Ypres was a British bullet, by Dunkirk 'psychological exhaustion' had become entirely respectable. The Government had a particular new enthusiasm for plastic surgery. Men with faces smashed on the Somme were, if lucky, returned home looking grotesque, and if unlucky, either died or recovered so splendidly they were sent back to present another target. Then Harold Gillies created with the basic elements of surgery and the penetrating eye of an artist his brand-new science of facial repair, though until the Armistice his notion of returning casualties to the world looking roughly like human beings attracted derision from many senior officers, to whom it was a matter of supreme indifference if a man got his face shot off or his backside.
But the Government's enthusiasm outran its supply of trained plastic surgeons, who were as scarce as trained pilots. Apart from Graham Trevose, there were only four, installed in special new units round London. Gillies, being the senior man, insisted on first choice and went to Basingstoke in Hampshire (it was convenient for his fly-fishing). An unknown surgeon called Archie McIndoe descended on the charming little local hospital at East Grinstead in Sussex. But Graham went nowhere. He had been overlooked, he assumed deliberately.
Graham was a realist. He knew he was dismissed by his profession as a 'beauty doctor', a trivial practitioner, a refurbisher of distraught dйbutantes who had inherited daddy's nose along with his money. He had admittedly specialized in offering hope to young actresses who saw their names one day in lights, or to old actresses for whom the lights were starting to dim. He had erased the scars of hunting accidents from the cheeks as neatly as those of dissipation from below the eyes, and the 'Trevose nose' was famous in London society-a little too famous: women were starting to recognize its distinctive handiwork across crowded cocktail parties. Perhaps he had made and spent too much money, lived too fashionably. Perhaps his private life unfitted him for employment by His Majesty. He had recently had a close shave from the General Medical Council over the famous 'infamous conduct'. Or perhaps, he told himself wearily, some stupid clerk in the Ministry had simply mislaid his file.
When the war was a month old, before he had set eyes on Smithers Botham, Graham was surprised by a telephone call inviting him to meet Brigadier Haileybury at his club the following evening. Before the war, Haileybury, too, had been a civilian plastic surgeon, and the pair had for twenty years lived in mutual dislike. It was a dignified but deadly feud, and like all feuds afforded the onlookers much innocent amusement. But Graham accepted the invitation. He had nothing else to do. And it would be the first time that he could remember Haileybury buying him a drink.
The newly created brigadier was already waiting. Of all the man's virtues, Graham found his strict punctuality the most regularly irritating.
'Well, Trevose, you're looking fit.'
'That's very kind. So are you.'
'I'm finding it difficult to get enough exercise, sitting all day behind a desk.' Haileybury held an administrative job in the Army medical services. He had a flair for organizing people. 'Shall we find a quiet corner in the morning room?'
Haileybury ordered sherry. He was a tall, thin, bald, graceless man with large red hands more fitting a stevedore than a surgeon, wearing an immaculate uniform with red tabs. 'I've just seen Tom Raleigh,' he stated.
'Oh, Tom.' Tom Raleigh was a young plastic surgeon, Graham's partner until the arrangement was disrupted through the Trevose temperament, which was almost as famous in London as the nose.
'You know he's been called up for the R.A.M.C.? I could have had him left in civvy street had you wanted his services. But you'll remember, when I enquired, you turned the idea down very flatly indeed.'
Graham did remember. He'd learned Tom had supplied evidence leading to that close shave with the General Medical Council. A stroke of treachery he was disinclined to overlook. But he said only,
'I assure you that you're misinformed, Trevose,' Haileybury said hastily. 'I admit there was some hesitation…' He stopped. Under the circumstances, it seemed best not to recall the past. 'Anyway, you'll shortly have your chance to join the civilian Emergency Medical Service. I thought that something really should be done about you.'
The condescension grated on Graham, but he said nothing. He was adjusting himself to being a nonentity, while Haileybury was now one of the nation's elite, as you could tell from a glance at his clothes.
'But I have something better to offer.'
Graham looked up.
'I have never made a secret of my disagreement with you on many things, Trevose, personal and professional.'
'No, you haven't,' Graham concurred.
Haileybury had passed his civilian years between the wars with a modesty indistinguishable from drabness, his bachelor home in Richmond as plain as his sister's cooking, his few amusements harmless to the point of boredom. Where Graham saw plastic surgery as an exciting art in the most rewarding medium of all, human flesh and blood, to Haileybury it was a science, the calculated repair of injuries and defects rather than interference with the endowments of Nature. He would have been almost as reluctant to reshape an actress's nose as to perform her abortion.
'Neither have I made a secret of my admiration for your workmanship,' Haileybury went on. 'Your surgery on burns at Blackfriars called for far wider recognition.'
'I found it a very interesting branch of plastics.'
'I supposed you didn't publish it because you found the surgery of pretty women even more interesting.'
'That's unfair. It was simply because I hadn't the time.'
'Forgive me. Perhaps it's not the first occasion I've misconstrued your motives.'
'Misconstrued?' Graham smiled. 'Are you being honest with yourself?'
'I think that my next remarks will prove that. I am going to offer you a responsibility which, to be frank, I would offer no-one else.' The brigadier leaned back impressively. 'The responsibility for all facial and related wounds in the Army. Let your mind dwell on it a moment. I can promise you a perfectly free hand. Within the usual limits you will be your own master. I can promise you first-class accommodation and equipment. You can pick your own team. You can organize your own training programme and choose whom you want to train. No one will interfere. I give you my guarantee. Come! Just think. Isn't it a splendid chance to make a second reputation?'
Graham said nothing. His quick mind had fallen on the suggestion like a terrier, worrying the different elements from it.
'Of course, you're already famous,' Haileybury conceded. 'Far more than myself. Everyone in London knows Graham Trevose.'
'By 'everyone in London',' Graham suggested, 'I presume you mean the few despised for regularly getting their names in the papers by the many who wish they could?'
Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm trying to say this would bring a different sort of fame. It's a chance to get yourself remembered as Gillies was in the last war. Surely that would be reward enough?'
The idea appealed to Graham. He would be making himself known to men who had, at the most, only seen his name in the gossip columns. It suited his exhibitionism, which had saddened his friends in the profession as much as it had enraged his enemies. He would be running his own show, pushing his own ideas, moulding his own assistants. Haileybury would be as good as his word-that was another of his infuriating virtues. Anyway, it would be better than doing nothing.
A thought struck him. 'You mean I'd have to join the Army?'
Haileybury looked surprised. 'That would be inescapable.'
'What rank?'
'Lieutenant-colonel.'
'Is that the best you can do?' Graham asked crossly.
'That's a very high rank.' Haileybury was shocked. 'Quite a number of senior men are coming in as majors.'
'Then it's out of the question.'
Why, he would be subordinate to Haileybury! Even if he, too, became in time a brigadier, the fellow would by then be a general, or some such. He would have to call the bloody man 'Sir'! A grisly thought.
'Totally out of the question,' Graham repeated. 'I was a civilian in the last war and I'd best stay a civilian in this one. I'm not the military type.'
