Surgeon at Arms

‘doper’ or ‘stuffist’, hurrying with his rubber tubes and cylinders from nursing-home to nursing-home on a time-table more complicated than Bradshaw’s. The surgeons allowed him ten per cent of the operating fee, so he had to keep in with a good many to keep going. The year before the war he had married Denise, whom he had met at a suburban golf-club. She was tall, slim, blonde, and athletic, and had money. It struck Graham that ever afterwards John occupied himself by keeping in with her.
    Graham hadn’t liked Denise from the start. She had taken him over, as she had taken over everything else connected with her husband, even his Saturday’s golf. It was becoming a complication to their work in the theatre, and Graham wouldn’t countenance any complication likely to affect his patients. The Bickleys had found a cottage near Smithers Botham—very luckily, the arrival of Blackfriars having shifted most of the white elephants squatting on local estate agents’ books. Having neither children nor evacuees, Denise had first invited Graham to live with them, confessing her astonishment at his tolerating the pub. But he was never a man to lack excuses. She insisted he at least called for Sunday lunch. She had a pressing sense of social duty, devoting much energy to organizing the wives of Blackfriars consultants scattered round the countryside into cosy if meatless dinner parties, into fours of bridge or sets of tennis, and into the knitting of large quantities of Balaclava helmets.
    She loved quizzing him about Maria. It seemed to be her Sunday treat. Graham could anyway hardly explain his motives for not divorcing his wife when he didn’t know them himself. Perhaps he had no more than a vague reluctance to put down some decrepit animal which once strode vigorously in the sunshine of admiration. Or perhaps, he thought more darkly, his wife was a mother-substitute, his feelings towards her loaded with guilt—but one mustn’t take too much notice of the psychiatrists, they told a lot of fairy-tales. Somehow he must see less of Denise, particularly now it looked as though they’d be living in each other’s pockets at Smithers Botham for life. Only General Wavell in the Western Desert was providing any encouraging sweeping black arrows on the front-page maps of Lord Arlott’s Daily Press. Graham wondered glumly if the ebullient Australian newspaper proprietor, whom he had known well enough in peacetime, had foreseen that his task of chirpingly maintaining civilian morale every morning would have reached its present bleak severity.
    Reaching his office in the hut outside the annex, Graham changed his shoes, pulled on a white coat, and sent a nurse for Peter Thomas.
    ‘I hope I’m a specimen worthy of display to the outer world,’ Peter began cheerfully.
    The patient’s flesh sausage was by then detached from his wrist, and starting to turn into something like a nose. The rest of his face was a patchwork of skin, too yellow and too shiny, Graham thought, cut from various bits of his body, Graham removed a dressing and saw with satisfaction that some sepsis in the corner of his last graft had healed. ‘The sulphanilamide powder seems to have done the trick,’ he announced. ‘It’s saved me the necessity of having to use you as a guinea-pig for penicillin.’
    ‘Penny what?’
    ‘Oh, it’s some stuff they invented at Mary’s. Their Prof. Fleming found a mould which kept killing off the bugs he was trying to grow in his lab. It must have been very irritating, until he put two and two together. Our medical unit are working on it. It’s supposed to be secret, though God knows why. The stuff’s as rare as hens’ teeth’.
    ‘What’s it look like?’ asked Peter, with interest.
    ‘Very yellow and sticky, and personally I don’t think it’s going to be the slightest use.’
    Graham took the man’s hands. Not much movement yet. Annoying.
    ‘Is that physiotherapy girl bullying you to use your hands, Peter?’
    ‘Quite delightfully so.’
    ‘I think we can risk doing without your company for a couple of months,’ Graham decided. He turned to the folder of notes on his desk. ‘Then I’m afraid it’s back for the next stage.’
    ‘How long, O Wizz, how long?’
    ‘Altogether? The next step shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll make you some eyebrows from the hair on the nape of your neck. But I’ve never made a secret that we’ll be very old friends by the time we finally part. You’re a major