Philippa Gregory - The Little House

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.’