‘But it’s yours, Reg. Your baby.’
‘Half the letters we had while you were off to war were about you,’ he told her, somewhat wistfully. ‘“What happened to the nice young lady who wrote the bits to make us laugh?”. Well, now I’ve got two of you trained up, seems daft not to let my old bones have a rest. Mary’s been nagging me about it ever since I gave you your job back, Bobby.’
Reg was seized by another coughing fit. Bobby wondered if there was more to these than Tony’s smoke. She hadn’t realised Reg’s lungs had been affected by gas in the last war. And he did look tired – she’d noticed the change when she’d returned from the WAAF. Still, Reg must really be feeling his age if he was willing to take a step back fromTheTyke.As Mary often complained, he lived and breathed for that magazine.
‘I don’t get it,’ Tony said, stubbing out his cigarette in one of the ashtrays Mary had placed discreetly around the room. ‘Who’s in charge then? Someone has to be.’
Reg mopped his mouth with a handkerchief and nodded to Bobby. ‘She is. I’m promoting her to deputy editor. I’ll still beeditor-in-chief, but that don’t mean I’ll be hovering over your shoulders, don’t worry. I’ll just stop in from time to time and cast my eye over things.’
Bobby sat up straighter. ‘Deputy editor! Really?’
‘Aye.’ Reg smiled. ‘Told you there’d be an editor job in your future, didn’t I? There’ll be a bit extra in your pay packet to reflect the promotion. Not a lot, mind, but another three bob a week. That’s as much as I can afford for now.’
Tony looked appalled. ‘You’re promoting her over me?’
‘Oh, don’t sound so shocked,’ Reg said, rolling his eyes. ‘She’s got more experience, that’s all.’
‘She might have more experience on this rag but I’m the more experienced journalist. I was a seasoned newspaperman when she was just the girl who made the tea.’
Bobby glared at him. ‘You know, I can hear you, Tony.’
‘Save it, son,’ Reg told him shortly. ‘Don’t matter if you’ve got fifty years’ experience in papers. It’s this magazine you need to know – this magazine and this place.’
‘And what about when she buggers off to have a baby?’ Tony demanded. ‘Waste of time employing women.’
Bobby felt her colour rise, and hid her cheeks by pretending to blow her nose.
‘We’ll talk about that when the time comes,’ Reg said firmly. ‘Now get to work, the pair of you.’
Bobby floated to her desk in a daze.
Deputy editor! It was everything she’d dreamed of when she came to work here. Perhaps Reg was even thinking she’d take over from him as editor one day. When the war ended and paper became once again plentiful, who knew to what heights the little magazine might rise?
Bobby felt elated for a moment, until her fluttering belly brought her back to earth. Her excitement had awoken Marmaduke. It reminded her that this was only temporary –just for a month or two, until she left to take up her duties as a mother.
What would happen then? Reg would promote Tony to deputy editor, she supposed, and hire a junior reporter to work under him. It would be unlikely there would be any way back for her once the baby was born. Bobby knew well enough from Lilian how all-consuming the responsibilities of a new mother were. There would be no time to think of writing between changing napkins, washing, cooking and cleaning.
The irony of it – of being offered everything she had dreamt of, only to then have it snatched away – brought a lump to her throat.
She forced it down, feeding a sheet of paper rather violently into her typewriter. Ridiculous to be crying over good news. Marmaduke’s fault, she supposed. Her emotions seemed to lurch between extremes far too easily these days.
Too curious to wait until Monday, Bobby hurried to the Parrys’ cottage as soon as she finished work at midday, stopping only to promise Mary that she would return shortly to help her and Lil with the Christmas baking.
The captain might well be working a shift at the department store in Bradford where he was employed as a tailor, but if he was at home, Bobby was sure he would let her peep inside her new office. If he wasn’t, she could at least peer over the wall.
‘Shed’ didn’t sound too promising. It made her think of the rotting wooden construction on her dad’s old allotment in Bradford. Then again, in the Dales, ‘shed’ could refer to buildings of many sizes. It might just as easily be a large cowshed as one of the garden variety.
More importantly, though, what condition was it in? Bobby didn’t relish the idea of an office reeking of animal dung, with rainwater leaking through the roof and wind whistling through cracks in the wall.
She spotted Tony a little way ahead, also heading for the Parrys’ place. Bobby should have guessed he would have had the same idea.
Well, she supposed it was no bad thing to have an opportunity to clear the air. Her brother-in-law had been casting her resentful glances all morning, her promotion over him clearly rankling, and she knew from long experience that there was nothing harder to extract work from than Tony Scott in a sulk. She hailed him, and he slowed to let her catch him up.
‘You should have waited and we could have walked over together,’ she said when she fell into step beside him. ‘Don’t forget it’s me who’s got the key.’
‘Not likely to forget, am I?’ he said grumpily, choosing to interpret this as an attempt to rub her seniority in his face.
Bobby nodded to the cottage up ahead.
