Nothing But the Night

by John Blackburn

  ‘And if one green bottle . . .’ He had a headache, probably the ’flu coming on, the ‘Monarch’—all the company’s vehicles bore regal names—needed tuning and this constant singing was no help at all. If only the perishers would change to another song it wouldn’t be so bad, but they’d been through their blasted bottles four times already. Why couldn’t those old cows who were supposed to be in charge quieten them down? Reynolds glowered at two grey-haired ladies across the aisle, but they were deep in conversation and appeared oblivious of the singing.

  No discipline with the youngsters these days. He con­sidered the straps and canes of his own school days. No respect for adults, no consideration for anybody and the little blonde madam at his side was the worst of the lot. Whenever the others came to the end of the chant she turned around and started them off again. Reynolds lit a cigarette to calm his frayed nerves and changed gear for the approaching roundabout at Pounder’s Corner. The sky was clear but the road surface was still damp from an after­noon shower and the time was almost three minutes past six.

  Exactly a minute later when the forty-ninth bottle was in process of demolition, the ‘Surrey Monarch’ appeared to go out of control, mounted the pavement and came to rest with its radiator inside the Period Lounge of the Grey Bull public house on the corner of Pounder’s Green. The coach was back in service within the month but, apart from structural damage to the Bull, the insurers had to write off a large quantity of imitation Victorian chaise-longues, Georgian carriage lamps, and Tudor weapons. There were only three casualties. The licensee, a certain Major Treacher, was deprived of a toe by a falling halberd and a seven-year-old girl named Mary Valley received superficial cuts and bruises. Frank Reynolds, who had held a clean licence for thirty-five years and worked for his present employers for over eight of them, died in hospital within an hour of the collision.

  Chapter One

  ‘You are of course aware of the presence of antibodies in the animal system, ladies and gentlemen.’ Sir Marcus Levin, K.C.B., F.R.S., and recent winner of a Nobel prize for services to medicine, fingered his already immaculate tie and smiled at the assembled class of students.

  ‘These tiny creatures which live in symbiosis with our cells act as allies; shock troops against the ever-present armies of bacteria and virus infections which constantly threaten us. Without this support it would be quite impos­sible for the human race to survive.’ Marcus paused to glance up at the clock. There was another five minutes left for him to finish his introductory talk and then he would have a quick lunch at his club and hurry round to the Central Research Laboratory. He had been pleased when asked to deliver a series of lectures at Saint Bede’s Hospital, but now that his present work looked like paying off he begrudged the time bitterly. Less than three miles away, a tiny creature which could save the lives of millions was stirring in its plastic saucers and he longed to be there to observe what happened.

  ‘The dangers of the indiscriminate use of antibiotics are equally well known to you all.’ He gave a winning smile at a pretty girl in the front row. ‘Though these substances can kill some of the germs which attack us they may also weaken the friendly allies which are our natural defence against infection. Should another invasion take place before the organisms have had time to recover, the human system is left open and help­less against attack.’ The minute hand jerked forward and Marcus started to gather up his notes as he spoke.

  ‘What present-day research is looking for is a solution to this problem: a means of changing the very nature of these antibodies, of producing—I hate the word mutant since it came into popular use, but it is the only one which fits—a creature that is resistant to the worst we can do to it and becomes even more inimical to our enemies. That will be the subject of these lectures, and next week I shall draw your attention to the work of Edelman in Munich, Trevor-Jones in New York and a team of bacteriologists here in London. We are all searching for what may well be the impossible: a really super defence mechanism against disease. If we succeed, mankind may die of over-population and starvation, but that is quite outside my province.’ He gave another smile as he closed his briefcase and the clock moved on to the hour.

  ‘Thank you very much for listening to me, ladies and gentlemen, and I am looking forward to our next meeting.’ He bowed to them and hurried out of the room: a tall, imposing figure but, if one looked closely at his face, the marks of suffering were visible beneath the debonair con­sultant’s manner.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Sir Marcus. I’ve managed to catch you, then.’ A porter intercepted him in the corridor, grin­ning widely because they were old friends. ‘The dean asked me to give you a message. Said he wanted to see you on a matter of some urgency.’ The man smiled again as he saw Marcus’s expression and he lowered his voice.

  ‘Look, sir, you go on if you’re in a hurry, and I’ll say I missed you. Knowing Dr Plunkett, I shouldn’t think it’s anything which can’t wait.’

  ‘You tempt me, Serjeant. You tempt me very strongly indeed.’ They had estimated that the culture would reach its maximum activity at approximately two o’clock and Marcus dearly wanted to be at Central Research to see what happened—if anything. The chances were that this would turn out to be just another failure. All the same, if it did react in the way they hoped, a real breakthrough would have been made. He stood considering for a moment and then shrugged and put on what his wife called ‘Your wounded stag expression’.

  ‘No, you are a good friend, but get thee behind me, Serjeant Jackson.’ He turned and walked quickly away towards a staircase.

  ‘Come in, Sir Marcus. Jackson managed to catch you then.’ Brian Plunkett, dean of the hospital, came from behind his desk and extended a hand. ‘Good of you to spare me a few minutes . . . very good indeed.’

  Plunkett was an old, stocky Irishman and his grey beard and red-rimmed eyes had earned him the nickname of ‘Badger’ to generations of students and housemen. He had little concern with actual medicine nowadays and passed his time listening to endless complaints about finance, hos­pital management and staff protocol.

  ‘Smoke . . . a glass of something . . . an aperitif before your lunch?’ The dean panted slightly as if he, not Marcus, had been running up the stairs.

  ‘No, thank you, Doctor.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but I am in a bit of a hurry, so could we get down to business straight away.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You young fellers are always on the go these days.’ Plunkett waved him to a chair. Marcus was forty-five years old but he might have been talking to a first-year student. ‘I’ll be as brief as I can, but as you’re on the board of management now this is very much your business. A nasty business too which could be very embar­rassing to Saint Bede’s. It doesn’t do to offend people, you know, Sir Marcus. Not rich and important people like these Van Traylen guardians. You’ll have heard of them of course.’

  ‘A little. They are a philanthropic society founded by a Mrs Helen Van Traylen, the widow of an American millionaire. Wasn’t she in the news some time ago?’

  ‘About a year ago, Sir Marcus.’ The dean started to fill an old charred pipe. ‘The poor old bird complained of stomach cramps and Eric Yeats found there was an inoperable tumour. Nothing to look forward to except drugs or extreme pain for the rest of her life, so she blew her head off with a shotgun. Very sad, but the society she started continues to function. The Van Traylen Fellowship, they call it.’ The Badger struck a match and clouds of grey smoke drifted across his dingy little office everybody called the ‘earth’.

  ‘Rather a moving story in a way. A group of elderly people, all rich, all widowed and childless, who decided to devote their remaining years to good works. They’ve shelled out thousands on cancer and other medical research, bought a mansion on the west coast of Scotland and turned it into an orphanage, paid a quarter of a million to stop that Warwickshire art collection going abroad. The orphanage is quite a place from all accounts. The kids, there are only about t
hirty of them, I think, have got their own qualified teachers, a swimming pool, a cinema, and there’s even a retired quack living on the premises. No expense spared in fact. When that party were up in London last week, they put them up at Clark’s Hotel in Knightsbridge; pots of money. No, that Fellowship is not the kind of organization any sane man would wish to offend.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Dean, but how do they concern us?’ Marcus looked pointedly at his watch, but Plunkett completely ignored the gesture.

  ‘They concern us very unpleasantly, Sir Marcus, and, if I may say so, you should keep in touch with current affairs. I know how important your work is but it’s a narrow vision that can only take in what it sees through a microscope.’ The pipe had gone out and he relit it with agonizing slowness.

  ‘If you’d read the papers, you’d know that last Wednesday a party of the Van Traylen children who had spent a week in London sightseeing were involved in an accident. The coach taking them to the airport and a plane back to Scotland went out of control and crashed into a public house somewhere near Hounslow. Mercifully there were only three casualties: the publican, a bogus major called Treacher who had a toe sliced clean off by an imitation halberd, the driver who was crushed by the steering-wheel and died shortly after being admitted here and a seven-year-old girl. Have a look at young Taylor’s report on her.’

  ‘If I must.’ Marcus glanced briefly at the house surgeon’s notes. ‘A cut on the cheek and the right shoulder, neither of which required stitching, bruises on both thighs, some signs of slight shock. I don’t understand, Dean. This child was in no danger and I presume she has been discharged by now.’

  ‘Yes, any sane man would presume that, Sir Marcus. Any competent physician would have had that child out of here days ago.’ Plunkett stood up and paced angrily across the room. ‘But not our tame head shrinker; not your friend Mr Peter Haynes, B.M., Dip. Psych., and all the rest of it. Because of the shock, Taylor, quite properly, asked Haynes to look at the child and he came up with this load of gibberish.’ The dean opened a filing cabinet and pulled out a bundle of foolscap, which he carried back to the desk as though it were an extremely disgusting object.

  ‘After a brief examination of the little girl, her name is Mary Valley, Haynes stated that she was not suffering from shock but from some obscure mental illness which might be dangerous. He goes on about nervous lesions, a breakdown of the self-regarding sentiment and schizophrenic tendencies. Utter rubbish. Neither you nor I have any training in psychi­atry, but we do know that schizophrenia is a physical illness and unrecognizable before puberty. Read it for yourself.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Marcus frowned over the first sheet of spidery writing. Plunkett was right in saying that he and Peter Haynes were friends, but he cursed the man for not typing his notes and using a flood of technical jargon which was largely meaningless to him.

  ‘This is beyond me, Dean. But what is the driver’s statement Haynes keeps referring to? I thought the man died shortly after being admitted here.’

  ‘Oh that.’ The Badger growled and his little pink eyes glowered at the manuscript. ‘The man died, but he talked, raved rather, before he lost consciousness. He kept repeat­ing that the child, Mary Valley, was responsible for the accident. Said she had snatched his cigarette and stabbed him in the cheek with it. Complete nonsense, because eight witnesses, two of them adults, stated that the girl was sit­ting perfectly peacefully beside him right up to the time that the coach went out of control. The police are quite satisfied that the accident was caused by his taking a roundabout too fast, and it is clear to me that the poor fellow was delirious when he made his statement. He’d held a clean licence for thirty-five years and obviously wanted a scapegoat to justify himself.’

  ‘But all the same you decided to back Haynes up, Dean.’ Marcus had come to the end of the report and saw Plun­kett’s neat recommendation attached to the last page.

  ‘That I did, Sir Marcus. I don’t like the feller and I don’t trust him. Though he’s well under forty, Mr Haynes has got through three wrecked marriages and held almost a dozen appointments before coming to us. The board would never have taken him on if it hadn’t been for the staff shortage.

  ‘All the same, I make a point of backing up my staff and I telephoned Lord Fawnlee, who has been chairman of the Fellowship since Mrs Van Traylen died, and told him that we wanted to keep Mary here for further examination.’

  ‘What was his reaction?’ Marcus looked at his watch again. If only Plunkett would come to the point, he thought. He’d have to do without lunch, but there was still time for him to get to Central Research. Success or another failure; a useless product which had cost him six months’ work or a tiny creature that might save millions of lives? His col­leagues would be on their way there already, eagerly antici­pating the moment when a drop of green liquid would spread across a slide and tell them if half a year had not been in vain.

  ‘His lordship threw the book at me good and proper, Sir Marcus.’ The dean’s old, barking voice broke into his thoughts. ‘He said that the child was completely normal and happy and if she had recovered from her physical injuries she must be released at once and taken back to join the other children in Scotland. He pointed out that the orphanage had a fully qualified medical officer of its own and finished by saying that one of his employees would be here to collect her by nine o’clock this morning.

  ‘He was quite within his rights of course. Unless the little girl were suffering from some infectious disease that could make her a danger to others, we have no right to hold her against the wish of her parents or legal guardians. A law which I entirely disagree with, Sir Marcus, but there is nothing we can do about it.

  ‘I told Haynes that and it’s clear to me that he’s the one who needs medical attention. He kept demanding that we apply to a magistrate for a withholding order. Said that the child was in a critical state of mental health and that he couldn’t answer for her sanity if she was removed from his care. He finished by giving me a lecture on Jungian arche­types which I have always considered an unscientific attempt to prove human immortality. The fellow will have to go, Levin.’ The Badger tugged at his beard to emphasize the decision. ‘He may be a pal of yours, but I won’t keep an unbalanced man like Haynes on the staff any longer than I have to.’

  ‘You said he was excited, unbalanced about the case?’ Marcus frowned slightly. ‘Strange that, because I had lunch with Peter only yesterday and showed him round my lab afterwards. We were over three hours together and, though he talked a lot of his own shop, he never mentioned Mary Valley once.

  ‘So that’s why you called me up here, Dean. Haynes’s con­tract expires next month and you don’t want to renew it. You think that, because I’m friendly with him, I may oppose you on the board.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up.

  ‘I shan’t fight you, Dr Plunkett, but I think you’re making a mistake. You are a physician and I am a bacteri­ologist and we know little about psychiatry. Though Haynes may appear eccentric I believe him to be a good doctor, and perhaps Mary Valley is mentally ill. In any event she will have left the hospital by now and be on her way to Scot­land, so the case is closed as far as Saint Bede’s is concerned.’

  ‘Sir Marcus, you really surprise me.’ Plunkett broke in with a long, slow shake of the head. ‘You believe that I have been wasting your and my own time to discuss Haynes’s blasted contract! Mary Valley is not on her way to Scotland. She is still here, in this building, and it was as a bacteriologist that I wished to consult you.’ He turned and walked towards the door, his dragging feet showing the trace of a slight Parkinson’s syndrome.

  ‘That child remains in our care because in the early hours of the morning she really did become ill; physically, dangerously ill. A nurse heard her crying and went into her room. The pulse rate was ninety-two, the temperature a hundred and six and she was sweating heavily. Later she broke out in a rash on the chest and abdomen. I wanted to give you a general picture of the situation b
efore you examine her. That is why I have been keeping you here.’

  He shook his head again as he saw Marcus’s expression. ‘No, we have not been talking while a little girl is dying, Sir Marcus. Mary is completely out of danger but the hospital is not. Lord Fawnlee has already accused us of crass negligence, and at the moment I am unable to refute him.’ Plunkett pulled open the door and prepared to lead the way down the corridor.

  ‘Something came very near to killing that child this morn­ing and I am hoping you will be able to tell me what it was.’

  They had put Mary Valley in a private room at the back of ‘B’ isolation ward and a young nurse opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘She is better, gentlemen, very much better,’ she said. ‘On Mr Haynes’s instructions I gave her another adult shot of Genomycin at noon and now the temperature is well under a hundred and the breathing much easier.’

  ‘Mr Haynes told you to administer Genomycin; a full adult dosage?’ Marcus raised his eyebrows. The antibiotic was one of the most recently produced, barely out of the experimental stage, and Haynes was not a physician. The man really had taken a good deal on his shoulders.

  ‘I understand it was Mr Haynes who first attended the child, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sister Martin who is on night duty told me that he’s been looking in on Mary during the small hours of the morning since she was admitted. He told Sister that he wanted to study the child’s sleep patterns. When Sister found that Mary was running a fever she went to call the doctor on duty, but Mr Haynes met her in the corridor and said he would handle the case. I think Sister was rather annoyed about it, sir.’

  ‘I can imagine that, Nurse.’ Marcus remembered Sister Martin as a grim martinet who would stand no nonsense from a senior consultant let alone a mere bachelor of medicine. ‘But Mr Haynes got his way?’