Children of the Archbishop (34 page)

It must, Dr. Trump reflected afterwards, have been the deplorable effect of the champagne on a constitution unaccustomed to it that had made Auntie Flo so suddenly and so remorselessly reminiscent. On the subject of her nephew she became as a woman inspired: she was eloquent. She forgot nothing—his first manly trousers; his weak chest; his tantrums; his indigestion; his flat
feet, particularly his left one that had always turned inwards at the ankle; his bicycle accident; his disastrous experiment in shaving; his bouts of bronchitis that succeeded even the least of chills; his fear of large dogs; his abnormal longing for a silver watch in a local pawnbroker's; his dislike of other children of the same sex; the sweetness of his singing voice; his affection for clergymen; his powers of application and the diplomas, medals, prizes, exhibitions, scholarships and what-not that had all followed.

Twice Dr. Trump plucked her by the sleeve—the second time quite hard—and tried once more to show her the presents. But she was not to be distracted. Her colour had risen and with her veil slipped back across the brim of that awful hat she faced the world on more than even terms.

With a newly discovered confidence she now assailed him. Why had he never been back to see them? Had he forgotten his own auntie? Did those who loved him and cared for him and thought about nothing else mean so little to him? How could he bear to leave empty his own bedroom above the shop that was just as he had left it, just as he would want to find it whenever he returned? And when, even to her ears, his assurances of an early visit and prolonged stay sounded empty and deceitful, Auntie Flo turned on Felicity. There was room, and a welcome for both of them. She offered her own bedroom if only they would really come.

But Dr. Trump had ceased to listen. Instead, he was looking at the faces of the listening group. And if it had not been for the foxy alertness of the unwelcome reporter he would—weak digestion, flat-feet, affection for clergymen and all—have wiped the smile clean off Mr. Prevarius's face with one crisp and uninhibited clip across the jaw.

The hour had come at last. Felicity had turned off all the lights, except for the pink shaded one above the bed. And Dr. Trump, who had just remembered that he had not put his shoes outside, was walking self-consciously back into the bedroom, fiddling with the tassels of his new dressing-gown.

But, instead of getting into bed, Dr. Trump—to Felicity's great astonishment—passed straight through the bedroom and out on to the balcony again.

The air there was cooler, and Dr. Trump shivered slightly.
Nevertheless, it was a pearl among evenings. Night had already descended on the bay and the moon shining on the water made a pathway that vaguely suggested a subject for a sermon. But Dr. Trump at this moment had no appetite for sermons. He stood biting his lips and gazing at a distant star.

Behind him from the bedroom a soft voice called.

“Samuel,” it said.

Dr. Trump started guiltily.

“Yes, my love.”

“A penny for them, dearest.”

Dr. Trump turned and began to remove his dressing-gown as he re-entered.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “So far there hasn't been a single answer to the advertisements. And with Dawlish wanting to go, it'll be extremely awkward if no one else applies.”

Especially in the dawn-light, the new laundry block looked most impressive. The insurance company, having failed to find any flaw in the policy, had finally paid up like gentlemen. And, in consequence, an expanse of bright yellow brick now showed violently among the grey, smoke-laden walls of the rest of the Hospital. Nor was the laundry block all. There was also the new fire-engine. Of the latest model and with centrifugal action, it was painted pillar-box red like its predecessor, and stood at the Latymer end of the cloisters, roped off from passers-by and with the notice “DO NOT TOUCH” fixed on to the front of it.

But a great calamity like a fire can hardly be expected to pass off with nothing more to show for itself than some clean brickwork and a fancy-looking, stream-lined fire-engine. Indeed Dr. Trump by now had taken every precaution. He had ordered new fire-escapes. And the whole Hospital was now girded and festooned with extinguishers—one in each dormitory and classroom; one in each corridor; one in the Board Room; one in the masters' common room, and one in the mistresses'; one in Dr. Trump's own room, just behind his chair; three in the Warden's Residence;
and one in the chapel. After some thought, Dr. Trump had decided on the pulpit as the most suitable place for the chapel extinguisher. In the result, if a conflagration should break out during divine service Dr. Trump could, without abandoning his position, merely strike the knob sharply and direct the jet into the very heart of the inferno.

It was really the extinguisher in the masters' common room that was the most important because, as Dr. Trump frequently upbraided himself, he had practically
invited
his own staff to make a bonfire of the whole place. He had already issued one of his orders on the subject of smoking in bedrooms. Over the mantelpiece in every master's room there now hung a printed card in bold letters: SMOKING IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN IN BEDROOMS, AND OFFENDERS WILL BE DEALT WITH SEVERELY. MASTERS WISHING TO SMOKE ARE PERMITTED TO DO SO IN THE COMMON ROOM BUT ARE ONCE AGAIN WARNED OF THE DANGERS OF CARELESSNESS.
Signed
Samuel Trump, Warden.

And on his tours of inspection Dr. Trump now always made a special point of pausing long enough to sniff outside each door. Of abnormally keen powers of smell, he prided himself that if the dirty habit were secretly being practised anywhere behind closed doors he would be able to detect it immediately. The only difficulty was that Mr. Dawlish's room was so soaked and impregnated with tobacco that it was difficult to decide how recently the weed had been burning.

For Mr. Dawlish was still there. The other victims of Dr. Trump's re-organisation, his purge, had duly passed outwards into limbo. Mr. Jeffcote, practically blind already, was reduced to addressing envelopes for an agency at the rate of Iod. a thousand; Mrs. Glubb had found a post—but only at £52 a year—in a home for backward children in St. Leonards; and Miss Wynne, her goitre growing steadily worse and more disfiguring, was with an aunt at Hendon. But Mr. Prevarius and Mr. Dawlish remained.

In fact, when Dr. Trump had come to review the matter it became more and more distressingly apparent that Mr. Dawlish was well-nigh irreplaceable. There was simply no one else in the whole Hospital who could teach so much English, History, Geography, Arithmetic and Scripture to children of all ages from six to fourteen. And the size of class did not seem to worry him either. Sixty was the present number, and Mr. Dawlish, still as dirty and tobacco-stained as ever, took it all as calmly as when the class had been only half the size.

As for Mr. Prevarius, he was still there because Dr. Trump had set his heart on that B.B.C. broadcast, Admittedly, up to the present there had been nothing to show for it. But, according to Mr. Prevarius, he was engaged in a practically day by day correspondence with Sir John Reith, who was ready to cancel anything—symphony concerts, plays, even the news bulletin itself—to fit it in, and it was thus only a matter of waiting for the happy moment.

In the meantime, Dr. Trump had been strict and businesslike. Mr. Prevarius now combined the Old Testament and a little English Grammar with music-teaching, and there were no more free periods anywhere in Mr. Prevarius's calendar. Dr. Trump had, indeed, considered throwing in the New Testament as well. But, remembering the incident of the elderberry wine, he had finally decided against it, and had added commercial script and simple book-keeping instead.

And so, except for the doubling-up of classes on the girls' side, life in the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital continued very much as it had done before Dr. Trump's major re-organisation.

Or, at least that was how things were before Mrs. Gurnett fired off her bombshell. That was something that threw everything into chaos; something that, as Dr. Trump told her, he found it quite impossible to forgive, especially at such a moment when Mrs. Trump's condition was naturally causing him so much concern.

But now look at it from Mrs. Gurnett's point of view. Just think what it meant to her.

The letter had come at the ordinary time—it was round about 8.15 when the postman usually reached the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital—but until this moment, Mrs. Gurnett had not had more than a chance to glance at it. Admittedly, she had already raced through it no fewer than five times. Once when it had arrived; again immediately after breakfast; once at eleven, during the break for a mid-morning cup of tea; once during the lull after lunch while the washing up was going on; and once surreptitiously in the lavatory at about 5.30. But she was still not satisfied. Up to the present, she had not managed to do what she called
getting down to it properly
.

But this was different. She was in her own room, now. The nickel-plated alarm-clock on the mantelpiece showed 10.25 p.m., and Mrs. Gurnett noted the fact approvingly. It meant that, short of anything sudden and dramatic, there would be no more interruptions for to-night. Mrs. Gurnett therefore moved her chair round so that the light was better, unbuckled her belt, eased off her shoes until her toes were only just poking into them and started to re-read what had been written.

Started to re-read, and then stopped because the past was suddenly so recent and so overwhelming. It was terrible, frightening, the way it all came sweeping back over her. She remembered everything—her shame, Mr. Gurnett's trial and imprisonment, her own imaginary widowhood. It was all so recent, yet so remote—like reading in the evening paper of some other woman's misfortune. And now, out of the blue, to receive this letter telling her that Mr. Gurnett was dead.

It was twenty-three years almost to the day when she had last seen him. And that had been when he had turned in the dock with the warder's hand already resting on his shoulder, and had blown her a kiss where she was sitting. Twenty-three years, but she could still see every detail of the scene—the rather large check of the suit that he had on, the black silk cravat worn somewhat wider than was customary among gentlemen in his social position, the solitaire pearl tie-pin, the militarily waxed moustache, and, above all, his large, dewy black eyes that he had once brought so close to hers.

And Mrs. Gurnett remembered something else as well. She remembered how the first, the
real
Mrs. Gurnett, had sat just below her in the body of the court. And, at that distasteful memory, the crescent of Mrs. Gurnett's lips hardened and she drew in her breath involuntarily. That one glimpse was all that she had ever had of her rival, her forerunner. But it had been enough. The tendrils of fair fluffy hair escaping round the straw hat-brim, the china blue eyes, the pink and white complexion all betokened the essential cheapness and frivolity in Mr. Gurnett's false nature. It was as though somehow he had earlier got himself entangled with a wax doll. And it had shown that she was well shot of such a monster, this cheap Italian-looking bedroom-monger who could blow a kiss to another woman with his own lawful wife looking on.

Then to receive this, to learn when it was already too late, that he had loved her all the time. It was staggering, incredible; like
re-writing history. To think, after all, that those playful whisperings that had raised a blush every time he turned towards her, had come not merely from the tongue, but from the heart. To realise that if it had not been for that snivelling blonde milk-maid whose eyes had been pink-rimmed right through the case, Mr. Gurnett would have been with her all through these years, his lusty tenor laugh ringing through the house, his Homburg hat and yellow gloves on the hall-stand, his heavy breathing on the pillow beside her at night-time. Mrs. Gurnett sat back for a moment and wiped away a tear.

Not that she had felt like this about the matter from the start. Her first emotion when she opened the letter had been one of sick horror, of disgust. When she had seen the name Albert Nathaniel Gurnett set out in the cold script of the lawyer's typewriter, her first instinct had been to tear the letter up, destroy it instantly, so that no matter what message was contained within it she could not possibly be drawn back down into those depths, that cesspool.

But, when she read its astonishing message, she paused. Two hundred and eighty-nine pounds! It was a fortune. And apparently this incalculable and misjudged man had decided to leave it all to her. Not that she was going to do anything rash like accepting. For all she knew, Mr. Gurnett might not really be dead at all: the whole thing might be simply a trick, a ruse to get her back to him. But even if he were dead
could
she,
ought
she, to accept the money? Wouldn't it reduce her to a level as low as his if she calmly put the cash into her handbag and called the whole thing quits?

She paused, easing her toes inside her half done-up shoes. Then she began to see things differently. All the money in the world wasn't enough to put right the wrong that he had done her. Mr. Gurnett must have known that. But it was something that he had tried, it showed that she must have been on his conscience. And who was she to refuse a dying man, a dead man even, his last wish? Besides, there was something very touching, something that made a lump come into her throat, at the thought of him far, far away—Bridlington was where the letter came from—remembering her as the death mists had closed around him. In that moment, she forgave him; and, having forgiven him, there could be no point in refusing what he had been so anxious to bequeath.

Her reply took some time to write because she wanted it to be as formal and correct as the letter that the lawyer had sent her.
And, when she had finished it, she still had to make a copy of her own so that she would know if the firm was a sharp one and tried to do her out of anything.