'Evipan.' John drew back the plunger of his syringe, a swirl of blood telling him the needle lay safely inside the vein. If the injection went by error into the skin of Bluey's elbow there would be an abscess, and a terrible row with Graham. 'There, you didn't even feel the needle, did you? Now count, out loud…'
Bluey reached fifteen, yawned deeply, and fell asleep. John plucked out the syringe, simultaneously freeing Bluey's breathing by holding up his chin. 'This stuff was invented by our friends the Germans,' he told the nurse. 'I ought to use it as a routine. The boys get pretty browned off, being suffocated every time with gas. That can't be much fun when you have to face a dozen operations on the trot.'
Like all specialist anaesthetists, John Bickley brought to his work the artistic touch of an experienced chef. First he held a triangular padded mask tight to Bluey's patchwork face, and concocted a delicately proportioned mixture of oxygen and nitrous oxide gas. Then he moved a lever on a bottle of blue liquid to add a trace of trichlorethylene vapour-a more powerful anaesthetic to deepen Bluey's unconsciousness. John edged across the lever on another bottle to admit the pungent vapour of ether, the main ingredient of the dish. Bluey coughed fiercely. He always did, John reflected. He should insist that Graham stop his patients smoking for at least a week before their operations. But Graham objected that would be bad for morale, and they'd smoke in the lavatories, anyway. Graham objected to almost everything he suggested, it struck John wearily, ever since he had started calling for Sunday lunch.
Two coloured bobbins already danced up thin vertical glass tubes on John's anaesthetic trolley, indicating the volume of oxygen and nitrous oxide flowing to his patient. When he judged the anaesthesia deep enough, he sent a third bobbin spinning by adding carbon dioxide to the mixture. This stimulated Bluey's breathing, until he was heaving away as though finishing some desperate race in his sleep. With economical movements, John laid aside the face-mask, reached for a narrow, stiff, greased, red-rubber tube, and inserted it into the remains of Bluey's right nostril. He edged it inwards gently-an unsuspected nasal polyp would bring blood all over the shop and an even worse row with Graham-listening to the breath-sounds as it slipped behind Bluey's flaccid tongue, then finally through his widely open larynx into his windpipe. It was a technique invented by Harold Gillies' own anaesthetist, Ivan Magill, to deliver the anaesthetic directly into the patient's lungs while leaving his face and mouth as a sterile unoccupied battlefield for the plastic surgeon.
'That looked pretty easy, I must say,' observed the nurse, who like all nurses had long ago ceased to be impressed by her medical overlords. But her remark pleased John. The trick was rather like playing darts in the dark, not easy at all. Only the experience of twenty years made it seem so.
As Bluey himself knew, the operation was to be a simple affair. Graham cut a thin graft of skin from Bluey's thigh with a Thiersch knife like an oversized razor, then stitched it along his chin where a former one had failed to take. Bluey was back in bed within the half hour, struggling to consciousness through dreams about flying, which were always unpleasant but soon forgotten. He woke up deciding he didn't feel as bad as usual. The Gasman's injection was a winner. The next night he'd be fit enough to finish the bottle of rum in his locker, then slip out with half a dozen others to The Oak.
Knowing the habits of his patients, Graham made a point on Saturday nights of taking a bus to the pictures in Maiden Cross. That Saturday he queued to see an American film about the war, in which all the Germans conversed in villainous guttural undertones, all the British officers had Oxford accents, and all their men talked like Sam Weller. The star was Stella Garrod, the woman Graham had made a fool of himself with before the war. He wondered wryly if she ever bothered to think of him. In fact, she spoke fondly and often of her affair with the little London surgeon, immorality with Englishmen having, after Dunkirk, considerable kudos in Hollywood.
When Graham reached home on the last bus the pub was already closed, but Bluey and his companions had been disinclined to finish the evening. They had staggered down the Smithers Botham drive singing _Cats on the Rooftops,_ and the night being moonlit someone noticed a collection of builders' materials stacked outside Captain Pile's office under the gleaming portico. Bluey gave a whoop as he found a tin of paint and a brush. A porter appeared through the complicated blackout screening the front door to investigate, but identifying denizens of the annex retreated instantly. Bluey painted across the portico a single word in large letters, one on each of the four columns. Then they went singing and laughing back to the annex and bed. The night nurses were used to it.
Early the next morning Mrs Sedgewick-Smith came down the hospital drive, hurrying to a long-standing appointment with the elderly padre. Mrs Sedgewick-Smith was the wife of a stockbroker who commanded the local Home Guard, and before the war had filled the vacuum of her life by fussing over the mental patients at Smithers Botham, or as many of them as remained socially presentable. She had organized whist drives, jumble sales, demure dances, and extremely amateur theatricals, invited the inmates for tea or for outings in her Rolls, all of which she bracketed as 'giving the poor things a nice little break'. The war presented even more poor things as targets for her deadly solicitude. She had installed herself as unofficial welfare officer at Smithers Botham, and was beginning to hope the war would go on long enough for somebody to give her a medal for it.
She saw the word.
She was horribly shocked. It was not a word which could possibly appear in print, but she had of course overheard it, from workmen, soldiers, lunatics, and the like. She had always imagined it spelt with a 'ph', like 'phutt'. To see it splashed in black paint across the portico was absolutely outrageous. And on a Sunday morning, too. She would have to find Captain Pile.
Captain Pile occupied a comfortable villa in the grounds, where he managed to live in unmilitary domesticity with his wife and two children. He was in his braces, enjoying his breakfast. He put on his tunic and inspected the word officially. Though he used it frequently himself, he had to affect an air of disgust as pained as his informant's. Mrs Sedgewick-Smith must be humoured at all costs. She was a powerful lady at Smithers Botham, the dispenser of valuable grace and favours, mostly unobtainable off the ration.
When Graham arrived at the annex at nine for an informal Sunday ward-round with his new sister, his spirits fell as he noticed Miss Mills in close conversation at the ward door with Captain Pile. He caught sight of Mrs Sedgewick-Smith, and they dropped further. He had often noticed her fluttering in and out of the Tudor house across the village green, but hearing she was a professional busybody had taken pains to avoid her. Besides, she was thick with Denise Bickley, and probably knew far more about his personal affairs than she deserved.
'Good morning,' Graham greeted the visitors politely. 'Anything I can do for you?'
'I'm afraid a most serious matter has arisen, Mr Trevose,' Captain Pile told him solemnly.
Oh God, this is going to be a bore, Graham thought.
'I expect you've seen the main entrance this morning?' the Captain added.
'No, I came here direct, through the orchard.'
'A word-a most offensive word-has been written across it in paint. Mrs Sedgewick-Smith was most disturbed to see it.'
'I'm sorry about that. But-I know the annex has a bad name-why hold my patients responsible?'
'For the simple reason they were seen by the night-porter. Flight Lieutenant Jardine and some others.'
Graham nodded slowly. That's encouraging, he thought, Bluey's getting enough function in his hands to wield a paint brush. 'Then I can only apologize most sincerely to both you and Mrs Sedgewick-Smith.'