The Little House. Philippa Gregory
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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