Ruth Galloway (33 page)

‘Harry!' Nelson is aware that his wife is actually speaking to him, twinkling charmingly from across the table.

‘Harry. Leo was talking about the Roman settlement that they've dug up. The one near Swaffham. I was telling him that we've got a friend who's an archaeologist.'

Michelle and Ruth, rather to Nelson's surprise, hit it off
immediately. Michelle likes boasting about her intellectual friend. ‘Honestly, she doesn't care what she looks like.' Michelle will be delighted to hear that Ruth hasn't lost any weight.

‘Yes,' says Nelson guardedly, ‘she works at the university.'

‘I'm writing a play,' says Leo earnestly, ‘about the Roman God Janus. The two-faced God. The God of beginnings and endings, of doorways and openings, of the past and the future.'

Janus. Something is echoing in Nelson's head but is having trouble fighting through the champagne and the suckling pig. Of course, it was Ruth's know-all friend, the one from Sussex University.
Janus, God of doors and openings.

And suddenly Nelson realises something else. It is as if he is seeing a film rewound and, in the second viewing, recognising something that was there all the time. He sees Ruth walking towards him, her loose shirt blown flat against her body. She hasn't lost weight. In fact, she may even have put some on.

Could Ruth possibly be pregnant? Because, if so, he could be the father.

‘What do you mean you're pregnant? You're not even married.'

This is one of the times when Ruth just wants to lift up her head and howl. She has made her disclosure on a Sunday afternoon walk in Castle Wood, hoping that the open-air setting might dissuade her mother from having hysterics. Fat chance.

‘You don't need to be married to have a baby,' she says.

Her mother draws herself up to her full height. Like Ruth she is a big woman but majestic rather than fat. She looks like Queen Victoria in M&S slacks.

‘I am aware of that, Ruth. What I mean, as you know very well, is that God has ordained marriage for the purpose of having children.'

Well, she might have guessed that God would come into it somewhere. Ruth's parents are both Born Again Christians who believe that unless Ruth too is Born Again, she faces a one-way trip to eternal damnation. A location that, at present, seems preferable to Eltham.

‘Well I'm not married,' says Ruth steadily. But the father
is, she adds silently. She knows this piece of information will not help matters at all.

‘Who's the father?' asks her father, rather hoarsely. Ruth looks at him sadly. She usually finds her dad a bit easier than her mother but he seems about to work himself up into Victorian father frenzy.

‘I'd rather not say.'

‘You'd rather not say!' Ruth's mother collapses onto a tree stump. ‘Oh, Ruth, how could you?' She starts to sob, noisily, into a tiny lace handkerchief. Other Sunday walkers look at her curiously as they tramp past. Ruth kneels beside her mother feeling, despite herself, extremely guilty.

‘Mum, look, I'm sorry if this has upset you but please try to look at the positive side. You'll be getting a grandchild. I'll be having a baby. Isn't that something to be happy about?'

‘Happy about having a bastard grandchild,' rumbles her father. ‘Are you out of your mind?'

Obviously, thinks Ruth. She must have been out of her mind to assume, for one second, that her parents would be happy at the news. That they would rejoice with her. That they would accept that, while their daughter doesn't have a partner, she does have a baby and that the baby is, if not planned, desperately wanted. How desperately, Ruth does not like to admit even to herself. All she knows is, the moment when her suspicions crystallised into that thin blue line on her pregnancy kit, her heart went into overdrive. It was as if every heartbreak and disappointment in her life, to say nothing of the traumas of the past few months, had faded into nothingness, leaving only a boundless blue contentment.

‘I hope you'll change your minds,' is all she says. She stands
and helps her mother up from the tree stump.

‘We never change our minds about anything,' says her mother proudly. ‘That's not the sort of people we are.'

You can say that again, thinks Ruth. Being Born Again has only increased her parents' already well-developed sense of infallibility. After all, if God has chosen you, how can you ever be wrong again? About anything. Her parents found God when she was a teenager. Far too late for Ruth, although she had, for a time, accompanied them to services. She has never found God but, then again, she isn't about to go looking.

Her father gestures dramatically towards Severndroog Castle in the background.

‘Our values don't change. They haven't changed since that castle was built in the Middle Ages.'

Ruth does not add that the castle is, in fact, an eighteenth-century folly or that the Middle Ages were presumably rife with illegitimate babies and unmarried mothers. She only says, ‘Well I hope you'll feel differently when the baby's born.'

Neither of her parents answers but, when they cross Avery Hill Road, Ruth's father takes her arm in a protective way, as if being pregnant has seriously impaired her traffic sense. This Ruth finds obscurely comforting.

*

Sunday afternoon in a King's Lynn suburb. Cars are being washed, fresh-faced families set out on bike rides, dogs are walked, newspapers are read and the smell of Sunday lunch permeates the air. After his own lunch (roast lamb with vegetarian option for Laura) Nelson announces his intention of mowing the lawn. Michelle says she'll go to the gym (she's the only woman in the world who wants to go to the gym
on a Sunday afternoon) and Laura says she'll go too, for a swim. That leaves Nelson and sixteen-year-old Rebecca, who immediately disappears upstairs to plug herself into her iPod and computer. This suits Nelson fine. He wants to be by himself, performing some mundane domestic task. It's the way he thinks best.

By the time he has got out the lawnmower, found that it has run out of petrol, fetched the spare can from the boot of his Mercedes, dropped the garage door on his foot, fixed the broken clutch cable and moved Michelle's washing line, he's thinking furiously. Is Ruth pregnant? Is it his baby? They spent one night together, back in February, but, at the same time, he knew Ruth was seeing her ex-boyfriend, Peter. It's possible then that the baby is Peter's. And what about Erik, Ruth's old tutor? He always thought Ruth was very close to Erik. Could they have been sleeping together? It's a funny thing but he thinks of Ruth as somehow existing on a higher plane than most people. The night they slept together had seemed removed from the ordinary motivations of lust and desire, though those had played their part. He and Ruth had come together as equals who had just been through a terrible experience together. It had just seemed … right. The sex, Nelson remembers, had been incredible.

Somehow, remembering that sense of rightness, Nelson feels convinced that Ruth did conceive that night. It seems almost preordained. Jesus – he gives the mower a vicious shove – he's thinking like some crap women's magazine. It's highly unlikely that she got pregnant; she was probably using birth control (which was never mentioned; they didn't talk
much). He's not even sure that she is pregnant. She has probably just put on weight.

‘Dad!'

Rebecca is leaning out of an upstairs window. With her long blonde hair and serious face she looks oddly accusatory, like a Victorian picture of a wronged woman. For one stupid moment Nelson imagines that his daughter knows all about Ruth, is about to tell Michelle …

‘Dad. It's Doug on the phone. He says do you want to go to the pub tonight.'

Nelson pauses, breathing hard. The smell of mown grass is almost overpowering.

‘Thanks, love. Tell him no, I'd rather spend the night in with my family.'

Rebecca shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. But I think Mum's going out to the pictures.'

*

That evening, as Nelson and his daughters sit in front of an old James Bond film (Michelle has indeed gone to the cinema with a girlfriend), Ruth is mindlessly watching the same movie in her parents' sitting room. She loathes James Bond, thinks he's sexist, racist and almost unbearably boring but her parents seem to be enjoying the film (although was there ever anyone less Born Again than James Bond?) and the last thing she wants to do is argue with them. The arguments about her baby have continued, wearily, all afternoon. How could she? Who's going to look after it when she goes to work? Hasn't she heard that families need fathers? What's the poor little mite going to do without a father, without a family, without God? ‘You'll be its family,' Ruth said, ‘and
you can tell it about God.' Although, she adds silently, I shall tell it my own version. That God is a made-up fairy tale, like
Snow White
only nastier.

Now, mercifully, her parents are silent, happily watching James Bond beat up a scantily dressed woman. When Ruth's phone rings, they both look at her accusingly.

Ruth walks out into the hall to answer it. ‘Phil' says the message on the screen. Her boss. Head of the Archaeology Department at the University of North Norfolk.

‘Hallo, Phil.'

‘Hi, Ruth. Not interrupting anything am I?'

‘I'm visiting my parents.'

‘Oh … good. Just that something's come up on one of the field sites.'

The university employs field archaeologists to work on sites that are being developed, usually for building. The field archaeologists nominally report to Phil and are the bane of his life.

‘Which one?'

‘Woolmarket Street, I think.'

‘What have they found?'

Though, of course, she already knows the answer.

‘Human remains.'

Working all day today, translating Catullus. She distracted me, which is Wrong. I heard the voices again last night. I used to think that I was going mad but now I know that I have been Chosen. It's a great responsibility.

It is not only the Lady who talks in my mind but the whole army of saints who once occupied this place. The martyrs who died for the Faith. They speak to me too. This is my body. This is my blood.

Death must be avenged by another death, blood by blood. I understand that now. She will never understand because she is a woman and women are Weak. Everyone knows that. She is too attached to the child. A mistake.

I sacrificed again last night and the result was the same. Wait. But she grows bigger. She is walking and soon she will be talking. I'm not a cruel person. The Gods know I would never willingly hurt anyone. But the family comes first. What must be done, must be done
. Fortes fortuna iuvat.

It is afternoon by the time that Ruth reaches the site on Woolmarket Street. She has no lectures on a Monday so took the opportunity to have a lie-in at her parents' house (she is still being sick in the mornings – and evenings too, for that matter). Her mother made her porridge because that is meant to be good for morning sickness. Ruth could only manage a few spoonfuls but was dimly aware that her mother was trying to be kind. No other mention was made of the bastard grandchild.

Woolmarket Street is one of the oldest in Norwich, one of a maze of narrow, medieval alleyways interspersed by new, hideous office blocks. As Ruth drives carefully through the one-way system, city map open beside her, she sees part of the old city wall, a lump of flint and stone, looking as if it has grown there rather than being built. Opposite this landmark is a massive Victorian house, set back from the road behind iron gates. A sign on one of the gates declares that Spens and Co are building seventy-five luxury apartments on this site.

From the gates, the house still looks impressive. A tree-lined
drive, sweeping and gracious, leads up to a looming red-brick façade. Through the trees Ruth can see curved windows, archways, turrets and other displays of Victorian Gothic grandeur. But as she gets closer she realises that this is only a shell. Diggers and skips have taken over. The outer walls of the house still stand but inside men in hard hats scurry busily along planks and hastily constructed walkways, trundling wheelbarrows along what were once corridors, drawing rooms, kitchens and pantries.

Ruth parks at the front of the house. On what would once have been the front lawn there is now a prefabricated hut and a portaloo. Mounds of sand and cement cover the grass and the air is full of noise, the clang of metal against metal and the relentless grind of machinery.

Grabbing her site gear, she gets out of the car. A red-faced man comes out of the hut.

‘Can I help you?'

‘Dr Ruth Galloway,' says Ruth, holding out her hand. ‘I'm from the university. I'm here to see the archaeologists.'

The man grunts, as if his worst suspicions have been confirmed. ‘How are my boys ever going to get any work done with archaeologists cluttering up the place?'

Ruth ignores this. ‘I believe the lead archaeologist is Ted Cross?'

The man nods. ‘Irish Ted. I'll get someone to fetch him.' He hands her a hard hat saying, ‘You'll need to wear this' and disappears back into his hut. Ruth knows Irish Ted slightly from previous digs. He is a heavily built man in his late forties, bald and heavily tattooed. There is, to the outer eye at least, nothing Irish about him.

Ted greets her with a grin, showing two gold teeth. ‘Come to see our skeleton have you?'

‘Yes. Phil rang me.'

Ted spits, presumably at the mention of the head of department. ‘This way,' is all he says.

He leads the way towards the main entrance of the house. Standing on its own, impressive and slightly surreal, is a massive stone archway. As they pass underneath Ruth sees that an inscription has been carved into the stone:
Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit
. Ruth is a comprehensive-school girl: she has never studied Latin. ‘Omnia' means all or everything, doesn't it? ‘Mutantur' sounds like ‘mutated' so maybe it means transformed or changed. What about the rest of it? ‘Nihil' has a nasty, final sort of sound, like ‘nihilism'.