Free The Death of Ruth by Elizabeth Kata Page A

estate agent to find him a place, and the agent told him that Ralph was looking for a short-term tenant.
    Mr Grey is delighted, so he says, to be near his new home-to-be, and he and John have taken to playing chess together in our living room. John likes him, and if it were any other man in the world but Mr Grey, I would be delighted, for John’s sake; but it is Mr Grey, and, Ruth, it is all too much of a coincidence for me to rest easy under. Do you agree? Do you think, as I do, that Mr Grey is here for other reasons?
    Ruth, Jodie now has her baby. It is a boy. She brings the little thing here to see John. You remember how he likes children? The baby is called after John, and he is proud of that. Seeing John with the baby brings back my regret in not having been able to give him a child of his own.
    He was born to be a father. He is still extremely kind to Jodie and Rob, always ignoring Rob’s worsening stutter and patiently advising Jodie about her sudden outbursts of uncalled for hysteria, sympathizing with her because she still bites her finger nails down to the quick. Yes, both your children retain the nervous tics your cruelty induced into them just as they both have certain scars on various parts of their bodies.
    Nevertheless, I have to admit that I have taken a dislike to Jodie. She is becoming a thoughtless, an unkind person in many ways. When they all sit together in my living room,petting and admiring the baby, they all, especially Jodie go on as though I were not in the room, as though I were invisible. On one occasion, they all trooped out to admire this rock-garden, leaving the baby in the living room with me. Then, Jodie had yelled out—just as you used to yell—ordering Bill to return to the house, screaming wildly, ‘Hurry, I don’t want Johnny left with that mad woman.’
    Mad woman! Ruth, you know that all during her childhood, I was the one Jodie came to for comfort and solace and that I never failed her.
    As for Rob, poor lad, he is also unthoughtful and unkind towards me. Not so long ago he went so far as to encourage John to have me put away. I gather that he meant I belonged in a lunatic asylum. Yes, they would like that because then, of course, these two fall-down houses could be sold. I don’t want to think about that.
    I would like to tell those children of yours, Ruth, that if it had not been for your child-bashing tactics, your sadism, I would be a different person indeed from the wreck I have become; and instead of not selling the property, we would have sold it—yes, if we go deeply into the matter, it is your fault alone that things are the way they are, and that
you
are where you are.
    Ruth, it is frustrating to me having Jodie speak of you as though you had been the tenderest of mothers to her. ‘Oh …’ she gurgles, ‘If only Mum could see you, Johnny. Poor Johnny, your Nana would have loved you so much.’
    Ruth, you know as well as I that the only motherly tenderness Jodie knew in her youth came from me. You were too hard, Ruth. I am repeating myself I know, but you were too cruel and it appears to me to be a great injustice that you are now revered and loved by Jodie and Rob, whilst I am despised, scorned and disliked. Yes, you are the blame for so much, so much. It was those years that Ralph spent under your domination that made him into a man who could cover up a crime rather than have the personwho had committed it suffer punishment. He was weary of the perpetual chastisement that went on in his home.
    Ralph’s outrageous behaviour on that dreadful day was the result of the behaviour pattern he had been forced into by your domination, your viciousnesss towards his children. It could not have been otherwise, and you, Ruth, know, even better than I, how Ralph loved Jodie, and Rob, how tender and patient a father he was—and still is. He knew that if he had stood up against you, you would only have made things worse for