The Little House Read online

  ‘And so you shall!’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘As soon as you are completely well, you’ll start life again in your new home, and we’ll be the first to congratulate you.’

  Ruth hesitated, looking from Elizabeth’s smiling face to Patrick’s determined one. ‘I really have to make this clear. I am not living here permanently.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Elizabeth said pleasantly. ‘You have your own life to lead – why, we’ve even replaced your car!’

  ‘My car?’

  Frederick rose from his place before the fire. ‘Your old car never turned up, I’m afraid. Whoever took it from the pub car park probably had it resprayed and resold within the week. And your insurance didn’t cover you for theft since the keys were left in it.’

  Ruth flushed scarlet with shame at the memory.

  ‘Bought you another,’ Frederick said gruffly. ‘Little runabout. Welcome-home present. Show of support.’

  ‘Because we know you need your freedom,’ Elizabeth supplemented sweetly.

  Ruth felt the easy tears rise into her eyes again. ‘You’re so good to me!’ The words were wrenched out of her by their generosity. ‘Thank you.’

  Elizabeth came forward and took Thomas from her. ‘We just want you to be happy,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s all be happy, now.’

  Ruth bathed Thomas in the yellow bathroom that night and Elizabeth tidied the linen cupboard on the landing outside the bathroom so that she could listen at the door and make sure that Thomas was safe.

  When Ruth came down with Thomas all pink and smiling and clean, his grandfather held him while Ruth made his bottle, and then handed him back with a goodnight kiss.

  ‘He likes to be rocked while he has his bottle, and then when he has finished his bottle, you put him up on your shoulder and rock him like that,’ Elizabeth instructed. ‘You’ll feel him go all limp and his breathing deepen when he has fallen asleep, and then you can put him in his cot. I leave the night-light on, and he has his duvet cover just up to his tummy.’

  Ruth nodded and took her son up the stairs to the nursery.

  ‘You go,’ Elizabeth said in an undertone to Frederick. ‘You can read the newspaper in our bedroom and just keep an ear open. Just in case.’

  He nodded obediently, and folded his paper under his arm and followed Ruth and his grandson up the stairs.

  ‘She’s bound to notice after a while,’ Patrick said to his mother. He followed her out into the kitchen and poured them both a gin and tonic while she sliced vegetables for the evening meal.

  ‘I think we can be tactful,’ she said. ‘There are three of us; we can take it in turns. I think we can always have someone within earshot.’

  ‘We won’t go back to the little house until I am confident that Thomas is safe with her,’ Patrick said firmly. ‘Whether she likes it or not.’

  She glanced at her son. ‘That must be your first duty,’ she said. ‘Your first duty must be to our boy.’

  Ruth’s days took on a new routine, living at the farmhouse with Patrick and his parents. If Thomas woke in the night she went to him and rocked him to sleep again. Then he would often sleep until eight o’clock, so Patrick got up and left for work without disturbing her. Elizabeth and Frederick were always up from seven, Elizabeth to cook Patrick’s breakfast and see him off to work, Frederick to eat breakfast and go out for his morning stroll with the dog around the fields.

  When Thomas woke, he and Ruth would go downstairs for breakfast, Ruth in her dressing gown and Thomas in his sleep suit. Elizabeth would have Ruth’s toast and coffee ready, and she would feed Thomas while Ruth ate, and then take him upstairs to dress him while Ruth had a shower.

  If the day was sunny and bright, Ruth would wrap Thomas warmly and put him in the pram for Frederick to push him a little way down the lane until he fell asleep. Then he would come home and draw the pram into the house, through the French windows of his gunroom, where Thomas could sleep undisturbed by the noise of housework in the rest of the house. Frederick would potter at his workbench or his desk, tying flies for the fishing season, or writing letters while Thomas slept in his pram in the corner of the room.

  Ruth had nothing to do. Elizabeth would not accept any help in the house; she said she had her own way of doing things and there were no chores to do. Instead, Ruth started walking down the lane to her own house, the little house, vacuuming and dusting the cold rooms, cleaning the windows, and tidying the cupboards, and then locking it all up and walking back to the farmhouse in time for lunch.

  Ruth always picked Thomas up after his morning sleep, changed his nappy and played with him before lunch. Obediently, she dressed him in the bulky towelling nappies that Elizabeth preferred, and fed him with Elizabeth’s freshly pureed dinners. In the afternoon Ruth would play with Thomas in the living room, or in her own bedroom. She did not notice that someone was always with them. If they were in the living room together, playing on the mat before the fire, then Frederick would be in his chair, behind the Daily Telegraph. If they were in her bedroom or in the nursery, then Elizabeth would be cleaning the bath, or doing the flowers on the landing, or dusting the picture frames. Ruth, absorbed in finding a new and valuable intimacy with her baby, simply did not notice that she was constantly supervised.

  Patrick, secure in the knowledge that his child was safe, came home in time for dinner at seven-thirty, sometimes only just in time to kiss Thomas goodnight.

  ‘You hardly see him,’ Ruth complained.

  ‘I see him at the weekends,’ he said. ‘And besides, when you were away I saw him all the time. He needs his mother now.’

  Elizabeth cooked an impressive dinner every night, with either a starter, entrée and cheeseboard, or with a main course and a homemade pudding. After dinner they watched television in the sitting room, the nine-o’clock news followed by whatever programme was on BBC1 or BBC2. If Frederick wanted to watch something different, he went to his gunroom. If Patrick wanted to watch either of the independent channels, he went upstairs to their bedroom and watched it on the small television up there. It was an unwritten and unchallenged rule that they watched only the BBC in the sitting room. The only time the rule was broken was when one of Patrick’s documentaries was on, and then it was watched and videotaped in solemn silence. Some evenings Patrick took Ruth out for a drink, once to the cinema. But Patrick’s work was still so demanding that during the week he preferred to go to bed early, and he slept heavily.

  At the weekend Patrick and Ruth took Thomas to the park, or out for a walk, or for a stroll around the city centre, window-shopping. On Saturday night they generally left him with Elizabeth and went out for dinner. On Sunday morning they slept in, and Elizabeth had him all to herself until eleven o’clock, when they all went to church. After Sunday lunch they went for a walk. It was all as it had been when Patrick and Ruth used to visit on Sundays, except now the visit had been prolonged indefinitely, and sometimes Ruth feared that she would never get home.

  On Thursday afternoon, in the second week, Elizabeth had Thomas all afternoon when Ruth went in to see the Bath therapist – a woman called Clare Leesome. She had consulting rooms on the ground floor of her house, a solid Victorian house, on the outskirts of Bath. Ruth rang the doorbell and Clare showed her into a room furnished with soft chairs and large floor cushions. Clare Leesome sat on one chair, Ruth sat on another. The house was very quiet. Clare asked Ruth a few questions and then sat very still, letting her slowly reveal more and more.

  She started with the clinic, and the discovery of her grief at her parents’ death. Clare Leesome nodded; she took no notes. Ruth cried as she spoke of the death of her mother, and the therapist watched her cry as if tears were a sign of health, an appropriate expression, and not a symptom of illness that should be apologetically mopped up. They agreed that they would meet weekly for Ruth to talk through the loss of her parents. It was to be an open-ended arrangement, to last as long as Ruth wished.

  ‘I don’t want to be one of these people with an anal