The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘But Ben, she’s right,’ Jessie said, and she didn’t look at him. ‘We are … I mean, she’s right, isn’t she?’

  He looked down at her and frowned sharply. ‘I suppose so, but ….’

  ‘I told you it would all be different here at Minster. London wasn’t real. Here is real and that changes everything.’

  ‘Spoils everything.’

  ‘Not necessarily. But we’ve got to think. About a lot of things, about people and work. Mostly work ….’

  ‘Yes.’ He brightened then. ‘Yes. It’s a mess, but it’s important, for all that. Work, and sorting out what we do about Contra vert ….’ They were walking across the car park now, towards the lab, and Jessie said, ‘Those reporters who followed us on to the train and were such pests – did they come all the way here? Or did they get off when they left us? At Doxford, perhaps?’

  ‘No, they’re here. I saw them at the station. Got the cab behind ours. I dare say they’re at the gates with the rest of the bloody vultures.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have talked to them on the train. Why not talk to them now, Ben? Then maybe they’d go away,’ Jessie said. ‘I know you’ve decided to keep quiet, but honestly, I’m not sure it’s the right way to handle it. Better talk to them, answer their questions, and then get some peace, get time to talk about … other things, and not just the Contravert situation.’

  ‘No. I’m not talking to them now or ever. They can’t be trusted. They lie, twist what I say. You saw what happened there on Probe last night. You saw what the papers were saying this morning. It’s as though they saw a different programme altogether – it’s sickening, and talking to them won’t make it any better, will it?’

  ‘It might. If you took precautions.’

  They had reached the door of the lab now and he looked down at her, chewing his lower lip. ‘How, precautions?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen on the news on television … press conferences? Lots of people standing around, all witnesses if you like, to what is said. If you talk to all of them at the same time, then you can say what you want to, and they can’t tell lies because so many people will have heard what you say.’

  He stood thinking for a while and then nodded. ‘You could be right, I suppose. I’ll think about it. If the fuss goes on. Thanks, Jessie ….’ And he bent and kissed her swiftly and then urged her through the door and into the laboratory.

  Only Errol greeted them as they came in, waving cheerfully from his overloaded sink where he was clashing away amidst the glass, and Annie looked up and grinned at Ben and said, ‘Sorry, I was late this morning – but I sat up late to watch you on the telly. You looked great. Really great. My new fella got ever so jealous when I told him you were my boss … did you enjoy it all?’

  ‘Not a great deal,’ Ben said dryly, ‘I wasn’t there for fun.’

  ‘What did you think of what he said, Annie?’ Jessie looked at her hopefully; perhaps if someone else – especially someone like Annie – told him he’d done tolerably well on the programme, that she had found his contribution useful and understandable, that would help restore some of his battered self-confidence.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t really listening to all that stuff,’ Annie said blithely. ‘Get enough of it here, don’t I? Very boring. But you looked lovely – you too, Mrs Hurst. Ever so nice. Do they do your makeup for you and all that? That must have been ever such fun ….’

  ‘I’ll be in the office,’ Ben said shortly and went, straight past Harry Gentle and Moscrop, who had been sitting head down over their microscopes with an air of great industriousness.

  Harry looked up as he passed and said briefly, ‘I saw it.’

  Ben stopped, but didn’t look at him. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Seemed to make sense to me.’ Harry grinned then at Jessie. ‘Though as Annie says, I’ve heard it so often already. But it made sense. You too, Jessie. Liked the way you stood up to those bloody animal nuts.’

  ‘Thanks. And they’re not nuts. Not all of them,’ Jessie said, and went over to look at the pile of request slips and the trays of blood samples beside Harry’s bench. ‘What can I take over, Harry?’

  ‘As much as you like. There’s a million of ’em. Help yourself ….’ And he returned to his microscope. Moscrop went on working, paying no attention to anything that was going on around him, apparently absorbed in what he was doing.

  ‘I’ve got some things to sort out in the office and then I’ll be out to do some as well,’ Ben said. ‘Got to call Clough at Charringtons, sort out the placentae situation from maternity, but I shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘You’ll talk to Podgate about some more animals?’ Jessie said.

  ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘No. Right now, I’ve enough to do without starting new trials. That’ll have to wait. It’s all going into cold storage for a while. Till this fuss dies down and I can do the work properly. No one can do useful work under the sort of circumstances I’m in. So I shan’t try. But we’ll get back to it. I may get a bit low sometimes, but I know that much. I shan’t give up. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Then why are you talking to Charringtons? If you’re putting it into cold storage, as you say, then you don’t need any more supplies, do you?’ Moscrop’s voice was sharp and Jessie turned to look at him, but he still had his eyes glued to the microscope.

  ‘Because I don’t want to leave him in the air,’ Ben said loudly, too loudly. ‘Because I operate as honourably as I know how, and I booked all the capacity the man could give me till the end of the year. I have to take what he’s got, make sure he’s got raw materials to work on, see the contract out. After that, I think again. Are you satisfied?’

  Still Moscrop remained at his microscope. ‘Am I satisfied? As if that mattered. It’s what you’re getting out of all this that’s important, isn’t it? And I’ll bet you’re satisfied and over the top.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Ben said it softly, so softly that Jessie thought for a moment she hadn’t heard it, and then she cried out as Ben propelled himself across the room to haul on Moscrop’s shoulders and pull him to his feet.

  ‘Careful, Pitman,’ Moscrop said, and his eyes were bright and excited, like an eager dog’s. ‘Hurt me, and you’ll really be in the shit. Oh, it’d look great in tomorrow’s papers, wouldn’t it? Medical hero beats up his laboratory staff. What else has the man to hide beneath his façade of devoted scientist, seeking cures for all the ills that afflict us? Could it be that he isn’t the wonder-man after all? Could he be as greedy and as selfish as everyone else in the normal world? Who’d ever have thought it?’

  Both Jessie and Harry were holding on to Ben’s arms now, preventing him from moving, and Harry said, ‘Come on, Ben. This’ll get you nowhere. Send the man home on sick leave or something. Can’t be doing with all this around the shop, now can we?’

  At last Ben let go and Moscrop stood rubbing his arm where Ben’s fingers had gripped him, his eyes still glittering.

  ‘You’d better go,’ Ben said thickly. ‘Tell the union there’s not enough work for you, tell the pay office, tell anyone you like … we’ll manage without you. I’ll see to it they pay you as usual – pay you myself, if I have to ….’

  ‘You’ll be able to afford it, I dare say,’ Moscrop said, and moved across the laboratory to collect his things from the lockers in the far corner. ‘The sort of money you’re going to make in the future, what’ll my few quid mean to you? Will you kick anything back to the NHS for the amount of time you used here to do the research?’

  ‘Get him out of here!’ Ben roared it and Harry shot him a quick look and then jerked his head at Moscrop.

  ‘Go on, big mouth,’ he said, and his easy-going voice was for the first time sharpened and had none of its usual jocularity. ‘Enough is enough.’ And Moscrop looked at him consideringly and then shrugged and turned and went, slamming out of the door, leaving them all in silence behind him.

  It was Ben who stirred first. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Why the bloody hel
l are people so malicious? What did I ever do to that man that justifies that sort of behaviour?’

  ‘You’re cleverer than he is,’ Harry said and now he sounded his normal mocking self again. ‘Thou shalt never be better than anybody at anything, that’s the rule for these modern times. No one likes an original thinker. Too frightening. They only believe in original sin – they can understand that. There are millions like Moscrop who’ll see what you’ve done only in terms of what’s in it for you. Money, fame – all that. The rest of ’em’ll want to see you as some sort of angel – no one’ll see you as an ordinary chap with rather more brains than are comfortable for him, doing his best to do what’s right in the middle of all his cerebration.’

  There was a little silence and then Jessie said, ‘He’s right, Ben, It’s not just Moscrop. Those journalists in the train this morning – they were the same, weren’t they? More subtle about it, but the same. Kept trying to dig out the real facts, they said – couldn’t understand there wasn’t anything nasty to be dug out. Simple stories of work and … they just don’t believe them.’

  ‘And now Moscrop’ll go and tell God knows what sort of tale to them all at the gate, and they’ll love it. The real dirt, they’ll reckon. The Contravert spirited away God knows where, and you fighting with your own staff ….’ Harry looked at Ben quizzically. ‘Hope you’ve got the strength for it all, old man. Wouldn’t be in your shoes for a pension, I wouldn’t. Great discoveries – they’re just great headaches from where I sit. Why bother to find cures for people when most of ’em are such bastards?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe that,’ Ben said. ‘And damn it, Harry, you’re as bad as the bloody journalists.’ He was calming down now, and his hands, Jessie noted, had stopped shaking as his colour returned. ‘Thinking that people set out on research with high-minded notions about great cures and … all I did was work out that there might be an answer to virus infections. That was all. There was no … I wasn’t having any visions of myself shoved up on a pedestal, or making extra money ….’

  ‘Tell that to the marines,’ Harry said. ‘They’ll believe it before anyone else will.’

  ‘Jessie, what do I do?’ He was looking at her now, and it was as though there were no one else around them, as though Annie sitting staring with her mouth half-open and Errol, still wrapped in his earphones and oblivious of what was going on, didn’t exist. ‘You told me to have a press conference, but where would be the point? If Harry’s right and what most people want is either to think you’re a self-seeking bastard or God Almighty – where’s the point?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said after a long pause, while she stared at the floor, trying to think. ‘Don’t put it on me, Ben. I can’t think for you – I feel for you, God knows I do, but you have to make up your own decisions. For good or bad, you’ve got to make your own.’ She did look up then at his tired anxious face and couldn’t bear to be dispassionate any longer. He needed real answers, not considered fence-sitting. ‘I can tell you what I’d do but no more than that ….’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I’d talk to the Press, once and for all. I’d carry on with the work as though none of the fuss had happened. And I’d ride it out. They’ll get bored eventually, leave us in peace. That’s what I’d do. But I’m not standing in your skin. I don’t know what it feels like to get that sort of … to have to deal with people like Moscrop. I can only guess.’

  ‘You’d better make your mind up soon,’ Harry said, and sat down again at his microscope. ‘Because the next thing that’ll happen is you’re going to be asked to use your precious Contravert on another kid somewhere, if you haven’t already, that is. The way this epidemic’s going ….’ And he put out a hand and rifled through the pile of request slips. ‘The way it’s going, there are going to be a hell of a lot of kids who need it, aren’t there? And then what’ll you do?’

  He grinned at Ben then, over his shoulder. ‘And while I’m asking questions, where is the stuff? It sure as hell’s bells isn’t here. I’ve looked.’

  30

  ‘I took it to my own fridge at home. It seemed the most sensible thing to do,’ Ben said. ‘I meant to talk to you about it, but in the drama of that day, and the fuss about the Press and that damned TV programme, I didn’t. I just collected up all the supplies I had and took them away.’

  ‘Why?’ Jessie stirred her coffee and began to drink it, cupping the beaker between both hands, needing to make sure she had a firm grasp of it. She was so tired she could hardly sit up straight, let alone hold a beaker in one hand.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He was tired too; it showed in the dark smudges beneath his eyes and his red-rimmed gaze and in his unkempt hair. He looked like a man who would willingly crawl into a corner to die, if he could. ‘I think it was because of the break-in, or maybe it was because of Lyall Davies. I don’t know … I just thought … there it isn’t really mine. At home it is. So I took it home. No reason why not. June isn’t there, so it wouldn’t get in her way, make no problems. Jessie, how much more is there to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said firmly, and carefully put down her beaker. ‘Not tonight. It’s nearly three, for God’s sake. We can’t do anything else useful today. Go and get some sleep, and I’ll do the same. Tomorrow in the morning we’ll see how things are going. By then Mrs Cloudesley might have some news about what we can offload, but right now, it’s enough. Come on.’

  And he let her pull him to his feet and lead him to the old sofa in his office and she pushed him down on to it and then hauled his legs up on to it, and covered him with the blankets from the corner cupboard.

  ‘I’ll bring you some coffee and toast in the morning,’ she said, as she stood at the door, her hand on the light switch. ‘Sleep well ….’

  ‘What about you?’ He said it thickly, as though he were half-asleep already, and she didn’t answer but waited, and within a moment or two his breathing changed, thickened, and became a soft snore, and she nodded to herself in satisfaction and switched off the light. Now she had only to drag her own exhausted body across the yard to the nurses’ quarters and see if she could find an unoccupied room to curl up in for what was left of the night. She’d managed on hardly any sleep often enough in the past; she could do it again. As long as she was around when he needed her, that was all that mattered; and as that thought came to her mind she made a face. It sounded so trite, so sentimental, like the worst kind of pop song; and yet it was true and she didn’t know which was worst; the banality of the thought or its accuracy.

  She slept heavily and woke feeling surprisingly refreshed, which was fortunate, for the day began at top speed and seemed to accelerate from there. First, there were the Breakfast Television programme and the radio news broadcasts, about which all the hospital’s staff were agog, and she felt she was running a barrage of stares and whispers when she went to the night staff canteen to collect coffee and toast to take to the laboratory for breakfast. And then there were the newspapers: now every one of them was devoting two or more pages to the story of the epidemic, with heartrending accounts of individual children all over the country who were in desperate straits, and strongly worded demands that Dr Pitman be forced to give his new drug over to other doctors willing to use it if he was unwilling to do so himself. There were interviews with such doctors – among whom Lyall Davies figured prominently – saying that it was his Hippocratic duty to do so; while interviews with others said they agreed with Ben that it was dangerous to use untried but powerful drugs, especially on children. One woman, a consultant endocrinologist from a London teaching hospital, ranged herself on that side, to Ben’s considerable relief, explaining in some detail in one paper just what the risks were.

  ‘Some children,’ she was reported as saying, ‘might possibly suffer damage to their gonads – the organs that make the cells that in due course create new life. Any drug derived from hormones and prostaglandins, as I gather this substance is, could carry that risk. I wouldn’t use it on my own
patients, not unless it were fully tested first.’

  ‘There, Jessie, you see?’ He looked up from the paper, and, for the first time for what seemed like weeks to her, managed something that looked like a smile. ‘I don’t have to talk to the bloody Press. Not while there are sensible people around to do it for me.’

  ‘Whatever she says, it won’t mean as much as if you say it,’ she said. ‘More coffee? I brought four cups over.’

  ‘No, that was great, thanks. How are things in the hospital? Did you pick up any news?’

  ‘The Barnett child’s leaving today,’ she said. ‘The night staff were agog, because the TV people’ll be at the gates to film her and heaven knows what else. Lyall Davies is getting himself fitted for a new wig for the event, they’re saying.’

  ‘He deserves every bit of the bitching he gets. Look, Jessie, I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Can we arrange that, do you think? I’ll stay here all day – I’ve got Clough arriving with some more Contravert … no, don’t worry. He’s bringing it in the back of his own car, and it won’t look like a delivery at all – and I want to be here for that. Otherwise I want to keep out of sight as much as possible.’

  ‘I don’t see why not ….’ She stood up and began to clear the detritus of their picnic breakfast from his desk. ‘Where will you put the new stuff?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Will you take it home? Like the rest of it?’

  He considered for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘No. And now I’m going to be here all the time, I’d better get the stuff that’s at home back here too. Look, Jessie, would you mind getting it for me? I’ll give you the keys and ….’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’d feel better if it was here, too. Ben ….’ She hesitated at the door. ‘Is there no way that you’d let anyone use it at present?’

  ‘Oh, Jess, not you too!’

  ‘I’m not being like everyone else!’ She jumped to the defensive. ‘It’s just that reading about some of those children … they’re as ill as Andrea Barnett was, fit to die, and now she’s going home today.’