Surgeon at Arms

course’.
    ‘I’m sorry, it was out of my mind for the moment.’ After another long silence he said, ‘It’s odd to think that one day we shall have a Queen on the throne again. Though I shan’t be alive to see it. I just remember when the last Queen died. At least, I imagine I do. I have a mental picture of my mother telling me the news in father’s old study in Hampstead. I could only have been seven years old at the time. It was just before my mother died herself of T.B., and I remember that well enough. “Queen Elizabeth” has a fine ring about it, hasn’t it?’ He began to sound more cheerful as the problem of Alec settled into its true insignificance. ‘The country’s having a pretty thin time of it at the moment, but perhaps a new Elizabethan age will dawn upon us. Oh, we’ll end up top dogs again, sooner or later, like we were before the war.’
    That so many fellow-countrymen imagined the same as Graham Trevose at the time was the great mid-twentieth-century British tragedy. Or perhaps comedy. They are only two ways of looking at the same thing.
     

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
     
    WHEN THEIR TRIDENT landed at Heathrow there was a reporter and a photographer waiting. Graham had lost nothing of his attraction for the Press.
    ‘How kind of you to come along,’ he smiled. He had also lost nothing of his touch with newspapermen.
    ‘Good evening, Sir Graham. I hope you had a good trip?’
    ‘Splendid, thank you, splendid. Aeroplanes make everything so convenient these days. I still haven’t quite got used to them. All that messing about one used to do with trains and boats was quite exhausting. Yes, Rome was wonderful. In September I think the light is just right. In summer the sun’s too strong, and the shadows are the most intriguing part of any building—or of any human face.’
    ‘I gather you made a quite sensational speech to the Plastic Surgery Congress, Sir Graham?’
    He chuckled. ‘Hardly sensational. My days for making sensations are past. But I put over a few of my old ideas, which still hold good. The basic principles have been rather swamped by the enormous advances in surgical technique and technology. But to my mind, it’s as important to grasp them as firmly in 1968 as it was in 1948, when I took over the Directorship of the National Accident hospital. In fact, these basic principles haven’t changed since 1940, when I was proud of being in a position to put them to good use.’ He always referred to 1940 in front of the Press.
    ‘I hope you’ve managed to get some holiday in Italy at the same time, Lady Trevose?’ the reporter asked Clare.
    ‘Yes, we had an absolutely wonderful fortnight in Positano.’
    ‘Despite the continuing currency restrictions?’ grinned the reporter.
    ‘We are extremely modest abroad,’ Graham told the man, quite sharply.
    It was nine o’clock before they emerged from the Customs into the bright and confusing concourse. ‘It’s strange how this place always looks entirely different depending on whether you’re going or coming,’ Graham observed. ‘It’s the difference between hope and anticlimax, I suppose. A common enough sequence, in my own experience.’
    ‘You’ve nothing to complain about this trip, darling.’
    ‘Perhaps a little. They didn’t take my speech seriously at the Congress, you know. Not entirely.’
    ‘But they were absolutely charming,’ Clare protested. ‘Particularly the Russians.’
    ‘Yes, but they think I’m old hat. Perhaps they’re right. I’m a realist. Anyway, I livened them up. We’ll see how the Americans take to me in Baltimore next spring.’ Graham looked round hopefully for the chauffeur booked to drive them into London. He felt that at his age the shunning of airport buses was a luxury worth indulging in. He was spry, and as thin as ever. He let his wispy hair grow overlong, and strands of it poked under his hat. He wore glasses all the time, large and round, making his eyes look more owlish than ever. He had grown rather untidy in his clothes, presenting an amiably donnish look to the world. Clare thought fondly he resembled an elderly elf.
    The car had hardly reached the M4 before Graham fell asleep. Clare picked up the tartan rug provided by the hire firm and carefully laid it over him. This was less to prevent any malevolent chill taking advantage of his unguardedness—her nursing training enabled her to take a strictly scientific view of Graham’s management— but an indulgence on