The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  He had never been a violent man, not physically. He’d always said that a man who had to use his fists to get what he wanted wasn’t a real man. It took brains, a tongue well-employed, wisdom, an air of authority to operate as a man should, he would say when cases of wife-battering were talked about, and was as disgusted as anyone else by the stories told of injured women and frightened children. But now it was different. Now it was he who was being pushed by a provocative wife into behaviour that was obnoxious to him, the way he had heard it said some of these wife-beaters were, and as he hurled himself across the room at her somewhere inside his head a voice was shouting at him, you’ve got to stop her …

  He hadn’t even realized he’d lifted his hand; it was as though all the day’s frustrations and fears had boiled up inside him to make a head of steam that operated his body of its own volition. Not until his hand hit her face with a stinging blow did he know he’d done it, and then, even as he watched his own hands in horror, the hitting went on, slapping her face from side to side so that her hair swung over her shoulders and her neck seemed as though it would crack under the strain of the movements.

  She was crying aloud, screaming, and that made it worse, and he tried to pull the case from her hands, to throw her on to the bed, to show her he was master – that she couldn’t just walk out on him, just because he’d talked about what any intelligent man would talk about when he heard his property had been damaged – but she used it to protect herself, shoving it hard against him, and the corner of the heavy case, with its cladding of protective metal, caught him in the crotch and made him squeal with pain and double over.

  And then she was gone, running away from him, down the stairs and out of the front door. He could hear every step she took, heard the front door opened and left open, heard the slam of the car door as she threw herself into it and then its choked cough as she switched on the engine. By the time he was able to straighten up as the sickening wave of pain she had created slowly subsided, the car’s sound was dwindling down the avenue.

  It always looked so easy when they did it on a film or on TV: they would just stuff a handkerchief nonchalantly into the mouthpiece of the telephone and talk and what was heard at the other end was a clear but totally disguised voice. But it wasn’t like that in real life.

  The first time Hugh did it, pushing the money home as the pips started, asking for the editor, all he got was a bored voice at the other end repeating, ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’ and then swearing and breaking the connection. The second time the voice said with marked asperity that he should try to get through via the operator because she couldn’t hear a word, and again the connection was broken. So this time, very aware of spending ten-penny pieces as though they were going out of fashion, he abandoned the handkerchief ploy and decided to use an accent. He could do a fairly good Scottish one, but only when he said things like, ‘Och, aye, the noo’; he wasn’t sure he could sustain it for the amount he had to say. And then he was struck, he decided, by a touch of genius, and settled down to be as Irish as he knew how.

  ‘The editor isn’t here,’ the now familiar voice of the switchboard operator said, ‘I’ll put you through to the editorial floor – someone there’ll be able to help you, I dare say. Want to tell ’em about a wedding or a function do you? If it’s a private function, it’s our Mr Frost, but if it’s a more public thing, like a play by a local group, it’s our Mr Pullen.’

  ‘It’s a news story,’ Hugh said grandly, and then remembering the need for consistency said it again. ‘’Tis a news story, begorrah,’ and then as he listened to the click as the girl put him through thought uneasily – that’s too stagey. I mustn’t say that. Be careful.

  His heart was thumping hard when at last someone answered the extension. ‘Minster Advertiser, Editorial,’ the voice barked.

  ‘Ah … yes …’ Hugh swallowed, and coughed slightly. ‘I’m afther having a bit of a story for youse ….’ Did that sound better? It seemed Irish enough to him, but it was hard to be sure.

  ‘It’s a bit late tonight, I’m afraid,’ the voice said sharply. ‘Weddings should be phoned in between ten and four to Mr Frost, events between ten and four to Mr Pullen. Goodnight.’

  ‘’Tis not a wedding, by gob!’ Hugh shouted, almost feeling the way the phone was about to be hung up on him. ‘’Tis a warning, that it is ….’

  There was a little silence and then the voice said at the other end. ‘A warning? What sort of a warning?’

  ‘That’s better, now,’ Hugh said, and relaxed. It wasn’t going to be so difficult after all. ‘’Tis important ye pay me some attention, now.’

  ‘I’m all bloody ears,’ the voice said. ‘What do you bloody well want?’

  ‘There’s no need to be swearing,’ Hugh said indignantly, and then added quickly, ‘at all, at all.’ The voice at the other end of the phone snorted.

  ‘Listen, I’ve better things to bloody do than sit here and be buggered about by some sort of practical joker. Tell me what you have to say, or I’m hanging up right now.’

  ‘The hospital. There’s to be a … um … a happening there, yes, a happening. Wednesday night. You be there, you and your cameras and your reporters as well, and you’ll get something to your advantage. I can’t say more than that. There’s to be a happening.’ He realized suddenly that he’d forgotten his accent, and added smoothly, ‘Indeed to goodness’, and remembered too late that it was Welsh.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Now, you can’t be expectin’ me to be telling ye that! Call me a well-wisher.’ Hugh shifted the phone to his other ear, painfully aware of the way he’d been pressing it too tightly to his head. ‘Just a well-wisher, as wants to see daycent justice done. I’m after tellin’ ye, there’s to be a happening at the hospital on Wednesday night, about midnight. Be there.’

  ‘What’s the codeword?’

  ‘Eh?’ Hugh said, and swallowed hard. What had he overlooked?

  ‘There’s a bloody codeword the IRA uses when it’s a true bill. You use it now and I’ll bloody take you seriously.’

  ‘Who said I was anythin’ to do wid de IRA?’ Hugh said, watching himself anxiously in the cracked and dirty mirror over the phone. ‘Don’t udder Oirhish groups ….’

  ‘And they’re bloody hoaxers too,’ the voice said sharply, but Hugh wasn’t put out now. He’d aroused this man’s interest and he knew it.

  ‘Well, I’m not one of ’em,’ he said. ‘Be at the hospital Wednesday and find out for yourself. You’ve nothing to lose but a great story.’

  ‘Where at the hospital? It’s a big place, covers a bit of acreage. Whereabouts?’

  ‘By the pathological laboratories, that’s whereabouts,’ Hugh said, and then jumped half out of his skin at a loud tapping on the glass of the telephone kiosk. ‘The laboratories at Minster Hospital, midnight Wednesday. You have been warned.’ And he hung up and pushed his way out of the box past the bad-tempered old woman who was waiting outside.

  He’d done it and if that didn’t show that bastard Graham where he got off nothing would. All he had to do now was pray they’d take his call seriously and turn out. Tomorrow, perhaps, he’d call the TV people, get them to come too? But would they be able to be discreet, that was the question; he had rather hazy ideas about how many people were needed to make a TV show; would they come in dozens with batteries of lights, frighten Graham off? That would never do. No, leave well alone. Just hope that the man at the Advertiser would take it seriously, that was all. Just pray that he was a real journalist who knew when to sit up and take notice.

  He need not have worried. Joe Lloyd had sat up very straight and had started to take a great deal of notice as soon as his caller had mentioned the laboratories. Now, as he sat and stared at the silent phone and whistled soundlessly through his teeth, he was trying to decide what to do: alert the police as any sober citizen should when he’d been given a warning by an Irish voice? No, he thought. No need to pre-empt my own scoop. That voice was as Irish as a palm
-fringed lagoon; whatever this was, it wasn’t a terrorist ploy. It had something to do with the laboratories at Minster, and that was where Edna Laughton worked when she wasn’t working at Bluegates School, and Bluegates was where there was a mysterious epidemic, and the whole thing was Joe Lloyd’s very own story. Someone up there actually loved him, for a change.

  The whistling stopped being soundless and began to be a merry jig that made Simon Stone look up and ask himself whether this might not be a good time to talk to the old man about getting out and about. He was worth more than these horrible obituaries, he told himself. Much more. And the boss must surely realize it soon and give him the opportunities he deserved. And he got to his feet and went hopefully into Joe Lloyd’s office.

  15

  June lay curled on the sofa, her head buried in the cushions, but still the sounds of her sobs made the air around him shiver, and Ben leaned forwards yet again to take her shoulders in both hands so that he could pull her towards him and hold her close and comfort her. But it was no use; she resisted him furiously, and after a moment he stopped trying. He was too tired to go on, for even that small action of reaching for her had made his arms and shoulders ache.

  He knew he should feel unhappy for her, should feel remorse for letting her down as he had, but however hard he tried to drum up that feeling in him he couldn’t. All he felt was a dull anger and that didn’t help his general sense of ill-being. Bad enough he was exhausted by lack of sleep and the excitement of the new stage in his work; why did he have to face this as well?

  He’d tried to explain that to her when she’d phoned him at the hospital, but it hadn’t been any good. He’d been very deeply asleep in the night staff’s room in the medical quarters, and when the phone had rung beside his ear he had felt like a drowning man struggling up from the depths of a vast ocean as he tried to wake enough to answer it; and then there had been Moscrop’s voice in his ears, apparently apologetic but in fact rather amused, jeering, almost.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Ben,’ the voice had clacked into his ear as he pulled himself half upright, in an effort to stop himself falling asleep again. ‘Wouldn’t have disturbed you for the world ….’

  ‘What is it? Don’t say it’s an urgent PM because I don’t think I could ….’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. We’re coping rather well here, in spite of being two short. No, I’m afraid it’s your wife.’

  ‘My wife? What about her?’

  ‘She’s on the phone. Says she’s got to talk to you, and when I told her that you were asleep over in the medical quarters because you were up all night last night, she got very agitated and said she must talk to you right away. So I thought I’d better – she really is rather distressed. I’ve got her holding on the other line. Shall I have the call transferred?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ben said flatly, and held on to the phone, listening to the clicks as the operator made the connection, wishing he could see behind Moscrop’s smooth façade. He suspected the man laughed at him for having a wife who called as often as June did, but he couldn’t deny that she did make a nuisance of herself. If anyone else in the department had so many personal calls wouldn’t he object in some way? Probably, he told himself, irritable suddenly, probably.

  ‘Ben, darling?’ The voice came tremulously into his ear and he blinked; he’d been on the point of falling asleep again.

  ‘Yes, I’m here. Look, June, I wish you wouldn’t do this, phoning all the time. It makes the work of the department so difficult.’

  ‘But you’re not working!’ she said it shrilly. ‘You’re not, because that man Moscrop told me so. If he’d said you were doing a PM or something I’d have let it go, but he said you were only asleep.’

  ‘Only asleep? Damn it, June, I was up all last night, remember? I told you that when I phoned you this morning – I’ve had ….’ He squinted at the watch on his wrist. ‘Just three hours sleep in the last thirty. I’ve got to get some rest, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Then, Ben, come home and rest.’ Her voice was wheedling, no longer shrill or self-justifying. ‘Come home, and I’ll make you comfortable and you can sleep as much as you like. Once you’re comfortable ….’

  It was as though his heart had twisted in his chest, so sharp was the thump of apprehension that hit him. She couldn’t mean it, could she? He tried to do the counting in his head, tried to remember when her last period had been, and again that thump of adrenalin hit him, but this time it left a sickly feeling behind.

  ‘Look, June, I can’t.’ He tried to pretend he didn’t know what she wanted. ‘I’m exhausted, do you understand? I must get some more sleep, just till the end of the afternoon, and then go down to the department for a while to check on all I haven’t done all day. I’ve got some new animals coming in and I’ve got to be there to receive them, and there are other things too – let me sleep now, and get everything done and I’ll be home as soon as I can, I promise you.’

  She had started weeping again, weeping so bitterly he could almost see the tears on her face. ‘Please, Ben, I did the test, the mucus one – I know it’s now, right now. By tonight I might be past it again, and that’s another month gone – please Ben. Please ….’

  His jaw had tightened. ‘June, I’ve told you before, the fertile phase lasts at least two days. Later tonight will be fine – even tomorrow would, I promise you.’

  ‘Now, Ben, now – I can’t bear it if you don’t come now – please Ben ….’ And he had wanted to hang the phone up with a slam to get rid of her, but of course he hadn’t. The strength of June’s weakness was formidable: she could make the most determined people do anything she wanted just by standing there and weeping helplessly.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, his voice expressionless, and hung up the phone carefully, with just a click. It would never do to lose control now, to indulge himself by attacking inanimate objects.

  And much good it had done her, anyway, he thought now, standing in the kitchen and making black coffee for both of them, listening to her sobs coming from the living room. Much good it had done either of them. He’d known what would happen the moment he’d walked in through the door and seen the arrangements she’d made: the fire lit, even though it wasn’t all that cold a day, the sofa pulled in front of it, herself decked out in the black negligee he’d given her two Christmasses ago and bitterly regretted buying; the whole scene had been more than he could bear.

  ‘Christ, June,’ he’d said as she came towards him, her arms outstretched. ‘What d’you think I am? I’m not a stallion that you can turn on just when you want to! I’m a man, and right now I’m a very tired man, and there is no way I’m going to be able to do what you want. I’m exhausted, can’t you see that?’

  ‘No man’s ever too exhausted to make love,’ she said, and her face had begun to crumple ominously. ‘All you’ve got to do is be with me, let me make you feel good.’

  ‘I know you can make me feel good, June,’ he said, talking as patiently as he would to a difficult child, and sat down on the sofa, deliberately planting himself in the corner of it so that he couldn’t be made to lie down. ‘You’re clever in bed, you’ve learned a lot from all those wretched books you keep studying.’

  ‘I only want to know how my body works!’ she’d cried, sitting next to him as close as she could, so that he could feel easily that she had nothing on apart from the negligee; no nightdress beneath it at all. ‘And how yours works so that we can make a baby – that’s all I ask, Ben, only a baby – you can’t refuse me.’

  ‘I’m not refusing you,’ he’d shouted despairingly. ‘I’m not refusing you! I’m just telling you I can’t! I could no more fuck you right now than fly to the moon, for God’s sake! Can’t you understand? I’m exhausted.’

  But she hadn’t listened. She’d thrown herself down on to the cushions and started to weep furiously, crying over and over again: ‘You don’t love me – you don’t find me attractive any more – you don’t love me,’ and refusing to be comforted.
It was as though she heard only what she wanted to hear, as though he hadn’t told her how tired he was, how physically unable to please her he was; she had made up her mind to it that she was unloved and unlovable and there was only one way he’d be able to convince her otherwise.

  He picked up the tray of coffee cups and carried it into the living room. Maybe the black coffee would help, maybe he could, after all, just manage it. If he concentrated very hard indeed.

  ‘I said all along she was too ill to be kept here,’ Sister said. ‘And I for one won’t take any responsibility for it if she dies.’

  ‘What do you mean, responsibility?’ Lyall Davies said. ‘How can you be held responsible for my case? You’re getting above yourself, Sister.’

  ‘All the same, if it came to court I’d have to say ….’

  ‘To court? What are you talking about, woman? How can it come to court?’

  ‘If she were my child and she was as ill as this, I’d want to know why and what had been done for her and why she wasn’t treated in a special centre, that’s what’s got into me. We do our best in this ward, but it just isn’t possible to do all I want to do. Not with that clapped out old respirator and the general equipment we’ve got.’