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difficult for us, you know.’
    ‘Of course I do. But leaving Bluey here will make life very much more difficult for him. Should the powers that be object—’
    ‘But they will object, Mr Trevose.’
    Graham grinned. ‘Just say I behaved in such an overbearing and arrogant manner you had no alternative but to give in. Say I threatened physical violence if you like. With my reputation they’ll believe you.’ He patted her amiably on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, Sister, I’ll see there’s no trouble. I’ll take full responsibility. It’s really quite easy. I’m one of the few people at the moment who don’t have to give a twopenny damn for the grandest air-marshals, generals, admirals, or anyone.’
    She hesitated. She had quite taken to Graham, who had set himself to be resolutely charming towards her. ‘You do behave badly sometimes, you know,’ she told him gently.
    ‘I behave badly frequently. But it’s a change doing so on someone else’s behalf instead of my own.’
    The following morning Bluey Jardine arrived at Smithers Botham in Graham’s second-hand Morris, driven by a green-uniformed W.V.S. worker, with most of him hidden by a tartan rug. It was then October 1940, and the population had found more to worry about than whether to wear their shirt-tails outside their trousers at night. But it had been a lovely summer. The cherry trees had flowered charmingly over the little Gothic mortuary, the patients were kept awake by owls serenading to the crickets’ violins, the tomatoes ripened wonderfully along the sunny walls of the main operating theatres (nourished by the unused offerings of patriotic blood-donors). It was difficult at Smithers Botham to believe the Germans might leap from the seas or the skies any moment. The litter of old iron gathered from surrounding fields to make room for growing food was put back again to frustrate enemy gliders. At the portico, the words ‘Smithers Botham’ were painted from the blue-and-gold notice to baffle Nazi parachutists dropping on the lawn, doubtless dressed as nuns. The chapel clock was hushed, chimes being classified with sirens, whistles, and football-rattles as the portents of varying sorts of doom. The L.D.V. crawled enthusiastically on their stomachs everywhere, carrying shotguns and threatening with much ferocity anyone moving after dark they disliked the look or sound of.
    The vast main wards of Smithers Botham remained almost empty. People heard so often on the B.B.C. of ‘hospitals and churches’ being hit by bombing all over southern England that these seemed highly dangerous places to find yourself in (whether there was a comparable decline in churchgoing no one bothered to find out). The reluctance of these civilians to present themselves for long-awaited treatment Graham found a godsend. After Dunkirk, the annex had been alarmingly overcrowded. If he wanted to throw up more huts, he was told they were ‘unavailable’—an infuriatingly handy expression of rebuff. If he wanted more beds, he knew where to look. With the amiable connivance of Mr O’Rory, the Blackfriars gynaecologist working at Smithers Botham, Graham sent Tudor Beverley and his houseman to shift some unoccupied ones from O’Rory’s wards. When the traffic was interrupted angrily by Captain Pile in the middle of the lawn, Graham drove to Maiden Cross and bought camp beds in the sports’ shop. Captain Pile appeared in the annex to object wrathfully, but even he could hardly evict the sleeping patients.
    ‘It’s most irregular, Mr Trevose. You can’t just increase the number of beds in the hospital like that.’
    ‘But the men would be terribly uncomfortable on the floor,’ Graham pointed out mildly.
    Captain Pile went redder than ever. He was having a bad war. His command was admittedly complete over the military patients at Smithers Botham, who on his approach were expected, with the difficulty of saluting smartly from the pillow, to stiffen themselves under the sheets