The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  For a moment he looked as if he might refuse.

  ‘I really want to,’ Ruth prompted.

  ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘It just seems a bit odd.’

  They walked in step for a few paces. ‘It is odd,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s not odd going to look at it, it’s odd that we don’t live in it.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Patrick discouragingly. ‘Doesn’t Thomas love his bouncy thing!’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said. ‘But we don’t have a hook for it in our house, and they have a hook in the farmhouse.’

  ‘We can put up a hook!’ Patrick said bracingly. ‘There’s no problem with that!’

  Ruth hesitated. The wine she had drunk at lunchtime, and the example of Miriam’s open defiance of her mother, made her feel reckless. She felt ready to force the issue. ‘Or we could not bother,’ she said. ‘We could stay in the farmhouse forever and never live in our own house.’

  He checked. ‘What?’

  ‘You obviously don’t want to go, and your mother obviously wants us to stay there. Shall we decide now that we all live together, and you and I never have a home of our own again?’

  ‘No,’ Patrick said instantly. ‘No one lives like that. It would look so odd … like Argentinian peasants or something.’

  ‘It is odd,’ Ruth agreed, stretching her strides to keep pace with his.

  ‘And I like our house,’ Patrick said as the trim front garden came into view around the curve of the drive. ‘I like living here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth.

  ‘The stay in the farmhouse has just dragged on a bit,’ Patrick said thoughtfully. ‘First you being ill, and then I was worried about you, and then I really wanted to move at Christmas, but the heating was off … it’s just been one thing after another.’

  ‘I can’t make us move,’ Ruth said simply. They had reached the garden gate, and she swung around to face him. Her face was flushed from the walk, her eyes bright and clear. He felt a sudden straightforward desire for her. In that moment he stopped seeing her as a sick woman, as a mad woman. Suddenly he saw her for what she was: young, sexual, desirable. ‘I can’t make us move,’ Ruth said again. ‘It has to be your decision. I’ve done all I can, and I can’t make it happen. If you don’t put your foot down, we’re going to be there forever.’

  She turned from him and went to the front door. ‘I don’t have a key,’ Patrick said.

  She took it out of her pocket and opened the door. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is your mother’s key. You have to decide, Patrick, whether this is their house or ours. You have to decide whether we will live here or not.’

  He stepped into the hall. The dry, dusty smell of an unused house was like a reproach.

  Ruth went ahead of him into the sitting room. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she said. ‘A Christmas drink in our own home.’

  He smiled, attracted by the clandestine sense of an assignation. ‘I’ll see what we have.’

  Ruth struck a match and put it to the kindling in the grate. At once the firelight made the room look warm and friendly. She drew the curtains against the red setting sun.

  Patrick came back with a bottle of port and a couple of glasses. ‘The cupboard’s a bit bare,’ he said. ‘This is all I could find.’

  Ruth smiled at him, her face lit by firelight, the room warming up. There was an intimacy about being alone in their house, like a newly married couple when the last of the wedding guests have finally gone, and the bawdy jokes are over, and there is silence.

  ‘It’s silly,’ Patrick remarked. ‘I’d forgotten what a nice house this is.’

  He poured the wine and looked around. ‘We’ll move back, shall we? As soon as the heating is fixed?’

  Ruth raised her glass to him. ‘And start again,’ she said as if it were a toast. ‘I’m sorry that it went wrong before, Patrick. I am quite different now.’

  He sat beside her on the sofa and kissed her gently. ‘It’s been a tough year,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t all the help I should have been. We’ll do better next year.’

  She turned to him and Patrick put down his glass and kissed her again. With a sense of delightful discovery Patrick slid his hands under her blouse and felt her warm, soft skin. Ruth sighed with relief and welcomed Patrick into her body.

  Elizabeth knew.

  As they came in the door, pink-cheeked and breathless from walking quickly home up the darkening drive, she took one swift look from one to another and knew that they had been to their own house and made love.

  Ruth saw the glance and had an immediate impression of Elizabeth’s disapproval. For a moment she thought that the older woman was shocked at her son’s sexuality – sneaking out in the afternoon like a teenager – but then she had a sense of something deeper and more serious, something like envy, something like a challenge.

  ‘You were a long time,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m surprised you could see your way home.’

  Patrick looked embarrassed. ‘It’s only dusk,’ he said.

  ‘We went to our house,’ Ruth said. She looked Elizabeth in the eye. ‘We lit the fire in the sitting room and had a glass of port to celebrate Christmas. It was lovely.’

  Elizabeth smiled but she looked strained. ‘I’m surprised the chimney drew,’ she said. ‘It’s been cold for so long.’

  They went into the sitting room. Thomas was on his play mat on the carpet; when he saw his mother he crowed with delight, and his arms and legs waved. Ruth picked him up and turned to her mother-in-law, with her son’s head against her cheek.

  ‘We’ve missed it,’ she said firmly. ‘We’ll move back next week, as soon as the heating is fixed.’

  Elizabeth slid a conspiratorial glance at Patrick, but he did not see. He was looking at his wife and son. ‘I’ll go over tomorrow and put up a hook for his bouncer,’ he said.

  On Boxing Day it somehow turned into a family walk. They all went to the little house together. Elizabeth and Frederick walked down the drive with them, Ruth pushing Thomas in his pram. ‘We’ll bring Thomas away when he’s had enough,’ Frederick said.

  ‘It’s too cold for him down there without heating,’ Elizabeth remarked. ‘Heaven knows how we managed in the old days. The only warm rooms ever were the kitchen and the drawing room. The stairs and the hall were draughty and cold, and the bedrooms were like ice.’

  Frederick nodded. ‘I used to have chilblains every winter when I was a child,’ he said. ‘And chapped hands. You hardly ever hear about chilblains now.’

  Patrick was half listening. ‘It would make quite a nice little film,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The medical side of recent progress. People not getting chilblains any more because the houses are warmer, but getting more asthma.’

  Elizabeth laughed and slipped her hand in her son’s arm. ‘Fleas,’ she said. ‘If you dare to mention them. Now that we have centrally heated houses fleas don’t die off in winter. The vet was telling me they breed all the year round. It’s a real problem. There’s a mini epidemic.’

  ‘And house mites,’ Frederick said cheerfully, coming up on the other side of Elizabeth. ‘That’s the cause of your extra asthma if you ask me. Not enough fresh air.’

  Ruth, lagging behind, pushing the pram, saw the three of them, walking in step in the happy unity that seemed so easy for them to achieve. But it was Elizabeth and not Patrick who glanced back towards her and called, ‘What about you, Ruth? Are you one of the post-central heating children? Or was your home cold?’

  Ruth shook her head. Her aunt’s house had never been a home, and she could scarcely remember her childhood home. But then she had a sudden sharp recollection of her home in the States, before the death of her parents. They had rented a small white clapboard house, cool in summer and snug in winter. When Ruth was in bed at night, she could hear the comforting gabble from her parents’ television downstairs. The warmth from the furnace in the cellar spread through the house. In autumn her father used to put up storm windows and go up on the roof to check the shingles. Her mothe
r used to make him wear thick working gloves. ‘Your hands!’ she would exclaim. Ruth remembered her father’s hands, long-fingered, soft, with the power to wring music from wood. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said shortly.

  They reached the gate. Frederick paused to help her with the pram, while Elizabeth and Patrick opened the front door and went in together.

  The sitting room was fusty and dark, with the curtains still closed. The little fire had burned out in the grate. Ruth had not drunk all her port yesterday, and there was a sour, stale smell from the dregs in the glass. The cushions on the floor and the pushed-back sofa showed very clearly to Elizabeth’s quick assessing gaze that they had made love on the floor. Ruth felt deeply uncomfortable, as if they had been detected in some secret assignment. The room did not look intimate and seductive as it had looked the day before; it looked sordid.

  Elizabeth went over and threw back the curtains. The harsh winter sunlight showed the dust and the red stain inside the wine glasses. Without a word of criticism or condemnation Elizabeth unlocked the sash window and threw it up. The clean winter air flooded in. Ruth picked up the dirty glasses and the bottle and took them to the kitchen. As she left the room she saw Elizabeth stooping to pick up the cushions from the floor, brush them off, and replace them on the sofa. Ruth had a moment of cringing embarrassment that one of them would be stained, that Elizabeth would take off the cover of the cushion for washing; all in that remorselessly civilized way.

  In the kitchen Frederick was unpacking the tool kit while Patrick tapped the plaster-board ceiling, looking for the joists.

  ‘Mind you don’t hit a cable,’ Frederick said. ‘Hang on a minute. I’ve got one of those cable detectors in here.’

  ‘You’ve got a tool library in there,’ Patrick said, smiling. ‘Is there any DIY gadget you haven’t got?’

  ‘I like a good tool kit,’ Frederick said. ‘And your mother likes things just so at home. It’s very satisfying to do a good job.’

  ‘Aha,’ Patrick said as the hollow sound of his tapping changed. ‘I think it’s here.’

  ‘Tap again?’ Frederick said, listening. ‘Yes. That sounds like it. Now where d’you want the bouncer, Ruth?’

  Ruth gestured to a space between the kitchen table and the back door. ‘There?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’ll reach up and pull off the tablecloth.’

  Ruth hesitated. She had never thought of putting a tablecloth on the kitchen table, which was scrubbed pine.

  ‘It should be here,’ Elizabeth said, gesturing closer to the back door. ‘And then in summer you can have the door open, and he can bounce in the sunshine.’

  Elizabeth was right. Ruth found a smile. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, trying to sound pleased.

  ‘Shall I have a look at the central heating while I’m here?’ Frederick asked. ‘I might be able to get it going.’

  ‘It’s under guarantee,’ Elizabeth warned. ‘Don’t just thump it with a spanner.’

  Frederick raised his eyebrows to Patrick in a mutual silent complaint about the unreasonable and suspicious nature of women. ‘I’ll just look,’ he said, and went to the utility room. A few moments later they heard the boiler click and then flare.

  ‘Extraordinary thing,’ Frederick said, coming out of the utility room. ‘The clock was disconnected. Can’t think how it could have happened. The boiler wasn’t firing because it was disconnected from the clock.’

  ‘Must have been loose when they put it in,’ Patrick said. He drilled the hole for the bouncer hook, and plaster dust filled the air.

  ‘I suppose so …’ Frederick said. ‘But I can’t see why it would suddenly come out. You’d expect it to flicker on and off …’

  ‘Oh!’ said Elizabeth, waving her hand before her face in protest at the dust. ‘Let’s get Thomas out of here! Shall we go upstairs and make the beds, Ruth?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ruth said. ‘You play with Thomas in the sitting room.’ She felt she could not bear to have Elizabeth turning over the cold sheets, just as she had turned over the sofa cushions.

  ‘All right.’ Elizabeth lifted Thomas out of the pram and smiled at his welcoming gurgle. ‘We’ll be happy enough! Call me if you want a hand.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said.

  There was a companionable male muttering from the kitchen as the men hung the baby bouncer, and then Thomas’s delighted giggle from the sitting room as Elizabeth tickled the small outspread palms of his hands. Ruth, going up the stairs alone to the cold bedrooms, felt left out and lonely, but did not know how she could join in.

  She made the beds quietly, finding that she was listening to the sounds of the others down below. When the men finished in the kitchen they joined Elizabeth and the baby in the sitting room. She could hear them chatting, Elizabeth advising Patrick not to order more logs or coal until prices came down in the summer. ‘We have plenty,’ she said. ‘I ordered extra because I guessed you might run out. Father will bring a trailer load down for you later in the week.’

  Ruth thumped the pillows into place, and shook the duvet.

  ‘I’d offer you a cup of coffee,’ Patrick said. ‘But we haven’t got anything in at all.’

  ‘I cleared it all out when Ruth had her breakdown,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Better than letting it go to waste. But I kept a complete list of what was in the larder so I can replace it for you to the last tin of beans!’

  ‘We can go shopping …’ Patrick said.

  ‘Not today you can’t,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘Boxing Day. I shouldn’t think Sainsburys will be open till Tuesday. I can go in then.’

  ‘So you’re with us for a few more days?’ Frederick asked.

  ‘It looks like it,’ Patrick said. ‘We’ll leave the heating on and come down and air the place. But I don’t want to run up the drive every time I want a cup of tea.’

  Ruth slammed the bedroom door and came noisily down the stairs. They all looked up at her and smiled. ‘Can’t you lend us some basics?’ she asked Elizabeth. ‘A loaf from the freezer? A small jar of coffee? A couple of tea bags? A pint of milk?’

  ‘We don’t want to put Mother to any trouble,’ Patrick intervened.

  ‘Of course not,’ Ruth said determinedly. ‘But you’re so well organized, Elizabeth, I just assumed you’d have plenty in the house. Don’t you have anything to spare?’

  Elizabeth hesitated. ‘I always have a loaf in the freezer …’

  ‘My dear, you know you keep in enough to feed an army!’ Frederick exclaimed. ‘Let’s all go home for lunch and then you two can take your pick of the larder and bring down whatever you want.’

  ‘And anything you haven’t got I can pick up at the garage shop,’ Ruth said pleasantly.

  ‘Of course,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘I hope you won’t catch me out. I think I can give you everything you need. If you’re sure you want to go now. It seems rather a rush …’

  Ruth nodded, meeting her eyes. ‘We were only waiting for the central heating to be mended,’ she said levelly. ‘And it’s on now. We can move back in.’

  Fifteen

  THAT EVENING Ruth and Patrick curled up before a log fire in their own sitting room after a supper of curried turkey and rice. Elizabeth had given them slices from the Christmas turkey for their supper and Ruth had driven down to the garage shop for a tin of curry powder. Upstairs, Thomas slept in his own cot in his own nursery again.

  Frederick had given Patrick a bottle of claret to celebrate their first night back in the little house, and they drank the bright red wine and put the glasses down on the wooden floor, and cracked nuts with a sense of behaving naturally in private at last.

  ‘I’m glad we came home,’ Patrick said. ‘I thought at the last moment we were going to get stuck until the shops opened on Tuesday.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘It’s always one thing or another,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth didn’t want us to leave.’

  Patrick nodded. ‘You can see why,’ he said fairly. ‘She’s so close to Thomas you would think
he was her own son.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Ruth contradicted. ‘I would never think that Thomas was anyone’s son but yours and mine.’

  Patrick gave her his charming smile and pulled her against him. ‘Manner of speech,’ he said against her hair.

  ‘Not my speech,’ Ruth said stubbornly as his kisses moved from her warm, smooth head to the line of her neck. She turned her face to him and opened her mouth as he kissed her.

  ‘Bedtime,’ Patrick said suddenly. ‘In our own bed at last, thank God.’

  They went upstairs with their fingers interlinked and made love, in their own bed, with no one but a passing owl to hear.

  The end of Patrick’s holiday time was like the end of a small reserve of peace. His alarm clock went off early, by accident, and woke Thomas. Instead of the enjoyable well-organized breakfast Ruth had planned, she had to warm Thomas’s early-morning bottle and then change his nappy halfway through his feed. Thomas – who liked to have his bottle undisturbed – took noisy exception to this, and his complaint soured his temper for the rest of the morning. Ruth could not put him down and make Patrick’s breakfast as she had wished, but had to wedge him under her arm while she filled the kettle and tried to make tea one-handed.

  Their early start did not give them more time, it merely increased the confusion. Patrick could not find his cuff links – which he had left up at the farm – and so had to change his shirt for one with buttons at the cuff. It was a pale blue, which meant that he had to choose another tie as well, and the blue tie that matched had been left up at the farmhouse. ‘For heaven’s sake, as though it mattered!’ Ruth snapped. Thomas dropped his bottle and let out a pitiful deprived wail.

  ‘Just leave breakfast!’ Patrick ordered. ‘I’ll get a cup of coffee at work. I never said I wanted a cooked breakfast in the first place!’

  ‘But Elizabeth always –’ Ruth bit the sentence off.

  Patrick came towards her and quietly took Thomas from her. ‘Make yourself a cup of tea,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll hold him while you drink it. Mother gets everything ready the night before, and she gets up at the crack of dawn to get everything done. There’s no need to try and be like her. We live here now.’