Surgeon at Arms

‘I haven’t said anything wrong, surely?’
    ‘I thought the annex meant everything to you Graham.’
    ‘It’s something I’ll look back on with considerable affection.’
    ‘Like me?’
    ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked irritably. ‘You’re being fanciful.’
    ‘I’m not. It’s perfectly true. I’m just part of the annex, as far as you’re concerned.’
    ‘Now you’re being downright silly.’
    ‘You don’t want to marry me, do you? You don’t want to at all.’
    She advanced on him angrily. Graham was startled. All his life he had surrounded himself with submissive people, and it was always unsettling when they turned on him.
    ‘Clare, you’re simply saying a lot of irresponsible things which are making you overwrought.’
    ‘I’m saying things which I should have said months ago, years ago. My God, I’ve been a fool. Do you imagine all this hasn’t been boiling in my mind since I came here? Of course you don’t want to marry me. You’ve always had some excuse, something to put it off. Even when you got me pregnant you didn’t want me as your wife. You were scared stiff at the thought. You didn’t want that child either. You were as pleased as Punch when I aborted. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’ He stood up. ‘Of course it wasn’t the truth,’ he told her crossly. ‘I did everything I could to save it, didn’t I? I was upset when we lost it, dreadfully upset. Do you think I don’t know my own mind?’
    ‘No, you don’t know it all, Graham. That’s your trouble. There’re plenty of wonderful things about you, and you don’t recognize them. There are plenty of horrible things about you too, and you don’t recognize those either. Or you won’t bring yourself to face them, which is the worse for you.’
    ‘So you’re suggesting I’m going to turn you out after the war, like some camp-follower?’
    ‘It won’t come to that. We can’t go on with this playacting any longer. We’ve got to split up.’
    ‘You can’t mean that?’ He was alarmed at this practical turn in the conversation.
    ‘It’ll only get worse if I stay. She looked down at the threadbare carpet and went on more calmly. ‘I haven’t made up my mind just this minute, Graham. I decided... oh, months ago, I don’t know when. Perhaps I didn’t decide at all. It just crept up on me.’
    ‘Clare—’ He approached her, but she pushed him away. ‘Supposing I said I’d marry you tomorrow?’
    ‘No, it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t work. We’d be in a worse mess than ever. Once you got back to London you’d want to be rid of me. I’m not your type. You don’t love me. I don’t think you could love anyone. Your attitude to women is like your attitude to the boys in the annex. So many ‘construction jobs’, as you say. You overlook that I’ve got the right to any feelings at all.’
    Graham stuck his hands in his pockets. It was all most distressing. He hated emotional scenes. Perhaps they were both upset with the business of Maria. Clare would be over it tomorrow. ‘Why did you take up with me in the first place?’ he asked, a shade resentfully. ‘You knew enough about me, about my past affairs?’
    ‘Every woman’s a heroine, I suppose. She expects to succeed where others have succumbed.’
    ‘Possibly.’ They stood looking at each other. ‘You cant’ meant it?’ he asked more quietly. ‘About going away?’
    ‘Yes, I do. I’ll get a job somewhere.’
    ‘Les’s discuss it again tomorrow, when we’re ourselves.’
    ‘No,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing else to say.’
    A week later Clare left the bungalow and Graham took a room in a London hotel, explaining to everyone at Smithers Botham that this temporary change in domestic arrangements was necessitated by his searching for a flat. The pair had parted politely even amicably. A continued emotional tempest would have worn out both of them, and they were old enough to take such things sensibly. In the end, Graham was rather pleased. He would miss Clare, of course, but she was right. She was a simple, kindly girl, but not at all the sort to stand beside the fashionable plastic surgeon, Graham Trevose, now returning like the exiled European governments to his rightful dominions. A marriage would have been a disaster. And supposing this ‘gong’ materialized? Lady Trevose? Decidedly not. To fill that rôle he wanted someone far more intelligent, more versed in the ways of the world, more socially adept, someone of