The Little House Read online

‘Good,’ the nurse said soothingly.

  Ruth started to drift into sleep. ‘They do … they do …’ she whispered. ‘I know they do.’

  When she woke it was early evening. She stirred and found that someone had undone her bindings and she was free to get up. She stumbled to the bathroom, her feet were still cramped, and then she went cautiously to the dayroom. Half a dozen people were watching television. It was Thursday evening; they were watching Top of the Pops. Ruth blinked at the strange lunatic costumes and joyless erratic dancing on the programme, and the orderly silence of the inmates.

  One of the men from her group glanced around and saw her. ‘OK now?’ he asked.

  Ruth nodded, feeling embarrassed.

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ he said.

  She puzzled over that for a moment. He spoke as if her grief and her rage were somehow signs of material progress.

  ‘Are you being funny?’

  He shook his head with a smile and then turned back to the television screen. ‘It’s bottling it all up that is crazy,’ he said. ‘Letting it out is sane.’

  ‘Do you mean …’ she started.

  He shook his head again. ‘Don’t ask me, I’m a schizophrenic,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m as crazy as you can get.’

  Ruth took the chair beside him. ‘Have you been here long?’

  He nodded without taking his eyes from the screen. ‘Long and often. In and out. I go out when I get straight, and then I come back in again when I start flying, or hearing voices, or chatting to God.’

  ‘You do that?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s the best times.’

  ‘I’ve always been frightened of mad people,’ Ruth observed.

  He was not interested.

  ‘I’ve always been frightened of people who talk in the street. They always seem to come and talk to me.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ he said with sudden energy. ‘I wouldn’t talk to you because you’re always trying to be nice. I’d rather talk to someone who was really there. Real and nasty. Someone who had a bit of substance. Not a pink jelly.’

  Ruth recoiled at the unexpected attack. ‘I’m not a pink jelly!’

  He clicked his tongue as if he had been guilty of some minor social solecism. ‘Tell me in group,’ he said; and he watched the television, and would not speak to her again.

  Ten

  ON MONDAY MORNING Patrick went in late to work. He wanted to telephone Ruth’s convalescent home, and he did not want the call overheard by his staff.

  Elizabeth, leisurely polishing the banister in the hall, while Frederick rocked Thomas’s pram in the garden, was able to hear most of the conversation without appearing to listen.

  ‘Dr Fairley? It’s Patrick Cleary.’

  Dr Fairley drew Ruth’s notes towards him. ‘Ah, Mr Cleary. Good to hear from you. Your wife is making excellent progress,’ he said.

  ‘She wouldn’t speak to me on the telephone, and she didn’t want to see me this weekend. I thought something must be wrong.’

  ‘No,’ Dr Fairley said calmly. ‘She is getting in touch with her feelings. We have to be patient with her. She is experiencing anger and grief. She is doing very well.’

  ‘Anger?’ Patrick asked blankly. ‘What does she have to be angry about?’

  Dr Fairley hesitated. ‘This is therapeutic work,’ he said tactfully. ‘Sometimes a patient goes back almost to babyhood. Sometimes it is recent or recurrent grief. But your wife is confronting her difficulties well and is making good progress.’

  ‘What d’you mean – therapeutic work?’ Patrick demanded. ‘What has she got to be angry about? She’s had everything she wanted all her life, and especially since we were married. If she says that she’s been badly treated it’s just not true.’

  ‘I do not attend her group sessions,’ Dr Fairley said gently. ‘So I do not know the details. Even if I did, then the confidentiality of the patient would mean that I could not discuss such things with you. But I can say – in the broadest of terms – that she is getting in touch with her feelings, and expressing them.’

  ‘When I phoned the other night they said she could not come to the telephone because she was “in treatment”,’ Patrick said, his voice very tight.

  Dr Fairley turned back a page and sighed a small silent sigh. ‘Yes, that was the case. She was under restraint,’ he said gently.

  ‘Under restraint?’ Patrick demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had her in a padded cell? In some kind of strait-jacket?’

  ‘Please, Mr Cleary, don’t distress yourself with these anxieties,’ Dr Fairley said gently. ‘There was an incident in her group between herself and another patient, and she was sedated and returned to her bedroom. She woke at – let me see – just after seven o’clock and watched television with the other patients. She behaved perfectly normally at supper, and took part in all the activities the following day.’

  ‘Are you telling me that she was fighting with someone, that you knocked her out and then she got up and watched television?’

  ‘Yes, that is what seems to have taken place. As I say, I am not her group leader, so I was not there myself.’

  ‘Is she mad?’ Patrick demanded, outraged.

  ‘No, most certainly not.’

  ‘Then what is going on?’

  Dr Fairley sighed gently. ‘Mr Cleary, you must be patient with her, and even with yourself. She was deeply wounded as a child by the death of her parents, and she has got to come to terms with that loss and with her grief and anger. Her inability to care for her own son no doubt springs from that early trauma, and of course, on top of that, she feels the natural anxiety of the young and inexperienced mother. She is doing wonderfully well in coming to terms with all of this, and she is making good progress.’

  Patrick was silent for a moment, trying to take it all in.

  ‘When will she come home?’ he asked.

  Dr Fairley thought of Ruth as he had seen her that morning. Her step was more confident; she had acknowledged him in the corridor. ‘I think she should be the one to decide,’ he said. ‘But I would think within a fortnight. Then I would recommend a therapist near to you, so that she can go on with her therapeutic work. But she will know what she needs. She will be the best person to decide.’

  ‘Even though she’s the mad one?’ Patrick asked rudely. ‘Are the lunatics running the asylum?’

  Dr Fairley observed the rise of his own temper until he had it under control and out of his voice. ‘Your wife is not mad, Mr Cleary,’ he said politely. ‘She was a sad and angry little girl and she has had difficulties in adult life. But she is as sane as I am, or as you are. And indeed there are many therapeutic communities that are self-run.’

  Patrick bit back a retort. ‘I’ll visit her on Saturday unless I hear to the contrary,’ he said shortly.

  ‘I will give her your message,’ Dr Fairley said with courtesy. He put down the receiver. ‘And she is certainly more pleasant than you,’ he said roundly to the absent Patrick. ‘Better mannered, less selfish, more loving, and generally a nicer person to be with. She is growing to be an honest and mature woman while you are just a bossy little boy!’ Then, with his temper relieved, Dr Fairley pulled on his jacket and went to do his rounds.

  Patrick sat in silence for a moment, and then the sitting-room door opened and his mother brought in a tray with freshly made coffee.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said heavily.

  She poured him a cup in silence and handed it to him. ‘Bad news?’

  He made a face. ‘I can hardly tell. The doctor says that he thinks she’ll be home within a fortnight. But after that she’ll need to see some local chap.’ He looked at his mother in bewilderment. ‘She was violent,’ he said wonderingly. ‘She attacked a patient and had to be sedated, and tied up, or something.’

  Elizabeth sank to the sofa. ‘Oh! my dear!’

  ‘I can’t imagine it!’ Patrick said. ‘Little Ruth! Why, until we had Thomas, I don’t think I e