Surgeon at Arms

felt he was rather miserable with himself:’
    Haileybury inserted the final stitches in the child’s mouth. ‘He’s a man of moods,’ he observed drily. ‘And that nephew of his has gone off his head.’
    John frowned under his surgical cap. ‘Alec was my junior assistant. He was something of a queer fish, I must say.’
    ‘That goes for all the Trevose family, doesn’t it? They don’t make life easy for themselves.’
    ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ John disconnected the long corrugated rubber tube of his anaesthetic apparatus. ‘Alec’s mother will be upset. She had high hopes for him. Saw him as a second Horder, I believe.’
    ‘Well, he might achieve it yet. Some of our most eminent brethren have been somewhat unbalanced. It’s a matter of survival until they reach the position where nobody dare mention it.’
    John removed the throat-pack and the thin, wire-stiffened armoured Magill tube from the child’s windpipe. ‘I think I’ll go back to the ward with this one.’
    ‘All is well, I trust?’ asked Haileybury sharply.
    ‘Yes, perfectly. But you can never be sure of anything at all in this game.’
    In the children’s ward at the end of the corridor he passed his patient to the care of the staff-nurse, and asked, ‘Where’s Sister?’
    ‘In her office, Dr. Bickley.’
    John knocked on the door by the ward entrance and went in. Clare Mills looked up from her desk. ‘Hello!’ She smiled. ‘Quite a stranger.’
    ‘I was bringing back that palate.’ He popped a cigarette over his sagging mask and lit it. ‘I had a chat with Graham last Saturday night.’
    Clare raised her eyebrows. At first she said nothing, but moved some notes on her desk. ‘And how is he?’
    ‘He’s wearing well. And he seemed to be enjoying life. Or trying to convince himself that he was.’
    ‘I’m glad he’s all right.’
    ‘Do you ever hear from him?’
    ‘Oh, no! I would never have expected that. Not with Graham.’
    ‘He didn’t mention you at all,’ John volunteered.
    ‘I wouldn’t have expected that, either. Once anyone’s left his orbit he likes to cut them out completely. To forget about them, as though they’d never existed.’
    ‘Even you, who tried to save him from himself?’
    ‘I wasn’t conscious of doing so at the time, but I suppose that’s true.’
    ‘It’s all part of his selfishness, I suppose. Rejecting even those who’ve helped him, once they’re no more use.’
    ‘I don’t think so. Not entirely. We can understand his trying to spare himself the pain of sad memories. He inflicts enough on himself. Anyway, he doesn’t know where I am,’ she added more briskly. He doesn’t even know if I’m still in the country.’
    ‘Do you want to see him again?’
    She looked at him hard for a moment and said, ‘What’s the point?’
    John nodded understandingly and asked, ‘Have you any plans—for getting married, that sort of thing? Anyone in mind? I hope you don’t mind my asking, Clare. I’ve come to feel something of an uncle to you.’
    She smiled again. ‘A very useful uncle. You found me this job.’
    ‘I felt I wanted to do something for you. If you remember, we were both suffering from the Trevose temperament rather severely at the time.’
    ‘Perhaps it was all something to do with war-weariness.’
    ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
    ‘No, I haven’t anyone in mind. I don’t suppose I shall. I’ve got my work.’
    ‘At which you’re extremely efficient.’
    ‘Thank you. Everyone regards me as a dedicated and
    completely sexless ward sister. There’re plenty of them about. The backbone of any hospital. The whole system would fall to bits without such women. When I was in training, I often wondered exactly what created them. Now I know.’
    ‘That sounds like a gloomy prognosis' for yourself.’
    ‘Perhaps someone will turn up. You never know. Otherwise I shall sister on, until I’m pensioned off and go to live in a seaside boarding-house.’
    ‘But don’t you bear any resentment? Towards Graham?’
    ‘How can one bear any resentment towards a maladjusted child?’
    ‘I dare say you’re right,’ John told her.
     

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
     
    THE GOVERNMENT was out of luck. The worst snowfall of the century was followed by the worst floods that could be remembered at all. The cascade began in the middle of March 1947, the rivers spilt disastrously across the countryside, swamping the roads and railways, drowning the sheep, ruining the