Ruth Galloway (48 page)

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.

Edward Spens lives in Newmarket Road, a busy thoroughfare on the outskirts of Norwich. This is the land of the seriously rich. The houses are huge, set back from the road and surrounded by trees. So many trees, in fact, that the houses themselves are almost hidden until you come to the end of the driveway and they suddenly appear in all their smug, landscaped glory. Nelson drives slowly up to Edward Spens' house, past a covered swimming pool and a child's play house that looks as if it must have needed planning permission. Sprinklers play on the perfectly manicured lawn, and as he comes to a halt a gardener hurries past carrying emergency plant supplies. Nelson is pleased to see that his dirty Mercedes distinctly lowers the tone.

He is still feeling shell shocked after yesterday's revelation. Well, not exactly revelation, more confirmation. How unlucky can a man be? He has a one-night stand and, hey presto, he's going to be a father again. Other men (he knows this from Cloughie) sleep around all the time with never a whisper of consequences. Why the hell hadn't he used contraception?
Why hadn't Ruth? His feelings towards Ruth veer crazily between anger, admiration and a sort of heart-clenching compassion. He admires her for her determination to have the baby and is grateful that she doesn't seem to want anything from him. But he is slightly irritated too. Ruth seems to think that she can just have this baby and bring it up on her own, with the occasional birthday present from him. But he knows, as she doesn't, that parenthood can be a lonely business. He knows that Michelle struggled sometimes, especially when they moved down south, when he was working long hours and she was alone all day with the kids. Ruth will have no one to turn to, except her Jesus-freak parents and that flaky girlfriend of hers. Maybe Cathbad will offer to babysit. That's no life for a son of his.

His son. Contrary to popular belief, Nelson has never been desperate for a son. He has always been delighted with his daughters. He likes their otherness, their ability to disappear behind secret feminine rites, he even likes being outnumbered at home; it's restful somehow (‘It's a girl thing, Dad. You wouldn't understand'). A son – now a son brings all sorts of buried emotions to the surface. Nelson was never that close to his father. He was the only boy in the family (he has two older sisters, a pattern that he now sees is going to be repeated) and he realised, early on, that there were expectations attached to the role. Unlike his sisters he wasn't expected to be good; he was expected to be tough, athletic, embarrassed about emotions, passionate about football. And, by and large, Nelson achieved this. He suppressed an early interest in ponies (which had deeply worried his father) and became a football fanatic, playing for the school, and
later the county teams. His father had always been there to watch him, yelling incomprehensible advice from the touch-line despite the fact that he, Nelson's father, had never actually played the game. He had a withered foot, the result of childhood polio, and walked with a stick. How had this affliction affected his vision of manliness? Was this the reason why he wanted his son to be a sportsman above everything? Nelson never asked him and now it is impossible. His father died when he was fifteen. Archie Nelson never saw his son become a policeman, a career choice which would have delighted him.

Nelson's mother, Maureen, was a much bigger influence. She is a forceful Irishwoman who shouted at her children and sometimes even clouted them. Archie never raised his hand or his voice (except on the touchline). Yet, despite this, Nelson was closer to his mother. They had some epic rows during his teenage years but he also knew that, deep down, Maureen loved him fiercely. Perhaps that's why, even now, he actually prefers the company of women. Oh, he can do the lad stuff all right, he wouldn't be able to survive in the force otherwise. He still plays football and golf, likes a night in the pub, enjoys the camaraderie of police work. But he also likes the company of strong, intelligent women. Which is why he was drawn to Ruth Galloway, which is why he is in this mess today.

Nelson sighs as he parks his car outside the Spens mansion. Having spent Sunday being the perfect husband, he now feels emotionally exhausted. He not only took Michelle to the garden centre but out for a pub lunch afterwards. He has even agreed to go to see some God-awful play with her tonight.

Now it's a relief to be able to turn back to business. And Edward Spens won't be able to hide behind his perfect house and double garage. Nelson wants some answers. Why didn't Spens mention from the beginning that his family used to own the house on Woolmarket Street? And is there a dead child that he also forgot to mention? Not in Edward Spens' lifetime perhaps but, sometime during the years that the Spens family lived in the house, a child was killed and buried under the wall, its head thrown into the disused well. That's quite some family secret.