She thought for a moment. ‘Not a fool, Ben, no. But you didn’t do yourself justice. I kept wanting you to explain more about how much you worry and ….’
‘Thank God for you,’ he said and managed to smile at her, a twisted little grimace that made his eyes look more miserable than ever. ‘You were bloody marvellous. You took a lot of the fury out of those people, you know. You heard what they said when they started talking – and how the Animal Freedom Brigade lot were howled down ….’
‘I can’t think why they weren’t arrested as soon as they said that’s who they were,’ Jessie said indignantly. ‘The damage they did at the lab and ….’
‘You weren’t listening properly, Jess. They’re organized on a cell system. None of them know each other. They only deal with their own immediate group, so they can’t be held accountable for what other groups do.’
‘They ought to be,’ Jessie said and her voice rose a little with her anger. ‘They ought to be, and then maybe we’d ….’
‘Now, we can’t have you two sitting here on your own!’ Giles Stetler was beaming down on them. ‘Do come and collect a plateful of food. Nothing too fancy, you know – the hospitality budgets are being cut to ribbons these hard times, I’m afraid – but the chicken legs are edible. I promised you you’d feel better once it was all over and done with, didn’t I? Well done, both of you. You were absolutely superb, you really were. Excellent television, it really was – if those bloody reviewers don’t give us the accolade tomorrow, well, I don’t know what J.J. will say. He’s delighted about it all right now – he’s in his dressing room – but he’ll be along in a few moments. Do come and get some victuals – you’ve more than earned it ….’
‘I’m not so happy about how it went,’ Ben said bluntly. ‘I don’t think I gave a fair picture of what I do, and what the problems are ….’
‘But you were splendid, splendid!’ Stetler said heartily, and then added with an edge in his voice. ‘You can’t deny you were given every opportunity to say what you wanted?’
‘The questions ….’ Ben said and then stopped. ‘I never realized before how difficult it is to give the right answers if you don’t get the right questions.’
‘But you were given the right questions!’ Stetler said, more sharply now. ‘There was that long briefing session you had with J.J. – you talked for at least ten minutes – and he told you the areas he would cover and ….’
‘I know he did. But the way the questions were framed it just wasn’t possible to make it clear. I kept being sent off at tangents ….’
‘Forgive me, doctor, if I say that’s no fault in J.J. He doesn’t control your answers, you know – this was a live programme, you were free to say what you liked! No one was trying to catch you out.’
‘Then why do I feel as though they were? Why do I feel so uneasy? Why did I never feel I was in control of my own ….’
‘Oh, that’s just the effect of television! I’m sure that you’ll feel much better when you see the video. I’m sure you arranged for someone to video it so that you could see yourself tomorrow?’
‘No,’ Ben said, and frowned. ‘It never occured to me.’
Giles shook his head, amused. ‘Then you’re very unusual. Most of our studio guests do that. Can’t wait to see how they performed.’
‘I’m not a performer, I’m a doctor,’ Ben said. ‘Perhaps I should have remembered that before I agreed to come.’
‘You’re being over-sensitive, my dear chap!’ Giles put his arm soothingly across Ben’s shoulders. ‘Now, do relax and try some of our delicious BBC supper! I have to call it that in case anyone from the DG’s office is listening, though between ourselves I can’t deny it’s pretty ghastly … oh, Jenny. Are you looking for me?’
The girl in leather trousers and a heavy sweater, in spite of the heat in the room, who had come pushing through the crowd towards them was grinning from ear to ear. ‘No, Giles, for Dr Pitman. My dear, the drama! We’ve only been off air twenty minutes and the phones have been positively humming. Jammed the switchboard, I’m told – and there’s already someone here from The Times wanting an interview with you for tomorrow’s paper, and I dare say there’ll be others yet! J.J’s over the moon about it – it’s been ages since we had a programme that got them like this one has. Not even the Warnock Committee report got under their skins the way this one did – you can’t beat animals, can you? It always gets ’em where they live – the reporter’s over here. Will you come with me, Dr Pitman?’
‘No!’ Ben said. ‘I’ve talked enough for one night to last me a lifetime. Not another damned word ….’
‘But you must!’ Giles said. ‘You’ve become a person of considerable importance, my dear chap. You really must ….’
‘I must do nothing of the sort,’ Ben snapped. ‘I’m leaving. Now, Jessie?’
At once she nodded. ‘As soon as you like, I’ll get my coat – it’s in that dressing room place ….’
‘But you can’t say no to The Times,’ the girl Jenny almost wailed it. ‘I mean, it’s not as though it’s the Sun or something – this is the man from The Times ….’
‘I don’t care if he’s from bloody Timbuctoo. I’m leaving. My coat as well, please. If someone would get it and arrange for a taxi to take us back to our hotel ….’
He was white about the mouth again and Jessie felt better; Ben once again in an attacking mood was a great comfort in this alien setting, and she moved a little closer to him, grateful for his physical bulk.
‘Would this be Dr Pitman, then? Yes, of course, I recognize you. Watched the programme. And Mrs Hurst too … how convenient. Perhaps we could find a quiet corner, somewhere, Dr Pitman? Just a few minutes of your time before the hordes descend on you ….’
‘This is the Times journalist I told you about,’ the girl Jenny said, looking at Ben with an imploring expression on her face. ‘Jimmy, Dr Pitman’s a bit tired, as I’m sure you’ll understand and he said ….’
‘I am not tired,’ Ben said furiously. ‘But I do not intend on any account to ….’
‘Have you heard about the death, Dr Pitman?’ The journalist was standing looking at him with his head tilted to one side, his eyes bright and birdlike in a rather pallid round face. ‘Very unfortunate, isn’t it?’
‘What death?’ It was Jessie who asked, pushing forwards a little from Ben’s side. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Three children in Dartchester,’ the Times man said, never taking his eyes from Ben’s face. ‘They live in the same house – two brothers and a cousin, it seems. They showed signs of a flu attack early yesterday morning, apparently, and the grandmother who looks after them called the doctor, who didn’t come. She found the youngest dead in her bed this morning. Little girl of seven.’
‘Why are you asking Ben about it?’ Jessie’s mouth was dry.
‘Because Dartchester isn’t that far from Minster, and because the symptoms are, I gather, similar to those the child at your hospital had – the one you cured with your Contravert, Dr Pitman. It seems likely, according to the local GP, that the children picked up the virus from your animals – they’d been playing in a field near the town where there are a great many rabbits and ….’
‘Dartchester’s an enormous distance from Minster when you’re talking about rabbits. The animals from our lab couldn’t have gone that far – it’s almost forty miles!’ Jessie was standing in front of Ben now who was still silent, staring at the journalist. ‘They’re much too small to travel forty miles,’ she said passionately. ‘Much too small and much too weak. They’re probably dead by now, if those people let them loose in the open. They’re not used to fending for themselves, they can’t have got that far. Whatever those children had, it can’t be the same, it can’t ….’
‘It must, Jess,’ Ben said quietly and everyone looked at him. Around them the room had quietened as people turned and listened, craning to see and hear over each other’s heads. ‘Viruses can transmit great distances qu
ite quickly. It depends on the availability of vectors and there are a lot of rabbits and small mammals of all sorts in the country. They cover a big area. Has the child had a PM? Post-mortem examination?’
The journalist lifted his brows. ‘I don’t know, Dr Pitman. No idea. Would you care to comment on the situation?’
‘No,’ Ben said shortly, and began to move forward, pushing aside the people clustered round them. ‘Not enough information. I can’t comment – not enough to comment on. Just a supposition ….’
‘You said yourself that the virus could be from your animals …’ the journalist said, and Ben turned and blazed at him.
‘I bloody well did not! I said only that a virus could be transmitted the distance in the time that’s elapsed since my animals were stolen and released. That is all I said, and I have witnesses here. You report me as saying anything else, and by God, but you’ll pay for it!’
‘Fair enough,’ the journalist said pacifically. ‘Sorry, I misun derstood. But you don’t deny that these children could be affected by the virus which you had infected your animals with in your laboratory, Dr Pitman? The ones that were later stolen and released by a cell of the Animal Freedom Brigade?’
‘I neither deny nor affirm,’ Ben said, and now his rage seemed to have left him, for he spoke with a weariness that made Jessie reach out and take hold of his arm. ‘I only said that I don’t have enough information to make any sort of useful comment, so I make none. That is what I said, it’s what I say again, and if you report me as saying anything else, I’ll … I’ll sue. There has to be some legal protection against the sort of distortion you people go in for ….’
‘No one is distorting anything,’ Giles Stetler said loudly. ‘If that comment was directed at the way this programme was produced, then I oppose it categorically. We’ve done all we can to give you a fair hearing, an open forum, and if you damned yourself out of your own mouth, that isn’t our, fault, is it?’
‘And no one could ever think The Times would misreport you either, Dr Pitman,’ the journalist said and smiled at him, again tilting his head winsomely. ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.’
‘I’m glad you’re sure. Jess, are you ready? Mr Stetler, our coats if you please ….’ And he began to push towards the door even more determinedly.
‘One last question, Dr Pitman!’ The journalist came pushing along behind them. ‘Will you be willing to provide some of your Contravert for the remaining children of that family in Dartchester? They’re very ill, it seems, and a request has been sent to your hospital for supplies ….’
Ben stopped short and stood staring ahead of him, his eyes blank. Then he turned and looked at the Times man.
‘I’ll consider the request as soon as I receive it,’ he said carefully, enunciating each word very clearly. ‘I can’t make any decision in the absence of information. I can’t decide here, in a TV studio, what would be good medical practice at Minster Hospital. Can I? As soon as I get back to the hospital tomorrow morning, I’ll see the request and decide then. That’s all I can say. Goodnight, gentlemen.’ And this time they let him go, with Jess close beside him.
Long after they had said goodnight and parted, she sat on the side of her bed at the hotel, her dressing-gown pulled round her, staring at the floor between her bare feet, thinking.
The taxi journey back from the television studio had been a grim one, because the driver had a radio on, and the news bulletin that started just after they got into the cab led with the account of the death of the child in Dartchester, and warnings that a severe epidemic seemed to be building up as a result of the releasing of the laboratory animals.
‘Speaking on the BBC programme Probe tonight,’ the newsreader had said in cheerful tones, ‘Dr Ben Pitman, whose research involved infecting the released animals with the lethal virus strain known as 737, said no blame can be attached to the hospital at which he did the work, nor to his department. The Animal Freedom Brigade, who claim responsibility for releasing the animals, similarly deny all responsibility for the threatened epidemic, pointing out that they did not infect the rabbits in question with the lethal germ ….’
‘Damn them, damn the ignorant bastards for …. Why do they keep calling 737 lethal? Are they trying to put the fear of God into everyone? It’s the most irresponsible business I ….’
‘No sense in getting agitated, Ben,’ Jessie said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. ‘The story’s out and there it is. And it’s no use saying 737 isn’t dangerous because we know it is. Look, let’s not talk about it any more tonight. You’re exhausted and so am I, and we’ve talked ourselves into a state of bewilderment as it is. So, tomorrow, when we get back, then we’ll be able to think it through properly. Right now, you’re just getting upset and that’ll get you nowhere.’
And he’d agreed and had lapsed into a silence that he barely broke even when they reached the hotel. He’d collected his key from the desk, grunted a goodnight to her and gone, and she had watched him as he let himself into his room along the corridor and then gone into her own.
She had thought she was tired, thought that all she wanted was sleep, but she was wide awake now, in spite of a hot bath and a straight double whisky from the little refrigerator in her room. She didn’t drink much normally, but tonight, she’d told herself, she needed a sedative. And whisky would do as well as anything else.
But still she sat there at the side of the bed, her senses preteniaturally alert, her eyes wide and unblinking, unable to rest, thinking only about him. She imagined him, there in his room, a few doors down the long corridor outside her door, as alone and as wakeful and miserable as she was, and the image made her restless, made her get to her feet to prowl around the anonymity of this pink wallpapered box of a room in a box of an hotel in the middle of this noisy box of a city that she so hated.
Below in the street she could hear traffic, and somewhere in the distance a police siren began to wail excitedly, lifting waves of fear in her, and she pulled her dressing-gown even more tightly around her, even though she wasn’t cold, and opened her door and went out into the corridor. Being shut in that square featureless room, with its ominous lack of any personality at all, was suddenly more than she could bear. Even walking up and down the dusty overheated corridor outside would be better than sitting here, she told herself, and began to pace along the strip of carpet in the middle of the harrow way, setting her feet in front of each other very deliberately, the way a child does when she fears stepping on the lines between the paving stones, the way she had walked herself when she had been small and there had been so much in the world to be afraid of. Just as there still was.
She hadn’t meant to go to his room, she really hadn’t, or so she told herself. But there she was, staring at the gilt numbers. 431. The four was slightly askew and she looked at it and then put up one hand, wanting to set it straight, and then pulled away, furious with herself for her own foolishness. As if it mattered that the number was crooked; who cared? And she made herself look away from the upper part of the door and so saw that the key to the room was still in the lock. He’d left it there when he’d let himself in, and she stared at it and then, very deliberately, put out her hand again and this time grasped the key and turned it so that the door opened on the dark room inside. And she went in.
27
She woke in the bed in room 458 suddenly, one moment deeply asleep and the next wide awake with her heart thumping heavily in her chest, as though something terrifying had happened to her. It was dark in the room, though a faint glow came through the curtains from the floodlighting that criss-crossed the front of the hotel, and she peered at the faintly luminous face of her bedside travelling clock, squinting to see.
Half past six. She collapsed back again into her pillows, trying to puzzle out why she had woken in such fear; and then it started again; the wail of a police siren getting closer and closer, and she knew at once that it was that which had woken her before, and turned on her side, to
settle to sleep again. No need to get up for another half hour yet ….
And then she remembered and lay very still, staring out blankly at the dark room and its bulky shadows of dressing-table and luggage-stand, trying to convince herself that it hadn’t happened, that she’d dreamed it – which in itself would have been worrying enough, surely? – that it had all been a figment of her whisky-fed imagination.
But of course it hadn’t. She knew perfectly well that it had all happened. She had behaved extraordinarily oddly, God knew: she, the passive obedient wife of Peter, who had never even told him how she felt about his sporadic and clumsy lovemaking, to have behaved so? Had she really walked calmly into another man’s bedroom last night and taken off her nightdress and slipped her naked body into his bed beside him? She contemplated the enormity of her own actions and then, as she remembered the startled way he had responded to her – his moment of total stillness and then the urgent reaching for her – her mouth curved and she was grinning with delight in the darkness of her blank hotel room, going over and over each movement he had made, each movement she had made herself, enjoying it all again, reliving it so that her skin moved across the muscles of her belly at the memory.
It had all seemed so normal, she told herself, now, so natural and right. If anyone had ever asked her how she might react to making love with a man other than Peter, she would have been unable to answer. She had never shared a bed with any man but her husband, going into marriage with him as a virgin – a fact about which, she had later discovered to her chagrin, he had boasted a good deal – and had never even considered the possibility. She had told herself a long time ago that she was one of the more fortunate of the world’s women, not unduly perturbed by sexual needs, and had been grateful for that. To hunger after sex when married to a man like Peter could be a recipe for some unhappiness; as it was she had never felt particularly deprived, and had never thought of any other man in that context.
Until now, and she looked back down the corridor of her memory at last night and marvelled at how much urgency there had been in her and how she had been able to unleash it at his touch. Had she really rolled about beneath him in that abandoned fashion? Had she really made those extraordinary sounds, and above all, had she really gone on and on after she had reached the peak of her excitement so that wave after wave of delight curled through her? She who had more often than not felt little more than gratitude it was over and done with when Peter had made love to her, and who had only a few times in her life with him reached any sort of climax – and meagre ones at that – to have reacted with the strength she had showed last night? It ought to be unbelievable, she told herself, but glory be, it wasn’t, and she turned on to her back, abandoning any thought of sleep now, to lie with her hands linked beneath her head, staring at the ceiling and remembering, over and over again.
The Virus Man Page 27