The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Mrs Scarman said, scandalized, as his voice became ever thicker with every word he spoke. ‘If I was your mother, I’d see to it you didn’t go anywhere but to your bed!’

  ‘I wish you were,’ he said wanly, standing there with his shoulders drooping, clutching his parcels. ‘If my Mum was here instead of in Newcastle she’d just phone them up and tell them I couldn’t come.’

  ‘Then I will, gladly,’ she said at once, and he managed not to grin his pleasure. ‘You tell me who to phone and I’ll do it.’ And she went bustling into her room to come out with a pad of paper and pencil and a little box marked ‘Telephone Calls’.

  ‘You write down the name and number then and I’ll call them,’ she said busily and gave him the box to hold in what was meant to be an absent-minded manner, and he dug into his pocket and fished out a ten-penny piece thinking – mean bitch! But it was worth letting her get away with her grasping ways unrebuked just to get her help; he could have hugged himself with pride at his manipulative skills as he heard her dialling, and then listened to her side of the conversation.

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Board, he’s ever so poorly. You should see him, eyes as red as they can be and nose running like a tap and that hoarse you can hardly hear him. I warned him he’d get ill, and there he is, just like I said he’d be ….’

  Lovely, he thought as he went up the stairs, remembering to trudge as heavily as an invalid would. Perfect. If that doesn’t convince him and he comes round here, he’ll see how ill I am. And then God help the bloody lot of ’em when the balloon goes up. And it should go as high as the moon; surely that newspaper man would have warned the police? He’d thought hard and long about tipping them off himself, but had baulked at the risk. He had hazy notions about the police ability to track down phone calls. Safer not to get near them; let the newspaper chappie do the necessary. He must have done it, must have got the police organized. Any decent citizen would, let alone a journalist. No, he’d done all he needed to; no need for more.

  And he settled himself in bed with a hot-water bottle at his feet to make him hot enough to sweat, after smearing the chest rub all over a handkerchief and waving it round to spread the smell of it, his hot soup and his cream crackers ostentatiously displayed in a tray next to him with the inhalant and cough mixture well in evidence beside it. The stage was well and truly set and it would be Graham Board, meddling bastard, who’d art the fool on it.

  ‘Why should he mind?’ June said. ‘It’s not as though you’re strangers, is it? You’re family, and of course I have to help if I’m needed.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to have a husband willing to let me be away as much as you are,’ Liz said and shot her a mocking glance in the mirror as she carefully applied mascara to her lashes. ‘I’m better off without a bloody husband, I reckon, than one as offhand as your Ben is. Always acts the high and mighty with me, and what is he, at that? A right chauvinist pig, walks all over you ….’

  ‘He isn’t!’ June’s face crumpled a little. ‘It’s just that his work … he’s always very busy, so if I have to be away it’s not as bad as it would be for a man who worked ordinary hours at an ordinary job. And he’s not a pig at all – no more than your Nick is,’ she added daringly, not wanting to upset Liz but needing to defend Ben.

  ‘Oh, Christ, Nick’s the biggest MCP there is – but he’s a rich one. He gets the benefits of being a macho bastard, and that means I get them too. This American thing ….’ She dropped her mascara brush and cursed and then sat and stared at June through the mirror. ‘That’s what makes me so mad about Ben. He treats you like furniture, takes you for granted, and doesn’t even make much money for you.’

  ‘He makes enough,’ June mumbled, not looking at her, not wanting to risk reminding her that the extra money that she handed over for Liz and Timmy’s keep originated from Ben, knowing how much that would enrage her sister. ‘I don’t care for money that much.’

  ‘Then the more bloody fool you,’ Liz snapped, and began to do her eyelashes again. ‘More fool you. You haven’t got much else, let’s face it. You might as well be miserable in comfort. Why do you stay with him? You’re not that happy – he can’t even give you a baby.’

  ‘Stop it,’ June said, and her voice was almost a wail. ‘You know I don’t want to ….’

  ‘Well, how do you know it’s not his fault? How long since he had a test? It’s always you that gets in a sweat over it.’

  ‘He never had any problems. Nor did I, that’s the stupid thing. You know all that, Liz – don’t go on about it ….’

  ‘Well, he’s not much of a lousy doctor if he can’t find out what’s the matter with his own bloody wife. Here’s me worrying myself sick over the stinking Pill and you getting in a sweat – oh, all right!’ For June had begun to weep helplessly, the tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘For Christ’s sake shut up or you won’t be fit to look after Timmy. I won’t go unless you pull yourself together so you’d better get a hold on yourself.’

  She was in a high good humour now; she always was when she’d manage to needle June, and June knew it, and therefore felt better too. This was just another of the rituals they went through, just another of Liz’s ways of reminding her that she owned Timmy, the person June loved most in the world, that he was Liz’s, and that was something never to be forgotten.

  Now, with the message rammed well and truly home she looked sleek and cheerful as June blew her nose and dried her eyes.

  ‘Will I do?’ Liz asked, standing up in front of her mirror now and twisting and turning to get a close look at herself from every angle. ‘I’ve managed to lose three pounds this week – I thought I’d better get a bit off before we go to America – if we go.’

  ‘If?’ June’s alarm showed in her voice. ‘I thought it was all agreed ….’

  ‘Not if you go getting yourself in such a sweat every time I come out with a few home truths about you and your bloody Ben. I can’t leave Timmy with you if you’re in a state.’

  ‘I’m not in a state. I’m fine,’ June said, and leaned back in her chair, to show how calm she was. ‘It’s you going on about Ben. He’s all right really, you know. It’s just that he’s up to his neck in his work.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is. And up to his neck in some fancy little nurses, I’ll bet that too. Oh, all right, I’ll lay off. He just makes me so mad, that’s all. Still, it’s none of my affair. He’s your bloke, and I wouldn’t have him as a gift.’

  ‘You don’t need him. You’ve got Nick.’ June managed a smile and Liz glanced at her and grinned too.

  ‘Haven’t I just! I’ll get him to the bloody tape yet, you see if I don’t. You know he wants us to be away for Christmas? It’s not just a week he wants to go for, not like Majorca.’

  ‘I told you, it’ll be fine. Timmy’s too young to know exactly what Christmas is anyway, and I’ll see to it he has all the toys and his stocking and all. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘I know he’ll be bloody fine,’ Liz said savagely, and reached for her bag as the doorbell rang. ‘That’s what makes me so sick, you stupid bitch, don’t you know that? I’ll be back around three. Bye.’ And she was gone in a gale of Patou’s Joy; Nick was giving her more and more expensive presents these days.

  June sat on for a while in the bedroom after the front door had slammed and then went quietly in to look at Timmy, asleep in the corner of the other bedroom. He was lying on his back, his hands flung up above his head and his mouth half open, snoring gently. He looked softly flushed and his upper lip was beaded with a light sweat, and she wanted badly to pick him up and hold him close, but she controlled that, contenting herself with leaning over the cot and looking at him, eating him with her eyes, taking in the warm smell of him and the sound of his breathing. She could stay like that for a quarter of an hour or more at a time, usually, but tonight she moved away after a few minutes and went heavily into the living room to sit down in front of the TV set with its sound turned low, so that she could hear Timmy if he called,
and tried not to think about what Liz had said.

  The American trip must be on: Liz had told her that Nick was determined to take her, that he’d booked tickets on the People Express, that he had a lot of deals cooking there in New York, he needed her with him, and there was no reason to think that would change. It was all right; she would have Timmy for Christmas, and it would be wonderful.

  But there was still a tug of anxiety in her and she thought back over their conversation, hearing Liz’s high flippant voice again, and tried to identify what it was and then felt sick as she heard Liz’s voice in her mind’s ear saying it again. ‘And up to his neck in some fancy little nurses ….’ Why had she said that? Does she know something about Ben that I don’t? Is she trying to warn me? Is that why Ben was so horrid yesterday, why he said he didn’t want to make love, why I had to coax him so? Was that it? Was there someone else at the hospital who ….

  She sat up straight and stared determinedly at the flickering shadows on the TV screen, refusing to think any more about what Liz had said. She’d just been up to her usual tricks, trying to upset me, paying me back for loving Timmy so much, paying me back because she needs me so badly. That was all it was. Wasn’t it?

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen,’ Joe said again. ‘If I knew I’d bloody tell you, wouldn’t I? Don’t keep bloody nagging. All I can tell you is I’ve had a tip-off that something’s happening at Minster Hospital tonight. It could be all my eye and Betty Martin, but you don’t get good stories thinking that and going home to an early night and your Horlicks. You’ve got to gamble. And what the hell do you care anyway? Paying you, aren’t I? You’re getting your bloody overtime.’

  ‘I wasn’t complaining,’ the photographer said, unruffled. Everyone was used to Joe Lloyd’s pose of extreme irascibility. ‘Just asking. It helps to know what sort of film I need. How much light there’ll be and all that.’

  ‘Expect no light and you won’t be disappointed. Lots of flash, that’s what this’ll be, Ronny, a lot of flash.’

  ‘Sexy stuff, eh?’ And the photographer giggled and Joe Lloyd looked at him witheringly and then at Simon.

  ‘As for you, keep your eyes skinned and your bloody mouth shut. I don’t want you goin’ off half cocked. I wouldn’t have you there at all if I didn’t have to, but that bloody lab’s too far away from the hospital building proper to keep an eye on both at the same time, so I want you there by the hospital. You see or hear anything, you let me know, right? If anything does happen it’ll be at the labs, I’m sure of that much – but we’ve got to cover every possibility.’

  ‘What’s going to happen, sir?’ Simon was so bright-eyed and eager he was sweating with it. ‘Haven’t you any idea? Didn’t this tip-off say anything about ….’

  ‘You know as much as I do,’ Joe said. ‘Now shut up. We’ll meet at the hospital at eleven thirty. The tip-off said midnight, but we’ll be early.’

  ‘I’ll get there at eleven,’ Simon said eagerly, and Joe glared at him.

  ‘No you bloody won’t. Hang around there too long and someone’ll see you, big ugly lump like you. Eleven thirty I said, and eleven thirty I meant. No earlier, no later. And you ….’ He jerked his head at the photographer. ‘Plenty of film. I’ve got a gut feeling about this one. Don’t forget.’

  After they’d gone he sat in the office chewing his ham sandwich and drinking the stewed ink that passed for coffee from the machine in the corner and thinking. Should he have told the police there was something in the wind tonight, got them to turn out too? No, he had been right with his first thought. Get those lummoxes in and they’d ruin it, whatever it was. Soon enough to call ’em afterwards, when he knew the strength of it. He’d have evidence for them, photographs, his own eye-witness status – and the thought of himself in a witness box pleased him. He’d be making the news yet, and not just reporting it.

  But there wasn’t only the question of the rights or wrongs of notifying the police about tonight’s affair; he still hadn’t decided what to do about the Edna Laughton business. The epidemic story seemed to be petering out a bit – there’d been no more reports of trouble at Bluegates, though seeing most of the girls had been sent home perhaps that wasn’t surprising; was he right to do what he was doing, which was waiting to see if there was any more illness around the town? Perhaps the fact that Edna Laughton worked at the hospital with those animals wasn’t as significant as he’d first thought?

  He’d got this idea she’d picked up some sort of germ there and taken it back to the school, like that story he vaguely remembered about Typhoid Mary. She’d been a disease-carrier who’d worked in school kitchens somewhere and spread her plague to thousands of people, hadn’t she? He couldn’t quite remember; he just had this feeling in his guts that he’d got hold of an important story and wasn’t quite sure how to use it. Go off half-cocked and all he’d do was make a fool of himself at best, and trouble for a stupid but well enough meaning old woman at worst. Handle it right and it could be his big scoop, his chance to get out of this shit-hole of a town and up to London at last. It was never too late, was it, to make the top? He was wasted here, always had been, and there was nothing to hold him in Minster; not with a wife like his, for Christ’s sake ….

  He sat on, brooding, for a long time, and then picked up the phone book and began to leaf through it, looking for a number. He was a fool. There was someone he could talk to about this, of course there was. Why hadn’t he thought of Dan Stewart sooner? He was the local health chappie; he’d be able to tell him the strength of his hunch, and if he said Joe had got it all arse about-face, what would it matter? Doctors never told on you, did they?

  Dr Stewart, he discovered after a couple of phone calls, had gone out and was not expected back for some time. Any urgent messages could be left for him, but Joe cradled the phone without leaving any messages at all and thought that perhaps after all there was no point in chasing Dr Stewart right now. Tomorrow would do – after he had found out what tonight’s events at the hospital were to be. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  19

  I’ll never sleep, she thought, and turned over again, listening to the creak of the old springs beneath her, and feeling already the stiffness creeping into her shoulders from the sofa’s unyielding lumpiness. I want to be over there with the rest of them, want to watch that child, see what happens, but Ben had been adamant.

  ‘There’s no sense in both of us being worn out. I need you to be in good nick tomorrow – I’ve neglected the department appallingly this past few days, and that worries me. If you get a decent night’s sleep then at least you’ll be fit to see what’s what, even if I’m not. Anyway, there’s no guarantee I won’t be getting to bed myself pretty soon. We’ve given her the first dose and we can’t do more. I’ll wait till midnight to give her the next – and we’ll keep on with a four-hourly regime – and then I’ll go to bed in the medical staff quarters. So, you go now, please, Jess. I promise you you’ll know every detail of what happens when I see you tomorrow, but be sensible now.’

  So she had gone, leaving the ward with just one more backward look over her shoulder at the child in the screened corner bed. She’d been given the first dose of Contravert at eight o’clock in the evening, after the whole day had been spent in discussion and checking and rechecking of the test results, both of the child’s blood and of the cultures of her throat and nasal swabs, and after a long discussion between Lyall Davies and Ben, during which Ben’s resistance to the idea of using his remedy had at last been worn down. She had sat there between the two men in Sister’s office, listening to them arguing, and trying very hard indeed to understand why it was Ben was so unwilling.

  He had a remedy for a dying child, she had told herself as she looked at his troubled face; why does he worry so about wretched ethics? Surely you have to forget such things in a situation as desperate as this one? But then Ben had said to Lyall Davies, spelling it out as though to a dim child rather than to an eminent colleague, ‘But it’s
never been fully tried on animals, yet, let alone humans – I’ve taken the work to no ethical committee, I’ve had no over-view from any outsider, just my own hunches and ideas to go by. How do I know that the stuff isn’t dangerous? How do I know it doesn’t have side-effects that are worse than the condition it’s supposed to be ameliorating? It’s just too big a responsibility to ask one man to risk a child’s life with something he simply doesn’t know enough about ….’ And she had been swayed by his obvious distress almost to agree with him.

  Until Lyall Davies had said with vigour, ‘Nonsense! The child’s moribund – you can’t do any more harm to her than her disease is doing. If she’s going to die whatever you do, then where’s the worry about side-effects? There’s no risk-benefit ratio here – it’s all too obvious. Give the child the stuff, man. It can’t do harm, might do good, what more can you ask for? To refuse on the grounds you’re using is ridiculous.’ And she had had to agree with him.

  And eventually he had won, overwhelming Ben with the force of his argument, and Ben had looked at her almost appealingly, seeming to want her to back him up. But she had sat dumb, unable to do so. She had agreed with Lyall Davies; that child was too ill for there to be any argument, and she no longer felt any guilt about having put the idea of using Contravert into old Lyall Davies’s mind, so turning him into the force majeure to which Ben was now succumbing. It had had been right to think of it, right to do it, and she had watched as Ben had sat working out a dosage for the child, checking her body weight against the number of Contravert units, just as he did for dosing the rabbits, and then had drawn up the first syringe full of the straw-coloured liquid.

  He had decided to use it intramuscularly, as he had for the rabbits, though Lyall Davies had tried to persuade him to put it directly into a vein.