SURGEON AT ARMS

'Thank you,' said Graham shortly.

'Well, Graham-you've become more famous than ever. I always seem to be reading about you in the papers.'

'I'm only doing my job. Like a lot of others who don't get noticed.'

'I'm with security, you know.'

'I thought you were censoring civilian letters?'

'It's the same thing,' said Lord Cazalay, looking put out.

The landlord reappeared, holding an unopened bottle of Haig like a newborn baby. As he poured three measures Lord Cazalay went on, 'What are your plans for after the war, Graham?'

'I think it's only courting disappointment making any.'

'I wouldn't say that. It'll be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Like last time. The thing is to get in early, before the mugs. There'll be pickings enough for the right people.'

'Where precisely do you intend to pick, if I may ask?'

'Travel.' Lord Cazalay swallowed his whisky and demanded another. 'People have been cooped up here all the war, they'll be bursting to get out and about. There'll be plenty of spare shipping space, Army buses, that sort of thing, if you know where to put your hands on them. I've plenty of valuable contacts in France. I doubt whether they've got into any trouble with the Germans.' He looked at his glass reflectively, and added, 'As a matter of fact, I'm starting a small company. If you're interested, I could let you have a piece of it.'

Graham thought this brazen, even for his brother-in-law. "You're asking me for money, after having tried to get me publicly disgraced as a professional man?'

Lord Cazalay looked serious, then said, 'Graham, I'm glad you raised that business. It's been on my conscience. I'd been meaning to have a word with you, but with the war, of course, everything's been difficult. It was all a tragic misunderstanding, surely? I was simply wrongly advised. It was a relief to me nothing came of it.'

'It was to me, too.'

'Don't you trust me?' he asked, part humorously and part aggressively.

'I don't think this is quite the occasion to conduct commercial affairs.'

'No, no, perhaps you're right,' Lord Cazalay said quickly. 'Now we must be going. Desmond has to catch a train for Portsmouth.'

'We'll keep in touch,' Lord Cazalay promised. 'Yes, very much in touch.'

They left him with the bottle of whisky, which he seemed about to settle down and finish, on the estimable principle that unexpected blessings needed exploiting to the full.

16

'What was it like?' asked Clare as Graham got back to the bungalow, having left Desmond at the station in Maiden Cross. 'More harrowing than I imagined.'

'Do you want some tea, darling? You can't have had anything to eat.'

'I don't think I'm hungry, really.'

He sat in an armchair in the sitting-room and picked up the _Daily Press._ He hadn't seen a paper that morning. 'The Russians seem to be doing well,' he observed. He wondered what Val Arlott had meant about a war with the Soviets. They seemed prickly customers, but at least they were on our side, and putting up a far better showing than last time.

'Did you see the brother?'

'Yes.'

'Any trouble?'

'No, he tried to borrow some money off me.'

Clare sat on the arm of his chair. 'I can see it's upset you, Graham.'

'It was all the paraphernalia-dirges, gloomy incantations, that sort of thing. Why should I be disturbed by her death in itself? It was a merciful release, overdue if anything.'

'I never met her, of course. But I thought I knew her. I've so often imagined her lying beside you.'

'That was never particularly successful or pleasurable.'

'What was she like? In her prime?'

Graham tossed the paper down. 'Active. Always busy. A great do-gooder. On dozens of committees. She was an intelligent woman before her brain gave way. We had a rather cerebral relationship, I suppose. She was dreadfully afraid of her own emotions. The only thing in the world she was afraid of.'

'What made you marry her?'

'Who knows at such distance why they married anyone?'

After a pause she asked, 'When are we going to be married ourselves, Graham?'

'There'll have to be a decent interval, naturally.'

'Of course, I appreciate that.'

'I've got to take some account of the world in general, however much I despise it. There'd be gossip if we got married tomorrow-Crampers, the Bickleys, everyone at Smithers Botham. It would probably get into the papers, certainly into the Press. I don't want to invite maliciousness. God knows I've had to suffer enough of it recently.'

She noticed it didn't occur to Graham even to ask her own sentiments. Clare was used to his self-centredness. She had decided there was nothing unkind or even unattractive about it. In some ways it was a virtue. His egotism, more than anything else, had made the annex what it was. If Graham could think of nobody but himself, she felt resignedly, it was perhaps because there was nobody in his acquaintance half as interesting.

'How long?' she asked.

'I really can't say off-hand, Clare. I've had no experience of the situation.'