The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘It can’t be helped,’ he said and stared at her with his reddened eyes blank with stubbornness. ‘I shouldn’t have agreed to that use, and I wish to God I hadn’t. My God, but I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘It was my fault. I suggested it.’

  ‘And I acted on it.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Can’t you understand, Jessie? I’m dying to use it. I’d love to try it on any number of these children, but I daren’t. And the more people go on about it and the more badly I want to use it, the more important it becomes that I stay firm and don’t. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so. I’ll go and get the stuff from your house, then.’

  ‘Yes. Go and get it. The keys are here somewhere ….’ He began to scrabble in his desk drawer.

  ‘June won’t be there?’

  ‘No … at least I don’t think so. I haven’t spoken to her since ….’ He rubbed his face. ‘Not since before we went to London. I lose track of time these days. I should phone her, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jessie said. ‘You should.’

  ‘Well, I’m too busy, and I’m too tired and I … I can’t. I just haven’t the reserves right now to deal with June going on about Timmy. Lay off, Jessie, I don’t want to talk about her. Go and get the stuff from the fridge in the kitchen and get back here as soon as you can, and we’ll get the work going again. The deliveries of yesterday’s requests’ll be here soon, and then God help us ….’

  She was puzzled when she got to Ben’s house. She’d expected to find everything blank and feeling empty in spite of the presence of furniture, the way an uninhabited house is, but the heating was on, and in the kitchen there was a lingering smell of hot toast and a comfortable cluster of dishes on the table: a sticky porridge dish with a picture of Pigling Bland on it, an empty shell in a Peter Rabbit egg cup, and a half-empty mug of milk with Jemima Puddleduck on its side. She stood there and looked at them and then round at the neat kitchen with its flowered curtains and pine dresser adorned with blue and white china, the epitome of cosiness and security, and then back at the child’s special dishes, and she felt her face actually redden with shame. She had abused the owner of this snug domesticity, had robbed her as surely as if she had knocked her down and taken the contents of her pockets. She, Jessie Hurst, was one of those Other Women she had always rather despised – if she’d thought of them at all – and that realization was a hateful one. The fact that she stood here in this inner sanctum of another woman’s life, with keys of admittance that had been given to her by that woman’s husband – it was horrible, and she wanted to turn and run away, to go back to Ben and tell him he must fetch his Contravert for himself, she couldn’t fetch it for him; but then she shook that thought away. It was ridiculous. Whatever had happened between Ben and herself had nothing to do with the job in hand. It was just fortuitous that doing this particular piece of work meant encroaching on June’s territory; it meant nothing in any real sense, and very deliberately she turned to the refrigerator.

  The six big bottles of Contravert were there, lying on their sides, their tops carefully fastened on to prevent spillage, and she lifted them out, one by one, and stacked them on the kitchen table. They stood there gleaming dully in the thin winter sunshine thrown through the pretty curtains and she looked at them and thought – children’s lives. How many children’s lives are in there? And then had to push that thought away, too. Ben said he couldn’t use the stuff, no matter what, and had good reasons. She couldn’t, shouldn’t think about it any more. Thinking didn’t help, and she moved about the kitchen purposefully, looking for something in which to carry the bottles. She should have brought something, she told herself irritably, hating the way she had to pull open drawers and pry into cupboards to make her search, grateful when at last she found, neatly folded in a drawer, a stout plastic carrier bag.

  Before she left she hesitated, and then took a piece of paper from a wooden doll-adorned wall rack, and the pencil that the wooden doll held in one carved hand, and wrote swiftly, ‘Dr Pitman sent for the bottles in the fridge. As you weren’t here, I helped myself. I tried not to disturb anything.’ And she stopped before signing it and then very deliberately left it without her name on it. What was the point? Why tell June her husband’s lover had been prowling round in her kitchen? Why make it worse than it need be for her?

  Illogical thought, crazy illogical thought, she told herself angrily as she got back into Ben’s car and started the engine. June doesn’t know what happened in London. I’m not sure I do. That was yesterday, a lifetime ago, in a place that isn’t real. Maybe it never happened, and anyway, how could June know? And she backed the car out of the drive and into the road, and turned its nose towards the hospital.

  Quite when the thought came to her she wasn’t sure, but she was halfway back to the hospital when she passed the top of a main road that led to the estate of houses where Purbeck Avenue was and without stopping to judge the sense of the thought, she steered left into it. There were things she needed, she told herself, extra underwear, a few sweaters against the colder weather that must surely be coming, odds and ends like that; it’s not so that I can go into my own kitchen again, exorcize that experience of trespass in June’s kitchen. It isn’t that at all, of course it isn’t ….

  The house seems to have shrunk, she thought, as she stopped the engine and got out of the car. She hadn’t parked it in the drive, feeling oddly that she had no right to, now that she’d left, but left the car at the side of the road a few yards down, and walked towards number 30 trying to see it as it had seemed to her in the long years she had lived there. But she couldn’t see anything but the here and now: a square, uncompromisingly dull house, in white Snowcem with bay windows with a few panes of coloured glass let into the fanlights, and neat cream curtains, and a garden scrubby in the winter sunshine with dead roses on weeping bushes and unpicked late dahlias. A totally anonymous, dead house. Twenty years of her life had been given to washing that house’s paintwork, polishing its floors and weeding its garden, and yet looking at it now it could have been a stranger’s house for all it said to her, and as she pushed open the gate she was startled by its familiar double squeak.

  Her key turned smoothly and the front door opened, and for a moment she stood there, surprised. Peter was in his office at this time of day, of course. Had he become so disorganized since her departure that he didn’t lock up as carefully as he usually did? The single lock had been the only one that held the front door, not the mortice and chain as well, which was how the door was meant to be fastened when everyone was out. Peter had always been very fussy about that; perhaps, now, he didn’t care any more. Peter not caring about his possessions? It was a warming thought and she felt a glow of softness at it, a sort of pity for him in his loneliness, and she thought – I must see him. I’ll call him, tell him we must talk, make him see that it’s just the inevitable passage of the years, not a fault in him or me, just that we’ve outgrown each other. We don’t have to part enemies, we can be civilized, sensible people the way they are in books and films, not childish and sulky the way I’ve been; and she stepped over the threshold of the door and closed it behind her, warmed and strengthened by the resolve she had made. She felt a better person already, a wiser and more caring person, and that was a good way to feel.

  She stopped and looked into the living room and that hurt. Here it was familiar, the furniture that she had chosen, the pictures she had found for the walls, but it all looked forlorn and dusty and she tried to see it the way she had been used to keep it, fresh and clean and alight with fresh flowers, but it was impossible. All there was to see was there: the crumpled weary look of an uncleaned unloved room.

  The kitchen was worse; a dead emptiness that made her feel actually cold, even though the house was warm. If there had been dirty dishes in the sink, evidence of a messy person using it and not bothering to clean up afterwards, she wouldn’t have minded. That would have been human and attractive, somehow. As it wa
s the place was bleak with its dusty worktops and bare kitchen table and gaping, blank sink and she shivered, and turned away to step out into the hall again and go upstairs to fetch the things she had come for. The sooner she got out of the house the better ….

  And came face to face with Peter. He was standing very erect and tidy in his navy blue office suit, his shirt as white and neat as it always was, his tie as tightly knotted and his hair as smooth above his forehead. He was well shaved and she could smell the cologne on him and yet for all that he looked somehow bedraggled and ill-kempt. It was nothing she could directly identify, no detail that showed he was not the man he had always been, but she knew. He was a hollow version of the Peter she had lived with for twenty years; there was none of the certainty that had been so much a part of him. The sleek assurance that had always been his hallmark was quite gone, and she felt the pang of pity again and held out a hand impulsively.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel so bad, Peter. I’ve been thinking … we’ve got to talk ….’

  He still stood there staring at her, his face quite blank, and then he said, in a voice that was rather higher than it usually was, ‘You’re what? Did you say you were sorry?’

  ‘Not precisely. I’m not apologizing, if that’s what you mean. I said … and I mean it … I’m sorry you feel so bad.’

  ‘I feel fine. Do you hear me? I feel fine.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I don’t feel bad.’

  ‘All right … you don’t. I just thought, looking at you ….’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came for some of my things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I don’t know … just some clothes. It doesn’t matter … I shan’t bother, after all ….’ She began to edge past him, wanting to get away, suddenly frightened. There was something about him that was different, almost a smell of threat, and it filled her with uneasiness, an uneasiness that was increasing, congealing in her arms and legs and her belly, making it difficult to move. ‘I won’t bother …’ she said, and then was past him, and in the hallway, and she ran for the front door, scrabbling for the fastening urgently, wanting more than she had ever wanted anything to be out, out in the air, away from the house and from him.

  But of course he caught her, and as the blows started, rhythmic vicious blows to each side of her head in turn, and as she tried to put up her arms to shield herself she knew that what was happening was inevitable, and knew, too, that there was much worse pain to come.

  31

  It wasn’t until Annie got to her feet and announced loudly that she was worn out with all this extra work, if no one else was, and she was going over to the hospital for her lunch and wouldn’t mind fetching back sandwiches for anyone who wanted them and asked nicely, that Ben realized that the morning had passed him by. He had settled himself beside Harry Gentle at Moscrop’s microscope and worked with every atom of concentration he had, doggedly making his way through request after request, and now he lifted his head and stretched his stiff shoulders and said, ‘Mm? I’ll have a couple of ham sandwiches, then. And coffee … what’ll you have, Harry? They’re on me … and where’s Jessie? Tell her it’s my shout and see what she wants.’

  ‘Not here,’ Annie said. She was prinking at the mirror in the corner by the lockers, pursing her lips at herself and turning her head from side to side to admire her own profile. ‘She went out this morning … took your car, didn’t she? And she’s not back yet.’

  Ben frowned sharply and looked at his watch. ‘But it’s after one! That means she’s been gone … it must be almost four hours. She ought to be back by now. Now, why do you suppose that ….’

  ‘Hope she hasn’t pranged your car the way she did her own,’ Harry said. ‘Remember? That was as fancy a piece of vehicle demolition as I’ve seen since I was eighteen and an expert in the field. Regularly used to put my car into a state of irrevocable buggeration, I did ….’

  ‘Thanks for the reassurance!’ Ben said savagely, and got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and see if the car’s back.’

  ‘Well, she’d hardly be sitting in it in the car park, would she?’ Harry said reasonably, but Ben had already gone, slamming out of the door, and almost sending Tomsett flying off his feet.

  The old porter was coming in with a couple of requests to be signed which would allow post-mortems to be transferred to Farborough, and he turned and stared after Ben venomously and shouted, ‘goin’ ter get me on the way back, then, are yer?’ But Ben paid no attention, running out of the building and on into the car park with his white coat flapping around his knees.

  And he found her there. He saw his car parked in its usual place and stopped to look, to see whether it was occupied, and saw the shadow of her head and knew she was still in the driver’s seat, and waited, expecting her to get out and come towards him. But she didn’t move. She just sat there, her head silhouetted blackly against the rear window and he began to move forwards again, anxiety sharpening in him.

  He bent to peer in at the front window as he came up to the car and there she sat, very upright, staring ahead, quite still, and he crouched so that he could get nearer to her and bent his head so that he could look up into her face.

  ‘Jess, for God’s sake, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Don’t just sit there – tell me what’s the matter.’

  Her eyes, glazed and blank, seemed to shift and then focus and she looked at him, and now he could see her face clearly. It was a sickly white, with dark violet smudges beneath the eyes, and her lids were swollen and reddened. She stared at him for a long moment and then her lips moved. ‘Ben? Did I get back then, after all? Ben?’

  ‘Jess, for heaven’s sake ….’ He stood upright again and putting his arm behind her back tried to turn her so that she could get out of the car, and she winced and cried out, but he persisted gently, bending to lift her legs out of the car and then carefully urging her to her feet until she stood swaying slightly beside him.

  The effort had brought some colour back into her face but she still looked pale and drawn and he put his arm round her shoulders and said softly, ‘What is it, Jess? What’s happened?’

  ‘The stuff …’ she said, and tried to pull away from him to look into the car. ‘Is it all right? I was so frightened. I drove over the kerb, bumped badly … he ran after me, you see. I had to almost run him down to get away, it was … is it all right?’

  He followed her as she scrabbled at the tailgate handle and helped her open the car and there it was, jammed into the corner and supported by the pile of road map books he kept there, a bulging black plastic carrier, and he reached in and picked it up carefully.

  ‘Are they broken? Are they all right?’

  She was looking at him piteously and he looked into the bag and shook it gently and said reassuringly, ‘It’s fine … absolutely fine … now, come on, love. Come over to the lab and sit down and tell me what’s upset you so much.’ And again he put his hand out to take her arm, her left arm this time, and again she winced and cried out, flinching away from him and weeping, and he set the bag of Contravert bottles carefully on the roof of the car and then turned back to her, his face set and almost as white as hers. ‘You’re hurt,’ he said. ‘Now tell me what happened, at once, and let me see your arms ….’

  He unbuttoned her coat and slid it back over her shoulders and she stood very still, trying to hold herself rigid as though doing that would stop any pain, and as he slipped the coat down her arms he could see the marks through the thin sleeves of her blouse: great spreading blue lakes of pain, running from shoulder almost to elbow, with the deeply gouged prints of fingers showing darkest of all. She twisted her head to look, and stared, almost surprised, as though it was someone else’s body she was examining, not her own.

  ‘How did that happen?’ Ben said quietly.

  She looked up at him and said, ‘I’m so sorry … I shouldn’t have, I suppose … I didn’t think … I went home, you see, thought I’d collect a few th
ings on the way back … I shouldn’t have gone there. I’m so sorry ….’

  ‘Stop apologizing, for Christ’s sake!’ He shouted it and the sound of his voice whipped round the car park and came buffeting back and again she winced. ‘There’s nothing for you to apologize for.’ He spoke more quietly now. ‘This was Peter again.’ He said it as a fact, not as a question.

  She bent her head and stared at the ground like a guilty child. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ he said again. ‘Isn’t that what happened? You went home and he was there and he beat you?’

  Still she didn’t answer, and again he reached to take hold of her and remembered in time and let his hands fall. ‘Tell me what happened, Jess,’ he said softly. ‘I can’t help you if you shut me out. It’s no shame on you that he beat you. The man’s a bastard – that doesn’t make you bad.’

  ‘It wasn’t the beating,’ she said then, and now she looked at him. ‘It was ….’ She drew a long shuddering breath. ‘He raped me. Ridiculous, isn’t it? The idea of a man raping his own wife. But he did. I couldn’t, I really couldn’t … but he got worse and worse and pushed me over and then, in the hall, it felt so … it was crazy. Peter raping me … I didn’t believe it. I still don’t … really, he couldn’t have, could he? But he did, honestly he did and when I pushed him off and got up and got out of the door and ran … and then he ran after me and I still don’t believe it … Ben, tell me he didn’t.’

  But Ben didn’t answer. He had put her coat round her shoulders and picked up the plastic bag of Contravert from the roof of the car and now he began to lead her not towards the laboratory block, but towards the hospital.

  ‘Can you walk? It’s not too far, Jess. Lean on me and see how you get on ….’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Obediently she began to walk, though obviously she was in pain at each step.