The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Accident? For God’s sake, Jessie, what are you on about? I don’t know whether I’m ….’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She rubbed her hands over her hair, trying to smooth it. ‘Look, let’s get out of here, and into the office. I need to sit down, I think ….’ And at once he put a hand under her elbow and half-carried, half-led her to the office with its elderly but tolerably comfortable chairs.

  ‘It’s a complicated business,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ll do my best … I had an accident in the car coming back from Podgate. I was tired and … it was odd. The headlights coming towards me seemed to pull me into the middle of the road, do you know what I mean? Has it ever happened to you? I realized it was happening in time, or at least I thought it was in time, but I don’t think I’d been in the middle after all because when I tried to steer back I hit a lamp post and the car was a write-off and the police said they’d be talking to me again, although I talked to so many of them, and one of them brought me back here with the animals. I wasn’t hurt, you see, only a bit shaken up, so Harry Gentle lent me his car to go back to Purbeck Avenue then and ….’ She stopped, suddenly seeing the pit she had dug for her own feet, but it was too late. He was sitting up very straight and staring at her.

  ‘You went home. Then why are you here? You did go home?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said unwillingly. ‘Since I’d settled the animals I went back to the house. I was so tired I didn’t know what to do with myself, to tell the truth, and I just went. Moscrop had already gone by the time I went, and Harry said he’d lock up with my keys and leave them at the main-gate porter’s lodge for me to pick up in the morning, and said he was going over to his girlfriend tonight and didn’t need his car, and let me take it.’

  ‘So why are you here now?’

  She looked at him consideringly. All her instincts were to hide what had happened, to pretend her face was bruised because she’d walked into a door, or fallen over somewhere. To have been attacked by her own husband was a shameful thing to have to admit; much of the pity she had felt in the past when she had heard about wives who had been battered had been as much because of the injury to their pride as because of any injury to their bodies. How dreadful to have to display publicly by your injuries the fact that you were so much a failure as a woman that you couldn’t even prevent a man from attacking you! Somewhere deep inside herself she had believed that women who were beaten by men had, to an extent, only themselves to blame. It wasn’t something that happened to sensible, caring women like her. To have to tell anyone now that indeed it was, that she had been cast, against her will, into the role of victim; that was a disgrace that was hard to tolerate.

  ‘But it wasn’t my fault,’ she said aloud. ‘Was it? He said it was because he’d come back and I wasn’t there and …. it’s true I did get the days mixed up. I thought he wasn’t coming back till tomorrow – not last night.’ She rubbed her face with both hands, and laughed a little shakily. ‘I’m still not sure where I am as far as time’s concerned. It could be last night or tomorrow morning right now for all I know ….’

  ‘You’re not making sense, Jessie.’ He said it as gently as he could but he knew there was a note of asperity in his voice and she reddened at the sound of it.

  ‘I’m tired, damn it, and I’m confused and I was in an accident, and my husband hit me. What sort of sense d’you expect after that? An alphabetical list?’

  ‘Your husband … what did you say?’

  ‘You heard me,’ she said wearily. ‘Peter hit me. I suppose he was upset: he’d been waiting for me for ages, didn’t know where I was, and then when I came and told him the car was a wreck ….’ She shrugged. ‘That upset him,’ and she made her voice as colourless as she could.

  ‘Upset or not, no man has the right to hit any woman,’ Ben said strongly. ‘My dear, I’m so sorry. Of course you had to get away from him – but why here? Why not go to a hotel or something?’

  ‘It feels like home here,’ she said simply, and there was a little silence between them, and then she looked at him and frowned, puzzled. ‘Why are you here? What’s the time?’

  ‘Almost eleven,’ he said. ‘It’s Wednesday night and it’s almost eleven.’ And then he laughed, softly at first and then more and more until there were tears on his cheeks as she stared at him until he caught his breath and said, ‘I’m here for the same reason you are. I had to get away from a tiresome spouse.’

  ‘Tiresome?’ She blinked at the word and then laughed too. ‘Well, you could say that being slapped by a man of Peter’s size makes him tiresome, and he always had made me feel … well, perhaps you’re right. But your wife? June? What ….’ She stopped, embarrassed. The fact that she had told him of her own marital squabble didn’t give her the right to ask him for details of his, and she withdrew into herself, suddenly fastidious. She didn’t want to know. She’d had enough to put up with today already, wanted no more pain of any kind, even if it were someone else’s and not her own. No more pain, she thought, so don’t tell me ….

  ‘It sounds crazy, and I know it’s crazy, but I have to tell someone and you’re … I can trust you. I’m not sure even now that I know what I’m talking about, or even thinking about. Being without sleep makes you do the oddest of things, doesn’t it? It’s just that I think June raped me.’ Again he laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘I told you, crazy.

  Forget I said that.’

  There was a silence and then she said awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry,’ and realizing the inadequacy of it smiled at him, and he managed to smile back. ‘That’s silly. I suppose it’s my lack of sleep making me talk nonsense too. Look, Ben, I’m sorry I bothered you with my … with what happened, and I’d rather you didn’t tell me about … anything about June and you because it’ll make things complicated. Just let’s be as we are, can’t we? Working and busy and talking about work and enjoying it and ….’

  ‘Yes,’ he said at once. ‘Absolutely yes. Look, you need some more sleep. So do I. You can’t sleep with the animals, can you? So ….’

  ‘I can, you know. It was lovely. I just sort of did it. I hadn’t meant to but I thought I ought to leave a note for Harry saying I’d brought the car back and telling him where I’d parked it, so I picked up the keys and came over here. And then somehow it seemed too much trouble to go anywhere else. I’d meant to go to a hotel, really I had. I had a suitcase and everything, but the animals were there and they smelled so … so animal, you know? I like that smell. Earthy and musty and …. it’s life, isn’t it? Dry straw and corn and lettuce leaves. Nice. And when I’d fixed up the pile of straw and lay on it it made a lovely sound, whispering when I breathed. I slept beautifully. Till you came.’

  ‘But you were afraid to switch off the lights.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘I suppose I was.’

  ‘Take the couch here,’ he said. ‘No, really. I’ve still got some work to do so I shan’t need it and ….’

  She looked across the office at the battered old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall. It was usually covered with piles of books and papers, but he sometimes cleared it to sleep on when he had worked particularly late and wanted to start early next morning; he only did that when June was spending her nights looking after small Timmy at her sister’s flat, she knew that, but all the same it was his, and she shook her head.

  ‘What about you? You need sleep as much as I do. And you’re not going home either.’ Now it was her turn to make a statement rather than ask a question.

  ‘No, I’m not going home. But I can go over to the hospital to sleep in the medical quarters. You can’t. So it makes sense.

  Sleep here, Jessie, and I’ll get those bloods reported and then I’ll go over to the hospital. There’s a child there in Seven B I’m interested in, and I’d like to look at her before I go to bed and … well, I want to get the work done on her now. She’s got a virus infection.’

  She quirked her head at him and managed a
smile, weary though she was. ‘Got you excited, has she? Arc you going to give her Contravert?’

  ‘Hardly! I’ve not completed the animal trials yet, for heaven’s sake, let alone human ones. No, of course not – but she’s the sort of case it’ll be useful for, when … if we manage to get it right. So I want to see how she gets on. I’m interested.’

  ‘No matter what else happens, there’s always work,’ she said with sudden fervour. ‘Thank God for work.’

  ‘Yes. Thank God for work.’ He got to his feet and went over to the sofa and began to take the papers off it, stacking them methodically on the floor. ‘You’d be better off if you undressed, you know. You can’t really sleep like that. I’ve got a couple of blankets here somewhere, so you’ll be warm enough.’

  ‘I’ve got my case with me, so I’ve got nighties and things.’ She said it mechanically, watching him drag blankets from a cardboard box in the corner, and wad one up to make a pillow; she was now too exhausted to move, to go and do as he said and change in the little shower room beside the mortuary where he and visiting pathologists cleaned up after working in the PM room. But then he looked over his shoulder at her and said curtly, ‘Go on. You need all the sleep you can get.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said obediently, and with a great effort of will got to her feet and went over to the corner in the office where she had left her big blue suitcase, and rummaged in it for a nightdress and cardigan to put over it. ‘You’re right, of course you’re right. I’ll just go and change.’

  At the door she stopped and looked back at him. ‘Ben, will it all be the same again tomorrow? I mean, will it be like it usually is? Comfortable and … busy and, well, comfortable? You won’t let what I told you spoil anything?’

  ‘Spoil what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel frightened. I need everything here to go on as it always has. Work and being quiet with you and just getting on with it. Only getting excited and hopeful and worried about work, not about me or about … not being personal. Am I making sense?’

  He was silent for a moment and then continued arranging her bed, not looking at her. ‘Yes, you’re making sense. I know what you mean. I’ll forget anything you said tonight – or I’ll try to if you’ll do the same. Not about yourself, of course. You’ve got to decide what to do about Peter and whether you’re staying away from him for always or just for tonight. About me, I suppose I mean. I shouldn’t have said what I said about June.’

  ‘Then you didn’t say it.’ She managed to smile at him and went out, leaving the door open behind her, padding along the cold corridor in her stockinged feet, glad of the sudden chill. It gave her the added spurt of energy she needed to get herself undressed and back to that infinitely welcoming sofa. He didn’t say it, she told herself, so I shan’t think about it.

  But all the same, when she had gone back to the office and lay at last curled up under the rough red blankets, hearing him moving about in the laboratory outside, she knew she wouldn’t forget the bleak look on his face when he’d said, ‘It’s just that I think June raped me.’ Nor would she forget the rush of feeling that, weary as she was, had filled her body at the images that statement had conjured up. After what Peter had done to her that night, thoughts like that just weren’t thinkable.

  17

  They met again at breakfast at half past seven in the night nurses’ canteen, both looking a little haggard, but rested all the same. It was as though the extraordinary week that lay behind them had not really happened, and as she collected bacon and toast from the bored hotplate cook and poured cups of strong black coffee for them both she ran the events of those days before her memory’s eyes.

  It had all really started with the dead rabbits, and the fact that the other litter was alive and well, and she took her tray over to the table where he was finishing his bowl of cereal and set it down and said, ‘Ben … I was thinking … about the results we got with that group B litter. It is true, isn’t it? They did all survive the 737 virus? I mean, there couldn’t have been any mistake, could there?’

  ‘I know just how you feel.’ He pushed his bowl away and seized a plate of bacon greedily. ‘I was thinking the same this morning, while I shaved. Did it happen? But it did. We’ve really cracked it. I’m still scared of it all but not as much as I was. I know I’ve managed it and I feel bloody incredible about it. No matter what else happens, this is wonderful.’

  He looked at her for a moment and then away, and she knew what he meant as clearly as if he’d said it: forget personal things, forget what I said last night, what you said. Forget it.

  ‘And I know we’re on to it now. There’s no doubt in my mind at all. The stuff is good and it works. And the marvellous thing is I’ve got a lot of this batch of Contravert. Enough to do any number of repeat trials, and enough to get it properly analysed, to make sure we can standardize it in the future. I’ll talk to Don Clough about that this morning ….’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You remember. He’s the chap at Charrington’s, the people who do the extraction from the placentae.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘They make the Contravert for you.’

  ‘Not make it. They just extract it. They’re incredibly good there, I must say, for such a small set-up. Clough’s one of these really pernickety old women – hell to deal with, but he delivers what I need, which is a standard product every time. Don’t know how he does it. I must call him today and get him going on a new batch that matches this one exactly. However much I’ve got, I can’t have too much. It’s exciting, marvellously exciting.’

  He had gobbled his bacon and was now drinking his coffee, holding the cup in both hands while his elbows rested on the table, and staring at her with eyes glittering with excitement. She looked back at him, but only briefly. It was as though she were shy of him, very suddenly, the way a schoolgirl is shy if she meets a person she has always hero-worshipped; her pulses were banging thickly in her ears, and she was furious with herself because of it. It’s only because of what happened last night with Peter, that’s all; I’m grateful to him, no more. Don’t be so silly – it’s not even a crush, just an attack of acute gratitude. And she refused to consider the undeniable fact that she had been feeling like this about him, if not so intensely, even before her confrontation with Peter.

  ‘Yes,’ she said now, and managed to look at him again. ‘It is marvellous. You’ll be able to start treating people with it soon, won’t you? How soon do you think, Ben?’ That’s the way to get my head clear, she thought. Talk about work. Be cool and scientific instead of stupid and emotional.

  ‘People? Human trials, you mean? Heavens, I can’t say. I’ll need to put a proposal to the ethical committee here, I imagine, and maybe at area level too before I can do that. It’s one thing to work on animals, quite another to start dealing with human lives.’

  ‘Do you have to get permission from a committee? What happens if you don’t? Do you get into trouble?’

  He shook his head at her, amused. ‘It’s not a legal thing – it’s an ethical matter. It’s just not done to go ahead and do what you fancy doing with a new drug without getting the opinion and judgement of other people in the field. Or at least in adjacent fields. And in medicine you know as well as I do that people worry a hell of a lot more about what other doctors think of ’em than they do about legal sanctions.’

  ‘It’s just that I was reading somewhere about the first anticancer drugs. They were used on people who were so ill they couldn’t recover anyway, just to sec what would happen, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they were. There was a consultant at the Northern in London when I was a student there – years ago, it was – who’d developed some sort of jungle juice based on one of the nitrogenous mustards, I seem to recall. No one really approved of what he was doing, but as they said, when patients were obviously dying anyway they couldn’t be hurt by a new medication, and there was always a remote possibility they’d be helped ….’

  ‘Were t
hey? Helped, I mean?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, they all died, and then the poor devil got a carcinoma himself, and so the research stopped anyway. And I have to be fair – eventually they did develop anti-cancer drugs though we all used to jeer at the old man at the time. And they cracked it by using them on people so ill they were willing to take a chance on anything.’

  ‘So you could try Contravert the same way.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet, not yet by any means. I’ve had one successful animal trial and that’s all. I couldn’t start a human one for ages yet. It just wouldn’t be ethical.’ He locked at his watch and then got to his feet. ‘Look, Jessie, I want to go up to Ward Seven B, see what’s happening with that child – will you go and start things off at the lab? I won’t be long, and then we can start on the new litters.’

  ‘Of course.’ She got to her feet too, and together they walked out of the canteen. ‘I’ll do the pharmacy order, too, shall I? It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? They make such a fuss if you don’t get the requisition in before nine and if you’re going to a ward ….’

  ‘God, is it Wednesday already? Whatever happened to Monday and Tuesday? What happened to the year, come to that? Nearly Christmas, damn it, and I swear it was Easter last week. Yes, please, do the order. I left the rough list on my desk – hope you can find it. I’ll try not to be too long ….’ And he was gone, loping along the corridor towards the main ward block.

  She watched him go, liking the way his rather shabby white coat slapped against the back of his legs, and the odd lurching gait he always showed when he was in a hurry; he’s like a child rushing to get to an exciting party, she thought fondly, and then made a face at her own imbecility and went hurrying off herself to the laboratory. There were things to be done and other more important thoughts to be thought; such as what she was to do about Peter. Her bruises were covered now with a little discreet make-up and looked little more than shadows, but they were there all the same, and they had to be considered. Was she going back to Purbeck Avenue tonight? Was she going back ever? Some time today she’d have to face those questions, but not quite yet. First the animals to be fed, the pharmacy requisition to be written, a new animal trial of Contravert to be started; her familiar technique for separating personal matters from work matters struggled and at last triumphed and Peter left her thoughts altogether. There was only work now, and lots of it.