‘That’d surely be quicker, m’boy,’ he’d said, watching eagerly as Ben checked the measurement lines on the syringe. ‘Time’s running out, no doubt about it. It’s amazin’ she’s held on as long as this, tenacious little thing that she is. But just look at her ….’ And indeed the child looked worse than ever, if that were possible, her face crimson over the cheeks but waxen pale over the brow and the temples, and even more deeply unconscious than she had been. She no longer responded to painful stimuli and it was clear that her breathing was now totally controlled by the cuirass respirator. Earlier there had been signs that she was struggling to breathe unaided, but they had gone now.
But Ben had shaken his head. ‘Intravenously could be too quick. If there is any impurity in the stuff it won’t be held back the way it might be, to an extent, by the intramuscular route. I prefer the slower way, it’s relatively safer ….’ And he’d been immovable on that, though Lyall Davies had made another attempt to persuade him.
And then there had been nothing. Lying now sleepless on the couch in the office at the lab, Jessie felt again the sense of anti-climax that followed Ben’s injection into the child’s thigh, as Lyall Davies had stood there staring down at her and then announced gruffly that there was no sense sitting here; he’d be at home if he was wanted, and he’d gone out to speak to the night sister who had now arrived on duty, leaving Ben and Jessie alone in the cubicle.
‘If she dies I’ll blame myself, now,’ Ben had said, not looking at her, not taking his eyes from the child’s oblivious face. ‘You do know that, don’t you? It’s ridiculous, of course, since it’s obvious she’s too ill to recover whatever we do, but I’ll blame myself.’
‘I ….’ She took a deep breath. ‘But suppose she does recover? Have you thought about what that will mean? Because I have. I think she will – I saw the rabbits in group A, remember, and I know how ill they were. That strain of 737 is a very virulent one, and they were damned ill. And the group B rabbits didn’t die. So maybe this child won’t. Think about that, not about the negative things.’
‘I ought to be furious with you,’ he said, and now he did look at her. ‘Dropping me in it like this.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Well, I’m not going to apologize for it. I think it was right. I’m glad I told him.’
‘I wish I knew how I felt about it,’ he said, looking back at the child. ‘I think I’m numb, now ….’
‘I think you’re hungry,’ she’d said. ‘You’ve been on this ward all day and not eaten a thing. Come to think of it, neither have I. Come and have some supper.’
He had looked at her and said with an air of surprise, ‘You’re right. I’m starving.’
‘I’ll tell Sister where you’ll be,’ she said, and took his elbow and urged him out of the corner cubicle the way she would have urged a recalcitrant child. ‘She’ll call you if there’s any change. Come on ….’
Sister had been obviously glad to be rid of them, promising she would send a senior student nurse to special Andrea, assuring them a little testily that the child wouldn’t be left for a moment, and that all the regular observations would be taken – half-hourly blood pressure, temperature, pulse and respiration readings, the lot – only go, was the unspoken invitation, and they both heard it. And went.
They chose to go to the night staff canteen again, beginning to feel like regulars now, and collected tired hamburgers and soggy chips from the hotplate and managed to eat them, they were so hungry, and then sat over cups of coffee, tired and silent. Until Ben had stirred himself and said, ‘You ought to go home, Jess.’
She pushed away the lift of excitement she felt when he had used the diminutive of her name, refusing to respond to it.
‘I’m not going home,’ she said flatly. ‘Not for a while, at any rate. May I sleep in the office again tonight? For a few nights till I sort things out? I could go to a hotel but ….’ She had grinned at him then, albeit a little crookedly. ‘I think it might be an idea to save money where I can for the future, and hotels are expensive. I checked on the phone earlier today – they want £35 a night for bed and breakfast even at the cheapest of them. Do that for a week, and I could be in trouble. I have a little of my own, but it won’t go far – I’m going to have to depend on my salary. And it isn’t all that big ….’
He had looked up at her sharply and then made a face. ‘Oh, Jess, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. That’s dreadful of me, to have forgotten something so ….’
‘Not at all,’ she said swiftly. ‘For God’s sake, Ben, we’re here to work, not to … not for anything else. Just to work, and work comes first. Of course you forgot.’ She grinned then. ‘So did I, for a lot of the day. It was great – I just forgot.’ And she touched her jawline gently, to remind herself of the bruise that still ached there. ‘I actually forgot. Work’s marvellous, isn’t it?’
‘It has its moments,’ he said dryly. ‘Look, Jess, I don’t mind you bunking down in the lab, of course I don’t. But it’s not very salubrious – that squalid office and the reek of the animals and the chemicals and no real bathroom, just that nasty old shower, and ….’
‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel comfortable.’ Near you, murmured a voice deep in her mind, but she ignored it.
‘You’re right about hotels, of course, but – haven’t you any friends you could stay with? People who’d understand and would ….’
She made a small grimace. ‘I’ve lived in this town for over twenty years, and I have to say no. Oh, I know people, of course I do. Neighbours in Purbeck Avenue.’ She managed a smile then. ‘They’d be shocked to the core to think I’d want a bed anywhere except with Peter. I keep reading how marriage is breaking down and one couple in three are divorcing – well, I don’t know where that’s happening. Not in Purbeck Avenue it isn’t. Everyone I know is an incredibly respectable wife and neighbour. There isn’t one of ’em I can think of who’d be able to cope with me, a woman whose husband hit her.’
There was a little silence and then he said gruffly, ‘You sound very lonely.’
She thought about that for a while, passing in review the people she knew in the town, the office friends of Peter’s that he sometimes brought back to dinner, the people from the photographic club, the neighbours in the polite stretches of Purbeck Avenue, the women she had known in the days when Mark was a schoolboy and parents met each other at Open Evenings and Sports’ Days, and she said almost wonderingly, ‘Yes. Very lonely. I never really thought about it before. I just ….’ She shrugged. ‘I got up in the morning and did the house and shopped and cooked and went to bed in the evening. Read a little in between, watched some TV, did a bit of knitting, and then – yes. Lonely. But not any more.’
He had lifted his brows at her in disbelief and she had laughed.
‘I already said it – work’s marvellous, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not enough for you, though, is it, surely? It is for me, but it’s different for me. I’ve got the research and ….’ He stopped and as though he had said it aloud she knew what he had thought. ‘I mean, there’s home as well, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she said and smiled at him briefly and then looked away, embarrassed. ‘But why shouldn’t work be enough for me? I enjoy it, hugely. For the first time for years, in all my life, really, I feel I’m doing something useful, something that really matters. When Mark was very small I felt useful, but that didn’t last. Once he started school and pushed me into the back seat … I didn’t mind that, you understand. I never wanted to be the sort of woman who squashed a child. I was glad he was … glad he was so independent, took over his own life as soon as he did. I still am. It’s just that I’ve not felt very useful for a very long time, and now I do. I don’t think I want anything else now. If I could just find somewhere small and cheap to live, and be here all the time otherwise ….’
She took a deep breath and stopped. She had been on the brink of displaying the most private of her fantasi
es, her image of herself as a busy career woman, no longer involved at all with husband or son, totally involved only in her own interests, her own needs and her own life, and that was dangerous.
‘So don’t worry about me. I’m fine. But it’d help if I could sleep at the lab for a few nights, if that’s not too illegal. I’ll be perfectly comfortable and it will help me a lot as far as money’s concerned.’
‘Then do it,’ he’d said. ‘If anyone from the admin, side wants to know, then you’re there to keep an eye on the animals.’
She laughed. ‘But Ben, you’ve said we’ve got to keep a very low profile about the animals. You remember the fuss when Castor got out, and they started nosing about from the admin office ….’
‘Well, yes. But it’ll be different now. If that child actually gets better ….’
She pounced on that. ‘Then you do think it’s possible?’
He reddened. ‘Well, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, is it? Ill as she is, she’s clearly got a tough little constitution – looking at her I’d have thought she’d have died any time this past twenty-four hours, and the sister on the ward, who’s a downy old bird in these matters, she thought the same. So she’s held her own when no one expected it. So, maybe she’ll recover when no one expects it – and the Coatravert did work for the rabbits, after all.’
‘Didn’t it just,’ she said joyously. ‘Oh, Ben, didn’t it just!’
‘You’re getting excited,’ he said as dampeningly as he could. ‘Bad science, that, to get excited. But ….’ He shook his head. ‘Every time anyone walks in that door or the phone rings over there I think it’s the ward telling us the child’s dead. But it’s over two hours now since she had the first dose and she’s still going. I’m going back to see her, Jess. No, not you. I need you fit to work tomorrow. Go to bed now, there’s a good girl. I’ll sleep over here, and see you in the morning. By then we’ll know where we are. Where that child is ….’
He stopped at the door and looked back at her as he went and she opened her mouth to call after him, ‘Don’t forget to phone your wife …’ but then closed it again. It was none of her business what he did about his wife any more than it was any of his what she did about Peter. And lying in her cocoon of rough hospital blankets now, trying to sleep, she tried to push all such thoughts out of her mind, thoughts about his wife, her husband, thoughts even about work. She had to sleep, because tomorrow would need to find her alert and able to cope. Go to sleep now, now, now, now ….
She wasn’t sure whether she had in fact been on the edge of sleep or as wide awake as she now was, but suddenly she was sitting bolt upright and listening. There had been an odd sound from outside, not from the animal room, where there were the usual scuttlings and whisperings the animals made at all hours of the day and night, but from beyond the office door, in the lab, and she sat with her head strained upwards, struggling to hear.
It came again, a creaking sound and then a sort of soft rippling noise, and she slid out of her bundle of blankets and pulled on her coat over her nightdress and, barefoot for want of the pair of slippers which were still somewhere inside her big blue suitcase in the corner, went out into the laboratory.
It wasn’t completely dark, because there was a faint glow of moonlight coming through the high windows, and her eyes were accustomed to the dimness, for she had been lying with her lids closed for a long time, and she reached for the light switch but then with an innate sense of prudence stopped and left the big room as it was, big and shadowy.
She went padding along the cold tiled floor towards the source of the noise, which was the main door into the laboratory from outside. Tonight, she had locked it, on Ben’s instructions; he had been worried, he had told her firmly, finding the door unlocked when he had come in the other night, and if she was going to sleep at the lab, then she must lock herself in.
‘They’ve had break-ins at the pharmacy, remember,’ he told her. ‘We don’t want any such thing happening here. We’ve got no drugs here, but these people don’t know that, and they might try it on. So, for heaven’s sake, lock up.’
She could just see the key sticking out of the door as a faint moonbeam caught it and then, as she stared, the door shook and the key fell out of the lock, clattering to the floor. Someone’s breaking the door down, she thought frantically; Ben was right, someone is trying to get in, and she took a deep breath and shrank back as the door rattled again and with the same rippling noise she had heard before, rocked and shifted in the dim light.
There were voices now, hoarse and low, speaking in indistinguishable words, and someone gave a little squeal that made another voice out there lift in fury, and she felt a lift of terror inside herself to match it, and turned, wanting to run back to the office to barricade herself in and phone for help. But as she turned she caught her bare foot on the projecting leg of a lab stool and the pain that seared through her made her gasp and stop still unable, for a sick moment, to move.
And that was the point at which the door finally gave way and banged open behind her. There was more confused noise then as someone shouted, ‘Lights,’ and someone else cried, ‘Can’t find the switch,’ and then suddenly lights blazed on, and she began to run, hobbling towards the office door.
‘Goddam it, there’s someone here! Hold her, John, easy now, just stop her.’ And she turned, desperately, to fight off the attack she was sure was coming and saw them: a huddle of figures, their faces blank and smooth and horrible, and she felt a great surge of fear now as she looked at them, and then realized somewhere deep inside her mind that they were wearing stocking masks and weren’t at all as inhuman and robotic as they looked, and she opened her mouth to shout. But one of them grabbed her and put his hand over her face and she couldn’t shout and indeed couldn’t breathe either, as she struggled to fight him off, beating her hands against his restraining arm, and kicking out with her bare feet, unaware now of the pain she was inflicting on herself.
‘Over there,’ one of them shouted, a man’s voice again. ‘Over there, go on, open the bloody door and let’em out, over there,’ and she heard a squeal from a much higher-pitched voice and then a rush of footsteps.
There were other sounds now, coming from further away, but it was hard to be sure what she was hearing, or whether some of the strangeness was coming from within herself, because her struggles to get air through the hand in the thick glove that was clamped over her mouth and nose were getting her nowhere. She was beginning to feel dizzy, to feel the uproar around her receding to somewhere deep inside her mind. The world seemed to be shrinking to a dot of noise and then stopped existing at all.
20
She could hear someone retching painfully, could actually feel the pain they were experiencing, the tightness in their chest, and she felt a deep pity for whoever it was, and then, as the retching started again, realized it was her own body that was being racked so agonizingly, and she opened her mouth as wide as she could to take a deep breath and to shout for help. But all that happened was the retching started again, and now she felt the cold of the tiled floor beneath her already bruised cheek and the hot tears that were coursing down her face to splash on it.
‘You all right, Miss?’ a voice said above her head, and then there was someone kneeling beside her, slipping an arm beneath her shoulder. ‘Get this one, Ronny, long shot, closeup’s a bit messy, good atmosphere stuff, you all right, Miss? What happened? What were you doing in here? Did you hear them break in?’
The retching had stopped, blessedly, but she still couldn’t speak, feeling the nausea lurking just below the level of her throat and she shook her head slightly, trying to breathe slowly and deeply, and then struggling to sit up.
The man with his arm round her helped her, shouting over her head, at the still invisible Ronny. ‘Get the lab, and then the room in there that they broke into. There’re cages and all sorts, make sure you get good shots of all of them, and then a wide angle one that shows the whole place. Will you bloody move,
man, the police’ll be here any minute, and then we’ll not be able to get anything. You feel able to stand up, Miss? Come on, now, we’ll get you sitting down.’
‘What happened?’ She managed to get the words out and was amazed at the sound of her own voice, thick and husky. ‘What … where are those people?’
‘Gone,’ the man said. ‘Left their calling-card though …’ and he thrust a large sheet of paper in front of her. It was torn from a roll of wallpaper and on the reverse had been painted in large black letters, ‘The Animal Freedom Brigade was here. Captive animals have now been freed. We will return if more animals are put to torture and free them. You have been warned.’
She stared at it, her face crumpled with amazement. She was feeling steadily better now as she managed to fill her lungs with good air, and the nausea at last began to subside.
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered, and then aware that the man was still holding her, pulled away and looked up at him. He looked a very commonplace sort of person, wearing an ordinary suit and tie, though rather messy shabby ones, and she frowned at the sight of him.
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘Joe Lloyd, Minster Advertiser news desk. Got a tip-off there’d be trouble here tonight so we were here with a photographer.’
‘You got a … you knew someone was going to break in here?’
‘Knew something was going to happen. Didn’t know what, of course, but we ….’
‘And you didn’t warn us?’
He didn’t look perturbed. ‘How could we warn you when we didn’t know what it was that might happen? It was just a general sort of thing – could have been a hoax. Called the police as soon as we saw what was going on, though. Got our pictures of them running and then called the police right away. They shouldn’t be too long, even that shower of … not too long.’
‘You knew and you didn’t warn us,’ Jessie said again, feeling the fury rising in her. ‘How dare you be so ….’
The Virus Man Page 20
