The Little House

‘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 door 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.’

‘In our day fathers were completely banned,’ Frederick said. He turned to Elizabeth. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted me there, would you?’

‘Certainly not!’ she said. ‘I gave birth to two children in two different countries, and never had a class in my life.’

‘I want to have a completely natural childbirth,’ Ruth said firmly. ‘I want to do it all by breathing. That’s what the classes are for. And I am counting on Patrick to help me.’

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ Elizabeth reassured her. ‘And, Patrick, you know all about it, do you?’

‘Not a thing!’ Patrick said with his charming smile. ‘But Ruth has given me a book. I’ll bone up on it before the day. I just can’t get on with the class, and a roomful of people watching me.’

‘I should think not!’ Frederick said. ‘It’s a private business, I should have thought.’

‘And it’s more difficult for me,’ Patrick said, warming to his theme. ‘Everyone knows me, they’ve all seen me on the telly. I could just see them watching me trying to massage Ruth and dying to rush home and telephone their friends and say, “We saw that Patrick Cleary give his wife a massage”.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t,’ Ruth said. ‘They’re all much too interested in their own wives and babies. That’s what they’re there for, not to see you.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Frederick. ‘Fame has its disadvantages too.’

‘But I’ll read the book,’ Patrick promised. ‘I’ll know all about it by the time it happens.’

But Patrick had not read the book. It was in his briefcase on a journey to and from London. But he had bought a newspaper, to look for news stories for the documentary unit, and then there were notes to make, and things to think about, and anyway the journey was quite short. The book, still unread, was in his pocket as he helped Ruth into the maternity unit of the hospital.

As soon as the nurse admitted Ruth it was apparent that something was wrong. She called the registrar and there was a rapid undertone consultation. Then he turned to them. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to do a section,’ he said. ‘Your baby is breeched and his pulse rate is too high. He’s rather stressed. I think we want him out of there.’ He glanced at Ruth. ‘It’ll have to be full anaesthesia. We don’t have time to wait for Pethidine to work.’

The words were unfamiliar to Patrick, he did not know what was going on, but Ruth’s distress was unmistakable. ‘Now wait a minute…’ he said.

‘We can’t really,’ the doctor said. ‘We can’t wait at all. Do I have your permission?’

Ruth’s eyes filled with tears and then she drew in a sharp breath of pain. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so…Oh, Patrick!’

‘Permission for what?’ Patrick asked. ‘What’s going on?’

The registrar took him by the arm and explained in a quick undertone that the baby was in distress and that they wanted to do a Caesarean section at once. Patrick, out of his depth, appealed to the doctor, ‘But they’ll both be OK, won’t they? They’ll both be all right?’

The doctor patted him reassuringly on the back. ‘Right as rain,’ he said cheerily. ‘And no waiting about. I’ll zip her down to surgery and in quarter of an hour you’ll have your son in your arms. OK?’

‘Oh, fine,’ Patrick said, reassured. He looked back at Ruth lying on the high hospital bed. She had turned to face the wall; there were tears pouring down her cheeks. She would not look at him.

Patrick patted her back. ‘It’ll all be over in a minute.’