by John Halkin
They chatted generally for three or four minutes before Bernie made his excuse and slipped out. Left alone together, Ginny tried to entertain her sister with the latest gossip from the village, but without mentioning caterpillars, which was just as well. When she began to describe her trip to the Garden Centre that morning for pesticide; Lesley changed the subject right away.
But then she was still very weak. Several times she closed her eyes while Ginny was talking.
‘Would you prefer to sleep now?’
Lesley’s eyelids flickered open lazily. ‘No, go on, please. I like hearing your voice. So what did he say to Mrs Martinson?’
Ginny went on with her story of how the vicar was in deep trouble with the Ladies’ Committee who were disgusted that he could even think of accepting that quart bottle of whisky for the All Saints Spring Fête. What if one of those teenagers won it?
But Lesley was already asleep. Ginny sat by her quietly, wondering why it had to happen to her.
When Bernie returned, she put her finger to her lips to warn him, and they both crept quietly out of the room. He took her elbow and steered her a few paces farther away from the door.
‘That’s the best medicine for her now. Plenty of sleep.’ He kept his voice down despite the clatter as a trolley passed them in the corridor. ‘I’ve had a word with Sanderson. She’s still responding well, he tells me. If she keeps this up for another twenty-four hours she should be in the clear.’
‘It’s that bad?’
‘It’s that good,’ he corrected her grimly. ‘The state she was in when we got her here yesterday, it’s a wonder she’s still alive. Now –’ he changed tack, ‘about this business of yours. Tomorrow won’t do, I suppose?’
‘I’m going to London tomorrow to see that script agent.’
‘I’d forgotten all about that. Very well, then,’ he sighed with obvious disapproval, ‘if you still insist on going through with it –’
‘Which I do.’
‘I have obtained permission. I’ve also asked one of the house doctors to accompany you, so we’d best go along and meet her now. We don’t want to waste too much of her time.’
She was left breathless trying to keep up with him as he strode through the corridors. At last he stopped to push open a swing door and she found herself in a common room for medical staff. A young, pretty Indian girl stood up as they entered and came towards them. She hardly looked old enough to be a qualified doctor, Ginny thought; but she carried a stethoscope protruding from the side pocket of her white coat, so that was what she must be.
‘This is Dr Roy,’ Bernie introduced her briefly. ‘My sister-in-law, Ginny Andrewes. I’m extremely grateful to you, Jameela. I hope it’s not too much bother.’
‘I’m glad to be of help.’
‘Now if you’ll excuse me. Sanderson has kindly invited me to take a look at one of his patients, the survivor of that last incident. Perhaps I could meet you in the reception area, Ginny.’
She nodded, pressing her lips together. Now it had come to the point of being taken into the mortuary she was beginning to feel apprehensive. Not of the dead bodies. She’d seen bodies before; in the dissecting room too, during her time at university when she’d shared a flat with a girl medical student. But what if she made a fool of herself and fainted?
‘We go this way along the corridor,’ Dr Roy told her crisply. ‘I’m afraid this hospital’s a rabbit warren of corridors.’
‘Like something out of Kafka.’ Ginny grimaced pointedly.
‘Oh, you’ve read Kafka?’ Her face lit up with pleasure. ‘My favourite. My name’s Jameela, by the way. I’m so glad your sister seems to be making progress. She must have a lot of stamina.’
‘I think she does.’
The mortuary was a windowless building set a little apart from the hospital. They were met at the door by a Boris Karloff figure in a grey overall coat who grumbled as he put the key in the lock that this wasn’t one of his duties and he’d enough to do in his own job without having extra chores put on him. He stood aside to let them through but did not go in himself.
After the warmth of the day, the air-conditioning inside the mortuary made Ginny suddenly shiver and her stomach rebelled against its lingering, stale smell. Three bodies lay on the slabs, shrouded in blue covers. The one farthest from the door, Jameela said, was Mrs Kinley.
‘I’m afraid the lower part of her face is – well, really rather horrifying,’ she explained as they walked over there. ‘But if I can turn down the sheet carefully, you won’t have to look at it.’
‘Yes.’ Oh, why did she feel so nervous?
Jameela folded back the sheet just far enough to reveal the upper section of the dead woman’s face. Like a yashmak, Ginny thought as she gazed at her. The dark, lifeless eyes – partly open – returned her stare as though making fun of her.
Oh yes, that was Mrs Kinley all right. Ginny recognised her even from the eyes alone. Well, this was her return visit. Too late, but at least she’d made the effort.
Unexpectedly, Jameela’s bleeper sounded.
Ginny was startled. The sound was not so high-pitched as the squealing of those moths, yet it reminded her of them: those same moths which had brought her and Mrs Kinley together in the first place.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ Jameela said apologetically. ‘I must find a phone. Shan’t be a second.’
Left by herself, Ginny faced those challenging eyes again. Perhaps a mere visit was not enough, not under the circumstances. Perhaps she should – kiss her? She took a deep breath. Isn’t that what people did? She leaned over the half-concealed face, still uncertain, yet feeling she should do something more.
A gesture of some kind.
A kiss, then. On the forehead. Then she could draw the blue sheet over those eyes again with a clear conscience and go to rejoin Jameela who was using the wall telephone near the entrance.
Accidentally she must have brushed against the sheet as she bent down. It slipped, uncovering the entire face and throat. Most of the lower lip was missing, together with part of both cheeks and the soft flesh under the chin. White patches of jawbone were visible through the wounds, and there was no sign of a tongue.
The shock at this horrifying sight sent a spasm of revulsion jarring through her whole being, followed by a heartfelt cry of pity.
‘Oh, you poor thing!’ Ginny’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, I hope you didn’t suffer too much! I should have listened to you.’
‘This is what we wanted to avoid.’ Jameela reappeared at her shoulder, reprimanding her sharply. ‘Come on now. Let’s go.’
‘It wasn’t deliberate!’ Ginny straightened up. There was an edge to her own voice too. ‘But now I’ve seen it, I want to know where else they attacked her.’
‘Then you must ask your brother-in-law.’
‘I’m asking you, Jameela. It’s not idle curiosity. These caterpillars will attack again. We’ve got to know what we’re fighting against.’
Jameela softened her approach, as if humouring a fractious patient. ‘Please, Ginny, don’t make things awkward for me,’ she coaxed, taking her arm in an attempt to lead her away from the body. ‘I’ve got to get back. I’m on duty. Can’t we leave Mrs Kinley in peace now? You’ve paid your respects.’
‘Peace?’ A slight movement beneath the sheet caught her eye. She pointed to it. ‘Is that what you call peace?’
It was no more than a faint ripple in one of me folds in the material. If Ginny had not turned to face the doctor she might not have noticed it at all.
‘Well, doctor?’
Jameela took a step back and an expression of disgust crossed her face.
‘I shall report this to the registrar,’ she said, obviously upset. ‘They’ve had rats once before in this mortuary, but we were told they’d cleared it up. Apart from anything else, it’s a health hazard.’
‘Rats?’ There was another movement, as if the corpse were flexing its thumb under the blue shroud. ‘That’s too small for
a rat.’
Before Jameela was able to stop her, Ginny had peeled back the sheet. Naked on the slab, Mrs Kinley’s body was a pitiful object. The upper sections of her legs, her groin and abdomen were pitted with deep red craters of raw flesh where the caterpillars must have eaten into her. One was still there, emerging slowly from a wound an inch or two above her navel.
Swallowing hard, Ginny somehow managed not to be sick. Jameela clung to her, exclaiming something in her own language which sounded like a prayer. Her eyes were wide with horror as she stared at it weaving malevolently this way and that.
‘That’s what they look like?’ The fear in her voice was undisguised.
‘They’ve been feeding on her!’ Ginny cried out harshly, breaking loose from her grip. ‘Don’t you see? Like so much carrion!’
Her words echoed through the mortuary and the sound must have disturbed the porter who had opened up for them, because he put his head round the door.
‘Everything okay in there?’
‘No.’ Jameela spoke coldly, her emotions now tightly under control again. ‘Take a look at this.’
‘If anything’s wrong it’s not my responsibility,’ the man grumbled, ambling past the slabs towards them just the same. ‘Not the mortuary. That’s not one o’ my duties.’
He reached them just as the caterpillar decided to make another effort to heave itself out. Under the hard strip lighting the bright green of its long hairs seemed exceptionally brilliant.
‘Jesus!’ the man swore, taken aback. ‘That’s not good, is it? Never seen anything like that before. Them rats was more’n I could stomach, but they only nibbled at the feet. What d’you think it is?’
‘It’s a caterpillar,’ Ginny told him. As if it wasn’t only too obvious!
‘Rum sort o’ caterpillar, doin’ that.’
‘Don’t touch it!’
He had stretched out his hand, but he jerked it back rapidly at the note of panic in her voice.
The caterpillar was moving again, bunching up its body, then pushing forward over the dead woman’s skin. It seemed oddly sluggish, Ginny thought as she remembered the one which had investigated her stomach – God, was it only yesterday? So alert, that one had seemed, but this was dopy in comparison.
Or dying, perhaps.
‘There’s something wrong with it,’ she said.
‘Eaten too much!’ The ghost of a smile passed over the porter’s face and it made him look even more like Boris Karloff in those old black-and-white movies. ‘See the size of ’im?’
Slowly it lowered itself on to the slab and without pausing crawled towards the edge. The porter was right about its size. It must be eight inches long, she estimated; in diameter it matched one of those new pound coins that everyone hated. As they watched, it seemed to flow headfirst over the edge, its body rippling lazily.
‘We can’t let it get away,’ Jameela commented, matter-of-factly. Her keen eyes were following its every move. ‘Who knows where it would turn up next. Have we nothing to put it in, if we can catch it?’
‘Nothing in here,’ said the porter. ‘No more than a waiting room, this place, till the undertakers come an’ collect what’s theirs. Even this one wouldn’t be here if the town had its own morgue. Still, the caterpillar’s no problem.’
Before Ginny realised what he intended to do, he had whipped a Bic ball-point out of his breast pocket and stood poised over the caterpillar which by now was half-way down one of the slab supports. He gave it a smart tap with the pen. It dropped limply to the floor, not even curling up as she might have expected, and he brought his heel down on top of it to grind it to death. A green smear spread around the edges of his shoe.
‘Right, that’s your caterpillar!’ Ginny recognised the tone of the self-satisfied male who had once more demonstrated his sex’s superiority over the mere female. ‘Now if you ladies have finished in here, I’ll just make the deceased decent again, and I can lock up.’
‘Someone had better clean the floor,’ Jameela pointed out with a glance at the squashed remains. She wrinkled her nose with distaste.
‘I’ll pass the message on, doctor. Not one o’ my duties, you understand. We’ve a typed roster settin’ out our duties. It’s all written down there.’ He picked up the sheet and began to draw it over Mrs Kinley’s mutilated body. ‘Died the hard way, poor love. Though they say she was a right raver when she was young. Not that I knew her then, more’s the pity. But it’s the way life goes, innit? One thing you can never foretell, that’s your own end.’
At last they got away from the hospital, but only after a long delay during which Bernie and Dr Sanderson went to the mortuary themselves to make certain there were no other caterpillars around. Ginny was left to sit on the hard bench in the reception area, and half an hour passed before Bernie returned to collect her. By that time she was more than fed up.
Outside, it was pitch dark. The rain was lashing down and they had to make a dash for his car. As it was, they were pretty well soaked by the time he managed to unlock the doors.
‘I’ll turn the heating up full,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘We’ll soon dry out.’
‘I felt mean, not looking in on Lesley again.’
‘Oh, I did put my head round the door. She’s still asleep. I checked with the sister too. It’s a matter of time now. She’s still on antibiotics, of course.’ He switched on the headlights and began to drive slowly across the rain-sodden car park. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that experience in the mortuary. It must have been unnerving.’
‘Bernie, we have to talk about these caterpillars.’ She hesitated, wondering how to put it, afraid that he might think she was being hysterical and fob her off with a Valium. ‘People should be warned.’
‘I think you’re right.’
‘Thank God for that!’ Perhaps she’d been too tense. Now a sense of relief washed over her like a tidal wave and she threw all caution to the winds. ‘It’s an epidemic, if that’s the right word. We don’t know how many there are, or where the next attack will be.’
‘Ginny, let’s keep it in perspective. We know of only three incidents so far.’
‘With three people dead and two in hospital,’ Ginny interrupted. ‘How many more d’you want before you take it seriously?’
‘Believe me, love, I’m taking it seriously.’
He slowed down. Ahead of them, at the side of the dark country road, was a patch of bright light which appeared shapeless and undefined through the rain-drenched windscreen. As they approached it, she recognised the outlines of the area’s most exclusive hotel.
‘I’d like to invite you to a spot of dinner,’ Bernie informed her, turning into the drive. ‘If you’ve no objection.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t eat dinner!’ she exclaimed. Even the very thought of it seemed repulsive. ‘Honestly, I just couldn’t face it. I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, I am,’ he said firmly. ‘I need to refuel, so could you at least toy with something while I have a meal? Please? It’ll save one of us the bother of cooking when we get home.’
She agreed reluctantly. Judging from the number of cars outside, the restaurant was probably full anyway. Expensive cars too, all of them.
Bernie eased into a parking space and they had another dash through the rain to reach the entrance. Once inside, she went in search of the Ladies to tidy herself up. The door was mock-rustic with painted black iron hinges. It was marked, coyly, Lasses. Ginny snorted contemptuously when she saw it.
A man on the other side of the corridor, emerging from the corresponding door labelled Lads, laughed sympathetically and made some approving remark which she didn’t quite catch.
She took her time over tidying up, feeling she should have insisted on Bernie taking her home. There was something indefinably obscene about coming to eat in a place like this directly after that business in the mortuary. It was pagan: a heartless funeral feast with the victims still cold on their slabs, not yet even buried.
In the bar,
Bernie handed her the large printed menu and left her to study it while he bought her a drink. Whisky again. Why she was drinking whisky these days, she didn’t know; she’d never done so before moving into the cottage. At a table near the bar sat the lean-jawed man from the corridor. Bernie seemed to know him, she noticed; they exchanged a couple of words before he brought the whisky over.
‘He was at the hospital visiting our caterpillar patient,’ he explained as he sat down. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers,’ she responded automatically, but even after the first sip she felt it doing her good already. ‘How’s the patient? I haven’t asked you how he’s getting on. He was with Mrs Kinley, wasn’t he?’
‘He was there with Harry Smith. A Mr Ferguson – a fertiliser salesman, apparently. Quite severe bites on his forearm. In fact he might have bled to death if the constable hadn’t applied a tourniquet.’
‘And fever, same as Lesley?’
‘Not quite so bad. But yes, the same symptoms.’
The head waiter came to take their orders, recommending the specialities of the day. Ginny declared again that she was not hungry. Reluctantly she yielded to his suggestion that she might try the shrimps, just to keep Bernie company. How he could even think of eating after all that had happened she could not understand.
When the head waiter returned to call them into the restaurant she discovered they had been allocated a small table in a corner where they could at least talk privately. Bernie was obviously hungry judging from the way he tucked into his pâté and curly toast. He was accustomed to big meals and probably missed Lesley’s cooking.
The shrimps were gathered like pink caterpillars on a pair of large lettuce leaves. She poked at them halfheartedly with her fork, almost expecting them to bite back. They were both arthropods, she remembered Lesley explaining: these shrimps and her moths. She had made some joke about flying prawns. At that time neither of them had suspected how dangerous these creatures could be.
‘Aren’t you going to eat up?’ Bernie enquired, concerned for her.