The Little House Read online

  Dr Fairley, thinking of the several difficult phone calls with Patrick, nodded and reserved his opinion.

  ‘His parents adore him,’ Ruth said simply. ‘And of course they will never love me like that. It was unfair to them and unfair to myself to hope for more. I was playing happy families in my head. I wanted them to fill all the spaces of my childhood – I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. I wanted my own parents back so badly …’

  She broke off and reached for a tissue from the box on his desk, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, without apology for the show of emotion. ‘They’re good people, and they love Patrick and they love Thomas and they love me too – up to a point – I’m going to go back and accept that limitation.’ She gave him a small brave smile. ‘And in time, when they see that I care for Patrick and I care for Thomas, they’ll respect me,’ she said. ‘They’ll see that I’m a good wife, and a good mother, and they’ll respect that.’

  ‘Good,’ Dr Fairley said with careful neutrality.

  Ruth nodded. He let a little silence fall on her good intentions.

  ‘And what about you,’ he said. ‘As an individual?’

  She spread her fingers out on her lap. ‘I’ll look after Thomas while he’s little, and I’ll do some freelance work,’ she said. ‘I might write, if I can’t get back into radio work. I might write magazine articles; I could do that. And when Thomas is older and goes to school then I’ll go back to radio work again.’

  He nodded. ‘And how will you keep from being depressed, at home on your own with a small demanding baby?’ he asked.

  She smiled her urchin smile. ‘I shall see the consultant that you have referred me to,’ she said, ticking off the tasks on her fingers. ‘I shall not ever take tranx or uppers or downers or anything again. I shall make a relationship with Patrick that is a real relationship between adults based on love and self-respect. I shall learn to enjoy being with Thomas. I shall ask Elizabeth for advice and help but I shall stop her invading my life, and I shall try to become friends with Frederick, and to see him as a real person, and to make him see me as a real person and not just as an adjunct of Patrick. I shall see my friends from Radio Westerly, and I shall find friends in the village, women who have babies like Thomas, and I shall spend time with them and talk about babies and child care with them.’

  He nodded again. ‘That all sounds very practical and workable,’ he said. ‘And how will you know that it is working for you? How will other people know?’

  She nodded at the lesson that George and the others in her group had taught her. ‘Oh, yes! I will know that I am OK because I will not feel the need for any kind of drug, and I will not be sleepy all the time. I will enjoy things like food and talk and jokes. I will feel joy and sadness. And I will start to love Thomas.’ She suddenly looked up, and her eyes were filled with unshed tears. ‘I want to love Thomas,’ she said suddenly. ‘I feel as if I have only given birth to him now, as if all the days before were just part of a hard pregnancy. I’m ready to love him now, and I want to see him and hold him and smell him and bath him and kiss him.’

  Dr Fairley smiled for the first time since she had come into the room. ‘I think you will make an excellent mother,’ he said. ‘Thomas is a lucky boy to have such a loving mother, who has come through so much to be with him.’

  She nodded. ‘I have,’ she said simply. ‘And I want to be his mother now, and I never did before.’

  ‘I think you have worked very hard,’ he said. ‘You’ve come through a great shadow on your life, and you will never be so alone and so unhappy again.’

  She looked at him with hope. ‘Can you promise that?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Not because I’m a magician, but because the loss of a parent for a little child is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen. And you were never allowed to acknowledge that loss until now. You’ve faced it now and started to deal with it, and it’s unlikely that you will ever have to face anything worse.’

  She nodded. ‘I feel as if I’ve been crying non-stop ever since I arrived.’

  ‘Maybe you will cry some more,’ he suggested. ‘And there is nothing wrong with crying.’

  She reached for the tissues again. ‘I cry all the time.’

  He smiled gently. ‘Newly exposed emotions can be very sensitive,’ he said. ‘When I first did my therapy I went around weeping for months. I felt completely out of control and completely wonderful. Everyone else thought I was miserable, but it was a different feeling from sadness.’

  She was silent for a moment.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked, trying to read her face and the relaxed set of her shoulders.

  She looked up and he saw she was smiling through her tears. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve finished. But I do thank you for having me here, and for all that you and everyone has done for me.’

  He made a little gesture with his hands. ‘It is my job,’ he said. ‘And you have a right to the best treatment we can give.’ He hesitated. ‘If you ever need us, we will still be here,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel that this was like school that you have to leave and can never go back.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll need to come back,’ she said. ‘Things are going to be different at home. I’m going to be straight and honest and adult with them, and things will be very different.’

  Dr Fairley thought of the remorseless niceness of Elizabeth, and of Patrick’s little-boy charm. ‘I wish you the very best of luck,’ he said simply.

  Patrick came to collect Ruth and was relieved to find her waiting in the hall with her small suitcase at her feet. There was no one to see her off. When she saw the car draw up outside, she rose and carried her suitcase down the shallow flight of steps. Patrick took it from her, feeling that she should not be carrying heavy weights, that she was ill. He put it in the boot and held the car door for her. Ruth got in and he slammed the door carefully. He remembered bringing her home from the hospital when Thomas was born and felt the same irritable concern, as if Ruth had just played a master stroke, which would ensure that all the attention was focused on her instead of him.

  ‘Thank God I don’t have to spend another minute in that place,’ he said abruptly as they drove through the tall gates.

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said neutrally. ‘How are things at home?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And Thomas?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘How d’you mean: “what’s he doing?’”

  ‘I mean, how does he look, what is he eating, how is he behaving?’

  ‘He looks just the same,’ Patrick said. He did not mean to be unhelpful, but the differences in Thomas’s development were too slight to be noticed by him. ‘Mother will tell you,’ he said.

  ‘Was it a tooth coming through?’

  ‘No, he was just a bit pink-cheeked and restless.’

  Ruth nodded and looked out of the window. The easy tears threatened to come at the thought of Thomas’s being pink-cheeked and restless and her not there to comfort him.

  ‘So that’s that, is it?’ Patrick asked after a while.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You don’t have to go back again?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll see a therapist in Bath for a while,’ she said. ‘But I don’t plan to go back to Dr Fairley.’

  ‘Does he say you’re completely OK?’

  Ruth threw him a swift smile. ‘I don’t think he quite deals in those sorts of judgments,’ she said, amused. ‘I don’t think he would recognize the concept of completely OK.’

  ‘Well, he says you’re normal?’

  ‘I was always normal.’

  ‘Well, you’re better then?’

  ‘Better than normal?’

  Patrick clicked his tongue. ‘Look, Ruth, it’s been a long worrying time for me, and I had to go in to work at seven this morning to get something out of the way so I could collect you today. I’ve driven two hours here and I’m driving two hours back, and I’m not