Children of the Archbishop (19 page)

“Felicity,” he said at last, speaking like an elder brother.

“Samuel,” Miss Warple replied, not in the least like a younger sister.

“I … I don't like to see you crying,” he told her gently.

And it was here that Dr. Trump made his third, his consummate mistake. For while he was speaking he opened his arms appealingly as one might to soothe a child.

And as he did so, Miss Warple sprang into them.

On the night of his engagement, Dr. Trump scarcely slept at all. He began with an uneasy pacing of the room alternating with spells of despondent moodiness stretched out, nearly recumbent, in his wicker chair. Then, finding that sleep was farther away than ever, he went down to the kitchen and made himself a cup of cocoa.

Usually this was a beverage that had a magical, almost anaesthetising effect upon him. One sip of the liquid chocolate, and his eyes would begin to close, his breathing grow slower. But this time, it was different. It may have been that he had put in half a teaspoonful too much of the powder or, in his distress, had carelessly allowed the milk to catch. Whatever it was, to-night the cocoa had the reverse effect. It was like strychnine. First of all, it woke him up. Then it upset him. He felt wakeful, fidgety, sick. Even when he tried a short prayer, it was unavailing. He had to get up hurriedly halfway through, and go over to open a window.

The chief of his misgivings during that dreadful night when he wondered exactly what it was that had occurred—whether he had boldly proposed or merely timidly accepted—was concerned with Felicity's potential motherliness.

Everything now seemed to turn upon that point. Did she or did she not want children? And if so, how many? Dr. Trump then found himself asking of what sex—not so much because he thought that Felicity could do anything in particular about it as to see whether her views coincided with his own. And, as for him, his mind was
quite
made up. Four was to be the number: two boys and two girls, with a boy for the eldest. He was unprepared to make even the slightest concession. One of each, for example, would simply have been trifling with the problem.

Would Felicity be willing? Would she be capable? Above all, would she be
enthusiastic
? And, looking back on the whole astonishing incident in the Bishop's study, he saw now that he should have asked her; should have established his basic point right from the very start. There was only one thing for it and that was to ask her at the earliest possible moment before things had gone any farther.

Sitting bolt upright in bed, he put the light on and looked at his watch. It showed 3.15, and he put the light out again. Even cutting things to their finest there was nothing that he could do for another four and three-quarter hours. It was at eight o'clock that he would phone her—the Bishop, he knew, was an early breakfaster and he assumed that Felicity would be having breakfast with him—and, gently but firmly, he would put his point of view. The suspense meanwhile was terrible. But a natural feeling of delicacy, a kind of sixth sense in negotiation, told him that he could not very well ring up any girl before 8 a.m., snatch her from a running bath-tub probably, to present her with such an ultimatum.

There could, however, he repeated to himself, be no possible compromise, no half measures. From the first moment when he had begun to think about such things—it must have been when he was just turned fifteen—he had pictured himself in the guise of a patriarch. Even the details had been clear to him. He had seen himself most clearly standing on an ancient rectory lawn, possibly even a deanery lawn, and to an admiring group of lesser-fry, vicars, curates and lay church-workers, he was saying: “My eldest is at Eton: the younger is at Radlett. The girls are both at Cheltenham. My wife's old school, you know …”

That reminded him. He must find out where Felicity had been educated. It might give depth and detail to an otherwise vague and shadowy picture. Because now that he came to think about it, he realised that he had never properly thought about this remarkable woman, his mate, the mother-of-four. As a young man, the nearest that he had ever come to visualising her was in the image of the golden-haired cashier in the tea-rooms beside the theological college where he had done so well, so strikingly well, in Old Testament studies. Not that there had been any suggestion of calf-love about the episode. On the contrary, keeping his heart well under the command of his head, he had deliberately transferred his patronage from The Blue Bird to The Copper Kettle where the service was slower, the cakes flat and apparently un-leavened,
the tea almost undrinkable, but the elderly proprietress a regular fellow communicant at the parish Church of St. Ninian's.

And only once since then had the possible mother of his children crossed his thoughts not merely as a mother but as a woman. Indeed, it still astonished him to remember that evening in the children's playroom when he had seen Margaret putting up the decorations. Moreover, it was essentially as a mother that he had seen her. He still thought what a strangely moving picture she had made with the whiteness of her blouse showing up the blue-black lustre of her hair … But this was terrible! Simply terrible. He was appalled at the course that his thoughts had taken him. Why he was being practically unfaithful to Felicity before he had even bought the engagement ring.

And, all the time, he was saying to himself: “But I should be so happy. So ecstatically happy. It is all that I could have dreamed of. I am betrothed. And to a Bishop's daughter.”

But he could not make himself feel happy. Not the least bit happy. Even now, looking back on it, last evening had been like a nightmare. When Felicity Warple had flung herself upon him and he had been confronted at point-black range by the arrow-head sharpness of her nose, the cold possessing eye, the upstanding quiff of hair, reason had nearly departed from him. It was as though the Bishop himself, possessed and out of his true senses, had leapt into his arms. Dr. Trump reeled as he remembered it.

And, at the thought that next morning he would have to meet the man face to face after having entertained such dreadful thoughts about him, he became distraught again. For there was no avoiding it. The way things had turned out it was his clear duty to see Bishop Warple as soon as possible. He still had to
ask
him for his daughter's hand in marriage.

It did not make things any easier that the Bishop's cold was no better. On the contrary, it had thickened rather than cleared. In consequence, Bishop Warple had given up all thought of going out to-day. Bundled up in a crimson dressing-gown, with his feet thrust into a pair of bedroom slippers, he was sitting in front of the gas-fire in the bedroom. An egg, rather messily decapitated,
stood on the breakfast tray beside him, and his cup had been absent-mindedly put down upon the tray-cloth instead of on the saucer. A copy of
The Times
, open at the cross-word with the single solution, ANEMONE, filled-in in pencil, lay at his feet. And on the arm of his chair rested two clean handkerchiefs and a nose-dropper.

At the sight of Dr. Trump he flushed. When he had heard the housekeeper announce Dr. Trump's name he had assumed that the man was somewhere on the other end of the phone. And he was now waiting gloomily for the woman to switch the call through to him. This was bad enough in itself. But to see Dr. Trump actually standing there on the threshold was far worse. It was, in fact, intolerable. And he said so.

Drawing his dressing-gown across his pyjama legs, he waved his visitor away.

“I'b sorry,” he announced, “bud I'd dod seeing addywud. Dod dis bordig.”

“But I must see you,” Dr. Trump replied. “I am here on business. Personal and intimate business.”

Bishop Warple looked up in astonishment. Dr. Trump's voice sounded different. It was like having a blackmailer in the room. He resented the imperiousness. And he intended to tell him so. But he was reckoning without his cold.

“Yaa-chew!” was all that he could utter.

The sneeze was unexpected. Nevertheless it had the effect of unnerving his visitor.

“At any other time, I would have waited,” Dr. Trump began, “but this is …”

“Yaa-chew,” Bishop Warple interrupted him a second time.

“… vital to both of us,” Dr. Trump continued. “And … to Mrs. Warple.”

At the mention of Mrs. Warple, the Bishop looked up in astonishment. He was still mopping himself with his handkerchief and his eyes had moist red rims to them. But at least he was listening.

“Wod's thad?” he asked.

Dr. Trump recognised this for the right moment. And he wished to do justice to it. Drawing himself up to his full height, he towered over his bewildered Bishop. But now that he was face to face with his future father-in-law and he remembered his awful thoughts, his courage abruptly left him. He was timid and confused.

“I have come …” he started in a high, unnatural voice.

“Go od,” Bishop Warple said impatiently.

“I have come …” he resumed.

“Go od,” the Bishop said for a second time.

“I have come to ask your spouse's hand in marriage,” he blurted out at last.

“By spouse's! “Bishop Warple repeated in amazement.

“Your daughter's spouse I should say,” Dr. Trump hurriedly corrected himself.

And then, because that still didn't sound right, he tried again.

“In short, I wish to marry your daughter,” he finished up miserably.

A perspiration had broken out all over him while he was speaking and he was now looking down at his boots, not daring to catch the Bishop's eye. But the Bishop was self-occupied. With his handkerchief spread over his hand as if he were conjuring, he was waiting helplessly for the next sneeze that was slowly mounting to its climax.

“Yaa … yaa … yaa … chew!” he roared at last.

In the pause that followed, Dr. Trump screwed up all his courage and spoke again.

“Did you … er … did you hear what I said?” he asked.

The Bishop nodded. He had heard all right. But he still didn't know what to make of it. Even if he had been in normal health, Dr. Trump's words would still have taken him aback.

“Does … does by daughter dow?” he asked.

Here Dr. Trump smiled a trifle self-consciously.

“Indeed, yes,” he said. “It was, in fact, she who asked me.”

Sweetie often wondered about the little boy who had visited her so suddenly in the middle of the night and had then gone away again without even saying good-bye.

He had been a very rough sort of boy, she remembered; and his feet had kept getting on tob of hers as they lay together. Also he had been wet. Like a used bath towel—though he could scarcely
be blamed for that because of all the rain that was coming down outside. But it was his rudeness that she minded about most. After all, it wasn't a lot to ask of anyone that he should say thank you to a complete stranger who had taken him into her bed simply because the police were after him.

All the same, she would have liked to meet him again if only to see what he really looked like. As it was, she could not remember properly. The most that she could be sure about was that his nose turned up rather than went straight; and that his hair stuck out in a kind of fringe from his forehead and didn't lie down flat the way other little boys' hair did. But even the way his hair stuck out, she was ready to admit, might have been because he had got himself a bit ruffled coming up the fire-escape. She had often looked down from the dormitory window at the criss-cross metal of the escape, and it was certainly a terribly long climb.

By now Sweetie had pretty much given up all hope of ever meeting him again. The Hospital was so large that there were hundreds and hundreds of other little boys to get him mixed up with. And the wall down the centre was so high that, even if she knew his name and called out to him, he wouldn't be able to hear.

It was only on Sundays in fact that the boys and the girls ever came together, and that was in chapel. But the boys all looked different then because of the white collars that they were wearing. And Sweetie expected that she must look different, too, because the last time that particular little boy had seen her she had only been wearing a nightdress.

Not that it mattered very much, either way. She had almost forgotten him. And he had probably forgotten all about her, too.

In any case, she had more than little boys to think about now. She was getting to be a big girl; she was six already. Getting on for seven. And she was going into the first grade to-morrow. This meant upheaval. A different teacher. A different dormitory—so that even if the strange little boy should happen to come back to look for her she wouldn't be there. And a different uniform.

It was the uniform that was the most important. The infants in the Kindergarten wore anything that would fit them; washedout cotton frocks in the summer and woollen jerseys in winter. Nobody—not even Dr. Trump—seemed to mind about the infants. They were too small to disgrace anybody. But, once in the junior school, all that was changed completely. By then the Archbishop Bodkin uniform was compulsory.

It hadn't altered since 1668, this uniform. Winter and summer alike, it was the same. A pillar-box colour red flannel blouse with a narrow white collar, stiff like a bank clerk's, a blue serge skirt with a leather belt and brass buckle for a waistband, black lace-up boots and black stockings, and a blue cape and hood lined with the same pillar-box flannel. It was picturesque, historical, uncomfortable. Visitors were particularly affected by it. And Dr. Trump himself, carried away by so much orphan pageantry, had once enthusiastically declared that if he had his way he would make the uniform compulsory for all children everywhere.

Sweetie would have been ready to agree with him. She had lain awake at night thinking of that broad leather belt with its brass buckle. It was the most beautiful kind of belt in the world. The spike on the buckle was sharp enough for making holes in bits of paper. And the lace-up boots: they were worth keeping yourself from falling off to sleep just so that you could go on remembering them. They came up right over your ankles and the laces were as long as from your nose to the tips of your fingers. If she could only have that leather belt and those boots it seemed that nothing else would matter. She would be like all the other girls and could never be unhappy again. Besides, the red of the blouse was her favourite colour. It was the very hottest sort of red there was.