Richard Gordon - SURGEON AT ARMS

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.