Children of the Archbishop (31 page)

“I learnt at breakfast of your trouble,” the Bishop said simply. “I have come.”

And, having come, he wanted to see everything. He stood at the edge of the crater and peered down. He asked whether arson
was suspected. He poked at the brickwork with his umbrella. He crushed a charred ember with his heel and remarked that fire consumed all things. Then, abruptly, he took out his watch.

“Well, I must leave you now to tidy up,” he said. “I fear that things at home are far from well this morning.”

For once, Dr. Trump forgot to say how sorry he was. At the moment, however, he was too much preoccupied by the Press men who were still crowding round Mr. Dawlish to give so much as a thought to his future father-in-law. And he did not even show the excitement natural to a good fiancé when the Bishop turned and remarked over his shoulder: “Felicity said she'd be round later. She's coming as soon as she can get away.” Instead, he merely waved distractedly and prepared to thrust his way into the group of reporters. But it was no use. Before he had gone more than a couple of paces, he was hailed. And the voice was summoning and peremptory. It was Dame Eleanor's.

Dr. Trump turned.

“How kind of you to come in the midst of our trouble …” he began.

But Dame Eleanor was in no mood for politeness.

“Whose fault was it?” she asked.

“The cause of the fire is unknown,” Dr. Trump replied guardedly. “The Salvage men are still hoping to discover something.”

“In all that mess?” Dame Eleanor asked him.

Dr. Trump nodded.

“They are looking for a cable,” he explained, adding unnecessarily, “an electric one.”

“Well, it's too late now even if they find it,” Dame Eleanor answered tartly. “The harm's done. Is the insurance all right?”

“I … I trust so,” Dr. Trump told her.

“It'd better be,” Dame Eleanor replied grimly. “You're responsible, you know.”

“Quite so,” Dr. Trump replied. “Oh quite.”

And in his agitation he forgot all about Mr. Dawlish and the news-hawks. The one thing that now mattered was to check the policy.

Dame Eleanor, however, had not yet left him.

“Margaret was round here before breakfast,” she said. “There's loyalty for you. That's how I heard …”

It was still only 9.25 when Dame Eleanor departed. And Dr. Trump braced himself for the day's work before him. There was
so much to be done—insurance, salvage, police, and his complaint to the local Fire Station. The children, too, would have to be quietened down and brought back to a sense of proper discipline. The staff needed steadying. Sergeant Chiswick would have to be cross-examined. There was Mr. Dawlish's story to be probed into—for all that Dr. Trump knew, the man might simply be seeking to conceal something. And, above all, fresh arrangements would have to be made about the laundry.

“Even if the Juniors have to lose their playroom,” Dr. Trump told himself, “we must get the ironing done somewhere. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of the orders.”

And, at the prospect, his spirits began mounting.

“No one in authority, no administrator,” he told himself, “is ever really put to the test until things begin to go wrong. What is needed now is clear thinking and action. I shall cancel all the day's appointments. Religious instruction, the catering accounts, the sports fund, everything. I shall shut myself away entirely.”

He was still repeating this last piece of determination when he entered his study and found a telegram on the table.

“Just read this morning's Stop Press,” it read. “Earnestly praying all well and no casualties stop Returning London immediately stop”

The telegram was signed “Mallow.”

It seemed to Canon Mallow that the train had never been slower. He sat in the corner of the third-class compartment, still clutching the fatal sheet of newspaper. “FIRE IN ORPHANAGE,” the Stop Press ran, “WING OF BODKIN HOSPITAL, PUTNEY, GUTTED LAST NIGHT. CAUSE OF FIRE UNKNOWN.” And every time he raised his eyes from those three lines of black and inky type he became more conscious of the slowness of the train. There it was ambling through the fields when he was wanted urgently, desperately in town. He was so much concerned, indeed, that when the train reached Waterloo he sprang from it before the driver had really got there. Two porters caught him, and a ticket inspector who had seen it happen came along all the way from the barrier. If Canon Mallow, he said, had been anyone other than a clergyman he would have reported him. People who jumped from moving trains injured other people more often than they injured themselves
and the railways were getting pretty hot on it; it was, in fact, Canon Mallow's last chance at train jumping.

Canon Mallow was upset by the whole incident, and apologised. “You must forgive me,” he said. “My home was on fire last night. It says so here. And all my boys and girls, five hundred of them, you understand.” But when he tried to find the newspaper, it was gone. Knocked from his grasp when he had collided with the porters, probably. So he wasn't altogether surprised when he saw the ticket inspector turn away and tap his forehead significantly.

“Quite so, sir,” said the inspector. “Now you go along quietly. You'll find everything's all right.”

Naturally as soon as he had got through the barrier, Canon Mallow went straight up to the bookstall to buy the evening papers. For some extraordinary reason, the news of the fire wasn't on the front page at all. There was a lot about a railway accident in Italy and a murder in Stoke Newington and a killer-dog in Sussex. But still nothing about the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital fire. It was not, in fact, until he turned to page three of one of the papers that he came upon anything at all. And then it was only a paragraph entitled “Laundry Blaze.”

Canon Mallow was astounded that with so much human life hanging in the balance, the orphanage should have been called a laundry. It was all of a piece with the callousness that made the public Press so distressing.

He concluded afterwards that it must have been because the newspaper paragraph had upset him that he left his umbrella in the Underground. But he could not be sure. It was quite possible, for instance, that he might have left it in the train coming up to Waterloo: he did not actually remember having it in his hands when he had fallen from the train. Or he might even have left it propped up against the bookstall when he went to buy the papers. He had been in such a rush all the time that he couldn't be certain of anything.

And the loss saddened him: it was a break with the past being separated from that umbrella. The handle was that rare thing, an absolutely straight piece of cherrywood, and the silver band was of the ingenious kind that pushed down and fastened on to the ribs when the thing was folded up. But what made the loss all the more heartbreaking was that it was the Old Bodkinians Association that had given it to him to celebrate his fifteenth year as their President.

He would rather have lost anything than that umbrella.

Canon Mallow was craning his neck out of the taxi as it approached St. Mark's Avenue. And, certainly from the front, everything looked reassuring enough. All the same, his nerves were fairly tingling as he stood in the deep, mock-Gothic gateway, tugging at the ornamental bell-pull.

“Please God all the children are safe,” he kept repeating to himself. “Let them be all right. I can't think how it can have happened. Not with all the staff there …”

He had turned his back on the Hospital and was gazing up the Avenue in contemplation. That was why he did not notice when Sergeant Chiswick opened the door to him. He was not in point of fact at that moment thinking about the missing children at all: it was the lost umbrella that was preoccupying him. And he jumped when he heard Sergeant Chiswick's voice saying loudly in his ear: “Why it's you, sir.”

Canon Mallow spun round.

“Is everyone all right?” he asked quickly. “Are the children safe?”

He could tell at once from Sergeant Chiswick's expression that nothing was seriously wrong and he continued breathlessly.

“Then there's nobody been killed?”

“Bless you, no, sir.”

Canon Mallow paused. The alarm, the urgency dissolved inside him. He felt flat and empty. There was possibly even something a little absurd in the way in which he had come hurtling back from the seaside. But he was still not satisfied.

“What caused it?” he asked. “We didn't have fires in my time.”

Sergeant Chiswick leant forward.

“Something in the electricity, sir,” he said. “One of the firemen told me. It's the wiring. Ought to have been seen to years ago.”

Canon Mallow clicked his teeth disapprovingly.

“I'll speak to Dr. Trump about it,” he said. “We can't risk another one. We may not be so lucky next time.”

He was already beginning to move off in the direction of the Warden's Residence, when Sergeant Chiswick stopped him.

“Dr. Trump said on no account was he to be disturbed, sir,” he explained apologetically.

But Canon Mallow only smiled at him.

“You needn't worry about that,” he said. “I don't think that he'll count me as a disturbance.”

Here, however, he was wrong. At first the maid—she was a new one whom Canon Mallow had never seen before—refused even to take his name up. And then, when she had been persuaded, she returned with the news that Dr. Trump could not be interrupted now, but would hope to see Canon Mallow later if his business permitted.

Canon Mallow was momentarily taken aback. And then, when he had reflected on it, he saw how reasonable it was.

“My compliments to the Warden,” he said, “and tell him that with his permission I will take the opportunity of looking up a few of my old friends.”

When the door of the Warden's Residence had closed again—and it seemed strangely like having his own front door closed in his face—Canon Mallow went back through the side door into the Cloisters. And straight away he noticed one or two rather puzzling innovations. In the first place, there was a placard fixed on to the pillar nearest to the Residence: and when Canon Mallow had slipped his glasses up on to his forehead he saw that it read: “NO TALKING OR RUNNING IN THE CLOISTERS.”

“I wonder why,” he asked himself. “I do hope no one's ill.”

There was something different about the lawns, too. They were now surrounded by a low trellis of wire and, attached to the wire at the point opposite the entrance to the Latymer Block, was a notice bearing the words: “CHILDREN ARE FORBIDDEN TO WALK ON THE GRASS.”

“Oh, I suppose they must have sown new grass seed or something,” Canon Mallow reflected. “But it's funny. It always looked all right to me.”

He was still reflecting on the enclosure of the lawn when he saw a familiar figure approaching. It was Mr. Dawlish. His head was bent forward as he walked because he was doing something to his pipe. In consequence, he did not see Canon Mallow until he was almost upon him. But when he did so, the effect was remarkable. He came forward and pressed Canon Mallow's hand with undisguised emotion and seemed, though Canon Mallow could not imagine why, almost to be upon the brink of tears.

“Ah, Canon,” he said. “It's good to see you. Things aren't a bit the same since you left, you know. Not a bit the same.”

And, without warning, Mr. Dawlish unloaded himself of his second piece of news.

“They're getting rid of me at the end of this term,” he said.

“Getting rid of you,” Canon Mallow repeated in amazement.

Mr. Dawlish nodded.

“Nine weeks' notice last Friday,” he said. “Nine weeks, after seventeen years,” he said.

“But … but why didn't you write and tell me?” Canon Mallow demanded.

He realised as he said it that writing would have been of little use. Even if he had heard, the most that he could have done would have been to appeal to Dame Eleanor. Or to Bishop Warple. But Dame Eleanor would have been bound to support the decision of her own Warden. And, as for the Bishop, he could hardly be expected to turn against his future son-in-law.

Mr. Dawlish, however, was making no demands on him.

“Not that I'm grumbling,” he said. “It had to be.”

“Oh, don't you worry,” Canon Mallow told him. “Perhaps it won't happen.”

As soon as he had said it, he realised how silly it was. But he felt somehow that it was his duty to comfort the poor man.

“Just don't think about it,” he went on. “We none of us know what God has in store.”

And with that, Canon Mallow went on his way towards the laundry block. And as soon as he got there he saw at a glance how terrible things must have been. The charred rafters were outlined against the sky, and the area where the ironers used to work had disappeared altogether: it was now simply a pit, half filled with blackened rubbish, chairs, tables, ironing-boards, gas-rings, clothes-baskets, sinks, lamp-brackets and lengths of twisted iron tubing.

“Thank God that it happened at night,” thought Canon Mallow devoutly. “Otherwise someone would have been hurt for certain.”

He shook his head as that awful possibility occurred to him, and turned to go away in search of Mrs. Gurnett. He knew that he could be sure of a sensible account from her. But as he turned he realised that he was not alone. Peering in through one of the empty window frames on the far side was a face. And as soon as the face saw Canon Mallow it disappeared.

“Is there anybody there?” Canon Mallow asked.

No reply.

“Was someone looking through the window just now?”

Still no reply.

Canon Mallow raised his voice a little.

“Come here, Ginger,” he said. “I want to speak to you.”

For a moment, the silence continued, unbroken. Canon Mallow frowned. Had he been mistaken? Did the fringe of carroty-coloured hair that he had seen really belong to somebody else? Then he heard a slithering sound, the sound of heavy boots clambering about on rubble.