Nelson is on his way to work when he gets the call. He has his phone on hands-free so Judy’s voice fills the car. Nelson finds it hard to take in the details, even as he drives through the empty streets. Cathbad is in hospital, on oxygen, Judy is in quarantine.
‘I don’t know any more,’ says Judy. Nelson can hear her struggling to control herself. Judy, who is always in control. ‘It’s very hard not being with him.’
‘I bet it is,’ says Nelson, ‘but he’s in the right place. He’s getting good care.’ Even as he says this, he wonders if it’s true. Is a hospital full of Covid patients really the best place to be during a Covid pandemic?
‘Try not to worry, love,’ he says. Then he spends the rest of the journey worrying about calling his most senior officer ‘love’.
When he gets to the station, Tony is already there. Nelson groans inwardly. He doesn’t think he can take a day listening to Tony’s chatter. Sure enough, when Nelson explains about Cathbad, Tony launches into a long story about two cousins in China who caught, and subsequently recovered from, the virus.
‘That’s great, Tony,’ says Nelson, when he can get a word in. ‘Let’s get on with our work, shall we?’ In silence, he wants to add, like Sister Anthony used to say to his primary school class. ‘I’m casting my cloak of silence over you.’ But Tony seems to get the message.
Leah brings him a cup of coffee. ‘I hope Cathbad’s OK,’ she says. ‘Judy’s so lovely. I can’t bear to think of her being worried.’
Judy had been worried about Leah, Nelson remembers. What had she said? She seems a bit quiet. But Leah, unlike Tony, is not given to chatting. For which Nelson thanks God silently.
Thinking of God, as always, reminds him of his mother. He hadn’t rung her last night so he does so now.
Maureen sounds bracingly the same. No, she’s not ordering food online. She doesn’t hold with things like that. She goes to the shops with her wheely bag. Of course she wears a mask. Maeve brought her a pack. Nelson’s older sister, Maeve, lives near their mother, and visits every other day. ‘She doesn’t come in,’ says Maureen, ‘she stands in the garden and shouts up at me. It’s a gas.’ Nelson’s other sister, Grainne, lives further away but apparently she did one of those Zoom yokes the other night.
‘How are you, Harry?’ asks Maureen at last. ‘Are you still on your own? Is Michelle still in Blackpool with Georgie?’
‘Yes,’ says Nelson, ‘she’s a bit worried about her mum. Louise has diabetes, you know.’
‘She’s as fit as a fiddle,’ says Maureen.
‘She certainly seems it,’ says Nelson.
‘How’s Katie?’ asks Maureen. Nelson answers carefully. Maureen now knows about Ruth and Katie but he doesn’t want to get into an ethical debate with her, if he can help it.
‘She’s fine. Her school’s closed so Ruth’s teaching her at home.’
A silence.
‘Laura’s back home with me,’ says Nelson. ‘She was finding it a bit hard to cope, living in the flat.’
‘My prayers have been answered,’ says Maureen but without much surprise. She always expects her prayers to be answered. ‘Laura can look after you.’
‘I can look after myself, Mum.’
‘A home’s not a home without a woman in it.’
Nelson thinks of the little cottage on the marshes containing two of his favourite women.
‘We’re taking turns cooking,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Laura will go back to her flat when all this is over.’
‘Sure, it’ll be over soon,’ says Maureen. ‘I don’t know anyone who’s actually got the thing, do you?’
‘Cathbad. Remember him? He’s in hospital with Covid.’
‘Cuthbert? Of course I remember him. He’s a good soul. I’ll pray for him. I watch mass on the computer every day. Yesterday I went to the Vatican.’
‘You do that, Mum. Give the Pope my love.’
‘He’s a good man, is Pope Francis. He understands about life.’
That makes one of us, thinks Nelson.
Ruth is also shocked by the news about Cathbad. Judy sends her a text, which is closely followed by a call from Nelson.
‘I can’t imagine Cathbad getting ill,’ says Ruth.
‘No,’ says Nelson. ‘I think it’s thrown us all. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’
‘Thanks,’ says Ruth. ‘How’s Laura?’
‘She’s fine,’ says Nelson. ‘I expect she just needed a rest.’
Ruth is too proud to ask ‘When will I see you again?’ so she says, rather heartily, that she hopes Laura continues to feel better and she rings off. Kate is watching her.
‘Is that Dad? How’s Laura? Is she coming to see us?’
‘I don’t suppose she can. Because of lockdown.’ Although that didn’t stop her running home to Daddy, thinks Ruth. ‘I heard from Judy earlier,’ she says. ‘Cathbad isn’t very well.’
‘Is it Covid?’ says Kate, sounding disconcertingly like a much older person.
‘Yes. They think so.’
‘Tasha’s mum had Covid but she’s better now.’
‘Most people do get better very quickly,’ says Ruth. The words but some people don’t hover unsaid. But they don’t need to be said when every news bulletin is full of hospital wards crammed with the sick and dying. Is Cathbad in intensive care? Attached to tubes and drips? Ruth wishes she could ask Zoe about his possible treatment, but she saw her leaving for work earlier, wearing her blue scrubs and waving cheerfully. Ruth had waved back, channelling Mrs Grantham.
After a morning of pretending to work, Ruth and Kate go for a walk across the marshes. Ruth thinks of the first time she saw Cathbad. The archaeologists had planned to remove the henge timbers to the museum. The wood needed to be treated so that it could be preserved. But, when they arrived at the site that morning, it was to find a group of cloaked figures forming a protective ring around the original circle. The leader had been a youngish man with long black hair and a piratical beard.
‘They belong here,’ he had said. ‘Between the earth and the sky. Part of the cycle of nature, part of the ebb and flow of the tides.’
Those, she thinks, were the first words she heard Cathbad say. Erik had been impressed with him, had stayed to argue his case, but Cathbad and his druid friends had refused to move. Finally, at sunset, and against Erik’s wishes, the protestors were removed by the police. Ruth didn’t speak to Cathbad then – they only became friends years afterwards – but he had, it transpired later, noticed her.
‘Let’s go back,’ says Kate. ‘It’s boring and cold.’ It’s true that it’s a grey day with a sharp wind. They haven’t got near to the beach or the henge circle but Ruth agrees to turn back. ‘Hecate knows her own mind,’ Cathbad always says. ‘But you don’t seem to know her name,’ Ruth sometimes answers. She can’t, now, imagine a life without Cathbad.
Back home, they eat cheese sandwiches for lunch. Ruth will need to go food shopping again soon. Kate settles in front of the television but Ruth has a lecture at two so she props her laptop at a flattering angle and starts to upload her presentation. An email pops onto the screen, silhouetted against Avebury Ring.
I think I’ve found something. Can you come to Tombland?
Judy has never known a day like it. She has never realised before how much the house belongs to Cathbad. He’s in every inch of it. His cloak over the banisters. His jams and preserves in the pantry. His bug hotel and hedgehog house in the garden. The hens squawking for him. Thing howling for him.
Maddie is a tower of strength and takes the children for a walk, before engaging them in several games of Mario Kart. Judy has to admit that the neighbours have also been very kind. Steve and Richard (‘Whatsit’ to Judy no longer) have baked a cake and passed it over the fence. Jill, on the other side, posted a card through the letter box. It showed a teddy bear looking out of a window and said, ‘We’re here if you need us. If you don’t, we’re still here.’ She included her mobile number but not her husband’s name, so Judy is still not sure if it’s Fred or Ned. Did Jill buy the card specially? Where? All the specialist stationery shops are shut. Or does she have a stock of such things, a neat phrase for every occasion? This message strikes Judy as rather touchingly obvious. Neighbours are just there, you don’t choose them like friends, they are simply the people who live nearby. But, today, their presence is definitely comforting.
Now it’s afternoon and Maddie and the children are watching The Lord of the Rings. ‘We’ll watch all the films,’ Maddie tells them, ‘it’ll take ages.’ It’s all a bit much for Judy; Frodo wondering why it’s his fate to live through such times, Gandalf telling him to shut up and get on with it (or words to that effect). Cathbad loves Tolkien and once had a cat called Hobbit. Judy leaves the children in Middle Earth and retreats to her bedroom to ring the hospital. There’s no answer on the number she was given by the paramedics but she goes through the switchboard and, eventually, after shamelessly using her police rank, she gets through to a nurse who tells her that Cathbad has been moved to Intensive Care.
‘It’s not necessarily anything to worry about,’ says the kindly voice at the end of the phone. ‘It just means that they can look after him properly.’
‘And I can’t see him?’
‘I’m afraid not. No visitors allowed on the Covid wards.’
Judy sits at the workspace she created only a week ago. What would Cathbad do now? Pray to the healing spirits? Light a ceremonial bonfire? Bake some brownies? Instead Judy googles the hospital, planning to check the ICU success rates. If they are poor, maybe she can get Cathbad moved elsewhere. Along with complaints about parking charges and maps showing new building works, she sees news stories from the past, the hospital’s name highlighted. One of them includes a photograph.
Nurse cleared of killing patients.
Nurse Dawn Stainton, 32, was yesterday cleared of killing patients Bill Grimes, 86, Edna Bates, 91, and Margaret Loomis, 88 . . .
Judy looks again at the photograph. She remembers the yoga picture and the slight unease she’d felt at the laughing face on the other side of Ruth’s fence. Because Dawn Stainton is, without doubt, Ruth’s new neighbour, last seen gatecrashing Cathbad’s online class.