The Little House. Philippa Gregory
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an idea of the value.’
‘Surely we don’t want to live down the lane from your parents,’ Ruth said. She poured boiling water and added milk and passed Patrick his coffee. ‘Toast?’
He shook his head. ‘No time.’ He stopped abruptly as a thought suddenly struck him. ‘You don’t imagine that they would interfere, do you?’
‘Of course not!’ Ruth said quickly. ‘But we would be very much on their doorstep.’
‘All the better for us,’ Patrick said cheerfully. ‘Built-in baby-sitters.’
There was a short silence while Ruth absorbed this leap. ‘We hadn’t even thought about a family,’ she said. ‘We’ve never talked about it.’
Patrick had put down his coffee cup and turned to go, but he swung back as a thought suddenly struck him. ‘I say, Ruth, you’re not against it, are you? I mean, you do want to have children one day, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she said hastily. ‘But not…’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’ Patrick gave his most dazzling smile. ‘Phew! I suddenly had the most horrid thought that you were going to say that you didn’t want children like some ghastly hard-bitten career journalist. Like an awful American career woman with huge shoulder pads!’ He laughed at the thought. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. You’d be so gorgeous with a baby.’
Ruth had a brief seductive vision of herself in a brod-erie anglaise nightgown with a fair-headed, round-faced, smiling baby nestled against her. ‘Yes, but not for a while.’ She trailed behind him as he went out to the hall. Patrick shrugged himself into his cream-coloured raincoat.
‘Not till we’ve got the cottage fixed up as we want it and everything, of course,’ he said. ‘Look, darling, I have to run. We’ll talk about it tonight. Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll take you out. We’ll go to the trattoria and eat spaghetti and make plans!’
‘I’m working till six,’ Ruth said.
‘I’ll book a table for eight,’ Patrick said, dropped a hasty kiss askew her mouth, and went out, banging the door behind him.
Ruth stood on her own in the hall and then shivered a little at the cold draught from the door. It was raining again; it seemed as if it had been raining for weeks.
The letter flap clicked and a handful of letters dropped to the doormat. Four manila envelopes, all bills. Ruth saw that the gas bill showed red print and realized that once again she was late in paying. She would have to write a cheque this morning and post it on her way to work or Patrick would be upset. She picked up the letters and put them on the kitchen counter, and went upstairs for her bath.
The newsroom was unusually subdued when Ruth came in, shook her wet coat, and hung it up on the coatstand. The duty producer glanced up. ‘I was just typing the handover note,’ he said. ‘You’ll be short-staffed today, but there’s nothing much on. A fire, but it’s all over now, and there’s a line on the missing girl.’
‘Is David skiving?’ she asked. ‘Where is he?’
The duty producer tipped his head towards the closed door of the news editor’s office. ‘Getting his cards,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Bloody disgrace.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Cutbacks is what,’ he said, typing rapidly with two fingers. ‘Not making enough money, not selling enough soap powder, who’s the first to go? Editorial staff! After all, any fool can do it, can’t they? And all anyone wants is the music anyway. Next thing we know it’ll be twenty-four-hour music with not even a DJ – music and adverts, that’s all they want.’
‘Terry, stop it!’ Ruth said. ‘Tell me what’s going on!’
He pulled the paper irritably out of the typewriter and thrust it into her hands. ‘There’s your handover note. I’m off shift. I’m going out to buy a newspaper and look for a job. The writing’s on the wall for us. They’re cutting back the newsroom staff: they want to lose three posts. David’s in there now getting the treatment. There are two other posts to go and no one knows who’s for the chop. It’s all right for you, Ruth, with your glamour-boy husband bringing in a fortune. If I lose my job I don’t know what we’ll do.’
‘I don’t exactly work for pocket money, you know,’ Ruth said crossly. ‘It’s not a hobby for me.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Sorry. We’re all in the same boat. But I’m sick of this place, I can tell you. I’m off shift now and I’m not coming back till Wednesday – if I’ve still got a job then.’ He strode over to the coat rack and took his jacket down. ‘And it’s still bloody raining,’ he said angrily, and stormed out of the newsroom, banging the door behind him.
Ruth looked over to the copy taker and raised her eyebrows. The girl nodded. ‘He’s been like that all morning,’ she said resignedly.
‘Oh.’ Ruth took the handover note to the desk and started reading through it. The door behind her opened and David came out, the news editor, James Peart, with him. ‘Think it over,’ James was saying. ‘I promise you we’ll use you as much as we possibly can. And there are other outlets, remember.’ He noticed Ruth at her desk. ‘Ruth, when you’ve got the eleven-o’clock bulletin out of the way could you come and see me?’
‘Me?’ Ruth asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said and went back into his office and closed the door.
There was a brief, shocked silence. Ruth turned to her oldest friend. ‘What did he say to you?’ she asked David.
‘Blah blah, excellent work, blah blah, frontiers of journalism, blah blah, first-class references, blah blah, a month’s pay in lieu of notice and if nothing else turns up why don’t you freelance for us?’
‘Freelance?’
‘The new slimline Radio Westerly,’ David said bitterly. ‘As few people as possible on the staff, and the journalists all freelance, paying their own tax and their own insurance and their own phone bills. Simple but brilliant.’ He paused as a thought struck him. ‘Did he say you were to see him?’
‘After the eleven-o’clock,’ Ruth said glumly. ‘D’you think that means that I’m out too?’
David shrugged. ‘Well, I doubt it means you’ve won the Sony Award for investigative journalism. D’you want to meet me for a drink after work? Drown our sorrows?’
‘Yes,’ Ruth said gratefully. ‘But perhaps I won’t have sorrows to drown.’
‘Then you can drown mine,’ David said generously. ‘I’d hate to be selfish with them.’
Ruth rewrote the bulletin, one eye on the clock. At the desk behind her David made telephone calls to the police, the fire station, and the ambulance, checking for fresh news. He sounded genuinely interested; he always did. She remembered him from journalism college: when everyone else would groan at a news-gathering exercise, David would dive into little shops, greet shop assistants with enthusiasm, and plunge into the minutiae of local gossip.
‘Anything new?’ she threw over her shoulder.
‘They’re mopping up after the fire,’ he said. ‘There’s an update on the conditions from the hospital. Nothing too exciting.’
She took the slip of copy paper he handed to her, and went into the soundproofed peace of the little news studio. The door closed with a soft hiss behind her, Ruth pulled out the chair and sat before the desk to read through the bulletin in a murmured whisper, marking on her copy the words she wanted to emphasize, and practising the pronunciation of difficult words. There had been an earthquake in the Ural Mountains. ‘Ural Mountains,’ Ruth whispered. ‘Ural.’
At two minutes to eleven the disc jockey’s