The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  In the farmhouse Thomas stirred in his pram. He opened his eyes and saw the comforting canopy of the pram and the little dancing toys that Elizabeth had strung from one handle of the hood to another. He made a shape with his mouth and moved his lips. A sound was coming, slowly, he could make a sound. ‘Ma,’ he said. ‘Ma.’

  That evening Ruth sat between Agnes and Peter when they ate their supper in companionable silence. When she turned towards her room, Peter said quietly: ‘You did well today,’ and Agnes looked up and smiled.

  ‘It’s hard,’ Agnes said. ‘But Pete’s right. You did do well today. In the end.’

  Ruth was aching with tiredness. ‘I’ve never felt so bad in my life,’ she said.

  Agnes nodded. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get all the bad stuff out before you feel better. Don’t you feel better at all?’

  Ruth paused and thought. Somewhere there was a sense that a lie had been challenged, that a truth had been told. She thought of the pleasure she used to have as a journalist on the rare occasions when she had caught someone out in a deception. She felt as if she liked knowing the truth, and that for most of her marriage with Patrick she had been lying about herself, and that others had been lying too.

  ‘Yes,’ she said honestly. ‘I do feel better. I’ll do some more tomorrow.’

  ‘Good,’ Pete said.

  Another woman started the session the next day. Ruth watched and listened as another person’s pain unfolded before her, and saw how George and the group gently encouraged her to speak. She was the daughter of a wealthy family; she was addicted to drugs. She trembled with desire for the comfort of drugs even as she spoke of the damage they had done to her. Ruth thought of her own longing for the easy sleep given to her by Amitriptyline and shivered. When the other woman dissolved into tears and then wrapped her arms around her own thin body, shivered a little, and said, ‘I’m done,’ Ruth spoke.

  ‘You were right yesterday,’ she said to them generally. ‘The little house is not my home, it belongs to Frederick and Elizabeth.’ She took a breath. ‘And Patrick is my husband, but he was their son before he ever met me, and he is more their son than he is my husband.’ She looked round. ‘I’m not doing this very well,’ she said with a new humility. ‘I don’t know how to be honest about this.’

  ‘You’re being honest,’ George said.

  ‘He’s theirs,’ Ruth said. ‘He likes being in their house best. He likes being with them more than he likes being with me.’ It was a sharp, bitter truth she was telling. ‘It’s her. She makes him comfortable in a way that I don’t know how to. It’s not just cooking and furniture. He acts like he belongs there. At our home he acts like he is on a visit.’ She thought for a moment. ‘A working visit,’ she said. ‘It’s not a very nice place to stay.’

  She choked on the words for a moment, recognizing the little house in that damning phrase. ‘They don’t love me particularly,’ she said. She had a strange sense like diving into completely unknown deep water, which might wash her in any direction at all. ‘They love me because Patrick brought me to them and said he wanted me. If he had brought someone else it would have been her. Up to a point, it could have been anyone. If we were to separate,’ her voice shook slightly, ‘if he found someone else, they would like her just as much.’ She paused. ‘Possibly more. They hardly see me. In all the time I have known them, they only really saw me when I was pregnant. They cared for me then because it was important that Patrick’s child was well. It wasn’t me they cared about. It never has been.’

  She could hear the words spilling out as if it were someone else talking from far away, saying things that reversed her life like a negative instead of a print, when everything that should be white is black, and everything that should be black is white. But she recognized what the voice was saying, and there was a clear, clean honesty at last in what the voice was describing. And everything that had puzzled Ruth and hurt her in the past – Patrick’s ‘helping’ in his mother’s kitchen before Sunday lunch, Patrick’s private walk with his father after lunch – all made sense now. These were the techniques they were forced to use to share the joy of their son’s presence, and divide the task of entertaining his wife. Each of them wanted time alone with him, each of them had to pay for that pleasure by spending time alone with her.

  ‘I am a real burden to them,’ she said brutally. ‘What they want is Patrick – and now Thomas too. But they had to have me. They found all sorts of ways of managing me. But I never really fitted in.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘And is this a new way?’ Peter asked.

  George shot him a bright, acute look. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Is this a new way to manage you? Put you in a loony bin?’

  She recoiled. ‘They didn’t do it,’ she said positively.

  Peter raised an eyebrow. ‘Who pays?’

  ‘You always ask that!’ she said impatiently. ‘Who pays! Who pays! There are other things more important than money, you know! It doesn’t always matter who pays!’

  He nodded. ‘But it tells you a lot,’ he observed. ‘Who is paying for you to be here?’

  ‘Who’s paying for you?’ she retorted like a child.

  ‘My company,’ he said easily. ‘They know that the way they work drove me crazy. They know that if they had worked well I wouldn’t have had a breakdown. They know they did it. So they’re putting it right. Is that what’s happening for you?’

  Ruth was about to deny it but she paused. She thought of the little house, which she had never wanted, and the baby, which she had conceived and carried against her will. She thought of the remorseless good nature of Elizabeth and Frederick and their view of life, which accepted no argument, or even dissent. She thought that she could never have fitted into the mould of their daughter-in-law, that in the end something had to crack. The distance between the flat in Bristol and the farmhouse outside Bath had preserved their mutual privacy, but once Ruth was on the doorstep she was bound to be scrutinized, and once she was scrutinized they would have to see that she did not do things as Elizabeth did them, and that if they were not done as Elizabeth did them then they would be bound to be wrong. And anyone persisting in being wrong would be crazy to behave in such a way – crazy, mad, insane.

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said quietly. ‘They did it to me. They didn’t mean to do it to me, and there was the birth, and being really tired, and all the hormones jumbled up as well, and Thomas not sleeping – but yes, living next door to them has driven me completely insane, and now they are trying to put it right.’

  ‘So you’re a loony, in the loony bin,’ Peter said cheerfully.

  The rest of the group smiled. It was like some form of initiation. ‘Yes,’ Ruth said, joining at last. ‘I am a loony in a loony bin, and I am going to get sane and get out.’

  Patrick arrived at the clinic on Saturday night looking tired. Ruth normally met him at the door and they went to her bedroom. This Saturday she was not waiting at the door, and he had to make his own way down the hall to her room. A woman came out of a door and stared at him without smiling. Patrick recoiled. He was accustomed to the curious gaze of the audience upon a minor celebrity, but there was nothing of that sycophantic half-smile from the woman. She gazed at him in quite a different manner. As if he were not important, as if she did not like him.

  ‘Evening,’ Patrick said pleasantly. He could not comprehend dislike at all.

  She looked through him and beyond him. She did not want to see him, and by very little effort she could make him transparent.

  ‘Evening,’ Patrick said again, but with less certainty, and dived into the relative safety of Ruth’s bedroom.

  He was surprised to find it was empty. At other visits Ruth had waited for him at the front door, and when he was ready to go he had left her lying, weeping silently, on the bed. He had thought that there was nowhere else for her to be but waiting at the door for him, or lying on the bed and grieving for his absence. He had not seen the
dayroom, or the group room, or the garden, or the handicrafts room. He sat in the chair, waiting for her, and then he strolled around the room, looking at the bed, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the curtained window. He glanced at himself in the mirror and smoothed his hair. His good-looking reflection reminded him of the woman who had looked through him in the corridor. ‘Barmy cow,’ he said. He showed his even teeth in his charming smile. ‘Barmy cow,’ he said again.

  ‘You said it,’ Ruth said, coming in behind him.

  He whirled around. ‘Hello, darling!’ he said. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Much worse actually,’ she said precisely. ‘How is Thomas?’

  ‘He’s fine. Completely fine. Mother said to tell you that she thinks he’s cutting a tooth. But he’s completely fine. Everything under control.’

  Ruth closed her eyes briefly at the thought of her son cutting a tooth, and her not knowing.

  ‘And how are you?’ said Patrick, putting emphasis on the ‘you’ and making his voice warm.

  ‘Worse, as I said. But how are you?’ Ruth inquired in an exact parody.

  Patrick hesitated. He was not sure how to deal with Ruth, who looked the same, rather better actually: the same dark-eyed, petite, kissable little thing, still a little plump, but now unrecognizably difficult. She was tense, he decided. He would reassure her. ‘I’m fine. Missing you all the time.’

  ‘Eating well?’ Ruth asked. There was something not quite caring about her tone.

  Patrick made a little downturned mouth. ‘Homecooking,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Sleeping well? No crying babies at night?’

  He scanned her face. ‘Thomas is sleeping quite well,’ he said. ‘And Mother gets up to him. You knew that.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Ruth said viciously. ‘I know that your mother gets up to see to my baby. I know that I left him with her, not with you – his own father. I know that the last trump wouldn’t wake you after one of her dinners and a couple of your father’s best bottles of claret and a couple of nightcaps.’

  He recoiled. ‘Steady on.’

  ‘You sound just like your father addressing the natives in Poona,’ she said mercilessly. ‘You’re something like a hundred years out of date. All of you.’

  ‘Ruth …’

  ‘Patrick …’ she mimicked his reproachful tone.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you …’ he started.

  ‘If you don’t know what’s wrong with me then why did you put me away?’ she demanded.

  ‘I hardly put you away,’ he said, stung. ‘You were knocking back pills and boozing on top of it. You weren’t fit to care for Thomas. It’s all very well to get self-righteous about it now, Ruth, but you were a danger to Thomas and to yourself. What did you expect us to do?’

  She was instantly deflated. ‘Oh.’

  ‘“Oh,” what? Mother was worried sick that you would hurt yourself, or hurt Thomas. They couldn’t keep supervising you and him at long distance. I couldn’t be home all the time. What did you want us to do? Are you saying you shouldn’t have come here? Are you saying you want to come home?’

  Ruth put her hands out, as if to halt him. ‘Patrick …’

  ‘It’s all very well sitting here and thinking about everything and blaming us, but we’re just doing the best we can in a completely impossible situation. People at work keep asking me how you are and I keep saying that you’re fine. People in the village keep asking why you’re not looking after Thomas, and Mother keeps having to say that you’re resting. You’ve put us in an impossible situation, and now you’re trying to blame us.’

  She was white-faced. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said weakly. ‘I know a lot of it was my fault.’

  ‘I’d have thought all of it was your fault,’ Patrick said powerfully. ‘Your choice, all along the line.’

  ‘I didn’t want to move out of Bristol …’ Ruth started.

  ‘Oh, you can keep harking back forever,’ Patrick said impatiently.

  ‘I didn’t want to live there, right next door to them …’

  ‘It was an excellent choice of house, a wonderful investment, and we would have been mad to turn it down.’

  ‘But it’s not my house …’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Elizabeth decorated it, she chose almost everything …’

  Patrick turned towards the door and then spun around. ‘Mother did everything she could to make you comfortable and to spare you worry, and now you’re making her out to be some sort of harridan,’ he said. ‘It’s so unfair, Ruth. You’re being so unfair to everyone. She did everything she could to make it easy for you and now you’re accusing her of interfering.’

  Ruth’s lips were white. ‘I’m not,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Well, it sounds like that.’

  ‘I just thought … I’ve been thinking and thinking, Patrick.’

  ‘Well, stop thinking disloyal and unfair thoughts and start thinking how you’re going to pull yourself together and come home,’ he said brusquely. ‘Your child is being cared for by my mother, your house is being run by her. She’s looking after me, and she’s doing all her own usual work. And you’re in here – at their expense, I might remind you, because we could never afford the bills – you’re in here, and all you’re doing is lying around on your bed imagining how badly you’ve been treated.’

  ‘I’m not! I’m not!’ Ruth cried. She pitched forward into his arms, and Patrick felt his satisfaction mix with desire at the warm, desperate closeness of her. ‘I’m sorry, Patrick, you don’t know what it’s like here. We chew over everything, over and over, and at the end you don’t know what to think.’

  He stroked her hair and stepped to one side a little, pressing her slight body closer to his. He glanced at the bed and wondered if he shut the door whether anyone would come in. It was not as if it were a hospital, after all. It was a private nursing home and his parents were footing the bill and it was his own wife …

  Ruth was sobbing, her body shaking with grief. He patted her back. ‘There,’ he said, absentmindedly. If the door had a bolt on it he had a good mind to shut it and to have Ruth on her little narrow hospital bed. Female despair had always stimulated Patrick, and it had been a long time since he and Ruth had made love. Emma’s rejection had shaken him; he wanted Ruth’s grateful response.

  ‘There,’ he said again. Ruth was still crying.

  Patrick reached behind him and flicked the door shut with his spare hand. Ruth looked up, her face tearstained and sore.

  ‘The doors have to stay open,’ she said.

  ‘Not during visiting time, surely …’

  She shook her head. ‘All the time.’

  ‘I thought we might be together. Ruth, together.’

  She shook her head. ‘The doors have to stay open.’

  He felt sexually frustrated and angry with her. ‘For God’s sake, Ruth, I’m paying for this!’

  She stepped back from him; her face was still young and blotched with her tears but she looked different, she looked wiser, and she looked at him as the woman in the corridor had looked, not as if she were arrested by his handsome face but as if she could see into his very soul – and it was completely transparent, there was nothing there at all. She looked as if she could see completely through him. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, Patrick. I think I am the one who is paying. You are benefiting.’

  Eleven

  THOMAS was in his cot. Slowly into his line of vision his clenched fist swam forward, and then backwards again. He observed it with careful concentration. Just when he was starting to make the connection between the sensation of movement and the phenomenon of vision he was completely surprised by another hand, which approached from the other side.

  He opened his mouth in amazement. ‘Ma,’ he said. ‘Ma-ma.’

  ‘He’s saying “Grandma”,’ Elizabeth said with wonderment. ‘Frederick – come and listen! Thomas is saying “grandma”.’

  Her smiling face swam into Thomas’s line of vi
sion. ‘What a clever boy!’ she said. ‘What a clever boy.’

  Somewhere in Thomas’s memory cells was the fading image of another face. It was not smiling, it was pale and tired-looking, but she smelled right, and she was infinitely dearer. His lip trembled. ‘Ma-ma,’ he said. But they would not hear him.

  Ruth was getting ready to leave the convalescent home, having her farewell interview with Dr Fairley.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said agreeably. ‘What differences have you been able to make in your life since being with us?’

  Ruth looked across his desk. ‘I’ve stopped using tranx,’ she said, and then she corrected herself with a rueful grin at him. ‘Tranquillizers, I should say.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m glad of that. They seem as if they’re helping but they don’t get you very far.’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘I should never have been offered them, and I should never have used them.’

  He nodded. ‘You could still consult the doctor for other illnesses,’ he said. ‘He might be a very good GP for broken legs. Postpartum depression is very hard to treat.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said. ‘And he was under pressure from my family, I’m sure.’

  ‘Ah, your family …’

  Ruth smiled. ‘I’ve thought a lot about them too, these last few weeks.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’re not all bad,’ she said. ‘I wanted more from them than they could ever have given. Patrick’s not a bad man – he’s vain and he’s been spoiled, but I love him, and he’s the father of my child, and I’ve got every reason in the world to go home and to try and make it work with him.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dr Fairley said, neutrally.

  Ruth nodded. ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ she said. ‘He’s very attractive, and he’s brilliant at his job. In many ways I’m lucky to have him. I don’t think he’s God’s gift to women any more, but I do know that many women would want to be in my position. And I want to make it work. We’ve got a lot going for us – a lovely home, a wonderful baby, plenty of money, and he’s got a great career – we should be able to make it work. I’m going to try.’