‘Gla’ yer come, Tim.’
Tim, deeply shocked, stammered some kind of reply.
‘Tim sa’ my li’. Wan say than’yer.’
‘That’s right.’ His wife nodded encouragingly, arranging a pillow at his back to help him to sit upright. ‘He says you saved his life and he wants to thank you for it.’
‘Goo’ fi’. Kee’ guar’ up.’
‘He says you’re a good fighter but you must keep your guard up.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘He’s always on about boxing. Watches every minute of it on television. I think I’d better make some tea, don’t you? I’m sure you’ve a lot to talk about.’
‘I’ll come and help you,’ said Sue.
Left alone with him, Tim began to say awkwardly how all the Gulliver team sent their regards. Arthur nodded eagerly, then interrupted.
‘’Irl ’rector. Ver’ ’lever. ’Irl ’rector.’
‘Oh — the girl director? Yes, she’s a clever director all right. Jacqui, you mean? She was a bit nervous that first day — d’you remember? But she’s settled down now.’
To Tim’s surprise, they managed somehow to keep a conversation going. He retailed all the gossip about Gulliver — not that the thug knew half the people, but it seemed to interest him. Dorothea was leaving at the end of the month to marry an Australian millionaire; something of a Gulliver-type tycoon himself, from all she said. They were to honeymoon on their own private yacht in the Caribbean. Jacqui had bought herself a flat in Chelsea, telling everyone she intended to install a single bed and it was going to stay that way. The cameraman was running a book on it. As for the company, they were rubbing their hands all the way to the bank since one of the American networks had bought Gulliver for peak-hour showing.
It was Mrs Arthur — as Tim thought of her — who brought up the subject of jellyfish when she returned with a steaming pot of tea on a tray, together with her best china.
‘Of course, Arthur was still in hospital while it was all going on,’ she said, offering him a biscuit. ‘But they repeated your films the other week; he couldn’t tear himself away. That must’ve been a terrible experience.’
‘It was.’
A few moments’ silence, then Sue came to the rescue. How she could still talk about it, he didn’t understand. Maybe it was some sort of release for her. On himself it had the opposite effect; these days he clammed up.
Dead? He hadn’t believed it when the major had said it all those weeks ago back in the hospital laboratory, and he’d been right, too. Jocelyn had examined the specimens and pronounced them still alive. They were paralysed, she’d explained, their motor nerves put out of action by the Sabin vaccine, which was a live polio strain. In due course they would starve to death.
That helped, certainly. Acting speedily for once, the authorities organised an airlift of Sabin vaccine from all over the world. Some was used in a mass immunisation campaign, with people in every town and village in the country lining up to receive their lumps of sugar, each bearing a precious drop of the vaccine. The rest — well over half, he was told — was fed to the jellyfish invaders. It was germ warfare, though no one called it that.
For weeks afterwards their bodies were seen floating on the sea, washed about by the tides.
Tim had been kept in quarantine for ten days only, although the Ministry hadn’t allowed that to hold up his filming programme. One day shortly after his release he’d travelled down to the coast with Jocelyn to witness the ‘Sabin effect’ for himself. She had turned pale when she saw it; then, pressing her lips together, she had stared at him disturbingly with those troubled eyes of hers before announcing abruptly that she’d seen enough. When next he heard of her, she was in India on a walking tour with her husband Robin. No one knew when they were due back.
Dead?
He still found it hard to grasp. Still expected to see them lurking in some corner. Pulsating.
‘Well, it’s been really nice you could come,’ Mrs Arthur was saying, standing up. ‘And I’m sure Arthur enjoyed it.’
Sue, bless her, had found a diplomatic moment to draw their visit to an end. Tim took Arthur’s shaking hand and said how glad he was to see him fighting back; it seemed to please him.
They were at the garden gate and about to say goodbye when Mrs Arthur stopped them, her eyes filled with tears.
‘It was so good of you to come,’ she confided, her voice breaking. ‘In his young days Arthur could’ve had any girl he wanted. Maybe he did too, I don’t know. I never asked. He was winning fights then, you see. But it was me he married and he’s been a good husband. When I look at him now — Oh, it’s such a pity!’
Driving away in the car afterwards both Tim and Sue remained sunk in their own thoughts. Since that terrible day at the hospital fighting off the jellyfish they had hardly spent a single night apart. Yet sooner or later — he was only too aware — she’d be cast in some play she wanted to do while he would be hundreds of miles away, filming for Gulliver. Would it all start again?
As she drew up outside their flat and switched off the engine, they turned to each other simultaneously.
‘If we could do Beatrice and Benedick together — ’
‘D’you think a small part for me in Gulliver might be —’
Laughing, they both stopped in mid-sentence.
‘We do need to work something out, don’t we?’ he said seriously. ‘Some shows together, anyhow.’
‘Shakespeare?’ she teased him. ‘You looked good in that hospital holding a spear.’
‘Why not? I always wanted to.’
Withdraw… withdraw… withdraw…
The signal became fainter until it gradually died away. The species had survived despite the overwhelming danger. They were depleted in numbers… much weakened… yet they still existed.
They rode the currents now westwards, feeding wherever food was to be found, sending out their planula larvae to seek some safe anchorage where they could grow until in the fullness of time they produced a new generation of disc medusae. Most larvae died, but the future lay with those that survived.
A few drifted blindly away from the main shoals, still westwards, reaching Miami Beach. Then once again the signal pulsed out.
Food… food… food…
Copyright © 1984 by John Halkin
First published by Century Hutchinson