Surgeon at Arms

28

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 serious, 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, of course, 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 has 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 Botham, 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.

'How did the lecture go?' asked Desmond, welcoming his father amiably enough with a glass of sherry in his rooms.

'I don't really know. It was my standard one. I've delivered it so often it comes out automatically. It's a useful opportunity for me to think about other matters.'

Desmond gave a faint smile. Now that he's started wearing his hair long, thought Graham, he really does look tremendously like Maria.

'How's Clare?' Desmond asked.

'She's splendid! You didn't particularly want to attend the wedding, I suppose?'

'I'd have come if you'd asked me.'

'Then perhaps I saved you some embarrassment by omitting to. By the way, you don't happen to know where Alec's got to, I suppose? His mother's worried stiff about him.'

Desmond looked surprised. 'I was going to ask you the same thing. I heard some sort of rumour that he was doing anaesthetic locums round London.'

'Then perhaps John Bickley might have a clue,' Graham suggested hopefully.

'I'm not going to let him get away with it, you know,' said Desmond more severely. 'The money's mine, and he's showing absolutely no inclination to pay it back whatever. It's just as if he'd put his hand in my pocket and stolen it.'

'My dear Desmond!' Graham leant back in his armchair. 'One of the things you should now be learning in life is the right moment to cut your losses. With either bad debts, bad women, or bad operating techniques. Enjoy your mistakes, but don't lose sleep over them.'

'I didn't want to pay for his bloody upbringing! It was you who took it on.'

'I agree, but anyway the unpleasant experience will do you good.' Graham sipped the sherry, which was really rather good. It was stupid to worry about grabbing money all the time, he told himself. One of the more depressing of the herd instincts. A wonder he had fallen for the idea for so long. Since marrying Clare he was becoming quite righteous.

'If I'm going to start making self-improving donations to charity I certainly wouldn't begin with Alec,' Desmond declared crossly.

'You've got paranoia about him, haven't you? That's a waste of time, too. Old Haileybury and I were daggers drawn for years, and it didn't get us very far. Only recently I've realized that everyone was killing themselves laughing behind our backs. I'd forget Alec, if I were you.' As Desmond continued looking disagreeable, Graham added, 'All right, all right, once I've got my affairs straight I'll make up the sum to you. Does that make you feel better? Count your blessings. You're set for a brilliant academic career, while Alec will never come to anything.'

Desmond seemed to consider this proposition for some moments, then announced, 'You know I've decided to prepare a new edition of grandfather's book? There's a tremendous amount of work involved, but I think it will be worth while.'

'That's excellent news.' Graham felt deeply gratified. '"Trevose on the synovial membranes". I remember the old boy writing it, donkey's years ago, when I'd escaped with my life from that sanatorium. He'd be pleased to think the family were keeping it going. There's a weight of medical tradition on your shoulders, you know, Desmond. It gets heavier every generation, like our debts.'

'Perhaps that's why I decided on the task,' said Desmond solemnly. 'It's something for posterity. It doesn't seem I shall father another generation of Trevoses. Our branch of the family will die out.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Graham told him cheerfully. 'You've forgotten about Clare and myself.'

'Good God,' murmured Desmond, looking thoroughly alarmed.

Graham decided to take Desmond's guess about Alec's whereabouts as fact, and wrote Edith a consoling letter saying her son was making his way in the newly flourishing specialty of anaesthetics. He supposed he could have made more energetic enquiries, but he was tremendously busy with plans and committees for the new hospital. For the third time in his life he was starting a new unit from scratch-first at Blackfriars in the twenties, backed by Val Arlott, secondly at Smithers Botham, discouraged by everybody, and now in the abandoned American building with the full resources of the Welfare State at his elbow. It was the most exciting, if the most exhausting, of all. He could hardly be expected to play Alec's nursemaid at the same time. Anyway, the man was in his middle twenties, a qualified doctor, and should be able to look after himself. Edith wrote again rather pathetically. Graham finished her long letter with a deep sigh. The woman really was rather a nuisance. She'd never missed a chance to make use of him. Never since he'd deflowered her in a seaside summerhouse during the warmer months of 1918.

Graham let young Alec drop from his mind. Then one afternoon in November he was hurrying along Shaftesbury Avenue from a lunch appointment in Soho, and saw the name ALEC TREVOSE facing him from a placard outside a theatre. Graham stopped, frowning. He felt for his newly prescribed glasses, the announcement not being in particularly large type. The name was among three others claiming authorship of a revue, which Graham vaguely remembered as wringing amiable notices from the critics (he had turned his back on the theatre of late). Lower down, there was Alec Trevose again, in even smaller letters, among the cast. Well, it was not an uncommon name, Graham reflected, and sounded well enough for any player to sport. There was no immediate way of telling if the actor-dramatist might be his own nephew. The simplest course seemed to buy a couple of tickets for the show, which he obtained for the following evening, with the greatest difficulty.

A glance at Clare's programme as they took their seats told Graham it was Alec right enough. The sketch he had written and in which he was about to display himself was entitled simply _At The Doctor's._ The pair of them sat through the foregoing scenes, which struck Graham as exactly like every other revue he had seen, with mounting impatience and foreboding. Then Alec finally appeared. He acted a patient, subjected to an ingenious variety of indignities and discomforts by a dozen white-coated doctors. The audience bellowed. Once recovering from the shock of his nephew's entrance, Graham had to admit it was well put together and surprisingly funny, perhaps because every line that Alec had written and every situation he had depicted occurred often enough in a real hospital. He turned his head, to see Clare dabbing away tears of laughter with her handkerchief. He wondered what Edith would have thought.

After the final curtain Graham said without enthusiasm, 'We'd better go round and have a word with him, I suppose?'

'Yes, I'd love to,' agreed Clare eagerly. 'I've never been behind the scenes before.'

Graham gave his name to the stage-door keeper, who directed them down a flight of stone stairs leading to a narrow, green-painted, ill-lit passage, smelling strongly of disinfectant. The dressing-rooms that Graham had visited during his theatrical phase had been spacious flower-filled apartments, but Alec's seemed hardly bigger than a railway compartment, with a wooden stand in the middle for the mirrors fringed with electric bulbs, at which three other young men were busy wiping away their make-up.

'Why, it's Uncle Graham!' Alec leapt up, a scrap of filthy towelling in his hand. 'But what a lovely surprise! And Auntie Clare. I say, I should have congratulated you or something, shouldn't I? I'm dreadfully sorry. Life's been an absolute rush, I've had hardly a moment to think of my nearest and dearest.'

'Perhaps it is we who should congratulate you?' remarked Graham rather drily, shaking hands.

'Did you enjoy the show?' asked Alec, with a pressing eagerness he shared with even the greatest actors.

'I'd hoped we clapped loudly enough to make that an unnecessary question.'

Alec lit a cigarette. 'I expect it shattered you a bit? Seeing me from out front?'

'It's admittedly an unexpected talent brought to light.'

'It all started in Smithers Botham. Dency thought it would help if I tried some form of self-expression. He knows someone in the management here, and sent the sketch along. At first I was only supposed to help out with the technical details-you know, wearing your stethoscope the right way round, putting on gloves the regulation way, that sort of thing. After I'd been fooling about at rehearsals one of the cast went sick. So they gave me a chance. Success story.'

One of the other young men, none of whom Alec had introduced, picked up his jacket and with a call of 'Good-night, darlings,' left them. Graham noticed with amusement Clare looked shocked. He himself had come to learn the endearing expression was merely the equivalent of the Communists' 'Comrade' in an ever-shifting and commendably classless society.

'A success story so far,' Graham agreed, nodding.

'Now, Uncle, you're being damping. But I've half another show written, I'm getting work on broadcasting-I've even got an agent. Oh, I know it isn't a solid job like medicine, but you can't imagine how much better I've been feeling since I tried my hand at it. And this poisonous underground atmosphere has absolutely cured my asthma. The pollens can't get at you.'

A girl, who seemed to Graham to be wearing only her underclothes, put her head round the dressing-room door, said, 'Oh, sorry,' and disappeared again.

'I was a misfit in medicine,' Alec continued cheerfully, wiping off the remains of his grease-paint. 'God knows why I started it in the first place. Mother, I suppose. Weight of family tradition. Or perhaps you think I've let the side down?' he asked, genuinely concerned.

'Not entirely. I was something of a misfit myself.'

'Well, I'm not the first doctor to make an exhibition of myself in public. The great Charles Wyndham was qualified. He ended up a grand actor-manager, with a knighthood and a theatre called after him.'

'I don't think Wyndham ever played in revue,' Graham observed. With the vague feeling that Alec was probably starving in some attic, he added an invitation to supper. But his nephew declined graciously, explaining he was already engaged to sup with some important director who thought highly of his work. Graham imagined the girl in the underclothes his more likely companion, but was glad enough to accept the refusal.

'You really ought to send some sort of word to your mother,' he finally admonished him. 'She's written saying how disturbed she is about you.'

'Dear mother!' Alec started putting on his shirt. 'She always did fuss so. Yes, I really must send her a line.'

'Or perhaps you'd prefer me to write?' Graham saw Alec in his present mood as a doubtful correspondent.

Alec turned with a bright smile. 'Just do that little thing for me, will you, Uncle?'

In the taxi going home, Graham said, 'God knows what will come of Alec's wild ideas. It is a bit of a let-down for the family, however broadminded you try to seem about it. A hell of a lot of people took enormous trouble teaching him medicine. Now he throws it all away to become a professional buffoon.'

'Haven't you said often enough, darling, you can't suppress a true artist? Even if he can only chalk sunsets on the pavements? You never let them suppress you.'

'Perhaps so,' he admitted. 'Perhaps Alec and I are the same thing, really.'

He took her hand and stared gloomily out of the cab window. It would all be intolerably difficult to describe to Edith. But his thoughts as usual turned back to the new hospital, and he said, 'Remind me I've got to go to the Board of Trade tomorrow afternoon. Something about importing American equipment. I'm seeing the new Minister-fellow called Harold Wilson. One of Attlee's bright boys.'

Clare said, 'Tomorrow I'm going to listen to the wedding on the radio.'

'Wedding? What wedding?'

'Oh, Graham! Princess Elizabeth's wedding, of course.'

'I'm sorry, it was out of my mind for the moment.' After another long silence he said, 'It's odd to think that one day we shall have a Queen on the throne again. Though I shan't be alive to see it. I just remember when the last Queen died. At least, I imagine I do. I have a mental picture of my mother telling me the news in father's old study in Hampstead. I could only have been seven years old at the time. It was just before my mother died herself of T.B., and I remember that well enough. "Queen Elizabeth" has a fine ring about it, hasn't it?' He began to sound more cheerful as the problem of Alec settled into its true insignificance. 'The country's having a pretty thin time of it at the moment, but perhaps a new Elizabethan age will dawn upon us. Oh, we'll end up top dogs again, sooner or later, like we were before the war.'

That so many fellow-countrymen imagined the same as Graham Trevose at the time was the great mid-twentieth-century British tragedy. Or perhaps comedy. They are only two ways of looking at the same thing.