Surgeon at Arms

by Gordon, Richard

  Graham sipped his drink in silence. The reference to tempestuous partnerships set John wondering about his host’s present arrangements for sexual relaxation. He generally had some of a sort, though John had picked up no gossip round the nursing-homes of the West End. He wondered if the fellow were getting past it. By way of a probe, he asked, ‘Do you live in this palace all alone?’ Graham nodded. ‘It’s too big, but I had to take what I could. The squatters were in downstairs, you know.’

  ‘You were lucky to get your hands on it.’

  ‘London’s a peculiar place just now. Everyone knows someone who can obtain the unobtainable. This austerity’s a bore, isn’t it? I certainly didn’t expect it after the war. I thought everything would more or less click back into place again. I must have been mad.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one. The Tory party suffered the same insanity.’

  ‘I suppose I’m amusing myself. Though the people you meet are peculiar. Not at all like before the war. I wonder what happened to them all.’

  ‘Haven’t they gone to Kenya and Rhodesia and such places?’

  ‘I’d rather put up with things here. I’m not doing badly, you know,’ Graham told him defiantly. ‘The plastic game’s as tough as ever, if not tougher. But I’m well and truly inside the magic circle now.’ He smiled. ‘The new handle helps, I suppose, “Sir Graham” and all that. The outsiders have a thin time of it, trying to break in. I’m certainly not going to help them. I suffered enough myself, and nobody was inclined to give me a leg-up.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of what Bevan’s going to do?’

  ‘Not really. The scheme won’t touch us consultants much. We might even be better off—after all, we’ll get paid for the work we do free in hospital. The g.p.s will get the dirty end of the stick, and that’s too bad. The B.M.A. have spotted that, of course, that’s why they’re kicking up such a shindy. They’re the g.p.s’ trade union. The Royal Colleges, who represent people like me, are coming round to Bevan’s line of thinking. The letter from the three presidents last month certainly seemed to indicate something like that. You see, Bevan’s split the profession. Cunning blighter. I rather admire the man. If I’d gone into politics, which God forbid, I should have modelled myself on him. He knows what he wants, and can be perfectly charming as he invariably gets it. How are you doing, John?’

  ‘Very busy. I’ve Smithers Botham, the Cavendish Clinic, half a dozen hospitals scattered round London. I’d almost forgotten I was on the staff of half of them.’

  ‘I missed you badly at the annex, I don’t mind admitting it.’

  ‘Nice of you to do so now,’ John said drily.

  ‘That Australian we got was all right as a stuffist, but the anaesthetist’s the stage-manager of the operating unit. With you, everything went so smoothly.’ The vague idea of staging a reconciliation with John, already in Graham’s mind before the dinner, now struck him as urgent. After all, he had a real affection for the man, they had been professional brothers-in-arms for the best part of thirty years. ‘How’s Denise?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s been a bit off colour, recently. Nothing definite. One of the physicians had a look at her. Trying to run a home these days is enough to get any woman down.’ Graham hesitated, and added, ‘If you’d like to get away, I’ve a villa you could borrow in the south of France. At Roquebrune, up above Monte Carlo.’

  John raised his eyebrows. ‘How on earth did you get the currency?’

  Graham laughed. ‘Oh, there are ways and means. I bought it a month ago—very reasonably, once I got hold of the francs. I don’t think one should take these restrictions too seriously. After all, there are so many of them, if we observed the letter of all the laws we wouldn’t be able to stray from our front-doors.’

  ‘It’s a very kind offer, Graham, but I don’t know when we’ll have a chance to take you up on it.’

  ‘I’ve hardly had a chance myself. I’m sending Sheila Raleigh down there next month—you know, Tom Raleigh’s widow. She needs a holiday. I’ve given her the job of secretary to this Annex Club. There’s an awful lot of work to do, quite a lot of money in the kitty. It’s a way for me to make amends. If I have any amends to make.’ Graham finished his drink: ‘It was sad about Tom. It shook me badly at the time. Too much so, perhaps. I felt somehow I was responsible. But how could I have been? I must have been feeling oversensitive in those days. Anyway, Sheila’s getting married again this summer, some fellow out of the Navy. Do you want another drink?’

  ‘No, I must get home, I’m afraid.’ John rose. ‘I promised Denise I wouldn’t arrive back in too alarming a condition.’

  ‘I’ll walk. We’re not far away, across the Park.’

  ‘John, I wonder if you’d like to take over my anaesthetic work again?’

  John paused, getting into his overcoat. This will prove, Graham thought, if he holds everything against me still.

  ‘It’s good of you, Graham, but I’m afraid my time for private work is absolutely booked.’

  ‘Too bad,’ murmured Graham.

  He does hold it against me, Graham told himself. And quite badly. Probably Denise is behind it.

  ‘Perhaps when things become more organized we can team up again?’ Graham suggested vaguely.

  ‘Yes, perhaps we can,’ said John.

  Graham closed the door behind his guest. He stood alone in the middle of the room. Something was disturbing him. He looked round, then sprang towards the mantelpiece and seized the ornamental clock. He looked at it foolishly for a moment, and carried it out to the kitchen. He had let it run down, and the woman who cleaned the flat must have rewound it. He hated clocks. Tick tock, tick tock. Every one a click along the rächet towards extinction. Such thoughts came upon him often now that he lived alone. He sat down heavily in the armchair, telling himself he was really becoming dreadfully neurotic. Perhaps it was all to do with the symptoms of the male menopause.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE PARTY was in Grosvenor Square, in a block of flats occupied mainly by Americans left over from the war, the only class of people in the country who could afford the rent. Lord Cazalay occupied the penthouse which covered most of the top floor. Graham admitted that his brother-in-law seemed to be making a success of his life. Despite the currency restrictions, the travel business appeared to be prospering, and he claimed to have his fingers in all manner of tasty pies. He always treated Graham with the warmest affability. Graham did not deceive himself this was through fraternal love, or remorse for past malevolence. Sir Graham Trevose was a useful name to keep around him. Graham didn’t object overmuch. If you wanted such things as whisky, beefsteaks, suit lengths, or villas on the Riviera, you couldn’t be squeamish over the company you kept.

  ‘Graham, I’m delighted you could come.’ Lord Cazalay pushed his way through the noisy crowd of guests. ‘I hope you got over that dinner last night. I read about it in the papers.’

  ‘I left before they started breaking the place up.’

  ‘Very wise. It must be gratifying to know you’ve got these young men in such good spirits again.’

  ‘I only did my best,’ Graham told him modestly. ‘Some of them would still give a girl a nasty scare on a dark night.’

  ‘Champagne? I was rather lucky to get this consignment across the Channel. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  Lord Cazalay led Graham across the room, putting his arm round his shoulders, to demonstrate either affection or possession, Graham wasn’t sure.

  ‘Fred, this is Sir Graham. I know you’ll be glad to meet him.’ Graham found himself facing a short, square man with a leathery face, smoking a pipe. ‘This is Fred Butcher,’ Lord Cazalay introduced him. ‘You know, from the War Office.’

  Graham recognized one of the Ministers who had been swept to breathtaking heights by the flood of electoral popularity, to be left sitting forlornly on his isolated peak as the tide abruptly turned. He was a rather colourless public figure, a fair-minded, hardworking trade union offi
cial with a valuable flair for bedding down lambs with lions. Graham wondered how he got on with the more peppery generals.

  ‘Glad to meet you, Sir Graham. Heard a lot about you during the war, of course.’

  ‘Perhaps too much?’ Graham asked. ‘That’s some people’s view.’

  ‘Every word was deserved, I’m sure of that.’ He relit his pipe and added, ‘You know a surgeon called Mr Haileybury, I believe?’

  ‘Extremely well.’

  ‘He got me to speak at a luncheon the other week. About this burns hospital, and that. He seems a great one for the idea, does Mr Haileybury.’

  ‘Personally, I think he’s got something of a bee in his bonnet about it.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ said the politician guardedly.

  Graham had heard of Haileybury’s plan only secondhand. It seemed that Haileybury, once reconciled to the Government’s cossetting the nation’s health to a greater extent than providing clean water and drains, had turned himself into a crusader for the new scheme. He suddenly woke up to its offering an outlet for his qualities of administration, sadly frustrated once he put away his uniform. He was particularly taken with the idea of establishing a hospital in London for burns and accident, arguing that the experience gained during the war should not be dispersed, but concentrated under one roof and passed to visiting surgeons from countries which had regrettably been spared the opportunity for such practice. The Ministry of Health was sympathetic to Haileybury, but doubtful. They had to find the money to put roofs on the old hospitals before digging the foundations of new ones.

  Graham had a dozen questions he would like to have asked the Minister about the fuel crisis. But politicians, like medical men, must learn to keep their counsel, and he found himself talking instead about the restarting of international football. Then Lord Cazalay reappeared and said, ‘Fred, I must tear Sir Graham away. There’s someone else I’d particularly like him to have a word with.’

  As Graham allowed himself to be led across the room, Lord Cazalay asked, “Isn’t Liz coming? I thought you were giving us the pleasure of looking at her?’

  ‘She’s meeting me here. The curtain at her show doesn’t ring down till after ten.’

  ‘That’s splendid news. Graham, this is Arthur King. A very close friend of mine.’

  Arthur King struck Graham as resembling a worried ferret. He was a youngish man, certainly not over thirty, with thinning fair hair and sidewhiskers. He wore a smart blue double-breasted suit with over-emphasis on the lapels, a dark striped shirt, and a plain grey tie with a diamond pin stuck in it. His green eyes had an expression of continual anxiety in them, and if he had ever learned to smile he seemed to have forgotten the knack.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Arthur King.

  ‘Of course, you’ll know all about Sir Graham’s work in the war,’ Lord Cazalay said affably.

  ‘Yes, I read about it in the papers.’ He inspected Graham anxiously. ‘You fixed all them pilots up with new faces, didn’t you? Must be a clever feller.’ Graham nodded. To have his work praised by a Minister of the Crown was one thing. Approbation from a man who might have left his fruit-barrow at the door was less welcome. Still, he told himself, society was changing, you had to take people as they came, if you played the snob you got nowhere.

  ‘You’ll remember, Arthur, that Sir Graham has an interest in our travel business.’

  ‘Smart lad.Going like a bomb, that little company. It’s only the beginning, mind. Once these bloody restrictions come off, the market’ll be wide open.’

  ‘I hope I’ll see something back for my money,’ said Graham, for the sake of making conversation. ‘It isn’t much fun paying it all away in taxes.’

  ‘Oh, taxes,’ said Arthur King, contemptuously. ‘There’s another little idea of ours. Shall we tell him, Charles?’

  ‘Television,’ said Lord Cazalay.

  ‘There’s not much future in that surely?’ Graham looked surprised. ‘Nobody will be able to afford the sets.’

  ‘Another ten years and there’ll be one in every home,’ said Arthur King confidently. ‘Just like the toilet.’ Graham’s instruction in the mysteries of commerce was interrupted by the arrival of Liz.

  Liz was an actress. Not a particularly well-known one—indeed, discovery of her name generally called for a fairly close reading of the programme. She was in one of the postwar revues, with a small part which hardly justified her style of living. She had an enviable knack of getting to know the people who mattered, and an even more valuable one of dropping them before they ceased to. She was a big woman, red-haired, with enormous teeth. Graham supposed she must be well past forty. He had met her a few weeks before, in the dressing-room of an actor whose noble features had illuminated the musical-comedy stage for some decades, and now, with his assistance, seemed likely to continue lightening it for some decades more. Graham had begun to move among theatrical people, even adopting some of their little affectations. It pleased him to see himself as part of their scene, to understand their momentously whispered trivial gossip. He found Liz heavy going, but a man must have a companion, and he was never one to play the monk.

  ‘Graham, darling, how wonderful.’ Liz embraced him warmly, simultaneously managing to take a glass from her host. ‘And Arthur, bless you, how nice. Thank you so much for all those lovely nylons. You are clever. They’re divine.’

  ‘Glad you liked them,’ said Arthur briefly.

  ‘Graham, tell me all you’ve been up to,’ she invited, though they had parted less than forty-eight hours before.

  ‘I went to a party with a lot of my old patients.’

  ‘Those poor boys! They must look so peculiar, all together.’

  ‘They do, but they’ve given up thinking about it, which was the object of the exercise.’

  ‘How on earth could they manage to give up thinking about themselves? I should feel dreadful, quite an outcast, if I had the merest scar.’

  ‘They manage it because I always made the effort of having people treat them like normal human beings, not as something out of a circus.’

  Liz gave a faint smile. He looked in danger of being serious again. He really was a dreadful bore when he got serious. If he went on mixing with all those awful deformed creatures, he really shouldn’t bother everyone by insisting on talking about them in quite repulsive detail.

  ‘Let’s go and grab something to eat,’ Liz suggested. ‘I think they’ve even got lobster.’

  After ten minutes she said to him, ‘You are grumpy tonight, I must say. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’An uneasiness had settled on him. These people really were rather dreadful, he told himself. Though why should he complain? There was wine, lobster, and bright company, all hard to come by. ‘Shall we go on?’ he asked her abruptly. ‘To a nightclub or somewhere?’

  ‘But darling! I’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘I’m feeling restless.’

  ‘Oh, all right, then. You do carry on peculiarly sometimes, darling, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know I do. Very peculiarly. All my life. It’s a bit late in the day to change my habits, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I see you’re in your interesting mood,’ she told him. It was too bad, but she had to put up with it. He seemed very wealthy.

  The nightclub, like a dozen others sprouting after the war, was in a basement near Piccadilly. Graham signed an order for a bottle of gin, which was supposed to be sealed and reproduced at the guest’s next visit, but somehow never was. There was a rumba band and they danced for a few minutes on the overcrowded floor. ‘Let’s go home,’ said Graham. ‘This place is suffocating.’

  ‘Darling, what’s wrong with you tonight? You can hardly wait to get at it.’

  ‘You’re right. I can’t. I feel like it.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She laughed. You’re worse than any of the young ones.’

  ‘The young ones don’t need consoling.’

  She ruffled the hair in the nape of his neck, w
hich he was allowing to grow rather long. ‘What do you need consoling about? You’ve got everything.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing. Nothing that counts.’

  ‘Now you are being interesting. I can’t see anything you lack.’

  ‘A human being, the most precious commodity of all.’

  ‘What about me. Aren’t I human.’

  ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Oh, all right, darling. Though don’t rush at me like a bull when we get in, will you?’

  When they reached the flat she insisted on taking her time, to put him in his place. ‘Can’t we have a drink?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  As he poured out the gin she took a cigarette and remarked, ‘That’s a pretty picture.’

  ‘Yes, it is pretty. That’s its trouble. There’s no feeling underneath.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘I did. Before the war.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were an artist I mean, apart from making people faces. I suppose that’s much the same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘I am an artist. Rather than a surgeon. I am an artist obliged to conform with the discipline of a surgeon’s life.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to worry you,’ she laughed.

  ‘It does, quite often. For most of my life I’ve fought against the rigidity and stuffiness of the medical profession. Now I’m not so sure. It’s rewarding, being set apart, being someone special. Even if it’s only through your own rules, many of which can be extremely silly. I suppose it was the war which changed my mind, though I didn’t realize it at the time.’