Surgeon at Arms

Mr Haileybury. I am not agreeable.’
    Haileybury hesitated again. He decided that having got this far he would charge bravely on. In 1942 he may not have been motivated by spite, as Graham suggested, but he had found the delicate negotiations leading to the man’s dismissal from the annex not wholly unpleasurable. Yes, he must make amends, it was his duty. The new job was not enough. After all, Graham could have earned that easily on his own merits. It was only a matter of his stooping to take it.
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said, quite sternly. ‘I hope you appreciate the extent of his emotional disturbance? I have known him for years—since before you were born—and I can appreciate it very keenly myself. Quite frankly, he talked to me of suicide. Oh, I know it’s a common enough threat in such circumstances. From a boy of twenty, perhaps. But not from a mature man. And a man of the world, like Graham.’ He saw she looked alarmed, and went on, ‘Perhaps I can see your point of view. He would never conceal from society that he was lavish in his affections. But he’s a better man. It was a process which probably started during the war, when he had no alternative but to follow his natural instinct and devote himself to others. I fancy his life in the world of fashion merely expressed his taste for self-indulgence, pursued with the energy which he devotes to everything.’
    There was a pause, filled with the screaming of children.
    ‘Perhaps so,’ was all Clare said.
    Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. He felt no need to say more. He had done his duty. He made a peculiar jerky bow and sidled away. He sincerely hoped the girl would take up with Graham again and marry him. After that conversation, it would be outrageously embarrassing always meeting her in the hospital.
    Clare went to her small office and sat at her desk. It was all dreadfully confusing. Of course, she still loved Graham. Of course, she would happily marry him. Had she been five years younger she wouldn’t have hesitated. But the lesson of Cosy Cot was not one she was anxious to learn over again—unless that funny old stick Haileybury was right, and Graham had really shed his old habits. When they had lived together she had seen mostly Graham’s best side, and that was certainly something worth taking a risk for. On the other hand, with Graham you could never tell how he was going to behave about anything, even the way he liked his shirts ironed.
    There was a knock. A cheerful curly-headed young man in a white coat, the thoracic surgeon’s houseman, put his head inside. ‘All right if we have a look at that patent ductus, Sister?’
    ‘Yes, of course, Mr Cooper.’ Clare got up. The surgeons were daringly starting to operate in the area of the heart itself, and had tied off an abnormal bloodvessel in a little girl suffering this congenital defect. She gathered up her notes. ‘The patient’s doing very well, I’m glad to say.’
    ‘That’s splendid. Then we’ll have another one for you to nurse next month.’
    ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be here by then, Mr Cooper. I’m leaving to get married.’ Clare stood looking at him, still wondering why she had said it.
    Graham found a wedding in middle life a surprisingly agreeable experience. Though after all, he told himself, unlike most bridegrooms, he wasn’t marrying an almost total stranger.
    Graham’s first marriage had been one of the social landmarks of 1920. Maria had worn a train twelve feet long, there had been a shoal of expensively outfitted bridesmaids, all of whose names and faces he had long ago forgotten, and the first Lord Cazalay had driven her up in a brand-new Rolls Royce. The young John Bickley had been his best man, and the second Lord Cazalay, now calculating his chances in a remand cell, had become embarrassingly drunk. The reception had been in some official building, though Graham had gathered the bride’s father would have preferred Buckingham Palace could he have arranged it. As Graham had expected, nobody had taken much notice of himself. He had later come to appreciate this was true of even the humblest marriages, which he supposed were largely occasions for the parents to entertain their friends and show off without risk of later backbiting.
    His own wedding was the first Graham had attended since the miserable afternoon at the marriage of Peter Thomas—who Graham was delighted to find from the newspapers seemed to be making a fortune with some