Elly Griffiths - The Janus Stone

Ruth thinks how strangely archaeologists speak sometimes. ‘Our body’. The bones found buried under the Roman foundations have become ‘our body’, linking Ruth and Max in some strange, surreal way. They both feel a sense of ownership, even sympathy, towards them. But is this enough reason for Max to leave this message? Did he really just want a cosy chat about decapitated bodies or did he, just possibly, want to talk to her again?

Ruth sighs. It’s all too complicated for her. Besides, she has other things on her mind. Tomorrow she has to drive to London and tell her mother that’s she’s pregnant.

‘So, you see, we’re developing three key sites in the heart of Norwich. The old tannery, the Odeon cinema and the derelict house on Woolmarket Street.’

‘Woolmarket Street?’ Whitcliffe cuts in. ‘Didn’t that used to be a children’s home?’

‘I believe so, yes,’ says Edward Spens, spreading butter on his roll. ‘Are you a local Norwich boy, Gerry?’

That explains a lot, thinks Nelson, as Whitcliffe nods. Nelson was born in Blackpool and would be back there like a shot if it wasn’t for Michelle and the girls. It had been Michelle’s idea for him to take the Norfolk job and, deep down, he still resents her for it. The girls don’t like Blackpool; everyone talks funnily and you eat your supper at five o’clock. And it’s too cold for them, although the local girls seem to wear miniskirts all year round.

They are at the ‘banquet’ stage now; roast pork disguised as suckling pig. Michelle has left most of hers. She is sparkling away at her neighbour, some goon called Leo wearing a pink shirt and ridiculous glasses. Nelson’s neighbour, a regal woman in blue satin, has ignored him completely, which has left him listening to Edward Spens’ relentless sales pitch.

‘It’s a family company,’ Spens is saying. ‘Built up by my father, Roderick Spens. Actually it’s Sir Roderick, he was knighted for services to the building trade. Dad’s supposed to be retired but he still comes into the office every day. Tries to tell me how to run things. He’s against me developing the Woolmarket site, for example, but it’s a prime piece of real estate.’ He laughs expansively. Nelson regards him stonily. Real estate . Who does this guy think he is?

‘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.