The Janus Stone

CHAPTER 19

Ruth is floating in a dark sea. Toby is somewhere near but she can’t see or touch him. It’s funny, but suddenly she feels she knows him inside out, his hopes and fears, his loves and hates, as if he were an old friend, not a three-month-old foetus. She even knows what his voice sounds like. It sounds like he’s saying goodbye.

She is on the beach and a tide of bones is washing up against the shore. She hears Erik’s voice. He is talking to Toby, ‘It’s the cycle of life. You’re born, you live and then you die. Flesh to wood to stone.’ ‘But he’s not even born yet,’ she wants to scream but somehow her head is underwater and she can’t speak or hear or breathe.

The tide brings her back again but now she’s in the trench and it’s too dark to see. She knows there’s someone there with her. Someone evil. She sees a woman with two black dogs, a crossroads, the yellow eyes of an owl.

Now it is Max’s voice she hears in her head. ‘She was the goddess of many things. The Greeks called her the “Queen of the Night” because she could see into the underworld… She’s the goddess of the crossroads, the three ways… Another name is Hekate Kourotrophos, Hecate the child-nurse.’

‘Hecate!’ she says, forcing the breath out of her lungs, ‘save me!’

Then another wave washes over her and everything is black.

Nelson is on his way to interview Edward Spens when he gets the call. He listens intently and then performs a screeching U-turn in the middle of the dual carriageway. Then he switches on the siren.

She is in the sea again and the tide is pulling her backwards and forwards, dragging her body against the stones, engulfing her in darkness. Now and again she sees lights, very far away, darting to and fro in the black water. She hears voices too, sometimes louder, sometimes softer. She hears her mother, Phil, Shona, Irish Ted and the nurse at the hospital. Are you on your own?

Once she hears Nelson’s voice, very loudly. ‘Wake up, Ruth!’ he is saying. But he has to wake up, he has to leave, get back home before his wife finds out. They can never be together again. Thanks. What for? Being there.

Two children are digging a well on the beach. They are singing, ‘Ding Dong Dell, Pussy’s in the well.’ Flint appears, very large, licking his whiskers. Then Sparky wearing a necklace of blood. A headless bird singing in a cage. The light glinting on coins thrown into a wishing well. A penny for your thoughts. Ding Dong Dell, Pussy’s in the well.

Erik is rowing her to shore. He is talking about a Viking funeral. ‘The ship, its sails full in the evening light. The dead man, his sword at his side and his shield on his breast.’ The tide rocks the boat up and down. ‘Do not be afraid,’ Erik tells her, ‘it is not your time.’ Time and tide wait for no man. The sea carries her back through her life – Eltham, school, University College, Southampton, Norfolk, the Saltmarsh, the child’s body buried in the henge circle. Cathbad, torch upraised. Goddess Brigid, accept our offering.

Another wave takes her right out of the water and leaves her stranded in daylight, gasping and shaking. She opens her eyes and sees Max, Nelson and Cathbad looking down at her.

She closes her eyes again.

Nelson drives like a maniac towards the hospital. ‘Ruth’s hurt,’ Cathbad had said. ‘I think she might be losing the baby.’

The baby. He does not stop to wonder how Cathbad knows or what Cathbad knows. He does not even wonder why Cathbad is the one who is ringing him, why he is with Ruth at all. All he can think about is that Ruth’s pregnancy, which was hitherto only a suspicion, has become reality. And that the baby she is losing may be his. He presses his foot harder on the accelerator.

At the hospital he finds not only Cathbad, complete with cloak, but the know-all from Sussex University, Max Whatshisname. They are standing in the waiting area, by the rows of nailed-down chairs and ancient copies of Hello!, looking helpless.

‘What’s going on?’ barks Nelson, going straight into policeman mode.

‘They’re examining her now,’ says Cathbad, putting a calming hand on Nelson’s arm. He shakes it off irritably.

‘Let me speak to the doctor.’

‘In a second. The doctor’s busy with Ruth now.’

Thwarted, Nelson turns on Max who is looking awkward and embarrassed.

‘What happened?’

‘I found her at the site.’ If Nelson sounds like a policeman, Max sounds like a suspect. ‘I went to check on the dig after the rain and she was there, in a trench, unconscious.’

‘Was anyone else there?’

‘Not at first but while I was… looking at her… Cathbad appeared.’

‘Just appeared?’ growls Nelson, looking at Cathbad. ‘Got magic powers now, have you?’

Cathbad looks modest. ‘I just happened to be at the site. I wanted to have a look round. As you know, I’m interested in archaeology.’

‘And you just happened to be there when Ruth collapsed?’

‘I must have arrived a few minutes after Max. I saw his car at the foot of the hill.’

‘And what happened to Ruth? How come she collapsed?’

In reply, Cathbad holds something out. Nelson recoils.

‘What the hell’s that?’

It is Max who answers. ‘It’s a model of a newborn baby. When I saw it, I thought…’

‘So did I,’ says Cathbad, sounding rather shamefaced. ‘That’s why I sent you the message.’

Nelson looks at the model. It is an anatomically perfect plastic replica of a full-term foetus. Its face is blank, its eyes sightless. Turning it over, he sees a name stamped at the base of the spine. ‘It’s from the museum,’ he says. ‘I went to some ridiculous party there and I remember it. They’ve got these models of foetuses at all stages of development.’

Max looks as if he is about to speak but at that moment the doctor (a disconcertingly youthful Chinese woman) appears in front of them.

‘Are you with Miss Galloway?’

‘Yes,’ answers Nelson immediately.

‘How is she?’ asks Cathbad.

‘Still unconscious but her vital signs are good. She should come round soon. I understand she’s pregnant?’

‘About sixteen weeks,’ says Cathbad, ‘I told the ambulance crew.’

The doctor nods soothingly. ‘There’s no sign of a miscarriage but we’ll do a scan later. Go in and talk to her. It might help her come round.’

The invitation seems to be addressed to Cathbad alone but all three men follow the doctor into a side ward, where Ruth is lying in a curtained cubicle. Her name is already at the end of her bed. This efficiency strikes Nelson as ominous. Aren’t people meant to wait for ages in Casualty, lying on a stretcher in the corridor?

Ruth is lying on her side with one arm flung over her head. She seems to be muttering under her breath. Cathbad sits beside her and takes her hand in his. Nelson stands awkwardly behind him. Max hovers by the curtain, seemingly uncertain about whether he should stay or go.

‘What’s she saying?’ asks Nelson.

‘Sounds like Tony,’ says Cathbad.

‘Toby?’ suggests Max from the background.

Suddenly Nelson steps forward. ‘Wake up, Ruth!’ Ruth’s eyes flicker under her lashes.

‘Don’t shout at her,’ says Max. ‘That’s not going to help.’

Nelson turns on him furiously. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

But Cathbad is looking at Ruth.

‘She has come back to us,’ he says.

‘What’s happened?’ Ruth’s voice is faint, but accusatory, as if somehow this is all their fault.

‘You fainted,’ says Cathbad. His voice is soothing. ‘You’ll be fine.’

Ruth looks, rather desperately, from one face to another. ‘The baby?’ she whispers.

‘Fine,’ says Cathbad bracingly. ‘They’ll do a scan but there’s no sign that anything’s wrong.’

‘The baby in the trench?’

‘It was a model,’ says Nelson, ‘some nutter must have put it there for a joke.’

He holds out the plastic baby. Ruth turns her head away and tears slide down her cheeks.

‘Your baby’s OK,’ says Nelson in a softer voice. Ruth looks up at him and somehow it seems as if they can’t look away. The seconds turn into minutes. Max fiddles with a hand sanitiser on the wall. Cathbad, of course, is incapable of embarrassment.

‘I think,’ he says brightly, ‘that we should all give thanks to the goddess Brigid for Ruth’s safe recovery.’

Luckily, at that minute a nurse pushes aside the curtains and says that they are transferring Ruth to another ward. They will keep her in for the night, she says, just for observation. ‘And in the morning,’ she says cheerfully, ‘one of your friends can drive you home.’ She looks at the three men, from Cathbad’s purple cloak to Max’s mud-stained jeans and Nelson’s police jacket, and her smile fades slightly.

In the morning, Ruth is only too keen to leave hospital. At first it had been wonderful to lie between the cool, starched sheets and have kind nurses bring her tea and toast. They had wheeled her down for the scan and there was Toby, floating happily in his clouds. To Ruth’s embarrassment she had cried slightly, sniffling into the pink tissues handed to her by a nurse. Jesus, they’re so nice in here. It’s a wonder they don’t go mad.

But as the night drew on she had started to worry about Flint (Cathbad had offered to feed him but who knows whether he’d remember), about her baby (how on earth is she going to cope on her own?) and, finally, about herself. It seems that someone is trying to scare her to death. Her name written in blood (Max has confirmed this) and now the final gruesome discovery of the plastic baby. Did whoever put it there know she is pregnant or was it just another grisly classical allusion? And who could it be? It must be someone close enough to put the objects in place the split second these sites are deserted. And why? This is the question that chased itself around in her head all through the long night, full of nurses padding to and fro and white figures hobbling to the loo and back. The woman next to her snored continually, but unevenly, so Ruth was unable even to fit the noise into a soothing background rhythm. She had nothing to read and eventually this need became so pressing that she asked the nurse for something, anything, with words on. The nurse came back with Hello! magazine so Ruth spent the rest of the night reading about footballers’ weddings and obscure Spanish royalty to the accompaniment of jagged grunts from the bed next door.

Morning starts early with a tepid cup of tea at seven and Ruth is already asking when she can go. She must let the doctor see her first, say the nurses soothingly. By eight she is sitting, fully dressed, on the bed. She had not thought to ask any of her visitors yesterday to bring her a change of clothes and, in any case, she would have been too embarrassed. But there is something sordid about putting the same clothes back on. She hasn’t even got a toothbrush but a nurse brings her toothpaste and she rubs it vigorously round her mouth. The woman next door (very pleasant when she isn’t snoring) offers her deodorant and some rather violent-smelling body spray. Ruth sits on the bed, smelling of roses, rereading an account of how some actress she has never heard of overcame tragedy to marry some sportsman she has never heard of. It’s all very inspiring.

Eventually a teenage boy masquerading as a doctor appears, examines her head and tells her she can go home. ‘Come back at once if you have any dizziness or blackouts,’ he says sternly. He’s wearing baseball boots. Baseball boots! How can Ruth possibly take anything he says seriously?

She has nothing to pack so she asks the nurse if she can call a taxi. ‘No need,’ says the nurse, smiling sweetly (though, to Ruth’s knowledge, she has been on duty for the last twelve hours). ‘A friend of yours rang and said he’d come to collect you. Wasn’t that nice of him?’

The nurse doesn’t say which friend but as she emerges from the main doors Ruth is not really surprised to see Nelson’s Mercedes parked in the space reserved for minicabs. She gets into the front seat and for a few minutes they sit in silence.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ asks Nelson at last.

‘I was going to.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

‘It was difficult,’ retorts Ruth, ‘you’re married. I didn’t want to rock the boat.’

‘Didn’t you think I had a right to know? If it is mine, that is.’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ flares Ruth, ‘whose did you think it was?’

‘I thought maybe your ex-boyfriend… Peter.’

‘I haven’t slept with him for ten years.’

‘It’s not his then,’ says Nelson with a slight smile.

‘No, it’s definitely yours.’ There is another silence broken only by the minicabs behind starting a strident chorus of hooting. Nelson swears and puts the car in gear. They drive in silence through the Norwich backstreets. It’s Sunday morning and everything is quiet, people are emerging from newsagents with giant Sunday papers under their arms and café owners are putting tables out on the pavements. As they pass through the centre of the city, they can hear church bells ringing.

‘What are you going to do?’ asks Nelson, breaking sharply at a zebra crossing.

‘Have the baby,’ says Ruth determinedly, ‘bring it up on my own.’

‘I want to help.’

‘Help? What do you mean “help”?’

‘You know… financially. And other things. I want to be involved.’

‘How involved? Are you going to tell Michelle?’

Nelson says nothing but Ruth sees his eyes narrow. Eventually, he says, ‘Look, Ruth. This isn’t easy. I’m married. I don’t want to break up my family. The girls–’

‘Don’t think for one second that I want to marry you. That’s the last thing I want.’

She thinks Nelson relaxes slightly and when he speaks again his tone is gentler. ‘What do you want from me then?’

‘I don’t know.’ She doesn’t. Of course, on one level she does want a totally committed partner who will come with her to the birth and bring up the baby with her. But that isn’t on offer. ‘I just want someone to talk to, I suppose,’ she says.

‘Well, you can talk to me. Have you had a scan yet?’

‘Yes, he’s got long legs apparently.’

‘He?’

‘I think it’s a boy. I’m calling him Toby.’

‘Toby!’ The car swerves. ‘Toby! You can’t call him Toby.’

‘Why not?’

Nelson hesitates. Ruth waits for him to say ‘because it’s a poof’s name’ but supposes that, even for Nelson, this is a step too far.

‘I suppose you think I should call him Harry,’ says Ruth.

‘Harry? No. Ever since Harry bloody Potter that’s been a nightmare. But couldn’t you name him after… What’s your dad’s name?’

‘Ernest.’

‘Well, maybe not.’

‘I could ask Cathbad.’

‘Jesus. He’ll want to call him Jupiter Moon Grumbleweed or something. Why not just give the poor kid a normal name. Like Tom.’

‘Or Dick. Or Harry.’

She and Nelson are never together very long without arguing, reflects Ruth. But all the same she is happy, almost exhilarated. Talking about the baby, discussing names, has made her pregnancy seem more real than at any time since the first scan. No, it’s not the pregnancy that seems real, it’s the baby. Or rather, it’s the idea that the baby will grow up to be a child, a person, someone who will eat Marmite sandwiches, make finger paintings, play football, jump in puddles. She realises that she is grinning.

They are on the ring road now. Nelson is driving too fast as usual. Ruth sometimes thinks he only became a policeman to avoid speeding fines.

But it seems that he also has been thinking. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it,’ he says, overtaking a lorry, ‘we don’t know each other that well, but we’re having a baby together.’

‘We’re not “having a baby together”,’ says Ruth.

‘Yes we are,’

‘But we’re not “together”. You’re not going to come to parent-teacher evenings, are you?’

‘That’s a bit of a way off, Ruth.’

‘I just mean, I’m having the baby on my own but you’re the father. That’s all.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You should be pleased I’m not making all sorts of demands.’

‘You should be pleased I’m not running for the hills.’

The ridiculousness of this exchange makes them both laugh.

‘What about your parents?’ asks Nelson. ‘Are they supportive?’ He says this as if he is proud to have thought of such a PC term.

‘Not exactly,’ says Ruth, ‘they’re Born Again Christians. They think I’m going to burn in hell.’

‘Nice. They might come round when the baby’s born though.’

‘They might, I suppose.’

‘Have you got brothers or sisters?’

Nelson is right, thinks Ruth, it is odd that they can be having a baby together when they know nothing about each other’s lives. She has no idea if Nelson has brothers or sisters either.

‘I’ve got a brother. He’s OK but we’re not close. He lives in London.’

‘Has he got children?’

‘Yes. Two.’

Toby will have cousins. That has never occurred to her before either.

‘Are you going to carry on working?’ asks Nelson.

‘Of course. I’ve got to support the baby, haven’t I?’

‘I told you, I want to help.’

‘I know, but realistically, if you don’t tell Michelle, you’re not going to be able to do very much. That’s OK though. I don’t want help. You can buy him a bicycle or something.’

‘His first football.’

‘You’re not going to insist he supports some ridiculous northern team are you?’

‘Blackpool. Of course.’

‘What if I want him to support…’ She wracks her brain for the most annoying choice. ‘Arsenal?’

‘Then I’ll apply for custody.’ After a short silence, Nelson says, ‘What will you tell about me? I don’t want him growing up not knowing who his father is.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’ But the bridge looks more like a rickety plank across the Niagara Falls. If Michelle doesn’t know, how can she possibly tell her baby that Nelson is his father?

They are on the Saltmarsh road now. The tide is in, forming sparkling blue pools between the islands of long grass. Ruth opens her window and breathes in the salty sea smell.

Nelson watches her. ‘You love this place, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then there’s no point in me saying it’s an isolated spot to bring up a baby?’

‘No.’

Nelson parks outside Ruth’s cottage. ‘Do you want to come in?’ she asks.

He looks awkward. ‘I ought to get back. I said I’d take Michelle to the garden centre.’

‘Oh, all right.’

Ruth gets out and scrabbles in her bag for her key. Nelson watches her from the car. For some reason, the sight of her standing there on her doorstep in her crumpled shirt, a bandage over her left eye, makes his throat constrict.

‘Ruth!’ he calls.

She turns.

‘Take care.’

She waves and smiles and then, finding her key, disappears into the house.

It’s very hot. Too hot. Last night I slept with only a sheet over me and I was covered in sweat by the morning. She came to me again and I was weak. Perhaps my weakness is why this house is cursed, why nothing grows here but dust and ashes. In the morning I sacrificed again and the entrails were rotten, stinking and putrid. I buried them behind the greenhouse where the grass grows long. The time is near. We cannot escape.