Richard Gordon: SURGEON AT ARMS

'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.

When their Trident landed at Heathrow there was a reporter and a photographer waiting. Graham had lost nothing of his attraction for the Press.

'How kind of you to come along,' he smiled. He had also lost nothing of his touch with newspapermen.

'Good evening, Sir Graham. I hope you had a good trip?'

'Splendid, thank you, splendid. Aeroplanes make everything so convenient these days. I still haven't quite got used to them. All that messing about one used to do with trains and boats was quite exhausting. Yes, Rome was wonderful. In September I think the light is just right. In summer the sun's too strong, and the shadows are the most intriguing part of any building-or of any human face.'

'I gather you made a quite sensational speech to the Plastic Surgery Congress, Sir Graham?'

He chuckled. 'Hardly sensational. My days for making sensations are past. But I put over a few of my old ideas, which still hold good. The basic principles have been rather swamped by the enormous advances in surgical technique and technology. But to my mind, it's as important to grasp them as firmly in 1968 as it was in 1948, when I took over the Directorship of the National Accident hospital. In fact, these basic principles haven't changed since 1940, when I was proud of being in a position to put them to good use.' He always referred to 1940 in front of the Press.

'I hope you've managed to get some holiday in Italy at the same time, Lady Trevose?' the reporter asked Clare.

'Yes, we had an absolutely wonderful fortnight in Positano.'

'Despite the continuing currency restrictions?' grinned the reporter.

'We are extremely modest abroad,' Graham told the man, quite sharply.

It was nine o'clock before they emerged from the Customs into the bright and confusing concourse. 'It's strange how this place always looks entirely different depending on whether you're going or coming,' Graham observed. 'It's the difference between hope and anticlimax, I suppose. A common enough sequence, in my own experience.'

'You've nothing to complain about this trip, darling.'

'Perhaps a little. They didn't take my speech seriously at the Congress, you know. Not entirely.'

'But they were absolutely charming,' Clare protested. 'Particularly the Russians.'

'Yes, but they think I'm old hat. Perhaps they're right. I'm a realist. Anyway, I livened them up. We'll see how the Americans take to me in Baltimore next spring.'

Graham looked round hopefully for the chauffeur booked to drive them into London. He felt that at his age the shunning of airport buses was a luxury worth indulging in. He was spry, and as thin as ever. He let his wispy hair grow overlong, and strands of it poked under his hat. He wore glasses all the time, large and round, making his eyes look more owlish than ever. He had grown rather untidy in his clothes, presenting an amiably donnish look to the world. Clare thought fondly he resembled an elderly elf.