SURGEON AT ARMS

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.