listening for the car, waiting for the scrunch of the wheels on the gravel. She had kept Thomas from his morning sleep so that he would be certain to be asleep when his mother came home, to give them all time to assess Ruth before she saw her son. She saw Patrick’s car from the nursery window; in the antique wooden cot below the window Thomas was soundly asleep. She closed the nursery door behind her and ran down the stairs to open the front door as Patrick drew up and Ruth got out.
Elizabeth noticed at once that they had been listening to the radio rather than talking together, that Patrick looked strained and sulky. Then she looked at her daughter-in-law. Ruth was looking wonderfully well. The tired, strained look had quite gone from her face, her eyes were bright again, her hair clean, her face young and optimistic. It was how she had looked when Patrick first brought her home and Elizabeth had realized, with a feeling of dread, that this would be the girl who would be her daughter-in-law, that this was the one he would marry.
‘Darling!’ she exclaimed and hurried down the steps and put her arms around Ruth and held her tight.
Ruth had lost weight in the four weeks she had been away from home; Elizabeth could feel the bones in her shoulders and her hips as they embraced.
‘It’s so good to have you home,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful. Come in, I’ve got lunch ready for you.’
‘Where’s Thomas?’ Ruth said as she went into the hall.
‘Upstairs having a sleep. I’ve just this minute put him down.’
Ruth started for the stairs and did not see the swift exchange of looks between Patrick and his mother.
‘I’ll come up too,’ Patrick said and followed Ruth up the stairs.
She tiptoed into the nursery and leaned over the side of the cot. Thomas was asleep on his back, his eyelashes curled on his pink plump cheeks. His downy hair was close around his perfectly round skull; his mouth was a tiny rosebud. One hand was outflung above his head, the fingers curled into the palm. The other was thrown sideways as if the baby were quite abandoned into sleep. Ruth drank in the sight of him, as if she had been thirsty for him for months. ‘Oh, God, he’s so lovely,’ she whispered.
Patrick leaned against the doorpost.
Ruth reached down and put her finger on the little wrist. There was a small crease where the plump arm met the plump hand; Ruth stroked it. Thomas stirred slightly in his sleep and turned his head. Ruth bent low over the cot and inhaled the warm scent of his breath. He smelled of warm skin, of baby shampoo, and of milk.
‘Let’s go down,’ Patrick said. ‘Mother won’t want him woken up if she’s just put him down.’
‘You can go,’ Ruth whispered.
He did not move.
Ruth leaned into the cot and let her lips and nose brush Thomas’s fine hair, inhaling the scent of him, sensing the warm sweetness of him. She felt like some animal – a mother lion – reclaiming a lost cub. She wanted to strip him of his little romper suit and sniff him all over, she wanted to lick him, she wanted his naked warm skin against her own. With a sharp pang she realized that she had lost her chance to breast-feed him, and that only now was she ready for that intimacy.
‘Come on,’ Patrick said from the doorway.
Ruth glanced behind her. ‘You go on down,’ she said. She had forgotten he was there. ‘I just want to see him for a moment. I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Patrick said.
‘No, go on,’ she said.
He did not move. Ruth kissed Thomas gently on his warm rounded skull but she felt Patrick’s scrutiny on her back. She straightened up and tiptoed towards the door. ‘He’s so vulnerable,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten all about that. When I was ill I felt as if he were a little monster, draining the life out of me. Now that I can see him properly I can see what a delicate little thing he is. Completely defenceless.’
She slipped her hand in his arm and leaned against him. ‘I’m so glad to be home,’ she said. ‘Thank you for being so patient, darling, you’ve been wonderful. I’m so glad to be home.’
Patrick kissed the top of her head and led the way from the nursery and down the stairs.
Elizabeth and Frederick were waiting for them in the sitting room with the decanter of sherry and glasses. There was a jug of fresh orange juice on the tray as well. Frederick came forward and kissed Ruth with a word of greeting.
‘Sherry, darling? Orange juice, Ruth?’ Elizabeth asked.
Ruth hesitated. ‘I can drink sherry,’ she said awkwardly.
Elizabeth shot a quick look at Patrick.
‘We thought you’d have to be on the wagon,’ he said. ??
‘I’d like an orange juice,’ Ruth said. ‘But I can drink alcohol if I want.’
Frederick poured the drinks with care and handed Ruth her juice and then sherry to Elizabeth and Patrick. ‘Never does to mix them,’ he observed to nobody in particular. ‘Drugs and drink, never do mix.’
‘I’m not taking any drugs,’ Ruth said.
Again Elizabeth and Patrick exchanged that swift intimate glance.
‘I thought you’d be on something, until you get to see the Bath therapist,’ Patrick said.
Ruth shook her head. ‘The whole point of going there was to get off the drugs,’ she said. ‘And it was only Amitriptyline, I wasn’t a complete crackhead. And now I’m clean.’
Elizabeth’s face was a study of polite interest. ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ she said, ignoring the drug jargon as she would have ignored an obscenity.
Frederick glanced uncomfortably at her, uncertain as to how they should handle this glimpse into a world they could usually ignore.
‘I wanted to say something to you, to you all,’ Ruth started. She was reminded with a surprising rush of nostalgia how she would sometimes start talking in her group. She looked at the anxious faces around her – Frederick’s distinguished craggy scowl, Patrick’s handsome half-smile, Elizabeth’s unaffected charm. ‘I wanted to say that things were very bad for me from the moment Thomas was born – even before. And I’m really sorry that they turned out like that. I’ve thought through what was wrong and it will never be that bad again. I want to start afresh with you.’ She looked at Patrick and then she looked from him to his mother and his father. ‘I want you to give me another chance,’ she said. ‘You’ve been generous and kind and helpful to me and now I want to come to you as an equal and start again.’