The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘And so you shall!’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘As soon as you are completely well, you’ll start life again in your new home, and we’ll be the first to congratulate you.’

  Ruth hesitated, looking from Elizabeth’s smiling face to Patrick’s determined one. ‘I really have to make this clear. I am not living here permanently.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Elizabeth said pleasantly. ‘You have your own life to lead – why, we’ve even replaced your car!’

  ‘My car?’

  Frederick rose from his place before the fire. ‘Your old car never turned up, I’m afraid. Whoever took it from the pub car park probably had it resprayed and resold within the week. And your insurance didn’t cover you for theft since the keys were left in it.’

  Ruth flushed scarlet with shame at the memory.

  ‘Bought you another,’ Frederick said gruffly. ‘Little runabout. Welcome-home present. Show of support.’

  ‘Because we know you need your freedom,’ Elizabeth supplemented sweetly.

  Ruth felt the easy tears rise into her eyes again. ‘You’re so good to me!’ The words were wrenched out of her by their generosity. ‘Thank you.’

  Elizabeth came forward and took Thomas from her. ‘We just want you to be happy,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s all be happy, now.’

  Ruth bathed Thomas in the yellow bathroom that night and Elizabeth tidied the linen cupboard on the landing outside the bathroom so that she could listen at the door and make sure that Thomas was safe.

  When Ruth came down with Thomas all pink and smiling and clean, his grandfather held him while Ruth made his bottle, and then handed him back with a goodnight kiss.

  ‘He likes to be rocked while he has his bottle, and then when he has finished his bottle, you put him up on your shoulder and rock him like that,’ Elizabeth instructed. ‘You’ll feel him go all limp and his breathing deepen when he has fallen asleep, and then you can put him in his cot. I leave the night-light on, and he has his duvet cover just up to his tummy.’

  Ruth nodded and took her son up the stairs to the nursery.

  ‘You go,’ Elizabeth said in an undertone to Frederick. ‘You can read the newspaper in our bedroom and just keep an ear open. Just in case.’

  He nodded obediently, and folded his paper under his arm and followed Ruth and his grandson up the stairs.

  ‘She’s bound to notice after a while,’ Patrick said to his mother. He followed her out into the kitchen and poured them both a gin and tonic while she sliced vegetables for the evening meal.

  ‘I think we can be tactful,’ she said. ‘There are three of us; we can take it in turns. I think we can always have someone within earshot.’

  ‘We won’t go back to the little house until I am confident that Thomas is safe with her,’ Patrick said firmly. ‘Whether she likes it or not.’

  She glanced at her son. ‘That must be your first duty,’ she said. ‘Your first duty must be to our boy.’

  Ruth’s days took on a new routine, living at the farmhouse with Patrick and his parents. If Thomas woke in the night she went to him and rocked him to sleep again. Then he would often sleep until eight o’clock, so Patrick got up and left for work without disturbing her. Elizabeth and Frederick were always up from seven, Elizabeth to cook Patrick’s breakfast and see him off to work, Frederick to eat breakfast and go out for his morning stroll with the dog around the fields.

  When Thomas woke, he and Ruth would go downstairs for breakfast, Ruth in her dressing gown and Thomas in his sleep suit. Elizabeth would have Ruth’s toast and coffee ready, and she would feed Thomas while Ruth ate, and then take him upstairs to dress him while Ruth had a shower.

  If the day was sunny and bright, Ruth would wrap Thomas warmly and put him in the pram for Frederick to push him a little way down the lane until he fell asleep. Then he would come home and draw the pram into the house, through the French windows of his gunroom, where Thomas could sleep undisturbed by the noise of housework in the rest of the house. Frederick would potter at his workbench or his desk, tying flies for the fishing season, or writing letters while Thomas slept in his pram in the corner of the room.

  Ruth had nothing to do. Elizabeth would not accept any help in the house; she said she had her own way of doing things and there were no chores to do. Instead, Ruth started walking down the lane to her own house, the little house, vacuuming and dusting the cold rooms, cleaning the windows, and tidying the cupboards, and then locking it all up and walking back to the farmhouse in time for lunch.

  Ruth always picked Thomas up after his morning sleep, changed his nappy and played with him before lunch. Obediently, she dressed him in the bulky towelling nappies that Elizabeth preferred, and fed him with Elizabeth’s freshly pureed dinners. In the afternoon Ruth would play with Thomas in the living room, or in her own bedroom. She did not notice that someone was always with them. If they were in the living room together, playing on the mat before the fire, then Frederick would be in his chair, behind the Daily Telegraph. If they were in her bedroom or in the nursery, then Elizabeth would be cleaning the bath, or doing the flowers on the landing, or dusting the picture frames. Ruth, absorbed in finding a new and valuable intimacy with her baby, simply did not notice that she was constantly supervised.

  Patrick, secure in the knowledge that his child was safe, came home in time for dinner at seven-thirty, sometimes only just in time to kiss Thomas goodnight.

  ‘You hardly see him,’ Ruth complained.

  ‘I see him at the weekends,’ he said. ‘And besides, when you were away I saw him all the time. He needs his mother now.’

  Elizabeth cooked an impressive dinner every night, with either a starter, entrée and cheeseboard, or with a main course and a homemade pudding. After dinner they watched television in the sitting room, the nine-o’clock news followed by whatever programme was on BBC1 or BBC2. If Frederick wanted to watch something different, he went to his gunroom. If Patrick wanted to watch either of the independent channels, he went upstairs to their bedroom and watched it on the small television up there. It was an unwritten and unchallenged rule that they watched only the BBC in the sitting room. The only time the rule was broken was when one of Patrick’s documentaries was on, and then it was watched and videotaped in solemn silence. Some evenings Patrick took Ruth out for a drink, once to the cinema. But Patrick’s work was still so demanding that during the week he preferred to go to bed early, and he slept heavily.

  At the weekend Patrick and Ruth took Thomas to the park, or out for a walk, or for a stroll around the city centre, window-shopping. On Saturday night they generally left him with Elizabeth and went out for dinner. On Sunday morning they slept in, and Elizabeth had him all to herself until eleven o’clock, when they all went to church. After Sunday lunch they went for a walk. It was all as it had been when Patrick and Ruth used to visit on Sundays, except now the visit had been prolonged indefinitely, and sometimes Ruth feared that she would never get home.

  On Thursday afternoon, in the second week, Elizabeth had Thomas all afternoon when Ruth went in to see the Bath therapist – a woman called Clare Leesome. She had consulting rooms on the ground floor of her house, a solid Victorian house, on the outskirts of Bath. Ruth rang the doorbell and Clare showed her into a room furnished with soft chairs and large floor cushions. Clare Leesome sat on one chair, Ruth sat on another. The house was very quiet. Clare asked Ruth a few questions and then sat very still, letting her slowly reveal more and more.

  She started with the clinic, and the discovery of her grief at her parents’ death. Clare Leesome nodded; she took no notes. Ruth cried as she spoke of the death of her mother, and the therapist watched her cry as if tears were a sign of health, an appropriate expression, and not a symptom of illness that should be apologetically mopped up. They agreed that they would meet weekly for Ruth to talk through the loss of her parents. It was to be an open-ended arrangement, to last as long as Ruth wished.

  ‘I don’t want to be one of these people with an anal
yst for the rest of my life,’ Ruth said.

  Clare smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t work like that either. But you have been through a difficult time; there are bound to be things that will come up for you that you will want to talk over.’

  ‘And will I be happy?’ Ruth demanded. ‘Will I stop crying and crying and feel steadily happy?’

  ‘If your life gives you cause to feel happy,’ Clare replied. ‘If you have a sad and troublesome daily life, then you will feel sad and troubled. But if you have a happy and fulfilling life, then you will feel happy and fulfilled. All we can do is to make sure that you feel the emotion that is relevant – so that you’re not unhappy when everything is going well. It will be up to you – when you are in touch with your feelings and can make the judgments – to decide whether your life needs to change or not.’

  Ruth telephoned David at Radio Westerly at the end of the second week. For some reason, which she did not choose to examine, she used the telephone in the little house, when she was visiting one morning.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Ruth! God! How wonderful to hear from you! Are you out?’

  ‘No, I drove my motorbike and jumped over the wire, what d’you think?’

  ‘I think you’re out.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And – are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I’m so sorry that you were stuck in the middle. I can hardly remember the pub, but they tell me you had to bring me home. I imagine it was dreadful.’

  He chuckled. ‘God, Ruth, you will never know. They were all frightfully British and restrained about it. I should think Patrick wanted to murder me.’

  ‘How awful. I am sorry, David.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said grandly. ‘I only wish I had known what to do. I did feel that I had abandoned you, and then I heard you’d gone off for a – er – a rest.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she assured him. ‘And they found me an excellent residential therapy centre. I wasn’t locked up screaming, you know. It was an excellent place and I’m really well now.’

  ‘Want to come and get drunk then?’ he offered mischievously.

  She giggled. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Lunch?’

  ‘Elizabeth baby-sits for me on Thursdays. I go into Bath to see a therapist. I could have lunch with you first.’

  ‘Twelve o’clock at the Black Bull?’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘If there’s any problem you can phone me. I’ll give you the number.’

  ‘I’ve got the number.’

  There was a little pause. ‘I’m not at home. We’re at Patrick’s parents’ house.’

  He was instantly alert. ‘Oh. Why’s that?’

  ‘They wanted us to stay until we are all settled down again. I think they wanted to know I was going to be all right.’

  ‘So when do you go back home?’

  ‘It was supposed to be this weekend. But Patrick has to go away overnight, and they don’t want me on my own in the little house, so it’ll be the middle of next week.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll see you for lunch, anyway.’ He thought about wishing her luck. For an odd superstitious moment he had a sense of her as facing obstacles that were almost too great for her. ‘Without fail,’ he said, as if he could will her through the days. ‘Is Thomas OK?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘And Patrick?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘See you on Thursday then,’ he said.

  When the phone clicked and she was gone he felt as if he had lost her to the Cleary family all over again.

  The decision that Ruth should stay at the farmhouse while Patrick was away was made almost by default. Ruth had thought that they would move out on Friday, but then the meeting in London came up, and Patrick would not be home until Sunday. He said he could not face the packing and the disruption and the moving of all Thomas’s toys and things when he had just got home; he said he would do it in the following week. Thus the third week of the visit started.

  ‘I could move us,’ Ruth said brightly at dinner on Tuesday night. ‘You don’t need to do anything, Patrick. I could do it all.’

  ‘I want to help,’ Patrick said. ‘I just can’t do it for a couple of days. There’s no problem, is there? We can move into the little house at the weekend.’

  ‘I just feel that we’re rather in the way …’ Ruth started.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Elizabeth said swiftly. ‘You know we love having you here. Don’t feel that, Ruth! We’ll be quite lost without you.’

  ‘Give it another week,’ Frederick advised. ‘Then you can go back in time for Christmas.’

  ‘Thomas’s first Christmas,’ Elizabeth said, smiling. ‘What are you going to get him?’

  ‘Is he too small for one of those bouncy things?’ Patrick asked. ‘Those bouncy things that you hang on doorways?’

  ‘I always worry that they’ll collapse!’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Not if it’s properly hung,’ Frederick advised. ‘I could put you up a good solid butcher’s hook in the kitchen ceiling, if you wanted. Screw it into the beams. He’d have to bring the whole house down with him to get it down.’

  ‘Chap at work says his daughter spends half the day in hers,’ Patrick said. ‘He says she loves it.’

  ‘But when shall we go home?’ Ruth asked abruptly.

  Patrick leaned over and patted her hand. ‘It’s lovely to see you so well and anxious to get back,’ he said affectionately. ‘But I don’t want to rush back.’

  ‘And you’re more than welcome here, Ruth,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I should hate to see you getting overtired again.’

  ‘I wasn’t overtired,’ Ruth said carefully. ‘I was depressed. I was suffering from the mental illness of depression. But now I have recovered, and I am continuing with therapy to make sure that I stay well. We’ll have to go back sooner or later; I’d like to get back and get on with our lives.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘What does your therapist say?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘Nothing …’ Ruth replied, surprised. ‘That is, I haven’t asked her. She hasn’t said anything about where we live. It hasn’t come up.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that you want to move back to living on your own, without any support?’ Patrick asked heavily.

  Ruth was lost for words. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve not discussed it.’

  ‘Perhaps you should see what she thinks,’ Elizabeth said gently, a glance at Patrick. ‘When you go on Thursday. Talk it over with her.’

  ‘Two heads are better than one,’ Frederick added. ‘Ask the experts.’

  ‘It’s not really anything to do with her,’ Ruth said. ‘We talk about my feelings, not my living accommodation.’

  ‘But she’d have an opinion,’ Patrick urged. ‘Ask her what she thinks. Then we’ll have something to go on.’

  Ruth felt absurdly blocked, as if she had been driven into a cul de sac. ‘All right,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I’ll ask her on Thursday afternoon.’

  On Wednesday morning Patrick telephoned Clare Leesome and left a message on her answering machine. On Wednesday afternoon she called him back. When she said her name he got up and shut the door to his office, with elaborate caution. ‘Thank you for calling back,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘It’s about my wife, Ruth Cleary.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘As you may know, we’re living at home with my parents. When she went into the clinic it was the only way we could manage with the baby, and it seemed a good thing that she should have the continued support when she came out.’

  Clare Leesome wondered at the smoothness of Patrick’s sentences, and thought it was a prepared speech.

  ‘She now wants to move back into our own house, and we have suggested that she take your advice.’

  ‘Oh,’ Clare said unhelpfully.

  ‘Our feeling is that she needs the support of our family,’ Patrick said confidingly. ‘The baby is a very act
ive, wakeful child, and with her history …’ he tailed off but she did not interrupt him. ‘She was violent in the clinic with another patient, and she was short-tempered with Thomas …’ Still Clare Leesome held her irritating silence. ‘We feel that she should stay living with my family until we can be sure that she has completely recovered.’

  There was a complete and unhelpful silence.

  ‘I wanted your advice,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Concerning what?’ Clare asked, as if Patrick’s lengthy preamble had never been said.

  Patrick curbed his temper. ‘I wanted you to advise me that we are doing the right thing in keeping her at home with all of us,’ he said.

  She said nothing for a moment. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t have enough facts to make a judgment.’

  ‘The facts are as I have described them,’ Patrick said tightly. ‘And she has this history of not being able to care for Thomas …’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a history exactly,’ Clare said thoughtfully. ‘I’d call it an episode.’

  ‘Well, what more do you need to know? History, episode, the facts are that she was incapable of caring for a newborn baby on her own.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clare said pleasantly. ‘As are most people …’

  ‘So I want to know that you agree that it is best for her to live with my family until we are sure she is better.’

  ‘As I say,’ Clare repeated, ‘I couldn’t judge.’

  ‘Surely you must have an opinion!’

  Clare noted Patrick’s rising tone. ‘It depends on so many things,’ she said. ‘Her relationship with you, with your mother, with your father. The family dynamic. Her contact with the child, issues about privacy, issues about sharing. I cannot say what Ruth thinks. I think, if it were me, I would rather live in my own house.’

  Patrick wanted to shout at her. He held the telephone away from his ear for a few moments and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘But we are talking about a disturbed woman,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Clare said briskly. ‘If you mean psychotic – she’s certainly not that!’