The Little House. Philippa GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Four

      PATRICK came at visiting time at four in the afternoon with a big bouquet of flowers. He kissed Ruth and looked into the cot.

      ‘How is he?’

      ‘He won’t feed,’ Ruth said miserably. ‘We can’t make him feed.’

      ‘Isn’t that bad? Won’t he get hungry?’

      ‘I don’t know. The nurse said he was sleepy from my anaesthetic.’

      ‘Did she seem worried?’

      ‘How should I know?’ Ruth exclaimed.

      Patrick saw that she was near to tears. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look at your lovely flowers. And dozens of bouquets at home – it looks like a florist’s shop. They sent some from my work, and my secretary told Radio Westerly and they sent some.’

      Ruth blinked. ‘From Westerly?’

      ‘Yes. A big bunch of red roses.’

      ‘That was nice.’

      ‘And your little chum.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘That David.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. It seemed like years since she had last seen David.

      ‘And how are you, darling?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘My stitches hurt.’

      ‘Mother said they would. She said that we would all have to look after you especially well when you come home.’

      Ruth nodded.

      ‘She said she would come down later if that was all right with you. She didn’t want to crowd us this afternoon. But she and the old man will come down this evening if you’re not too tired.’

      ‘Perhaps tomorrow?’ Ruth suggested.

      ‘They’re very keen to see the grandson,’ Patrick prompted. ‘Dad especially.’

      ‘All right, then.’

      ‘They asked me what we would be calling him. I said that we’d probably stick with Thomas James.’

      Ruth glanced towards the cot. She had imagined Thomas James as a fair-haired boy, not this dark-headed little thing. ‘I never thought he’d be so small,’ she said.

      ‘Tiny, isn’t he?’ Patrick said. ‘Shall I pick him up?’

      ‘Better let him sleep,’ Ruth said.

      They both gazed at the sleeping baby. ‘Tiny hands,’ Patrick said again.

      ‘I never thought of him like this,’ Ruth said.

      ‘I never really imagined him at all. I always kind of jumped ahead. I thought about teaching him how to fish, and taking him to cricket and things like that. I never thought of a tiny baby.’

      ‘No.’

      They were silent.

      ‘He is all right, isn’t he?’ Patrick asked. ‘I mean he seems terribly quiet. I thought they cried all the time.’

      ‘How should I know?’ Ruth exclaimed again.

      ‘Of course, of course,’ Patrick said soothingly. ‘Don’t get upset, darling. Mother will be down this evening and she’ll know.’

      Ruth nodded and lay back on her pillows. She looked very small and wan. Her dark hair was limp and dirty, her cheeks sallow. There were dark shadows under her eyes.

      ‘You look all in,’ Patrick said. ‘Shall I go and leave you to have a sleep?’

      Ruth nodded. He could see she was near to tears again.

      ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

      ‘See you tonight then.’ He bent over the bed and kissed her gently. She did not respond, she did not even turn her face to him. She let him touch her cheek as if she were sulking after some injury. He had a flash of irritation, that he should be behaving so beautifully, with such patience and forbearance, and she should be so limp. In the films he had seen of such situations as these, the young mothers had sat up in bed in pretty beribboned bed jackets, and smiled adoringly at their husbands and gazed devotedly at their babies. Patrick was too intelligent to mistake Hollywood images for reality, but he had expected something more than Ruth’s resentful apathy.

      He straightened up and turned to the cot. ‘See you later, Thomas James,’ he said quietly, and went from the room.

      Ruth slept for only half an hour. At five o’clock the nurse woke her with dinner. Ruth, hungry and chilled, was confronted with a tray of grapefruit juice, Spam salad with sliced white bread and butter, followed by violently green jelly. As she drew the unappetizing dishes towards her, the baby stirred in his cot and cried.

      Ruth’s stitches were still too painful to let her move. Shifting the tray and picking up the baby was an impossibility. She dropped a forkful of icy limp salad and rang the bell for the nurse. No one came. The baby’s cries went up a notch in volume. He went red in the face, and his little fists flailed against the air.

      ‘Hush, hush,’ Ruth said. She rang the bell again. ‘Someone will come in a minute,’ she said.

      It was incredible that a baby so small could make so much noise, and that the noise should be so unbearably penetrating. Ruth could feel her own tension rising as the baby’s cries grew louder and more and more desperate.

      ‘Oh, please!’ she cried out. ‘Please don’t cry like that. Someone will come soon! Someone will come soon! Surely someone will come!’

      He responded at once to the panic in her voice, and his cry became a scream, an urgent, irresistible shriek.

      The door opened and Elizabeth peeped in. She took in the scene in one rapid glance and moved forward. She put down the basket she was carrying, picked up the baby, and put him firmly against her shoulder, resting her cheek on his hot little head. His agonized cries checked at once at the new sensation of being picked up and firmly held.

      ‘There, there,’ Elizabeth said gently. ‘Master Cleary! What a state you’re in.’

      She looked over his head to Ruth, tearstained in the bed. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she said gently. ‘The first days are always the worst. You finish your dinner and I’ll walk him till you’re ready to feed him.’

      ‘It’s disgusting,’ Ruth whispered. ‘I can’t eat it.’

      ‘I brought you a quiche and one of my little apple pies,’ Elizabeth offered. ‘I didn’t know what the food would be like in here, and after I had Patrick I was simply starving.’

      ‘Oh! That would be lovely.’

      Holding the baby