Blood Worm

16

The web stretched across the narrow gap between the fence and the tumbledown old tool-shed. Backing out with the garden fork in his hand, Guy caught sight of it and stopped dead. In the autumn sunshine its delicate silk threads glistened richly; perhaps stimulated by the sudden warmth, the fly trapped in its mesh began to struggle again.

‘Oh, the poor fly!’ Kath exclaimed, joining him.

‘The web must have been in shadow and the fly didn’t see it in time.’

‘But can’t we help it somehow? Set it free?’ i doubt if it could fly again if we did. Probably damaged its wings.’

‘The poor thing!’

‘Oh, and what about the poor spider who is looking forward to his dinner?’ Guy retorted, ‘What about that, young missie?’

‘Huh!’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m going, Daddy. See you!’

She ran lightly down the path skirting the vegetable beds and seconds later he could see her head in its black peaked hat as she rode off on the pony he had bought for her.

Six months had passed since he was allowed out of hospital and Evan suggested they should pool their resources to buy this smallholding in the depths of Waies. Free-range hens and vegetables, that was his idea; somewhere as far away from the city as they could get. It was perhaps the best decision he had ever made, Guy felt. No profit yet, that was too much to expect in such a short time — though the place was a going concern when they took it over — but they were breaking even on running costs, as well as being self-sufficient for most of their own food.

Kath came to see him more often now too, which was a clear sign that she was beginning to recover from all she must have been through. She had witnessed more death and dying during those terrible days in London than most people encounter in a lifetime. For the first few weeks she had hardly spoken a word, except to Susi. In fact, Lise had been the only person able to get through to either of them.

His big stroke of luck had been Lise. When Kath refused to stay with him in the old house he’d acquired with the smallholding, he’d suggested that Lise might take charge of both girls and she had agreed enthusiastically. He fixed it up with Susi’s father, then bought a small farmhouse on the far side of the village where the three of them could live. The house itself was nothing very much — little more than a cottage really with some outhouses — but there was also a bam which Lise made into a studio where she could paint, plus a couple of acres of land.

Of course the day would come when Kath would want to go off to study dancing — that was still her dream, and Susi’s too — but under present conditions it just wasn’t possible. With London still a wasteland and the bloodworm threat spreading as far as Bristol and Birmingham, most other parts of Britain were overcrowded with refugees. In all major towns he’d heard that house-sharing was now compulsory, schools operated two sessions per day, and only the most serious cases had any chance of hospital treatment.

At least here in the country they were spared most of those inconveniences, Guy thought contentedly. He paused in his work and straightened up to enjoy the feel of the sun on his face. Dorothea would have liked it here.

He could hear Evan’s old Peugeot approaching up the lane even before it came into sight. Sticking his fork into the soft earth, he went over to the yard to help him unload.

‘Got a newspaper!’ Evan called out triumphantly as he drew up. He fished among the things on the seat until he found it. ‘A Manchester one this time. Bought it off a lorry driver. It’s only four pages, but it’s got a crossword.’ ‘Did you go to the post office?’

‘Couple o’ letters and a card — not much, is it? The card’s from Tony. Remember Tony the carpenter? He’s taken his family to Australia to settle. Well, I don’t blame him, do you?’

Guy grunted. From the envelope he could guess already what one of the letters contained. He tore it open. It was closely typed, covering a couple of pages. ‘Anything interesting?’ Evan enquired.

‘Mrs May Lee, my old boss. They’ve opened up again, in York this time. If I want it I can have my job back.’

‘I suppose the money’s good.’

‘Oh yes. No problem there.’

‘With prices shooting up we’d make quite a profit if we sold out now. Even after this short time.’

‘What would you do?’

‘I’d stay here, boyo,’ Evan said firmly. ‘You’ll not catch me moving again.’

‘That makes two of us then,’ Guy told him cheerfully, stuffing the letter into his pocket. The other was a bill. ‘Now, what else did you get? Cement?’

‘One bag, it’s all they’d let me have. No green paint, no writing paper, no salt. Don’t ask me why.’

‘What’s Mrs Roberts going to say about no salt?’

‘I’m thinking you’re the one who should be telling her. It’s your turn to give her the bad news. I did it last time.’ Evan grinned at him broadly. It was a game they’d played ever since they moved in and discovered that Mrs Roberts from the village expected to be kept on as their ‘daily’; she’d worked for the previous owner, isn’t it, and came with the house, if the gentlemen took her meaning.

‘See this?’ Guy had picked up the Manchester newspaper. ‘It’s about our action committee. No names, except your superintendent’s. They’re giving him a knighthood.’

‘Surprise me,’ Evan said. He hoisted the sack of cement on to his shoulder and carried it over to the large lean-to shed by the house. ‘No mention of Mary?’ he called back. ‘No.’

‘Bloody hell, they should have mentioned Mary. Now that really does make me angry.’

Guy read down to the end of the article. ‘Derek’s in. No, that’s about a TV broadcast he’s doing, Wednesday today, is it?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Then we’ll watch it tomorrow.’

They watched it together over in the farmhouse with Lise and the two girls. Guy had hesitated at first, worried about Kath and whether seeing the bloodworms on the screen again mightn’t set her back, but it was Kath herself who insisted, quite calmly. She even came across to his chair and put her arm around his shoulders, something she hadn’t done since before it all happened.

‘I know I’ve tried not to see them, but I’ve got to face it sometime,’ she said sensibly. ‘So it’s going to be tonight when your friend explains it all. Don’t you think that’s the best way?’

He had to agree, though he wondered at how much she had grown up. The bloodworms had changed them all, hadn’t they? None of them would ever be quite the same again.

The programme began, in that odd quirky way of television, not at the beginning of the story but with shots of sleek Royal Air Force jets taking off on a bombing mission against London. Target London’, as the commentator called it: though the cameras revealed how little of the capital had remained unscathed even at that stage. Centre Point, the new Stock Exchange and a few other tall buildings were still identifiable, but most of the familiar landmarks were already in rains even before the raids started.

Wave after wave of aircraft were filmed swooping down to drop their napalm with pin-point accuracy — first on Whitehall and the ministries, then the great shops of Oxford Street, the clusters of West End theatres and cinemas, the university, the publishers of Bedford Square, the clubs and palaces of St James’s, the financial institutions of the City.

A brief pause in the bombing followed to give the fire and wind a chance to do their work. Viewers were treated to an extract from the prime minister’s broadcast explaining why it was all necessary, there were pictures of the pilots at lunch, and then came more bombing. Street after street of houses this time, in their desperate attempt to contain the menace.

‘People’s homes,’ murmured Lise. Impulsively she took hold of Guy’s hand. ‘Oh, Guy, we lived through all that.’ At last the more scientific section of the programme was reached, including some superb footage of beetles and bloodworms filmed by the BBC’s Natural History Unit. On the screen, the beetles’ exquisite colouring looked so attractive, people might easily have been tempted to keep them at home as pets.

‘Urgh!’ Susi exclaimed, clutching at Kath as the bloodworms came on the screen. She buried her head against Kath’s shoulder. ‘Oh, I don’t want to watch!’

Kath herself didn’t move, other than to place a reassuring hand on Susi’s arm.

‘The first thing to realise about these very big bloodworms is they don’t really exist,’ Dr Derek Owen’s mild voice began to explain, with a touch of boyish excitement.

Lise snorted.

Then his face appeared in close-up and he went on: ‘Let me tell you what I mean by that. We all know a lot of different people. Now imagine they all come together in a factory, each doing his or her own job. They become something much more cohesive. A unit of production. A workforce. At the end of the shift, off they go to their homes, separate people again. Well, bloodworms come together in much the same way, except that they fasten on to each other physically. They form what we call in nature a colony, functioning as one complete creature. But eventually they separate again, as you can see in this piece of film.’

How they managed to get some of these shots was a miracle, Guy thought as he watched. The film crews must have risked their own lives many times over. Evan and the others all shared his feelings, he could see it from the expressions on their faces, but it was Lise who put it into words.

‘Thank God we’re only seeing it on the telly!’ she cried out with a shudder. ‘Oh, it was awful!’

Derek reappeared, this time in the setting of his own laboratory which for safety reasons had been transferred from Oxfordshire to an unnamed location in Scotland. He gave a brief account of how they had set about building up a picture of the bloodworms’ life cycle, and even mentioned the preliminary work started by Mary Armstrong.

‘Bless the man,’ said Lise.

‘But how can we fight back? By destroying London we saved the rest of the country, but only in the short run — and what a price to pay! Is there no other way?’ His dry, academic manner gave no hint of what he was about to announce. ‘Well, within a couple of days I and my team intend to make the first field trials of a method we’ve been working on for some time now. Quite simply it’s this. We’ll be spraying a test area with a fluid containing not a poison this time, but a virus. In fact, a special type known as a baculovirus which doesn’t affect humans at all, nor any other vertebrate. But it will infect bloodworms, we’ve already demonstrated that much in the laboratory, and it’ll kill them. What’s more, after they’re dead the viruses still live on to attack more and more bloodworms. These are only tests, I want to stress that—’

‘They’ve found the answer!’ Lise jumped up from her chair, overjoyed. ‘Oh, I’m so happy I could kiss him — even there on the screen!’

The general excitement at this news drowned out the remaining minute of the programme. For months they had been resigned to the thought that sooner or later the bloodworms would begin to advance once more towards other towns; now at last they’d been offered a ray of hope. Lise announced that she had a bottle of champagne in the cellar and was going to fetch it.

The moment she was out of the room Kath came over to Guy and hugged him tightly. ‘Daddy, I’m so fond of

Lise, aren’t you?’ she whispered.

Before he could answer, Susi had joined her and he found himself holding both girls in his arms.

A few minutes later Evan commented that Lise had been down in that cellar quite a long time; maybe someone should go and check. A sudden silence: everyone understood exactly what he was thinking.

i’ll go,’ said Guy.

They had all been so elated, they had practically forgotten that the bloodworm menace could still reach them. It needed only a steady wind from the right direction to carry a few beetles into Wales on one of their mating flights, and then…

A sudden fear seized him that Lise too might die in the same way as Dorothea, Mary, Byron, Sharon and thousands of others. Going down the dark steps into the cellar, he discovered no more than one single light bulb burning; it cast deep shadows between all the crates and boxes she stored down there. Among them something was moving.

‘Hello! Come to look for me?’ Lise reappeared through the gloom, a champagne bottle in her hand and cobwebs in her hair, i’d put this behind the cases out of temptation’s way, so of course I had to shift them to get at it.’

‘We were worried about you.’ He tried to say it lightly but failed.

i had thoughts too while I was doing it,’ she confessed sombrely. ‘Visions of being stuck with no way out. Guy, we’re never going to feel safe again, are we? Even if Dr Owen’s tests work and life does get back to normal, we’re still going to stand back when we open a cupboard, or tap out our shoes before putting them on. Just in case.’

‘Just in case,’ he agreed. ‘As you say, we can never really be certain.’