The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Those court stories you brought in a couple of weeks ago. Want ’em now. Get ’em.’

  The boy gawped. ‘Court stories? Which court stories?’

  ‘Shoplifters, idiot, shoplifters! There was one called Laughton, lived in Wessex Street, East Minster. I want the notes. Now.’

  ‘Wessex Street, East Minster,’ Simon repeated and backed out, praying that he’d be able to find his notebook. He usually had three or four going at any one time, and the one he had been using a fortnight ago could be anywhere; and he went to hunt in the squalor of his desk drawers, awed as he always was by Joe Lloyd’s remarkable memory, while Joe sat and waited, smiling gently to himself.

  So, the News wasn’t interested in two dead kids and an epidemic? He’d show ’em what a story was! They’d soon find how wrong they were not to pick up on it. Here he was in a position to get every bit of inside information there could possibly be from Bluegates; here was a source who’d be falling over herself to tell him everything there was to be told, from the kids’ symptoms to the colour of the headmistress’s knickers. A shoplifter! He couldn’t believe his luck.

  Dan Stewart sat at his desk for the first time that week, and stared down at the returns that had been hastily collected for him by his secretary and felt a little shiver of anxiety start in his belly and creep up into his shoulders.

  There had been a more than a hundred per cent increase in the numbers of cases the GPs thought might fit into his tentative outline of the illness. He’d sent them all a confidential memo, telling them he wanted information on any virus infections that might present, and listing ten signs or symptoms, and offering them all simple checklists they could use to get the information to him. It was a simple method he’d devised years ago when he was young and energetic and new in the community health game for persuading busy or lazy doctors to get him the information he wanted with the least effort to themselves. It was a coarse-meshed screen, of course; plenty of the cases that had been added to the totals were likely to turn out to be chicken pox or German measles or just different strains of upper respiratory tract infection with a bit of coincidental diarrhoea and vomiting, but even allowing for that, there was enough here to make a man worry.

  Could it be a raw new flu strain that had started there at Bluegates? And, if so, where had it come from? And he made a face at himself for being so stupid; half those kids were there because their parents worked overseas. Anyone could have brought Christ knows what in with them on their last trips home for the holidays. The new term hadn’t been that old when it started. When was the first case? That child had died on – he flicked open his desk memo book – 31 October. And the school term had started on 17 September. That meant a … six-week incubation period. Not possible, he told himself. Not a flu strain. And not at the rate it’s now seeming to spread. It’s obvious it’s a short incubator, not a long one. So we still don’t know where it could have come from. Certainly not from overseas, unless a parent visited in the interim or a child came back late? He’d have to find out about that, and he made a note.

  Not that that really faced up to the central problem he had to deal with. Was this a new bug, and had he encouraged its spread by not putting the school in quarantine? He’d let the kids go home for the half-term holiday, damn it, even when there’d been warnings that there might be something here that needed further investigation. He should have held on to them, swabbed the lot, seen what he could grow.

  ‘Shit!’ he said aloud, and reached for his phone. He’d have to talk to Dorothy Cooper, find out whether there could have been a source from overseas, and then get in touch with Colindale. It wasn’t that there was anything really to worry about, he told himself, as optimistically as he could. The illness, whatever it was, might be keeping the doctors busy, but there was no reason to really worry …

  Except for two dead children in as many weeks, an inner voice said sharply, and he swore under his breath with impatience as the phone rang tinnily in his ear, repeating itself infuriatingly. Where were the silly bitches? Why couldn’t someone answer the bloody phone?

  At last a breathless voice said, ‘Hello?’ guardedly, as though its owner was afraid someone would jump down the phone at her, and he said brusquely, ‘Miss Cooper please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Cooper’s not available,’ the breathless voice said, more nervous than ever now. Try tomorrow. She might be here then ….’

  ‘Might be?’ Stewart said and his voice sharpened. ‘What’s going on there? Who is that?’

  ‘Nothing’s going on,’ the voice quavered. ‘Er … are you a parent?’

  ‘No, damn it, I’m Dr Stewart. And I have to speak to Miss Cooper.’

  ‘Oh!’ The voice drew a sharp little breath of relief. ‘Oh, you should have said, Dr Stewart! This is Wynn Ventnor. Hasn’t Miss Cooper called you? She said she was going to.’

  ‘I’ve been out of my office all week,’ Dan said, and sat up a little straighter. ‘Why did she want me? Is there something … what is it?’

  ‘Oh, Dr Stewart, we’re so worried. Some of the girls are so ill, and now we’ve had to take Andrea Barnett into the hospital, she’s like poor Pauline was, and we’re so worried – the girls have been calling their parents and seventeen of them have gone already.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘Home, or to their relatives in England if their parents are away. It’s all so dreadful, Dr Stewart. Miss Cooper’s being so strong, but honestly, I’m worried about it and ….’

  ‘So am I,’ Dan Stewart said. ‘So am I bloody well worried. She’s at the hospital? Good. I’ll see her there.’ And he slammed the phone down and ran for the door so fast his chair went sprawling.

  10

  ‘Well, it might be,’ Ben said. ‘It just might be,’ and he tried to sound judicious, relaxed, very cool and professional, but Jessie could hear the excitement underneath the measured tones. ‘I’ll have to try another group, of course, replicate the whole thing. How is the other litter – the one in the corner pen? How many are there?’

  ‘Only six in that one,’ she said, feeling absurdly that it was so mehow her fault that she hadn’t had the skill to make the doe superfecund, able to produce vast numbers of small rabbits for Ben to work on. ‘But there are two of them … I mean, do you remember what we did last time? We mated the same buck with two does from the same litter. The sister’s in the pen beneath Castor and Pollux’s cage. So you could use both litters, and they’d still be well matched, wouldn’t they? It’s not the same genetically as splitting one litter, but they’re closely related.’

  He thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’d rather replicate the experiment precisely. We’ve got some more of the same Contravert batch, haven’t we? And the 737 – yes. So, we’ll use one litter, even though it’ll mean smaller groups.’

  ‘We could do it twice,’ she said. ‘Both litters – split each one into groups A and B and use them as doubles.’

  ‘We could ….’ He sat and thought, staring blindly at the dead rabbit on the slab in front of him. ‘We could – but I think I’d rather wait. I want to use the next generation of the virus as well, you see, for each experiment. Then we’ll know if it becomes more virulent or if it attenuates as it progresses.’

  ‘Then we’ve got to run parallel experiments,’ Jessie said. ‘One lot with the present virus strain of 737 as well as the Contravert, and another set with second and third generation 737 and Contravert. Otherwise you aren’t replicating this experiment properly, are you? And we could use the sister litter for that easily.’

  He grinned, delighted with her. ‘Attagirl. Yes, that’s the way we do it. You’re quite right, of course. I’m trying to rush it. Hang on to my coat tails, Jessie – I’m getting excited and falling over my feet.’

  ‘I’ll hang on,’ she said, and almost without thinking put her hand up and took hold of his upper sleeve and shook it slightly. ‘Oh, I’ll hang on. It’s working, isn’t it, Ben? We’re
going to do it – you’ll be as famous as, I don’t know, Alexander Fleming. We’re going to do it.’

  ‘I think we are.’ He was still standing looking down at the rabbit lying stretched and rigid on the slab, waiting for its autopsy. ‘Oh, Christ, Jessie, I think we are.’ And he looked at her directly now, and she peered closer at him and said, uncertainly, ‘Ben? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m shit scared!’ he said, and she could see it even more clearly now, the dilated pupils and the pinching round his nostrils. ‘I’m not sure what I’ve started here. I just thought it’d be interesting, useful; I thought – I’ll find what I want, one of these days, and then everything’ll be wonderful. I never really thought how it’d feel, what would actually happen. And now I think I might actually have found it, that it’s one of these days today, right now, and I’m scared – I haven’t felt this way since I was a child. When my father died … it’s mad ….’

  ‘Not mad,’ Jessie took her hand away from his arm, suddenly very aware of the physical contact and acutely embarrassed by it. ‘But a bit, well, illogical, for a scientist. What’s there to be scared of?’

  ‘You can be a scientist in one half of you, while the other half is still thirteen years old and just been told his father’s going to die. Or that he’s won a place at the best school in the county, or that he’s got three A grade A levels or … logic has nothing to do with it. I just feel scared and excited and shaking inside and I don’t know why for the life of me. Research shouldn’t be like this. It’s a long slow business – not dramatic and exciting and frightening. Or it shouldn’t be so. I just don’t know why I feel so … it’s ridiculous. And I don’t know why I’m talking so much rubbish. You’re bad for me. You make the words come out of me whether I want them to or not.’

  ‘That can’t be bad,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘I keep reading these articles that say people don’t talk enough.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right.’ He moved slightly away from her, turning his shoulder, visibly withdrawing. ‘Now, the next stage. I’ll section this one, make up the cultures and the slides, while you prepare the next. I have to do every animal, you see, and match the cultures. If they all died from the same strain of virus, we’re all right. If there’s an adventitious one, I’m getting excited and stupid over nothing. So, some real work. Will you start, then? I can manage here on my own.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course,’ trying not to let the hurt of his withdrawal show. ‘I’ll finish Harry’s stuff first, if you don’t mind. Otherwise he’ll come in in the morning and start asking awkward questions. I’ll be ready well in time for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Fine …’ and his voice was abstracted, his head already bent over the animal as he began to open the belly.

  They worked all through the night. Once or twice Jessie looked up from what she was doing – getting the small bodies ready for him, clearing up after he’d finished each one, labelling the slides and the cultures, setting them in the incubator, writing up the charts – and once actually opened her mouth to suggest they stopped, went to get some sleep and then started again in the morning, but he was totally absorbed, enclosed in that absorption as though he were inside a transparent soundproof shell. So she closed her mouth again and said nothing, but went on doggedly working, her eyes hot and sandy and her skin feeling tight over her bones, but content for all that. It was as though there were no time, no world outside this small cluttered set of laboratories, no reality except in the faint reek of opened mammalian bellies, no sound but the ringing hiss of the overhead strip lights and the rumble of the fridges and the incubators; nothing but two silent people, working in a vacuum.

  At half past seven, when she heard the rattle of the cleaners’ buckets outside in the corridor, she straightened her back and made herself speak, and the effort made her voice sound loud and peremptory in her own ears.

  ‘Ben, it’s light. The cleaners’ll be in here in a while, and they’ll talk if it’s obvious we’ve been here all night. I’m going over to the main hospital to get a shower and some breakfast. You ought to do the same.’

  He looked up bleary eyed from the notes he had been writing busily for the past hour and blinked at her.

  ‘What did you … what’s the time?’

  ‘Half past seven. Errol’s due in an hour. I know he’s usually late, but all the same …’

  ‘Yes, of course. A shower and breakfast. Yes … coffee …’ He sat and contemplated coffee and then grinned at her, his face alight with pleasure. ‘Oh Jessie, isn’t it marvellous? Haven’t we had a marvellous time?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s marvellous,’ and she went to the corner of the office to reach into the locker and get out her bag and her coat. It was important to look as though she’d just arrived, rather than that she’d been here all night, and maybe putting her coat on ….

  He stood up and stretched. ‘I’ll come over with you. Do you need your coat? It’s not that cold, is it? I’m cooking.’

  ‘That’s lack of sleep,’ she said. Her bag slipped in her hand, partly because she was so tired, but also because he was standing rather near to her, and that made her oddly shaky. The contents strewed themselves over the floor and she muttered under her breath and crouched to retrieve them. At once he crouched beside her, too, to help her, and together they scrabbled among loose change and lipsticks and tubes of aspirin and keys, and as they reached for the same thing their hands touched, and at once she pulled back as though his skin had been red hot and she had been scorched.

  When she stood up, holding her bag awkwardly in front of her, pushing the things back into it, he stood up too, and now he was standing even closer, and she said breathlessly, ‘Please. Don’t ….’

  ‘Don’t what, Jessie?’ He made no effort to move, standing there close to her, and she couldn’t get away, for the locker was behind her and its open door blocked off any avenue of escape to the side.

  And anyway, her mind shouted at her, why do you want to escape? There’s nothing to escape from – don’t be stupid, you’re like a baby, a silly schoolgirl, getting all hot under the collar for nothing, stupid, stupid.

  ‘Don’t crowd me.’ She tried to make it sound jocular, a light little comment any woman might make, but it came out in a squeak, and he ducked his head to look more closely at her, for she was standing with her head bent over her bag so that her hair fell forwards and hid her face.

  ‘You said something before,’ he said abruptly. ‘I thought it odd then – you said that if the cleaners came in and saw us they’d know we’d been here all night and they’d talk. What did you mean?’

  Still she stood looking into her bag, poking at it, pretending to look for something, pretending to tidy up its contents.

  ‘Well, just that … you know what cleaners are. They love to gossip. Everyone in this bloody place loves to gossip.’ And there was a sudden note of venom in her voice. ‘And I’d rather they didn’t. That’s all.’

  ‘Jessie, people in hospitals often work all night. Why should anyone gossip about it? You’re not making sense. Or are you?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Again she tried the oh-so-light voice and now it was more successful, and she felt she could look up at him, if only briefly. ‘Put it down to fatigue and stupidity. Sorry.’

  ‘Why did you stay?’ He said it abruptly and she looked at him, briefly, puzzled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, why did you stay? Why didn’t you tell me at ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, whenever it was you got tired, why didn’t you tell me you were going home, and just go? Harry Gentle went, and so did Annie – why did you stay?’

  ‘There was work to be done.’

  ‘There’s always work to be done. Any minute now the deliveries’ll start and we’ll be swamped with work. It never stops. Why did you stay, Jessie?’

  ‘Because I wanted to.’

  ‘Why?’ He stood stolidly, not moving, so neither could she.

  ‘I wan
ted to, I suppose … I don’t know! It’s important – the work I mean – and you were here and ….’

  ‘The work’s always important, but you don’t usually stay all night to do it. You don’t stay all night when I don’t.’

  ‘No, but ….’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Stop it, Ben! You’re nagging me! What have I done to make you bully me this way?’ She was trying to drum up some anger, something that would help her push him out of the way so that she could escape, but it wasn’t really working. She sounded merely petulant.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and moved of his own free will, going back to his desk to sit on the edge of it. ‘I … was I bullying you? I’m sorry. It was just that I wanted to know.’

  ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘Why you’re behaving so oddly. Why I’m feeling so ….’ He shook his head. ‘I used to be able to stay up working all night and feel fine. Am I getting old? I’m a bit light-headed.’

  She felt safe again; he wasn’t so close any more and seemed to be less intense, and she moved forwards and pushed past him, forced to go close to him by the clutter in the small space, and he put out a hand and pulled on her upper arm, so that she had to half turn to face him.

  ‘Am I getting old?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ she said, and managed a smile. ‘I am. We all are.’

  ‘How old are you, Jessie?’

  ‘I’ll be forty in January,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Then I was an eighteen-month-old bouncer when you were born. Not much in it. If I felt as young as you look I’d be able to stay up all night and not notice it. You’re an oddity, you know that?’ He grinned at her, still holding her arm, and she knew she ought to pull away from him but she felt too tired to try. And anyway, she didn’t want to. Before, she had been alarmed by his closeness; now she was relishing it. I’m mad, she thought, quite mad, and she stared at his face, so close to hers that she could see the hairs growing sparsely over his cheekbones, and liked what she saw even more than she usually did when she looked at him. Quite, quite mad.