Surgeon at Arms (21 page)

‘But darling! I’ve only just arrived.’

‘I’m feeling restless.’

‘Oh, all right, then. You do carry on peculiarly sometimes, darling, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I know I do. Very peculiarly. All my life. It’s a bit late in the day to change my habits, I’m afraid.’

‘I see you’re in your
interesting
mood,’ she told him. It was too bad, but she had to put up with it. He seemed very wealthy.

The nightclub, like a dozen others sprouting after the war, was in a basement near Piccadilly. Graham signed an order for a bottle of gin, which was supposed to be sealed and reproduced at the guest’s next visit, but somehow never was. There was a rumba band and they danced for a few minutes on the overcrowded floor. ‘Let’s go home,’ said Graham. ‘This place is suffocating.’

‘Darling, what’s wrong with you tonight? You can hardly wait to get at it.’

‘You’re right. I can’t. I feel like it.’

‘I don’t know!’ She laughed. You’re worse than any of the young ones.’

‘The young ones don’t need consoling.’

She ruffled the hair in the nape of his neck, which he was allowing to grow rather long. ‘What do you need consoling about? You’ve got everything.’

‘I’ve got nothing. Nothing that counts.’

‘Now you
are
being interesting. I can’t see anything you lack.’

‘A human being, the most precious commodity of all.’

‘What about me. Aren’t I human.’

‘Shall we go?’

‘Oh, all right, darling. Though don’t rush at me like a bull when we get in, will you?’

When they reached the flat she insisted on taking her time, to put him in his place. ‘Can’t we have a drink?’

‘Yes, of course.’

As he poured out the gin she took a cigarette and remarked, ‘That’s a pretty picture.’

‘Yes, it is pretty. That’s its trouble. There’s no feeling underneath.’

‘Who did it?’

‘I did. Before the war.’

‘Really?’ She looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were an artist I mean, apart from making people faces. I suppose that’s much the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘I
am
an artist. Rather than a surgeon. I am an artist obliged to conform with the discipline of a surgeon’s life.’

‘That doesn’t seem to worry you,’ she laughed.

‘It does, quite often. For most of my life I’ve fought against the rigidity and stuffiness of the medical profession. Now I’m not so sure. It’s rewarding, being set apart, being someone special. Even if it’s only through your own rules, many of which can be extremely silly. I suppose it was the war which changed my mind, though I didn’t realize it at the time.’

‘Please, darling, don’t go on about the war again.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m really trying to forget it, but it keeps coming back, more and more.’ He sipped his drink and reflected, ‘It was really the only worthwhile time in my life, out at that annex place.’

She stubbed out her fresh cigarette. ‘Come along, darling, shall we get on with it?’ she invited. Anything to stop him talking about the war.

Graham had taken to copulating with the fight on. He found it more amusing, and anyway had read somewhere that turning out the light was a suburban habit. Liz, possibly worn out by her exertions on the stage, fell asleep almost immediately afterwards. He lay for a long time looking up at the ceiling. She really was a ghastly female. She was fat, and her breasts fell away to the sides of her chest like a pair of half-filled sandbags. Still, she had a kind heart and she was always available, valuable and infrequent attributes in any female. He would be generous writing her cheque in the morning. He must have been rather difficult to tolerate that evening. His life was all wrong, all completely wrong. But he didn’t see much prospect of setting it right, even if he had the remotest idea what the right sort of life for himself should be.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE SAME EVENING Desmond Trevose was entertaining his cousin Alec to dinner at high table in his Cambridge college.

Desmond had spent six months at Smithers Botham as Mr. Twelvetrees’ house-surgeon, and a further year as his registrar, which substituted for service in the thinning ranks of the Army. He was a good house-surgeon, competent and thoughtful, skilful enough with his hands as assistant in the theatre. But he was not really a success.

He was too cold, too brusque with the patients. He had no sense of human relationships. This was admittedly not a necessity for the effective, or even successful, medical man. Many renowned surgeons have been abominably rude. Others like Mr. Cramphorn regarded hospital patients as simple-minded supplicants, unable to grasp such intellectual matters as the nature of the disease which irked them, which having a Latin name could only be discussed, if at all, by educated gentlemen. But the mood of the patients, like the mood of the nation, was becoming restless with smug authority. Medicine had advanced during the war as strikingly as aeronautics, the hospital doctor found himself turning into an applied scientist, yet the more he could do for his patients the less they seemed to regard him. It was baffling, not only for Mr. Cramphorn. But the patients were only daring to express what they had expected from their medical attendants all along—to be their friend in health, their ally in sickness, and their companion in death, a relationship previously accorded only to those among them with a fee in their pockets.

Early in 1947 Desmond applied for a research scholarship at his old college, to study anatomy. It was in the blood.
The Synovial Membranes
, the anatomical thesis by his grandfather the professor, published in the year of Desmond’s birth, lay on his desk in the college rooms. The old boy had a few sound ideas, Desmond decided, though the bulk of the book was nonsense. But the synovial membranes, lining the joints of the body, might be worth a second look, and he decided to spend a year taking it.

He had asked Alec to dinner with no feelings of duty or affection. After living with him for a year in the medical officers’ mess at Smithers Botham, Desmond had allowed the lifelong tepidity of his feelings towards his cousin to cool into frosty dislike. But having him up for the night seemed the only way to pin him down. Desmond wanted his money back, and Alec showed reluctance even to discuss such ungentlemanly a subject.

‘I hope you won’t find that guest room too chilly,’ said Desmond, standing before dinner amid the beams of his own sitting-room. ‘Did my gyp light a fire? I expect he’ll give you a hot-water bottle.’

‘Don’t I need a gown, or something?’

‘Guests at dinner aren’t required to wear them,’ Desmond told him solemnly. ‘What have you there?’

‘Gin.’ Alec produced the bottle from inside his jacket. ‘A brand I’ve never heard of, it’s probably full of methyl alcohol, enough to turn you blind. Not to worry. I was damn lucky to get it. I thought it would be an acceptable present.’

‘I’d rather not risk it, if you don’t mind,’ said Desmond warily. ‘I’ve got some reasonable college sherry.’

‘You won’t mind if I drink the stuff?’ Alec had brought the bottle only with this intention. Desmond was a mean host. ‘Do you remember the trouble we had buying booze at Smithers Botham? That ghastly grocer with his wine counter.’ Alec poured half a tumbler of gin, which he started to sip neat. ‘It was a kindly Act of God which landed him on us with a strangulated hernia. Afterwards I believe he genuinely tried to do his best for his medical customers. He was dead scared he might find himself in our hands again.’

‘Everyone drank far too much at Smithers Botham.’

‘You know, I loved the place. A lot of people were browned off with it, but not me. I suppose it was because you could get away with anything. No stuffiness. Do you remember that party when some fellow kept insisting on lighting his own flatus with a match? It was quite sensational. Amused the girls terribly.’

‘Aren’t you drinking rather a lot yourself, Alec?’

‘I expect I’m an alcoholic. My present employment is enough to make me one.’ Alec had left Smithers Botham for a hospital in the north of England, where he was an anaesthetic registrar. ‘It’s a ghastly hole. The town’s all trains. They seem to go clanking and hooting everywhere, into tunnels, across viaducts, holding up all the traffic at level crossings. The hospital’s dreadful. Not a gentleman in the place. All the residents are Irishmen, Indians, Scotsmen, those sort of people. No intellectual conversation. Anyway, drinking seems to do my asthma good.’

Desmond put his hands behind his back and pursed his lips.

‘I thought you might have given conventional treatment a chance first.’

‘But I did.’ Alec finished his gin and poured himself another. Desmond began to feel worried. His cousin had become dreadfully unreliable socially, and it would never do upsetting the dignity of the dons’ dining table. ‘I was skin-tested, and they told me I was allergic to grasses—crested dog’s-tail, sheep’s fescue, bird’s foot trefoil. Whoever could imagine things with such lovely names doing anyone the slightest harm. It’s ridiculous.’

‘That’s not a very reasonable attitude towards medicine, is it?’

‘Well, medicine’s only a branch of zoology. We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously. But I let them fill me up with grass extracts. They didn’t do the slightest good. Did you know I went to a psychiatrist at Smithers Botham?’

‘There was a rumour to that effect.’ Desmond gave a faint smile. ‘Nobody seemed to think it particularly surprising.’

‘Of course I kept quiet about it. For a Blackfriars houseman, visiting a psychiatrist would be far more shameful than visiting a prostitute. I went to see old Dency. He said I suffered from
Haltlosigkeit.’
Desmond frowned. ‘It means an irresponsible, aimless personality, with no persevance, no will-power, no concentration, and no particular interests. An optimistic hysteric who lives for the present and refuses to learn from experience. I looked it up. Possibly he’s right. It’s apparently due to maternal over-indulgence in early childhood.’

‘How is your mother?’ Desmond asked.

‘She seems happy enough in the States. I suppose it’s nice to warm your feet on the small of a man’s back again, even at her age. And even with a cold fish like her husband. I always thought Americans noisy and fun-loving, like the ones we used to see lounging about Piccadilly and spitting on the pavement. She a peculiar woman, my mother. It’s odd, the particular severity one judges one’s parents with as one grows up. Must be fundamental. Some species eat theirs. Dency looked after
your
mother, didn’t he?’

Desmond nodded. He supposed the reminder was vaguely ill-intentioned.

‘Do you think he’s a pansy?’ Alec asked. ‘He kept patting me, like the geography master at school.’

‘He’s got a certain effeminacy of manner,’ admitted Desmond awkwardly. Homosexuality was not a subject to be mentioned, even in private.

‘Are
you
a pansy, Desmond?’

Desmond went red. ‘How dare you ask such a thing?’

‘I’ve often wondered. You’re not particularly interested in girls. I don’t believe you’ve ever had one, have you? Even at a Smithers Botham party, where maidenheads popped like the balloons.’

‘I can hardly afford to get involved with women,’ said Desmond defensively. ‘I’ll be here a year, maybe two, hardly paid at all. Only my keep and an honorarium. I can’t expect to sponge on my father at his age.’

‘You asked me here to get your money back, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, ’ said Desmond.

‘You haven’t got a hope, old cock.’

Desmond stuck his hands in his pockets and asked angrily, ‘Why don’t you make some attempt to behave honourably about it? It’s a debt. It’s on paper. You’d never have qualified at all without it.’

‘In good time, all in good time,’ said Alec amiably. ‘At the moment I’ve rather a lot of expenses. I’m going to get married.’ Desmond stared at him. ‘To Felicity, only daughter of Air Marshal Sir Giles Perrins, K.C.B., D.S.O., D.F.C. And bar. Very grand, you see.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Come, Desmond. The only asset I’ve got is a strange sex appeal. Don’t deny me that.’

‘I still don’t believe you. How on earth would you meet her?’

‘At some sort of social to do with my present hospital. She was a W.A.A.F. I asked her and she said yes. Remarkably straightforward. I’m seeing her in Town tomorrow. She’s just been demobbed.’

Desmond digested this. ‘What can I say? I hope you’ll be very happy.’

‘Thank you.’

A bell started to ring. Desmond picked up his gown. ‘It’s time for hall.’

‘So you see, Desmond, I shall shortly be in a position to pay you off. I should imagine the dowry will be considerable. They’re stinking rich. For the moment, patience.’

As Alec reached for his gin-bottle again, Desmond said testily, ‘You haven’t time for another.’

‘But I must, Desmond. I
must.
I have a pathological fear of meeting strangers. Don’t worry. I shan’t be sick into the soup, or anything like that.’