Surgeon at Arms

engine cut out. Silence. Then an explosion which shook the earth under them. The clergyman started the burial service in a tone of deep relief.
    It was all mumbo-jumbo, Graham thought. The only difference between a human body alive and a human body dead was that between an engine running and switched off, though the stopped engine didn’t inconveniently rot to pieces. There were a surprising number of people in the church, twenty or thirty. Old friends of Maria’s, he supposed. Living ghosts, come to clank the rusty chains of their memories in his ears. He hoped the old clergyman would get it all over quickly. He probably would, there was always the chance of another flying-bomb.
    As they wheeled Maria out, Graham noticed the route to the graveside passed a row of elaborate memorials to others of the Cazalay family. Though not her father and mother, who had died in the arid air of Venezuela, a destination recommending itself for Lord Cazalay’s retirement through its lack of an extradition treaty with Great Britain. As Maria’s remains were lowered from sight another flying-bomb came out of the distance. As the engine stopped, heads turned heavenwards in anxiety rather than supplication. It exploded with a distant thump. Graham wondered idly who was unfortunate enough to be underneath it
    ‘Mr Trevose, you must remember me,’ said an old lady in a velvet hat, voice conscientiously hushed.
    ‘Of course I do,’ Graham lied.
    ‘I was on the committee of the Sunshine League and the Free Medicine Club with your dear wife, you know.’
    The Sunshine League! Well, the war had relieved the rich of the painful necessity of lightening the burdens of the poor. Graham found himself facing a thin old man with two sticks, whom he recognized after a moment as Sir John Blazey. He’d been chairman of the small hospital at Uxbridge which Graham had used as his first step to success in plastic surgery—rather unscrupulously, he supposed. He thought the fellow had died long ago.
    ‘Your wife was a great woman, Trevose.’ The old man shook his head reflectively. ‘She was quite unsparing in her sense of duty to others. We shall never know how many unfortunate people have had cause to be grateful to her.’
    Graham thanked him. He had almost forgotten the Maria of the busy committees, with her picture in the Illustrated London News and the Bystander. Now the glories of her past began to draw his eye from the shadows of her later poverty and insanity. Well, it’s good to know she died a credit to me, he thought. He found himself shaking hands with Val Arlott.
    ‘Why did you come?’ Graham asked, looking surprised. ‘I didn’t notice you in the church.’
    ‘Have you a moment for a stroll?’
    They walked together in the country lane outside the churchyard. ‘I can’t say why I came, exactly,’ Val told him. ‘I’ve been wondering. Perhaps it is to make up for missing the burial of her father. I was fond of old Cazalay. In some measure, I suppose I was responsible for his plight.’ Graham made an unbelieving gesture. ‘It’s difficult to know. There are things I might have said or done to check his recklessness. Perhaps I’m suffering unconscious feelings of guilt towards the family. This is my penance. You’d know about such matters, wouldn’t you? How are things going?’
    ‘At the annex? We’re still busy. Though the excitement’s gone. We’re an institution now. Like all institutions we’ve lost the fun for getting greater and grander, we’ve only the worry of seeing ourselves slipping.’
    ‘I wish I’d done more for you medical people. Particularly now I’m getting old and infirm. Look at Nuffield—given millions, set up professors, all manner of things.’
    ‘You know they tried to sack me?’
    ‘Yes, I got the P.M. to scotch it.’
    Graham looked faintly put out. He had imagined the intervention a tribute to his own personality. ‘After the war you’ll have plenty of room for your charity, I should imagine, Val. These ideas about State medicine and so on, nothing will come of them, surely?’
    ‘Don’t you believe it. When the fighting stops we’ll get a socialist government.’
    ‘Surely you’re not telling me the country’s going to reject Churchill?’
    ‘Why not? What stopped us giving in after Dunkirk? Our national streak of perversity.’
    Graham looked glum. ‘That’ll make it tough on me, trying to build up again.’
    ‘You’ve got a wonderful reputation.’
    ‘I