The Little House Read online

  ‘I remember,’ Ruth said awkwardly. ‘I just didn’t realize that you planned so far ahead.’

  Elizabeth laughed gently. ‘How else could everything be ready for the day?’ she asked. ‘It’s no good dashing around a week before, hoping to get things in time. There are seasons to good housekeeping. You have to think about autumn in midsummer, and you have to think about Christmas in midautumn.’

  Ruth felt hopelessly superficial. ‘I haven’t even bought presents yet,’ she said.

  Elizabeth laughed, ushered Ruth out of the hall, and closed the front door behind them. ‘Then thank heavens you don’t have to worry about the house as well as everything else,’ she said. ‘I’ll have Thomas every afternoon this week and you can go in to Bath and shop. I hope it’s not too crowded.’

  Ruth watched Elizabeth drop the key to the front door of the little house in her camel-hair-coat pocket. ‘When did the heating man say he could come?’

  Elizabeth made a face. ‘You know what they’re like,’ she said. ‘Not until after the New Year holiday. I think everything just shuts down between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Still, you can go home the first week in January, and then you can start afresh in the New Year.’

  Ruth turned and trudged up the lane to the farmhouse, Elizabeth followed her, a little way behind. She nodded to Frederick’s Labrador dog, who ran between the two of them and stopped to sniff at a gatepost. ‘So that’s all right,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ve got another month.’

  Ruth and Patrick were in bed, Thomas asleep in the nursery next door, Elizabeth and Frederick in the bedroom further down the landing. Ruth had been with Clare Leesome in the afternoon, and she was alert and excited. Patrick had been up early, and had spent an arduous day in the editing room with a producer who had misunderstood what was wanted from the very first day of filming. Huge reels of film would be wasted; some parts would have to be reshot. The documentary was way over budget, and Patrick was so confused between the initial brief, the producer’s interpretation, and his own second thoughts that he felt quite incapable of patching together a film that would make any sense at all.

  He spent a long time in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet and reading Broadcast magazine. He did not acknowledge it, even to himself, but he was rather hoping that Ruth would be asleep by the time he finally emerged. He undressed and put on some pyjamas. Before they had moved into the farmhouse Patrick had slept naked, or wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. But under his mother’s roof he wore crisp cotton pyjamas, which he changed twice a week and which she washed and ironed. He came to bed smelling pleasantly of fabric conditioner and clean cotton, but Ruth missed the caress of bare skin and the natural scent of his body. On the infrequent occasions that they had made love since her return from the clinic, she found herself irritated by the pyjamas. Patrick’s fumbling with the trousers and his laziness in leaving on the jacket were a powerful antidote to sexual desire.

  Patrick looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He had put on weight since living back at home, and his jawline was fatter than it used to be. He stretched up his chin and watched the skin recede. He looked at himself critically. He feared he was losing his looks and that his young, glossy handsomeness would not develop into his father’s craggy, attractive face, but would blur into plumpness and indistinction.

  ‘I should get fit,’ he said thoughtfully to himself. ‘Do some training, join a gym.’

  He did not mean it. The hours that he worked and the demands of his home life made any extra activity too much of an effort to be pleasurable. He shook his head at his reflection. ‘No time,’ he said. ‘Never a damn moment.’

  He shook his head again, feeling harassed and unfairly treated. He splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth and rubbed his face briskly in the warm towel. The touch of the fleecy cotton on his skin cheered him at once. At least he was now living in a well-run home, he thought. The towels in the little house had been unreliable, and often he had to use a damp one.

  He went quietly across the landing, noting the line of light under his parents’ bedroom door, and thought of them placidly reading their books in their big double bed. He had a vague sense that marriage should be like that: secure, mutually dependent, at peace.

  Ruth was waiting for him, sitting up in bed, turning the pages of a magazine.

  ‘You’ve been ages,’ she said with a smile. ‘I nearly came to find you.’

  ‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ he said. He turned back the duvet and got in beside her. At once she held out her arms and he slid into her embrace. The thought of making love to her surfaced in his mind and he instantly dismissed it. He would have to get up early in the morning, and he needed his sleep. If Thomas happened to wake then, Ruth might expect him to go to the nursery. After lovemaking Ruth generally went to the bathroom, and that would disturb his parents, and – more than anything else – Patrick was rarely aroused under his mother’s roof. There was something deeply inhibiting about the family home. His mother changed their sheets twice a week, and would know if they had made love. He could not bear the thought of them hearing the squeaking of the bed, or Ruth’s breathy cries or, worst of all, his own groan at climax. The thought of his parents hearing his lovemaking, or even worse, deliberately listening and then perhaps exchanging a smile, froze his desire before he was even conscious of it.

  ‘Let’s have a cuddle,’ Ruth said invitingly.

  Patrick stretched out and put out the bedroom light and cuddled her up against his shoulder as he lay on his back. There then ensued a dance as formal as if it had been choreographed. Ruth wriggled up the line of his body to kiss his neck, just below his ear, and spread her thigh across his groin, pressing against his penis. Patrick wriggled up also, to tuck her down to his shoulder again, pushing her down in the bed, so she was not sprawled across him. She raised herself up a little and reached across to kiss him on the lips; he felt her breasts press against his pyjama jacket, warm and heavy against his chest. He kissed her with tenderness and then took her head in his hands and firmly placed it on his shoulder.

  ‘I love sleeping cuddled up with you,’ he said, and then pushed her gently so she rolled over on her side and he cuddled up behind her.

  Ruth moved slightly backwards, so that her buttocks were pressing against his penis. Despite himself, Patrick found that he was getting aroused. Ruth moved a little away, and then back again. Patrick put his hand down and held her hipbone to push her gently away.

  ‘Enough of that!’ he said, in a warm, caressing tone. ‘I have to sleep.’ As soon as he spoke he knew he had made a mistake in making his refusal explicit. She moved away from him at once, rolled onto her front, and raised her head so she could see his face in the half-light from the window.

  ‘It’s been ages,’ she said.

  He sighed. He hated any analysis of personal life, and since she had been seeing Clare Leesome her desire to talk and talk and talk was even worse.

  ‘I’m just very tired tonight,’ he said. ‘And you must be exhausted too. Was the traffic terrible coming out of Bath? It’s late-night shopping now, isn’t it?’

  She would not be diverted.

  ‘We haven’t made love for ten days,’ she said. ‘And before that, it was a fortnight.’

  He forced himself to chuckle in a soft, confident tone, and drew her back towards him. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult at the moment. I’m incredibly busy at work and I feel really stressed, Ruthie darling. Wait till my Christmas days off and we’ll make up for lost time.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she said flatly. ‘You can’t ever make up for lost time.’

  He thought how much he hated these conversations, which could go from the most basic practicalities – such as the last date that they had made love – to the most fanciful of philosophies – such as whether you can make up for lost time.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And it’s as bad for me as it is for you. Let’s sleep now, and have an early night tomorrow. Mother can baby-si