Surgeon at Arms

16

'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.

'Clare, you're simply saying a lot of irresponsible things which are making you overwrought.'

'I'm saying things which I should have said months ago, years ago. My God, I've been a fool. Do you imagine all this hasn't been boiling in my mind since I came here? Of course you don't want to marry me. You've always had some excuse, something to put it off. Even when you got me pregnant you didn't want me as your wife. You were scared stiff at the thought. You didn't want that child either. You were as pleased as Punch when I aborted. That's the truth, isn't it?'

He stood up. 'Of course it wasn't the truth,' he told her crossly. 'I did everything I could to save it, didn't I? I was upset when we lost it, dreadfully upset. Do you think I don't know my own mind?'

'No, you don't know it at all, Graham. That's your trouble. There're plenty of wonderful things about you, and you don't recognize them. There are plenty of horrible things about you too, and you don't recognize those either. Or you won't bring yourself to face them, which is the worse for you.'

'So you're suggesting I'm going to turn you out after the war, like some camp-follower?'

'It won't come to that. We can't go on with this play-acting any longer. We've got to split up.'

'You can't mean that?' He was alarmed at this practical turn in the conversation.

'It'll only get worse if I stay.' She looked down at the threadbare carpet and went on more calmly, 'I haven't made up my mind just this minute, Graham. I decided…oh, months ago, I don't know when. Perhaps I didn't decide at all. It just crept up on me.'

'Clare-' He approached her, but she pushed him away. 'Supposing I said I'd marry you tomorrow?'

'No, it wouldn't do. It wouldn't work. We'd be in a worse mess than ever. Once you got back to London you'd want to be rid of me. I'm not your type. You don't love me. I don't think you could love anyone. Your attitude to women is like your attitude to the boys in the annex. So many 'construction jobs', as you say. You overlook that I've got the right to any feelings at all.'

Graham stuck his hands in his pockets. It was all most distressing. He hated emotional scenes. Perhaps they were both upset with the business of Maria. Clare would be over it tomorrow. 'Why did you take up with me in the first place?' he asked, a shade resentfully. 'You knew enough about me, about my past affairs?'

'Every woman's a heroine, I suppose. She expects to succeed where others have succumbed.'

'Possibly.' They stood looking at each other. 'You can't mean it?' he asked more quietly. 'About going away?'

'Yes, I do. I'll get a job somewhere.'

'Let's discuss it again tomorrow, when we're ourselves.'

'No,' she told him. 'There's nothing else to say.'

A week later Clare left the bungalow and Graham took a room in a London hotel, explaining to everyone at Smithers Botham that this temporary change in domestic arrangements was necessitated by his searching for a flat. The pair had parted politely, even amicably. A continued emotional tempest would have worn out both of them, and they were old enough to take such things sensibly. In the end, Graham was rather pleased. He would miss Clare, of course, but she was right. She was a simple, kindly girl, but not at all the sort to stand beside the fashionable plastic surgeon, Graham Trevose, now returning like the exiled European governments to his rightful dominions. A marriage would have been a disaster. And supposing this 'gong' materialized? Lady Trevose? Decidedly not. To fill that role he wanted someone far more intelligent, more versed in the ways of the world, more socially adept, someone of better family than the seedy commercial artist's.

Someone like Maria? he thought.

Yes, someone like Maria.

Maria in death, like Maria in life, always came out top in the end.