Surgeon at Arms by Richard Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

at him sourly. It seemed he ‘ had lost the argument, as usual. He vaguely wondered why. ‘As I am here, perhaps you would invite me to look round your wards?’ he added as sarcastically as possible.
    ‘Of course.’ Graham smiled. ‘You know that I am always ready to oblige an old acquaintance in any professional matter whatever.’
    Graham opened the door of the ward. It was a terrible thought, he told himself, but he was really quite enjoying the war.
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    ‘BUT WHY DON’T YOU divorce her, Graham?’ asked Denise Bickley. ‘I can’t understand why you don’t divorce her.’
    It was a subject which Graham chose to skip away from as quickly as possible. ‘I hate having truck with lawyers, I suppose,’ he told her. ‘They give me the creeps. With their undertakers’ clothes and their undertakers’ faces, burying all your hopes under a mound of stony possibilities.’
    ‘But unfortunately not at undertakers’ rates,’ smiled John Bickley, the anaesthetist, across the log fire.
    It was a Sunday afternoon in the first week of 1941, when the Luftwaffe was bombing the country nightly, the onion had become a fragrant memory, whisky and bananas had vanished with the other flavours of peace, and the war was starting to change from a perilous adventure to a wearisome way of life.
    ‘But you can divorce her, you know.’ John’s wife Denise was chillingly well informed about everything to do with the married state. ‘You can these days. The law’s been changed.’
    Why does the woman continually go paddling in the muddy waters of my soul? Graham asked himself. ‘So I understand,’ he agreed. ‘A. P. Herbert’s Act altered everything. Maria’s been mad for over five years, so I’m legally at liberty to rid myself of the encumbrance whenever I feel like it. Of course, it was different when I first had her locked up.’
    Graham had hoped that putting the situation so starkly might shame Denise into changing the subject, but she persisted, ‘I’d have thought it worth taking the trouble, if only to get things straight.’
    ‘But how could it make the slightest difference to my life?’
    ‘Supposing you wanted to get married again?’ Denise exclaimed.
    Graham laughed.
    ‘Well, you never know.’
    ‘I’m forty-six. Hardly the romantic age. Anyway, who’s to be the bride?’
    ‘How old must Maria be now?’ asked Denise.
    ‘Let me see—she’s nine years older than me. Which makes her fifty-five.’
    ‘How’s she bearing up? Physically, I mean,’ asked John. It was an attempt to turn the conversation. He knew Graham’s sensitivities far better than his wife did.
    ‘Her body’s extremely well. I went down with Desmond to see her over Christmas. She’s put on a lot of weight—they generally do, I gather. But her vital organs are functioning perfectly, though admittedly her blood-pressure’s a bit up. Her mind’s quite unbalanced, of course. She doesn’t know me, sometimes she doesn’t know her own nurses. On good days she washes herself. On bad days she wets the bed.’
    Denise lit a cigarette and said, ‘It must be dreadfully upsetting, seeing her like that.’
    ‘Not particularly. I can hardly be expected to correlate her with the person I married. She was what they called a “society beauty”, you know. The only daughter of our popular tub-thumping millionaire, Lord Cazalay.’ A lot of things have happened since then, Graham reflected sombrely. Lord Cazalay’s gone bust, for a start.
    ‘Graham, may I ask you one thing?’ Denise puffed earnestly. ‘I’m only trying to help, you do understand that, don’t you?’
    ‘Ask anything you like,’ said Graham designedly.
    ‘Do you still love her?’
    ‘I never did.’
    ‘But surely you must have done once?’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in love with anybody. I fancy I have some sort of inborn immunity to the condition, like some people have for tuberculosis. Or perhaps I just expect too