Surgeon at Arms (17 page)

‘It’s certainly an attractive proposition—’ He broke off, listening ‘No, it’s only a motor-bike somewhere. Those doodle-bugs are damn scaring. I thought that one in church was going to blow the lot of us up, corpse and all.’

‘Don’t worry. Duncan Sandys says we’ve got them licked. Only about one in five get through now.’

‘When’s the war going to be over?’

‘Against the Germans, by Christmas.Against the Japs, in a couple of years. Against the Russians, God knows.’

With this deep and disquieting observation, Val Arlott shook hands, entered his chauffeur-driven car, and made off.

Graham felt he needed a drink.

The other mourners were cramming themselves with some agitation into three or four taxis parked off the lane. His son was standing alone, looking awkward by the lych gate. ‘I expect you could do with a stiff one, Desmond, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes, it wouldn’t come amiss.’

‘We’ll try our luck in the pub.’

They walked a quarter-mile down the lane in silence. The funeral had already been displaced from Graham’s mind by his talk with Val. Some sort of ‘gong’. What sort? They could hardly hand the O.B.E., like some zealous food official. A K.B.E. would make him Sir Graham, which would sound very pretty. But he doubted if even Val could push him into the pure light of official favour. The bigwigs in.the medical profession would certainly have a say in it, and they had always mistrusted him. Someone would be resentful he won his fight over the sacking, and eager to express it practically. And Haileybury would be against him. No, not Haileybury, Graham decided, after a moment’s thought. Haileybury was far too stupidly righteous to take the chance of such easy revenge. Anyway, he didn’t care. He had never let official honours flicker among the varied ambitions which had burned inside him. He knew medical knights enough, and he thought most of them horribly dreary.

They pushed open the door of the little saloon bar, to hear a loud voice declaring, ‘But of course you must have some whisky. Come along, be a good fellow, look out a bottle from under the counter. Don’t you understand? I’ve just been to a funeral?’

Graham hesitated, but it was too late to withdraw. He had never liked Maria’s brother. The man had laughed at him as her suitor, paining young Graham with the discovery that in ‘society’ medical people were seen with the eye of fifty years previously, when the healer was admitted only via the tradesmen’s entrance—though Graham had acted afterwards on this brutal realization, most profitably. He was also rather afraid of Charles Cazalay. He had the unscrupulousness of his father, if not the intelligence which made the most of it. He had tried to damage Graham once, and wouldn’t hesitate to try again if it suited him.

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Lord Cazalay continued to the landlord, half-chaffing and half-hectoring. ‘You should, you know. I’m Lord Cazalay. I used to live in the house. Before your day. I remember the fellow who kept this place, man called Greensmith. Greensmith

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.’

‘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.