Читать книгу The Little House - Philippa Gregory - Страница 4

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.

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, we must talk about this. I don’t want to sell the flat. I don’t want to move house. I want to stay here.’

‘I want to stay here too,’ he said at once, as if it were Ruth’s plan that they move. ‘But if something better comes up we would be stupid not to consider it. I’m not instructing an estate agent to sell, darling. Just getting 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 voice cut into her rehearsal. ‘News coming up! Are you there and conscious, Ruth?’

‘Ready to go,’ Ruth said.

‘Thank the Lord for a happy voice from the newsroom. What’s up with you guys today?’

‘Nothing,’ Ruth said frostily, instantly loyal to her colleagues.

‘We hear of massive cutbacks, and journalists out on the streets,’ the DJ said cheerfully.

‘Do you?’

‘So who’s got the push?’

‘I’m busy now,’ she said tightly. ‘I’ll pop down and spread gloom and anxiety in a minute. Right now I’m trying to read a news bulletin.’

He switched off his talkback button. Ruth had a reputation at the radio station for a quick mind and a frank turn of phrase. Her headphones were filled with the sound of the record – the Carpenters. ‘We’ve only just begun…’ Ruth felt her temper subside and she smiled. She liked romantic music.

Then the disc jockey said with his carefully learned mid-Atlantic accent: ‘Eleven o’clock, time for Radio Westerly news with Ruth Cleary!’

He announced her name as if there should have been a drumroll underneath it. Ruth grinned and then straightened her face and assumed her solemn news-reading voice. She read first the national news, managing the Ural Mountains without a hitch, and then the local news. At the end of the bulletin she read the local weather report and handed back to the DJ. She gathered the papers of the bulletin and sat for one short moment in the quiet. If David had been sacked then it was unlikely that they would be keeping her on. They had joined at the same time from the same college course, but David was probably the better journalist. Ruth straightened her back, opened the swing door, and emerged into the noise of the newsroom. She passed the script of the bulletin to the copy girl for filing and tapped on the news editor’s door.

James Peart looked so guilty she knew at once that he would make her redundant. He did.

‘This is a horrible job,’ James said miserably. ‘David and you, and one other. It’s a foul thing to have to do. But I have suggested to David that he look at freelancing and I was going to suggest to you that you look at putting together some light documentary programmes. We might have a slot for some local pieces: family interest, animals, children, local history, that sort of thing in the afternoon show. Nothing too ambitious, bread-and-butter stuff. But it’s the sort of thing you do rather well, Ruth. If you can’t find full-time work, you could do that for us. We’d lend you the recording equipment, and you could come in and use the studio. And you’d get paid a fee and expenses, of course.’ He broke off. ‘I know it’s not much but it would keep your hand in while you’re looking round.’

‘Bread-and-butter?’ Ruth asked. ‘Sounds more like slop.’

James grimaced. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger, Ruth,’ he said.

‘Who shall I shoot then?’ she said. ‘Who’s responsible for putting me, and David, and someone else out of a job?’

He shrugged. ‘Market forces?’ he offered.

‘This is rubbish,’ she said firmly. ‘Why didn’t you tell them that you couldn’t run the newsroom understaffed?’

‘Because my job’s on the line too,’ he said frankly. ‘I did tell them that we should keep the staff, but if I make too many waves then I’m out as well. I can’t lose my job for a principle, Ruth.’

‘So I lose mine for the lack of one?’

He said nothing.

‘We should have had a union,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Or better contracts, or better management, or more profits. But those days are gone, Ruth. I’m sorry.’

She was silent.

‘Look, there’s nothing I can do but offer you freelance work,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best to take everything you do. You’re a good journalist, Ruth, you’ll make it. If not here, then London. And I’ll give you good references. The best.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Thanks,’ she said shortly.

‘Maybe Patrick knows of something in television,’ James suggested. ‘He might be able to slot you in somewhere. That’s where the money is, not radio.’

‘He might,’ Ruth said.

James got up and held out his hand. ‘You’ll work till the end of the week, and then take a month’s salary,’ he said. ‘I do wish you luck, Ruth. I really wish this hadn’t happened. If things look up at all then you’ll be the first person I’d want to see back on the staff.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘If there’s anything at all I can do to help…’ he said showing her towards the door.

Ruth thought of her inability to pay the bills on time and run the flat as it should be run, of Patrick’s legitimate desire for a meal when he came home after working all day, of Patrick’s pay rise and the ascendancy of his career. Maybe a period of freelance work would be good for them both.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It looks like it’s all falling into place.’

She rang to leave a message for Patrick that she would meet him at the restaurant, and she ran through the rain to the pub. Although it was barely opening time, David was sitting up at the bar and was smiling and lightly drunk.

‘Flying start,’ he said genially. ‘I took the sensible course of a vodka tea.’

‘Gin and tonic,’ Ruth said, hitching herself up onto the barstool. ‘Double.’

‘You got the push too?’

‘I did.’

‘What did he suggest? Freelancing for Panorama? Career opportunities on News at Ten? Or you could go back to the States and run CNN?’

‘It’s odd,’ Ruth said with mock thoughtfulness. ‘He didn’t mention any of them. Probably thought they were beneath me.’

David made a face. ‘Poor bastard’s doing his best,’ he said. ‘He promised me if I went freelance they’d use my pieces, and I could come into studio to edit for free.’

Ruth nodded. ‘He offered me the same. Suggested I do local bread-and-butter stuff for the afternoon programme.’

‘It’s a great business, the media!’ David said with sudden assumed cheeriness. ‘You’re never out of work. You’re either resting or freelancing. But you’re never unemployed.’

‘Or taking time out to start a family,’ Ruth said. She screwed her face up at him in an awful simper. ‘I think the first few years are so precious! And I can always come back into it when the baby starts school.’

‘Boarding school,’ David supplemented. ‘Stay home with him until he sets off for boarding school. Just take eleven years off. What’s that, after all? It’ll pass in a flash.’

‘No child of mine is boarding! I think a mother should stay home until the children are grown,’ Ruth said earnestly. ‘University age at least.’

‘First job,’ David corrected her. ‘Give them a stable start. You can come back to work twenty-one years from now.’

‘Oh, but the grandchildren will need me!’ Ruth exclaimed.

‘Ah, yes, the magic years. So you could come back to work when you’re…perhaps…sixty?’

Ruth looked thoughtful. ‘I’d like to do a couple more months before I retire,’ she said. ‘I really am a career girl, you know.’

They broke off and smiled at each other. ‘You’re a mate,’ David said. ‘And you’re a good journalist too. They’re mad getting rid of you. You’re worth two or three of some of them.’

‘Last in, first out,’ Ruth said. ‘You’re better than them too.’

He shrugged. ‘So what will you do?’

Ruth hesitated. ‘The forces are massing a bit,’ she said hesitantly. She was not sure how much to tell David. Her powerful loyalty to Patrick usually kept her silent. ‘Patrick’s parents have a cottage near them that has come up for sale. Patrick’s always wanted it. He’s getting promoted, which is more money and better hours. And we have been married four, nearly five years. There is a kind of inevitability about what happens next.’

David had never learned tact. ‘What d’you mean: what happens next? D’you mean a baby?’

Ruth hesitated. ‘Eventually, yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But not right now. I wanted to work up a bit, you know. I did want to work for the BBC. I even thought about television.’

‘You always said you were going to travel,’ he reminded her. ‘Research your roots. Go back to America and find your missing millionaire relations.’

‘If I’m freelance that’ll be easier.’

‘Not with a baby,’ David reminded her.

Ruth was silent.

‘I suppose there is such a thing as contraception,’ David said lightly. ‘A woman’s right to choose and all that. We are in the nineties. Or did I miss something?’

‘Swing back to family values,’ Ruth said briskly. ‘Women in the home and crime off the streets.’

He chuckled and was about to cap the joke but stopped himself. ‘No, hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘I don’t get this. I never thought you were the maternal type, Ruth. You don’t really want a baby, do you?’

Ruth was about to agree with him, but again her loyalty to Patrick silenced her. She nodded to the barman to give them another round of drinks and busied herself with paying him. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Patrick’s got this very established conventional sort of family, and he’s a very conventional sort of man…’ She looked to see if David was nodding in agreement. He was not.

‘They’re very influential,’ she said weakly. ‘It’s very difficult to argue with them. And of course they want us to move house, and of course, sooner or later, they’ll expect a baby.’

‘Come on,’ David said irritably. ‘It’ll be you that expects it, and you that gives birth. If you don’t want to have a baby, you must just say no.’

Ruth was silent. David realized he had been too abrupt. ‘Can’t you just say no?’

She turned to look at him. ‘Oh, David,’ she said. ‘You know me as well as anybody. I never had any family life worth a damn. When I met Patrick and he took me home, I suddenly saw somewhere I could belong. And they took me in, and now they’re my family. I don’t want to spoil it. We see them practically every Sunday…’

‘D’you know what I do on Sunday mornings?’ David interrupted. ‘I don’t get up till eleven. I take the papers back to bed with me and read all the trivial bits – the travel sections and the style sections and the magazines. When the pubs open I walk across the park to The Fountain and I have a drink with some people there. Then I take a curry back home, and I read all the papers, and watch the telly. Then if I feel energetic I go for a jog. And if I feel lazy I do nothing. And in the evening I go round to see someone I like, or people come round and see me. I can’t imagine having to be polite all day to someone’s mum and dad.’

‘They’re my mum and dad,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘No, they’re not.’

He saw, as she turned away from him, that he had gone too far. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He shifted his barstool closer and put his hand on her knee. ‘Tell you what, come back to my flat with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll read last Sunday’s papers to you.’

Ruth gave him a wan smile, picked up his hand, and dropped it lightly in his lap. ‘Married woman,’ she said. ‘As you well know.’

‘Wasted on matrimony,’ he said. ‘That sexy smile of yours. I should have taken my chance with you when I had it, when you were young and stupid, before you found Prince Charming and got stuck in the castle.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’m very happy.’

David bit back the response. ‘Well, we both are!’ he said, lapsing into irony again. ‘What with our vivid emotional lives and our glittering careers! Speaking of which – what about our glittering careers? What will you do?’

‘I’ll look round,’ she said. ‘And I’ll do some local pieces for James. I can keep my hand in and they won’t look bad on a CV. What about you?’

‘I need a job,’ David said. ‘I can freelance for a week or so, but when the money runs out I need a pay cheque. I’ll be sweeping the streets, I reckon.’

Ruth giggled suddenly, her face brightening. ‘Walking them more like,’ she said. ‘A tart like you. You could pop down to the docks.’

David smiled back at her. ‘I try to keep my self-respect,’ he said primly. ‘But if you know any rich old women I could be tempted. What about your mother-in-law? Would she fancy a fling with a young gigolo? Is she the toyboy type?’

Ruth snorted into her drink. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘You could pop out on Sunday afternoons and rendezvous in that bloody cottage!’