Surgeon at Arms

by Gordon, Richard

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘I understand that Bevan himself is very keen on the idea.’

  ‘But when’s it all going to materialize?’ Graham asked. ‘After all, the Government’s already committed to taking the profession by the ears and shaking it out of all recognition in the next few months. It’s supposed to be building health centres everywhere like luxury cinemas. It’s got half the hospitals in the country damaged by air-raids, and the other half falling to bits anyway. When are they going to create your shining new palace? I’m sure the idea will come to something one fine day, Eric, but I’m afraid you and Nye Bevan and I shan’t be here to attend the opening ceremony.’

  ‘It already exists,’ said Haileybury quietly.

  The waiter brought their drinks. As he retired, Haileybury added, ‘It exists less than twenty miles from where we are sitting. To be precise, near Iver, in Buckinghamshire. Extremely convenient for London.’ Graham frowned. He couldn’t recall such a place. ‘Has some genie waved the magic wand?’

  ‘No, but the Americans have. They built a hospital there during the war. It took them, I believe, a matter of some weeks. They are not a people for procrastination. Now the Americans are going home, the building stands there stripped and empty. There seems no obstacle to our taking it over. It is a perfectly adequate structure, single-storey wards, room for five hundred beds. The design of the operating theatres is quite remarkable. There are one or two peculiar features—a soda-fountain, for instance—which can easily be removed. I gather the price will be nominal, particularly if we call it the “Franklin D. Roosevelt Hospital”, something of that nature.’

  ‘That sounds a pleasant windfall,’- said Graham thoughtfully. What would you want me to do? Serve on some committee to raise funds for the equipment?’

  ‘I would want you to head the staff.’

  Graham looked up. He had imagined that Haileybury’s interest in the hospital came at least partly from the glory of running it himself. ‘But what about you?’ Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. ‘You would be the better man.’

  ‘Aren’t you rather carrying modesty to extremes?’ Graham found himself faintly irritated by Haileybury’s honesty. It was something of an affront. ‘You’re the one who’s preached for years that plastic surgery was essentially the surgery of repair. As for rue, I’m a beauty-doctor, a face-faker?’

  ‘And that, if I may say so, is a rather over-modest view of your work during the war.’

  ‘I thought you imagined my work during the war was grabbing publicity?’

  ‘I did imagine it at the time,’ Haileybury told him frankly, ‘but I was wrong. I didn’t understand the importance of the cosmetic work you were doing. I make all the apologies you feel you deserve. It was difficult, confined to administrative tasks. I was too far from individual patients. I came to appreciate only late in the war how much you did for morale.’ He tapped the table with his long forefinger. ‘And that is what we need in this new place of mine. Someone to make plain that those mutilated by the hazards of peace can be treated as effectively as those mutilated by the hazards of war.’

  ‘But Eric! This is an enormous job you’re asking me to take on. There’re all manner of questions for me to decide first.’

  ‘At least the financial question will decide itself. As director, you would draw the appropriate consultant’s salary in the new health service. Plus a merit award» doubtless, if that part of the scheme goes through.’

  ‘But what time have I for such responsibilities? Don’t forget I’ve a busy private practice.’

  ‘I regret that private practice would not enter into it. The post would be full-time. You know how strongly the Government feels on such points.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid it’s out of the question.’

  ‘Do you know, Graham, it’s the second time you have used that expression to me sitting exactly in this spot?’

  Graham smiled. ‘I’m sorry. I much appreciate the honour you’ve paid me, but I must look to my own interests. I’ve landed myself with a hell of a lot of debts, to be paid off somehow before I’m too old to work at all. I’d love to accept, Eric, the idea’s got tremendous attraction, it would be like the annex all over again. But I’m afraid it’s just not on.’

  ‘Last time, I made the mistake of pressing you for a decision. I shall not repeat it. There is plenty of time— months, perhaps a year, perhaps two. Any moment you feel inclined to discuss the matter further, lift a telephone. Will you promise?’

  ‘Very well,’ Graham told him amicably. ‘I’ll keep it constantly before me. Should I undergo a change of heart you’ll hear at once.’

  ‘Excellent. Now let us drop the subject and talk about something else. Very sad, don’t you think, Graham, the prospects for the coming county cricket season?’

  Graham quickly put the offer out of his mind. A salaried post, he decided, would be far more suitable for a man of modest tastes like Haileybury himself. But even Haileybury indulged in a little private practice. He did operations every Saturday morning in a small hospital near the Crystal Palace, which during the war had somehow fallen under the domination of his own in London, King Alfred’s, and afterwards never escaped. It had few private beds, the theatres were antiquated, but the nursing was sound and the general atmosphere Haileybury found agreeably modest. John Bickley was a consultant to the hospital and generally gave Haileybury’s anaesthetics, though regretting that Haileybury didn’t take the same wide view of operating fees as Graham.

  The following Saturday, as Haileybury was finishing the repair of a child’s cleft palate, he observed to John, ‘I saw Trevose the other day.’

  ‘Yes, I ran into him only last week. He seems to be doing as well as ever.’

  ‘He’s full of bounce, certainly. With Trevose that generally indicates a stuffed wallet.’

  ‘Did you think him cheerful? I felt he was rather miserable with himself:’

  Haileybury inserted the final stitches in the child’s mouth. ‘He’s a man of moods,’ he observed drily. ‘And that nephew of his has gone off his head.’

  John frowned under his surgical cap. ‘Alec was my junior assistant. He was something of a queer fish, I must say.’

  ‘That goes for all the Trevose family, doesn’t it? They don’t make life easy for themselves.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ John disconnected the long corrugated rubber tube of his anaesthetic apparatus. ‘Alec’s mother will be upset. She had high hopes for him. Saw him as a second Horder, I believe.’

  ‘Well, he might achieve it yet. Some of our most eminent brethren have been somewhat unbalanced. It’s a matter of survival until they reach the position where nobody dare mention it.’

  John removed the throat-pack and the thin, wire-stiffened armoured Magill tube from the child’s windpipe. ‘I think I’ll go back to the ward with this one.’

  ‘All is well, I trust?’ asked Haileybury sharply.

  ‘Yes, perfectly. But you can never be sure of anything at all in this game.’

  In the children’s ward at the end of the corridor he passed his patient to the care of the staff-nurse, and asked, ‘Where’s Sister?’

  ‘In her office, Dr. Bickley.’

  John knocked on the door by the ward entrance and went in. Clare Mills looked up from her desk. ‘Hello!’ She smiled. ‘Quite a stranger.’

  ‘I was bringing back that palate.’ He popped a cigarette over his sagging mask and lit it. ‘I had a chat with Graham last Saturday night.’

  Clare raised her eyebrows. At first she said nothing, but moved some notes on her desk. ‘And how is he?’

  ‘He’s wearing well. And he seemed to be enjoying life. Or trying to convince himself that he was.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s all right.’

  ‘Do you ever hear from him?’

  ‘Oh, no! I would never have expected that. Not with Graham.’

  ‘He didn’t mention you at all,’ John volunteered.

  ‘I wo
uldn’t have expected that, either. Once anyone’s left his orbit he likes to cut them out completely. To forget about them, as though they’d never existed.’

  ‘Even you, who tried to save him from himself?’

  ‘I wasn’t conscious of doing so at the time, but I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘It’s all part of his selfishness, I suppose. Rejecting even those who’ve helped him, once they’re no more use.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not entirely. We can understand his trying to spare himself the pain of sad memories. He inflicts enough on himself. Anyway, he doesn’t know where I am,’ she added more briskly. He doesn’t even know if I’m still in the country.’

  ‘Do you want to see him again?’

  She looked at him hard for a moment and said, ‘What’s the point?’

  John nodded understandingly and asked, ‘Have you any plans—for getting married, that sort of thing? Anyone in mind? I hope you don’t mind my asking, Clare. I’ve come to feel something of an uncle to you.’

  She smiled again. ‘A very useful uncle. You found me this job.’

  ‘I felt I wanted to do something for you. If you remember, we were both suffering from the Trevose temperament rather severely at the time.’

  ‘Perhaps it was all something to do with war-weariness.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘No, I haven’t anyone in mind. I don’t suppose I shall. I’ve got my work.’

  ‘At which you’re extremely efficient.’

  ‘Thank you. Everyone regards me as a dedicated and

  completely sexless ward sister. There’re plenty of them about. The backbone of any hospital. The whole system would fall to bits without such women. When I was in training, I often wondered exactly what created them. Now I know.’

  ‘That sounds like a gloomy prognosis' for yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps someone will turn up. You never know. Otherwise I shall sister on, until I’m pensioned off and go to live in a seaside boarding-house.’

  ‘But don’t you bear any resentment? Towards Graham?’

  ‘How can one bear any resentment towards a maladjusted child?’

  ‘I dare say you’re right,’ John told her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE GOVERNMENT was out of luck. The worst snowfall of the century was followed by the worst floods that could be remembered at all. The cascade began in the middle of March 1947, the rivers spilt disastrously across the countryside, swamping the roads and railways, drowning the sheep, ruining the potato crop and countless carpets. Two years after victory the people who had given blood, toil, tears and sweat were left standing in queues holding damp ration-books.

  The postwar disgruntlement which affected everyone began to depress Graham. He was starting to confess himself bored and disgusted with his brother-in-law and his cronies. The girl Liz was really a shocking creature, though he felt disinclined to ditch her with no replacement in sight. Perhaps there never would be, he reflected. He was becoming a shade elderly to play the rake. He would have liked to stay at the villa after

  Sheila Raleigh came home, he craved for luxury and sunshine, but he had too much private work in London. There seemed to be a dammed-up demand for plastic surgery, as for other prewar luxuries like chocolates and cars, and plastic surgery was readily obtainable for your money. And at least, he reflected, he passed most of his time in hospitals and nursing homes, where it was warm and there was plenty of hot water.

  He was still living alone, and trying to reconcile himself to it. To make his evenings more bearable he started to write a text-book on the surgery of burns. He had never written much before, though he felt that if he could paint he was equipped with the right sort of mental muscles for self-expression. He turned out a trunkful of notes from the annex, sorted them into bundles, and started work with his portable typewriter. Progress was slow. As he read his scribbled pages, he found himself drawn back to the atmosphere of the bungalow where he had jotted most of them down. He found the composition becoming dominated by Clare. He remembered exactly what she was saying or doing when he had drawn up some particular account of a patient or an operation. It disturbed him. He had thought about her often enough since they separated, but he told himself she was in the past, finished and done with, like Edith. He determined to put her resolutely out of his mind. It was the only way. Anyway, if he didn’t, the book would never be finished.

  He was working alone one evening towards the end of March when the telephone rang. It was Lord Cazalay.

  ‘I say, Graham, are you still at home? We were expecting you tonight.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t make it.’ Another one of his damn parties. ‘Didn’t you get the message? I asked the Clinic to phone you.’

  ‘Some signal got through to me, but I didn’t take it seriously.’ Lard Cazalay sounded offended. ‘You remember you particularly promised to come.’

  ‘I’ve got an urgent case coming in, I’m afraid. You’ll have to excuse me.’

  This pretext being unanswerable, Lord Cazalay added, ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you fairly soon? It’s a matter of some importance.’

  Graham gave a grunt. He probably wants more money out of me, he thought. Money is the only matter of importance that he knows. ‘I’m dreadfully booked up this week, Charles, professionally.’

  ‘Surely you can spare a moment? It’s rather pressing. How about lunch tomorrow at my club?’

  ‘It’s a miserable confession, but my lunch is always a sandwich between cases.’

  ‘Can’t I call tomorrow evening? About seven?’

  ‘All right, I’ll make a point of being here,’ Graham told him, giving in.

  ‘I’m much obliged. By the way, you’ll make sure we’re undisturbed, I take it. It’s extremely confidential.’

  ‘I’m nearly always on my own,’ Graham assured him. In the next morning’s paper he saw that Fred Butcher had resigned from the Government. He wondered why. He had seemed from brief acquaintance a likeable, down-to-earth sort of fellow. He couldn’t be bothered to read the story running down the column. Politics was a bore, and the newspapers only made up fairy-stories. When someone mentioned the incident in the theatre of the Cavendish Clinic during Graham’s first case, he said, ‘Yes, I met the chap the other day. Seemed a very solid citizen.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked his young assistant, looking up. ‘What’s the matter?’ Graham was surprised at the tone. ‘Is he in disgrace, or something? I supposed he’d resigned on some lofty point of political principle.’

  ‘Reading between the lines, he’s in the cart. Something very peculiar about Army contracts. A number of old Army wireless sets seem to have gone sadly astray.’

  ‘Who on earth would want an old Army wireless set?’

  ‘People want anything these days. In Germany you could refurnish your home with a few hundred cigarettes.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Graham sombrely. ‘Everyone seems to be on the make. There’s a spiv in all of us.’ Lord Cazalay arrived promptly at seven. With him was the ferret-faced Arthur. Graham invited them in cordially. If they had some proposition for him, he had already decided to reject it. But at least he could politely offer them a whisky. After all, it had come via Lord Cazalay.

  For a while Lord Cazalay talked about the obstacles to making money in the postwar world, a subject he seemed inclined to leave with more impatience than usual. Arthur sat sipping whisky nervously and said nothing. After a few minutes Lord Cazalay declared, ‘Graham, I’ve found you a new patient.’ He inclined his head. ‘Arthur here.’

  Graham looked at the ferrety man with mild interest. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like you to fix my face up, Sir Graham.’

  ‘But you haven’t any scars or blemishes that I can see.’

  ‘I’d just like you to change it a bit. Like you did to the pilots during the war.’

  Lord Cazalay gave a harsh laugh. ‘Plenty of room for improvement,
eh, Graham?’

  Graham put his finger-tips together and gave the profferred features a more careful inspection. It wasn’t a bad face. The nose was too pointed and the jaw underslung, but not to the point of unsightliness. But he appreciated, even if he still never understood, the psychological forces urging patients towards him. A crooked nose or a drooping eyelid, passing more or less unnoticed by the world, could incite any amount of self-torture. He remembered a youth during the war with a leg withered from polio. All the frustrations of his life were ascribed to his leg. He implored one of the general surgeons to chop it off, to cast it from his life altogether, replace it with one of the splendid artificial ones they were designing for the wounded. The surgeon obliged. Six months later the young man committed suicide. We must all find something to blame, Graham thought, even if it’s a bit of ourselves.

  ‘Of course, you realize that a cosmetic operation, like any operation, carries a risk?’ Graham explained, as he did to every patient. Arthur nodded. ‘Nor is it free from pain and bother. Some can be distinctly uncomfortable for weeks afterwards. And even I can’t guarantee a perfectly successful result.’

  ‘The bill will be rather painful too, I fancy,’ said Lord Cazalay, laughing again.

  ‘I wouldn’t conceal that either,’ said Graham.

  ‘You’d be looked after, Sir Graham,’ Arthur assured him solemnly. ‘Rely on me for that.’

  ‘As this is turning into a consultation, I’ll have to ask you to leave us, Charles,’ Graham explained to his brother-in-law. ‘It’s rather irregular to conduct one with an audience.’