The Little House

by Philippa Gregory

  Frederick came in and made her a pot of tea in silence. ‘Will you speak to Patrick?’

  She nodded. ‘They will have to come back here.’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s no way for a young couple to live,’ he said. ‘They need a bit of privacy.’

  ‘So that she can neglect our grandson and we not know?’

  ‘I think we should listen to her version. She certainly loves him. I don’t think she’d neglect him wilfully.’

  Elizabeth wrung out the little shirt and trousers and changed the water in the sink. She watched the suds swirl down the drain and then turned and faced her husband. ‘Are you saying we should do nothing?’ she demanded. ‘Not warn Patrick, cover up for her, keep it a secret?’

  Frederick thought for a moment and then he shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘The baby comes first. But I am sorry she hasn’t made a better go of it.’

  ‘We all are,’ Elizabeth said smartly.

  Patrick, seated in the editing studio with a producer, trying to find cuts in a programme that was ten minutes too long, was irritated by the note his secretary brought in, which read: ‘Your mother rang and said to tell you that you should urgently phone home. At once.’

  ‘Sorry. Just a minute,’ Patrick said. He understood that home did not mean the little house, but the farmhouse. He picked up the studio phone and dialled the number. ‘It’s me,’ he said shortly.

  The producer watched his face change. He looked shocked, and then incredulous. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come at once.’

  ‘Trouble?’ the producer asked.

  Patrick switched on his charming smile. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I was enjoying this and it’s a good piece. There’s a family crisis at home: my son is sick. I have to go. Can you finish it without me and bike a copy over to my house for me to see tonight? I’ll phone you first thing in the morning.’

  ‘All right,’ the producer said. ‘I hope your son is OK.’

  Patrick’s smile wavered slightly. ‘Oh, sure,’ he said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  He drove home badly, overtaking and cutting in. Partly he was anxious to get home, but also he felt a mixture of rage and distress and, oddly, embarrassment. He felt that Ruth’s inability to cope with Thomas reflected badly on him. He felt that his parents deserved a better daughter-in-law, that he should have chosen a better partner. The closeness and sympathy of the days since Christmas dissolved under the acid of his realization that Ruth would never be able to cope.

  His mother opened the door to the sound of his step on the threshold. ‘Patrick,’ she said, and drew him into an embrace, which was consoling and powerful and reassuring.

  She led him into the kitchen. Thomas was sitting in his old high chair in his accustomed place by the table. Frederick was opposite, out of reach of the flying spoon that Thomas waved as he waited to be fed. Elizabeth sat down before her grandson and spooned food into his open mouth.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Patrick asked, leaning against the door. ‘He looks well enough.’

  Elizabeth glanced at Frederick and said nothing. Frederick spoke for them both.

  ‘Ruth took him shopping this afternoon and apparently left her handbag in the shop, or something. She phoned Mother and asked her to go down and hold the fort while she drove back to the shop. When Mother got there she found Thomas in his outdoor clothes in his cot. He’d been sick and he was dirty. Mother brought him up here at the double, and here we are. And now she’s AWOL. She should have been home by now but she’s not reported in. It’s a bad business, Patrick.’

  Patrick straightened up and turned a little away. He looked out of the kitchen window so they could not see his face. Elizabeth and Frederick exchanged a look.

  ‘He had cried himself to sleep,’ she said. ‘He was in a dreadful state. And his clothes must have been on him for a while; they were drying out. There’s his weatherproof suit. I kept it for you to see.’

  Patrick glanced down at the garment, which was drying with large blotches of white stains of vomit. He turned back to the two of them. ‘What shall I do?’ he asked like a man who has run out of answers. ‘What shall I do?’

  Ruth was delayed at the store because the security officer who had spoken to her on the telephone could not at first be found. Then, when he came, she had to produce satisfactory proof of identity and fill in a claim form before she could receive her handbag. Then she had to count the money in her purse and confirm that nothing was missing on an itemized receipt. Nothing could be hurried, everything had to be done in order. Ruth bit back her temper and checked her watch. It was five o’clock before she left the shop, and then she was caught in the rush-hour traffic. It was a quarter to six by the time she got home, and she felt flustered and apologetic. She expected to see Patrick’s car in the drive alongside Elizabeth’s but neither was there, and the house was in darkness.

  Inside, the little fire in the sitting room had died away to pale embers, hardly lighting the darkened room. The house was silent except for the soft occasional click of the pipes.

  Ruth snapped on the lights in the hall and on the stairs and experienced blinding rage. Elizabeth had not come and baby-sat, as had been agreed. Elizabeth had taken Thomas. Even now, Ruth knew, Thomas would be sitting in his high chair in the farmhouse kitchen, eating one of Elizabeth’s home-cooked dinners. From the absence of Patrick’s car Ruth guessed, rightly, that Patrick would be there too. At half past six exactly Frederick would pour a gin and tonic for each of them, and Elizabeth would take Thomas upstairs for his bath, and Patrick would be invited to sit in the bathroom and watch his son.

  The farmhouse, the family, the order, and the serenity seemed infinitely more solid and more attractive than Ruth’s house. Elizabeth’s mothering of Thomas was more assured, her cooking was better. Ruth opened the sitting-room curtains and looked up the drive towards the farmhouse. There were no headlights coming down the drive as Patrick and Thomas came home to her. Ruth knew that if she did not go and fetch them, or telephone them at once, then Elizabeth would bath Thomas and put him to bed in Patrick’s old nursery, and then come downstairs to cook Patrick’s supper.

  Ruth picked up the telephone and dialled the farmhouse.

  Patrick answered. ‘Where are you?’

  Ruth recoiled from the hostility in his voice. ‘Home, of course. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ll come straight down,’ he said, and hung up without explanation.

  Ruth replaced the receiver on the hook and wandered through to the kitchen. Automatically, she filled the kettle with water and switched it on. She wondered if Elizabeth had complained at being left with Thomas for twice the length of time that Ruth had promised. But it was so unlike Elizabeth to complain that Ruth was certain it could not be that.

  She heard Patrick’s car in the drive, and his key in the lock. She went out into the hall to meet him. ‘Where’s Thomas?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring him?’

  He stepped into the light and she saw his face. She had never seen him look like that before: he looked exhausted, drained, and grey. ‘He’s staying there for tonight,’ he said baldly. ‘I needed to talk to you alone.’

  Ruth thought at once that he had been sacked, or wanted to confess an affair, or some scandalous difficulty at work. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Patrick went into the kitchen and sat at the table. Ruth sat opposite him. In the silence the kettle boiled, and switched itself off.

  ‘Tell me about Thomas today,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘How was he?’

  ‘He was fine! He was fine! Patrick – please tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I need to know this first,’ he said. ‘What did you do this afternoon?’

  ‘We went shopping,’ Ruth said. ‘Then when we came home the shop rang and said I had left my handbag there, so I phoned your mother, and drove down and picked it up, and she took him up to the farmhouse – without telling me,’ Ruth added.


  Patrick nodded. ‘When did you put him in his cot?’

  ‘When we came back from the shops. He fell asleep in the car so I just put him in.’ Ruth stretched across the table and held his hands. ‘Patrick, stop this. Tell me what is the matter.’

  His hands, under her own, were like ice. ‘The matter is this: that Mother found him in his cot, covered in sick, sweating from the heat, having cried himself to sleep,’ he said dully. ‘And she says that this morning you let him choke on a sponge.’

  Ruth gasped. ‘It was an accident!’ she said, outraged. ‘And she said she wouldn’t tell you!’

  Patrick gave her a sharp accusing stare.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ Ruth said quickly. ‘It was just an accident. And this afternoon wasn’t like that. He was sick in the shop. I just put him in his cot.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Patrick!’ Ruth said. ‘I just told you! He was sick in the shop and he fell asleep in the car, so I just put him in his cot and let him sleep.’

  He did not meet her eyes.

  ‘So it’s OK,’ Ruth said.

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘She’s making a fuss about nothing,’ Ruth said stoutly.

  Patrick got up from the table as if he had heard enough. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said levelly. ‘She is very concerned that you left him in his cot like that, and so is the old man. And so am I.’

  Ruth got up too. ‘But this is absurd!’ she said. She put her hand on Patrick’s arm. ‘There’s nothing wrong! We had a completely awful day, but there’s nothing really wrong! It was just one of those days – you know – where everything goes wrong, and you feel like throwing him out of the window, you know what it’s like!’

  Patrick suddenly turned on her. ‘No, I don’t know!’ he exploded. ‘I don’t know about days when my son chokes and nearly suffocates in the morning and is then abandoned to be sick in his cot all afternoon and his mother wants to throw him out of the window. I don’t know about days like that!’

  Ruth fell back, shaking her head. ‘It wasn’t like that …’ she said.

  ‘Thomas will sleep at the farmhouse tonight.’ Patrick gave the order with a strange tone in his voice, as if it were not his decision but some new immutable law. ‘And tomorrow you and I will go up there and decide with Mother and Father what to do. We don’t think you can be left on your own with him, Ruth.’

  ‘You mean she doesn’t.’

  The spite in her voice repelled him. ‘If you mean my mother, then you are right,’ he said. ‘My mother does not think you are fit to be in sole charge of my son. And neither does my father. And neither do I.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Ruth cried. ‘He is my son as much as yours, he is my son, and I love him, and I care for him, and I would never hurt a hair of his head, and you may not say such a thing! Ever! Ever! Ever!’

  ‘You just said you felt like throwing him out of the window!’

  ‘Everybody does!’ Ruth screamed. ‘It’s called real life! Everybody feels like that sometimes. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him!’

  Patrick turned and went for the front door and Ruth flung herself on him and pulled at his arm and his shoulder, to turn him to face her.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ she said. ‘You can’t take him away from me like that!’

  His face was bleak. He looked at her and Ruth shrank back from the coldness in his eyes. ‘Yes, we can,’ he said.

  ‘Patrick,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t – please don’t be like this.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘Not me.’

  He opened the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. Her voice sounded little and thin against the great dark of the country winter night outside.

  ‘I’m going up to the farm,’ he said. ‘I’m sleeping there tonight. I’ll come down and pick you up in the morning.’

  She would have stopped him but he turned quickly and went down the path, got into his car, backed it carefully into their drive, and drove off.

  In his rear-view mirror he could see the bright oblong of the doorway spilling light into the garden, and Ruth’s silhouette, clinging to the doorpost, as if her legs were giving way beneath her.

  Sixteen

  RUTH DID NOT SLEEP that night, she sat in the window seat of the sitting room, wrapped in her duvet, with her head leaning against the icy glass, looking out at the night sky and waiting for the first signs of light. She thought that she had never in her life been in a worse situation – not in depression, and not in recovery. Every other situation had been created by accident or by her own folly. For the first time in her life Ruth realized that she had enemies.

  She wept a little – that Patrick should leave her so abruptly, that he should have sided with his parents against her, without even considering her version of events. But as the sky grew darker and the wind came up she moved from self-pity into a cold determination. She realized that she had lost Patrick, and lost her marriage. Now she had to fight for her child.

  In the farmhouse Patrick got up at two in the morning, after restless sleep with anxious dreams, poured himself a large brandy, and took it back to bed with him. Frederick woke at five, in the solid winter darkness, as black as midnight, sighed at the grief of the day ahead, and went downstairs to make a pot of strong tea.

  Only Elizabeth and Thomas, with clear consciences, slept well. Thomas did not wake until half past seven, and Elizabeth laid him on her bed with his morning bottle while she washed and dressed.

  At nine o’clock prompt, Frederick telephoned his solicitor, Simon Sylvester. The call was as brief as Frederick’s distress and distaste could make it. Simon Sylvester advised him that the first step in taking a child from its mother was to get a residence order with Patrick and his parents nominated as guardians. Subsequently there would have to be social-worker reports.

  ‘It would help your case no end if the mother was committed,’ Simon Sylvester said cheerfully. ‘Especially with a record of drinking and drugs. Is she likely to put up a fight?’

  ‘No,’ Frederick said, thinking of Ruth’s vulnerable desperation. ‘No fight in her at all.’

  ‘Parents? Family?’

  ‘No one. The family are American, and the parents are dead.’

  ‘Then she can go inside on your say-so: you’re the nearest of kin. She can be locked up by this afternoon and you and your son named as guardians this evening,’ Simon said. ‘If you’ve given up on her, that is. If you’re throwing her overboard.’

  Frederick heard the abrupt dismissal of Ruth without flinching. ‘Be on stand-by then,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you at midday.’

  At half past nine, Patrick, looking hollow-eyed and grey-skinned, went down the drive to fetch Ruth.

  She was waiting, at the sitting-room window bay. For a moment he thought that perhaps she had not gone to bed at all, but had stood there, waiting and hoping for him all night.

  When she came out of the house, slammed the front door behind her, and got in the car, he saw that she was alert and wakeful. She had showered and washed her hair, she had changed into a dark cashmere polo-neck sweater, and black jeans. She looked slim, desirable, and challenging.

  He drove in silence and she sat beside him in silence. They were both waiting for the other to speak and assessing, by the thousand small signs that intimate couples know, how long the quarrel might extend, how angry it might be, whether there might be a meeting of the eyes, an understanding, a meeting of the fingertips, a reconciling kiss.

  Ruth hunched her right shoulder and looked out of the side window. Patrick drove, never taking his eyes off the road, as if it were not his own drive, which he knew well enough to walk in the dark.

  When they got out of the car at the farmhouse, the front door opened.

  ‘Dear Ruth,’ Elizabeth said gently. ‘Come in.’

  Ruth followed her into the drawing room, where the fire was lit and the silver coffeepot was on the polished table. Ruth read the si
gns with a quick glance. This was a best-china occasion; it was intensely serious. Then she saw Thomas in his bouncy cradle-seat.

  She did not rush to him and snatch him up. She sat down quietly on the floor beside him, and held up his little duck so he could take it from her and drop it, and have it offered again. There was something very composed about Ruth’s gentle play with her son. His eyes went from the toy to her serene face with pleasure.

  Elizabeth’s silver coffee service and little enamelled spoons seemed suddenly to strike a false note, as Ruth sat cross-legged on the floor, playing quietly with her son as if they were alone together.

  Frederick came in. ‘Ruth,’ he nodded to her, hardly smiling.

  ‘Coffee?’ Elizabeth asked.

  It seemed that no one wanted coffee.

  For a moment no one spoke. It had not been planned in detail. Frederick and Elizabeth and Patrick had merely agreed that some decision must be made, since matters with Thomas could not go on. But they had not descended to conspire against Ruth, and Frederick’s consultations with his lawyer were a secret known only to him. Only he knew that the papers to commit Ruth, without her consent, to a mental hospital were being drawn up. Only he knew that Thomas could be a ward of court tonight.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Ruth asked. She addressed Elizabeth directly and without hesitation. ‘I had an accident with Thomas yesterday morning when he put his sponge in his mouth, and yesterday afternoon I put him into his cot when he had been sick while we were out shopping. He was never left alone, he was never in any danger. When I had to go out, I telephoned you.’

  Elizabeth inclined her head but said nothing.

  ‘I am caring for him perfectly well,’ Ruth went on, her voice controlled and tight. ‘There is no need for concern.’

  Still Elizabeth said nothing.

  ‘We are concerned, Ruth,’ Frederick said bluntly. ‘These things – whether they are exactly as you describe or not – these things have all happened on the first day that Patrick goes back to work and leaves you alone in the little house. If you are not coping with Thomas, Ruth, we will have to insist that you let us help.’