Surgeon at Arms

by Gordon, Richard

  would have found something for me, I don’t mind telling you. Now run along and see what you can do.’ Overcome either by the materialization of the local legend or the solemnity of his errand, the landlard departed anxiously to search his cellar. Graham approached and said, ‘It must be twenty years since we met.’

  ‘Graham, I’m delighted to see you again,’ Lord Cazalay greeted him affably. ‘I’m sorry it should be on such a sad occasion.’

  Graham introduced his son. ‘You can’t have set eyes on Desmond since he was a baby.’

  Lord Cazalay briskly brushed his moustache and remarked, ‘He’s grown into fine lad, As you know, I decided to make my home for some years in France.’ He lowered his voice respectfully. ‘It was very distressing about Maria, Graham. I know how you must feel. Her life was such a waste, shut out of the world so long. It was always a comfort to me that my sister had you to care for her—a medical man.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Graham shortly.

  ‘Well, Graham—you’ve become more famous than ever. I always seem to be reading about you in the papers.’

  ‘I’m only doing my job. Like a lot of others who don’t get noticed.’

  ‘I’m with security, you know.’

  ‘I thought you were censoring civilian letters?’

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ said Lord Cazalay, looking put out.

  The landlord reappeared, holding an unopened bottle of Haig like a newborn baby. As he poured three measures Lord Cazalay went on, ‘What are your plans for after the war, Graham?’

  ‘I think it’s only courting disappointment making any.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. It’ll be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Like last time. The thing is to get in early, before the mugs. There’ll be pickings enough for the right people.’

  ‘Where precisely do you intend to pick, if I may ask?’

  ‘Travel.’ Lord Cazalay swallowed his whisky and demanded another. ‘People have been cooped up here all the war, they’ll be bursting to get out and about. There’ll be plenty of spare shipping space, Army buses, that sort of thing, if you know where to put your hands on them. I’ve got plenty of valuable contacts in France. I doubt whether they’ve got into any trouble with the Germans.’ He looked at his glass reflectively, and added ‘As a matter of fact, I’m starting a small company. If you’re interested, I could let you have a piece of it.’ Graham thought this brazen, even for a brother-in-law. ‘You’re asking me for money, after having tried to get me publicly disgraced as a professional man?’

  Lord Cazalay looked serious, then said, ‘Graham, I’m glad you raised that business. It’s been on my conscience. I’d been meaning to have a word with you, but with the war, of course, everything’s been difficult. It was all a tragic misunderstanding, surely? I was simply wrongly advised. It was a relief to me nothing came of it.’

  ‘It was to me, too.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked, part humorously and part aggressively.

  ‘I don’t think this is quite the occasion to conduct commercial affairs.’

  ‘No, no, perhaps you’re right,’ Lord Cazalay said quickly.

  ‘Now we must be going. Desmond has to catch a train for Portsmouth.’

  ‘We’ll keep in touch,’ Lord Cazalay promised. ‘Yes, very much in touch.’

  They left him with the bottle of whisky, which he seemed about to settle down and finish, on the estimable principle that unexpected blessings needed exploiting to the full.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘WHAT WAS IT LIKE?’ asked Clare as Graham got back to the bungalow, having left Desmond at the station in Maiden Cross.

  ‘More harrowing than I imagined.’

  ‘Do you want some tea, darling?’ You can’t have had anything to eat.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m hungry, really.’

  He sat in an armchair in the sitting-room and picked up the Daily Press. He hadn’t seen a paper that morning. ‘The Russians seem to be doing well,’ he observed. He wondered what Val Arlott had meant about a war with the Soviets. They seemed prickly customers, but at least they were on our side, and putting up a far better showing than last time.

  ‘Did you see the brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘No, he tried to borrow some money off me.’

  Clare sat on the arm of his chair. ‘I can see it’s upset you, Graham.’

  ‘It was all the paraphernalia—dirges, gloomy incantations, that sort of thing. Why should I be disturbed by her death in itself? It was a merciful release, overdue if anything.’

  ‘I never met her, of course. But I thought I knew her. I’ve so often imagined her lying beside you.’

  ‘That was never particularly successful or pleasurable.’

  ‘What was she like? In her prime?’

  Graham tossed the paper down. ‘Active. Always busy. A great do-gooder. On dozens of committees. She was an intelligent woman before her brain gave way. We had a rather cerebral relationship, I suppose. She was dreadfully afraid of her own emotions. The only thing in the world she was afraid of.’

  ‘What made you marry her?’

  ‘Who knows at such distance why they married anyone?’

  After a pause she asked, ‘When are we going to be married ourselves, Graham?’

  ‘There’ll have to be a decent interval, naturally;’

  ‘Of course, I appreciate that.’

  ‘I’ve got to take some account of the world in general, however much I despise it. There’d be gossip if we got married tomorrow—Crampers, the Bickleys, everyone at Smithers Botham. It would probably get into the papers, certainly into the Press. I don’t want to invite maliciousness. God knows I’ve had to suffer enough of it recently.’

  She noticed it didn’t occur to Graham even to ask her own sentiments. Clare was used to his self-centredness. She had decided there was nothing unkind or even unattractive about it. In some ways it was a virtue. His egotism, more than anything else, had made the annex what it was. If Graham could think of nobody but himself, she felt resignedly, it was perhaps because there was nobody in his acquaintance half as interesting. ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘I really can’t say off-hand, Clare. I’ve had no experience of the situation.’

  ‘Do you mean six weeks or six months? A year? Two years?’ For the first time she resolved to press him. ‘We must allow the corpse to grow cold.’

  ‘Well, then—six months, say?’

  ‘I should think that would strike everyone as respectable.’

  ‘Shall we decide on January?’

  ‘Yes, in January. The war will be over by then.’

  The sitting-room window was open, and a breeze blew some sheets of case-notes from Graham’s table on to the floor. She rose to gather them. ‘We’ll be back in London then, as likely as not.’ he told her. ‘Mightn’t this be the moment to start looking for a flat? My house in Mayfair would cost a fortune to put into shape. I’ll need new consulting rooms, too. We might be able to combine both. Harley Street isn’t a bad area to live. It’s near Regent’s Park and not far from the West End.’

  She smiled and said, ‘It’s difficult to imagine myself living in London at all.’

  ‘It’ll be wonderful, once things get back to normal. Wonderful for both of us. There’s scores of places I’m longing to take you—restaurants, theatres, little clubs I remember. Not all of them can have disappeared in the blitz. There’s hundreds of people I want you to meet. This time they’ll come back, thank God. It was different after the last war, with those awful blood-baths.’

  ‘You won’t do anything like that at all, Graham,’ she chided him gently. ‘You’ll be too busy working.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard enough during the war. I deserve a bit of relaxation. It’s been five years out of my life. Do you realize that by Christmas in 1954 I’ll be sixty?’

  ‘That’s a long way off. Anyway, I’ll be almost forty.’
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  ‘Of course, I shall have to make a living, build up from scratch.’ He gave a grin. ‘I’ll have a new wife to impress. I don’t really believe these wild schemes for putting doctors under the State will come to anything. Supposing we all went on strike? That’s a chilling prospect for the politicians. Things will go on much the same, if you ask me. You can’t change England.’

  ‘But what about the annex?’

  ‘I suppose it will cease to exist, or become totally unimportant again, like the R.A.F. itself. I don’t know. It’s no concern of mine. My job there finishes with the war.’

  ‘But Graham,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe you could give up the annex, just like that. You created it. It’s filled your thoughts, day and night. You’d be aimless without it. You can’t have just lost interest in it.’

  ‘But it’s a phase in my life. Don’t you see, Clare? We’ve all grown so used to the war we’ve forgotten it’s a highly abnormal form of existence. I’ve been lotus-eating down here. I’ve had no worries about making money, nor about what to spend it on. A lot of the others at Smithers Botham haven’t the sense to see it the same way. They’re stuck in a rut, you’d imagine they thought the war was continuing for ever.’ He swept his hand round the sitting-room. My God, I’m longing to live in a proper house. Somewhere with my own furniture, decent pictures, eating off plates without cracks in them. None of this bloody rationing, servants to do the dirty work, a bit of style again. Oh, I’ll admit it, the war’s been stimulating, rewarding, often amusing. But when it’s over I want to forget it like an illness. I want to pick up my career again. As far as surgery goes, I’m only approaching my prime.’

  She was facing him, leaning against the table, and he saw she had started to cry. Women were unaccountable. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, not particularly kindly. ‘I haven’t said anything wrong, surely?’

  ‘I thought the annex meant everything to you Graham.’

  ‘It’s something I’ll look back on with considerable affection.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked irritably. ‘You’re being fanciful.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s perfectly true. I’m just part of the annex, as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘Now you’re being downright silly.’

  ‘You don’t want to marry me, do you? You don’t want to at all.’

  She advanced on him angrily. Graham was startled. All his life he had surrounded himself with submissive people, and it was always unsettling when they turned on him.

  ‘Clare, you’re simply saying a lot of irresponsible things which are making you overwrought.’

  ‘I’m saying things which I should have said months ago, years ago. My God, I’ve been a fool. Do you imagine all this hasn’t been boiling in my mind since I came here? Of course you don’t want to marry me. You’ve always had some excuse, something to put it off. Even when you got me pregnant you didn’t want me as your wife. You were scared stiff at the thought. You didn’t want that child either. You were as pleased as Punch when I aborted. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’ He stood up. ‘Of course it wasn’t the truth,’ he told her crossly. ‘I did everything I could to save it, didn’t I? I was upset when we lost it, dreadfully upset. Do you think I don’t know my own mind?’

  ‘No, you don’t know it all, Graham. That’s your trouble. There’re plenty of wonderful things about you, and you don’t recognize them. There are plenty of horrible things about you too, and you don’t recognize those either. Or you won’t bring yourself to face them, which is the worse for you.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting I’m going to turn you out after the war, like some camp-follower?’

  ‘It won’t come to that. We can’t go on with this playacting any longer. We’ve got to split up.’

  ‘You can’t mean that?’ He was alarmed at this practical turn in the conversation.

  ‘It’ll only get worse if I stay. She looked down at the threadbare carpet and went on more calmly. ‘I haven’t made up my mind just this minute, Graham. I decided... oh, months ago, I don’t know when. Perhaps I didn’t decide at all. It just crept up on me.’

  ‘Clare—’ He approached her, but she pushed him away. ‘Supposing I said I’d marry you tomorrow?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t work. We’d be in a worse mess than ever. Once you got back to London you’d want to be rid of me. I’m not your type. You don’t love me. I don’t think you could love anyone. Your attitude to women is like your attitude to the boys in the annex. So many ‘construction jobs’, as you say. You overlook that I’ve got the right to any feelings at all.’

  Graham stuck his hands in his pockets. It was all most distressing. He hated emotional scenes. Perhaps they were both upset with the business of Maria. Clare would be over it tomorrow. ‘Why did you take up with me in the first place?’ he asked, a shade resentfully. ‘You knew enough about me, about my past affairs?’

  ‘Every woman’s a heroine, I suppose. She expects to succeed where others have succumbed.’

  ‘Possibly.’ They stood looking at each other. ‘You cant’ meant it?’ he asked more quietly. ‘About going away?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ll get a job somewhere.’

  ‘Les’s discuss it again tomorrow, when we’re ourselves.’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing else to say.’

  A week later Clare left the bungalow and Graham took a room in a London hotel, explaining to everyone at Smithers Botham that this temporary change in domestic arrangements was necessitated by his searching for a flat. The pair had parted politely even amicably. A continued emotional tempest would have worn out both of them, and they were old enough to take such things sensibly. In the end, Graham was rather pleased. He would miss Clare, of course, but she was right. She was a simple, kindly girl, but not at all the sort to stand beside the fashionable plastic surgeon, Graham Trevose, now returning like the exiled European governments to his rightful dominions. A marriage would have been a disaster. And supposing this ‘gong’ materialized? Lady Trevose? Decidedly not. To fill that rôle he wanted someone far more intelligent, more versed in the ways of the world, more socially adept, someone of better family than the seedy commercial artist’s.

  Someone like Maria?he thought.

  Yes, someone like Maria.

  Maria in death, like Maria in life, always came out top in the end.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BY CHRISTMAS, when the fighting should have been over, the German armies broke through at the Ardennes for the second time in the war. Luckily for the Allies, the weather cleared and they could bomb them to pieces on the twisting hilly roads—which they would have saved themselves a great deal of trouble by doing in 1940, if only they’d had any aeroplanes. In London the flying-bombs were replaced by rockets, which perplexed and affronted the Government, as Lord Cherwell had worked out most carefully they were too expensive for the Germans to use. The rockets particularly harassed Alec Trevose, who was doing his two months’ midwifery training at a sandbagged lying-in hospital in north London. Every time one fell the noise sent half a dozen local women into labour, and it was no fun finding your way through blacked-out back streets on a bicycle, loaded like a mule with bags of instruments and dressings, suspected by policemen of being some sort of saboteur, and wondering if the next unheralded missile had your number on it.

  Alec didn’t like midwifery. He was beginning to see himself as an intellectual, a man of culture, and childbirth was an extremely uncultured pursuit for all concerned. Alec hated the babies. He hated the midwife in charge of him, a sparse-bosomed Scotswoman with a vinegary tongue. She in turn seemed to hate him and indeed men in general, which he felt was reasonable from her toilsome occupation. Only the jovial Mr. O’Rory brought levity to the solemn reproductive circus with his visits twice a week. He was a Catholic, and therefore unable to perform abortions—though he stretched a point when they were natural, like Clare’s miscarriage, and passed the
others to his houseman, back-seat driving over his right shoulder. Female sterilization was for him, he confessed, quite out of the question. He would perform the operation to the crucial point, then demand genially of his assistant, ‘Just tie a knot in those two ligatures round the Fallopian tubes, my boy, there’s a good fellow. My religion doesn’t allow me to do that sort of thing at all.’

  Alec rather took to Mr. O’Rory. He felt he had the cultured approach.

  In the spring the Nazi magníficos suddenly appeared in the papers as haggard and anxious old men, shuffling about in baggy civilian suits. It induced feelings of freakishness rather than triumph. To anyone of Alec Trevose’s age, a world empty of Hitler and Mussolini was as strange as one without Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Himmler bit the cyanide capsule in his tooth, and vomited himself to death over the trousers of a British officer. If nobody really knew what had happened to Hitler, nobody really cared. There were rejoicings in British streets, of a seemly nature. The Government, in a burst of official relaxation, allowed the citizenry to use binoculars again. If the population were restrained by the scarcity of hard liquor from getting lit up when the lights went up in London, at least they had some sort of fling before the authorities switched them off again through shortage of fuel. On the June day when the world inaugurated the United Nations in San Francisco and so abolished war for ever—for the second occasion in a quarter of a century—both Alec and Desmond found they had qualified as doctors.

  Alec quickly found that qualification, like marriage, brought more problems than it settled. His first difficulty was to win a resident post at Smithers Botham. Failing to get a ‘house job’ in your mother hospital was like being expelled from school, it stuck for life. Besides, he was going to specialize. All the students were going to specialize, their teachers (who were specialists) having freely laced their instruction with their opinion of family doctors as dangerous fumbling ignoramuses. But specialize in what? Psychiatry, Alec decided. It was intellectual, and you never got your hands messy. There was no psychiatric houseman, so as a first step he must land a house physician’s appointment. But unfortunately for Alec the jobs had come to be decided solely by Mr. Cramphorn, who dominated the selection committee. His methods were simple. He would look through the list of applicants, grunting, and strike out with his gold pencil all coloured students, Jews, those with un-English sounding names, any he had taken a dislike to, and any he had for some reason never heard of. And Mr. Cramphorn had taken a fierce dislike to the Trevose family. He thought Graham’s treatment of Clare outrageous, and after he had lavished his rabbits on her, too. Desmond, he admitted grudgingly, must be given a job, as the son of a Blackfriars consultant. If that unspoken rule lapsed the whole structure of the hospital might tumble, and there were changes enough in the wind already. But Alec could be sacrificed. In the end, Mr. Cramphorn compromised by making Alec the resident anaesthetist, this speciality, Mr. Cramphorn believed, being reserved for those unfitted for the practice of medicine at all.