The Little House

‘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?’