Surgeon at Arms (30 page)
Authors: Richard Gordon
Haileybury looked behind him. Full of Trevose’s patients. It suddenly struck him these men had hardly aged. Over twenty-five years ago they had been dragged from blazing aeroplanes, shattered tanks, and ships’ scalding engine rooms; now the skin collected in bits from all over their bodies had frozen on their faces in unwrinkled youth. He supposed it was some compensation for having your features ravaged by a shell-splinter at twenty, if you were immune from the ravages of time at forty-five. He searched for some more delicate examples of Trevose’s reconstructive art. But all the worldly and often charming men and women who had besought Trevose at considerable discomfort and expense to make them new faces seemed disinclined to show them in public.
A fitting epitaph, Haileybury thought, dragging himself to his feet as they began.
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