Surgeon at Arms

general, however much I despise it. There’d be gossip if we got married tomorrow—Crampers, the Bickleys, everyone at Smithers Botham. It would probably get into the papers, certainly into the Press. I don’t want to invite maliciousness. God knows I’ve had to suffer enough of it recently.’
    She noticed it didn’t occur to Graham even to ask her own sentiments. Clare was used to his self-centredness. She had decided there was nothing unkind or even unattractive about it. In some ways it was a virtue. His egotism, more than anything else, had made the annex what it was. If Graham could think of nobody but himself, she felt resignedly, it was perhaps because there was nobody in his acquaintance half as interesting. ‘How long?’ she asked.
    ‘I really can’t say off-hand, Clare. I’ve had no experience of the situation.’
    ‘Do you mean six weeks or six months? A year? Two years?’ For the first time she resolved to press him. ‘We must allow the corpse to grow cold.’
    ‘Well, then—six months, say?’
    ‘I should think that would strike everyone as respectable.’
    ‘Shall we decide on January?’
    ‘Yes, in January. The war will be over by then.’
    The sitting-room window was open, and a breeze blew some sheets of case-notes from Graham’s table on to the floor. She rose to gather them. ‘We’ll be back in London then, as likely as not.’ he told her. ‘Mightn’t this be the moment to start looking for a flat? My house in Mayfair would cost a fortune to put into shape. I’ll need new consulting rooms, too. We might be able to combine both. Harley Street isn’t a bad area to live. It’s near Regent’s Park and not far from the West End.’
    She smiled and said, ‘It’s difficult to imagine myself living in London at all.’
    ‘It’ll be wonderful, once things get back to normal. Wonderful for both of us. There’s scores of places I’m longing to take you—restaurants, theatres, little clubs I remember. Not all of them can have disappeared in the blitz. There’s hundreds of people I want you to meet. This time they’ll come back, thank God. It was different after the last war, with those awful blood-baths.’
    ‘You won’t do anything like that at all, Graham,’ she chided him gently. ‘You’ll be too busy working.’
    ‘I’ve worked hard enough during the war. I deserve a bit of relaxation. It’s been five years out of my life. Do you realize that by Christmas in 1954 I’ll be sixty?’
    ‘That’s a long way off. Anyway, I’ll be almost forty.’
    ‘Of course, I shall have to make a living, build up from scratch.’ He gave a grin. ‘I’ll have a new wife to impress. I don’t really believe these wild schemes for putting doctors under the State will come to anything. Supposing we all went on strike? That’s a chilling prospect for the politicians. Things will go on much the same, if you ask me. You can’t change England.’
    ‘But what about the annex?’
    ‘I suppose it will cease to exist, or become totally unimportant again, like the R.A.F. itself. I don’t know. It’s no concern of mine. My job there finishes with the war.’
    ‘But Graham,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe you could give up the annex, just like that. You created it. It’s filled your thoughts, day and night. You’d be aimless without it. You can’t have just lost interest in it.’
    ‘But it’s a phase in my life. Don’t you see, Clare? We’ve all grown so used to the war we’ve forgotten it’s a highly abnormal form of existence. I’ve been lotus-eating down here. I’ve had no worries about making money, nor about what to spend it on. A lot of the others at Smithers Botham haven’t the sense to see it the same way. They’re stuck in a rut, you’d imagine they thought the war was continuing for ever.’ He swept his hand round the sitting-room. My God, I’m longing to live in a proper house. Somewhere with my own furniture, decent pictures, eating off plates without cracks in them. None of this bloody rationing, servants to do the dirty work, a bit of style again. Oh, I’ll admit it, the war’s been stimulating, rewarding, often amusing. But when it’s over I want to forget it like an illness. I want to pick up my career again. As far as surgery goes, I’m only approaching my prime.’
    She was facing him, leaning against the table, and he saw she had started to cry. Women were unaccountable. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, not particularly kindly.