Chase did, though he wondered at John Ware's motives. Most likely the editor wanted a big topical theme to boost his AB readership. A chance remark in a Fleet Street pub had sparked off the idea to hire Gavin Chase to research and write a series of pieces on environmental problems worldwide, so here he was, being given the full expense-account treatment and lashings of bonhomie in the Unicorn Press Club at ten-past-three on a dismal Tuesday afternoon.
"Now, as to timing," John Ware said, with the briskness of a stockbroker closing a deal. "How soon could you leave for the States?"
"Three weeks," Chase said, having already thought about it. He'd need that length of time to make arrangements.
"What about your bits for TV? Contractual obligations?"
"I'm not under contract. They just call me in on a free-lance basis whenever they need an 'expert's' viewpoint." Chase spoke casually, with a hint of irony. "As you say, John, everyone has to have a label."
"No personal ax-grinding though," the editor warned him. "Keep it hard and factual and to the point." He raised his brandy glass. "Here's to a successful trip and a terrific series."
Chase acknowledged the toast and drank. Obviously John Ware, editor in chief of the glossy
Chase took a chance that the tube was running and walked up Chancery Lane to Holborn Station. You could never be sure since London went bankrupt which services were operating and when. He was in luck and rode through, changing at Oxford Circus to get on the District Line, to Chiswick Park. The easiest way would have been via Notting Hill Gate, but nobody used that station unless he was black or Asian.
He walked through the drizzle to his flat in Wellesley Road, passing the lines of derelict cars rusting at the curbside. At Belgrave Court he showed his ID to the armed security guard and was admitted. Every window was wreathed with barbed wire. He had a standing arrangement with a neighbor whose little girl went to the same school as Dan to collect his son and look after him till five. The little girl, Sarah, fussed around Dan like a mother hen, but at least he was safe and off the streets.
The word processor that served as his desk in the book-lined living room was inches deep in copies of
Meeting Theo Detrick in Geneva eight years ago had changed his life; getting married to Angie and then divorced had changed it even more, Chase suspected.
For it was actually her leaving him that spurred him on to pursue his new career. While still married he'd been contributing bits and pieces to the scientific press, so it wasn't a completely new departure when he terminated his ICI Research Fellowship at Durham and came to London to try his hand at free-lance science journalism. It was one hell of a gamble, though, and the first couple of years had been tough, especially with a young child to support and bring up. For a while he was even reduced to graveyard-shift lab work. Then the journalism started to pay, and when television came along he was able to provide an above-average standard of living for Dan and himself. At thirty-five he was beginning to feel established at last, though he still found it a precarious and unsettling occupation, subject to the vagaries of the media and the whims of editors.
But as John Ware had pointed out at lunch, television had made Gavin Chase's reputation as a science popularizes Much to his own surprise he'd made the transition from straight science reporting to the mass media, where the personality selling the message counted for as much, if not more, than the message itself.
The sight of the work to be finished made him restless, though it was probably pointless until two cups of strong black coffee had cleared the brandy fumes. Besides, there was the ritual of Dan's bath and bedtime story, which Chase looked forward to. He sometimes grumbled that it disrupted his schedule and derailed his train of thought, but it kept him sane and put things in their proper perspective. The end of the world would have to wait until after Dan's bedtime story.
Ironic, really, that he had the women's movement to thank. With the change in the social-sexual climate of opinion, every custody case was considered on its merits, without bias one way or the other. Angie had forfeited her rights to the child when she left the family home and, in the words of the judgment, "cohabited with another person in a separate dwelling." The other person was not Archie Grieve (she'd never slept with him, Chase learned) but a tall, balding BBC light-entertainment producer called Derek Chambers, whose name occasionally popped up on variety shows and quiz games for the mentally retarded.
