Richard Gordon - SURGEON AT ARMS

'Thank you,' said Graham shortly.

'Well, Graham-you've become more famous than ever. I always seem to be reading about you in the papers.'

'I'm only doing my job. Like a lot of others who don't get noticed.'

'I'm with security, you know.'

'I thought you were censoring civilian letters?'

'It's the same thing,' said Lord Cazalay, looking put out.

The landlord reappeared, holding an unopened bottle of Haig like a newborn baby. As he poured three measures Lord Cazalay went on, 'What are your plans for after the war, Graham?'

'I think it's only courting disappointment making any.'

'I wouldn't say that. It'll be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Like last time. The thing is to get in early, before the mugs. There'll be pickings enough for the right people.'

'Where precisely do you intend to pick, if I may ask?'

'Travel.' Lord Cazalay swallowed his whisky and demanded another. 'People have been cooped up here all the war, they'll be bursting to get out and about. There'll be plenty of spare shipping space, Army buses, that sort of thing, if you know where to put your hands on them. I've plenty of valuable contacts in France. I doubt whether they've got into any trouble with the Germans.' He looked at his glass reflectively, and added, 'As a matter of fact, I'm starting a small company. If you're interested, I could let you have a piece of it.'

Graham thought this brazen, even for his brother-in-law. "You're asking me for money, after having tried to get me publicly disgraced as a professional man?'

Lord Cazalay looked serious, then said, 'Graham, I'm glad you raised that business. It's been on my conscience. I'd been meaning to have a word with you, but with the war, of course, everything's been difficult. It was all a tragic misunderstanding, surely? I was simply wrongly advised. It was a relief to me nothing came of it.'

'It was to me, too.'

'Don't you trust me?' he asked, part humorously and part aggressively.

'I don't think this is quite the occasion to conduct commercial affairs.'

'No, no, perhaps you're right,' Lord Cazalay said quickly. 'Now we must be going. Desmond has to catch a train for Portsmouth.'

'We'll keep in touch,' Lord Cazalay promised. 'Yes, very much in touch.'

They left him with the bottle of whisky, which he seemed about to settle down and finish, on the estimable principle that unexpected blessings needed exploiting to the full.

'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.'