The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  At the hospital there was less excitement – death was, after all, a commonplace of the normal day – but certainly there was curiosity. Few of the nursing staff could remember the last time a respirator had been needed in the place; usually people showing signs of respiratory failure were bundled off as fast as ambulances could carry them to the Communicable Diseases Hospital at Farborough thirty miles down the motorway where they had modern life support systems, or to the neurological unit at Doxford, equally well-equipped. Minster was, after all, only a small local general hospital and did not run to the luxury of an intensive care unit, but as the day sister on the ward where Pauline had died said to the yawning night sister as she collected the report, ‘That must have been one hell of a fast bug.’ She cocked a sharp eye at the other woman. ‘I did my fevers when I was at Great Ormond Street, of course.’ She never missed an opportunity of reminding everyone how exalted a training she had had. ‘And we saw a few of these bulbar paralyses, but we always had time to get them well ventilated. This one just collapsed, you say?’

  ‘Just collapsed,’ Night Sister said, sniffy at the implied rebuke. ‘And yes, it is a fast bug. You can talk to Dr Stewart if you want to compare notes about the better quality bugs you had at Great Ormond Street. We had bugs in Leicester, too, of course, when I did my fevers, but they were just ordinary cases. So I never saw one like last night’s. Child was barely in the ward and she was moribund. G’morning. Have a good day.’ And she went to sit over her breakfast coffee and gossip with the remainder of the senior night staff about that bitch on Lyall Davies’s ward and her snide comments.

  Jessie, sitting at the next table over her own breakfast – with Peter away in London, and Mark never eating breakfast anyway, it was easier to come to the hospital to have her own meal than to bother to make something at home – heard the rumble of the night staffs conversation and at first paid no attention to them. She just sat staring sightlessly over the edge of the coffee cup she held in both hands, her elbows propped on the table, thinking about Peter.

  That row they had had on Saturday when she had finally put her foot down and told him that no matter what he said or did she wasn’t coming to his conference with him had been horrendous. They had never been a couple who argued, she and Peter. He had grumbled, God knew; all their married life there had been Peter’s grumbling like an obbligato in the bass of a piece of familiar music to which you never really listened, but there had never been rows. She had been too pliant for that, always bending to what he wanted, silently letting him have his own way, never really saying what she wanted or how she wanted it. It had been less trouble that way, and it had actually given her what she did want more than anything else, which was peace and quiet. But for the first time there was something she had wanted more; to stay and work with Ben through the trial they had at last started was the most important thing in the world to her and nothing Peter could say or do would keep her from it.

  So she had been adamant. Not that she had said that to him; she had just quietly said that she wasn’t coming to London, thanks, and kept on repeating it as his grumbling turned into loud complaint and then built to a roar of fury. She had sat there at the dining table and let him shout and done nothing and said nothing until at last he’d blown out his rage and gone to bed.

  And the next morning she had calmly packed his bag for the week, making sure he had plenty of clean socks and shirts – it never occurred to Peter that he could wash such things for himself in hotel bathrooms – and even took his car round to the garage to fill the tank, and had stood there at the door waiting to be kissed as he left; and he had shouted at her all through his breakfast and was still shouting as he marched through the door – kissing her cheek on the way as he always did, of course – and got into his car. But at last he had gone, white with fury and self-righteous sulkiness, and she had felt rather sorry for him.

  Poor old Peter, how could he understand? He’d get over it, of course, once he got to London and his conference, and found lots of boring men to talk to all day and drink with all evening, probably going to one of those Soho shows he thought so sophisticated. He’d be happy enough when he got back, and she’d be extra nice to him and that would be that. And she would, for once, have done what she wanted. And she curled her fingers more tightly round her coffee cup and let her tight shoulders relax. A whole week on her own lay ahead; it was extraordinary how good that prospect made her feel. An uninterrupted day’s work to look forward to, and four more to follow it. Lovely.

  And then she became aware of the conversation at the next table, and her attention switched at once to what was being said and the implication of it for her own working day.

  ‘Barely eleven she was, and only in the ward half an hour when she died. Came in through A and E, so of course there’ll be a PM, and no one’ll be more interested than I will to know what they find. There’s that bitch suggesting almost in so many words it was because I didn’t get her into a respirator in time, but I tell you, it was like greased lightning. Breathing a bit laboured but perfectly competent one minute and the next navy-blue face and no bloody pulse. Even Madam Great Ormond Street couldn’t have done that much about that ….’

  ‘A PM?’ Jessie hadn’t meant to speak, knowing how nurses enjoyed snubbing non-nursing staff – apart from doctors, of course – but she had to know; today’s work had been carefully planned and the last thing they needed was an unscheduled postmortem. ‘Did you say you’ve got a PM today?’

  Night Sister from Dr Lyall Davies’s ward looked at her blankly, trying to decide whether to put her down as a pushy bloody technician or whether to be as charming as befitted a senior sister, and because Jessie looked worried rather than merely inquisitive, opted for charm.

  ‘Mmm. Child died on my ward last night within an hour of her admission and there has to be an inquest. She came in from that boarding school.’

  ‘Bluegates,’ Jessie said, and frowned. ‘Another one? That’s awful ….’

  ‘Another one?’ Sister twisted her chair to look at her more closely, her face alight with interest. ‘What do you mean, another one? Which department are you?’

  ‘Path, lab,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy – I don’t usually listen to other people’s conversations. It’s just that … there was a child a week ago from there, died at the school and they brought her in for a PM. It was on her birthday she died. She was only twelve. And now ….’

  ‘Well!’ Sister said triumphantly, and turned back to her companions of the night. ‘And there’s that bitch trying to suggest it was because we were slow that the wretched child died! Not a word said about the fact there was another one that had died already, that there was information we didn’t have, oh, no, not a word. Oh, I’ll have her! Just you wait till I get on tonight! I’ll get in early, so help me I will, just to have a go at her, not telling me … it’s outrageous.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know,’ Jessie said, but the night nurses’ table paid no attention to her at all; they were much too busy shredding the reputation of Day Sister, and Jessie got up and conscientiously stacked her dishes and took her tray back to the serving hatch before going along the trail of corridors back to the laboratory. She’d have to warn Ben there was another PM for an inquest and soothe Tomsett and then try to get on as fast as possible with the routine stuff so that perhaps, just perhaps, they could get through to the work on the trial they had scheduled for the day. It was all a mess, but never mind; Peter was in London, she could stay here all night if she wanted to, and that thought made every other one, however tiresome, an easy matter to deal with.

  Ben knew about the PM before he got to the hospital. He had been just about to leave the house when the phone had rung and Dan Stewart had told him that there was another child from Bluegates in need of his Investigation, and he had frowned but made no complaint, not this time. It was part of his job and he had no right to, and anyway, now he was interested. The death of one hitherto healthy child from
uncertain causes could be regarded as an irritating intrusion on a heavy work load; the death of a second from the same school was something quite different. No wonder Dan sounded grim on the phone, he thought as he dialled a number and listened to it ring at the other end. In his shoes I’d be bloody worried too.

  ‘Hello,’ June sounded breathless but bubbling with excitement, and he grimaced at the sound of her voice. Looking after Timmy gave her a lot of pleasure, he knew that, and he’d been pleased for her when she told him Liz was going away for a week and wanted her to take care of the child in his own home, rather than sending him to their house. ‘She thinks it’s less unsettling for him, Ben,’ June had said almost pleadingly. ‘And I can’t argue with her because she is his mother after all and ….’ And you’re terrified of doing anything to upset the damned woman, Ben had thought, furious for his vulnerable June, and so you let her get away with anything. But he’d said aloud, ‘That’s all right, love, if that’s the way it has to be, that’s the way it has to be. I’m busy at the hospital anyway, so it’s just as well, maybe. I’ll talk to you on the phone whenever I can.’

  Now, listening to her babbling on about how good Timmy was being and how she’d managed to spring-clean the kitchen while he was at playgroup and how she planned to start on Timmy’s bedroom today, he felt the irritation rising again; for God’s sake, why couldn’t she find something else to fill her life? Why this bloody obsession with the minutiae of domesticity and care of children when there was a whole bloody busy world out there for her? Yes, it was sad she couldn’t have children, but why turn a disappointment into a tragedy by wallowing in it? She was telling him how much fun she and Timmy had had the afternoon before, baking gingerbread men in the sparkling clean kitchen, and what he’d said and what he’d done, and he interrupted more harshly than he meant to, wanting to cut off that tinkling babble, needing to bring her down to some sort of reality.

  ‘I won’t be able to call you this evening,’ he said. ‘I’ll be working till God knows what time. I’ve got another child to post-mortem, not yet eleven years old this time, and it’s likely to be a hectic day, what with that and everything else I’ve got on hand. So I’ll call you tomorrow morning.’ And he snapped the phone back on its cradle and slammed the front door behind him and went hurrying down the wet brick path, treacherous with fallen leaves and yesterday’s rain; as though moving briskly and being obviously busy could make June, away on the other side of the town, realize how much her silliness irritated him. It was absurd behaviour and he knew it, but it made him feel a little better.

  June went back to the kitchen after she hung up the phone and sat down slowly at the table, watching Timmy make patterns in his porridge and milk, feeling the coldness lift a little higher in her belly at the sight of his happiness. His cheeks, so round and downy, with just enough tan left from the past hot summer to give him the look of freshly buttered toast as the golden hairs glinted on the brown skin in the overhead light, his hands, pudgy and awkward as he grasped his spoon, his legs rhythmically kicking the chair legs; all were inexpressibly dear to her and she leaned forwards and gripped his arm suddenly, bursting with fearful love for him. He looked up at her, his milk-stained mouth open with surprise, and for a moment looked as though he might cry, but she laughed and said, ‘Let’s make a lake with your porridge, see how much of the lake you can drink up!’ She guided his hands so that the grey sticky mass was pushed aside and the milk collected in the middle, and he laughed delightedly and stirred vigorously, and for a while she was able to forget the effect of Ben’s words as she shared his pleasure.

  But later, as she walked back from the playgroup at the church hall where she had left him, squealing busily with the other children over the miniature cars and the climbing frame, she remembered and felt sick. Children dying; they shouldn’t die. It was horrible to think of. For a moment she hated Ben for having a dreadful job that put him in the position of knowing of the death of lovely children, of small people like Timmy; and unbidden an image lifted in her mind’s eye of Ben holding a knife and slitting a child’s body from neck to pubis, the way she’d seen in a picture in one of his medical books she had happened to pick up, and the image frightened her so that she broke into a little run, needing to get back to Liz’s flat as fast as possible. It was awful, awful, and Ben was awful to have made her think about it. Why had he told her this morning he was a doing a postmortem on a child? She hated him for upsetting her so and wanted to phone him and tell him so.

  And knew she was being stupid and that he’d be furious with her, and rightly so. He was a busy man, worked hard, what with the lab and his research; she had no right to disturb him with her nonsense ideas, because they were nonsense ideas and she knew it. It was ridiculous to think that just hearing about a child’s death was any sort of threat to Timmy; of course it wasn’t, she was just being superstitious, and it had to stop … think about something else. Something else. Think about the other side of Ben’s work, about his research.

  But she couldn’t even do that, because she knew nothing about it. He’d tried to tell her once but she’d been on the first day of a period and bitterly miserable and hadn’t listened and after that he’d never tried again, so that had been that.

  She pushed open the gate and went into the garden. Maybe when she’d finished cleaning the bedroom she’d collect some brown leaves and make an arrangement for the corner. Timmy would like that. And if she concentrated on that thought, she promised herself, maybe she’d be able to forget how frightened Ben’s phone call had made her.

  Joe Lloyd heard about the second death at Bluegates while he was having his breakfast at the Toque Blanche caf¨ in Schooner Street, just behind the office. He had been there every day of his working life in the past five years, ever since his wife had made it so painfully clear that the provision of any sort of service for him – culinary as well as sexual – was totally out of the question, and he was therefore as much part of the furniture there as the battered chairs and the Fablon-covered tables. Dimitri, who stood behind the steaming cluttered counter at the far end where he could watch with a scowl the shaven-headed boys who played with the Space Invader machines by the door, always had his usual poached-egg-on-white-toast-tea-extra-slice-toast-marmalade ready for him as he walked in at nine o’clock each morning and never said more to him than a grunt; which was reasonable enough since that was all Joe ever said to him. They loathed each other, Joe hating Dimitri for his absurd airs and graces about his greasy establishment – Toque Blanche, indeed! – and Dimitri hating Joe for his ability to sneer in seven different facial expressions; but they needed each other, for regular customers were few and far between for Dimitri, and the place was the only one within reach of the office Joe felt able to afford on a daily basis.

  It was because he was so invisible to Dimitri and his friends – generally speaking it was only his personal friends who spent any time in his establishment – that Joe heard as much as he did about the child’s death. The woman who was leaning against the counter talking volubly when he came in, collected his breakfast as usual, and slapped down the exact money for it as usual, didn’t lose a syllable of her saga as he pushed past her. ‘Phoned from the hospital she did, told Miss Ventnor, and she told Miss Spain, and she had an attack, she did, started carrying on, saying she couldn’t be held responsible another minute she couldn’t, she was walking out, and out she walked, and the others started trying to get the girls settled, and they was all excited over their fireworks and all that, and not a one of their potatoes did they eat, in spite of my work slaving over ’em all day, and then when they heard what had happened they started carrying on an’ all.’

  ‘So?’ Dimitri passed a grey wet cloth over his counter, rearranging the grease into new patterns. ‘So, girls carry on. Girls always carry on. It’s what they’re for.’

  ‘So they starts falling down ill, that’s what,’ the woman said triumphantly. ‘Going paralysed, crying they can’t breathe, the lot. You never hea
rd a row like it. I was busy gettin’ their suppers ready, o’ course. Cookin’ sausages and potatoes, very busy I was.’ She smirked at them and bobbed her head in self-satisfaction. ‘But I heard what was going on. There isn’t much Edna misses, I can tell you! And I’ll tell you something more, there’s something real bad going on down at that there Bluegates. I’m givin’ up my job there, much as I need the money, and for all they begged me they did, that Nancy McGrath as works with me in the kitchen, told me with tears in her eyes she’d never get through the day without me to see things got done. Very attached to me, Nancy.’ She leaned her elbows on the counter and looked winningly up at Dimitri. ‘Gives me stuff to take home all the time, she does. Eggs and potatoes and that. Very attached to me, she is.’

  ‘Then you’ll miss her, won’t you?’ Dimitri winked at the man who had just come into the caf¨, bringing a wash of cold air from the street outside. ‘Her an’ her eggs and potatoes. You’ll have to go an’ buy ’em like everyone else, won’t you?’

  ‘That’s as may be.’ The woman stood up straight and began to brush down the front of her coat. That’s as may be. It’s not all of us is as rich as some, businessman like you. What do you know about what it’s like to have a family to look after?’

  ‘And an old man always on the sugar stick,’ the newcomer said, and the woman, ignoring him loftily, collected up her pile of tattered plastic bags and went, muttering a little under her breath, leaving Joe stirring his tea thoughtfully. There were things to be done, and ideas to be followed up, he told himself. One idea in particular.

  The idea took him first to Bluegates, then to the hospital, and finally to the coroner’s office on the third floor of the magistrates’ court in Bentley Road, on the north side of the town. When he got to the office, just after eleven, he was unusually affable even to Simon Stone, who was tied to his desk subbing the obituaries, Joe Lloyd’s favourite punishment for pushy reporters, and the first thing he did was to put in a call to London to the features editor of the News in Fleet Street. In all his career as a stringer, Joe had never had as promising a story to offer him, and he had every intention of making the best of it.