Surgeon at Arms

14

It was a glorious afternoon. The sun streaked the water with gold and warmed the grassy slope where twenty-two-year-old Alec Trevose lay with his face roofed by Sir Robert Muir's _Textbook of Pathology,_ all 991 pages of it. The slope ran down to a white-painted hotel which had once housed holidaymakers at Southsea, near Portsmouth, but was now a makeshift hospital. Both sea and sky were for once free of men and their machinery, except for an approaching landing-craft, its silver balloon floating nonchalantly overhead, bringing smashed vehicles and possibly smashed humans back from Normandy. By mid-July both the weather and the progress of the invasion had improved noticeably. Montgomery had liberated Caen, the Americans had started moving down the eastward side of the Cherbourg Peninsula, and the coloured-headed pins stuck into maps on the walls of homes all over the country began to lose their faintly worrying immobility.

Beside Alec on the grass was his sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows, a frayed Blackfriars tie, and a semi-stiff collar. He had cast off his shoes, and his big toes poked through the holes in his socks. His striped shirt was open to display his thin chest-he suffered from asthma, an awkward complaint, liable to grip him in moments of emotion, sexual or otherwise. Alec often put down the asthma to some obscure psychological effect of having been delivered by his own father, the medical missionary, in the Malayan jungle several hundred miles from alternative professional attention. It was the first of many uncomfortable things which seemed to happen to him.

While his cousin Desmond had gone to a splendid public school, he had attended an odd establishment for the education of the sons of other missionaries, to be reared in a strong atmosphere of piety, chastisement, and carbolic soap. Even the cost of his education was being met by his Uncle Graham (or his cousin, Desmond, however you looked at it), though his bills were thankfully met by anonymous lawyers. He had started the telescoped medical course at Cambridge when the war was a year old. It wasn't much fun, he reflected, with no one to talk to except potential doctors, engineers, and clergymen, all three professions being thought essential by the Government to ensure eventual victory. But he had seen Cambridge as it should be seen, with King's Chapel shining in the pure moonlight like an iceberg, Great Court at Trinity a mystery of stones and shadows, Clare College running lightless to the river as a silver screen, the alleys returned to their rightful medieval blackness. It was Cambridge as Newton and Milton had seen it. His tutor was an ancient cleric in a purple stock encrusted with the memorials to countless college soups, who wore both gown and air-raid warden's helmet during alerts, taking seriously his responsibility for the physical as well as the moral safety of his pupils. The science dons had mostly disappeared to concoct new devilment for the enemy. On the whole, Alec thought the University rather superior about the war. It had lived through plenty before with fitting scientific detachment. The church clock still stood at ten to three, and for most of the time honey was off the ration.

That sunny afternoon by the sea he was still officially studying clinical medicine at Smithers Botham, where he had occupied almost a dozen lodgings in the surrounding countryside. However agreeable his hosts, however tasty the Woolton pie, however hot the officially permitted few inches of bathwater, Alec was always convinced of being happier at the next stop. It was a strange restlessness which applied to his hobbies, his friends, his enthusiasm for the various subjects he studied, and his views of life in general. He had finally asked his uncle Graham to get him into the Emergency Squad. He felt he got on rather well with his uncle Graham. Physically they were much alike. Alec supposed when the family genes had been shuffled at their separate conceptions, they had drawn much the same hand.

The Emergency Squad at Smithers Botham occupied a low two-storey block which in peacetime had housed the better-class lunatic, who could afford to pay for his own incarceration. It was comfortable enough, it saved paying rent, and you could always risk smuggling in a girl. The Squad's existence was at last justified on D-Day, when they were abruptly dispatched by lorry across the face of signpostless England to the converted hotel at Southsea, which they found in charge of a Polish civilian doctor who was unable to speak much English, and who seemed uncertain if they were a party of top-flight specialists from London or the men come to mend the boiler. No one knew what cases the hospital was created to take, because none ever appeared. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about them. Their only contact with authority was Brigadier Haileybury, who one afternoon had arrived unheralded to inspect them. 'I believe I know you, don't I?' he had asked Desmond.

'Yes, sir. We met once before the war. In my father's place in London. My name's Trevose.'

Haileybury nodded. 'Your father is certainly making a name for himself.'

'Deservedly, I hope, sir?'

'Of that I have no doubt. I hope you inherit a share of his remarkable talents, young man. You could look forward to a brilliant career.'

The brigadier disappeared. They all noticed he had a wonderfully pretty A.T.S. driver.

Alec slid the pathology textbook from his nose, aware that someone was approaching up the slope. It was Desmond, dressed in a grey flannel suit. His cousin sat down silently beside him, picked a stalk of grass, and stuck the end between his teeth.

'Anything doing in the wards?' Alec asked.

'No. What are you reading?'

'Muir.'

'I mean this other book,' Desmond picked up an open volume from the grass. He turned the pages frowning, and after a moment read aloud,

_'Behold me waiting-waiting for the knife._

_A little while, and at a leap I storm_

_The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform,_

_The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.'_

He tossed the book down and asked, 'What are you reading that sort of stuff for?'

'It's too hot for pathology.'

'It's a rather flamboyant bit of verse, isn't it?'

'No, I don't think so. Doesn't it put a patient's feelings well? God knows how many think the same thing. They aren't articulate enough to express themselves, that's all.'

'Nobody uses chloroform any more,' said Desmond briefly. 'Who wrote it?'

'Henley. When he was in Edinburgh Infirmary, waiting for them to chop his foot off.'

'Why have you taken to poetry?'

'Why not? Don't you realize, we're totally uneducated. All of us. At Blackfriars they simply drown us intellectually in a torrent of facts, mostly extremely dull. What chance have we got to equip ourselves with some knowledge of literature, the arts, philosophy?' he added grandly.

'I daresay.' Desmond bit a piece of grass then spat it away. 'Unfortunately, they don't ask questions on those subjects in the finals.'

'I think we should be more interested in being well-educated doctors than getting through our finals.'

'Oh, this is just another of your crazes,' Desmond dismissed his cousin's cultural ambitions. 'I've got to go back to London this evening.'

'What's this? A night out?'

'No, it's my mother,' Desmond told him with careful casualness. 'I've just heard. She's had a stroke. Quite a severe one, I gather.'

'I say, I'm sorry.'

'So am I. But these vascular accidents happen.' Desmond got up. 'Shouldn't you try and find someone to mend your socks?'

It would never do to display emotion, or even concern, especially in front of Alec.

The news telephoned from Sussex that morning was hardly a surprise to Graham. For a year Maria's blood-pressure had been steadily mounting, as she became fatter than ever. He still hadn't divorced her. The plan had somehow been overlooked in the flurry of his reinstatement at the annex. He told Clare-as he told himself-the episode of his sacking must be taken as a warning. For the patients to continue benefiting from his abilities, he must be careful about publicity in the future. A divorce case in the papers certainly wouldn't help his standing in the eyes of the Ministry. Such distressing tangles were perhaps best unravelled after the war, when he was his own master again. Clare agreed. The subject was dropped. So was that of a second excursion into pregnancy. Among any affectionate couple the matters never mentioned are generally the important ones.

Their domestic bliss at Cosy Cot continued. Clare didn't go back to her work at the annex, but stayed at home to look after the house, grow radishes and lettuces in the garden, and cook the rations. They were frequently indebted to Mr Cramphorn, who seemed to have taken to them after Graham's brush with authority, and would appear at the door with a rabbit he had shot, or a pigeon, or a rook, or even a squirrel, which he proclaimed excellent eating if roasted with a strip of bacon, as inclined to be rather dry. The food situation was trying, Graham himself sometimes guiltily brought liquid paraffin from the hospital to eke out the cooking fat, until the Ministry tumbled to this regrettably widespread practice and added the chemical phenolphthalein, which turned the fried fish bright pink.

'What's Maria's prognosis, Graham?' Clare asked.

They were sitting on the handkerchief of a lawn in the garden that evening, waiting for Desmond. Graham had managed to buy a bottle of Pimm's No. 1, which he prepared with great enthusiasm, adding bits of apple, cucumber rind, mint, and even carrot. 'It's difficult to say. She may recover, more or less completely. She may end up with a hemiplegia, half-paralyzed-and dumb, of course, if her speech centre's gone. She may go on having small strokes for months, even years. On the other hand she may develop broncho-pneumonia and die in a week. These patients get bedsores, sepsis, you know. Sometimes they just fade out.'

Clare said nothing. If Maria died, the last obstacle to their marriage would die with her. Well, the last excuse, anyway. Sensing her thoughts, Graham added, 'I should have gone ahead with that divorce.' He reached out and took her hand. 'I know how you feel, and it must be awful. Stepping into a dead woman's shoes.'

'No, I don't feel that at all, darling. Maria's never been more than an abstract quality to me.'

'You should have made me do something about those lawyers.'

'You'd have said I was nagging.' She laughed. 'You might have left me.'

He squeezed her hand and said, 'Don't be silly. You know perfectly well-' He broke off. A noise. A motor bike in the sky, coming nearer. 'Is that one?' he asked anxiously. 'Yes, I rather think it is.'

'Crampers told me the one which fell in Maiden Cross yesterday killed about twenty people.'

The engine stopped.

'It's a long way off,' he said, still sounding uncomfortable.

They stared at each other. The silence seemed to last for an age. Finally there was an explosion far in the distance.

'Some of them glide on for miles,' Graham observed. The flying-bombs had taken on an ill-natured personality of their own. They were malevolent, winged, fire-spitting beasts, no impossible to relate to the busy grey-uniformed squads dispatching them. 'I hope Desmond's all right,' he added in a worried voice.

But Desmond arrived unaware of his peril. He spent the night in the bungalow, setting off early the next morning with Graham in the Morris. The nursing-home where Maria lay ill catered for a more genteel mental sufferer than once found themselves in Smithers Botham. It was a manor house providing seclusion, fresh vegetables from the garden, and nursing which was unfailingly kindly if not particularly skilful. They were received by the matron, a stout, blue-uniformed north-countrywoman, radiating cheerfulness. 'The poor soul's poorly, of that there's no doubt,' she greeted Graham. 'If she went, we'd quite miss her, you know. She's been with us longer than anyone.'

Graham was familiar enough with Maria's room. She had occupied the same one since he had her shut up in the place ten years ago. It was small, bright in the sunshine, with a vase of pink roses beside the bed. Maria was unconscious, breathing noisily. It was too soon after the haemorrhage, which had sprung from a brittle artery amid the microscopic telephone-cables of her brain, to tell the extent of her coming paralysis. Graham noticed she suffered the indignity of a large fly crawling unmolested across her cheek. Her grey hair lay neatly on the pillow in two plaits, each tied with a pink bow, like a schoolgirl's.

Desmond stood in the background, looking solemn. However much he had prepared himself, however often he had observed the same clinical state in others, however little he felt for his insane mother, it was a shock to see her like that. Graham went to the bed and felt her pulse. His fingers slipped down to take her flaccid hand. It reminded him of the night when her troubles had started, when she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping-draught and had been saved by the skill of John Bickley. He suddenly felt himself touched. Now his wife lay under his eyes as a dying wreck, he felt a surge of love for her. It was stronger than any he could remember in his life, even before he had married her.

'Isn't her breathing rather obstructed?' he complained mildly.

'The doctor will be along by and by,' the matron told him comfortably. 'Doubtless he'll deal with it.'

Graham nodded. He supposed at that stage it didn't make twopence worth of difference. 'Perhaps you'll ring me at Smithers Botham, Matron, if she takes a turn for the worse?'

'I will that, Mr Trevose.' In the corridor outside she went on cheerfully, 'It's sad, isn't it, your poor wife should be smitten when there're such good news on the wireless this morning.' As Graham looked at her blankly she explained, 'Haven't you heard? They've tried to blow up Hitler with a bomb. The Germans themselves. It won't be long now till it's all over and done with, you mark my words.'

As they drove away, Graham said to Desmond, 'I suppose there're people who ought to know. You'd better try and get hold of your uncle Charles. You can probably find his whereabouts if you telephone Val Arlott's office at the Press. Say it's on my behalf. God knows where her other brother's got to.'

'Do you want to speak to Uncle Charles yourself, Dad?'

'I most certainly do not.' Graham drove in silence for a mile. 'So they tried to liquidate _Der Fьhrer,_ did they? Perhaps they'll end up with a revolution in Berlin, like last time. It could all be over by Christmas.'

Graham hardly said anything for the rest of the journey. The shadow of death that hung over both Hitler and Maria was bringing to the front of his mind difficult problems.