Chapter 39

Unto the Next Generation

Alex

2029

It was barely a week now since Isobel and Alex had become the proud parents of a daughter. Isobel gave birth not long after arriving at the hospital and an anxious Alex endured only a few hours of anxiety in the waiting room.

The whole process had been very efficient and well-organised from beginning to end, as was everything associated with Isobel. Even the decision regarding the baby's name had been made months earlier.

"Iris," announced Isobel. "After her grandmother."

"I thought your mother's name was Amanda," said Alex.

"Amanda Iris," Isobel corrected him.

"Well, it's better than Tracey," said Alex, recalling his own mother's name.

The relationship between husband and wife became ever more intimate as the progress of Isobel's pregnancy steadily approached the point at which Alex had to fully accept that he would soon become a father. He didn't only have to look at Isobel's swollen belly to be reminded of his future paternity. His work colleagues took every opportunity to remind him of the paternity leave he was entitled to. Alex suspected the underlying motives for his colleagues' outwardly friendly concern, but he also knew that as his role at Ibex International wasn't at all demanding the company was unlikely to suffer much from his absence. One advantage in having a good excuse to take time off was that he would be at less risk of saying something that would betray his ignorance about the products that Ibex International manufactured and marketed.

"She's a beautiful girl," said Isobel as she cradled their wizened pallid daughter in her arms. "She has her father's nose."

"Really?" wondered Alex who could see no family resemblance at all.

Iris had a very limited repertoire. She cried, she gurgled, she burped and she repeatedly clutched her fingers around anything that could be clutched. When Iris wasn't eating or drinking or demanding that she should be, she gazed around her with huge eyes that suggested volumes of understanding but which Alex was sure were nothing more than empty receptacles as yet unable to recognise anyone other than her mother. What she liked doing most and which Alex, despite himself, found disturbingly erotic was fasten her mouth on Isobel's nipples and unselfconsciously gurgle away.

"How long will you be staying off work?" Isobel asked.

"As long as you want me to, sweetest," said Alex.

"How long will they let you? I've heard that a lot of businesses are cutting back on benefits like paternity leave."

"The government doesn't mandate companies to provide it anymore," said Alex. "It's discretionary now. It's just not available to most people. My contract allows me up to nine months paternity leave. I don't have to use it all in one go, of course. I can spread it out over the next five years."

"How is your new job? You don't seem to have to work so many long hours these days. In fact, you haven't worked late more than two nights a week for ages."

"It's more an executive rather than an administrative role," said Alex. "I don't need to monitor progress as closely as I used to."

However, that was rarely the reason Alex ever stayed away from home in the late evening. It was mostly for social reasons. When he was still at Reuters-Fox this entailed a drink or two in the pubs around his old office. In his new job, he not only had to get familiar with new drinking companions but also with new drinking holes.

His drinking companions no longer included Zara who Alex hadn't seen at all after his conversation with Theo, but otherwise they were quite akin to those at Reuters-Fox. They were mostly men. They were chiefly between the ages of thirty and fifty. And most of them had a long commute home after work where the stress of travel was rather less if the journey was delayed until well after the end of the rush hour. Nevertheless, in one critical way, his new companions were very different from those he used to know. Once it had been Alex who had to ingratiate himself with better positioned staff members. Now it was they who were trying to curry favour with him. This was a role reversal that Alex positively relished.

"Do you think I should return to work when I'm able?" Isobel asked.

Alex hadn't really considered this. In fact, he'd forgotten that Isobel even had a job. What was it again? Something to do with marketing. And where did Isobel work? Alex screwed up his face in the hope that it would make him look thoughtful and considerate while it primarily served to conceal his forgetfulness.

"It depends what you want to do, dear," said Alex. "I earn enough these days that you don't have to work if you don't want to."

"Of course I want to," said Isobel through gritted teeth. "You know how much I've studied and worked hard to make a career for myself."

"Of course," said Alex who was now wondering how best he could salvage the situation. "How long a break do you think you'll be allowed to take?"

"It's unpaid maternity leave," said Isobel. "A charity like Amnesty International can't afford to pay me for that any more. I can stay out of work for as long as I like, but they won't hold onto my job forever."

"No, I guess not," said Alex. Now that he wasn't working for a media company he'd lost touch with current events. The Tories hadn't yet been in power for even two years but they'd already made many radical changes. Alex was one of those who voted Conservative, of course. It would have been hypocritical to work for Reuters-Fox and not do so. Isobel had also voted for them. She'd been a natural Tory ever since her childhood in a rural England of upwardly mobile middle class neighbours and a culture of public schools, riding lessons and village fêtes. Amongst the many changes implemented by the Conservative-led coalition were more spending cuts as well as tax reductions and increased defence expenditure, along with an increasingly shrill anti-European rhetoric. One aspect of state interference whose rolling back was much applauded at Reuters-Fox was the reduction in workers' benefits such as maternity leave, social security and housing benefit. Alex guessed that Isobel must be a casualty of such necessary changes, but he didn't normally care very much about state benefits. Alex had done well out of the change of government. The salary he'd awarded himself was more than enough to cover his wife's loss of earnings. His income tax rate was only 15% and the threshold at which the 20% tax rate applied was set so high that almost no one actually paid it.