Surgeon at Arms

it in the papers.’
    ‘I left before they started breaking the place up.’
    ‘Very wise. It must be gratifying to know you’ve got these young men in such good spirits again.’
    ‘I only did my best,’ Graham told him modestly. ‘Some of them would still give a girl a nasty scare on a dark night.’
    ‘Champagne? I was rather lucky to get this consignment across the Channel. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
    Lord Cazalay led Graham across the room, putting his arm round his shoulders, to demonstrate either affection or possession, Graham wasn’t sure.
    ‘Fred, this is Sir Graham. I know you’ll be glad to meet him.’ Graham found himself facing a short, square man with a leathery face, smoking a pipe. ‘This is Fred Butcher,’ Lord Cazalay introduced him. ‘You know, from the War Office.’
    Graham recognized one of the Ministers who had been swept to breathtaking heights by the flood of electoral popularity, to be left sitting forlornly on his isolated peak as the tide abruptly turned. He was a rather colourless public figure, a fair-minded, hardworking trade union official with a valuable flair for bedding down lambs with lions. Graham wondered how he got on with the more peppery generals.
    ‘Glad to meet you, Sir Graham. Heard a lot about you during the war, of course.’
    ‘Perhaps too much?’ Graham asked. ‘That’s some people’s view.’
    ‘Every word was deserved, I’m sure of that.’ He relit his pipe and added, ‘You know a surgeon called Mr Haileybury, I believe?’
    ‘Extremely well.’
    ‘He got me to speak at a luncheon the other week. About this burns hospital, and that. He seems a great one for the idea, does Mr Haileybury.’
    ‘Personally, I think he’s got something of a bee in his bonnet about it.’
    ‘Maybe so,’ said the politician guardedly.
    Graham had heard of Haileybury’s plan only secondhand. It seemed that Haileybury, once reconciled to the Government’s cossetting the nation’s health to a greater extent than providing clean water and drains, had turned himself into a crusader for the new scheme. He suddenly woke up to its offering an outlet for his qualities of administration, sadly frustrated once he put away his uniform. He was particularly taken with the idea of establishing a hospital in London for burns and accident, arguing that the experience gained during the war should not be dispersed, but concentrated under one roof and passed to visiting surgeons from countries which had regrettably been spared the opportunity for such practice. The Ministry of Health was sympathetic to Haileybury, but doubtful. They had to find the money to put roofs on the old hospitals before digging the foundations of new ones.
    Graham had a dozen questions he would like to have asked the Minister about the fuel crisis. But politicians, like medical men, must learn to keep their counsel, and he found himself talking instead about the restarting of international football. Then Lord Cazalay reappeared and said, ‘Fred, I must tear Sir Graham away. There’s someone else I’d particularly like him to have a word with.’
    As Graham allowed himself to be led across the room, Lord Cazalay asked, “Isn’t Liz coming? I thought you were giving us the pleasure of looking at her?’
    ‘She’s meeting me here. The curtain at her show doesn’t ring down till after ten.’
    ‘That’s splendid news. Graham, this is Arthur King. A very close friend of mine.’
    Arthur King struck Graham as resembling a worried ferret. He was a youngish man, certainly not over thirty, with thinning fair hair and sidewhiskers. He wore a smart blue double-breasted suit with over-emphasis on the lapels, a dark striped shirt, and a plain grey tie with a diamond pin stuck in it. His green eyes had an expression of continual anxiety in them, and if he had ever learned to smile he seemed to have forgotten the knack.
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Arthur King.
    ‘Of course, you’ll know all about Sir Graham’s work in the war,’ Lord Cazalay said affably.
    ‘Yes, I read about it in the papers.’ He inspected Graham anxiously. ‘You fixed all them pilots up with new faces, didn’t you? Must be a clever feller.’ Graham nodded. To have his work praised by a Minister of the Crown was one thing. Approbation from a man who might have left his fruit-barrow at the door was less welcome. Still, he told himself, society was changing, you had to take people as they came, if you played