39 Weeks (32 page)

I explained, then told him that my payment for the job was going to buy me, or more accurately my daughter, her pushchair. I was still getting to grips with thinking of the bump as my daughter, the whole idea of a little baby girl was
thrilling, magical even, it was just the ‘daughter’ bit that felt a bit strange and awkward on my tongue.

We lapsed into silence once more as he pulled into the car park at back of The Willow Tree.
It t
urned out I did know about this place, I’d passed it a few times but never been inside. It was quite old, and had all the typical charm of an old pub
,
with dark wood and bits of polished brass everywhere. Rob led me through the saloon area that was fairly crowded, and straight into the dining area at the back that had a couple of large French
type glass doors that opened out onto a paved patio area, although today they were firmly closed and no-one was sitting outside, w
h
ere you could get a front row view of the river Thames.

It was busy in here too, but we managed to grab a table just as a couple with their two children, both boys, were leaving.

‘That was lucky.’ Rob said pulling out a chair for me to sit down. ‘You usually have to wait.’

‘Usually? You’ve been here a few times then.’

‘I did
some
photo’s for an article, some twaddle about country pubs, although I don’t quite see how Richmond qualifies as the country, it’s not
exactly my idea of the country. A
nyway
for two days I was snapping away, here and up the road at The Swan, and this is where we stayed, and ate, me and the journalist and a gofer.’

‘A gofer?’

‘Yeah you know, go for coffee, or go for my other lens, or go . .’

‘Oh a gofer, okay get it now. Was this for the magazine you used to work for?’

‘Yes. So what do you want to eat?’

‘Actually I’m starving, is it alright if I have a proper Sunday roast with all the trimmings?’

‘Why not
. I’m pretty starving myself and it is Sunday after all, so I think I’ll have a Sunday roast too. It’s serve yourself, would you like me to do the honours?’

‘Yes, great, but no sprouts please, don’t know how people can eat those things, but anything else is fine.’

‘Okay then, roast beef, Yorkshire pud
, roast potatoes, a few
veg no sprouts, gravy?’

‘Yes a bit of gravy, but not swimming.’

‘Not too much gravy, anything else?’

‘No that’s it
.’

Rob walked over to the long table they had set up that was overloaded with food and the largest roast joints of meat I’d ever seen, and waited in line to get served.

Who’d have thought I’d be sitting here waiting for the luscious Rob, that we’d be here in a place like this together on a date. Okay I really need to get a hold of myself, I still didn’t know if this was a date, I mean there’d been nothing so far that suggested it might be, or give me any clue really one way or the other. It was still early days and so far I’d managed to have a coherent conversation, but I could feel myself floating up to cloud nine and then some, just like I had that night at Zee Zee’s
, and if I wasn’t on my guard I’d slip into open mouthed adoration and be incapable of any sort of conversation at all, coherent or otherwise. Maybe after lunch he’ll declare his undying love for me . . yeah and maybe pigs can really fly and one’s going to ask me what I want for desert. I’ve really got to stop thinking so much. 

Rob came back with two plates laden with Sunday
roast goodies, and
I was
embarrassed
to see that his plate had an abundance of sprouts
. He saw me scru
tinizing the sprouts and said ‘s
orry but I love them, it wouldn’t be a proper Sunday lunch without Brussels,’ then grinned at me impishly.

I really was starving and tucked in straight away, well I was eating for two, and everything tasted as good as it looked. Having satisfied my initial
hunger I asked him about his work and if he’d got any more jobs lined up. I was interested of course but if I’m honest what I was really doing was classic get them to talk about themselves, isn’t that what Cosmo would tell you to do and who am I to argue?

‘One or two,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can get
really
excited about, but anything’s better than nothing.’

‘Will you have to stay away again, or is it local?’

‘The first one’s in Newcastle and will probably take about a week, so I’ll have to stay up there for that one, and the other one’s going to be your average seaside town, location yet to be decided on, so no idea if that’s a stay over or not yet.’

‘Must be nice, going to all these places, never knowing from one day to the next exactly where you might be or end up.
’

‘Trust me there’s not much that’s nice about Newcastle, well not the bit of it that I’ll be staying in.’

‘Why what is the job, what are you taking pictures of?’

‘Don’t laugh
bu
t it’s classic shots of the bottling plant at a local brewery, so where else would it be but Newcastle, for a monthly brewery magazine.’

‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as a brewery magazine.’

‘Oh yes, Brewers Are Us, or something of the sort, it’s an in house thing for s
ome brewers union. Pretty crap
job really
, but
a jobs a job so I shouldn’t complain.’

‘Do you miss working for the magazine in London?’

‘No, it was the right thing to do leaving
all that
, I just wish I could get on to the more serious stuff, but I suppose if it all goes belly up I could always resort to weddings and christenings, or maybe passport photo’s.’

‘I can’t imagine you doing that somehow.’

‘Yeah maybe you’re right, and yes I do kind of like the not knowing from one week to
the
next where I’m going to be, I just wish the money was a bit more . . you know, reliable, steady.’

‘
Personally
I’m sick to death of going to the same place, same building, meeting the same people day after day.’

‘Yeah but at least you know you’ve got a job tomorrow
. Don’t get me wrong it is nice be
ing paid to go
out and about
, but it would also be nice to know for sure where my next pay cheque was coming from, or even if there was going to be a
next
pay ch
eque
.’
 

‘Couldn’t you get
a job on a paper, you know taking
pictures of the news?’

‘Mm that’d be ideal, but it’s a tough marke
t to crack and nowadays it’s mostly
freelance, so I’ll just keep plugging away at it.’

We carried on eating and Rob
cleared his plate
, including all the sprouts, while I was still struggling
with mine
, obviously I hadn’t been quite as hungry as I thought I was.

‘Sorry I can’t finish, it tasted great but it’s just a bit too much for me?’

‘Do you fancy desert?’

‘No way, I don’t think I could manage another mouthful of anything.’

‘How about a drink of something, wine, lager, tea?’

‘What I really fancy is lemonade.’

‘Okay . . lemonade? Are you sure?’

‘Yes positive, It’ll help this dinner go down a bit.’

‘Alright then lemonade it is.’

Rob went to the bar in the saloon, and while he was gone a waitress cleared the table. Okay I thought, this is it. The dodgy bit on any date is not the meal
itself,
I mean at least you’ve
got the food to talk about,
there’s all that deciding what you’ll have
, and then whether the food
turned out to be as good as you
’d
hoped it would be
. No
it was after the meal that things could get a bit hairy and was the real test, you had no distractions so were forced to talk about yourself, or listen to him talking about himself. That’
s if you could manage it, s
ometimes it was at this point that the conversation just dried up completely and you found out how much of a mistake going out with whoever it was
,
had turned out to be.

Rob came back with a
half
pint of beer for himself and a glass of lemonade for me. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted ice or not,’ he said depositing the glasses on the table.

‘No, ice is fine.’

‘We could take this into the bar if you’d like, it’s not as busy now.’

‘I quite like it here, you were right about the view.’ I said looking out at the river as one of those long rowing boats with ten or more oarsmen, like the Oxford and Cambridge boat race boats, streamed along, and some guy on the end of the boat shouted at them to row harder, or faster, or whatever it was.

‘When’s
Mac off
on his travels
again?’ I said.

‘Thursday I think.’

‘Must be a bit crowded when he’s home.’

‘You’re not kidding. Marsha’s been really good about it, letting me stay I mean, but I’ve got to get a place of my own
soon
.’

‘Have you been looking?’

‘No, but I really should start.’

‘If only I’d known you could have had my old place.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well when you do get somewhere maybe I’ll come and paint it for you, return the favour.’

‘While I look after the baby
I suppose?
’

‘Mm maybe not then.’

‘I could look after a baby,
’ Rob said defensively at my implied hint that he might not be able to. ‘
I looked after Harry
for two days
when Marsha went into hospital
to have Flora and Mac was
trying to get home
, and then
he
practically camped out at the hospital so he could be with her
.’

‘Did you?’ I said surprised but nonetheless impressed.

‘Yes I did. Didn’t do a bad job either. There were no visible scars
afterwards
anyway.’

‘
Okay then
you’ve convinced me, when you get a place of your own you can look after the baby and I’ll paint.’
 

We lapsed into silence. Crap
. T
hink of something to say. Anything.
‘So when are you off to Newcastle?’ Okay it wasn’t brilliant but it was something.

‘Monday week, and with a bit of luck back again
by
the following Friday.’

More silence. This was not good. I racked my brains
but clearly
I wasn’t rack
ing hard enough because I was coming up with zilch.

‘When will you stop work?’ Rob asked and I offered up a prayer of thanks to the God of uncomfortable silences.

‘End of January probably, I don’t know really, it depends how things go.’

‘Will they keep your job for you until after . .’

‘They said they would
, but I . . I’m not sure if I want to go back after.’

‘What will you do then?’

‘That’
s the question, what will
I do? It’s going to be hard trying to juggl
e a full time job
and a baby
, although Fishers
did say
I could go part time for a bit if I wanted to
.’

‘Well what about what you were doing this week, you know tax stuff. There must be lots of people who haven’t got a clue about that
sort of thing, I know I haven’t, a
nd you could do that at home.
’

‘Yes it’s an idea. I’ve thought about it but I don’t know if I could earn enough doing that.’

‘Well you could do mine, that’d be start. I could ask around for you, or you could just put an ad in the paper or something
.’

‘Yeah maybe, I’ll think about it.’

‘At least you’re not worrying about having twins anymore.’

‘Yes that was dreadful, I’d convinced myself I was having two. Thank God I was wrong.’

‘So you thought of any names yet?’

‘No not yet, I haven’t really thought about it, but I should shouldn’t I?’

‘Well what’s your mums name?’

‘Celia, and I’m not naming my baby after my mum, even if her name wasn’t Celia, which is pretty
dread, I still wouldn’t name the baby after
mum.’

‘You don’t get on with your mum?’

‘Oh we get on alright I suppose, but she . . well she’s just so . . right all the time and thinks I’m so wrong all the time
. I think she thinks I’m still twelve.’