'No, it's my mother,' Desmond told him with careful casualness. 'I've just heard. She's had a stroke. Quite a severe one, I gather.'
'I say, I'm sorry.'
'So am I. But these vascular accidents happen.' Desmond got up. 'Shouldn't you try and find someone to mend your socks?'
It would never do to display emotion, or even concern, especially in front of Alec.
The news telephoned from Sussex that morning was hardly a surprise to Graham. For a year Maria's blood- pressure had been steadily mounting, as she became fatter than ever. He still hadn't divorced her. The plan had somehow been overlooked in the flurry of his reinstatement at the annex. He told Clare-as he told himself-the episode of his sacking must be taken as a warning. For the patients to continue benefiting from his abilities, he must be careful about publicity in the future. A divorce case in the papers certainly wouldn't help his standing in the eyes of the Ministry. Such distressing tangles were perhaps best unravelled after the war, when he was his own master again. Clare agreed. The subject was dropped. So was that of a second excursion into pregnancy. Among any affectionate couple the matters never mentioned are generally the important ones.
Their domestic bliss at Cosy Cot continued. Clare didn't go back to her work at the annex, but stayed at home to look after the house, grow radishes and lettuces in the garden, and cook the rations. They were frequently indebted to Mr Cramphorn, who seemed to have taken to them after Graham's brush with authority, and would appear at the door with a rabbit he had shot, or a pigeon, or a rook, or even a squirrel, which he proclaimed excellent eating if roasted with a strip of bacon, as inclined to be rather dry. The food situation was trying, Graham himself sometimes guiltily brought liquid paraffin from the hospital to eke out the cooking fat, until the Ministry tumbled to this regrettably widespread practice and added the chemical phenolphthalein, which turned the fried fish bright pink.
'What's Maria's prognosis, Graham?' Clare asked.
They were sitting on the handkerchief of a lawn in the garden that evening, waiting for Desmond. Graham had managed to buy a bottle of Pimm's No. 1, which he prepared with great enthusiasm, adding bits of apple, cucumber rind, mint, and even carrot. 'It's difficult to say. She may recover, more or less completely. She may end up with a hemiplegia, half-paralyzed-and dumb, of course, if her speech centre's gone. She may go on having small strokes for months, even years. On the other hand she may develop broncho-pneumonia and die in a week. These patients get bedsores, sepsis, you know. Sometimes they just fade out.'
Clare said nothing. If Maria died, the last obstacle to their marriage would die with her. Well, the last excuse, anyway. Sensing her thoughts, Graham added, 'I should have gone ahead with that divorce.' He reached out and took her hand. 'I know how you feel, and it must be awful. Stepping into a dead woman's shoes.'
'No, I don't feel that at all, darling. Maria's never been more than an abstract quality to me.'
'You should have made me do something about those lawyers.'
'You'd have said I was nagging.' She laughed. 'You might have left me.'
He squeezed her hand and said, 'Don't be silly. You know perfectly well-' He broke off. A noise. A motor bike in the sky, coming nearer. 'Is that one?' he asked anxiously. 'Yes, I rather think it is.'
'Crampers told me the one which fell in Maiden Cross yesterday killed about twenty people.'
The engine stopped.
'It's a long way off,' he said, still sounding uncomfortable.
They stared at each other. The silence seemed to last for an age. Finally there was an explosion far in the distance.
'Some of them glide on for miles,' Graham observed. The flying-bombs had taken on an ill-natured personality of their own. They were malevolent, winged, fire-spitting beasts, no impossible to relate to the busy grey-uniformed squads dispatching them. 'I hope Desmond's all right,' he added in a worried voice.
But Desmond arrived unaware of his peril. He spent the night in the bungalow, setting off early the next morning with Graham in the Morris. The nursing-home where Maria lay ill catered for a more genteel mental sufferer than once found themselves in Smithers Botham. It was a manor house providing seclusion, fresh vegetables from the garden, and nursing which was unfailingly kindly if not particularly skilful. They were received by the matron, a stout, blue-uniformed north-countrywoman, radiating cheerfulness. 'The poor soul's poorly, of that there's no doubt,' she greeted Graham. 'If she went, we'd quite miss her, you know. She's been with us longer than anyone.'
Graham was familiar enough with Maria's room. She had occupied the same one since he had her shut up in the place ten years ago. It was small, bright in the sunshine, with a vase of pink roses beside the bed. Maria was unconscious, breathing noisily. It was too soon after the haemorrhage, which had sprung from a brittle artery amid the microscopic telephone-cables of her brain, to tell the extent of her coming paralysis. Graham noticed she suffered the indignity of a large fly crawling unmolested across her cheek. Her grey hair lay neatly on the pillow in two plaits, each tied with a pink bow, like a schoolgirl's.
Desmond stood in the background, looking solemn. However much he had prepared himself, however often he had observed the same clinical state in others, however little he felt for his insane mother, it was a shock to see her like that. Graham went to the bed and felt her pulse. His fingers slipped down to take her flaccid hand. It reminded him of the night when her troubles had started, when she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping-draught and had been saved by the skill of John Bickley. He suddenly felt himself touched. Now his wife lay under his eyes as a dying wreck, he felt a surge of love for her. It was stronger than any he could remember in his life, even before he had married her.
'Isn't her breathing rather obstructed?' he complained mildly.
'The doctor will be along by and by,' the matron told him comfortably. 'Doubtless he'll deal with it.'
Graham nodded. He supposed at that stage it didn't make twopence worth of difference. 'Perhaps you'll ring me at Smithers Botham, Matron, if she takes a turn for the worse?'
'I will that, Mr Trevose.' In the corridor outside she went on cheerfully, 'It's sad, isn't it, your poor wife should be smitten when there're such good news on the wireless this morning.' As Graham looked at her blankly she explained, 'Haven't you heard? They've tried to blow up Hitler with a bomb. The Germans themselves. It won't be long now till it's all over and done with, you mark my words.'
As they drove away, Graham said to Desmond, 'I suppose there're people who ought to know. You'd better try and get hold of your uncle Charles. You can probably find his whereabouts if you telephone Val Arlott's office at the
'Do you want to speak to Uncle Charles yourself, Dad?'
'I most certainly do not.' Graham drove in silence for a mile. 'So they tried to liquidate _Der Fьhrer,_ did they? Perhaps they'll end up with a revolution in Berlin, like last time. It could all be over by Christmas.'
Graham hardly said anything for the rest of the journey. The shadow of death that hung over both Hitler and Maria was bringing to the front of his mind difficult problems.
15
Maria's funeral caused a frightful fuss. She lingered a week, regaining consciousness, her hand groping the air, her eyes askew, speechless. During the days she was passive enough, but at nights she grew restless, clawing at her sheets, trying to get out of bed. The nurses were perfectly used to such behaviour. They brought long boards to slot along the sides of her bed, as though she were in her coffin already. On the Thursday morning she had another cerebral haemorrhage, and left life as she had entered it, with a gasp.
When they telephoned Graham at Smithers Botham he shrugged his shoulders. But he was surprised at his inner distress. It is a merciful quality of the human mind never completely to expect the inevitable. There were practical details again. He knew his wife wished to be buried at Biddenden, in more glorious days the Cazalay family's country 'place'. She had told him as much when her life was in danger once before, at the stormy birth of Desmond. But Biddenden was in Kent, and since the opening of the second front a military area. Graham seemed to remember that permits were needed to venture there. He approached Captain Pile, who confessed it outside his authority-though he had taken to Graham since the surgeon had become a national figure, often boasting to his cronies of association with this wonderful work. The undertakers finally sorted things out, and the following
