SURGEON AT ARMS, page 18
'I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Graham.' Haileybury appeared in his usual blue suit.
'And I'm sorry to have telephoned for an appointment so early. But I have some news. I have decided to accept your kind offer of a job.'
Haileybury inclined his head silently. That is good news indeed. It is all I will say, but I think you will understand how I feel. The new project is very near to my heart.'
'On one condition.'
'I'm sure any reasonable condition can easily be met.
'I don't know if this one can. The condition is that I stay out of jail. Haileybury looked at him blankly, wondering if he were joking. 'I've been involved in some currency deals. About five thousand pounds' worth of French francs. If it comes to light, I've had it. I've reason to expect it might'
Haileybury put the tips of his fingers together and blew on them. The noise still irritated Graham.
'I see.'
'It's all mixed up with Cazalay and your unfortunate friend Fred Butcher. You know a fine rumpus is blowing up?'
'I see,' Haileybury repeated.
'Of course, the very fact I've misbehaved might be enough for you to withdraw your offer. I'd quite understand that.'
'Could you explain the details?'
'I gave Cazalay a cheque for five thousand pounds and he gave me the francs. He wants me to do a job on one of his little crooks to stop the police recognizing him. I won't. It's as simple as that. So Cazalay will cook my goose.'
'But what on earth were you doing with all this foreign money?'
'Oh, I haven't it hidden in a biscuit-tin, bricked up in the chimney, anything like that, I never actually handled it, Cazalay bought me a house in France.'
'I see,' said Haileybury again.
Graham rose. 'That's the situation, Eric. If I don't land in abject disgrace over the next few weeks I presume you'll take me on?
Haileybury made an accommodating gesture. 'I'm only sorry you should find yourself in such a predicament.'
'It isn't my first,' Graham told him. 'But, whichever way it goes, it will be my last.'
He couldn't face operating or seeing patients. He rang Smithers Botham and a couple of nursing-homes, putting his day's work off, excusing himself with illness. He walked the shabby streets of London, hardly noticing where his feet took him. He found himself in Piccadilly, not far from Half Moon Street, and turned towards the Cazalay family's old town house. A hole in the ground. As he started walking northwards the rain began to fall. It was the same route he had taken thirty years before, tramping home through a thunderstorm to his father's home in Hampstead after he had first met Maria. On that walk he had decided three things-to become a plastic surgeon, to grow rich, and, more immediately, to ditch his fiancйe Edith. He had done all three, and ended up with nothing but the prospect of prison. He plodded on. It wasn't so easy to walk these days. Well, your arteries and joints had to grow stiff some time, it was inevitable. At least you were saved the effort of struggling against it, as he'd had to struggle against tuberculosis in his youth.
He decided to make for the house in Hampstead. It was still standing, but horribly dilapidated. It had been turned into flats before, the war, now there seemed to be a dozen families living in it, with washing forgotten and soaking in the front garden. The professor would hardly have countenanced that, Graham told himself. He wondered what his father would have to say of his misdeeds, personal and professional. Perhaps the old boy would have the chance to give him a celestial wigging soon. He had rather let down the family. Even the piss-prophet didn't get himself locked up.
He looked at his watch, and was surprised to find it almost six in the evening. He made for Hampstead Tube station, where he bought an evening paper. The storm had broken. The police were looking for Arthur and for Lord Cazalay, neither of whom could be found. Graham wondered if Cazalay had gone to Venezuela, too. But the stop press revealed he had gone no farther than Newhaven, where he was assisting the police with their enquiries. Graham stuffed the paper in his overcoat pocket. He would have to face the music, and the grisly concert had begun.
In the hallway of his block of flats a woman approached him.
'Graham! I'm sorry to sit on your doorstep. But I've been trying to get you all day. There's something terribly important you really ought to know.'
Graham recognized Sheila Raleigh. She must have just returned from France. 'I must apologize,' he told her absently. 'I've had rather a lot of things occupying me. It's about the Annex Club, I suppose?'
'No, it isn't.' She looked round. 'Could we have a moment alone?'
'Yes, of course.'
They said nothing until he let her into his flat. He felt she had chosen a damn inconsiderate moment to call. 'I hope you're liking the job?'
'Yes, it's wonderful. I can't thank you enough. Particularly after I said such bitter things to you once.'
'I deserved them.'
'No, you didn't. But you can understand how I felt at the time? I had to blame someone. It all seemed so pointless otherwise.'
Impatient to get rid of her, Graham asked, 'What can I do for you now.'
'It's about your house, Graham. In France.' She sat down, frowning. 'There's something fishy about it. There was a man who came to look at it, just before I left yesterday. A Frenchman, a very nasty piece of work. He arrived in a Citroлn with two others, who looked like thugs. Apparently…well, apparently you don't own the place at all. Lord Cazalay does. He's been "selling" it to a dozen different people. Oh, Graham, I'm so sorry! It must be awful to have lost all that money.'
25
For a week Graham read the morning and evening papers with eagerness and apprehension. But the Press stayed infuriatingly bare of facts, reassuring or deadly. Lord Cazalay and ferrety-faced Arthur were remanded in custody by the Bow Street magistrate on some comparatively trivial charge, a detective-superintendent implying from the witness box that all hell was in store for them once it could be properly documented. The disgraced Fred Butcher was announced by his distraught secretary as having entered an unnamed nursing-home for 'nerves'. He had sent his passport to Scotland Yard, though purely as a matter of courtesy.
The Tory party, squashed for a couple of years under Mr Attlee's majority, fell like bluebottles on the festering wound in the pure-white body of socialism. They even stripped the friable wrappings from the mummified first Lord Cazalay, recalling with glee that his disgrace had occurred under the sway of Ramsay MacDonald. There was a dreadful fuss in the House of Commons. The Speaker twice suspended the sitting, leaving the chamber like a despairing headmaster shaming his boys with a display of dignity. Two more Ministers resigned (but kept their passports). Then the Government neatly announced an investigatory tribunal to be established, under a judge of unassailable wisdom and impartiality. The matter was henceforward _sub judice,_ and could not with propriety be raised in public at all. The House simmered down, the legislators turning their vigilance to the raising of the school-leaving age to fifteen.
After ten days of uncertainty, paralysing all his activities and most of his thoughts outside his professional ones, Graham ran into John Bickley in the Cavendish Clinic. He had just finished his last case of the afternoon, loosening a Dupuytren's contracture in the palm of a stockbroker (the deformity interfered badly with his shooting). As he pushed open the door of the surgeons' room to change, he found the anaesthetist in his long green theatre gown, packing away rubber masks, tubing, swabs, syringes, and other tools of oblivion into a square black-leather bag.
'That was the best advice anyone's given me in my life,' Graham said at once.
John looked up. 'About not operating on that spiv fellow?' He gave a smile. 'You know, I hadn't the slightest expectation that you'd take it.'
'If I had, I'd be well and truly up the creek by now, wouldn't I? With all this fuss, all these political people getting interested, trying to outdo each other scratching up the dirt. The ridiculous aspect of the whole affair is that I'd nothing to worry about from Cazalay. Nothing at all. He simply swindled me out of my money. He didn't even buy those pernicious francs in the first place.'
'How much did you lose?'
'Five thousand quid.'
John's eyebrows shot up.
'Yes, I'm a mug,' Graham admitted. 'Cazalay might as well have sold me a gold brick or the Eiffel Tower-didn't some bright Frenchman flog it to the Germans for scrap during the war?' He undid a length of bandage round his waist, and slipped the white linen operating trousers from his spindly legs. 'But perhaps it was a reasonable fee to pay for the shock treatment. I've learnt my lesson. Henceforward Trevose sticks to the straight and narrow path.'
'Oh, come, Graham! You're making yourself sound like an old lag, not an ornament to one of our Orders of Chivalry.'
Graham threw his trousers into the corner with an impatient gesture. 'You know what I mean. Well, you ought to. You don't imagine I'm unaware of your going about referring to me as "Flash Harry"?' John laughed. 'By the way, I'm giving up my private practice,' Graham added.
The anaesthetist paused in packing away his apparatus and stared at him. 'You're not serious?'
'I'm perfectly serious. I'm abandoning the private racket for a full-time job. On the new unit Haileybury's always talking about. I'm to be its first Director.'
'But Graham-your whole life's been built round your private work. Everyone in London is green with envy at your reputation. You already get patients sent to you from all over the country. Once things get really back to normal you'll be getting them from all over the bloody world. Surely you can't throw all that away?'
'My life wasn't built round private work during the war, and that was the only time I was happy.' He pulled on his grey suit in silence. As John snapped the two catches of his leather case, Graham continued, 'Perhaps the Government are right to set themselves against fee-paying medicine. It's immoral really, if you look at it carefully. It didn't matter so much even thirty years ago, when the doctor could generally do damn all whether you paid him or not. Besides, I want to think. Perhaps to write. Rushing round nursing homes chasing guineas, you haven't a chance to do either. Perhaps I've an academic streak in me somewhere-don't forget my father was a professor. He left a massive volume on the synovial membranes as his tombstone, which is more than I shall ever achieve.'
'I still can't take you seriously, Graham.'
'Then wait and see. You won't even have to wait long. The appointment's being announced by the Ministry at the beginning of next month. I'll have to resign from Blackfriars, of course, which will be a wrench, though mainly a sentimental one. There doesn't seem the slightest prospect of the place being rebuilt in my own lifetime. And the staff there will all be working for the Government anyway, whether they like it or not. I'm giving up my flat-I've got to economize and I want something smaller, nearer the site, to organize things.' Graham's face suddenly lit up. 'It'll be like those early days at the annex, all over again. Except this time everyone will be on my side. I'll only have to snap my fingers for equipment to arrive by the lorryload.'
John stood looking at him, his bony long-fingered hands resting on the top of his case. 'It must have been a sacrifice. Or at least a horribly difficult decision.'
'Not really. Like most of the big steps in my life, I didn't think twice about it.' As John slipped the green gown from his shirt, Graham added as off-handedly as possible, 'You know, I really would rather like to see Clare again.'
'That's the best news you've given me today.'
Graham felt this sounded vaguely condescending, but asked, 'Do you think she'd respond to some sort of social invitation? To dinner, a show, something like that?'
'Why don't you come and find out? I'm just off to the Kenworth to do a case. I know for a fact she's on duty. Are you free?'
Graham hesitated. Then his natural impulsiveness made him say, 'All right. You can give me a lift.' As John picked up his instrument-case he added, 'After all, I've nothing to lose, have I? If I admit to you now that I treated Clare quite disgustingly, it's something which I have only just come to admit to myself.'
'Quite so,' said John.
It suddenly struck him how much Graham was starting to sound like Haileybury.
It was fortunate for the reputation of Sister Mills at the Kenworth Hospital that she had charge of a children's ward. Unlike the adult patients, who had little to do except listen to _Workers' Playtime_ through the headphones and intensely observe the personal behaviour of the staff, the youngsters saw nothing remarkable-only some welcome entertainment-in a wide-eyed little man bursting among them, a startled cry from Sister, a whispered conversation, glances between bewildered nurses, a brisk retreat to Sister's office, a slamming of the door. Graham reflected afterwards he could as well have telephoned, but his unexpected appearance was much more dramatic and much more satisfying. In the office, they were far too confused and embarrassed to say very much, nor even to approach within arm's length of each other. Graham told her he must see her, it was desperate-couldn't he even take her to dinner? She demurred, trying to adjust her mind to the situation. But he was never a man to lose the advantage of a woman's hesitation.
'All right,' Clare agreed doubtfully. 'All right, Graham. For old times' sake.'
'That's wonderful! We'll have so much to talk about. It's almost three whole years since we-' He wondered how to put it. 'Went our separate ways.'
She couldn't prevent herself asking, 'Did you miss me?'
'Like an amputated limb. You know how the patients get pain in them, don't you? "A phantom limb." It hurts worse than ever, even if it isn't there.'
She gave a nervous smile and said, 'You mustn't forget the limb's always amputated for the patient's own good.'
There was a pause. Neither of them felt entirely sure where the conversation was leading. Both were relieved for it to be frustrated by a knock on the door and the news that a child due for release, overcome by excitement, had vomited copiously over the newly cleaned floor.
Two evenings later they met. Graham had chosen a restaurant in Soho, whispered among a small and knowing circle as providing with its generous portions not only butter but crisp, white, mysteriously unrationed bread. By then both he and Clare had found time to adjust themselves, and were perfectly charming to each other. They sat in the corner of the small, rose-lighted room, chatting gaily of pointedly inconsequential generalities. Graham had really no precise idea what he was going to propose to her, and hoped he could rely on her delicacy to raise nothing that would make him feel too uncomfortable. He picked up the wine-list and suggested champagne, adding half-humorously, 'This place is terribly black market,'
'Oh, everyone these days knows someone who can get them something.' Clare smiled. 'Our theatre porter finds us the most lovely nylons-"They dropped off a lorry" is the story. It must have been an extremely large pantechnicon.'
'I'm growing rather tired of all that, you know. I've had some sort of moral conversion. And, like most converts, I was scared into it.' He picked up the evening paper, beside them on the table. Lord Cazalay and Arthur had been charged that morning with a number of offences from bribery of Government officials to possessing unauthorized sweet coupons. To Graham's relief, there was still no mention of currency transactions. 'You've read all about this, I suppose?'
'Is there anyone who hasn't?'
'But I think I can entertain you with some unpublished details.'
Over dinner he gave a frank account of his life since she had walked out of Cosy Cot, with the exception of Liz. In his penitent mood he was half-inclined to throw her in too, but consoled himself that Clare would certainly suspect he had been mixed up with a woman or two, and through natural female pride and vanity imagine them goddesses. If she became increasingly serious and sympathetic, Graham had been smugly confident of as much. His moral weaknesses had always been of as much concern to her as his physical ones, he reflected, and she accepted both with the same resignation. She hadn't changed, he told himself. Though if she had changed towards him was a separate question. When he finished the tale she held his hand under the table, and said, 'Poor Graham! You did get yourself in a mess, didn't you?'
'I didn't have you to keep me out of it.'
He started to talk about his new job, a conversation which drifted naturally back to the annex and Smithers Botham. Her eyes began to sparkle, she gripped his hand tighter than ever, and he felt a sudden glow of relief. It was going to be all right She had forgiven him, they could pick up neatly where they had left off, except this time he really would marry her, just as soon as the little formality could be arranged. He was starting to believe she would go that very night with him to the flat, when she said, 'Graham, it's been simply lovely meeting you. We must have another reunion one day, mustn't we? Perhaps when all this black-market and rationing nonsense is over.'
He looked blank. 'But Clare! Aren't you coming back to me?'
'Don't be silly, Graham.'
'But this time, I mean…we'd be married, it would be different.'
'It wouldn't be different in the slightest. As I told you once before, it wouldn't work.'
'You're being ridiculous.' He sounded quite cross. 'Everything was abnormal in those days'
'Yes, there was a war on.'
'I mean everything about me. I was selfish then, foolish, chasing all the wrong things. I've changed. I know I've changed. I've got my sense of values straight. I don't give a damn for the fripperies of life any more.'
'You sound like Sir Stafford Cripps,' she told him.
By the time he reached home Graham was furious. It was beyond him why Clare had refused to fall gratefully into his arms. All this effort to turn himself into a decent human being, he reflected petulantly, would be absolutely wasted if nobody was going to take it seriously. He poured himself a whisky and sat in the armchair. For the first time there stole upon him the black realization that he had lost Clare for good. A solitary life stretched ahead, as bleakly as the concrete corridors at Smithers Botham. And at fifty-one you needed someone beside you, much more desperately than at twenty-one. But there was nobody who cared a damn about him. Only his son Desmond. At least, he presumed so. The young man had more or less given up speaking to him.
