Everything and Nothing (8 page)

‘That sounds sensible. I’ll get right on to it.’

Dr Hackett was open-mouthed and Ruth presumed he had never seen a family like hers.

‘Come back and see me in a month,’ he said, recovering his composure. ‘Verity will make you an appointment.’

‘Yes, fantastic.’ Ruth was manoeuvring herself out of the door, one hand pushing the buggy and one dragging the hysterical Betty. ‘And I’m so sorry about this.’

‘Perhaps you’d be best advised to leave her with your amazing nanny next time,’ said Dr Hackett as she shut the door.

Ruth didn’t bother to speak to the gleaming Verity as she left. Betty was by now screaming for a Brat. Ruth bent down next to her daughter and hissed, ‘You are not getting a Brat. I told you to behave and you didn’t. We are going home.’

Betty wailed harder. ‘I hate you, Mummy. I hate you.’

White specks danced in front of Ruth’s eyes and she was painfully aware of her own heartbeat. I hate you too, she wanted to scream at her daughter, as she’d once seen a mother say to her child in the playground. Big red buses roared past her and glass shop doors swished to and fro as customers ebbed and flowed. People bustled past, tutting at the woman unable to control her children on the pavement. A thin man with a massive placard reading ‘Golf Sale’ brushed past her and she caught the pity in his eyes. The ground vibrated beneath her feet, sound coming at her from above, below and the side. She was acutely aware of herself as if on a map, a tiny speck on a rabbit warren of grey streets. She could imagine all the boilers burning in all the houses, all the wheels of all the cars turning relentlessly on the tarmac, all the voices shouting to be heard, all the babies crying, all the bins that needed emptying, all the lives that had to be lived. Ruth stepped into the road and stuck out her hand, willing a taxi to stop.

By the time they reached their house, Ruth felt as if her shoulders were locked tight. Betty had quietened to a whimper and Hal was still asleep in his buggy. They made it through their front door in one piece, which was, Ruth felt, as much as you could say about their day.

Agatha was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a magazine and she looked shocked to see them. ‘I thought you were going to feed the ducks,’ she said. ‘I was just on my way out.’ Ruth looked at the clock, it was ten past one. She probably hadn’t used up more than fifteen minutes of her hour’s appointment.

‘Could you put on a DVD for Betty,’ she said, slumping at the table. She wanted a cup of coffee but found she couldn’t move. Agatha had been reading a story about a well-known TV presenter’s stalker nightmare. It seemed refreshingly tame to Ruth.

Agatha bustled back into the kitchen. ‘She says she’s hungry. Haven’t you had any lunch?’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I’ll make her some cheese on toast. Do you want some?’

Ruth looked at the capable young girl standing in her kitchen, still ready to take on the world. Maybe they should go back to having children at sixteen, it was about the only time in your life you felt optimistic enough and had the energy.

‘No thanks, Aggie,’ she said, and then she started to cry.

Agatha came and sat next to her. ‘What’s wrong, Ruth? What’s the matter?’

The urgency in Aggie’s voice was especially touching to Ruth; it was as if she cared. It made her momentarily aware of how child-like Aggie was. ‘Everything,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m a terrible mother.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Agatha put her hand over Ruth’s. ‘You’re great. What’s made you say that?’

‘The nutritionist blamed me for Hal. He didn’t even ask me about Christian. Why does it all have to be my fault?’

‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know anything. Come on, Ruth, the kids love you.’

‘But why doesn’t Hal eat? And why does Betty cry all the time? Why won’t she bloody sleep?’

Ruth looked up and saw some starlings playing in the blue sky out of her kitchen window. She felt jealous of their freedom, their lack of responsibility. She turned her attention back to Aggie, who she could tell was trying to say the right thing.

‘You can tell me to butt out if you like, Ruth, but I’ve listened to you and Betty at night. And I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything, but you know, sometimes when you’ve been in a situation too long it’s hard to see a way out . . . ’

Ruth’s heart clenched. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, it’s only a theory, but you could try taking her into bed with you.’

‘She used to sleep with us every night,’ said Ruth. ‘She didn’t even have a cot for the first year. But then Christian insisted we move her.’

Aggie blushed. ‘Yes, but she never wakes up till midnight. You could start her in her bed and then let her come in to you in the middle of the night. I think she’s scared. That’s what it sounds like when I listen to you.’

‘Scared?’ Ruth tried to remember her daughter’s cries in the night, tried to make sense of them the way Aggie seemed able to do.

‘Yes, it’s like she’s got herself into this cycle and she knows she makes you angry and now she’s scared. I don’t know, it might be worth a try.’

‘Anything’s worth a try,’ said Ruth.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying anything,’ said Aggie. Ruth put her hand over the girl’s. She felt ashamed for bitching about her to Sally, ashamed for ever having thought badly of her. She was a sweet young girl wanting the best for them. ‘Don’t be silly, Aggie. It’s so kind of you to be thinking about us. I’m the one who should be apologising for keeping you awake.’

Aggie shook her head. ‘So you’ll try it?’

Ruth smiled. ‘I will. Tonight. We’ll do it tonight.’ She moved her hand and laughed. ‘So, now we’ve sorted out Betty, what are we going to do about Hal? He’s going to be three in a few weeks and he doesn’t eat.’

‘It’s his birthday soon?’

‘Yes, and I haven’t organised anything.’

‘Oh, would you let me, Ruth? I’d love to organise him a party.’

‘Oh no, Aggie, you’ve done enough. I couldn’t possibly.’

But she looked so keen, like a puppy. ‘Oh, but I’d love to. I love organising parties. I once had a job as a party planner.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I did loads of kids’ parties. I love them. I’d love to do that for you.’

Ruth laughed, pushing the hair out of her eyes. She felt tired to her bones and the offer sounded as sweet as nectar. ‘Is there no end to your talents, Aggie? What would we do without you?’

By the time Christian got home Ruth looked as though she had been beaten up. In the low half-light he could see her reading to Betty, who wasn’t listening but instead complaining that she didn’t want them to go out. Ruth soldiered on with the tale of the Princess who could feel a pea through twenty-four mattresses; it was one of Christian’s least favourite stories. He peeked in on Hal, who was sucking silently in his dream. He found that he loved his children so much more when they were asleep. He would gaze on their little faces, so earnest and content, and feel the emotions coursing through his body. Christian had believed this to be the most profound type of love, when you loved someone even at the moment they needed nothing from you. But as he stood over his son’s cot he wondered if he had got it the wrong way round.

He went into their bedroom to get changed and saw the towel he had used that morning lying damply on his side of the bed. His side of the bed had felt soggy for weeks and he wondered if Ruth was trying to tell him something. But before he could properly articulate the thought Ruth was standing in the doorway saying she felt too tired to go out.

He looked over at her and saw the black circles gouged under her eyes, her hair awry on her head, her pale and gaunt face, her bedraggled clothes. She made him feel momentarily worried. She was starting to look like she had at the end of that first year with Betty. Ruth was so complicated, she made his head spin. Part of her wonderfulness, he knew, lay in that complexity, but it interfered so constantly with everyday life, he also hated her for it. He wondered how she could be bothered with all the worry and anxiety which seemed to accompany her every waking moment.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you good. We can just go to Lemonas.’

She sat on the side of the bed and he saw she was going to cry. There was no doubting where Betty got her trembling bottom lip. ‘I think I’ve fucked everything up.’

Christian sat next to her. ‘What do you mean “everything”?’ Although he knew.

Now the tears came. ‘The kids, mainly. How do we have a child who doesn’t eat? We’re like some terrible BBC Three documentary.’

‘Don’t be silly. We’ll look back on all of this in a few years and wonder why we got so worked up.’

‘But do you think it’s all my fault?’ Ruth looked up at him and the desperation in her eyes made him want to protect her for ever, to stop the bad thoughts and take the pain away. He considered telling her that he feared it was his fault, but he didn’t want to bring Sarah into her head.

‘Of course it isn’t. Why would it be?’

‘Because I work.’

‘Because you work? What are you talking about? Where did that come from? Millions of women work.’

Ruth ran her hands through her hair. ‘God, I don’t know. The bloody nutritionist, for a start.’

Christian stood up. ‘Come on. Let’s go to the restaurant and talk about it there. I’m hungry.’

He was amazed that Ruth stood up and opened her closet door.

The restaurant didn’t look anything special from the outside and Ruth and Christian had nearly walked past it when they’d first moved in. Now they went there as often as they could and it felt like a little home from home. There was so much comfort to be found in the wonky wooden tables, the tea lights in old jam jars, the standard issue metal knives and forks, even the strings of plastic lemons criss-crossing the ceiling. The food was like the best sort of picnic: warm pittas, freshly made hummus and taramasalata, feta that was neither too sharp nor too salty, olives so juicy that you couldn’t stop the oil running down your chin.

On the way there Ruth told him that Aggie had suggested taking Betty into bed with them to try to make her sleep. He heard the desperation in his wife’s voice and felt surprised with himself for not thinking of this solution himself, it was so obvious. But it had always been such a contentious subject; it had taken him so long to persuade Ruth to move Betty out of their bed in the first place. A whole year without sex, it sounded like something you might read in an advice column. Now, though, it seemed less important and, as Ruth pointed out, Betty didn’t usually wake until midnight. It’s a good idea, he heard himself saying, let’s try it tonight. Anything to break this misery which seemed to enshroud their lives.

With a glass of red wine in her and another one waiting, Christian saw his wife relax. Her shoulders dropped and her mouth turned up into a half smile. She looked pretty if wan in the flickering light of the candles.

‘So tell me about this nutritionist,’ he said, wanting to take her hand across the table, but as the thought flittered into his brain like a starling in a church roof, she used her hands to wrap her shawl closer to her slight body.

‘I guess he was just old school. I don’t know why I let him get to me so much. It was a shit day. Betty dropped her fucking Brat onto the track on the tube and then had hysterics all the way there. I think the people in the carriage would have preferred me to have a bomb rather than Betty, you should have seen the looks I got.’ Christian laughed. Ruth smiled back at him. ‘Then I was expecting some nice Alan Rickman type of doctor and I got fucking Dr Crippen.’ Christian laughed again. ‘Seriously, he was like a parody of a posh doctor. And all he could ask was when had I gone back to work and then he said that five months was a critical time and had I heard of separation anxiety. I wanted to ask him why he wasn’t asking when you went back to work or anything like that, but instead I kept apologising. And then Betty started freaking out and so we had to go before our hour was up and as I left he said some snide remark like, Why don’t you leave her at home with your fabulous nanny next time?’

‘We should complain.’

‘Don’t be silly. He didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, he was probably right.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ruth tucked her hair behind her ears. She couldn’t force any more of the food down, even though it was delicious and she’d hardly eaten anything. ‘Well, I waited a year before I went back with Betty, and she eats. And I looked up everything he said on the Internet this afternoon and there is research on it.’

‘There’s research on everything.’

‘Yes, but did I go back to work for me or for Hal?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it does. That year after Betty I nearly went mad, and so I rushed back to work after Hal, saying that we needed the money and everything, but we could have stayed in our old house.’

‘It was tiny.’

‘Yeah, but we could have, and then I wouldn’t have had to work.’

Christian was becoming confused by the turns in the conversation. He felt as if he’d been led too far into a maze. ‘But you wanted to go back.’

‘I know, that’s what I’m saying. Why did I want to go back? Why can’t I look after my kids? Am I a bad mother?’

And there was the exit. Of course, this was what it was all about. ‘Why does working make you a bad mother and not the millions of other women who do it?’

‘Maybe they are too.’

‘Yes, and maybe so are all the women who stay at home and go silently mad or build up a head of resentment. I think you’ll find there are bad mothers everywhere, as well as good mothers.’

‘But . . . ’ Ruth was drawing a pattern on the table with a drop of red wine.

‘Staying at home and baking cookies doesn’t make you a good mother, Ruth.’

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. ‘Well, what does then? Because I’m all out of ideas.’

Agatha did not want Ruth’s life. Let’s just get that straight, she said to herself as she looked up cake recipes the next day. But it did give her a warm feeling of superiority to see Ruth falling apart while she coped so well. The woman was nothing more than a mess. Sometimes when she was breezing through the house tidying and sorting, she would have conversations in her head with Ruth’s mother, a woman she had never met and someone whom Ruth rarely spoke about. All of which was fine by Agatha because it was one less person to interfere in her new life. But surely you couldn’t have a daughter like Ruth and not worry about her, and surely, if the errant grandmother met Agatha, she would be reassured that life was as it should be. Yes, it is quite worrying, Agatha would say to the woman as she mended another broken toy or plumped cushions which were fatally sagged, but I’m coping fine, you stay where you are. Don’t be silly, it’s nothing, I want to help.