The Little House. Philippa Gregory
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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.
She had no investment of her own to balance against their generosity. Her parents had been classical musicians – poorly paid and with no savings. They had left her nothing, not even a home; their furniture had not been worth shipping to the little girl left in England. Patrick’s family were her only family, the flat was her first home since she had been a child.
Frederick had never delivered the deeds of the flat to Patrick. No one ever mentioned this: Patrick never asked for them, Frederick never volunteered them. The deeds had stayed with Frederick, and were still in his name. And now he wanted to sell the flat, and buy somewhere else.
‘I’ve loved that cottage ever since I was a boy,’ Patrick volunteered, breaking the silence. They were driving down the long sweeping road towards Bristol, the road lined with grey concrete council housing. ‘I’ve always wanted to live there. It’s such luck that it should come up now, just when we can take it.’
‘How d’you mean?’ Ruth asked.
‘Well, with my promotion coming up, and better hours for me. More money too. It’s as if it was meant. Absolutely meant,’ Patrick repeated. ‘And d’you know I think we’ll make a killing on the flat. We’ve put a lot of work in, we’ll see a return for it. House prices are recovering all the time.’
Ruth tried to speak. She felt so tired, after a day of well-meaning kindness, that she could hardly protest. ‘I don’t see how it would work,’ she said. ‘I can’t work a late shift and drive in and back from there. If I get called out on a story it’s too far to go; it’d take me too long.’
‘Oh, rubbish!’ Patrick said bracingly. ‘When d’you ever get a big story? It’s a piddling little job, not half what you could do, and you know it! A girl with your brains and your ability should be streets ahead. You’ll never get anywhere on Radio Westerly, Ruth, it’s smalltime radio! You’ve got to move on, darling. They don’t appreciate you there.’
Ruth hesitated. That part at least was true. ‘I’ve been looking…’
‘Leave first, and then look,’ Patrick counselled. ‘You look for a job now and any employer can see what you’re doing, and how much you’re being paid, and you’re typecast at once. Give yourself a break and then start applying and they have to see you fresh. I’ll help you put a demo tape together, and a CV. And we could see what openings there are in Bath. That’d be closer to home for you.’
‘Home?’
‘The cottage, darling. The cottage. You could work in Bath very easily from there. It’s the obvious place for us.’
Ruth could feel a dark shadow of a headache sitting between her eyebrows on the bridge of her nose. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said. ‘I haven’t said I want to move.’
‘Neither have I,’ Patrick said surprisingly. They were at the centre of Bristol. He hesitated at a junction and then put the car into gear and drove up towards Park Street. The great white sweep of the council chamber looked out over a triangle of well-mown grass. Bristol cathedral glowed in pale stone, sparkled with glass. ‘I would miss our little flat,’ he said. ‘It was our first home, after all. We’ve had some very good times there.’
He was speaking as if they were in the grip of some force of nature that would, resistlessly, sell their flat, which Ruth loved, and place her in the countryside, which she disliked.
‘Whether I change my job or not, I don’t want to live in the back of beyond,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s OK for you, Patrick, it’s your family home and I know you love it. But I like living in town, and I like our flat.’
‘Sure,’ Patrick said warmly. ‘We’re just playing around with ideas; just castles in the air, darling.’
On Monday morning Ruth was slow to wake. Patrick was showered and dressed before she even sat up in bed.
‘Shall I bring you a cup of coffee in bed?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘No, I’ll come down and be with you,’ she said, hastily getting out of bed and reaching for her dressing gown.
‘I can’t stay long,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing Ian South this morning, about the job.’
‘Oh.’
‘And I’ll ring the estate agent, shall I? See what sort of value they’d put on this place? So we know where we are?’
‘Patrick, I really don’t want to move…’
He shooed her out of the room and down the hallway to the kitchen ahead of him. ‘Come on, darling, I can’t be late this morning.’
Ruth spooned coffee and switched on the filter machine.
‘Instant will do,’ Patrick said. ‘I really have to rush.’
‘Patrick,