Children of the Archbishop (24 page)

“And does it matter to you where I live?” Mr. Prevarius asked hopefully.

“It couldn't matter less,” the young lady replied. “All the same, it's usual for gentlemen to say.”

She was hard at work with the polisher again by now, and Mr. Prevarius could see only the thick cluster of curls—daffodil in colour, chrysanthemum in construction—a mere six inches from him, but with the wire mesh of the inquiry desk in between.

“And it's useful,” she added, after a pause. “That is if you ever want to find them again.”

She looked up as she said it and Mr. Prevarius found himself gazing deeply into the pure cornflower blue of her eyes. The eye-lashes, he noticed, were long, black and romantically clotted with mascara.

Accommodation address or not—and Mr. Prevarius certainly had no intention of allowing the words Archbishop Bodkin Hospital to cross his lips—she was there beside him. Or rather, opposite. It was a corner table, from which Mr. Prevarius had asked the waiter to remove the flowers, and leave merely the pink-shaded standard lamp. They had both drunk two Martinis already, Desirée had restored the lip-stick that was now smeared round the edge of her glass, and Mr. Prevarius had his foot pressed up hard against her.

“I shouldn't be here at all really,” Desirée was saying. “I broke another date just to come. Ed'll be furious.”

It was the second time she had said it and Mr. Prevarius made the same reply as before.

“What the eye doesn't see,” he observed, “the heart can't grieve.”

Really this evening promised to be quite amusing. Besides, he was making such a lot of new acquaintances to-day. Apart altogether from Desirée herself, there had been Sid and Olly. And now Ed.

“Ed your boy-friend?” he asked.

“Not likely,” Desirée replied. “He's married.”

Mr. Prevarius reached out and took her by the hand.

“Wise little girl,” he said. “Taking no chances.”

Desirée disentangled her hand so that she could go on applying the lip-stick.

“You married?” she asked.

“Married?” Mr. Prevarius repeated. “Oh dear me no. Nothing like that about me. I have no ties of any kind.”

“That's what they all say,” Desirée replied. “I'll have the asparagus.”

Mr. Prevarius was disappointed. He disliked the way Desirée had switched the conversation suddenly from romance to asparagus: it made her appear heartless and callous. But perhaps she was only being cautious, refusing to allow the riptide of their passion to sweep them both away. And, instead of attempting to force the pace, Mr. Prevarius took the hint from her own aloofness and decided to proceed by other means. He beckoned to the waiter.

“A bottle of the Widow,” he said. “Very cold. And keep it iced.”

Over dinner, Mr. Prevarius learnt a lot more about Desirée—Manners was the surname. And her life story was certainly remarkable. First, there was the old place in Sussex with all the horses. Then there was that unfortunate father of hers whose third death had apparently occurred when the liner that was bringing him back from Ceylon foundered on the rocks off Capetown. Her mother had gone down at the same time with Desirée's baby brother clasped in her arms. From this, Mr. Prevarius gathered that it must have been another son of the same ill-omened marriage whom Desirée was now helping through Sandhurst. And Desirée herself seemed to have been educated almost everywhere—in a convent in Switzerland, privately by a governess in the Mannerses' rambling old mansion in Sussex, in India and alternatively in Ceylon, and at a finishing school in Cheltenham. She had sung. She had danced. She had once spoken French like a native, even
though she had forgotten it all now. But the very moment her brother Terence had passed out of Sandhurst and been appointed to his ship, she was going to chuck up everything and go off to Paris where she guessed that she really belonged. There was also an only partially explained kid sister who, like all the Mannerses, had contrived somehow to pack a lot into a short time. At this very moment, she was studying law, dancing in a ballet at Monte Carlo, on tour with an opera company up at Oldham and engaged to a Guards Officer with pots of money and another of those old places that keep turning up all over Sussex.

As the meal proceeded, indeed, the champagne served to break down all her accustomed reticence. She was in trouble with her dressmaker. And, until her thrice-dead father sent her next month's allowance, she frankly didn't know where next week's rent was coming from. Mr. Prevarius put his hand into his pocket while she was speaking and fingered tenderly the crisp one-pound notes that Mr. Jerome had given to him. He felt that, even if she didn't know he did. And he was glad that it was only her
pied-à-terre
in London and not the place in Sussex that was temporarily bothering her.

The meal had been a good one—lobster, duck and crêpe-suzettes—and the moment had come for coffee and liqueurs. He was disappointed that Desirée had chosen crème-de-menthe, and felt that Cointreau might have been more ladylike. But the crème-de-menthe could not have been more effective if he had prescribed it himself. It did everything that could have been expected of it. By the time she had lapped up the last emerald drop with her tongue, she sat back and said: “What do we do now?”

Mr. Prevarius cunningly suggested a theatre. But it was too late for any theatre: he knew that. Shaftesbury Avenue was already well into its third act. And until Mr. Prevarius got his new glasses he didn't want to go to a cinema because films made his eyes ache. Dancing, too, was out of the question because he was wearing crêpe-rubber soles.

“I only wish that I could suggest continuing our little conversation at home,” Mr. Prevarius said plaintively. “But, alas, we should be interrupted. I share bachelor chambers with a friend, you see.”

“Oh that's all right,” Desirée assured him. “Please don't apologise on my account. I'd hate to disturb your friend. Besides, I wouldn't
dream
of going back there. I scarcely know you.”

“Then you must let me take you home,” Mr. Prevarius told
her. “On that, I insist. Yes, positively insist. Anywhere you say and we can go on talking in the taxi.”

“Well, don't imagine I shall ask you in, because I won't,” Desirée said firmly, speaking exactly as her father, the Colonel, would have wished her to speak. “I've got my own reputation to think of just as much as you.”

“Just so,” Mr. Prevarius assured her. “I shall imagine nothing, and then I can't be disappointed, can I?”

While Desirée had left him for a moment and Mr. Prevarius was settling up with the waiter, a mood of airy recklessness came over him. He felt like a disembodied spirit with mischievous tendencies. The whole thing was like magic, a fairy-tale. He had made a compact and sold his soul—not to the Devil, but what was far more profitable, to Mr. Berkeley Cavendish. He was re-born. The vast Babylon of London was spread out before him, rich in mystery and in temptation. Somewhere in one of its hidden corners, Balham probably, Desirée had her bower and after he had left her there—the terms of that could be arranged in the taxi—he could slip away again, into the shifting multitudes, unknown, unnoticed, unconcerned: so safe that he would not even have to feel furtive.

When Desirée was safely inside the taxi, her two hands folded demurely in her lap, Mr. Prevarius turned smilingly towards her.

“Where to?” he asked. “Where does milady want?”

“Medina Road,” Desirée said sleepily. “Twenty-three B. Tell him to go to Putney Underground and I'll tell him from there.”

“Putney,” Mr. Prevarius repeated in a flat, hollow-sounding voice. “Did you say Medina Road, Putney?”

“That's right,” Desirée answered. “It's just off St. Mark's Avenue at the bottom. You needn't sound so worried. It's only four-and-six.”

It was just on twelve-thirty when Sergeant Chiswick was roused by a gentle tapping on his window. He rose and found Mr. Prevarius standing there, on the pavement, making silent signalling motions in the direction of the front door. And because it was so late the whole of their conversation had to be conducted solely in whispers.

“I missed the last train,” Mr. Prevarius explained softly.

“Quite so, sir,” Sergeant Chiswick replied, holding out his hand for the tip.

Mr. Prevarius put half a crown into it.

“The Warden was asking for you earlier,” he said slowly. “Wanted to see you as soon as you came in.”

“What time was that?” Mr. Prevarius asked.

“Just after ten o'clock, sir.”

Mr. Prevarius added another half-crown.

Sergeant Chiswick saluted.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he said. “You can rely on me, sir.”

It was blackmail, of course. Five bob's worth of the darkest blackmail. But worth it, if Dr. Trump really had been inquiring.

And, in any case, it wasn't Dr. Trump who was bothering him now. It was Desirée. There she was practically on his own doorstep. From his bedroom window he could actually see the terrace of mean little houses where she had her miserable bed-sitter. By his one act of indiscretion, which he reminded himself had sprung from nothing lower than the anguish of sheer loneliness, he had placed his whole future in jeopardy.

“Why couldn't it have been Balham, or Streatham, or Belsize Park, or anywhere else?” he asked himself. “Why did it have to be Putney?”

Dr. Trump had made up his mind. Mr. Dawlish would have to go.

Admittedly, the decision itself was a recent one. But the steps leading up to it had been slow and inevitable. In the first place, it was Mr. Dawlish's appearance that had counted so much against him. As a non-smoker himself, Dr. Trump disliked all smokers. But a dirty smoker was more than dislikable: he was downright disgusting. And it had to be admitted that Mr. Dawlish was dirty. Positively frowsty, in fact. There was ash all over him. Then there were his shoes. Other masters somehow contrived to keep their shoes clean. But not Mr. Dawlish. He would come slopping down
the stairs in the morning with shoes that looked as if he had spent the night in the kitchen garden. It was a key-point, the shoes: Dr. Trump had noticed before that clean shoes and self-respect always went together. He knew now at the first hint of shoe-trouble, to look out for the other danger signs. And in Mr. Dawlish they were all there—unpressed trousers, bulged pockets, ragged fingernails, creased tie, untidy collar, badly shaven chin. In short, the man was a specimen of advanced social disintegration. An outcast.

And an example. That was the dreadful thought. Dr. Trump squirmed every time he reflected on the influence that Mr. Dawlish must be having on the boys who were under him. The young of both sexes, as Dr. Trump had once described it at the Annual United Kingdom Convention of Christian Education Workers, are merely so many innocent mirrors miraculously reflecting what they absorb. And supposing that it was the image of Mr. Dawlish that was reflected? What an advertisement that would be for Old Bodkinians. Come to that, what an advertisement for Dr. Trump.

But, in any case, it was not Mr. Dawlish alone who was occupying Dr. Trump's thoughts. Mr. Dawlish himself was no more than a pawn, a solitary pathetic piece in a complicated and majestic game. For what Dr. Trump was working on now—had been working on for the last six weeks, in fact—was nothing less than complete reorganisation.

The idea of reorganisation had come to Dr. Trump suddenly when he was getting into his bath. And it had so entirely taken possession of him that he had simply lain there—with the nailbrush and the Sorbo sponge floating round him—while the water slowly cooled off below blood heat.

In consequence—since he was a morning bather—he was late for breakfast, late for Hall, late for his daily session with Mrs. Gurnett. But, rushed and harassed as he was, his soul was aflame within him. He now saw reorganisation as something apart and almost holy. For the time being at least, it seemed more beautiful even than discipline.

Nor had he merely toyed with the idea. With commendable thoroughness, he had already got down to details; hard facts, figures, personalities. There were fourteen members of the teaching staff altogether, drawing salaries that averaged three pounds ten a week, and all found. A hundred and eighty-two pounds a year apiece. Two thousand five hundred and forty-eight altogether.
With food, heat, light and laundry on top, say a round three thousand. No wonder that the balance sheet was such a nightmare.

But under the reorganisation things would be different. For a start, he was going to reduce the teaching staff from fourteen to nine. There would of course be difficulties, grave difficulties, confronting him: he saw that. But wasn't it the very essence of life's challenge that problems should be encountered and overcome? And now that he saw it all on paper, in his own handwriting, how simple the solution really was. Larger classes: that was the first thing. Instead of segregating the children rigidly into arbitrary age groups, there would have to be more latitude. The bright sevens would go in with the backward nines. And there would have to be doubling up—Scripture
and
games; singing
and
woodwork; cooking
and
needlework—that kind of thing. With, of course, less spare time. The present half-day a week would obviously have to go. And why not? Was it reasonable, was it proper, was it even honest, that Christian philanthropists should be asked for their alms, and the widow for her mite, that able-bodied men and women, whose lives should have been dedicated to the cause of teaching, should once a week for an entire afternoon lounge about in their rooms or in neighbouring cinemas in utter idleness?

There remained merely the question of which ones should go. And here Dr. Trump reminded himself that a good administrator had to be impersonal. Motives like sympathy and compassion that were admirable in other connections were entirely irrelevant here. And more than irrelevant: they were wicked. There was, indeed, only one criterion that could fairly be applied—age. It was, in short, the elderly, the infirm—and, of course, the difficult—who must be the first to go.