Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. 'You would be the better man.'
'Aren't you rather carrying modesty to extremes?' Graham found himself faintly irritated by Haileybury's honesty. It was something of an affront. 'You're the one who's preached for years that plastic surgery was essentially the surgery of repair. As for me, I'm a beauty-doctor, a face-faker.'
'And that, if I may say so, is a rather over-modest view of your work during the war.'
'I thought you imagined my work during the war was grabbing publicity?'
'I did imagine it at the time,' Haileybury told him frankly, 'but I was wrong. I didn't understand the importance of the cosmetic work you were doing. I make all the apologies you feel you deserve. It was difficult, confined to administrative tasks. I was too far from individual patients. I came to appreciate only late in the war how much you did for morale.' He tapped the table with his long forefinger. 'And that is what we need in this new place of mine. Someone to make plain that those mutilated by the hazards of peace can be treated as effectively as those mutilated by the hazards of war.'
'But Eric! This is an enormous job you're asking me to take on. There're all manner of questions for me to decide first.'
'At least the financial question will decide itself. As director, you would draw the appropriate consultant's salary in the new health service. Plus a merit award, doubtiess, if that part of the scheme goes through.'
'But what time have I for such responsibilities? Don't forget I've a busy private practice.'
'I regret that private practice would not enter into it. The post would be full-time. You know how strongly the Government feels on such points.'
'Then I'm afraid it's out of the question.'
'Do you know, Graham, it's the second time you have used that expression to me sitting exactly in this spot?'
Graham smiled. 'I'm sorry. I much appreciate the honour you've paid me, but I must look to my own interests. I've landed myself with a hell of a lot of debts, to be paid off somehow before I'm too old to work at all. I'd love to accept, Eric, the idea's got tremendous attraction, it would be like the annex all over again. But I'm afraid it's just not on.'
'Last time, I made the mistake of pressing you for a decision. I shall not repeat it. There is plenty of time- months, perhaps a year, perhaps two. Any moment you feel inclined to discuss the matter further, lift a telephone. Will you promise?'
'Very well,' Graham told him amicably. 'I'll keep it constantly before me. Should I undergo a change of heart you'll hear at once.'
'Excellent. Now let us drop the subject and talk about something else. Very sad, don't you think, Graham, the prospects for the coming county cricket season?'
Graham quickly put the offer out of mind. A salaried post, he decided, would be far more suitable for a man of modest tastes like Haileybury himself. But even Haileybury indulged in a little private practice. He did operations every Saturday morning in a small hospital near the Crystal Palace, which during the war had somehow fallen under the domination of his own in London, King Alfred's, and afterwards never escaped. It had few private beds, the theatres were antiquated, but the nursing was sound and the general atmosphere Haileybury found agreeably modest. John Bickley was a consultant to the hospital and generally gave Haileybury's anaesthetics, though regretting that Haileybury didn't take the same wide view of operating fees as Graham.
The following Saturday, as Haileybury was finishing the repair of a child's cleft palate, he observed to John, 'I saw Trevose the other day.'
'Yes, I ran into him only last week. He seems to be doing as well as ever.'
'He's full of bounce, certainly. With Trevose that generally indicates a stuffed wallet.'
'Did you think him cheerful? I felt he was rather miserable with himself.'
Haileybury inserted the final stitches in the child's mouth. 'He's a man of moods,' he observed drily. 'And that nephew of his has gone off his head.'
John frowned under his surgical cap. 'Alec was my junior assistant. He was something of a queer fish, I must say.'
'That goes for all the Trevose family, doesn't it? They don't make life easy for themselves.'
'Perhaps you're right. 'John disconnected the long corrugated rubber tube of his anaesthetic apparatus. 'Alec's mother will be upset. She had high hopes for him. Saw him as a second Horder, I believe.'
'Well, he might achieve it yet. Some of our most eminent breathren have been somewhat unbalanced. It's a matter of survival until they reach the position where nobody dare mention it.'
John removed the throat-pack and the thin, wire-stiffened armoured Magill tube from the child's windpipe. 'I think I'll go back to the ward with this one.'
'All is well, I trust?' asked Haileybury sharply.
'Yes, perfectly. But you can never be sure of anything at all in this game.'
In the children's ward at the end of the corridor he passed his patient to the care of the staff-nurse, and asked, 'Where's Sister?'
'In her office, Dr Bickley.'
John knocked on the door by the ward entrance and went in. Clare Mills looked up from her desk. 'Hello!' She smiled. 'Quite a stranger.'
'I was bringing back that palate.' He popped a cigarette over his sagging mask and lit it. 'I had a chat with Graham last Saturday night.'
Clare raised her eyebrows. At first she said nothing, but moved some notes on her desk. 'And how is he?'
'He's wearing well. And he seemed to be enjoying life. Or trying to convince himself that he was.'
'I'm glad he's all right.'
'Do you ever hear from him?'
'Oh, no! I would never have expected that. Not with Graham.'
'He didn't mention you at all,' John volunteered.
'I wouldn't have expected that, either. Once anyone's left his orbit he likes to cut them out completely. To forget about them, as though they'd never existed.'
'Even you, who tried to save him from himself?'
'I wasn't conscious of doing so at the time, but I suppose that's true.'
'It's all part of his selfishness, I suppose. Rejecting even those who've helped him, once they're no more use.'
'I don't think so. Not entirely. We can understand his trying to spare himself the pain of sad memories. He inflicts enough on himself. Anyway, he doesn't know where I am,' she added more briskly. 'He doesn't even know if I'm still in the country.'
'Do you want to see him again?'
She looked at him hard for a moment and said, 'What's the point?'
John nodded understandingly and asked, 'Have you any plans-for getting married, that sort of thing? Anyone in mind? I hope you don't mind my asking, Clare. I've come to feel something of an uncle to you.'
She smiled again. 'A very useful uncle. You found me this job.'
'I felt I wanted to do something for you. If you remember, we were both suffering from the Trevose temperament rather severely at the time.'
'Perhaps it was all something to do with war-weariness.'
'You haven't answered my question.'
'No, I haven't anyone in mind. I don't suppose I shall. I've got my work.'
'At which you're extremely efficient.'
'Thank you. Everyone regards me as a dedicated and completely sexless ward sister. There're plenty of them about. The backbone of any hospital. The whole system would fall to bits without such women. When I was in training, I often wondered exactly what created them. Now I know.'
'That sounds a gloomy prognosis for yourself.'
'Perhaps someone will turn up. You never know. Otherwise I shall sister on, until I'm pensioned off and go to live in a seaside boarding-house.'
'But don't you bear any resentment? Towards Graham?'
'How can one bear any resentment towards a maladjusted child?'
