Surgeon at Arms

enmeshed in the stout railings of the coal store, had decided to settle for a second-hand bicycle. But to anyone who read the newspapers, Smithers Botham in 1942 was the place where a man called Graham Trevose performed his miracles.
    The annex was no longer a sideshow but one of the busiest surgical units in the country. The huts in the grounds had doubled and the staff had trebled. Graham was receiving more patients from the R.A.F. than he could handle. His work had attracted surgeons—and journalists with their photographers—from every Allied nation, even the Russians. Women in fish-queues could talk to each other about Graham Trevose. Every morning brought a letter or two, generally badly written and spelt, with a few shillings towards the comforts fund. Graham thought this the most rewarding recognition of all. And it had all started because he had gone to Val Arlott seeking some zips for trousers.
    An unaccustomed sound crept across the misty morning. Church bells in the distance. For more than two years these accompaniments of Christian joys and sorrows had been silenced, reserved by the Government to herald not the coming of the Lord but of the German armies.
    ‘Listen.’ Graham slipped his hands between his head and the pillow. ‘I remember in the last war they rang the bells after Cambrai. It was when we used tanks for the first time, and broke the German lines. In a week or two we were back where we started, of course. It always seemed the case in those days. Let’s hope this Alamein affair is more permanent.’
    Clare Mills slipped her hand into the jacket of his pyjamas, which were pure silk, prewar, made to measure in Jermyn Street. The poor lamb really was terribly thin. It was like being in bed with a skeleton beside you. ‘Happy?’
    ‘This is probably a terrible confession, but the war’s been the happiest time of my life.’
    ‘Is it so terrible?’ she asked gently. ‘Surely the misery needn’t go undiluted?’
    ‘I suppose happiness is a well-insulated state of mind. Most of the boys are perfectly happy, and God knows they haven’t got much to justify it. Even Bluey seems happy enough these days.’
    ‘Perhaps he’s found a new girl-friend.’ She ran her hand down Graham’s chest. It was so smooth, the ribs standing out like the black notes on a piano. No wonder he’d once suffered from tuberculosis.
    ‘Why do I attract you?’ he asked.
    She pouted thoughtfully. ‘You’re different. From any other surgeon.’
    ‘Different from old Cramphorn, you mean?’
    Clare laughed. ‘You’re gentle, you’re amusing, you’re kind, you understand women. And I love you. Besides, you had a tremendous build-up. I’d read so much about you. It’s like being with a star you’ve only seen on the flicks.’
    ‘Don’t tell me I’ve got to match up to Clark Gable?’ he asked, though feeling flattered.
    She touched his small hard nipple with the tip of her forefinger. ‘Tell me why I attract you.’
    ‘You’re a good housewife.’
    ‘I thought that was it.’
    ‘Do you realize, darling, this is the first time in my life I’ve had a home I could call my own? I mean a place where I could do as I pleased, without it being run by a lot of servants. Where I didn’t feel I had to put on a show, to impress the world with my importance.’ He looked round the room, which was hardly big enough to take the bed. The beige wallpaper had galleons sailing across it, a fumed-oak dressing table was squeezed into a corner, there were faded pink curtains, an angular hanging mirror, and a coloured print of Tower Bridge, pre-blitz. They lived in a bungalow, rented furnished in the country some ten miles from Smithers Botham, with four small rooms and a kitchen, a bath with an alarming geyser, and the name of ‘Cosy Cot’.
    Graham felt he would have been happy with Clare even living in a Nissen hut. She shared his new liking for books and for the concerts on the wireless. She cooked agreeably and mended his clothes with her painstaking nurses’ stitches. He had enjoyed himself teaching her to dress properly, pulling her out of those awful tweeds and putting her into frocks, though the fun had been officially dimmed by the coming of clothes’ rationing. She was the most adoring woman he had known, which he sometimes wryly reflected accounted for their harmony. They had always the annex to fall back on as a common interest, Graham insisting she continued with her job, declaring the ward would