Surgeon at Arms

by Gordon, Richard

  ‘Graham, old fellow, if you’re going my way perhaps we can stroll together?’ Haileybury suggested with an unknown heartiness.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere in particular. Shall we take a turn round St. James’s Park? We’ve plenty to talk about.’

  As they walked round the lake, the chilly spring air restored Haileybury to his usual oppressive sobriety. They talked animatedly for half an hour about the first steps for bringing the new unit into being, until Graham broke off unexpectedly, ‘You know, Eric, this new task you’ve saddled me with has saved my life. Literally, I mean. I’ve never thought of suicide—and I know a surprising number of one’s acquaintances have at least once, quite seriously. But I wouldn’t have been too sure of myself, not at this stage of my life, without some fresh interest.’

  ‘You’re being fanciful again,’ Haileybury told him with a thin smile.

  ‘I suppose you’re entitled to think so. You know me better than almost anybody. But I mean it. Without something big to tackle, some worthwhile achievement to make, I’d get depressed. Dreadfully depressed. It seems to get worse with age. And when a patient’s depressed, you know well enough, they’ve a different personality, there’s no knowing what they might do. It’s as dangerous as walking along the edge of a cliff.’ Haileybury nodded slowly as they walked. ‘What makes you imagine I haven’t suffered myself?’

  Graham looked at him sharply. He had imagined Haileybury’s personality breasting the tides of life with the unexciting stability of a coal-barge on the Thames. It struck him that although Haileybury had grown to understand a good deal of his own inner workings, he knew absolutely nothing of Haileybury’s.

  ‘I hope the intolerable amount of work you are about to undertake will put such unpleasant notions from your mind,’ Haileybury added.

  ‘I’m safe as long as I’m occupied every minute of the day. I hate living alone.’ Graham hesitated, but decided to go on. Haileybury, of all people, had become his only confessor. ‘I’d hoped to cure that particular deficiency, btu I’m afraid it’s not to be.’

  ‘You’re thinking of taking a companion?’

  ‘I notice you avoid the word “wife”, and I can’t blame you for that either.’ Graham sounded a shade weary. ‘You know I lived with a girl during the war? She was my ward sister from the annex. We’ve met up again. I want to marry her. I can’t live without her. That’s a stupid expression, much overused, but as I explained a moment ago it might have been quite literally true. But she doesn’t want to take the same risk with me twice, and I can hardly object to her point of view.’

  ‘Who might this lady be? Would I have met her?’

  ‘I should imagine so. She’s the children’s ward sister at the Kenworth.’

  Haileybury stopped dead. ‘Sister Mills? But what an amazing coincidence!’

  ‘It isn’t at all. John Bickley got her the job after I kicked her out in 1944.’

  ‘I see,’ said Haileybury. He put his fingers together and blew on them.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Graham burst out. ‘It’s irritated me for years.’

  Haileybury hastily thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘I’m sorry there’s a difficulty between you,’ he sympathised.

  ‘She can’t understand that I don’t want to go back to my old ways—because of the war, or old age,’ Graham ended gloomily, ‘or perhaps just disgust with myself in general.’

  ‘I suppose to some extent the seven ages of man are all strangers to each other,’ Haileybury observed.

  ‘Just look at those ducks,’ said Graham, pointing across the lake. ‘They must run up a tremendous oxygen debt, keeping their beaks under water as long as that.’

  He didn’t care to reveal more of himself to Hailey?-bury. He had said too much as it was. He had written Clare a long and thoughtful letter, uncloyed with passion. There had been no reply. It seemed best to forget about her, as deliberately as he had once forgotten about Edith. As the two surgeons resumed their walk, Graham began with growing disquiet to hope that Haileybury would forget about her too. Haileybury had been his enemy once, and in this shifting and faithless world who knew when he might be again?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  BUT HAILEYBURY did not forget about Clare at all.

  He had heard rumour during the war of Graham living ‘in sin’ at Smithers Botham, but had vaguely imagined his consort some painted and skittish female of the type portrayed on his rare visits to the cinema by Dorothy Lamour (Haileybury suffered a guilty affection for the comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope). That she was the quiet and efficient Sister Mills, whom he had encountered almost weekly for a year, seemed inconceivable. But Haileybury decided he had never been able to comprehend the powerful mysteries of sexual attraction, no more than he could grasp those of the atomic physics you were beginning to read so much about in the newspapers. He had never felt drawn to one woman rather than another in his life. He felt annoyed that John Bickley had kept Sister Mills’ relationship from him—but he supposed it wasn’t a matter you wanted revealed in such a gossip-ridden place as a hospital. He anxiously tried to recall if he had made any particular uncharitable remarks about Graham in her presence.

  Haileybury thought about it all the week-end. He kept shaking his head and chuckling faintly to himself, much alarming his sister. It certainly took him back. The only other of Graham’s women he had met was that girl Edith, secretary on his plastic surgery unit in 1918. He had taken a distinctly dim view of that connection, Haileybury remembered. But that was long ago; now they were growing into old dogs and learning not to bark and bite so much. He began to wonder if he might say something on Graham’s behalf to Sister Mills. An outrageous idea, of course. But Haileybury was a fair man and felt the lady was perhaps being unjust. As for the injustice he had himself done Graham in 1942, he felt it more keenly than Graham now did himself.

  Sister Mills might make the man a good wife, Haileybury speculated. Graham had sobered down, there was no doubt about that. For him to have thrown away his profitable private practice would before the war have been as inconceivable as his entering a monastery. But no, Haileybury finally decided, he had no right to intervene. It was a personal matter for the pair of them. Besides, he was still not entirely certain how much in these strange postwar years he had come to like or even to tolerate Graham.

  On the Monday, Haileybury was visiting the Ken-worth Hospital to see his patients. He had two cases of cleft palate recovering in the children’s ward, which he usually visited ceremonially escorted by his house-surgeon. But this young man, whose services he shared with the throat department, was occupied in the theatre with the emergency of a postoperative bleeding tonsil. Haileybury found himself alone with Sister Mills in a small room off the ward known as the nursery, which contained a slide, a rocking horse, and various toys, all of which some half-dozen children were enjoying with an amazing amount of noise.

  ‘I believe you know Graham Trevose?’ Haileybury asked her suddenly, above the din.

  ‘Yes, that’s quite correct,’ Clare told him calmly. ‘I was one of his ward sisters during the war.’

  ‘How very strange.’ Haileybury looked uneasy. ‘I have enjoyed his acquaintance for years, you know.’

  ‘Yes, he used to talk a lot about you. Particularly when there was that fuss in 1942.’

  Clare noticed Haileybury had the grace to turn pink. ‘I think we have made all that up between us, Sister.’

  ‘I hope so, Mr Haileybury. He was very upset at the time. Almost out of his mind.’

  Haileybury made no reply. He had long ago ceased caring what Graham said to him, but the cloaked rebuke from Sister Mills was surprisingly wounding. A shocking illogical thought crept upon him—perhaps it was he who had behaved so badly over the years of their acquaintance rather than Graham?

  ‘I hope I have undone any damage by arranging to some extent his appointment to our fine new accident hospital. You must have seen the place mentioned in the papers, surely?’


  ‘I don’t think anything could compensate him for those few terrible weeks. He had built up the annex at Smithers Botham, and it was to be taken away from him.’ She paused, and added, ‘It was like a mother losing a child.’

  Haileybury didn’t know what to say. So he put his finger-tips together and blew on them.

  ‘I saw Graham just before the week-end,’ he admitted. ‘Naturally, with the new project we shall be thrown on each other’s company a good deal.’ He hesitated and added, ‘I understand he wishes to marry you, Sister?’

  He could not remember uttering anything making him feel more uncomfortable in his life.

  ‘That is correct, Mr Haileybury.’

  Clare leant down to pick up a crying child who had tripped over a pile of wooden bricks.

  ‘Forgive me—this is really nothing to do with me— but I gather you are not agreeable?’

  ‘That too, is correct, Mr Haileybury. I am not agreeable.’

  Haileybury hesitated again. He decided that having got this far he would charge bravely on. In 1942 he may not have been motivated by spite, as Graham suggested, but he had found the delicate negotiations leading to the man’s dismissal from the annex not wholly unpleasurable. Yes, he must make amends, it was his duty. The new job was not enough. After all, Graham could have earned that easily on his own merits. It was only a matter of his stooping to take it.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said, quite sternly. ‘I hope you appreciate the extent of his emotional disturbance? I have known him for years—since before you were born—and I can appreciate it very keenly myself. Quite frankly, he talked to me of suicide. Oh, I know it’s a common enough threat in such circumstances. From a boy of twenty, perhaps. But not from a mature man. And a man of the world, like Graham.’ He saw she looked alarmed, and went on, ‘Perhaps I can see your point of view. He would never conceal from society that he was lavish in his affections. But he’s a better man. It was a process which probably started during the war, when he had no alternative but to follow his natural instinct and devote himself to others. I fancy his life in the world of fashion merely expressed his taste for self-indulgence, pursued with the energy which he devotes to everything.’

  There was a pause, filled with the screaming of children.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ was all Clare said.

  Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. He felt no need to say more. He had done his duty. He made a peculiar jerky bow and sidled away. He sincerely hoped the girl would take up with Graham again and marry him. After that conversation, it would be outrageously embarrassing always meeting her in the hospital.

  Clare went to her small office and sat at her desk. It was all dreadfully confusing. Of course, she still loved Graham. Of course, she would happily marry him. Had she been five years younger she wouldn’t have hesitated. But the lesson of Cosy Cot was not one she was anxious to learn over again—unless that funny old stick Haileybury was right, and Graham had really shed his old habits. When they had lived together she had seen mostly Graham’s best side, and that was certainly something worth taking a risk for. On the other hand, with Graham you could never tell how he was going to behave about anything, even the way he liked his shirts ironed.

  There was a knock. A cheerful curly-headed young man in a white coat, the thoracic surgeon’s houseman, put his head inside. ‘All right if we have a look at that patent ductus, Sister?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mr Cooper.’ Clare got up. The surgeons were daringly starting to operate in the area of the heart itself, and had tied off an abnormal bloodvessel in a little girl suffering this congenital defect. She gathered up her notes. ‘The patient’s doing very well, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘That’s splendid. Then we’ll have another one for you to nurse next month.’

  ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be here by then, Mr Cooper. I’m leaving to get married.’ Clare stood looking at him, still wondering why she had said it.

  Graham found a wedding in middle life a surprisingly agreeable experience. Though after all, he told himself, unlike most bridegrooms, he wasn’t marrying an almost total stranger.

  Graham’s first marriage had been one of the social landmarks of 1920. Maria had worn a train twelve feet long, there had been a shoal of expensively outfitted bridesmaids, all of whose names and faces he had long ago forgotten, and the first Lord Cazalay had driven her up in a brand-new Rolls Royce. The young John Bickley had been his best man, and the second Lord Cazalay, now calculating his chances in a remand cell, had become embarrassingly drunk. The reception had been in some official building, though Graham had gathered the bride’s father would have preferred Buckingham Palace could he have arranged it. As Graham had expected, nobody had taken much notice of himself. He had later come to appreciate this was true of even the humblest marriages, which he supposed were largely occasions for the parents to entertain their friends and show off without risk of later backbiting.

  His own wedding was the first Graham had attended since the miserable afternoon at the marriage of Peter Thomas—who Graham was delighted to find from the newspapers seemed to be making a fortune with some sort of cross-country air service. Clare’s mother and father appeared from Bristol, to Graham’s relief too flattered by their daughter’s unexpectedly turning herself into Lady Trevose to utter anything but the platitudes of the occasion. He asked John Bickley to repeat his rôle of best man. Denise had to be invited as well, of course, but to Graham’s intense joy was too ill on the day to go out.

  Afterwards, Graham stood them all lunch in a hotel, where they had champagne and snoek piquante. There was a wedding-cake, with an iced covering made, in the way of the times, from detachable white cardboard. There were no speeches, though Graham’s new father-in-law had by then so fallen under the influence of his charm and his title that he had to be restrained from making one. They caught the train for a week-end’s honeymoon at Bognor Regis. Everything was punctiliously correct. The rushed two weeks since Clare had accepted him were too occupied with her work in hospital and her visits to Bristol to give them more than a moment or two together over lunch in Claridge’s. Graham mounted to their seaside bedroom reflecting with amusement that he was facing his bride like the most moral of newly wedded husbands—if one overlooked a year or two during the war. He got into bed making jokes about consummations and such other horribly dignified words festooning the sexual relationship. This time he put out the light, feeling he wanted to be as respectable about everything as possible. Then suddenly he broke into tears.

  Clare held him tightly in the darkness. ‘Darling, what is it?’ Weeping was something she had never known in him before. ‘What is it? What’s upsetting you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Graham told her. ‘For once I just can’t express myself any other way, that’s all.’ Her hand under the bedclothes stroked his penis, that organ of superb anatomical ingenuity.

  ‘I though I’d lost you for good, Clare—I really did. I could have taken it a few years ago, but not now. Not any longer.’

  She said nothing for a moment, then confessed. ‘We have a fairy godfather. Someone who came and changed my mind.’

  ‘Oh? And who might that be?’

  ‘Mr Haileybury,’ she told him cheerfully.

  Graham sat bolt upright. ‘Haileybury? My God! That pie-faced old fossil Haileybury?’

  ‘He told me you could be relied upon to be a good boy in future,’ she added teasingly. ‘And of course, nobody could possibly doubt the good word of Mr Haileybury.’

  ‘Good God! ’ muttered Graham.

  But the news was too much. For almost the first time in his fife when in bed with a woman, Graham was put off his stroke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AT THE BEGINNING OF JUNE in the hot and thundery summer of 1947, it was starting to sink into the British public that of all the ‘shortages’ bedevilling the country, which ran from electricity-generating stations to milk chocolate, a lack of United States dollars was the most ser
ious, intractable, and baffling. After all, General Marshall was proposing to give dollars away by the shipload to European countries who had spent the war defeating one another—even to Germany, or the bits that the Russians had left of it. And we were the victors. We had fought the war from the first shot, we had won it (admittedly with a little American assistance), we had paid our whack of it. It was most frustrating. Why, the Government were even contemplating an unbelievable economy—of denying the twenty million weekly cinemagoers their accustomed Hollywood films.

  Graham then had a letter from Edith, demurely congratulating him on his marriage. He supposed she had learnt of it from some regular bundle of English newspapers dispatched to soften her exile. But most of the half-dozen pages in her large round hand concerned her son Alec. She was dreadfully worried about him. He had written early in the year explaining he was in hospital with some mild psychological disturbance. She just couldn’t understand it. Alec had been a highly strung child, and was still inclined to be excitable, but he was perfectly normal, and very clever, really. There was certainly no madness on their side of the family.

  (Graham felt slightly irritated at the barb, but supposed it unintentional.) Edith hadn’t heard from Alec since. She had no idea if he were still under treatment, or where he was. She hesitated troubling Graham, who must be terribly busy, but she was becoming desperate. It seemed such an awful pity that all Alec’s splendid education should go to waste.

  Graham tossed the letter on to the desk in his Marylebone flat. Edith was always a great admirer of education, he reflected. Even as a girl she placed it among the noblest of human qualities, when it was only another pair of hands, to be used for good or evil, but mostly for feeding yourself.

  But he supposed he had better do something about Alec.

  He knew the young man had been discharged from Smithers Bothers, taking some new drug which Dr Dency assured Graham would have a tranquillizing effect, rather than a soporific one like the barbiturates. Graham telephoned the psychiatrist’s consulting room, to learn that Dr Dency had left for a six-months’ lectureship in the Union of South Africa, where he was doubtless enjoying steaks and as many eggs as he cared to eat for his breakfast. He telephoned Smithers Botham but could get no sense from anybody. The next afternoon he was himself delivering a lecture at Addenbrook’s Hospital at Cambridge, and had arranged to dine in hall afterwards with his son. Perhaps Desmond might be able to help, Graham wondered. He had more reason for keeping track of Alec than anyone.