Surgeon at Arms

Smithers Botham. Her eyes began to sparkle, she gripped his hand tighter than ever, and he felt a sudden glow of relief. It was going to be all right. She had forgiven him, they could pick up neatly where they had left off, except this time he really would marry her, just as soon as the little formality could be arranged. He was starting to believe she would go that very night with him to the flat, when she said, ‘Graham, it’s been simply lovely meeting you. We must have another reunion one day, mustn’t we? Perhaps when all this black-market and rationing nonsense is over.’
    He looked blank. ‘But Clare. Aren’t you coming back to me?’
    ‘Don’t be silly, Graham.’
    ‘But this time, I mean... we’d be married, it would be different.’
    ‘It wouldn’t be different in the slightest. As I told you once before, it wouldn’t work.’
    ‘You’re being ridiculous.’ He sounded quite cross. ‘Everything was abnormal in those days.’
    ‘Yes, there was a war on.’
    ‘I mean everything about me. I was selfish then, foolish, chasing all the wrong things. I’ve changed. I know I’ve changed. I’ve got my sense of values straight.
    I don’t give a damn for the fripperies of life any more.’
    ‘You sound like Sir Stafford Cripps,’ she told him.
    By the time he reached home Graham was furious. It was beyond him why Clare had refused to fall gratefully into his arms. All this effort to turn himself into a decent human being, he reflected petulantly, would be absolutely wasted if nobody was going to take it seriously. He poured himself a whisky and sat in the armchair. For the first time there stole upon him the black realization that he had lost Clare for good. A solitary fife stretched ahead, as bleakly as the concrete corridors at Smithers Botham. And at fifty-one you needed someone beside you, much more desperately than at twenty-one. But there was nobody who cared a damn about him. Only his son Desmond. At least, he presumed so. The young man had more or less given up speaking to him.
    The next morning Graham had a letter from Haileybury, confirming the new appointment and inviting him to lunch with some political figures who were enthusiastic over the new hospital. Mr. Bevan himself, he added, might possibly be joining them for coffee. Graham wrote resigning his post as consultant surgeon to Blackfriars. He would devote himself wholly to his new interest. He would have the best part of fifteen years in the place before he retired, and he would leave it as a splendid monument to himself. He would meanwhile live alone and put up with it. After all, he was a widower, not some crabby never-loved bachelor like old Crampers. He wondered vaguely if Crampers were still alive. He doubted it. The Welfare State seemed to have been the death of him.
     

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
     
    THE POLITICIANS’ LUNCH was held in the House of Commons, a fair proportion Of which, like a fair proportion of the place, though confessing as he was escorted Graham was interested to see for the first time the inside of the place, though confessing as he was escorted rapidly through the corridors and stairways a feeling of disappointment. The marble floors, the vulgar murals, the pillared corners and vaulted ceilings, the solemn dress-suited attendants, reminded him of somewhere— yes, it was the casino at Monte Carlo. He supposed that both structures had been raised about the same time, and had much in common in their function.
    The party gathered in a smallish upstairs room with mullioned leaded windows and an over-abundance of carved pale oak, overlooking the river. Graham at once realized the importance of the affair. Of the thirty-odd men in the room, about half he recognized as top medical people, including Haileybury. Clearly, the Government had taken the new hospital to its heart.
    Never a martyr to the self-inflicted tortures of modesty, Graham was flattered to notice the stir his arrival made among the politicos. They would have heard enough of him during the war, he supposed. Or perhaps, he reflected wryly, they were aware of his having married the daughter of the first Lord Cazalay, and his kinship to the rogue at the seat of their present troubles. Graham was coming to detach himself from the man in Brixton prison with more assurance every day. He decided his brother-in-law had enough on his hands without dragging him into the mess—though with a man like that you never could tell. But if anything about himself