‘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
