The Little House

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

About the Author

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

One

ON SUNDAY MORNING, on almost every Sunday morning, Ruth and Patrick Cleary drove from their smart Bristol flat to Patrick’s parents’ farmhouse outside Bath. They had only been married for four years and Ruth would have preferred to linger in bed, but this Sunday, as almost every Sunday, they had been invited for lunch at one o’clock prompt.

Patrick always enjoyed returning to his home. It had once been a dairy farm, but Patrick’s father had sold off the land, retaining only a little wood and circle of fields around the house: an eighteenth-century manor farm of yellow Bath stone. While never being so vulgar as to lie, the Clearys liked to suggest that their family had lived there forever. Patrick’s father liked to imply that he came from Somerset yeoman stock and the farm was their ancestral home.

Patrick’s mother opened the door as they came up the path. She was always there when they arrived, ready to fling open the door in welcome. Once Ruth had teased Patrick, saying that his mother spent her life peeping through the brass letterbox, so that she could throw open the door as her son arrived, wrap him in her arms, and say, ‘Welcome home, darling.’ Patrick had looked offended, and had not laughed.

‘Welcome home, darling,’ his mother said.

Patrick kissed her, and then she turned and kissed Ruth’s cheek. ‘Hello, dearest, how pale you look. Have you been working too hard?’

Ruth was surprised to find that immediately she felt exhausted. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Freddie, they’re here!’ Ruth’s mother called into the house, and Patrick’s father appeared in the hall.

‘Hello, old boy,’ he said lovingly to Patrick. He dropped an arm briefly on Patrick’s shoulder and then turned to Ruth and kissed her. ‘Looking lovely, my dear. Patrick – saw you on television last night, the piece on the commuters. Jolly good. They used a bit of it on News at Ten. Good show.’

Patrick grimaced. ‘It didn’t come out how I wanted,’ he said. ‘I had a new film crew and they all had their own ideas. I might be the reporter, but none of them want to listen to me.’

‘Too many chiefs and not enough Indians,’ Frederick pronounced.

Ruth looked at him. He often said a sentence, like a little motto, that she had never heard before and that made no sense to her whatsoever. They were a playful family, sometimes quoting family jokes or phrases of Patrick’s babytalk that had survived for years. No one ever explained the jokes to Ruth; she was supposed to laugh at them and enjoy them, as if they were self-explanatory.

‘That’s shoptalk,’ Patrick’s mother said firmly. ‘Not now. I want my assistant in the kitchen!’

It was one of the Sunday rituals that Patrick helped his mother in the kitchen while Ruth and Frederick chatted in the drawing room. Ruth had tried to join the two in the kitchen once or twice and had glimpsed Patrick’s indispensable help. He was perched on one of the kitchen stools, listening to Elizabeth and picking nuts from a bowl of nibbles she had placed before him. When Ruth had interrupted them, they had looked up like two unfriendly children and fallen silent. It was Elizabeth’s private time with her son; she did not want Ruth there. Ruth was sent back into the sitting room with the decanter of sherry and instructions to keep Frederick entertained. She learned that she must wait for Patrick to put his head around the door and say, ‘Luncheon is served, ladies and gents.’ Then Frederick could stop making awkward conversation with her and say, ‘I could eat a horse! Is it horse again?’

Elizabeth served roast pork with crackling, apple sauce, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, peas and carrots. Ruth wanted only a little. In Bristol in the canteen of the radio station where she worked as a journalist, she was always hungry. But there was something about the dining room at the farmhouse that made her throat close up. Patrick’s father poured red wine and Ruth would drink two or three glasses, but she could not make herself eat.

Patrick ate a good lunch, his plate favoured with the crunchiest potatoes and the best cuts of meat, and always had seconds.

‘You’ll get fat,’ his father warned him. ‘Look at me, never gained a pound till I retired from the army and had your mother’s home cooking every day.’

‘He burns it all up,’ Elizabeth defended her son. ‘His job is all nerves. He burns it all up with nervous energy.’

They both looked at Ruth, and she managed a small uncomfortable smile. She did not know whether to agree that he would get fat, which would imply an unwifely lack of admiration, or agree that he lived on his nerves, which would indicate that she was not protecting him from stress.

‘It’s been a devil of a week,’ Patrick agreed. ‘But I think I may be getting somewhere at last.’

There was a little murmur of interest. Ruth looked surprised. She did not know that Patrick had any news from work. She wondered guiltily if her own work, which was demanding and absorbing, had made her neglect his ambition. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.

He smiled his wide, handsome smile at her. ‘I thought I’d wait to tell you until it was shaping up,’ he said.

‘No point in counting chickens,’ his father agreed. ‘Spill the beans, old boy.’

‘There’s talk of a new unit, to do specialist local film documentaries,’ Patrick said. ‘It’ll be headed by a news producer. The best news producer we’ve got.’ He paused, and smiled his professionally modest smile. ‘Looks like I’m in line for the job.’

‘Good show.’

‘Wonderful,’ Patrick’s mother said.

‘What would you do?’ Ruth asked.

‘Regular hours!’ Patrick replied with a little chuckle. ‘That’s the main thing! I’d still do reports to camera but I wouldn’t be on call all the time, and I’d not be running around out of hours. I’d have more control. It’s an opportunity for me.’

‘Is this a bubble-size celebration?’ Patrick’s father demanded of Ruth.

She looked at him blankly. She simply had no idea what he meant.

‘Champagne, darling,’ Patrick prompted. ‘Do wake up!’

‘I suppose it must be.’ Ruth stretched her mouth in a smile, trying to be bright and excited. ‘How wonderful!’

Patrick’s father was already on his way to the kitchen. Elizabeth fetched the special champagne glasses from the sideboard.

‘He’s got a bottle already chilled,’ she said to Patrick. Ruth understood that this was significant.

‘Oh ho!’ Patrick said as his father came back into the room. ‘Chilled already?’

His father gave him a roguish wink and expertly opened the bottle. The champagne splashed into the glasses. Ruth said, ‘Only a little please,’ but no one heard her. She raised her full glass in a toast to Patrick’s success. It was a very dry wine. Ruth knew that dry champagne was the right taste; only inexperienced, ill-educated people liked sweet champagne. If she continued to make herself drink it, then one day she too would like dry champagne and then she would have an educated palate. It was a question of endurance. Ruth took another sip.

‘Now I wonder why you were keeping a bottle of champagne on ice?’ Patrick prompted his father.

‘I have some grounds for celebration – but only if you two are absolutely happy about it. Your mother and I have a little proposition to put to you.’

Ruth tried to look intelligent and interested but the taste of the wine was bitter in her mouth. The taste for champagne, they had assured her, was acquired. Ruth wondered if she would ever like it.

‘It’s Manor Cottage,’ Frederick said. ‘On the market at last. Old Miss Fisher died last week and, as you can imagine, I was onto her lawyer pretty quick. She left her estate to some damnfool charity…cats or orphans or something…’ He broke off, suddenly embarrassed, remembering the orphan status of his daughter-in-law. ‘Beg pardon, Ruth. No offence.’

Ruth experienced the usual stab of pain at the thought of her lost parents, and smiled her usual bright smile. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter at all.’

‘Well, anyway,’ said Frederick, ‘the house will be sold at once. I’ve waited for years to get my hands on it. And now, with you getting into more regular hours, it’s ideal.’

‘And the land?’ Patrick asked.

‘The garden, and the field, and that copse that joins our bit of wood. It rounds off our land to perfection.’

‘Pricey?’ Patrick asked.

Frederick laid his finger along his nose to indicate inside knowledge. ‘Her lawyer is the executor. And the charity won’t be putting it up for auction. They’ll want a quick, simple sale. The lawyer will take the first reasonable offer.’

‘Who’s the lawyer?’ Patrick asked.

Frederick grinned – this was the punch line. ‘My lawyer,’ he said. ‘As it happens. By happy coincidence. Simon Sylvester.’

Patrick chuckled. ‘We could sell our flat tomorrow.’

‘We should make a handsome profit on it,’ his father concurred. ‘You could stay here while the cottage is being done up. Couldn’t be better.’

‘If Ruth agrees,’ Elizabeth reminded them.

Both men turned at once to her. ‘I don’t quite…’ Ruth said helplessly.

‘Manor Cottage is on the market at last,’ Patrick said. ‘Come on, darling, the little house at the end of the drive. The one I’ve always had my eye on.’

Ruth looked from one bright impatient face to another. ‘You want to buy it?’

‘Yes, darling. Yes. Wake up!’

‘And sell our flat?’

They nodded.

Ruth could feel that she was being slow, and worse than that, unwilling.

‘But how would I get to work? And we like our flat.’

‘It was only ever a temporary base,’ Frederick said. ‘Just a little nest for you two young lovebirds.’

Ruth looked at him, puzzled.

‘A good investment is only worth having if you’re ready to capitalize,’ he said firmly. ‘When the time is right.’

‘But how would I get to work?’

Elizabeth smiled at her. ‘You won’t work forever, dearest. You might find that when you have a family-sized house in the country you feel like giving up work altogether. You might have something else to keep you busy!’

Ruth turned to Patrick.

‘We might start a family,’ he translated.

Frederick gave a shout of laughter. ‘Her face! Dear Ruth! Have you never thought about it? We could be talking Chinese!’

Ruth felt her face stiff with stupidity. ‘We hadn’t planned…’ she said.

‘Well, we couldn’t really, could we?’ Patrick confirmed. ‘Not while we were living in town in a poky little flat, and my hours were all over the place, and you were working so hard. But promotion, and Manor Cottage, well, it all comes together, doesn’t it?’

‘I’ve always lived in town,’ Ruth said. ‘And my job means everything to me. I’m the only woman news producer on the station – it’s a real responsibility, and this week I broke a national story –’ she glanced at Patrick. ‘We scooped you,’ she reminded him.

He shrugged. ‘Radio is always quicker than telly.’

‘We were going to travel…’ she reminded him. It was an old promise. Ruth was an American child – her father a concert pianist from Boston, her mother an Englishwoman. They had died in the quick brutality of a road accident on a winter visit to England when Ruth was only seven years old. Her mother’s English family had taken the orphaned girl in, and she had never seen her home again. When Ruth and Patrick had first met, he had found the brief outline of this story almost unbearably moving and had promised Ruth that they would go back to Boston one day, and find her house. Who knew – her childhood toys, her books, her parents’ things might even be in store somewhere, or forgotten in an attic? And part of the chasm of need that Ruth always carried with her might be filled.

‘We still can,’ he said quickly.

‘We’ll finish this bottle and then we’ll all go down and look at Manor Cottage,’ Frederick said firmly. ‘Take my word for it, Ruth, you’ll fall for it. It’s a little peach. Bags of potential.’

‘She’s not to be bullied,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘We might think it paradise to have the two of you on our doorstep, but if Ruth doesn’t want to live so close to us, she is allowed to say “no”.’

‘Oh, it’s not that!’ Ruth said quickly, fearful of giving offence.

‘It’s just the surprise of it,’ Patrick answered for her. ‘I should have warned her that you’ve had your eye on that for years and you always get your own way.’

‘Amen to that!’ Frederick said. The father and son clinked glasses.

‘But I like our flat,’ Ruth said.

Ruth borrowed a pair of Elizabeth’s Wellington boots for the walk, and her waxed jacket and her headscarf. She had not come prepared, because the after-lunch walk was always Frederick’s time alone with Patrick. Usually Elizabeth and Ruth cleared the lunch table, stacking the plates in the dishwasher, and then sat in the living room with the Sunday papers to read and Mozart on the hi-fi. Ruth had once gone with the men on their walk, but after a few yards she had realized her mistake. They strode along with their hands buried deep in their pockets, shoulder to shoulder in a silent enjoyable communion. She had delayed them at stiles and gates because they had felt bound to hold her hand as she clambered over them, or warn her about mud in gateways. They had kept stopping to ask if they were going too fast for her or if she was tired. Their very generosity to her and concern for her had told her that she was a stranger, and unwelcome. They wasted no politeness on each other. For each other they shared a happy, wordless camaraderie.

The next Sunday Frederick announced: ‘Time for my constitutional,’ and then he had turned to Ruth: ‘Will you come with us again, Ruth? It looks like rain.’

As she had hesitated, Elizabeth said firmly, ‘You two run along! I won’t have my daughter-in-law dragged around the countryside in the rain! Ruth will stay here with me and we can be cosy. We’ll kick our shoes off and gossip.’

After that, the two men always walked alone after lunch and Ruth and Elizabeth waited for them to return. There was no kicking off shoes. Elizabeth was a naturally formal woman, and they had no mutual friends for gossip. Ruth punctiliously asked after Miriam, Patrick’s elder sister, who was teaching in Canada. But Miriam was always well. Elizabeth inquired about Ruth’s work, which was filled with drama and small triumphs that never sounded interesting when retold, and asked after Ruth’s aunt, who had brought her up after the death of her parents. Ruth always said that she was well, but in truth they had lost contact except for Christmas cards and the occasional phone call. Then there was nothing more to say. The two women leafed through the newspapers together until they heard the dog scrabbling at the back door and Elizabeth rose to let him in and put the kettle on for tea.

Ruth knew that Manor Cottage mattered very much to everyone when she was invited on the walk, especially when Elizabeth walked too.

They went across the fields, the men helping the women over the stiles. They could see the Manor Cottage roof from two fields away, nestling in a little valley. The footpath from the farmhouse led to the back gate and into the garden. The drive to the farmhouse ran past the front door. There was a stream that ran through the garden.

‘Might get a trout or two,’ Frederick observed.

‘As long as it’s not damp,’ Elizabeth said.

Frederick had brought the key. He opened the front door and stepped back. ‘Better carry her over the threshold,’ he said to Patrick. ‘Just for luck.’

It would have been awkward and ungracious to refuse. Ruth let Patrick pick her up and step over the threshold with her and then put her down gently in the little hall and kiss her, as if it were their new house, and they were newlyweds, moving in.

The old lady’s rickety furniture was still in the house and it smelled very faintly of damp and cats’ pee. Ruth, with a strong sense of her alien childhood, recognized at once the flavour of a house that the English would call full of character, and that her American father would have called dirty.

‘Soon air out,’ Frederick said firmly. ‘Here, take a look.’

He opened the door on the sitting room, which ran the length of the cottage. At the rear of the cottage were old-fashioned French windows leading to a muddy garden, desolate under the November sky. ‘Pretty as a picture in summer,’ he said. ‘We’d lend you Stephens. He could come over and do the hard digging on Tuesdays. Mow the lawn for you, trim the hedges. You’d probably enjoy doing the light stuff yourself.’

‘So relaxing,’ Elizabeth said, with a nod to Ruth. ‘Very therapeutic for Patrick!’

They turned and went into the opposite room. It was a small dark dining room, which led to the kitchen at the back overlooking the back garden. The back door was half off its hinges, and damp had seeped into the walls. There was a large old-fashioned china sink, with ominous brown stains around the drain hole, and an enormous ash-filled, grease-stained coal-burning range. ‘Oh, you’ll have such fun with this!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Ruth, how I envy you! It’s the sweetest little room, and you can do so much with it. I can just imagine a real farmhouse kitchen – all pine and stencils!’

A laurel bush slapped waxy green leaves against the kitchen window and dripped water mournfully on the panes. Ruth gave a little shiver against the cold.

‘Upstairs is very neat,’ Frederick observed, shepherding them out of the kitchen through the dining room and back into the hall. ‘Pop on up, Ruth. Go on, Patrick.’

Ruth unwillingly led the way upstairs. The others followed behind her, commenting on the soundness of the stairs and the attractive banister. Ruth hesitated on the landing.

‘This is so lovely,’ Elizabeth said, throwing open a door. ‘The master bedroom, Ruth. See the view!’

The bedroom faced south, down the valley. It was a pretty view of the fields, and in the distance a road and the village.

‘Sunny all the day long,’ Frederick said.

‘And here are two other bedrooms and a bathroom,’ Elizabeth said, gesturing to the other doors. She led Ruth to see each of them. ‘And this has to be a nursery!’ she exclaimed. The pretty little room faced over the garden. In the cold autumn light it looked grey and dreary. ‘Roses at the window all the summer long,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Look! I think you can just see our house!’

Ruth obediently looked. ‘Yes.’

She turned and led the way downstairs. While the others returned for a second look at the damp kitchen, Ruth went outside and waited in the cold front garden. When they emerged, all smiling at some remark, they looked at her expectantly, as if they were waiting for some pronouncement that would make them all happy, as if she should say that she had passed an exam, or that she had won the lottery. They turned bright, hopeful faces on her, and Ruth had nothing to offer them. She felt her shoulders lift in a little shrug. She did not know what they expected her to say.

‘You do love it, don’t you, darling?’ Patrick asked.

‘It’s very pretty,’ she said.

It was the right thing to say. They looked pleased. Frederick closed the front door and locked it with the care of a householder. ‘Ideal,’ he pronounced.

Patrick slipped his arm around her waist. ‘We could go ahead, then,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Put the flat on the market, make an offer on this place, move house.’

Ruth hesitated. ‘I don’t think I want…’

‘Now, stop it, Patrick,’ Elizabeth said reasonably. ‘You’ve only just seen it. There’s lots to take into account. You have to have a survey done, and you have to have your own flat valued. Ruth needs time to get adjusted to the idea; it’s a bigger change for her than anyone!’ She smiled at Ruth conspiratorially: the two women in league together. ‘You can’t rush us and make a decision all in one afternoon! I won’t allow it!’

Patrick threw her a mock salute. ‘All right! All right!’

‘It’s a business decision,’ Frederick supplemented. ‘Not simply somewhere to live. You and Ruth might have fallen in love with it, but you have to be sure it’s a good investment too.’ He smiled fondly at Ruth and tapped her on the nose with the house key before putting it into his pocket. ‘Now don’t turn those big eyes on me and tell me you have to have it, little Ruth. I agree, it looks like an excellent bargain for the two of you, but I shall let my head rule my heart on this one.’

‘Hark at him!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. She slipped her hand in Ruth’s arm and led her around the corner of the house to the back garden. ‘He’s determined to have the place, and he makes it sound like it is us who are rushing him. Come and see the garden! It’s just bliss in summer. A real old-fashioned cottage garden. You can’t plant borders like this in less than twenty years. They have to mature.’

Ruth trailed after Elizabeth to the back garden and obediently admired the decaying, dripping wallflowers and the seedpods of stocks. At the back of the flower bed were the tall dead spines of delphiniums and before them were bloated pods of last season’s love-in-the-mist. The lawn was soggy with moss; the crazy-paved pathway was slick with lichen and overgrown with weeds.

‘Best way to see it,’ Frederick said. He picked a stick and switched at a nettle head. ‘See a property in the worst light and you know it. There’s no nasty shocks hidden away. You know what you’re getting. If you love it like this, little Ruth, then you’ll adore it in summer.’

‘I don’t think I could really…’ Ruth started.

‘Good gracious, look at the time!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘I thought I was missing my cup of tea. It’s half past four already. Frederick you’re very naughty to drag us down here. Ruth and I are faint for tea!’

Frederick looked at his watch and exclaimed in surprise. They turned and left the garden. Ruth plucked at Patrick’s sleeve as he went past her. ‘I can’t get to work from here,’ she said swiftly. ‘It’d take me hours to get in. And what about when I have to work late? And I like our flat.’

‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Let them have their little plans. It doesn’t do any harm, does it? We’ll talk about it later. Not now.’

‘Here, Patrick!’ his father called. ‘D’you think this is a legal right of way? Can you remember, when you were a boy, was there a footpath here?’

Patrick gave her a swift, encouraging smile and joined his parents.

Ruth was quiet at tea, and when they finally pulled away from Manor Farm with a homemade quiche and an apple crumble in the usual Sunday box of home-cooked food on the back seat, she still said nothing.

They were in an awkward situation. Like many wealthy parents, Frederick and Elizabeth had given the newlyweds a home as their wedding present. Ruth and Patrick had chosen the flat, but Frederick and Elizabeth had bought it for them. Ruth dimly knew that shares had been sold, and sacrifices made, so that she and Patrick should start their married life in a flat that they could never have afforded, not even on their joint salaries. House prices might be falling after the manic boom of the mid-eighties, but a flat in Clifton would always have been beyond their means. Her gratitude and her sense of guilt showed itself in her sporadic attempts at good housekeeping, and her frenzied efforts to make the place look attractive when Frederick and Elizabeth were due to visit.