The Little House Read online

  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