'You'd no hopes of the life hereafter?'
'I preferred to wait and see.'
'I expect you're right. I had a brother once, a medical missionary. He at least departed this life in a spirit of glowing optimism. Do you want some cigarettes?' Graham felt suddenly the conversation was becoming too self-revealing. But now he never had a chance to reveal anything of himself to anybody. 'They're called Sweet Caporals-Canadian, it seems.' He had given up smoking, mainly through the tediousness of queueing, but scrounged what he could for his patients. 'Do you want another book?' He tossed a paperback on his desk, alongside the unfamiliar white packet. In peacetime, he hardly got through a book a year. Now he spent most evenings in his room at The Oak reading. There was nothing like a world war to simplify your life. 'It's _Decline and Fall,_ by Evelyn Waugh. Very funny. How's Bluey getting on?' he added.
'Somewhat restless.'
Graham lit the cigarette in Peter's holder. That was bad news. Bluey had to stand at least another dozen operations, and needed all the patience he could muster.
'Though his morale has improved considerably,' Peter added, 'since getting his hands on a supply of rum. God knows where from. He keeps it in his locker, which I presume is strictly against regulations.'
'The annex houses enough trouble without regulations,' Graham said briefly. He looked at his watch. 'Very well, Peter, off you go on leave. Now there should be a female waiting for me. I don't know what she's like-young, old, fat, thin, as ugly as sin or a goddess. She wants to take over as ward sister, God help her.'
Peter looked surprised. 'The Dragon's going?'
'Yes, Sister James has decided to join the Q.A.S and nurse the Army. You can hardly blame her. After the annex she'll find even a pitched battle a rest cure. As the Blackfriars matron has broken off diplomatic relations with me through the disgraceful behaviour of my patients,' he told Peter with a grin, 'I am obliged to find most of my own staff. This one's been recommended by a surgeon I know in a children's hospital. Just about the right background for handling you lot, I'd imagine. Send her in, will you?'
The prospective sister struck Graham as resembling a Botticelli virgin with disastrous dress-sense. She was slight, fair, and transparent-looking, wearing lisle stockings, stout laced black shoes, and a suit of green and very hairy tweed. She had no hat, her hair was in the usual page-boy bob. Big eyes, Graham noticed, a pretty mouth, if rather over-large. No trace of make-up, but a good skin. He decided she didn't look nearly tough enough.
'It's Miss Mills, isn't it?' he asked, as she sat with hands crossed demurely in her lap. 'I'm afraid all I know about you is confined to a telephone conversation with Mr Cavill, and the line was terrible.'
'Yes. Clare Mills. I'm Mr Cavill's staff nurse.'
She had a soft voice, speaking with great deliberation. Graham noticed she had a trick of emphasizing her last syllables. Probably nervousness, he suspected.
'How old are you?'
'Twenty-three.'
How the nursing profession thrusts responsibility on its daughters! Graham reflected. Before the war, they had to be twenty-one and of unspotted character before being allowed to handle the Blackfriars sick at all. But perhaps women were built for it. After all, there was no responsibility like motherhood, and that was liable to catch a girl unawares anytime.
'I'd better make plain from the start that the work here isn't hard, Miss Mills. It's exhausting. I'm an impossible taskmaster. I'm demanding, boorish, and usually most ungrateful. I don't expect loyalty. I expect devotion. I tolerate incompetence badly, and fools not at all. It's a mystery how I manage to keep any assistants in the place. And the patients are much worse than I am. Life can be hell for nursing staff in the annex. Though, to be fair, most of them seem to find it an enjoyable hell.' Graham smiled at her. 'Would you like to end our interview here and now?'
'I should very much like the post, Mr Trevose.'
'Why?'
She hesitated. 'I've always wanted to work on a plastic surgery unit.'
'A strange ambition.'
She paused again, and went on shyly, 'You once operated on a friend of mine, Mr Trevose. She was a girl-seventeen at the time. She had a deformed lip. Her name was Susan Wright.'
Graham tried to remember. It was impossible. He had operated on so many girls. 'I can only hope the operation was a success?'
'Oh, yes!' She suddenly became animated. 'It made an enormous difference to her. Not only physically, I mean, but mentally. She told me all about you, Mr Trevose-how understanding you were, how skilful. Perhaps it gave me the ambition of one day working for you.'
Graham folded his arms. She was terribly young, but old Cavill had praised her warmly enough. She'd be pretty to have about the annex. Perhaps the boys would take pity on her delicate looks, though he doubted it. And she had a neat hand with flattery. A sensible girl. It was a talent which had taken him a long way at the beginning of his career.
'Can you start on Wednesday?' he asked her.
8
Bluey Jardine bared the upper half of his left arm with an air of resignation. He knew exactly what was coming to him. It was a Friday morning, following the Sunday when Graham had sent Peter Thomas on leave, which gave Bluey the dubious honour of being the ward's oldest inhabitant. He had then been in the annex four months, and into the theatre eight times. Like everyone else, he had developed a keen interest in the science which was bedevilling him.
The routine of an operation had become as familiar to him as the routine of flying. The injection about to enter his arm was his 'premedication', and he even knew the names of the drugs. There was one hundred-and-fiftieth of a grain of scopolamine, which dried up your mouth and lungs and stopped you bubbling and drowning yourself once you were under. There was a third of a grain of omnopon, which was just another name for morphia, and gave you guts. He twitched as the staff nurse punctured his skin with the syringe. The more needles they stuck into you, the more you came to hate them.
He lay back in bed, wearing long white knitted socks and a short over-laundered cotton nightshirt which fastened with rubber buttons at the back. He didn't seem to be growing as drowsy as usual. Perhaps the injection was losing effect. Only to be expected, he told himself. Once he could get drunk on a bottle of beer, now it needed a couple of crates. He wondered how many more operations the Wizz had in store for him. It never occurred to Bluey that he might ask Graham to stop, to leave him with a half-patched face and makeshift hands, but in peace. He accepted his treatment as something which went on until it reached its natural end, like the war.
As they wheeled him the few yards from the ward to the operating theatre on a trolley he searched the ceiling for a peculiar star-shaped crack, as he always touched the dried kangaroo paw in his tunic pocket before flying. Sometimes when they trundled you out you were dead scared, others you didn't give a damn. He supposed it depended how rough they were on your last visit. Anyway, the operation today was kid's stuff. He'd soon get over it. With luck, he'd be out on the grog again on Saturday night, as usual.
The anaesthetic room, improvised out of flimsy partitions, was hardly big enough to hold the patient, the ward nurse accompanying him, the tall frame of John Bickley, and the anaesthetic trolley gleaming with dials, bottles, piping, and coloured cylinders. Bluey raised his head from the pillow. The Gasman, his long green gown pushed up to his elbows, was holding a large syringe.
'Not another bloody needle?'
'You're a favoured customer, Bluey. No gas this time. I'm sending you off with an injection.'
'Go on?' This was an interesting departure, something to tell the ward afterwards. The anaesthetist rubbed a swab of cold antiseptic on the crook of Bluey's left arm. 'What's the stuff called?'