The Only Problem by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

was when he first rented the
cottage. He knew it was up for sale, and had been for some years.
    ‘It’s
falling to bits,’ he said to Ruth.
    ‘What a
pity to neglect it like that!’ Ruth said. ‘It’s a charming house. It reminds me
of something from my childhood, I don’t know quite what. Perhaps somewhere we
visited. I think something could be done to it.’
    She
brought the fretful child close to Harvey so that he could make an ugly face.
He showed his teeth and growled, whereupon Clara temporarily forgot her woes.
She smelt of sour milk.

 
     
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
     
    Up at the château where
the neglected lawns were greener than the patch round Harvey’s house, and where
the shrubberies were thick and very dark evergreen, the workmen were putting in
the daylight hours of the last few days before the Christmas holidays. She had
already reclaimed one wing for habitation. The roof had been secured in that
part, but most of the rooms were cold. Ruth had arranged one sitting room,
however, with a fire, and two bedrooms with oil stoves. A good start.
    What a
business it had been to persuade Harvey to buy the château! And now he was
enchanted. Once he agreed to buy — and that was the uphill work — it was
simple. Harvey sent for his London lawyer, Stewart Cowper, and for his French
lawyer, Martin Deschamps, to meet in Nancy and discuss the deal with the family
who owned the château. Ruth had gone with Harvey to this meeting, in October,
with Clara in her folding pram. When the hotel room got too boring for the
baby, Ruth hushed her, put her in her pram and took her for a walk in Place Stanislas.
It was not long before Ruth saw through the splendid gilt gates the whole
business group, with Harvey, trooping out to take the sun and continue the deal
in the glittering square. Harvey, his two lawyers, and the three members of the
de Remiremont family, which comprised a middle-aged man, his daughter and his
nephew, came and joined Ruth. The daughter put her hand on the handle of the
pram. They all ambled round in a very unprofessional way, talking of notaries
and tax and the laws governing foreigners’ property in France. You could see
that this was only a preliminary.
    Harvey
said, ‘We have to leave you. I’m writing a book on the Book of Job.’
    It was
difficult to get across to them what the Book of Job was. Harvey’s
French wasn’t at fault, it was their knowledge of the Bible of which, like most
good Catholics, they had scant knowledge. They stood around, the father in his
old tweed coat and trousers, the daughter and nephew in their woollen jumpers
and blue jeans, puzzling out what was Job. Finally, the father
remembered. It all came back to him. ‘You shouldn’t be in a hurry, then,’ he
said. ‘Job had patience, isn’t that right? One says, “the patience of Job”.’
    ‘In
fact,’ said Harvey, ‘Job was the most impatient of men.’
    ‘Well,
it’s good to know what it is you’re writing in that wretched little cottage,’
said the elder man. ‘I often wondered.’
    ‘I hope
we’ll soon have the house,’ said Ruth.
    ‘So do we,’
said the owner. ‘We’ll be glad to get rid of it.’ The young man and the girl
laughed. The lawyers looked a little worried about the frankness and the
freedom, suspecting, no doubt, some façade covering a cunning intention.
    Ruth
and Harvey left them then. It was all settled within a month except for the
final bureaucracy, which might drag on for years. Anyhow, Harvey had paid, and
Ruth was free to order her workmen to move in.
    ‘Instead
of disabusing myself of worldly goods in order to enter the spirit of Job I
seem to acquire more, ever more and more,’ was all that Harvey said.
    Ruth
wrote to Effie with her letter-pad on her knee, beside the only fireplace,
while the workmen hammered away, a few days before Christmas.
     
    Dear Effie,
    I really am in love with Harvey and you have no reason to say I am
not. The lovely way he bought the house