SURGEON AT ARMS

'I think that my next remarks will prove that. I am going to offer you a responsibility which, to be frank, I would offer no-one else.' The brigadier leaned back impressively. 'The responsibility for all facial and related wounds in the Army. Let your mind dwell on it a moment. I can promise you a perfectly free hand. Within the usual limits you will be your own master. I can promise you first-class accommodation and equipment. You can pick your own team. You can organize your own training programme and choose whom you want to train. No one will interfere. I give you my guarantee. Come! Just think. Isn't it a splendid chance to make a second reputation?'

Graham said nothing. His quick mind had fallen on the suggestion like a terrier, worrying the different elements from it.

'Of course, you're already famous,' Haileybury conceded. 'Far more than myself. Everyone in London knows Graham Trevose.'

'By "everyone in London",' Graham suggested, 'I presume you mean the few despised for regularly getting their names in the papers by the many who wish they could?'

Haileybury shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm trying to say this would bring a different sort of fame. It's a chance to get yourself remembered as Gillies was in the last war. Surely that would be reward enough?'

The idea appealed to Graham. He would be making himself known to men who had, at the most, only seen his name in the gossip columns. It suited his exhibitionism, which had saddened his friends in the profession as much as it had enraged his enemies. He would be running his own show, pushing his own ideas, moulding his own assistants. Haileybury would be as good as his word-that was another of his infuriating virtues. Anyway, it would be better than doing nothing.

A thought struck him. 'You mean I'd have to join the Army?'

Haileybury looked surprised. 'That would be inescapable.'

'What rank?'

'Lieutenant-colonel.'

'Is that the best you can do?' Graham asked crossly.

'That's a very high rank.' Haileybury was shocked. 'Quite a number of senior men are coming in as majors.'

'Then it's out of the question.'

Why, he would be subordinate to Haileybury! Even if he, too, became in time a brigadier, the fellow would by then be a general, or some such. He would have to call the bloody man 'Sir'! A grisly thought.

'Totally out of the question,' Graham repeated. 'I was a civilian in the last war and I'd best stay a civilian in this one. I'm not the military type.'

Haileybury sipped his sherry with a pained look. 'Neither are most young men in the country, but they are finding themselves obliged to be.'

'I hope you're not suggesting I lack a sense of duty?'

'I am suggesting nothing of the kind,' said Haileybury patiently. 'If anything, I am suggesting you lack a sense of perspective. I made my offer because I thought, firstly, it was in the best interests of the Army, and secondly, it was in the best interests of yourself. You turned it down with hardly a second thought.'

Graham sat looking surly. Haileybury saw the delicately built-up reconciliation was about to come down with a crash.

'Perhaps I am pressing you too severely,' he retreated. 'I cannot expect you to decide on such a far-reaching matter in a couple of minutes. Please excuse my unreasonableness,' he apologized with unexpected good grace. 'Perhaps you will accept it as evidence of my enthusiasm for your services? Telephone me in a day or two, when you've mulled it over. Here is the number of my extension.'

Haileybury spent the rest of the meeting talking about the disastrous effect of the war on county cricket, a topic Graham found painfully boring.

3

'Trevose?' asked Captain Cuthbert Pile of the Royal Army Medical Corps, sitting in his office at Smithers Botham. 'Trevose? Never heard of him. What's he want, Corporal?'

'He's from Blackfriars, sir,' said Corporal Honeyman.

Captain Pile groaned. 'Not another? He doesn't need accommodation, I hope? I'm doing miracles as it is. The Ministry can't expect me to squeeze anyone else into the place. What's his line?'

'He seems to be a plastic surgeon, sir.'

Captain Pile looked horrified. The war had forced acquaintance with fellow-doctors in many outlandish specialities, but the company of professional face-lifters he felt outside the line of duty. 'I don't want to see him.'

'You made an appointment, sir. For two this afternoon.'

'Oh? Did I?'

'You'll remember the Ministry telephoned, sir. The gentleman has just joined the Emergency Medical Service.'

Captain Pile rummaged busily through the papers covering his broad desk, which commanded a fine view of the sweeping front drive. There was a fire flickering in the oversized marble grate and an overall glow of mahogany-and-leather Victorian comfort. It had been the office of the Smithers Botham medical superintendent, then a consultant psychiatrist in the Army, where he was, in time, to have greater influence and invoke more widespread exasperation than a good many generals.

'Where is this Trevose? In the hall?'