The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  Three

  RUTH AND ELIZABETH were to go down to the cottage together, to measure for curtains and carpets, and discuss colour schemes. The builders had all but finished, the new kitchen had been built, the new bath plumbed in. Elizabeth had tirelessly supervised the workmen, ascertaining Ruth’s wishes and chivvying them to do the work right. Nothing would have been done without her, nothing could have been finished as quickly without her. Patrick, absorbed in setting up the documentary unit at work, had been no help to Ruth at all. Without her mother-in-law she would have been exhausted every day by a thousand trivial decisions.

  Ruth had planned to walk down to the cottage in the morning, when she felt at her best. But Elizabeth had been busy all morning and the time had slipped away. It was not until after lunch that she said, ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Shall we go down to the cottage now? Or do you want your nap?’

  ‘We’ll go,’ Ruth decided. In her fifth month of pregnancy she felt absurdly heavy and tired, and the mid-afternoon was always the worst time.

  ‘Shall I drive us down?’ Elizabeth offered.

  ‘I can walk.’ Ruth heaved herself out of the low armchair and went out into the hall. She bent uncomfortably to tie the laces of her walking boots. Elizabeth, waiting beside her, seemed as lithe and quick as a young girl.

  Tammy, the dog, ran ahead of them, through Elizabeth’s rose garden to the garden gate and then down across the fields. Ruth walked slowly, feeling the warmth of the April sunlight on her face. She felt better.

  ‘I should walk every day,’ she said. ‘This is wonderful!’

  ‘As long as you don’t overdo it,’ Elizabeth warned. ‘What did the doctor say yesterday?’

  ‘He said everything was fine. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Did he check your weight?’

  ‘Yes – it’s OK.’

  ‘He didn’t think you were overweight?’

  ‘He said it didn’t matter.’

  ‘And did you tell him how tired you’re feeling?’

  ‘He said it was normal.’

  Elizabeth pursed her lips and said nothing.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ruth repeated.

  Elizabeth smiled at her. ‘I know you are,’ she said. ‘And I’m just fussing over you. But I hate to see you so pale and so heavy. In my day they used to give us iron tablets. You look so anaemic.’

  ‘I’ll eat cabbage,’ Ruth offered. She climbed awkwardly over the stile into the next field.

  ‘Careful,’ Elizabeth warned.

  The two women walked for a little while in silence. In the hedge the catkins bobbed. Ruth remembered the springs of her American childhood, more dramatic, more necessary, after longer and sharper winters.

  ‘I forgot to tell you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Patrick rang this morning while you were in the bath. He said he has to go up to London this afternoon for a meeting and it’ll probably go on late. He said he’d stay up there.’

  Ruth felt a pang of intense disappointment. ‘Overnight?’ She hated being in Patrick’s parents’ house without him. She felt always as if she were some unwanted refugee billeted on kindly but unwilling hosts.

  ‘Possibly Tuesday as well,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You can have a nice early night and a lie-in without him waking you in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll ring him when we get home,’ Ruth said.

  ‘He’s out of touch,’ she said. ‘In his meeting, and then on the train to London.’

  ‘I wish I’d spoken to him,’ Ruth said wistfully.

  Elizabeth opened the gate to the garden of the cottage and patted Ruth on the shoulder as she went through. ‘Now then,’ she said briskly. ‘You can live without him for one night.’

  ‘Didn’t he ask to speak to me?’

  ‘I said you were in the bath.’

  ‘I would have got out of the bath, if you had called me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you,’ Elizabeth declared. ‘Not for a little message that I can take for you, darling. If you want a long chat with him you can save it all up until he comes home the day after tomorrow.’

  Ruth nodded.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Nothing that you need him for?’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said shortly.

  Elizabeth had the front-door key; she opened the door and stepped back to let Ruth go in. ‘Don’t cling, dear,’ she said gently. ‘Men hate women who cling. Especially now.’

  Ruth turned abruptly from her mother-in-law and went into the sitting room. Elizabeth was undoubtedly right, which made her advice the more galling. There was still a large patch of damp beside the French windows, which not even the previous summer had dried out.

  ‘Now,’ Elizabeth said, throwing off her light jacket with energy. ‘You sit down on that little stool and I’ll rush round and take all the measurements you want.’

  From the pocket of the jacket she pulled a notebook and pen and a measuring tape. Ruth sulkily took the notebook while Elizabeth strode around the room calling out the measurements of the walls and the window frames.

  ‘Fitted carpets, I think, don’t you?’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘So much warmer. And good thick curtains for the winter, and some lighter ones for summer. Perhaps a pale yellow weave for summer, to match the primrose walls.’

  ‘I thought we’d paper it. I want the paper we had in the hall at the flat,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Oh, darling!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Not William Morris willow again, surely!’

  ‘Didn’t you like it?’

  ‘I loved it,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But don’t you remember what Patrick said? He said he kept seeing faces in it. You don’t want it in your sitting room, with Patrick seeing faces peeping through the leaves at him every evening.’

  Ruth reluctantly chuckled. ‘I’ll have it in the hall then,’ she said.

  ‘And this room primrose yellow,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘I have some curtain material that will just do these windows, and the French windows too. Old gold they are. Quite lovely.’

  Ruth nodded. She knew they would be lovely. Elizabeth’s taste was infallible, and she had trunks of beautiful materials saved from her travels around the world. ‘But we shouldn’t be taking your things, we should be buying new.’

  Elizabeth, on her knees before the French windows, scratching critically at the damp plaster, looked up, and smiled radiantly. ‘Of course you should have my old things!’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to see my curtains up at your windows and the two of you – no, the three of you – happy and settled here.’ She looked back at the damp plaster. ‘I shall get someone out to see to this at once,’ she said. ‘Mr Willis warned me it might be a specialist job.’

  They moved to the kitchen, the dining room, and then to the three upstairs bedrooms. Elizabeth carried around the little stool from the sitting room, and insisted on Ruth’s sitting in the middle of each room, while she bustled with the tape measure, calling out numbers.

  Empty of furniture, but with new kitchen units in pale pine and with a remodelled bathroom upstairs the cottage did look pretty. Ruth felt her spirits rising. ‘If they hurry up with the decorating we should get in before the baby’s born.’

  Elizabeth, stretching across the bedroom window, nodded. ‘I’m determined to see that you are,’ she said. ‘Cream cotton at all the upstairs windows, I think, and then it matches whatever colour walls you choose. But that nice Berber-weave carpet I told you about all through the top floor.’

  ‘In the flat we had varnished boards,’ Ruth said. ‘I liked them.’

  ‘Weren’t they wonderful?’ Elizabeth reminisced. ‘Georgian pine. And you did have them beautifully done.’ She recalled herself to the present. ‘So we’ll have the biscuit-colour Berber carpet all around the upstairs floor, and pastel walls. We can choose the colours at home. I’ve got the charts.’

  ‘All right,’ Ruth said, surrendering her vision of clean waxed floorboards without an argument. She felt suddenly very weary. ‘The sooner we choose it and order
it the sooner the house is ready, I suppose.’

  ‘You leave it to me!’ Elizabeth said with determination. ‘I’ll have it ready by August, don’t fret. In fact I’ll leave you to have your rest when we get home, and I’ll zip into Bath and come back with some fabric samples. You can choose them this evening and we can order them tomorrow. I’ll order the carpets at the same time.’

  ‘And tiles or vinyl for the kitchen,’ Ruth said wearily. ‘But I haven’t chosen them yet. Patrick was going to take me into town tonight.’

  ‘Would you trust me to choose it for you?’ Elizabeth offered. ‘I can look when I’m ordering the carpets. They’ve got a wonderful selection there.’

  Ruth got up from the stool. Her back ached and there was a new nagging twinge in the very bones of her pelvis. The walk home over two hilly fields seemed a long, long way.

  Elizabeth broke off, instantly attentive. ‘Shall I fetch the car, darling?’ she asked gently. ‘Have you overdone it a bit?’

  ‘I can walk,’ Ruth said grimly.

  ‘Or I could run home and fetch the car for you,’ Elizabeth repeated. ‘I could be back in a moment. You perch on your little stool and I’ll have you home in a flash.’

  Ruth resisted for no more than a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully. ‘I’d like that.’

  Elizabeth threw her a swift smile and slipped down the stairs. Ruth heard the front door bang and her quick footsteps on the path. She sat on her own in the quiet cottage and felt the friendly silence gather around her. ‘It’ll be all right when we’re in here,’ she said to herself, hearing her voice in the emptiness of the house. ‘As long as we get in here in time for the baby. The last thing in the world that matters is who chooses the wallpaper.’

  Elizabeth, half running across the fields, fuelled with energy and a sense of purpose, reached the house and picked up the ringing telephone. It was the builder, calling about Manor Farm cottage and the damp around the French windows.

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘My cottage. You must get that damp problem cured at once, Mr Willis. My cottage must be ready by August. I have promised my son and daughter-in-law that I’ll have it ready for them by then.’

  It was not ready by August. The damp under the French windows was caused by a faulty drain. The flagstones of the path outside had to be cut back and a little gravel-filled trench inserted. None of it seemed very complicated to Ruth, and she wished they would hurry the work; but in the final month of her pregnancy she found a calmness and a serenity she had not known before.

  ‘The work will be finished this week,’ Elizabeth said worriedly. ‘But then that room will have to dry out and be decorated. I’ve got the curtains ready to hang, and the carpet fitters will come in at a moment’s notice, but if Junior is born on time he’ll just have to come home to Patrick’s old nursery here.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ruth said calmly.

  ‘Bit of a treat really,’ Patrick said. He was eating a late supper. Frederick had already gone up to bed. Elizabeth and Ruth had waited up for Patrick, who had been delayed at work by someone’s farewell party. Elizabeth had made him an omelette and he ate it, watched by the two women. ‘I like to think of him in my nursery.’

  ‘But I wanted to make the cottage ready for you,’ Elizabeth pursued. ‘I am disappointed.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ruth repeated. She had a curious floating feeling, as if everything was bound to be all right. She smiled at Elizabeth. ‘I’ll be five days in hospital anyway; maybe it will be finished in time.’

  Elizabeth shook her head disapprovingly. ‘In my day they kept you in for a fortnight,’ she said. ‘Especially a new mother who was completely inexperienced.’

  ‘We have to start somewhere,’ Patrick said cheerfully. ‘And we’ve done the classes, or at least Ruth has. I’ll have on-the-job training.’

  ‘If you so much as touch a nappy I’ll be amazed,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘He certainly will,’ Ruth replied. ‘He’s promised.’

  Patrick grinned at the two of them. ‘I am a new man,’ he pronounced, slightly tipsy from the drinks at work and the wine with his supper. ‘I’ll do it all. Anyway, even if I miss the nappy stage I’ve already bought him a fishing rod. I’ll teach him fishing.’

  ‘And what if it’s a girl?’ Elizabeth challenged.

  ‘Then I’ll teach her too,’ Patrick said. ‘There will be no sexism in my household.’

  Ruth got to her feet; the distant floaty feeling had become stronger. ‘I have to go to bed,’ she said. ‘I’m half asleep here already.’

  Patrick pushed his plate to one side and was about to leave the table to go upstairs with Ruth.

  ‘I was just making coffee,’ Elizabeth remarked. ‘I thought I’d have a coffee and a cognac before bed.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Patrick said agreeably. ‘I’ll stay down and have one with you. All right, Ruth?’

  She nodded and bent carefully to kiss his cheek.

  ‘I won’t disturb you when I come up,’ he promised. ‘I’ll creep in beside you. And I’ll be up early in the morning too. I’ll slip out without waking you.’

  ‘I won’t see you till tomorrow night then,’ Ruth said. Despite herself her voice was slightly forlorn.

  ‘Unless tomorrow is the big day and he has to come dashing home,’ Elizabeth said cheerfully. ‘Patrick, you must leave a number where we can reach you all day, remember.’

  ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll write it down now.’

  ‘On the pad beside the telephone in the sitting room,’ Elizabeth instructed.

  ‘Night, darling,’ Patrick said cheerfully and went to write down his telephone number as his mother had told him to do.

  Ruth lay in her bed. The floating feeling grew stronger as she closed her eyes. The sounds of the countryside in summer breathed in through the half-open windows. They still sounded strange and ominous to Ruth, who was used to the comforting buzz of a city at night. She flinched when she heard the sudden whoop of an owl, and the occasional bark from a fox, trotting along the dark paths under the large white moon.

  Ruth slept. Inside her body the baby turned and settled.

  Between two and three in the morning, she woke in a pool of wetness, a powerful vice closed on her stomach. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘Patrick, wake up, the baby’s coming.’

  He took a moment to hear her, and then he leaped from the bed, as nervous as a father in a comedy film. ‘Now?’ he demanded. ‘Are you sure? Now? Should we go to the hospital? Should we telephone? Oh, my God! I’m low on petrol.’

  Ruth hardly heard him; she was timing her contractions.

  ‘I’ll get Mother,’ Patrick said, and fled from the bedroom and down the corridor.

  As soon as Elizabeth appeared in the doorway in her cream corduroy dressing gown she took complete charge. She sent Patrick to get dressed in the bathroom and helped Ruth change from her nightgown into a pair of trousers and a baggy top.

  ‘Everything ready in your suitcase?’ she confirmed.

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I’ll phone the hospital and tell them you’re on your way,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘No petrol!’ Patrick exclaimed, coming in the door, his jumper askew and his hair unbrushed. ‘God! I’m a fool! I’m low on petrol!’

  ‘You can take your father’s car. Get it out of the garage and bring it round to the front door,’ Elizabeth said calmly. ‘And don’t speed. This is a first baby; you have plenty of time.’

  Patrick shot one anxious look at Ruth and dived from the room.

  ‘The suitcase,’ Elizabeth reminded him.

  ‘Suitcase,’ he repeated, grabbing it and running down the stairs.

  The two women exchanged one smiling look. On impulse Elizabeth bent down and kissed Ruth’s hot forehead. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘It’s not that bad, really. Don’t be frightened. And there’s a beautiful baby at the end of it.’

  She helped Ruth to her feet and down the stairs. At the front d
oor the Rover was waiting, Patrick standing at the passenger door. Ruth checked as a pain caught her, and Elizabeth held her arm, and then guided her into the car.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ she said to Patrick. ‘I mean it. You have plenty of time.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you.’

  She stepped back from the car and waved until it was out of sight. ‘Dear little Ruth,’ she said lovingly. ‘At last.’

  She closed the front door and went up the stairs to her bedroom. Frederick was still asleep. Nothing ever woke him. Elizabeth tapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘They’ve gone to the hospital,’ she said softly, thinking that the news might penetrate his dreams. ‘Dear little Ruth has gone to have our baby.’

  The childbirth course which Ruth had completed, and Patrick had attended twice, had laid great emphasis on the bonding nature of birth for the couple. There had been exercises of hand-holding and back rubbing, and little questionnaires to discover each other’s preferences and fears about the birth. Patrick, who was not innately a sensual man, had been embarrassed when he was asked to massage Ruth’s neck and shoulders in a roomful of people. His touch was light, diffident. The teacher, a willowy ex-hippy, had suggested that he grasp Ruth’s hand, arm, shoulder, until he could feel the bones, and massage deeply, to get in touch with the core of Ruth’s inner being.

  ‘As if you were making love,’ she urged them. ‘Deep, sensual touching.’

  Patrick, horribly embarrassed, had made gentle patting gestures. Next week there was an urgent meeting at work and he missed the class altogether.

  Ruth conscientiously brought home notes and diagrams, and discussed the concept of active birth. She and Patrick were sitting on the sofa while Elizabeth and Frederick watched television. Ruth kept her voice low but Elizabeth, overhearing, had laughed and remarked: ‘I only hope he doesn’t disappoint you by dropping down in a dead faint. He’s always been dreadfully squeamish.’