When the phone shrilled on the table beside her she knew it was him, never even considered the possibility that it might be the waking call for which she had asked. She picked up the phone and turned on her side again so that she could sandwich the instrument between her ear and the bed and said softly, ‘Good morning!’
There was a little silence and then he said, ‘Why did you leave me? I turned over and you were gone.’
‘Put it down to old fashioned morality.’ She smiled into the dimness. ‘Didn’t fancy being caught with you by a hotel chambermaid.’
‘Hypocrisy,’ he said and she could hear the smile in his voice, too.
‘It’s the same thing. Did you sleep well?’
He laughed softly. ‘Eventually. Eventually.’
‘I know. You snore. Did you know that?’
‘I’m not surprised. Always had a funny nose. Does it worry you?’
‘Not in the least. It’s a useful signalling system. Told me when it was time to leave.’
‘Then I’ll have to get my nose fixed and the snore abolished. It wasn’t … agreeable to wake up and find you gone.’
Now she was silent. ‘You’re assuming there’ll be other times.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘I haven’t thought about anything apart from the now. Last night and now. And now it’s time we got up, had breakfast, caught that train ….’
‘Not yet. If I can’t have you here beside me, let me talk a little longer at least. Why shouldn’t I get my nose fixed for you?’
She sighed, and turned on her back again, holding the phone to her ear. Now it was all over, the glory of the night shattered and the last glittering shards fell into the darker recesses of her mind. Now it was a time for sense.
‘Because we’re going back to work, Ben. Because this is London and nonsense and unreality and what happens here is …. different. Nothing to do with real life or with us.’
‘Everything to do with us.’ His voice was sharper now, as though he was alarmed. ‘Everything ….’
‘No,’ she said it sadly but definitely. ‘We’re going back to Minster, Ben. There it’s different.’
‘Why should it be?’
‘Because of Peter. I am married to him, you know. Whatever I decide to do about him in the future, I am still married to him and I’m … a tidy soul, I suppose. I need to have things right to feel right.’
‘Didn’t last night feel right?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, last night felt right. Here, in London, in this horrible hotel, it felt marvellously right. That’s my point. It wouldn’t feel right in Minster, not for me.
I’ve got to get things tidy first. And there’s June, isn’t there?’
She heard the deep intake of breath that mimicked her own. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said after a moment. ‘I suppose you’re right. What’s the time, Jess?’
‘Just after seven.’
‘What time’s the train?’
‘Eight thirty. Just time to get up, get some breakfast, get packed, go to Paddington ….’
‘To hell with breakfast. Talk a little longer, make it last a little longer. We can get coffee at the station.’
‘All right.’
There was a silence again, and then he said carefully, ‘It’s the guilt, isn’t it?’
‘Whose guilt? Mine or yours?’
‘Both, I suppose. Mine most of all, though. You’ve no reason to feel guilty about Peter. The man’s a bastard, hit you, treated you badly ….’
‘That’s not entirely fair ….’ She made a face in the darkness. ‘I mean, yes he did, but I think it was as much my fault as his.’
‘How can it be? You aren’t saying you believe all that nonsense some people trot out about victims being to blame for their own pain?’
‘To an extent. After all, I’ve lived with him for twenty years, haven’t I? I agreed to a view of life through his eyes all that time. Did it his way. You can’t entirely blame him for being so … for reacting as he did when I confused him by changing, can you?’
‘I can blame him. By God, I can.’
‘Then you’re being unjust. I colluded with him all these years, let him think I was one kind of woman when I wasn’t. I lied to him, if you like. Put that way, how can you blame him?’
‘For beating you?’
‘He lost his temper. It wasn’t a real beating.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Jess, why are you defending him? Are you trying to tell me you love the man? I don’t believe it ….’
‘No, I don’t love him. I thought I did, but I didn’t know what loving someone really felt like, so I couldn’t help my ignorance, I suppose. But that wasn’t his fault ….’
‘Then why not … why not let me get my nose fixed and the snoring stopped?’
She laughed softly. ‘It’s a nice snore. Melodious. I liked it.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Jess, why not?’
Now she had to say it. ‘Not because of my guilt, Ben, and you know it. It’s your guilt that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’ve left Peter, in effect. I’ve only got to tidy things up and then I’ll be free and I won’t be guilty about it – though I might be regretful. For the wasted years and for him. Poor Peter. But it’s different for you, isn’t it?’
He was silent and she wanted to reach into the phone, to push her finger in and touch him there somewhere deep inside it, as though she were a child who had to have her fantasies made real.
‘Ben?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am right, aren’t I? You’ve got to deal with the way you feel about June.’
Again the silence and then he said, ‘Yes. Oh, God damn it, yes. I suppose I do.’
‘I … I shouldn’t ask, but I have to. Do you love her, Ben?’
This time the silence frightened her, and for the first time since she had woken she felt a stab of shame. She had seduced a man who loved someone else. It shouldn’t matter, not in these bright shiny 1980s when no one gave a damn about love when it came to sex, but it did matter to her. For her the two were indivisible and always had been: it was because she had been able to face up to the fact that any feeling she might have had for Peter was a dead one, and certainly not love, that she had been able to allow herself to love Ben, and having allowed that, been able to give that feeling a natural and physical expression. To hear in his silence now the possibility that he had taken her love from her while giving his own to someone else made her feel, just for a moment, sick.
‘No,’ he said then, and she blinked.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no, I don’t love her. I did, once, and I’ve gone on trying to for a long time. But I don’t.’
It was as though someone had switched on the light in the dark room, and she closed her eyes against the brightness and said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘As sure as I can be. How can you tell when something starts to shrivel? How can you tell when the shrivelling’s complete and there’s nothing left? It’s been shrivelling for years, the way she has ….’
‘You mean she doesn’t love you?’
‘Not really. Not me as Ben. As a husband who might give her a child – ah, that’s something else.’ The bitterness in his tone was very clear. ‘As a stud I’m an important part of her life and her schemes. But as myself – no. She has only one passion, and she keeps it in her bloody uterus.’
‘She can’t help that, Ben.’ She needed to defend her lover’s wife, needed to try to make him attack her more. ‘It must be hell on earth to want a child and not be able to have one.’
‘Do you think I didn’t care about it?’ he said almost violently. ‘Do you think I never felt deprived? I’m on the way to fifty, Jess, and I’m not exactly likely to have children of my own now. It matters to men too, you know. It matters to men. That’s what makes June such hell. It’s as though she can’t imagine it mattering to anyone but herself. It’s as though I don’t exist except as a pair of balls ….’
; She couldn’t help it. ‘You’re certainly that, whatever else you are,’ she said and then caught her lip between her teeth. And when he laughed let her own breath go into a husky chuckle. ‘I’m sorry. That was frivolous and cheap of me.’
‘No, it wasn’t, and you bloody well know it wasn’t. Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you, Jess.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, mock-apologetic. He laughed again and then said with a sudden urgency, ‘Jess, we will again, won’t we? Last night was … incredible. I needed you and it was as though you knew, and you came here and … it can’t just be once, Jess. I won’t let it ….’
‘June ….’
‘I’ll think about June. Whatever you say won’t make any difference, you know. I mean, whether you agree to go on with what we’ve started or whether you come the Victorian madam and cast me into the outer moral darkness for ever, it’s the end of the road for June and me. It has been for ages, but I was too busy to notice or care, I suppose. Now I care. So, Jess, can we? Go on as we’ve started?’
‘Ben, we’ll miss that train if we don’t get going soon. I’ll see you in the lobby in three-quarters of an hour. Then we can get a cab over to Paddington. We can talk another time. Not now. It’s impossible now. No need to rush … please?’
‘On the train then. We can talk on the train.’
‘Yes,’ she said and stretched her other arm above her head, luxuriously arching her back, feeling the lingering traces in her body of the sensations that had filled it last night. ‘Yes. We can talk on the train. Don’t be late – three-quarters of an hour to meet downstairs and then an hour and a half on the journey. Lovely.’
But there was no time to talk on the train, after all.
28
June sat on the window seat staring out at the sooty wet garden, listening all the time to Timmy’s breathing and trying not to panic inside. He was all right; it was no more than a nasty little cold he’d picked up. She should never have taken him on the bus into town, should have got a taxi and to hell with the cost; shouldn’t have taken him into town at all really, but then he’d wanted to see Santa Claus in his grotto so much and she had wanted to see him there, his little face alight with the excitement of it all.
She bit her lip and turned back into the room. Timmy was still lying fast asleep on the sofa, and she looked down at him, trying to see if he was feverish, whether he was really ill, but he looked all right; his face was a bit rosy perhaps, and he was breathing noisily with his mouth open because of his blocked-up nose, but he wasn’t restless, showed no signs of the fretfulness a real illness must surely bring with it …. Carefully she bent, and moving with infinite care, pulled the blanket over him more securely and then tiptoed to the table to sit and make paper chains for him. She’d promised him they’d hang them up at her house this afternoon, and though she was getting more and more doubtful about the wisdom of taking him out of the warm flat, a promise was a promise. You mustn’t ever let children down, mustn’t destroy their confidence in their little world by breaking your word.
As she sat down she saw the newspaper again, and felt once more that swoop of terror in her belly and had to close her eyes against it and hold on to the edge of the table. Why had he told her to read the papers? Why hadn’t he left her in happy ignorance? Why had he set out to frighten her like this, spoil all her time with Timmy? She hated him for it, hated him, hated him – and thinking that helped, made it easier for her to open her eyes and look at the headline that screamed its alarm in inch-high letters. If she hated the source of that alarm, then it meant it was false. There couldn’t be anything true about someone you hated, could there?
And yet … and despite herself she leaned forwards and picked up the paper and smoothed it on the table and began to read it again. A dead child in Dartchester, a considerable number of children admitted to hospital with severe symptoms, and heaven knew how many in their own homes with slightly lesser symptoms. Clustered in the south west, but some cases beginning to appear further afield; some reported in London, not a few in the Birmingham area, and a suspected one as far north as Gateshead ….
And side by side with the ominous reporting of this plague of the children, as the newspaper persisted in calling it, the excited comment on Contravert, Ben’s Contravert, her husband’s Contravert, the man she hated’s Contravert – I don’t hate him really, she told herself, staring at the page. I don’t, but I’m so frightened, so frightened – and across the room Timmy stirred on his sofa and she lifted her head and looked at him anxiously, but he didn’t wake and she returned to the paper.
There was a lead article as well as the excited front-page report, and almost against her will she turned to it and began to read. “‘The Mills of God”,’ said the article portentously, “‘Grind Slowly, but they Grind Exceeding Small.” In other words,’ it went on in some confusion, ‘it was clearly meant that this great new British cure should be developed just at the time it was most needed for a dread new disease that threatened all our children. The fact that the epidemic that is clamouring for large supplies of Contravert to deal with it was itself caused by the research that developed the wonder drug adds to the poignancy of the scientific dilemma facing Dr Pitman – which,’ the article allowed handsomely, ‘is well understood by every intelligent person, of which, of course the readership of this newspaper is entirely composed and one with which said intelligent persons must deeply sympathize. But …’ and now the article took on a hectoring tone. ‘Dr Pitman cannot be left to make this decision alone. He might in a spirit of scientism want to tread the slow and laborious path of the perfect scientific method and test his drug further before making it freely available, but with a child killer plague loose – a plague, it must be remembered, engendered by the work of Dr Pitman himself – it is action that is needed. We live not in the Groves of Academe,’ the article boomed, ‘but down in the mud and struggle of the real world. Dr Pitman must therefore listen to us when we demand that he releases his great discovery for immediate use to save those children whose lives hang by a thread and ….’
Why won’t he? June sat and looked at Timmy and tried to puzzle it out. Why was Ben being so stupid, refusing to let people have the Contravert, if it was all that was needed to save children’s lives? Why was he refusing – as the paper said he was – to talk about the stuff, let alone let people have any of it? Was it because there wasn’t enough?
She lifted her chin at that thought; not enough, it had to be that, surely? She tried to remember what he’d told her about his work, about the things he did and the way he got his materials, but she had never listened to him properly, finding it all too boring, had sat and thought about all sorts of things of her own, nodding brightly but never really listening, and now she just couldn’t remember ….
But it had to be that. Not enough, that was the problem. But there was some. They’d used it for that little girl from Bluegates School, hadn’t they? The paper had said so, and that doctor on television last night, he’d said so. So there had to be some at the hospital. In Ben’s own laboratory? Where else would it be?
Timmy opened his mouth and began to wail even before he opened his eyes, and at once she ran across the room and picked him up, crooning to him soothingly to make him cheer up. If he woke up cranky he stayed cranky all afternoon and that made both of them feel dreadful; and she crooned and rocked and rocked and crooned and he stopped crying and buried his hot damp face in her neck and she held him close and thought about the Contravert that had to be somewhere in Ben’s lab, and the shortage of it and what she would do if Timmy got the plague.
‘Mr Glough isn’t here,’ the girl on the phone said, and looked appealingly at the old man, but he shook his head at her ferociously and she said it again, despairingly. ‘Honestly, he’s not here. No, I don’t know anyone else who can help, no one at all. I’ll take a message if you like … yes, Dr Lyall Davies, I’ll tell him ….’
‘Good girl! Say that to all of them,’ Don Clough said, and turned a
nd went out of the small cluttered office he shared with her. ‘And don’t let no one in here, neither. I’ll show the buggers. No one’s telling me what I ought to do and what I oughtn’t to do, and that’s about it ….’ And he went stumping out across the yard to the worksheds and she watched him from the window and then went sulkily back to her desk.
It was too bad of the old man, she told herself resentfully. Nothing interesting ever happened in this mouldy old place and now, when for the first time there was a bit of life, he went and ruined it all. Why shouldn’t she talk to the newspaper people who kept phoning up? What harm would it do him if she had her name in the papers? Perhaps he was too old to be interested, but she wasn’t. It might even get her on the telly, if she was lucky – but she knew she was wasting her time even thinking about that. He’d got those men to stand by the gates and wander round the fences so no one could get in, and certainly no one with a camera. Boring old fart that he is, she thought, and reached in her desk drawer for a Mars bar. Boring old fart with his boring old invoices. I shan’t type them, not till I’m ready and he can go and stuff himself ….
In the big clattering shed where the extraction work was done, Clough was shouting at the top of his voice to make himself heard above the din of the machinery.
The Virus Man Page 28