The Little House Read online

  ‘He can stay here with us.’

  ‘What does Patrick say?’

  ‘He agrees.’

  Ruth lay back on the pillows. ‘Where is Patrick?’ she asked at length.

  ‘He’s dressing Thomas in the nursery. He’ll come and see you in a minute, when you’re freshened up.’

  ‘How long do I have to go away for?’

  Elizabeth did not show that she had heard the defeated acquiescence in Ruth’s voice. ‘Not long,’ she said reassuringly. ‘And you can come home whenever you wish. But we all want to see you rested and well again.’

  ‘What did happen yesterday? How did I get here?’

  ‘You took too many of your pills, and you met David at the pub, and you drank too much. You passed out and he brought you here. You left the keys in your car and it was stolen overnight. We had to put you to bed. You slept all afternoon and all night.’

  Ruth felt a deep corrosive sense of shame. ‘David brought me?’

  ‘He had to carry you out of the pub.’

  ‘And Patrick was here?’

  ‘He had come for Thomas. None of us knew where you were. You just walked out of the little house; you left it unlocked.’

  Ruth dropped her head, her hair tumbled forward hiding the deep red of her cheeks. ‘My car …’

  ‘We’ve reported it missing. It may just have been taken by joyriders, it may turn up.’ Elizabeth hesitated. ‘It won’t be insured since you left the keys in it. I’m afraid you may have lost it.’

  Ruth pushed the tray to one side, Elizabeth put the bottle of pills on the bedside table, and took the tray away. ‘Be brave, darling,’ she said gently. ‘Dr Fairley is coming at ten. If he thinks he can help you, he has a wonderful house in Sussex where they can give you lots of rest, and make you well again. You can come back to Patrick and Thomas and make a fresh start.’

  Ruth turned her head away.

  ‘Unless you’d rather not …’ Elizabeth suggested.

  Ruth turned back. ‘Rather not what?’

  ‘Unless you’d rather start again somewhere else?’ Elizabeth said gently. ‘Your career is so promising … you could start a new life …’

  ‘Move away?’

  ‘If you wanted.’

  ‘With Patrick and Thomas?’

  Elizabeth met her eyes. The two women looked at each other. Elizabeth was serene and powerful, Ruth looked sick. ‘No, Patrick and Thomas will stay here,’ Elizabeth said firmly.

  Ruth nodded. ‘I see.’

  She said nothing more. It was as if Elizabeth’s calm assurance had set the tone of the whole day. Ruth hardly said a word to Patrick when he came in to see her, and answered the doctor in monosyllables. She did not ask for Thomas, who was, in any case, out for a long walk with his grandfather. Dr Fairley had come in his large comfortable car, and offered to drive her to Springfield Hall at once. Patrick produced a suitcase already packed, and put it in the boot. Elizabeth gave Dr Fairley an envelope containing a cheque with the fees for the first month. Ruth, wrapped in one of Elizabeth’s pale camel-hair coats, walked to the car and got in. She saw her feet going down the steps but she had no awareness of the hardness of the paving stones.

  ‘See you soon, darling,’ Patrick said, bending down to the car. ‘I’ll come down and see you at the weekend. And you can phone me.’

  ‘Will you be at home?’ she asked, meaning the little house.

  ‘Yes, I’ll stay here,’ he said, meaning the farmhouse. ‘It’ll be easier, and I’ll see more of Thomas.’

  She nodded.

  ‘When you’re better I’ll bring him down to see you,’ Patrick promised. ‘And soon you’ll be home.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ Ruth said dully.

  ‘Dr Fairley can deal with all of that,’ Patrick said reassuringly.

  ‘But if I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ Ruth’s brain was working slowly but stubbornly, through the haze of hangover and Amitriptyline, ‘if I don’t know what’s wrong, then how can I get better?’

  Patrick leaned forward and kissed her cheek. ‘Trust Dr Fairley,’ he urged. ‘He’s had a lot of experience. Mother says he’s the best in his field. Mother and Father are paying a packet for you to stay there. He’ll make you well again.’

  The doctor got into the car beside Ruth, and started the engine. Patrick stepped back and carefully shut the door. ‘I’ll call tonight,’ he said. ‘And every night. See you at the weekend!’

  Ruth stared past him, unseeing.

  The doctor put the car in gear and they moved smoothly off, down the drive. Ruth could just see, at the side of the house, Frederick pushing the pram around and around the garden, rocking Thomas to sleep and waiting for her to be gone. They had not wanted her to see her baby, in case she made a scene. Ruth lay back against the comfortable headrest and closed her eyes. She would never have been able to make a scene in Elizabeth’s house, she thought.

  ‘All right?’ Dr Fairley asked. He glanced sideways at her and saw that her eyes were shut but that tears were trickling from under her closed eyelids and running down her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

  Nine

  AT NINE WEEKS, Thomas was too young to cry for his mother, but Elizabeth thought that he had noticed her absence. He was placid and happy, quick to laugh or coo with pleasure, but his brightest vitality seemed to drain away during the month that his mother was away.

  Elizabeth tried to ignore it, and she never mentioned it to either Frederick or Patrick. But she could not deny that – though he slept through the night, and ate well – Thomas was quieter and less joyful than when his mother had been, however incompetently, taking care of him. Elizabeth found herself strangely offended by his loyalty. She would have preferred him to forget Ruth as soon as he ceased to see her. But there was something loving and stubborn about little Thomas, and Elizabeth could see that when a door opened and he turned his head to the noise, a light died from his face when someone else came in, when it was not his mother.

  Elizabeth felt, rather resentfully, that she was being haunted by Ruth. Her daughter-in-law remained a worry. Patrick telephoned her every evening at seven o’clock, and drove cross-country to Sussex every Saturday morning to spend the day with her.

  He came back from these trips tired and silent, and his father made a habit of sitting with him late on Saturday night, with a bottle of malt whisky and a jug of still spring water between the two of them in companionable silence.

  On Sunday morning they all went to church and came back to Elizabeth’s Sunday roast, then in the afternoon they took Thomas for a walk. Elizabeth had bought a backpack for Thomas; Patrick would put it on, and Elizabeth lift Thomas onto his father’s back. With the dog at their heels they would walk across the fields and up to the hills, Frederick, Elizabeth, Patrick, and little Thomas, his head bobbing with every step.

  He often fell asleep on these walks, and would sometimes sleep all the way home, not stirring even when the pack was carefully set down on the sofa while Elizabeth made tea. Then they would read the Sunday papers – the Sunday Telegraph for Frederick, who mistrusted the sports coverage in any other paper, and the Sunday Times for Elizabeth and Patrick.

  When Thomas had slept for an hour, Elizabeth would wake him for his supper. He was no longer given jars of baby food or powdered mixes. Elizabeth had painstakingly cooked, puréed, and frozen a wide selection of adult meals to make tiny dinners just for him. Patrick always bathed him on a Sunday night, and put him to bed. When Patrick came downstairs, leaving Thomas asleep, Elizabeth would have a large gin and tonic ready for him, in a crystal goblet packed with sliced lime and ice.

  Patrick felt as if he had never left home, never married, but had somehow been miraculously joined by the next son and heir. He enjoyed being a father to Thomas in a way that he had not experienced before. Under Ruth’s care Thomas had been a problem, his sleeping – or lack of it – was a continual unspoken ar
ea of conflict between them. His clothes, his feeding, his nappy changes were all areas where Ruth silently and resentfully pressed Patrick to do more, and which Patrick silently and skilfully avoided.

  But with Elizabeth running the nursery Patrick need do no more on a weekday than kiss his son’s milky face at breakfast time in the morning as he left for work, and play with him for half an hour before bed in the evening. He never saw Thomas except washed and clean and ready for play. He never wiped his face, sponged his hands, changed his nappy, or struggled to get his vest over his little head. It was the fatherhood that Frederick had enjoyed: in which a father returns from the outside world at predictable intervals, volunteers a period of enjoyable and bonding play, and disappears again when the chores of babyhood are to be done. Father and child meet only at their best moments. The tantrums, the washing, the feeding, all take place miraculously out of sight. It is the fatherhood still enjoyed by men who employ either professional nannies or devoted wives. It is not the way fatherhood is usually practised in the 1990s, when men and women are working towards equality of work and mutuality of experience. Patrick much preferred it.

  He liked the way Thomas’s little face lit up when he came into the room. He liked the way his presence was a treat and not a duty. He liked the way he could open the front door and hear his mother say to his son, in the tones of absolute delight, ‘Here’s Daddy home!’ and Thomas, cued by her enthusiasm, would kick his feet and wave his hands and beam.

  They all spoke of Ruth with tenderness and concern, but within a fortnight there was an unavoidable sense that this lifestyle – this comfortable, affectionate, orderly lifestyle – was better than anything any of them had experienced before. Patrick went to work in the morning with a well-cooked breakfast inside him, and a sense of order and solid well-being. He came home at night knowing that no domestic crisis would have broken out, and that his home would be tranquil and welcoming. His work became easier, no longer interrupted by desperate phone calls from home, and his attitude to his staff became more relaxed and tolerant. The documentary unit produced a couple of good ideas and one very good film, which was short-listed for a minor award. Patrick’s style: confident, well-dressed, and relaxed, fostered the impression that he was a brilliant young man, doing well in a competitive business.

  He had never looked more handsome. His clear, regular features were enhanced by the immaculate cleanness of his shirts and the pressing of his suits. His shoes shone with loving attention. Even his briefcase was polished.

  Frederick enjoyed the company of his grandson. He developed his own little rituals with him: taking him for a walk in the afternoon, rocking him to sleep in his pram. Frederick played with him for an hour in the morning, while Elizabeth prepared lunch and supervised the work of the daily cleaning woman. Thomas was settled and quiet with his grandfather. Sometimes Elizabeth would put her head around the door and see Frederick solemnly reading paragraphs from the Telegraph aloud while Thomas lay in his bouncy chair, his wide, serious eyes fixed on his grandfather, as if the English touring cricket team was the most entrancing story.

  ‘This is the life,’ Frederick said to her one lunchtime, as he poured a glass of sherry. Thomas had eaten earlier and was asleep in his pram in the conservatory.

  ‘Don’t get too attached to it,’ Elizabeth warned. ‘It will all change when Ruth comes home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Frederick said thoughtfully. ‘It seems almost a shame. I can hardly bear to think of Thomas leaving us. He’s so happy here, and Patrick looks so much better too.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘I’m afraid we have no choice really,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if she left him; it’s not as if there was a problem with the marriage. She just couldn’t cope with a new baby. It’s not as if they were separated or divorced.’

  Frederick nodded. ‘I suppose everything was all right for them,’ he said. ‘It was just Ruth getting overtired? It couldn’t have been something more?’

  Elizabeth gave a small shrug. ‘He’s never said anything to me,’ she said. ‘But if they were having difficulties I wouldn’t be surprised. Patrick’s not a man to wait for a woman forever. And Ruth was seeing that other young man – from the radio station.’

  Frederick shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ he said, dissatisfied. ‘We’re all so happy now, and she could come home at any moment, and we’ll be back to square one again.’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth agreed. ‘I don’t think Thomas should go back to her until she’s completely better. Even if she comes home, I don’t think Thomas and Patrick should go back to the little house until we are all confident that she’s completely well again.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Patrick doesn’t seem to see much of a change in her,’ Frederick volunteered. ‘He said she hardly spoke to him last time he was there. Didn’t look at the flowers we sent. Hadn’t read her book. Very quiet.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll be longer than a month then.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He hesitated, finding the truth. ‘I can’t say I’ll be sorry.’

  Elizabeth shot him a small half-hidden smile.

  At Springfield House in Sussex Ruth’s days passed in structured activities. She was called at eight o’clock and she showered and was down to breakfast at nine. She was making a tapestry and she worked on the large frame from half past nine until eleven. At eleven they all stopped for coffee, and her group – five men and five women – went to the meeting room for their session of group therapy. Ruth said nothing during the first four meetings. She barely listened. There was a young woman addicted to drugs, and one in deep depression; there was a woman recovering from alcoholism and one woman being treated for anorexia. The men, Ruth had not observed at all. She sat in the circle on the soft, comfortable chairs and observed her feet. They were not allowed to wear shoes in the group-therapy room. Ruth had a pair of pink socks; she moved her toes gently inside them and felt the soft wool caress her insteps. As much as possible she made herself deaf to the low-toned murmur of the group.

  The walls of the room were an encouraging yellow-tinged cream. There was a large reproduction of an Impressionist picture hung on one wall, and a large picture window overlooking the well-kept garden. Ruth looked at the picture, at the millions of little dots of paints, at the illusion of solid flesh and sunlit river water. She did not want to see the garden in its wintry, sodden bareness. It reminded her of home, of the little house set amid the cold fields and the drive leading up to the farm.

  She missed Thomas and she put the pain away from her mind every waking moment. She thought of her Caesarean scar and the strange loss in her belly after he had been born. She thought of the sense of weightlessness and the loss of the curve of her stomach. She felt that she had lost him at birth, when someone had put her to sleep and taken him from her, and that she had been a fool to let them do that – to steal her baby out of her own body. And now she had let it happen again. She had put herself to sleep and let them steal her baby from her.

  She could think of nothing to do but to stay asleep. She turned her head to study the picture again. She admired the bright sugar-almond pink of her socks. She decided that she would not think about Thomas, who was too young to care whether or not she was there. She would not miss Thomas, who would be cooing in his grandmother’s arms. She would not acknowledge this dreadful pain – a pain as deep and as agonized as an amputation. She would not even think of the little house, the boredom and claustrophobia of her relationship with Patrick, the wet fields and the dominating, imposing presence of the farm, and the gradual, irresistible theft of her baby.

  After lunch they lay down on their beds, or chatted in the common room. Ruth liked an afternoon rest. She lay on her bed, watching the ceiling, not thinking about Thomas, not thinking about Patrick, not thinking about the little house.

  Sometimes people walked past her door. Sometimes one of the other women from her group came in and tried to talk to her. Ruth turned a blank, pale face to their inquiries.
r />   ‘I’m sorry. I’m very tired,’ she said politely. And they would go away.

  Someone raised his voice in the group, Ruth turned her attention to the picture, trying to block out the sound. Then Agnes, the recovering alcoholic, suddenly turned on her. ‘Why d’you never talk?’ she asked abruptly.

  Ruth slowly turned her blank, uninterested gaze.

  ‘Why d’you never talk?’ Agnes demanded. ‘You’ve sat in that same seat for a week, looking at nothing and saying nothing. In recreation time you lie on your bed. You’re like a sleepwalker. You’re half dead.’

  Ruth looked towards the group leader, George. He was a young man in a crisp white jacket, the duty nurse. She expected him to tell Agnes that Ruth must be left alone. He said nothing.

  ‘I want an answer!’ Agnes said.

  Ruth looked to George, the nurse. Still he said nothing.

  ‘Say something!’ Agnes pressed. ‘Say anything! You sit like you’re dumb, like you’re deaf and dumb.’

  George nodded, waiting like the rest of the group.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ Ruth said unwillingly.

  Agnes leaped to her feet and came towards her. Ruth recoiled. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘Why nothing?’

  Ruth shook her head.

  George leaned forward; the whole of the group were watching this exchange. Agnes looked around. ‘Isn’t she half dead?’ she demanded.

  A couple of the men nodded, and one of the women. Ruth felt anger flare inside her.

  ‘Do I have to listen to this?’ she asked George. She expected him to take her part, to tell Agnes to sit down.

  He smiled gently, saying nothing.

  Ruth looked into Agnes’s angry face. She was flushed, her face shiny with sweat. Her black curly hair was greasy and uncombed. Ruth pulled her feet up, out of Agnes’s way; she sat holding her toes like a scolded child.

  ‘I want you to answer me,’ Agnes said determinedly. ‘You say nothing and you do nothing. I want you to tell me what it is that is keeping you so quiet.’