I just don’t believe it. That line struck a very odd note.
Firstly, young children might cry for the parent when dropped off at daycare but once Mum or Dad has disappeared they normally settle. I really cannot imagine Pip, under the tender care of Jill, being inconsolable all day about the absence of Ruth. Secondly, would Jill really want to upset Ruth by laying that guilt on her? Hmm … maybe, if Ruth had been particularly nasty to her that day. But as annoying as Jill is, I wouldn’t have though that of her.
Colicky babies can scream all day, yes, but as you say, not for their mothers. Would Jill really say that as a way of reproaching Ruth? I suppose she might. Sounded odd. If it were a tiny Pip she was talking about, you often can’t tell what the mite is yelling about, it doesn’t say. If older, well … logic suggests Pip would have had a closer relationship with Jill than with Ruth. If anything, she’d scream for Gran when Ruth or David showed up to collect the brat.
I am trying to remember who lived where when Pip was a baby. I think David and Ruth were living at Brookfield farmhouse because the Bungalow had not yet been built; it took a lot longer than had been expected.
Oh, that’s interesting. I was assuming they were in the bungalow. When David mentioned the gruesome picture of finding Ruth asleep on the sofa with her overalls round her waist I got the impression it must be the bungalow because that wouldn’t be something she’d do in someone else’s house but the scriptwriter could be making the same assumption I am and didn’t check. That would be par for the course.
They were certainly at Brookfield farmhouse when Pip was very small; Phil was Noble about the screaming baby. But relieved when the bungalow was finally ready and they moved out. I just can’t remember how soon that was.
Oh, poor Phil. One does wonder if there was any discussion between David and Ruth and the senior Archers about child care before the arrival of the lovely Philippa Rose. If Pip is or was taking a lot for granted, so were the Dopeys. What would they have done if Jill had said she was too busy to care for the child?
Thinking about it, I suppose it’s the combination of crying for Ruth and ‘all day’ that was so odd to my ears. Whatever the age of the brat, that tends not to happen. Someone has a tin ear. I think it was Stimpson.
Right, that I could believe. I suspect I am over-thinking this.
What you say would make sense not only that Ruth would misreport Jill but that in doing so she would exaggerate the attachment between herself and Pip since I suspect that at the time Pip was far closer to her gran. Ruth has always been a jealous parent and made sure that she undermined David with Pip. Didn’t work entirely, but she’s had a few successes. There was a lot of ‘Dad’s so unfair’ from Pip and ‘Don’t worry, pet, I’ll speak to yer Dad’ in the days of Jude. Then there was the conspiracy to hide the loan Pip made to Toby (which I think David still doesn’t know about).
They really are a creepy, weird, disturbing family altogether. Yuk.
Perhaps Ruth is at some primitive and reptilian level aware of the incestuos thrall in which Pip holds Dopey Dayveed, which is why she positions herself (Lytton Strachey, eat yer heart out) as intercessor whenever possible. That and the fact that she is an ill-bred, nebby She-oaf, with no notion of boundaries or respect for privacy,