Surgeon at Arms

to ease and the needles became less frequent. One afternoon he noticed there was a mirror right in the room. It was over the washbasin, though they’d covered it with flowered curtain material fixed by strips of sticking-plaster. He crawled out of bed, staggered, and fell. He managed to struggle across the floor, and to tug the flowered covering aside with the point of his elbow. He wondered who he was looking at. The face in the glass was swollen, black, and running with pus. There was no nose, and the eyes stared through a pair of encrusted lids. The door opened and the young nurse came in, scolding him like a naughty child for getting out of bed.
    A few mornings later the blue-uniformed sister, a stout and kindly woman, appeared at his bedside with a stranger. He was a civilian, thin, pale, weedy-looking, with a large head and eyes showing too much white.
    ‘Bluey Jardine, isn’t it?’ began the visitor affably. ‘The Australian? I’ve heard a lot about you. Sorry to make your acquaintance in these particular circumstances.’
    The patient looked suspicious. Whenever anyone new appeared in the room, it seemed to mean something unpleasant was going to happen.
    ‘My name’s Trevose,’ the civilian went on. ‘I’m a surgeon who specializes in your sort of trouble. I suppose you know well enough you were pretty badly burnt?’
    “Am I going to live?’
    ‘Yes, of course you are. But it’ll take a good deal of treatment getting you into shape. We’re going to see rather a lot of each other in the immediate future, I’m afraid.’ Graham took a bundle of case-notes from the sister. ‘You weren’t wearing goggles and gloves?’
    ‘I don’t reckon so.’
    ‘A sadly common omission,’ murmured Graham. With sterile forceps and a kidney-bowl he began picking away the dressings. Another case of ‘airman’s burn’. If only these chaps would keep their gloves and goggles on, he thought, they’d have at least some sort of protection in the cockpit. The first-aid station had smeared tannic acid jelly all over the raw surfaces, of course. Damnable stuff! Why couldn’t the muttonheads at the top issue orders banning it? It would take weeks for him to pick the dried tannic acid crust away, before he could even think about skin-grafting. The hands were terrible. The face was a pretty bad mess too, but that didn’t matter so much. A face was a decoration, but you needed hands to live.
    ‘Right, Sister,’ Graham decided. ‘I’ll have this one.’ He turned to the man in bed. ‘Would you like a change of scene? This hospital, however excellent otherwise, hasn’t the facilities for the sort of surgery you need. I run a little show nearer London where we can look after you properly.’
    Bluey hesitated and said, ‘I reckon I’m in the hands of you quacks now, aren’t I?’
    ‘Good. I’ll send a car for you tomorrow morning. Do you like ice-cream?’
    ‘I don’t mind it.’
    ‘Vanilla or strawberry? I’m afraid there’s no chocolate.’
    ‘Vanilla will do me.’ Bluey was mystified. Bits of him were burnt to cinders, and they talked about ice-cream. This doctor, whoever he was, seemed an odd bloke.
    ‘We’ll be feeding you it till you’re sick,’ Graham told him cheerfully. ‘See you later.’
    In the corridor the sister chided Graham with more severity than usual, ‘But Mr Trevose I You did say you wouldn’t kidnap any more patients.’
    ‘This officer will be my last—honestly.’
    ‘It does make life so difficult for us, you know.’
    ‘Of course I do. But leaving Bluey here will make life very much more difficult for him. Should the powers that be object—’
    ‘But they will object, Mr Trevose.’
    Graham grinned. ‘Just say I behaved in such an overbearing and arrogant manner you had no alternative but to give in. Say I threatened physical violence if you like. With my reputation they’ll believe you.’ He patted her amiably on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, Sister, I’ll see there’s no trouble. I’ll take full responsibility. It’s really quite easy. I’m one of the few people at the moment who don’t have to give a twopenny damn for the grandest air-marshals, generals, admirals, or anyone.’
    She hesitated. She had quite taken to Graham, who had set himself to be resolutely charming towards her. ‘You do behave badly sometimes, you know,’ she told him gently.
    ‘I behave badly frequently. But it’s a change doing so on someone else’s behalf instead of my