Children of the Archbishop (29 page)

Even now, everything would still have been all right if it had not been for the extreme dullness of one of Mr. Dawlish's lessons. It was a History lesson and Mr. Dawlish had been going on and on about the barons. Ginger had given up listening long ago; so long ago, in fact, that he could not remember when he had last heard anything. It seemed that, so long as he could remember, Mr. Dawlish had always been talking about barons. And in the end, merely to escape from barons, Ginger put his hand up.

Of course, he knew enough not to let the gesture go at that. He was careful at the same moment to suck his breath in noisily between his teeth, screw up his face hard and wriggle his fingers frantically in the air as though every moments' delay were painful and unpredictable.

At first, Mr. Dawlish took no notice of him. He knew that nothing was ever so urgent as a boy would make it. Also, he was opposed to these sudden departures. Idleness, rather than nature, he had long ago learnt, was at the back of most of them. On principle, therefore, he kept Ginger waiting before he let him go.

And as soon as he had got outside, Ginger felt wonderfully better. He had already made it apparent from his manner that this was not merely one of those brief, passing calls that scarcely even interrupt a lesson. He could afford to saunter. And, though it was necessary when he passed the window of the classroom that he should be proceeding in the general direction of the lavatory, once out of sight he could afford to go slower still.

As he sauntered, his mind wandered idly. It was, in fact, almost a complete blank by the time he reached Sergeant Chiswick's clinker-heap. But he knew at once that this was something really worth looking at. And, for the time being, all other thoughts left him. Clinker in all its aspects became entirely absorbing. He picked up a piece shaped like a swollen pancake, examined it critically and threw it away. Then, as it fell, he noticed that in the heart of the little cloud of dust that it raised there was something that glowed dimly like an opal.

This was a discovery, and like an inquisitive rooster he made his way across the slag-heap to the glowing thing. By the time he had scuffled around in the ashes he found that it was only quite a small cinder, a tiny nodule of hot coke not much bigger than a walnut. But it was hot all right. As soon as he picked it up he
dropped it, and he stood there sucking his fingers wondering what to do with such a hostile treasure. It wasn't the sort of thing that he could put in his pocket. But left to itself out there in the cold it would surely die.

It was while he was standing there pondering, that he noticed that the soles of his feet were getting hot. Really hot; not just warm. And as he looked down he saw that he was standing on a whole heap of the little fiery opals. There must have been twenty or thirty vividly living fragments in among all the dead dark slag.

“Cor,” said Ginger, as he realised that he had stumbled on a whole treasure heap.

The problem of saving them had now assumed different proportions. It was no longer a matter of protecting one tiny defenceless morsel from extinction. He now had a small furnace to take care of; to look after; to keep quiet about.

He was still working things out in his mind when he caught sight of Sergeant Chiswick's bucket upside down against the wall, and he let out a sigh of sheer relief. This at least was somewhere to put his find until he could think what to do with it. And, even pressed as he was for time, he still did the job carefully, lining the bucket with bits of warm slag so that the cold metal shouldn't chill off the fiery pieces. Because Sergeant Chiswick hadn't left a shovel handy and because cinders were too hot to pick up in his fingers, Ginger had to use his shoe. As soon as he had extracted everything worth keeping, he picked up the bucket and made his way towards the one private hiding-place he knew, the corner under the stairs of the laundry stores where he had kept his pet bow-and-arrow.

Considering how few spare moments he had during the day, his store-cupboard and hiding-place was reasonably well filled. There was the bow, now broken; a bottle; a length of iron tubing; a bird's wing; a biscuit tin badly holed on one side; some nails that Ginger had straightened; and a lump of coal. When he had added the lump of coal to his collection there had been no clear plan in his mind as to the use to which one day he would put it. The discovery of the live cinders was his vindication. It just showed how, in the restricted economy of the Hospital, almost anything would eventually come in useful.

And the biscuit tin was handy, too. Ginger brought it out, straightened it and broke the lump of coal into small pieces, by means of the iron tubing. Then, into the nest of virgin coal he tipped his collection of cinders. He had worked quickly all the time, not daring to slacken for a single moment. And, even now,
he was afraid he was too late. The cinders were turning grey in front of his eyes. But blowing revived them, and he squatted there beside them simply keeping the poor things alive. When he felt giddy and could go on no longer, he moved the biscuit tin close up against the door where the draught would fan it and started back to the classroom.

He had been so busy that he hadn't been able to fit in a visit to the lavatory at all.

Inside the classroom it was exactly as he had expected: Mr. Dawlish was still going on about the barons. He heard the word “Runnymede” before he even got the door closed properly behind him. Not that it mattered so much now. He was thinking about his firebox instead. He was therefore quite surprised when Mr. Dawlish addressed him.

“Where have you been all this time?” he asked.

“I've been to the lavatory, sir.”

“Look at yourself.”

Ginger inspected himself carefully.

There was ash all over him and his hands were black from the coal. Even his face was smeary.

“Sorry, sir,” said Ginger. “I fell over.”

He managed to get down to his biscuit tin once more before he had to go to bed. And by now it was really exciting. A miracle had occurred. He could see the glow of the firebox before he got to it. The whole thing had been converted into an incandescent cube. It possessed a strength and fury of its own. It was alive, in fact. And because there was now no danger of extinguishing it he scattered the rest of the raw coal on top, pressed it down with his heel and left it hopefully to itself for the night.

That was the last that he ever saw of his biscuit tin. Or of his bottle, or length of iron tubing or any of the rest of it. Or of the store room itself, for that matter. By the time morning came the whole appearance of the side of the Hospital was different. There was, in fact, a gap, empty and smoking, where the store-room had once stood.

It was Miss Phrynne, the Hospital Secretary, who was the first
to smell burning. This was at 10.15, just as she was going to bed. But, as she had always smelt gas or burning or something at bedtime, she did nothing about it. Simply turned off the light and went to sleep. Some thirty minutes later—at 11.5, that is—Mr. Jeffcote, who was leaving next week anyway, thought that he detected something that he described afterwards as “a vague, hot sort of smell.” He even got up to look out. But, without his glasses, he could see nothing. In front of him was merely a blurred, cubist design of walls and roofs, and when he did see a sudden glare breaking through the darkness it turned out to be merely a car coming up St. Mark's Avenue. Satisfied that it was nothing, Mr. Jeffcote mixed himself a mild dose of milk of magnesia, and went back to bed.

No one else in the Hospital suspected anything until midnight, and then it was only a kind of false premonition that did not really count. Exactly at 12 o'clock however, Nurse Stedge awoke gasping because she had dreamed that the Latymer Block was on fire, and that a great brute of a man was taking liberties with her as she was being carried down the fire-escape. She was always surprised that such a nice woman as herself could have such lurid dreams—she had one or two of them nearly every night—and so she too kept quiet about it.

But it was Dr. Trump who was most mortified by lack of faith in his own forebodings. He had been working late and at 12.35 when he had finished next Sunday's sermon, written a letter of complaint to the Water Board because the domestic supply tasted of chlorine, glanced through the advertisements in the
Church Times
, and moved single-handed a small bookcase that Felicity had told him would drive her mad if it were left out there on the landing, he went outside for a breath of fresh air.

The night was still and rather chilly. Dr. Trump stood on his own doorstep, thinking about the responsibilities of his impending marriage, when a new and more urgent thought entered his mind. Why should he not take his electric hand lamp and set off on a tour of the whole Hospital?

The idea was certainly attractive. On any showing, it was almost inconceivable that he would not come across something—even a window left unlatched—that he could report to somebody to-morrow. He was, in fact, on the very point of starting off when he pulled out his watch and examined it in the light that was streaming out through the open front door. Then he hesitated. It was now twenty minutes to one—a ridiculous time at which to
go prowling. If someone like Mrs. Gurnett saw him, she would probably conclude that he was a burglar and telephone for the police. He therefore turned back indoors, and resolved to make a thorough inspection—kitchens, laundries, isolation block, everything—at 9 a.m. the following morning.

And by the time he had locked up, undressed, said his prayers, got into bed, and closed his eyes, the alarm had sounded.

At first, Dr. Trump simply did not believe it. The ringing of the bell meant nothing to him. In fact, he sat up on one elbow in a sudden dazed sweat of anxiety, imagining that it must be Sunday and that, in some inexplicable fashion, he had overslept himself. Then the one word, “Fire,” shouted distantly in Mr. Dawlish's voice, reached his ears. In a bound Dr. Trump was out of bed buttoning on again the clothes that he had just discarded. It would have been quicker simply to put on an overcoat on top of his pyjamas: he realised that. But he realised also that in an emergency, a state of general alarm, people would look to their Warden to spread authority and calmness. And if he knew that pink and white stripes of poplin were showing under the hem of his black ecclesiastical overcoat he would feel neither.

Because his dressing had taken longer than he had realised, there was plenty of movement in the Cloisters when Dr. Trump emerged through the Warden's Gate. He almost cannoned into Sergeant Chiswick, who was still buttoning up his trousers as he ran in the direction of the playground. And, a moment later, he met Mr. Dawlish coming at the double to rouse him.

Dr. Trump's first thought was of the unsuitability of Mr. Dawlish's attire; and he congratulated himself on his own forethought in the matter of clothing. For Mr. Dawlish had not even put on an overcoat. He was wearing his ordinary short jacket over his pyjamas. And the pyjamas themselves were too short for him: they revealed his ankle bones. There was a wild look in his eye as he rushed forward.

“Get the Brigade, sir,” he said hoarsely. “Get the Brigade.”

He was on the point of collapse as he said it, and stood there, gasping. Dr. Trump looked at him, pityingly. The man was making a miserable spectacle of himself and, unless he pulled himself together immediately, he would be spreading panic and alarm all round him.

“Go back to your room before people see you,” he ordered. “Go back and get dressed.”

As he said it, Dr. Trump started forward again. He was still
determined not to run, not to do anything that would excite emotion. But when he turned the corner by the Ridley Block and distinctly saw a glow, he forgot all discretion. He broke into a run. He sprinted. And, catching his breath as he ran, he began shouting out “Fire! Fire!”

The sight as he drew nearer was truly dreadful. At first glance, the entire laundry block looked as though it was past saving. No flames were actually visible but from the glare that showed through the upper windows, the whole interior was incandescent. Moreover, the fire was audible. From inside the building came a dull roaring sound in the midst of which shrill cracklings could be heard.

A shadowy group of figures was already assembled. And their presence irritated him. He felt that by rights he should have been first. But he conquered his irritation.

“Is everyone safe?” he demanded.

It was Mr. Jeffcote who answered.

“There's no one in there,” he said. “It's the stores.”

“Well, do something, man,” Dr. Trump replied tartly. “Don't just stand there, gaping.”

While he was still speaking, he heard the sound of running feet in the darkness behind him. They were heavy feet and, pounding on the hard asphalt, they rose above the roaring of the fire. There was a harsh trundling noise as well. Dr. Trump turned hurriedly. Emerging from the gloom, came the Hospital's own fire-fighting apparatus. An ancient post-office red affair, mounted on a bicycle-undercarriage and with long graceful arms for pumping, it was being hurtled to the scene by Mr. Rushgrove, the games master.

This was Dr. Trump's opportunity.

“Stand clear,” he shouted. “All hands man the pump.”

By now, one by one, the whole staff was assembling. And Sergeant Chiswick had re-appeared. He was staggering along under a load of flat and ragged-looking hose and was shouting out instructions over his shoulder as he paid out the hose behind him.

“Don't pull too hard, gentlemen,” he was pleading. “We don't want to tear it.”

Up to that moment, Dr. Trump had hoped that the Hospital staff could attend to the fire unaided. It seemed so amateurish somehow to have to call on outside assistance. But those words of Sergeant Chiswick's unnerved him. The sooner the Brigade was summoned, the better for everybody.

Dr. Trump was certainly in no mood for tolerating delay, either from the Exchange or from the Fire Station. As he stood there in the lobby of the porter's lodge, frantically joggling the hook of the receiver up and down, his patience suddenly boiled over. And, when the Exchange answered, he fairly bellowed into the mouthpiece: “You'll hear more of this in the morning. You mark my words, you will.”