The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  THE VIRUS MAN

  ‘Miss Cooper? You’re the teacher, are you, from the school? Yes. Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to the parents of the Barnes child. We did the best we could ….’

  ‘You did … what?’ Dorothy said, and stared at her, her mouth half-open. ‘What do you mean, talk to the parents of the child?’

  ‘We couldn’t get her into a respirator in time. I’m sorry. Stopped breathing, do you see. It’s as well, perhaps. By the time we’d got her in it my guess is there’d have been brain damage. Anyway, there it is. I’ll arrange for the necessary formalities and so forth – there’ll be an inquest, of course, only in here an hour or so, so that’s got to be dealt with – leave the parents to you, if I may? Pity, isn’t it? Children dying – it always upsets people so much.’

  Also by Claire Rayner

  THE PERFORMERS:

  GOWER STREET

  THE HAYMARKET

  PADDINGTON GREEN

  SOHO SQUARE

  BEDFORD ROW

  LONG ACRE

  CHARING CROSS

  THE STRAND

  CHELSEA REACH

  SHAFTESBURY AVENUE

  THE BURNING SUMMER

  THE RUNNING YEARS

  FAMILY CHORUS

  The Virus Man

  CLAIRE RAYNER

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-039-4

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: info@mpassociates.co.uk

  M P Publishing Limited

  © Claire Rayner 1985, 2010

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  e-ISBN 978-1-84982-039-4

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  For Paul Sidey

  A great friend and a great editor,

  with love

  1

  Miranda Hallam was found dead in her bed in Rose Dormitory at Bluegates School at seven o’clock on the morning of 31 October 1984. It was her twelfth birthday.

  For Dorothy Cooper, the headmistress (she only used the hyphenated version of her name, Trant-Cooper, on the school prospectus, since she was always uneasily aware that someone might turn up who had known her in the old days before she had added that interesting embellishment) it was a personal affront, an event designed by Providence solely to cause problems for her, rather than an event to be grieved over. Of course, it was sad the child had died; the death of a young creature must always be regarded as sad, but why did she have to die in such a way and at such a time? Next week, when most of the other girls would have gone home for half-term, it wouldn’t have caused a fraction of the fuss it was sure to cause now; already the other children were stirring, sitting up in their beds and staring uneasily at the very unusual sight of their dressing-gowned mistress in their midst at such an hour; wretched Miranda, she thought.

  She stared down at the humped bundle in the bed, and then at the white face of Mary Spain, the young school matron who had actually discovered that the child was no longer breathing, and tried to decide what to do. Let the other children once realize that their dormitory companion was dead and heaven alone knew what would happen.

  She bent and carefully wrapping the bedclothes round the child’s body, said loudly, ‘Oh, dear! We’d better get Miranda into the sickroom at once, Miss Spain. I dare say she’ll feel better there.’ And grunting only slightly under the weight, she picked up the bundle and carried it to the door. ‘Now then, girls, time to be up! I want you all ready for breakfast on the dot of eight, now! No hanging about.’ And she swept away, with Miss Spain scuttling after her, to deposit Miranda’s corpse in the sickroom and then go on to telephone Dr Sayer.

  Miss Cooper had never really liked Dr Sayer; she was a rather theatrical woman who made the most of every medical excitement that came her way, and there were few enough in Minster as a general rule. It had always been a healthy town (a fact which figured large in the school prospectus, which murmured soothingly of bracing air, so near the sea, and good country food provided amid tranquil surroundings), and Dr Sayer’s practice therefore offered limited opportunities for the drama she so craved. That was why she had been so willing to take on the school’s medical care when Dorothy Cooper had founded Bluegates back in the good palmy days of 1969. All the other local GPs had refused on the grounds of not wanting the added burden of seventy-five children aged between seven and sixteen living in the artificial atmosphere of a boarding school, and at first Miss Cooper had thought she had chosen well even though she’d chosen faute de mieux. But now she knew that Dr Sayer, who had in the past diagnosed everything from multiple sclerosis to malaria from an attack of a severe head cold, was more of a hindrance than an asset as far as the school’s good name was concerned. She never minded how much fuss she made, and what effect it might have on nervous parents – many of them already over-anxious because of their guilt at sending their children away – and this, the first death on the premises, would be the most splendid of meat and drink to her. But what could the headmistress do? Dr Sayer was the school’s official doctor, and that was it; she could not be bypassed. Dorothy Cooper was indeed in a very aggrieved state as she dialled Dr Sayer’s number.

  Jessie Hurst arrived at the hospital so early that Thursday morning that she actually had a choice of parking places. Usually she had to manoeuvre her heavy old Volvo back and forth as she sweated over the tight steering to get it into one of the really awkward places beside the boiler house, but this morning she was able to slide easily into the row just beyond the covered way that led to the pathology laboratory entrance, and that was a real boon on so blustery and wet a morning. But even that piece of good fortune didn’t lift her mood.

  She sat in the car for a few moments staring out at the rain washed tarmac and its slither of fallen leaves and tried to switch off home and switch on work. It was a technique she had worked over for some time now, this deliberate separation of the segments of her life, and usually she managed it tolerably well: however irritable and depressed the hours spent with Peter at Purbeck Avenue had made her, she was able to start her day’s work serene and alert, ready and able to cope with whatever might happen. Today, however, it was not so easy because last night Peter had started again and, unusually, had continued this morning. Generally he grumbled his way out of it in one session, and it was ominous that he had stuck so stubbornly to his theme this time.

  ‘There’s no need for it,’ he’d said, over and over again. ‘I keep telling you, I’m established. No matter how many cuts they make, I’m established. They can’t make me redundant – I’m sitting pretty. And with the marvellous work this Government’s done over inflation, we’re better off than we’ve ever been. You don’t have to do that ridiculous job. You should be taking it easy – staying at home – Mark off your hands and all; you should be taking it easy, your time of life – you don’t have to be one of these women’s libbers, not with the sort of home you’ve got, and the money I’m making – I’m sitting pretty.’

  She had managed not to rise to any of it: didn’t try to explain to him that she didn’t work just for money (though God knew she valued having her own earnings in her pocket, rather than having to be aware as she always had been all through her married life that he was the source of the family cash), bit her tongue on her retort to his admiration for the Government, knowin
g how he would launch into a panegyric for Maggie Thatcher which would only make her lose her temper, and she certainly made no comment about the women’s libber bit or the dig at her age. It wasn’t worth it. It had been too long since they’d agreed on anything at all important, and certainly not on matters important to her. And she grinned sourly then at the wet leaves in the car park at the thought of Peter realizing that anything could be important to her; as far as he was concerned all that should matter to Jessie was what mattered to him and perhaps to Mark. That she might have needs of her own was a concept he just couldn’t grasp. And it was no use getting angry about that, because he’d only stare at her with blank puzzlement if she did, and then shrug it off with some comment about women of her age and funny hormones.

  She shook her head at herself then, working harder at pushing Peter and the house away – it was getting more and more difficult to think of it as home, it was always the house in Purbeck Avenue in her mind – and concentrated instead on the job. She’d go in, in just a moment or two, unlock the laboratory, and switch on the lights and put on the coffee so that it would be ready when Ben – when everyone else arrived, and then go and start in the animal room, walking into the odorous damp warmth, murmuring to the rabbits and the little snuffling guinea pigs, talking to the two precious monkeys, Castor and Pollux, putting the food out; and slowly, as she visualized the hours that lay ahead, the knots in the muscles at the back of her neck relaxed and her irritation began to dissolve. It should be a good day, however badly it had started, as long as nothing tiresome came along to get in the way of Ben’s plan for the day. They were to try the new batch of Contravert and that would be exciting and hopeful and – and at last she was able to get out of the car and slam the door shut and run across the car park to start some real living, some real Jessie living.

  Ben was woken by the phone at eight o’clock, and swore furiously under his breath when he squinted at the clock and realized he’d overslept by over half an hour. Bloody June, he told himself, it’s all her fault, and then, guilty at the thought, looked over his shoulder at her as he reached for the phone to stop its shrilling. But she was still fast asleep, her face puffy and miserable even in her unawareness, and he felt the old stab of distress. Poor June, not bloody June at all, poor June.

  ‘Ben? Sorry if I woke you. Dan Stewart.’

  ‘Been up for ages,’ Ben lied and then wondered why he bothered. ‘Well, just about. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can you do a PM today? Sorry to push it at you, but it could be something important. Could be nothing of course, but I’ve got that bloody woman Sayer on my back, clucking like an idiot, bloody near orgasmic with excitement. I don’t suppose it’s anything much but there you are.’

  ‘What is it?’ Ben was sitting up now, and he looked down at June, still oblivious beside him, and turned his back on her so that he wouldn’t wake her with his conversation. The longer she slept the better for both of them.

  ‘Child at Bluegates – that poncey school over at Petts’ Hill – boarding school, you know the place. One of the children was found dead this morning, and Sayer – she’s their GP, God help ‘em – says there’s some sort of infection there that she reckons killed the kid. Load of rubbish if you ask me, but she’s hoisted the flag, so what can I do? There’d have to be a PM anyway, of course, for the coroner, but with this suggestion there’s some sort of infection there, it’d better be sooner than later. It’s nearly half term, you see, the kids’ll be going home next week, or supposed to be, for a break. So if there’s anything nasty in their woodshed, I’d better know now, hmm? Can you manage it this morning? I can have the body over there before ten.’

  ‘Shit,’ Ben said and rubbed his chin, rasping his fingers against the stubble irritably. ‘I’ve got an important animal trial starting this morning.’

  ‘Sod your animals,’ Dan said. ‘This is a public health job. And have you seen this morning’s Guardian yet? They’re cutting umpteen million off research grants next year, so you’re wasting your time anyway. I’ll see you at the hospital around twelve or so. If I’m lucky.’ And he rang off.

  All the way to the hospital Ben’s irritability simmered in him; he was tired of course by work, and that didn’t help, but it wasn’t surprising that his eyes felt gritty and his head stuffed with cotton wool. It had gone on until well after three o’clock, with June crying on and on until she had washed away all the last shreds of his sympathy for her and left behind only the weary bad temper that now filled him.

  He’d known it was going to happen, of course. Her last period had been about five weeks ago and, as aware of her cycle as she was, he had realized with a sense of dull foreboding that she was almost a week overdue. Inevitably she had started getting excited the day she had expected this month’s period to start, and when fully five days had gone by with no sign of it, she had been euphoric. He’d tried to warn her, to remind her that this had happened before, that she had to be a great deal more sure before she built up her hopes, but it was like dropping gravel into the sea, it made so little impact. And last night, when she’d gone to the loo after dinner and had come back with her face white and ravaged, he had almost literally braced his shoulders for the storm.

  Fifteen years of it they’d had. Almost fifteen years. She’d started agitating about wanting babies almost from the day they’d married, though he’d tried even then to tell her that there was no hurry, she was only twenty-one, she had lots of time, and that getting worked up about pregnancy could get in the way of conception, almost as though he’d had some sort of premonition of what was to come; but of course she hadn’t listened, any more than she did now. June had always been like that; single-minded. Obstinate, he murmured to the swishing windscreen wipers in front of him as he turned the car into the long driveway that led to the hospital’s car park. Bloody obstinate; but that wasn’t really fair, or kind. She was a steady sort of person, that was the thing. What she started she finished; it made her reliable, loyal, all the things any man needed in a wife, especially a man with a job like his that kept him working at all sorts of odd hours, that absorbed so much of his energy. To complain because she had the faults of her virtues was unjust. Unjust, he repeated, as he pushed his car into the awkward space beside the boiler house – that bloody Martin from pharmacy had pinched his place again – because it was that certainty in her that had made him marry her in the first place. She was so comfortable to have around.

  She isn’t now, is she? It was sometimes as though there was another Ben Pitman who sat perched inside his head and commented sourly on what went on not only around the real Ben, but also deep inside him. She isn’t now. She’s hell to live with, every period bringing with it a scene out of Camille and the combined tragedies of Shakespeare, and then the bouts of desperate sex when she gave him no peace for fear of missing any chance of getting herself impregnated; she isn’t easy to live with now.

  And on top of all that an unscheduled PM on the one day he’d managed to clear so that he could start the new animal trial. It had taken weeks of planning to get to this, weeks of making sure that the animals were in tip-top condition – thank God, or whoever it was who arranged such things, for Jessie Hurst – of preparing the batch of Contravert, making sure that no one else but Jessie and himself knew what it was they were doing, and now all of it buggered up by Dan Stewart. But even as he whipped up his annoyance, he knew it wasn’t Dan’s fault any more than it was Susan Sayer’s. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that a child had died. If there was doubt about the cause and it might be communicable then obviously the PM had to be done as soon as possible. But it was maddening all the same.

  He pushed open the big swing doors to the pathology laboratory with a loud swish, scattering the water from his overcoat all over the newly washed floor, and oddly, that made him feel better; as though he had, after all, some control over events, and he stood for a moment with his head up, reabsorbing himself into the place. The smell of the heavy pine disinfectant they used
to scrub the floors and the overlay of formaldehyde and methylated spirit and the thick acrid bite of laboratory chemicals, all mixed up with the heavy warm scent of animals and straw and rabbit food filled his nostrils; not an attractive smell by any manner of means, but important to him. It meant peace, it meant busyness, it meant his own place; the worries that occupied him here were comfortable worries because he was in control of them: his own actions created any difficulties he might have, and his own actions could dispel them. It was never like that at home with June.

  He stood for another moment or two to let the sense of security his laboratory gave him take over completely and then, with a small sigh, moved on to push open the further door into the biochemistry lab. One of these days he’d get the money he needed out of the district or even from the Medical Research Council and have a proper access to his own office built. It wasn’t right always to have to walk through biochemistry to get to it, but at least there were compensations to the awkward geography of the place – an inevitable result of the way it had grown piecemeal over the years – and he valued them. The animal room could only be reached through his office, which meant it was much easier to control other people’s access to it. The research was hard enough to organize as it was, without the complication of the world and his wife getting at his subjects.

  The lab was already occupied. Harry Gentle, the senior blood technician, was sitting at a bench working over a sheaf of records, and there, beside the ramshackle table that had been rigged in the corner for coffee pots and biscuit tins, was Jessie. Her head was bent over the Cona machine so that her hair, with the streaks of grey in its heavy darkness, swung over her face, and as the door clicked closed behind him she looked up, and at the sight of him smiled widely.

  The last shreds of his irritation went, June and her tears whirled away out of his mind; there was only today to be concerned with, and now he came to think of it, as long as Dan got that body to him at the time he said he would, he could get that PM done and maybe start the animal tests after all. As long as he had Jessie to help him, he’d get through, though it might mean working a great deal later than usual. But Jessie never minded that, and he smiled back at her and went to hang up his coat and pick up his coffee from Jessie. His eyes weren’t gritty any more and he’d quite forgotten how little sleep he’d had.