Richard Gordon - SURGEON AT ARMS

As they wheeled Maria out, Graham noticed the route to the graveside passed a row of elaborate memorials to others of the Cazalay family. Though not her father and mother, who had died in the arid air of Venezuela, a destination recommending itself for Lord Cazalay's retirement through its lack of an extradition treaty with Great Britain. As Maria's remains were lowered from sight another flying-bomb came out of the distance. As the engine stopped, heads turned heavenwards in anxiety rather than supplication. It exploded with a distant thump. Graham wondered idly who was unfortunate enough to be underneath it.

'Mr Trevose, you must remember me,' said an old lady in a velvet hat, voice conscientiously hushed.

'Of course I do,' Graham lied.

'I was on the committee of the Sunshine League and the Free Medicine Club with your dear wife, you know.'

The Sunshine League! Well, the war had relieved the rich of the painful necessity of lightening the burdens of the poor. Graham found himself facing a thin old man with two sticks, whom he recognized after a moment as Sir John Blazey. He'd been chairman of the small hospital at Uxbridge which Graham had used as his first step to success in plastic surgery-rather unscrupulously, he supposed. He thought the fellow had died long ago.

'Your wife was a great woman, Trevose.' The old man shook his head reflectively. 'She was quite unsparing in her sense of duty to others. We shall never know how many unfortunate people have had cause to be grateful to her.'

Graham thanked him. He had almost forgotten the Maria of the busy committees, with her picture in the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Bystander._ Now the glories of her past began to draw his eye from the shadows of her later poverty and insanity. Well, it's good to know she died a credit to me, he thought. He found himself shaking hands with Val Arlott.

'Why did you come?' Graham asked, looking surprised. 'I didn't notice you in the church.'

'Have you a moment for a stroll?'

They walked together in the country lane outside the churchyard. 'I can't say why I came, exactly,' Val told him. 'I've been wondering. Perhaps it's to make up for missing the burial of her father. I was fond of old Cazalay. In some measure, I suppose I was responsible for his plight.' Graham made an unbelieving gesture. 'It's difficult to know. There are things I might have said or done to check his recklessness. Perhaps I'm suffering unconscious feelings of guilt towards the family. This is my penance. You'd know about such matters, wouldn't you? How are things going?'

'At the annex? We're still busy. Though the excitement's gone. We're an institution now. Like all institutions we've lost the fun of getting greater and grander, we've only the worry of seeing ourselves slipping.'

'I wish I'd done more for you medical people. Particularly now I'm getting so old and infirm. Look at Nuffield-given millions, set up professors, all manner of things.'

'You know they tried to sack me?'

'Yes, I got the P.M. to scotch it.'

Graham looked faintly put out. He had imagined the intervention a tribute to his own personality. 'After the war you'll have plenty of room for your charity, I should imagine, Val. These ideas about State medicine and so on, nothing will come of them, surely?'

'Don't you believe it. When the fighting stops we'll get a socialist government.'

'Surely you're not telling me the country's going to reject Churchill?'

'Why not? What stopped us giving in after Dunkirk? Our national streak of perversity.'

Graham looked glum. 'That'll make it tough for me, trying to build up again.'

'You've got a wonderful reputation.'

'I can't eat it.'

'No, but it helps. There'll be a lot of goodies and gongs going after the war, Graham. I don't see why you should be passed by. I take it you'd be agreeable if I put you in for something?'

Graham gave a faint smile. 'Haven't I been too gay a dog to be given an official collar?'

The war's altered a lot of that. After all, if you're brave enough to win the V.C. nobody gives a damn how many women you've screwed.'

'It's certainly an attractive proposition-' He broke off, listening 'No, it's only a motor-bike somewhere. Those doodlebugs 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 him 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 landlord 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 a 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.'