The nurse ushers Ruth into a room with a bed and a contraption like a TV screen. Another woman stands by the screen, nonchalantly chewing gum. Ruth is reminded uncomfortably of the autopsy room. Only this time she is the body on the slab. Don’t be morbid, she tells herself. This is a perfectly routine procedure. So is an autopsy, persists the voice inside her head.
The nurse tells Ruth to undo her trousers, and rubs gel onto her stomach. Ruth squirms. She hates being touched on her stomach and avoids massages and beauty treatments like the plague. ‘Relax!’ she remembers a masseuse once saying to her. Eccentric she knows but, for Ruth, having some manicured stranger kneading your shoulder blades whilst chatting about their holidays is the very opposite of relaxing.
The other woman now places something like the end of a stethoscope onto Ruth’s stomach, pressing quite hard. Ruth has been told not to go to the loo before the scan and the pressure is really very uncomfortable. For a second she feels like jumping off the bed and heading for the nearest Ladies. But then she sees that the screen is full of what look like wispy grey clouds. In the centre of the clouds something is moving.
Ruth has seen scans before – of bones and other archaeological objects. She knows that the high-frequency sound waves bounce off solid objects. She knows how to look at degrees of light and shade, to assess density and structure. But this – this is something quite different. This collection of dark circles, moving slowly on the screen, this is both completely incomprehensible and suddenly utterly real. This is her baby.
‘That’s the baby’s heart,’ says the woman, speaking for the first time and pushing the gum into the corner of her mouth. She points towards four black, pulsating circles.
‘That’s its spine.’ Ruth sees a slender white line moving across the screen. For some inexplicable reason, tears come to her eyes. Then she remembers something.
‘Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?’
‘Not at this scan. We’ll probably be able to tell at the next one, at about twenty weeks.’
But looking at the screen through swimming eyes, Ruth is convinced that the baby is a boy. There is something masculine, almost jaunty, about the little figure swimming around in her womb. The woman points at another part of the screen. ‘Long legs. Has your partner got long legs?’
Has Nelson got long legs? Ruth imagines him striding from place to place, impatient, eager to get to the next job. He is tall, presumably his legs are long. Longer than Ruth’s, certainly. Then, suddenly, it hits her for the first time. This baby is half his. Up until this point, she has thought of the baby as entirely hers, has even thought that it is the only thing in the world that is really hers. But it is not hers. For a second she sees the shape on the screen as completely alien – a male, a miniature Nelson. She closes her eyes.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes… just a little sick.’
‘That’s OK. It often happens. We’re done anyhow.’ She hands Ruth some scratchy paper towels to clean her stomach and Ruth sits up slowly.
‘I’ll print off an image for you to take home.’
‘An image?’ Ruth looks at her blankly.
‘Of the baby! To show your partner.’
‘Oh, yes. Thank you.’
Ruth drives slowly back to the university, aware that she is doing the whole mirror/signal/manoeuvre thing with more care than at any time since her driving test. She keeps to the two-second rule and is so slow passing a bicycle that the car behind her hoots impatiently. She knows that she is driving like an old lady in a hat but she can’t help herself. She is filled with the overwhelming realisation that she is carrying another human being inside her. A human being, moreover, with its own personality and its father’s long legs. She is its vehicle, carrying it smoothly from A to B, making sure that she gives all the right signals and doesn’t crash into an oncoming lorry. How will she keep it up, a journey of nine months, never exceeding the speed limit, no Little Chef to stop at on the way? Perhaps she’ll get used to it in time…
Term is over for the students. She sees them everywhere: carrying cases into cars, having tearful farewells in doorways, writing loving messages on each other’s T-shirts. Get over it, Ruth wants to say. You’ll see each other again in September. But she can remember what it’s like to have the whole summer stretching ahead of you: working, travelling, lounging around annoying your parents. Four months is an eternity when you’re eighteen. By the time the students come back, Ruth will be seven months pregnant. According to the printout in her bag, her baby is due on the first of November.
The students may be on holiday but Ruth isn’t. She has dissertations to mark and lectures for next year to prepare. She climbs the stairs to her office and is touched to find two of her students loitering outside to say goodbye. Ruth teaches postgraduates who are usually on a one-year MA course so this really is the last time she will see them, especially as these two are from the States (she has a lot of overseas students; the university needs the money).
‘Goodbye… good luck… keep in touch… come and see us if you’re ever in Wisconsin…’
Extracting herself, Ruth opens her door and begins collecting papers and books. Seeing her office with its
‘Ruth! How are you?’ It is Phil.
Phil now knows about her pregnancy and is being supportive. He expresses this by talking in a hushed voice and asking her how she is at every opportunity.
‘How was it?’ He means the scan (she had to tell him as attending meant she missed the end-of-term lunch) but Ruth chooses to misunderstand.
‘The post-mortem? OK. The new pathologist is a bit over-keen, jumps to conclusions too much-’
‘I meant… the
‘Oh, fine thanks.’
‘No
‘No.’
Phil stands in the doorway, smiling annoyingly. Ruth longs to get rid of him.
‘Going away this summer?’ asks Phil.
‘No. You?’
‘Well…’ Phil looks embarrassed. ‘Sue and I might get away to our place in France for a few days.’ Ruth wonders what Shona thinks about this. The latest from Shona is that Phil will leave his wife ‘after the final examiners’ meeting’. Why this fairly arbitrary date was chosen, Ruth has no idea; she only knows that Shona clings to it like the promise of the second coming. And if Phil does leave Sue, she thinks cynically, Shona’s problems are only just beginning.
‘Are you planning to drop in on the Swaffham site today?’ asks Phil, changing the subject with alacrity. ‘I hear they’re coming up with some interesting stuff.’
‘I might do.’ In fact, she is planning to go straight home. Her back aches and she longs to lie down. But Phil is enthusiastic about Max’s dig. The Romans are always worth a lottery grant or two, maybe even a TV appearance.
‘Great. Could you pick up some soil samples?’
Damn, now she will have to make the detour into Swaffham and spend ages faffing about with sample bags. Why can’t Phil do it? Probably off to meet Shona.
‘OK,’ she says.
It is almost dark by the time she reaches the site. There are no cars parked on the churned-up earth at the bottom of the bank and Ruth is not sure if she feels pleased or disappointed. She hasn’t seen Max since the Imbolc night and wonders whether it will be awkward when she does. Did the kiss mean anything to him? Probably not, probably in Brighton they kiss each other at every opportunity. But she knows she has been thinking about it. Not all the time, she has too many other things on her plate, but certainly more than is comfortable. All in all, she is pleased to have the place to herself.
