The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  I’ll tell them, I’ll go into Miss Cooper’s office and I’ll say, now Madam, I’m not one to bear tales, really I’m not, as well you know, but really, what that woman in your kitchen gets up to, with her little parcels in her bag and all that, thinks I don’t see, but I do, and Miss Cooper will say, oh, dear, Edna, how dreadful, sit down and tell me all about it – and her movements became more desultory still as she slid into a very satisfying vision of her whispered conversation with Miss Cooper about Nancy McGrath.

  Up in Rose Dormitory Miss Cooper was checking the children, looking down their throats with a torch, a spatula and an air of great knowledgeableness even though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. But someone had to do it, with Mary Spain up to her ears and over looking after the children in the sick bay, and the overflow they’d had to put into Jasmine Dorm.

  The girls stared solemnly back at her as they stood in front of her and one or two whimpered and tried to gag as she pushed their tongues down, but she glared back at them very firmly indeed and they soon stopped their fussing. Stopping their fussing, she told herself, as she patted Vanessa’s shoulder and made her give way to Emma, that’s what it’s all about. They’re far too suggestible, wretched girls, and they mustn’t be allowed to get away with it.

  ‘I feel awful, Miss Cooper, really I do,’ Emma said in a shrill little whine, and looked at her mournfully with wide damp eyes. ‘My legs are all wobbly and I think I’m just like Penelope was, and Lucy, and I want to ….’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Miss Cooper said firmly. ‘Let me look at your throat, and we’ll soon see what’s going on there. Open up! Wider … that’s it.’

  Did the throat look inflamed? It was hard to tell. The child certainly seemed hot and sweaty (Miss Cooper could smell the faintly acrid scent of her) but the heating was turned up to its usual November level, even in this unseasonably warm weather, and she herself was feeling rather warm. She stared, frowning, at the pink cavern with the wobbling tongue floor, and tried to decide what to do. Allow the child to go to Miss Spain in the sick bay and she’d increase this silly drama they were all making, but insist she went down to join the others at the fireworks party and then discover that she did in fact have the blasted flu and she’d spread it even further – bloody hell, she thought viciously, and withdrew the spatula as Emma began to retch rather alarmingly.

  ‘Well, Emma, I don’t think there is anything in the least wrong with you, but if you want to make a fuss out of a little cold and go to bed and miss the fireworks, then it’s up to you. No one will pay you any attention whatsoever, I can assure you, if you stay up here. Go to bed then, if you want to and think of all of us having a lovely time. There are baked potatoes and sausages ….’

  But none of the children reacted with the expected oohs of greedy pleasure; they just stood clustered round her looking sideways at Emma as she went across to her bed and sat on it, and though they did not move Dorothy Cooper felt the frisson that went through them, almost saw it as though a wind had whispered over a cornfield and made the stalks shiver.

  ‘My boyfriend Peter told me that Miranda Hallam was dead,’ Vanessa said suddenly, not looking at Dorothy Cooper, but keeping her eyes fixed on Emma sitting drooping on her bed. ‘He goes to school with a boy whose dad is a lawyer who looks after Miranda’s money. He said Miranda was quite rich because her Mum and Dad were dead, and her Auntie, and he said she died and now no one knows where her money’s going to go.’

  ‘You are much too young to be talking of having boyfriends, Vanessa Maxwell, and it’s exceedingly cheap of you into the bargain. What would your mother think of such things if she heard you?’

  ‘She likes him,’ Vanessa said, and still didn’t look at her. ‘His Dad’s rolling in loot, she says, and she likes Peter. I’ve got a good chance with him. And Peter said Miranda died here, and you never told anyone.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Miss Cooper said loudly and pulled the smallest child in the dorm, eleven-year-old Abigail, towards her. She hadn’t meant to be rough but her alarm made her movements jerky, and the child was startled and began to wail, her face creasing piteously.

  ‘Miranda had the bed next to me, Miranda had the bed next to me!’ she wept, and suddenly sat down on the floor. ‘My legs feel funny. I want Mummy …’ and the tears began to flow in real earnest. ‘I want to go home to my Mummy ….’

  Now the frisson could be clearly seen as a couple of the children shrank away from Abigail on the floor and began to cry too, and Vanessa stood smiling to herself, pleased with the effect she’d created, as others began to whimper.

  ‘Vanessa, you are a very stupid person,’ Miss Cooper said furiously. ‘Upsetting people with such nonsense! No one is dead and ….’

  ‘Miranda was in the next bed to me,’ bawled Abigail. ‘I don’t want to die like Miranda …’ and Miss Cooper got to her feet, her face white with rage.

  ‘Silence, all of you! One more word of this, and none of you go to the fireworks party, do you hear me? None of you! This is ridiculous rubbish, and I won’t have another word of it.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Lucy and Penelope, then?’ Vanessa was looking at her now, her chin up and her face smooth with insolence. ‘They wouldn’t have taken them to hospital if they weren’t ill, would they? And the sick bay’s full and people are in Jasmine being sick and saying their legs hurt and they wouldn’t be if it was all rubbish, would they? I want to phone my Mum and tell her this place is a charnel house and she’d better take me home.’

  ‘A charnel ….’ Dorothy had to make a physical effort not to lash out at the girl with her hands. ‘I never heard such rubbish in my life.’

  ‘You keep saying that,’ Vanessa said, and now the insolence was even more marked. ‘But Penny and Lucy aren’t rubbish, and they’re in the hospital and that isn’t rubbish and ….’

  ‘Go away before I lose my temper with you,’ Dorothy Cooper cried. ‘If you want to go home in the middle of term and ruin your O level work, that’s up to you, I wash my hands of you. Not that you’d get through anyway – you are a singularly stupid girl!’

  ‘Much I care,’ Vanessa said and went hipping over to the door. ‘I’m not ending up a sour old virgin like some I could mention so I don’t need your rotten exams.’

  It was hopeless, Dorothy realized. There was nothing she could do to stop the wailing, and she settled for physical action, harrying Abigail to her feet and half-dragging, half-carrying her to her bed, and sending the other girls downstairs to get ready for the evening’s fireworks, before going to find Mary Spain to get Emma’s and Abigail’s temperatures checked. If they really were ill, and she had to get that bloody Sayer woman out again, that really would put the tin hat on it; every time she’d come this week – and it had had to be appallingly often – her face had looked more smug than ever. It was more than flesh and blood could bear, and at the moment Dorothy Cooper was very sensitive flesh and blood indeed.

  ‘I don’t like the way Pauline Barnes is breathing,’ Mary Spain said as she came into the sick bay, and she made no effort to drop her voice and Dorothy again felt a surge of fury; was everyone determined to turn this minor run of flu into a dramatic epic in three acts? She frowned but Mary Spain, her face flushed and her hair in a tangle over her damp forehead, seemed unaware of her anger. ‘It’s the way they used to go when I was doing my fevers, the polios – I don’t like it. I can’t take the responsibility, Miss Cooper, and that’s the truth of it. I’m SEN, you know, not SRN, and there’s limits to what I can do on my own.’

  ‘Do keep your voice down, Miss Spain!’ Dorothy whispered furiously. ‘I’ve got enough on my hands without the rest of them flying into hysterical panics. You’ve got Miss Ventnor and Miss Holly to help you – do stop fussing so much! And I’m here too. I can leave Miss Johnson and Miss Charring to deal with the fireworks party – and I wish to heaven I’d never agreed to that in the first place – so what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to send Pauline to h
ospital,’ Mary Spain said, and set her lips in a sulky line, knowing the sort of response she’d get, but not caring. ‘I can’t be responsible, and that’s a fact. It’s no use you pretending there’s nothing going on here. We’ve got a bad epidemic and I don’t know what it is any more than you do, and that’s the truth of it. It could be anything – polio, anything.’

  ‘They’ve all had polio vaccine,’ Dorothy said, looking over her shoulder at the bed in the corner of the sick bay where the child Pauline was lying. ‘I don’t accept them if they haven’t. So it can’t be that. All right. If you can’t cope, I’ll get better help for you. I’ll call a nursing agency.’

  ‘No,’ Mary Spain said. ‘No, Miss Cooper, I’m sorry, but I’m not staying here to be responsible, and I’m not waiting for any other nurses, and there you have it. That girl ought to be in hospital.’

  ‘I’ll take her,’ Dorothy said, and now she sounded weary rather than angry. She’d done all she could to stop them all getting so excited and dramatic; no one knew better than she did how quickly hysterical notions could spread through a community made up largely of adolescent females. She had been quite certain that most of the illness was simple flu and the rest was tension and over-reaction fed into the children by Dr Sayer; but now, faced with a clearly frightened Mary Spain and a school full of children who were getting more and more agitated – and she thought venomously of the hateful Vanessa for a moment – she would have to give in. The time for firmness matched with soothing reassurance had gone. And she went down to her office to phone the hospital and explain that she had another child in a bad way, and was going to bring her in her car right away. They wouldn’t be best pleased either, she thought as she went down the stairs; they’ll fuss above having a referral from Susan Sayer, but I’m damned if I’m going to talk to that bloody woman tonight, I’m damned if I am.

  ‘It’s not poliomyelitis, I’m sure of that,’ Lyall Davies said. ‘Saw a lot of it, you know, in the States, when I was there in the fifties. Bad times, they were, bad times. You young men can have no idea what medicine was like in those days there, in the South. People died of the most appalling fevers you ever saw. Rocky Mountain Spotted, dengue, polio, the lot. Appalling. And I’m sure this isn’t polio – not even sure that the paralysis is a real one, d’you see. Lots of girls together too much, get notions. Remember what happened at the Royal Free twenty-odd years ago? Intelligent enough, you might think, student nurses, but there it was, went down like flies they did, complained of paralysis, the lot, but most of it was hysteria.’

  ‘That’s what they said at the time. Later they agreed there had been an organic basis,’ Dan Stewart said, irritated with the man even though what he was saying meshed with his own opinion; stupid old woman, he told himself.

  ‘Organic basis of course!’ Lyall Davies said. ‘I’m not denying that. I’m just saying that there’s an element of hysteria here. Psychological overlay, what? Yes, overlay.’ He rolled the word round his tongue, relishing it. ‘They get notions, girls do, make up their minds they’ve got something they haven’t. Yes, there’s an infection here, an enterovirus, I’d say, some diarrhoea, bit of nausea, some upper respiratory involvement, not all that unusual, you’ll agree. But that’s all – their reflexes are normal enough, don’t you see, and you don’t get the same response twice in a row when you examine ’em.’

  ‘I know,’ Dan said. ‘But all the same, I don’t like it. They’ve just brought in another from the school, and she’s showing definite breathing problems. Could be some bulbar involvement. Can you arrange life support? Just in case?’

  ‘Life support … trumpery language they use these days.’ Lyall Davies shook his head and tutted. ‘We’ve got a respirator here, of course – had ours for years, a good reliable piece of equipment too, not one of these fancy new jobs. They’ve got those at Farborough and Doxford, of course, but we don’t have ’em here and wouldn’t. Not part of our grading, d’you see. And you won’t need such a thing anyway, you mark my words. You can have it if you want it, of course. Here to help, you know, always here to help. But I’ll lay you odds you won’t need it. Now, you’ve got the run of the place, Stewart, you know that, I’m off now, my grandson’s fireworks party, don’t you know, they won’t have it without me, and there it is, but you stay here as long as you like. The boy I’ve got at the moment seems a pretty good chap for an Indian, Sanjib. That’s his first name, you understand, but I can’t get his surname round my poor old English tongue and he doesn’t seem to mind so that’s what we call him. You want anything, the nurses’ll get Dr Sanjib out for you. But do remember it’s Guy Fawkes tomorrow, won’t you? Most of the fireworks parties’ll be tonight, seeing it’s a Sunday, so they’ll be busy in Accident and Emergency and I’ve said they can borrow Sanjib if they’re pushed. Goodnight, m’boy. I dare say you’ll find your little girls are just fussing you.’ And he went, leaving Dan standing in the corridor outside the ward, and chewing his lower lip.

  Up to a point he agreed with the old boy. He might just be sitting out the days till his retirement, but still he’d had a lot of experience in his day and he must have had some fire in his belly once to have been appointed to a consultancy at all, but all the same … he shook his head and went into the ward, to find Dorothy Cooper sitting alone in the sister’s office, the phone clamped to her ear.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she was saying. ‘Yes, absolutely. Once the display’s over get them fed and to bed as soon as you can. And let them have their radios on if they want to. The more they’ve got to distract them the less likely they’ll get to be agitated. Now, are you sure that you … fine. Thanks Wynn, thank God I’ve got you to keep your head there! I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can.’

  She cradled the phone and looked up at Dan and made a face. ‘It’s beginning to look as though Sayer’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m still not sure,’ Dan said. ‘Lyall Davies thinks it’s just an enterovirus of some sort.’

  ‘Entero ….’

  ‘A virus spread through the gut. They’ve had diarrhoea as well as the running noses and sore throats and tight chests, haven’t they? And there’s been some sickness as well.’

  ‘Diarrhoea.’ Dorothy dismissed that with a wave of her hand. ‘That’s always happening. Happened to me too, all this week, but it’s nothing to make much of. I’ve had worse and I do know there’s a lot of it about. Saw a piece in the paper – local GPs run off their feet apparently.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, but we know pretty well what that is. It’s not associated with these other symptoms your girls are getting, that’s the thing. Especially not the muscular weakness.’

  There was a little silence and then Dorothy said, ‘I’m getting really worried, Dr Stewart. Do you think that child Miranda could ….’

  He shook his head, not looking at her, the same anxiety chewing at the back of his own mind. ‘I don’t know. It could be. I didn’t think so at the time, but ….’

  ‘But Sayer made a fuss, so you agreed with me. And I could have been wrong.’

  ‘Something like that.’ He made a face and then said violently, ‘Oh, shit!’

  ‘That doesn’t help.’ She stood up. ‘I’d better see how Pauline is. I gather Lucy and Penelope are doing well enough, but they weren’t too happy about the child I just brought in. Will you come and see too?’

  ‘Not much I can do,’ Dan said. ‘I want to see some of the path, reports. They’ve taken some swabs for culture – there might be something in them. And I’ve got to think about what to do about the school. I might have to send them home, you know, Miss Cooper. Close you down for a while. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know,’ she said bleakly. ‘I expect you will. I thought things were going too well. Only three empty places this term, the first time for years it’s been so good. I thought, the way money is these days, no one’ll be able to send their girls to me even though I’m one of the cheaper schools, but there it was, getting better. And now this. It’s not fair, is it?’


  He grinned for a moment. ‘You sound like one of your own girls – not fair, not fair.’

  ‘Do I? Well, there isn’t all that much difference, is there? Except they’ve got time on their side. They’re young.’ And she turned to go to the door, but Sister appeared there, and stood staring at them both with a portentous look on her round face.

  ‘Miss Cooper? You’re the teacher, are you, from the school? Yes. Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to the parents of the Barnes child. We did the best we could ….’

  ‘You did … what?’ Dorothy said, and stared at her, her mouth half-open. ‘What do you mean, talk to the parents of the child?’

  ‘We couldn’t get her into the respirator in time. I’m sorry. Stopped breathing, do you see. It’s as well, perhaps. By the time we’d got her in it my guess is there’d have been brain damage. Anyway, there it is. I’ll arrange for the necessary formalities and so forth – there’ll be an inquest, of course, only in here an hour or so, so that’s got to be dealt with – and leave the parents to you, if I may? Pity, isn’t it? Children dying – it always upsets people so much.’

  7

  It upset the whole town. It really was quite remarkable how quickly the news spread; Dorothy Cooper would have been gratified to know just how much the people of the town knew about her school and how interested they were to talk about the happenings there, although she would have been less happy to hear the relish with which they passed on the information they were able to glean.

  ‘Dying like flies,’ the school milkman told every customer he could bring to the door on a trumped-up excuse as he made his slow way down Petts’ Hill to the town centre. ‘Rushin’ ‘em into the hospital fast as they can go, and they’re all dead when they get there. Shocking, ain’t it? Young girls like that.’ And his eyes gleamed with lubricous excitement as his customers stopped to gossip with each other over the garden hedges and he went scuttling on, his very bottles glittering with the drama of it all, to spread the news further still.