Richard Gordon: SURGEON AT ARMS

Haileybury stopped dead. 'Sister Mills? But what an amazing coincidence!'

'It isn't at all. John Bickley got her the job after I kicked her out in 1944.'

'I see,' said Haileybury. He put his fingers together and blew on them.

'I do wish you wouldn't do that,' Graham burst out. 'It's irritated me for years.'

Haileybury hastily thrust his hands in his pockets. 'I'm sorry there's a difficulty between you,' he sympathized.

'She can't understand that I don't _want _to go back to my old ways-because of the war, or old age,' Graham ended gloomily, 'or perhaps just disgust with myself in general.'

'I suppose to some extent the seven ages of man are all strangers to each other,' Haileybury observed.

'Just look at those ducks,' said Graham, pointing across the lake. 'They must run up a tremendous oxygen debt, keeping their beaks under water as long as that.'

He didn't care to reveal more of himself to Haileybury. He had said too much as it was. He had written Clare a long and thoughtful letter, uncloyed with passion. There had been no reply. It seemed best to forget about her, as deliberately as he had once forgotten about Edith. As the two surgeons resumed their walk, Graham began with growing disquiet to hope that Haileybury would forget about her too. Haileybury had been his enemy once, and in this shifting and faithless world who knew when he might be again?

But Haileybury did not forget about Clare at all.

He had heard some rumour during the war of Graham living 'in sin' at Smithers Botham, but had vaguely imagined his consort some painted and skittish female of the type portrayed on his rare visits to the cinema by Dorothy Lamour (Haileybury suffered a guilty affection for the comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope). That she was the quiet and efficient Sister Mills, whom he had encountered almost weekly for a year, seemed inconceivable. But Haileybury decided he had never been able to comprehend the powerful mysteries of sexual attraction, no more than he could grasp those of the atomic physics you were beginning to read so much about in the newspapers. He had never felt drawn to one woman rather than another in his life. He felt annoyed that John Bickley had kept Sister Mills' relationship from him-but he supposed it wasn't a matter you wanted revealed in such a gossip-ridden place as a hospital. He anxiously tried to recall if he had made any particularly uncharitable remarks about Graham in her presence.

Haileybury thought about it all the week-end. He kept shaking his head and chuckling faintly to himself, much alarming his sister. It certainly took him back. The only other of Graham's women he had met was that girl Edith, secretary on his plastic surgery unit in 1918. He had taken a distinctly dim view of that connection, Haileybury remembered. But that was long ago; now they were growing into old dogs and learning not to bark and bite so much. He began to wonder if he might say something on Graham's behalf to Sister Mills. An outrageous idea, of course. But Haileybury was a fair man and felt the lady was perhaps being unjust. As for the injustice he had himself done Graham in 1942, he felt it more keenly than Graham now did himself.

Sister Mills might make the man a good wife, Haileybury speculated. Graham had sobered down, there was no doubt about that. For him to have thrown away his profitable private practice would before the war have been as inconceivable as his entering a monastery. But no, Haileybury finally decided, he had no right to intervene. It was a personal matter for the pair of them. Besides, he was still not entirely certain how much in these strange postwar years he had come to like or even to tolerate Graham.

On the Monday, Haileybury was visiting the Kenworth Hospital to see his patients. He had two cases of cleft palate recovering in the children's ward, which he usually visited ceremonially escorted by his house-surgeon. But this young man, whose services he shared with the throat department, was occupied in the theatre with the emergency of a postoperative bleeding tonsil. Haileybury found himself alone with Sister Mills in a small room off the ward known as the nursery, which contained a slide, a rocking horse, and various toys, all of which some half-dozen small children were enjoying with an amazing amount of noise.

'I believe you know Graham Trevose?' Haileybury asked her suddenly, above the din.

'Yes, that's quite correct,' Clare told him calmly. 'I was one of his ward sisters during the war.'

'How very strange.' Haileybury looked uneasy. 'I have enjoyed his acquaintance for years, you know.'

'Yes, he used to talk a lot about you. Particularly when there was that fuss in 1942.'

Clare noticed Haileybury had the grace to turn pink.

'I think we have made all that up between us, Sister.'

'I hope so, Mr Haileybury. He was very upset at the time. Almost out of his mind.'

Haileybury made no reply. He had long ago ceased caring what Graham said to him, but the cloaked rebuke from Sister Mills was surprisingly wounding. A shocking illogical thought crept upon him-perhaps it was he who had behaved so badly over the years of their acquaintance rather than Graham?

'I hope I have undone any damage by arranging to some extent his appointment to our fine new accident hospital. You must have seen the place mentioned in the papers, surely?'

'I don't think anything could compensate him for those few terrible weeks. He had built up the annex at Smithers Botham, and it was to be taken away from him.' She paused, and added, 'It was like a mother losing a child.'

Haileybury didn't know what to say. So he put his finger-tips together and blew on them.

'I saw Graham just before the week-end,' he admitted. 'Naturally, with the new project we shall be thrown on each other's company a good deal.' He hesitated and added, 'I understand he wishes to marry you, Sister?'

He could not remember uttering anything making him feel more uncomfortable in his life.

'That is correct, Mr Haileybury.'

Clare leant down to pick up a crying child who had tripped over a pile of wooden bricks.

'Forgive me-this is really nothing to do with me-but I gather you are not agreeable?'

'That too, is correct, Mr Haileybury. I am not agreeable.'

Haileybury hesitated again. He decided that having got this far he would charge bravely on. In 1942 he may not have been motivated by spite, as Graham suggested, but he had found the delicate negotiations leading to the man's dismissal from the annex not wholly unpleasurable. Yes, he must make amends, it was his duty. The new job was not enough. After all, Graham could have earned that easily on his own merits. It was only a matter of his stooping to take it.

'I'm sorry to hear that,' he said, quite sternly. 'I hope you appreciate the extent of his emotional disturbance? I have known him for years-since before you were born-and I can appreciate it very keenly myself. Quite frankly, he talked to me of suicide. Oh, I know it's a common enough threat in such circumstances. From a boy of twenty, perhaps. But not from a mature man. And a man of the world, like Graham.' He saw she looked alarmed, and went on, 'Perhaps I can see your point of view. He would never conceal from society that he was lavish in his affections. But he's a better man. It was a process which probably started during the war, when he had no alternative but to follow his natural instinct and devote himself to others. I fancy his life in the world of fashion merely expressed his taste for self-indulgence, pursued with the energy which he devotes to everything.'

There was a pause, filled with the screaming of children.

'Perhaps so,' was all Clare said.

Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. He felt no need to say more. He had done the duty. He made a peculiar jerky bow and sidled away. He sincerely hoped the girl would take up with Graham again and marry him. After that conversation, it would be outrageously embarrassing always meeting her in the hospital.