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Richard Gordon: SURGEON AT ARMS

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'How did the lecture go?' asked Desmond, welcoming his father amiably enough with a glass of sherry in his rooms.

'I don't really know. It was my standard one. I've delivered it so often it comes out automatically. It's a useful opportunity for me to think about other matters.'

Desmond gave a faint smile. Now that he's started wearing his hair long, thought Graham, he really does look tremendously like Maria.

'How's Clare?' Desmond asked.

'She's splendid! You didn't particularly want to attend the wedding, I suppose?'

'I'd have come if you'd asked me.'

'Then perhaps I saved you some embarrassment by omitting to. By the way, you don't happen to know where Alec's got to, I suppose? His mother's worried stiff about him.'

Desmond looked surprised. 'I was going to ask you the same thing. I heard some sort of rumour that he was doing anaesthetic locums round London.'

'Then perhaps John Bickley might have a clue,' Graham suggested hopefully.

'I'm not going to let him get away with it, you know,' said Desmond more severely. 'The money's mine, and he's showing absolutely no inclination to pay it back whatever. It's just as if he'd put his hand in my pocket and stolen it.'

'My dear Desmond!' Graham leant back in his armchair. 'One of the things you should now be learning in life is the right moment to cut your losses. With either bad debts, bad women, or bad operating techniques. Enjoy your mistakes, but don't lose sleep over them.'

'I didn't want to pay for his bloody upbringing! It was you who took it on.'

'I agree, but anyway the unpleasant experience will do you good.' Graham sipped the sherry, which was really rather good. It was stupid to worry about grabbing money all the time, he told himself. One of the more depressing of the herd instincts. A wonder he had fallen for the idea for so long. Since marrying Clare he was becoming quite righteous.

'If I'm going to start making self-improving donations to charity I certainly wouldn't begin with Alec,' Desmond declared crossly.

'You've got paranoia about him, haven't you? That's a waste of time, too. Old Haileybury and I were daggers drawn for years, and it didn't get us very far. Only recently I've realized that everyone was killing themselves laughing behind our backs. I'd forget Alec, if I were you.' As Desmond continued looking disagreeable, Graham added, 'All right, all right, once I've got my affairs straight I'll make up the sum to you. Does that make you feel better? Count your blessings. You're set for a brilliant academic career, while Alec will never come to anything.'

Desmond seemed to consider this proposition for some moments, then announced, 'You know I've decided to prepare a new edition of grandfather's book? There's a tremendous amount of work involved, but I think it will be worth while.'

'That's excellent news.' Graham felt deeply gratified. '"Trevose on the synovial membranes". I remember the old boy writing it, donkey's years ago, when I'd escaped with my life from that sanatorium. He'd be pleased to think the family were keeping it going. There's a weight of medical tradition on your shoulders, you know, Desmond. It gets heavier every generation, like our debts.'

'Perhaps that's why I decided on the task,' said Desmond solemnly. 'It's something for posterity. It doesn't seem I shall father another generation of Trevoses. Our branch of the family will die out.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Graham told him cheerfully. 'You've forgotten about Clare and myself.'

'Good God,' murmured Desmond, looking thoroughly alarmed.

Graham decided to take Desmond's guess about Alec's whereabouts as fact, and wrote Edith a consoling letter saying her son was making his way in the newly flourishing specialty of anaesthetics. He supposed he could have made more energetic enquiries, but he was tremendously busy with plans and committees for the new hospital. For the third time in his life he was starting a new unit from scratch-first at Blackfriars in the twenties, backed by Val Arlott, secondly at Smithers Botham, discouraged by everybody, and now in the abandoned American building with the full resources of the Welfare State at his elbow. It was the most exciting, if the most exhausting, of all. He could hardly be expected to play Alec's nursemaid at the same time. Anyway, the man was in his middle twenties, a qualified doctor, and should be able to look after himself. Edith wrote again rather pathetically. Graham finished her long letter with a deep sigh. The woman really was rather a nuisance. She'd never missed a chance to make use of him. Never since he'd deflowered her in a seaside summerhouse during the warmer months of 1918.

Graham let young Alec drop from his mind. Then one afternoon in November he was hurrying along Shaftesbury Avenue from a lunch appointment in Soho, and saw the name ALEC TREVOSE facing him from a placard outside a theatre. Graham stopped, frowning. He felt for his newly prescribed glasses, the announcement not being in particularly large type. The name was among three others claiming authorship of a revue, which Graham vaguely remembered as wringing amiable notices from the critics (he had turned his back on the theatre of late). Lower down, there was Alec Trevose again, in even smaller letters, among the cast. Well, it was not an uncommon name, Graham reflected, and sounded well enough for any player to sport. There was no immediate way of telling if the actor-dramatist might be his own nephew. The simplest course seemed to buy a couple of tickets for the show, which he obtained for the following evening, with the greatest difficulty.

A glance at Clare's programme as they took their seats told Graham it was Alec right enough. The sketch he had written and in which he was about to display himself was entitled simply _At The Doctor's._ The pair of them sat through the foregoing scenes, which struck Graham as exactly like every other revue he had seen, with mounting impatience and foreboding. Then Alec finally appeared. He acted a patient, subjected to an ingenious variety of indignities and discomforts by a dozen white-coated doctors. The audience bellowed. Once recovering from the shock of his nephew's entrance, Graham had to admit it was well put together and surprisingly funny, perhaps because every line that Alec had written and every situation he had depicted occurred often enough in a real hospital. He turned his head, to see Clare dabbing away tears of laughter with her handkerchief. He wondered what Edith would have thought.

After the final curtain Graham said without enthusiasm, 'We'd better go round and have a word with him, I suppose?'

'Yes, I'd love to,' agreed Clare eagerly. 'I've never been behind the scenes before.'

Graham gave his name to the stage-door keeper, who directed them down a flight of stone stairs leading to a narrow, green-painted, ill-lit passage, smelling strongly of disinfectant. The dressing-rooms that Graham had visited during his theatrical phase had been spacious flower-filled apartments, but Alec's seemed hardly bigger than a railway compartment, with a wooden stand in the middle for the mirrors fringed with electric bulbs, at which three other young men were busy wiping away their make-up.

'Why, it's Uncle Graham!' Alec leapt up, a scrap of filthy towelling in his hand. 'But what a lovely surprise! And Auntie Clare. I say, I should have congratulated you or something, shouldn't I? I'm dreadfully sorry. Life's been an absolute rush, I've had hardly a moment to think of my nearest and dearest.'

'Perhaps it is we who should congratulate you?' remarked Graham rather drily, shaking hands.

'Did you enjoy the show?' asked Alec, with a pressing eagerness he shared with even the greatest actors.

'I'd hoped we clapped loudly enough to make that an unnecessary question.'

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