“How long is the incubation period?” Ms. Taylor asked.
“Twelve to forty-eight hours,” he said. He craned his neck, trying to see over the heads of the detainees.
“That’s awful,” Ms. Taylor said. “What if one of us comes down with it in the middle of the peal? We’re Traditional, you know, not Council. The rules are very explicit.”
He wondered why Traditional, whatever that might be, had deemed it necessary to have rules concerning change ringers infected with influenza.
“Rule Three,” Ms. Taylor said. “‘Every man must stick to his bell without interruption.’ It isn’t as if we can put somebody else in halfway through if one of us suddenly keels over. And it would ruin the rhythm.”
He had a sudden image of one of the bellringers in her white gloves collapsing and being kicked out of the way so as not to disrupt the rhythm.
“Aren’t there any warning symptoms?” Ms. Taylor asked.
“No,” he said.
“That paper the NHS sent around said disorientation, fever, and headache, but that isn’t any good. The bells always give us headaches.”
I can imagine, he thought, looking for William Gaddson or one of the other undergraduates he could get to listen for the phone.
“If we were Council, of course, it wouldn’t matter. They let people substitute right and left. During a peal of Tittum Bob Maximus at York, they had nineteen ringers. Nineteen! I don’t see how they can even call it a peal.”
None of his undergraduates appeared to be in hall, Finch had no doubt barricaded himself in the buttery, and Colin was out collecting clothing. “Are you still in need of a practice room?” he asked Ms. Taylor.
“Yes, unless one of us comes down with this thing. Of course, we could do Stedmans, but that would hardly be the same thing, would it?”
“I’ll let you use my sitting room if you will answer the telephone and take down any messages for me. I am expecting an important trunk—long distance call, so it’s essential that someone be in the room at all times.”
He led her back to his rooms.
“Oh, it’s not very big, is it?” she said. “I’m not sure there’s room to work on our raising. Can we move the furniture around?”
“You may do anything you like, so long as you answer the telephone and take down any messages. I’m expecting a call from Mr. Andrews. Tell him he doesn’t need clearance to enter the quarantine area. Tell him to go straight to Brasenose and I’ll meet him there.”
“Well, all right, I guess,” she said as if she were doing him a favor. “At least it’s better than that drafty cafeteria.”
He left her rearranging furniture, not at all convinced that it was a good idea to entrust her with this, and hurried off to see Badri. He had something to tell him.
The rain had subsided to little more than a fine mist, and the anti-EC picketers were gathered in force in front of the Infirmary. They had been joined by a number of boys Colin’s age wearing black face plasters and shouting, “Let my people go!”
One of them grabbed Dunworthy’s arm. “The government’s got no right to keep you here against your will,” he said, thrusting his striped face up to Dunworthy’s face mask.
“Don’t be a fool,” Dunworthy said. “Do you want to start another pandemic?”
The boy let go his arm, looking confused, and Dunworthy escaped inside.
Casualties was full of patients on stretcher trolleys, and there was one standing next to the elevator. An imposing looking nurse in voluminous SPG’s was standing next to it, reading something to the patient from a polythene-wrapped book.
“‘Whoever perished, being innocent?’” she said, and he realized with dismay that it wasn’t a nurse. It was Mrs. Gaddson.
“‘Or where were the righteous cut off?’” she recited.
She stopped and thumbed through the thin pages of the Bible, looking for another cheering passage, and he ducked down the side corridor and into a stairwell, eternally grateful to the NHS for issuing face masks.
“‘The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption,’” she intoned, her voice resounding through the corridor as he fled, “‘and with a fever, and with an inflammation.’”
And He shall smite thee with Mrs. Gaddson, he thought, and she shall read you Scriptures to keep your morale up.
He went up the stairs to Isolation, which had now apparently taken over most of the first floor.
“
“I’d nearly given you up,” she said. “He’s been calling for you all morning.” She handed him a set of SPG’s, and he put them on and followed her in.
“He was frantic for you half an hour ago,” she whispered, “kept insisting he had something to tell you. He’s a bit better now.”
He looked, in fact, considerably better. He had lost the dark, frightening flush, and though he was still a bit pale under his brown skin, he looked almost like his old self. He was half– sitting against several pillows, his knees up, and his hands lying lightly on them, the fingers curved. His eyes were closed.
