The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

‘Good,’ the nurse said soothingly.

  Ruth started to drift into sleep. ‘They do … they do …’ she whispered. ‘I know they do.’

  When she woke it was early evening. She stirred and found that someone had undone her bindings and she was free to get up. She stumbled to the bathroom, her feet were still cramped, and then she went cautiously to the dayroom. Half a dozen people were watching television. It was Thursday evening; they were watching Top of the Pops. Ruth blinked at the strange lunatic costumes and joyless erratic dancing on the programme, and the orderly silence of the inmates.

  One of the men from her group glanced around and saw her. ‘OK now?’ he asked.

  Ruth nodded, feeling embarrassed.

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ he said.

  She puzzled over that for a moment. He spoke as if her grief and her rage were somehow signs of material progress.

  ‘Are you being funny?’

  He shook his head with a smile and then turned back to the television screen. ‘It’s bottling it all up that is crazy,’ he said. ‘Letting it out is sane.’

  ‘Do you mean …’ she started.

  He shook his head again. ‘Don’t ask me, I’m a schizophrenic,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m as crazy as you can get.’

  Ruth took the chair beside him. ‘Have you been here long?’

  He nodded without taking his eyes from the screen. ‘Long and often. In and out. I go out when I get straight, and then I come back in again when I start flying, or hearing voices, or chatting to God.’

  ‘You do that?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s the best times.’

  ‘I’ve always been frightened of mad people,’ Ruth observed.

  He was not interested.

  ‘I’ve always been frightened of people who talk in the street. They always seem to come and talk to me.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ he said with sudden energy. ‘I wouldn’t talk to you because you’re always trying to be nice. I’d rather talk to someone who was really there. Real and nasty. Someone who had a bit of substance. Not a pink jelly.’

  Ruth recoiled at the unexpected attack. ‘I’m not a pink jelly!’

  He clicked his tongue as if he had been guilty of some minor social solecism. ‘Tell me in group,’ he said; and he watched the television, and would not speak to her again.

  Ten

  ON MONDAY MORNING Patrick went in late to work. He wanted to telephone Ruth’s convalescent home, and he did not want the call overheard by his staff.

  Elizabeth, leisurely polishing the banister in the hall, while Frederick rocked Thomas’s pram in the garden, was able to hear most of the conversation without appearing to listen.

  ‘Dr Fairley? It’s Patrick Cleary.’

  Dr Fairley drew Ruth’s notes towards him. ‘Ah, Mr Cleary. Good to hear from you. Your wife is making excellent progress,’ he said.

  ‘She wouldn’t speak to me on the telephone, and she didn’t want to see me this weekend. I thought something must be wrong.’

  ‘No,’ Dr Fairley said calmly. ‘She is getting in touch with her feelings. We have to be patient with her. She is experiencing anger and grief. She is doing very well.’

  ‘Anger?’ Patrick asked blankly. ‘What does she have to be angry about?’

  Dr Fairley hesitated. ‘This is therapeutic work,’ he said tactfully. ‘Sometimes a patient goes back almost to babyhood. Sometimes it is recent or recurrent grief. But your wife is confronting her difficulties well and is making good progress.’

  ‘What d’you mean – therapeutic work?’ Patrick demanded. ‘What has she got to be angry about? She’s had everything she wanted all her life, and especially since we were married. If she says that she’s been badly treated it’s just not true.’

  ‘I do not attend her group sessions,’ Dr Fairley said gently. ‘So I do not know the details. Even if I did, then the confidentiality of the patient would mean that I could not discuss such things with you. But I can say – in the broadest of terms – that she is getting in touch with her feelings, and expressing them.’

  ‘When I phoned the other night they said she could not come to the telephone because she was “in treatment”,’ Patrick said, his voice very tight.

  Dr Fairley turned back a page and sighed a small silent sigh. ‘Yes, that was the case. She was under restraint,’ he said gently.

  ‘Under restraint?’ Patrick demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had her in a padded cell? In some kind of strait-jacket?’

  ‘Please, Mr Cleary, don’t distress yourself with these anxieties,’ Dr Fairley said gently. ‘There was an incident in her group between herself and another patient, and she was sedated and returned to her bedroom. She woke at – let me see – just after seven o’clock and watched television with the other patients. She behaved perfectly normally at supper, and took part in all the activities the following day.’

  ‘Are you telling me that she was fighting with someone, that you knocked her out and then she got up and watched television?’

  ‘Yes, that is what seems to have taken place. As I say, I am not her group leader, so I was not there myself.’

  ‘Is she mad?’ Patrick demanded, outraged.

  ‘No, most certainly not.’

  ‘Then what is going on?’

  Dr Fairley sighed gently. ‘Mr Cleary, you must be patient with her, and even with yourself. She was deeply wounded as a child by the death of her parents, and she has got to come to terms with that loss and with her grief and anger. Her inability to care for her own son no doubt springs from that early trauma, and of course, on top of that, she feels the natural anxiety of the young and inexperienced mother. She is doing wonderfully well in coming to terms with all of this, and she is making good progress.’

  Patrick was silent for a moment, trying to take it all in.

  ‘When will she come home?’ he asked.

  Dr Fairley thought of Ruth as he had seen her that morning. Her step was more confident; she had acknowledged him in the corridor. ‘I think she should be the one to decide,’ he said. ‘But I would think within a fortnight. Then I would recommend a therapist near to you, so that she can go on with her therapeutic work. But she will know what she needs. She will be the best person to decide.’

  ‘Even though she’s the mad one?’ Patrick asked rudely. ‘Are the lunatics running the asylum?’

  Dr Fairley observed the rise of his own temper until he had it under control and out of his voice. ‘Your wife is not mad, Mr Cleary,’ he said politely. ‘She was a sad and angry little girl and she has had difficulties in adult life. But she is as sane as I am, or as you are. And indeed there are many therapeutic communities that are self-run.’

  Patrick bit back a retort. ‘I’ll visit her on Saturday unless I hear to the contrary,’ he said shortly.

  ‘I will give her your message,’ Dr Fairley said with courtesy. He put down the receiver. ‘And she is certainly more pleasant than you,’ he said roundly to the absent Patrick. ‘Better mannered, less selfish, more loving, and generally a nicer person to be with. She is growing to be an honest and mature woman while you are just a bossy little boy!’ Then, with his temper relieved, Dr Fairley pulled on his jacket and went to do his rounds.

  Patrick sat in silence for a moment, and then the sitting-room door opened and his mother brought in a tray with freshly made coffee.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said heavily.

  She poured him a cup in silence and handed it to him. ‘Bad news?’

  He made a face. ‘I can hardly tell. The doctor says that he thinks she’ll be home within a fortnight. But after that she’ll need to see some local chap.’ He looked at his mother in bewilderment. ‘She was violent,’ he said wonderingly. ‘She attacked a patient and had to be sedated, and tied up, or something.’

  Elizabeth sank to the sofa. ‘Oh! my dear!’

  ‘I can’t imagine it!’ Patrick said. ‘Little Ruth! Why, until we had Thomas, I don’t think I e
ver heard her say a cross word. She never once even raised her voice to me. What can have happened?’

  ‘Didn’t he explain?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘He said he was bound by patient confidentiality – but he didn’t seem too concerned. He made me feel as if I were making a bit of a fuss over nothing.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘I suppose he sees worse every day,’ she said, ‘in his work. It must be dreadful.’

  ‘But Ruth …’

  ‘Did he say what we should do when she comes home?’ Elizabeth demanded.

  Patrick shook his head. ‘I didn’t ask … what d’you mean … what we should do?’

  Elizabeth’s look was open and concerned. ‘To protect Thomas,’ she said.

  Patrick was astounded. ‘Protect him?’

  ‘If she is violent, and she is with Thomas, on her own …’

  Patrick gave an abrupt exclamation, put down his cup of coffee and went to the window. In the garden outside Frederick was rocking the pram, the rhythm of the movements slowing as Thomas fell asleep, and then stilled. Frederick bent down and carefully put on the brake, adjusted the hood of the pram against the bright wintry sunlight, and checked that Thomas’s little hands were warm in their knitted mittens. He turned and came towards the house.

  ‘She can never be alone with Thomas,’ Patrick said as if the words were forced out of him. ‘I’ll have to check with Dr Fairley and make sure they are aware … but for our own peace of mind we’ll have to watch her all the time.’

  Elizabeth nodded, her face full of pity. ‘Oh, Patrick,’ she said softly.

  He turned to her and managed a little smile. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘Thank God I’ve got you and the old man.’

  She nodded. ‘You’ll always have us,’ she assured him. ‘For you and little Thomas. We’ll always be here for you both.’

  In the group session Ruth and Agnes sat facing each other, as wary as fighting cocks. George said his usual gentle introduction: ‘Who would like to start?’ and Ruth said quickly: ‘I would.’

  ‘Last time I was carried out of here,’ she said bitterly. ‘George, you held me, and you called some other nurses, and you carried me out and stuffed me full of some drugs.’

  George nodded.

  ‘I was angry,’ Ruth said. She was breathless with nervousness at speaking to the whole group, but she was determined to finish. ‘I was angry but I wasn’t mad. I’m not insane. There was no need to take me out like that. It frightened me.’

  ‘Um … I don’t believe that.’ It was the man from the television room.

  Ruth turned to him.

  ‘I don’t believe you were frightened,’ he said. ‘You didn’t look frightened. But you looked really mad.’

  ‘I’m not mad,’ Ruth said quickly.

  ‘Slip of the tongue,’ he said easily. ‘Freudian slip. You looked angry. I’m just saying I don’t believe you were frightened.’

  Ruth took a breath. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was angry.’

  The man smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ he said.

  ‘Ruth, we have a no-physical-violence rule for group work and all our therapeutic work, you know that,’ George said gently. ‘You can embrace someone or hold their hand, but you must not hit or threaten them with any physical violence at all. You agreed to that when you started with this group, and you have to hold to that agreement.’

  He paused, waiting for Ruth’s reply.

  She nodded.

  ‘I have to know that you agree.’

  ‘I nodded.’

  ‘I have to hear you say that you agree that there will be no physical violence to yourself or to others.’

  ‘I agree to no physical violence to myself or to others,’ Ruth said sullenly.

  ‘OK,’ George said. He settled back in his seat and smiled at her. ‘Now, go on with what you were saying.’

  Ruth felt temporarily deflated. ‘I was saying I was angry,’ she repeated.

  George nodded. ‘Was there any special reason?’

  ‘I was really angry with Agnes.’

  ‘Then tell her,’ George advised.

  Ruth turned to Agnes. ‘I was really angry with you.’

  It was a bad day for Agnes. She was shrouded in a huge man’s cardigan. The leather patches on the elbows were down at her wrists. She was folded up in her chair, her knees under her chin, her face moody.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said without interest.

  ‘You said some things about my family that are unforgivable,’ Ruth said, ‘and untrue. You said that they had done me over. I don’t begin to know what you mean. But I do know that they have loved me and cared for me, they took me into their family when I never had anyone to care for me before. They bought us our first flat, and I loved it there and I was really happy there. Then when we had our baby they bought us a beautiful cottage in the country. My mother-in-law is wonderful with the baby. They have both been wonderful to me.’

  Agnes nodded listlessly.

  ‘It is not how you said,’ Ruth said urgently. She badly wanted Agnes to respond. ‘What you said wasn’t true. They have been wonderful to me, and I really appreciate it.’

  ‘OK,’ Agnes said wearily. ‘OK.’

  ‘They love me,’ Ruth said. ‘They do all they can for me. Why, at this very moment they are looking after Thomas so I can be here!’

  Agnes shrugged and looked away.

  ‘To suggest anything else is a lie,’ Ruth made herself continue. ‘Elizabeth loves me as if I were her own daughter, and she adores Thomas. She furnished our house for us, with her own lovely things. She thinks about us all the time. She’s a wonderful woman.’

  ‘They bought your house and she furnished it?’ the man from the television room asked Ruth.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Why on earth not?’

  He smiled his shy smile at her. ‘It’s just a bit odd,’ he said quietly. ‘Usually people choose their own houses and furniture.’

  Ruth looked at him with dislike. ‘I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘She did everything for me; she was quite wonderful.’

  ‘So is it her house or yours?’

  ‘Mine!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Of course it’s mine!’

  He nodded as if in agreement. ‘You pay the mortgage?’ he suggested.

  Ruth suddenly flushed and turned to George the nurse. ‘Do you want the details of my bank account?’ she asked. ‘Is this what we’re supposed to be doing here? Discussing my personal finances?’

  ‘You wanted to go first,’ one of the women said sulkily. ‘So get on with it.’

  ‘I just wanted to say one thing to Agnes!’ Ruth protested.

  ‘Well, now someone has asked you something,’ the woman said. ‘So do you pay the mortgage on your house or not? Let’s just get on with it!’

  ‘But what has that got to do with anything?’

  George smiled his patient smile. ‘Perhaps nothing,’ he said equably. ‘But is there a reason why you don’t want to tell us?’

  ‘There’s no reason,’ Ruth said, ‘because there’s no mortgage. They bought the house and gave it to us outright.’ She threw an angry look at the quiet man. ‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ she said.

  He nodded and would have stopped, but George intervened. ‘What were you thinking about, Peter,’ he asked gently, ‘when you asked about the mortgage?’

  The man spoke to him alone. ‘I was just thinking that maybe they hadn’t given Ruth her home at all, but just let her live in one of their houses, and then furnished it how they liked. I just wondered how much it is her house, and how much it belongs to her husband’s parents.’

  George nodded. ‘I was wondering that too,’ he said companionably. He turned back to Ruth. ‘I think we were all wondering that,’ he said gently.

  Ruth slumped back in her seat. ‘I’m tired of this,’ she said. She felt a small pleasure at refusing to speak to them. ‘I’m tired. I’ve said all I had to say.’

  The thin woman leaned forward. ‘So answer the question, and
let’s move on,’ she said. ‘Is it her house – your mother-in-law’s house – or is it yours?’

  ‘Of course it’s mine,’ Ruth said. ‘I live there, don’t I?’

  ‘But she owns it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she furnished it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have no lease and you pay no rent?’

  Ruth shrugged. ‘Yes. So what?’

  The thin woman shrugged back, mirroring Ruth’s weary contempt. ‘Then it’s not your house,’ she said. ‘And actually you’ve got no rights at all. You’re not even a tenant. You’re a squatter. They can evict you any time they like.’

  ‘I’m their daughter-in-law, for God’s sake!’ Ruth suddenly yelled.

  The woman nodded. ‘All that means is that you are married to her son,’ she said. ‘You haven’t got a home or a family at all.’

  Ruth gasped at that as if she had been hit. She turned to George and he saw her face was white. ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say,’ she whispered. He saw her face crumple like a little child’s. ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say to someone – that they have no home or family.’

  He nodded, his face was tender. ‘It is a dreadful thing,’ he said, repeating the words she had used. ‘And especially hard for you, Ruth.’

  She nodded. He could see that her eyes were filling with tears, her face looked stricken. He thought it was how she would have looked when she learned she had lost both parents and her home. And now she had learned that she had not been able to replace them.

  ‘It’s a dreadful thing to say to anyone,’ she said, still pushing the truth away.

  ‘But worse for you,’ he suggested again. ‘Because you know what that loss is like.’

  ‘I can hardly remember …’

  He shook his head. ‘I think you know what that loss is like,’ he said again, and watched in pity as her expression dissolved and she turned in her chair, buried her face in the soft back, and wept. ‘I can’t remember,’ she insisted. ‘I was too young to remember.’

  His face was tender with pity. ‘I think you do remember, Ruth.’

  They all heard the catch in her throat, and then the deeper grief as she wept. George stepped across the circle and held her in his arms. His embrace was comforting, professionally sexless. Ruth – far away in memories, deep in grief – felt only the relief of arms around her, holding her allowing her to cry.