Surgeon at Arms

potato crop and countless carpets. Two years after victory the people who had given blood, toil, tears and sweat were left standing in queues holding damp ration-books.
    The postwar disgruntlement which affected everyone began to depress Graham. He was starting to confess himself bored and disgusted with his brother-in-law and his cronies. The girl Liz was really a shocking creature, though he felt disinclined to ditch her with no replacement in sight. Perhaps there never would be, he reflected. He was becoming a shade elderly to play the rake. He would have liked to stay at the villa after
    Sheila Raleigh came home, he craved for luxury and sunshine, but he had too much private work in London. There seemed to be a dammed-up demand for plastic surgery, as for other prewar luxuries like chocolates and cars, and plastic surgery was readily obtainable for your money. And at least, he reflected, he passed most of his time in hospitals and nursing homes, where it was warm and there was plenty of hot water.
    He was still living alone, and trying to reconcile himself to it. To make his evenings more bearable he started to write a text-book on the surgery of burns. He had never written much before, though he felt that if he could paint he was equipped with the right sort of mental muscles for self-expression. He turned out a trunkful of notes from the annex, sorted them into bundles, and started work with his portable typewriter. Progress was slow. As he read his scribbled pages, he found himself drawn back to the atmosphere of the bungalow where he had jotted most of them down. He found the composition becoming dominated by Clare. He remembered exactly what she was saying or doing when he had drawn up some particular account of a patient or an operation. It disturbed him. He had thought about her often enough since they separated, but he told himself she was in the past, finished and done with, like Edith. He determined to put her resolutely out of his mind. It was the only way. Anyway, if he didn’t, the book would never be finished.
    He was working alone one evening towards the end of March when the telephone rang. It was Lord Cazalay.
    ‘I say, Graham, are you still at home? We were expecting you tonight.’
    ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t make it.’ Another one of his damn parties. ‘Didn’t you get the message? I asked the Clinic to phone you.’
    ‘Some signal got through to me, but I didn’t take it seriously.’ Lard Cazalay sounded offended. ‘You remember you particularly promised to come.’
    ‘I’ve got an urgent case coming in, I’m afraid. You’ll have to excuse me.’
    This pretext being unanswerable, Lord Cazalay added, ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you fairly soon? It’s a matter of some importance.’
    Graham gave a grunt. He probably wants more money out of me, he thought. Money is the only matter of importance that he knows. ‘I’m dreadfully booked up this week, Charles, professionally.’
    ‘Surely you can spare a moment? It’s rather pressing. How about lunch tomorrow at my club?’
    ‘It’s a miserable confession, but my lunch is always a sandwich between cases.’
    ‘Can’t I call tomorrow evening? About seven?’
    ‘All right, I’ll make a point of being here,’ Graham told him, giving in.
    ‘I’m much obliged. By the way, you’ll make sure we’re undisturbed, I take it. It’s extremely confidential.’
    ‘I’m nearly always on my own,’ Graham assured him. In the next morning’s paper he saw that Fred Butcher had resigned from the Government. He wondered why. He had seemed from brief acquaintance a likeable, down-to-earth sort of fellow. He couldn’t be bothered to read the story running down the column. Politics was a bore, and the newspapers only made up fairy-stories. When someone mentioned the incident in the theatre of the Cavendish Clinic during Graham’s first case, he said, ‘Yes, I met the chap the other day. Seemed a very solid citizen.’
    ‘Did you?’ asked his young assistant, looking up. ‘What’s the matter?’ Graham was surprised at the tone. ‘Is he in disgrace, or something? I supposed he’d resigned on some lofty point of political principle.’
    ‘Reading between the lines, he’s in the cart. Something very peculiar about Army contracts. A number of old Army wireless sets seem to have gone sadly astray.’
    ‘Who on earth would want an old Army wireless set?’
    ‘People want anything these days. In Germany you could