Children of the Archbishop (4 page)

Dame Eleanor was pleased to see things turning out that way. She thought highly of Margaret; sufficiently highly to have taken her back into her service after the girl had gone away to look after a sick father or a sick mother or a sick someone—Dame Eleanor could remember nothing of the details, except that they were sad—who had eventually been considerate enough to die, and so release her again.

And Sweetie had taken to Margaret from the very start. Indeed, when Sweetie was in one of her difficult moods, Margaret was the only one who could do anything with her. Even having her about the place seemed to pacify the child; and Thursday in consequence came to be regarded as Sweetie's quiet day. If she had been forced to choose between Margaret and the pink plush rabbit, it is even possible that she would still have chosen Margaret.

And that's really about all that there is up to date to say about Sweetie; certainly nothing very sensational so far. But for that matter there was nothing very sensational at the time about the whole Archbishop Bodkin Hospital. One death (from measles) among all those children is a fairly low average; and one weather-vane blown away isn't much when you remember that the Victorian builder put up twelve of them altogether—and in the most exposed places, too.

No: during Sweetie's first three years at the place everything went on as quietly and placidly as it had done during the preceding three centuries.

Then something really did happen. Canon Mallow retired. The Canon himself had seen it coming on for some time—ever since he had joined the Hospital seventeen years ago. Sixty was retiring age, and it was the age of sixty that he had now reached. That was all there was to it.

But for those who remained, for the under-sixties, there was
unrest, speculation, anxiety, turmoil in the outcome. Even for Canon Mallow himself there was undefined uneasiness that he could not quite dispel. And the more he thought about to-morrow's interview with his successor—the last interview that he would ever hold in his own study—the less somehow was he looking forward to it.

After all, seventeen years is a long time.

“There. I think you'll find that's everything.”

Canon Mallow tried to smile reassuringly and folded his hands across his waistcoat. One by one he had ticked off the items on his fingers—the bank pass-book, the current ledger, the sundries, the file of birth-certificates, the medical reports. And now, relieved of all responsibility, he was facing his successor across the wide expanse of bare, polished mahogany.

Because it was his reading glasses that he was wearing he could not see Dr. Samuel Trump very plainly. Could hardly see him at all, in fact. But he still remembered quite enough about him. And as he sat there, peering and frowning slightly, he could still discern—though only smudgily, mistily, like something seen through a damp window pane—the large, egg-shaped head; the sharp grey eyes, deeply set and very close together; the massive caterpillar eyebrows.

It was not, however, merely the shape of his visitor's head that was worrying Canon Mallow: it was the way up it was. The pointed end was on top. And, rising above the high, the almost too-high, clerical collar, it looked exactly as though it had been carelessly inserted upside down into a clean white egg-cup.

But perhaps that was only the effect of seeing the head silhouetted so sharply against the light. Canon Mallow had always meant to move his desk round so that the light should not fall full on to his face. And more than once he had called in Sergeant Chiswick and his predecessors and asked them to do something about it. But when it actually came to it, he had never been able
to decide where else the desk should go. And in the evenings, of course, it was exactly right where it was. Or, it would be, if only he could have remembered to put a new bulb into his reading-lamp.

But this was dreadful! While he had been thinking about himself, he had forgotten all about his visitor, and the very last thing that he wanted was to appear off-hand or discourteous. So, putting his two hands on the table-top, he prepared to rise politely. But it was a low chair and a high table-top. And, when finally Canon Mallow had struggled up, it was rather in the manner of a child pulling itself on to its feet in a play-pen.

“Well,” he said, smiling vaguely into the light as he emerged, “and now shall we go round and see the rest of the Hospital?”

“But the laundry accounts,” his successor reminded him. “Weren't you going to show me the laundry accounts?”

The voice that had spoken was nasal and rather high-pitched. There was a serrated, metallic edge to it, as though, inside the egg, wheels were rasping. Canon Mallow decided that he did not like the sound of it. It was not a sort of voice at all for carrying on a conversation. It was simply a sharp, effective instrument for asking questions and requiring answers.

Canon Mallow smiled again; apologetically this time.

“Ah, yes, of course,” he said. “How silly of me. They're all here. The figures, I mean.”

He opened the large leather volume with the vertical cash columns, and pointed triumphantly to figures in red on the last page.

“There you are,” he said. “Nearly two hundred pounds out. It was worse last year.”

“And how long has it been going on?”

“The laundry?”

“No,” replied his successor. “The loss.”

Canon Mallow paused thoughtfully for a moment.

“Oh, as long as I can remember,” he replied. “You see, it's always made a loss, our laundry.”

“Then it must stop.”

“The laundry?” Canon Mallow asked again.

“I am still referring to the loss,” Dr. Trump told him.

But Canon Mallow only shook his head.

“I'm afraid it's not so easy as that,” he explained. “I've often tried to stop it. But it's the cost of things, you know. Soap powder. And soda. And starch, and all that. They're what run away with
the money. And, of course, the coal. There's a tremendous coal bill.”

“Other laundries pay,” the visitor remarked severely.

“Do they?” asked Canon Mallow, and hesitated. “Oh yes, of course,” he added. “I suppose they must do. Or people wouldn't go on running them, would they?”

Dr. Trump ignored the question.

“Is our machinery out of date?” he asked.

Canon Mallow considered this point carefully.

“I don't think it can be that,” he said slowly. “Because you see we don't use machinery. Not really. It's just washtubs and ironing-tables and things. Oh, and mangles. I suppose you might call a mangle a machine. But I don't think a mangle ever really goes out of date. Mangles are all very much the same, aren't they?”

“Is the turn-over sufficient?”

“Sufficient for what?”

“To make a profit.”

Canon Mallow paused again.

“Well, put like that, I don't see how it can be. Because if it was, we wouldn't be making a loss, would we?”

“We might, or we might not.”

Dr. Trump's lips came together again and remained pursed up after he had spoken.

“Do the girls work hard enough?” he demanded at last.

At that, Canon Mallow flushed.

“Good gracious, yes,” he said. “You wouldn't find a nicer lot of girls anywhere in England. And in that heat, too. And all the steam. Why, they're a lesson to every one of us.”

“Then I for one would like to learn,” the visitor answered. “Let us go to the laundry first.”

The man was certainly losing no time. Everything that Canon Mallow had been told about him was obviously correct. And as he stood there, he could hear again those words that Dame Eleanor had spoken with such confidence.

“Samuel Trump is the successful candidate,” she had informed him. “And the Board has made an excellent choice. Truly excellent. You need have no fears about leaving the Hospital in
his
hands. One of the shrewdest men in our Church. Quite one of the shrewdest.”

“And the greatest of these is shrewdness.” The words, uninvited, had formed themselves inside Canon Mallow's mind and become a slogan. He shuddered. This was worse than irreverence. Much worse. It was blasphemy.

Hurriedly, he pulled himself together.

“We'll go into the steam-room first,” he said. “Just to show ourselves. Then we'll get out again. We won't spend long in there. It's so hot.”

And they certainly hadn't spent long. It was all over, including the accident, inside half a minute. Not that it had been Canon Mallow's fault. Or Dr. Trump's for that matter. Accidents aren't usually anybody's fault. And, as for this one, it had just happened.

Anyhow, they were back in the little office by now, and Canon Mallow was bending over him.

“You're sure you're all right?” he asked anxiously. “You don't think you've broken anything?”

Dr. Samuel Trump raised his head, and his eyes—his small, too deeply inset eyes—met Canon Mallow's blue, wide-open ones. Then pursing up his lips he deliberately turned away again and continued to massage his right ankle.

“Sprained, possibly,” he replied at last. “But broken, no.”

He spoke briefly as if he wished to erase the whole unseemly incident from his mind. And, straightening himself, he began scrubbing vigorously with his knuckles at the disfiguring patch of soapy water on the sleeve of his new black jacket.

But Canon Mallow was far too solicitous, too deeply concerned, simply to drop the subject.

“Because you did come down an awful bump, you know,” he went on thoughtfully.

“Fortunately I grasped something,” Dr. Trump replied. “Otherwise …”

His voice trailed away significantly, with a hint of ambulances and anæsthetics in the silence that succeeded it.

“There used to be a light there,” Canon Mallow remarked quietly, almost as though speaking to himself.

“And there is going to be a light there again,” Dr. Trump assured him. “A bright light.”

“It's a wonder you weren't killed,” Canon Mallow went on. “It is really.”

“It would not have been my fault if …” Dr. Trump began. But, instead of continuing, he beckoned Canon Mallow over.

“Forgive my not rising,” he said. “The ankle, you understand. But I wish to ask you something.”

Canon Mallow smiled politely.

“Of course,” he answered.

“When I fell,” Dr. Trump said slowly and accusingly. “Did you hear anything?”

Canon Mallow's eyes opened even wider in astonishment.

“Why, everyone must have heard,” he answered. “You came a tremendous wallop.”

Dr. Trump frowned: his eyebrows were now like something taken from a box of Carnival Novelties and gummed on to him.

“I don't mean
after
I had fallen,” he went on in the same accusing tones. “I mean
as
I fell.”

Canon Mallow himself was frowning now.

“I don't think so,” he said. “Did you?”

“I did,” Dr. Trump answered. “I heard laughter. A laundress's laughter.”

“Oh that,” Canon Mallow answered. “That was just hysteria. They're a very highly strung lot, those girls. And it was a bit sudden, you know. At one moment there you were saying how glad you were to be here and at the next you'd vanished. Simply vanished. It was enough to make anyone …”

He broke off and ran his handkerchief across his forehead on which the steam from the wash-house still glistened. It had been a deplorable business, this visit to the laundry. First the heat and humidity of the steam-coppers—Dr. Trump, he could not help noticing, had emerged looking as if he were ready for ironing himself—and now the disaster on the stairs. Canon Mallow was afraid that Dr. Trump would think badly of the Hospital Laundry for ever. And he was anxious, desperately anxious, for everyone's sake that somehow or other he should soothe him.

“Feeling all right?” he asked again.

Under Dr. Trump's tremendous eyebrows, the eyes themselves seemed to contract still farther and come together until they were one single eye, fixed centrally and gleaming like a jewel in the forehead of an idol. Then the jewel blinked suddenly as a sharp spasm of pain passed through the idol's ankle.

“I am perfectly well, thank you,” Dr. Trump replied.

“Sure you wouldn't rather go back?” Canon Mallow persisted.

“Quite sure,” Dr. Trump said firmly. “I wish to see everything. Now. Before it gets too dark.”

“Well, just as you say,” Canon Mallow answered. “But mind yourself. It's all stairs and corners.”

The route from the laundry office lay along a worn asphalt pathway that stopped abruptly at a brick wall with a narrow Gothic doorway in the middle of it. The wall was high and a crest of broken glass ran along the top. Canon Mallow paused. It may have been the act of pressing down the latch that reminded him. For he suddenly recalled that he was conducting a visitor.

“This leads through into the boys' side,” he said pleasantly, like a guide indulging in the professional small talk of his calling.

“From the girls'?” Dr. Trump asked pointedly.

“That's right,” Canon Mallow replied. “Senior boys one side. Senior girls the other.”

“Is it not kept locked?”

Canon Mallow shook his head.

“There used to be a key once,” he said.

“What happens at night?”

Canon Mallow looked blankly towards him.

“Why nothing,” he replied. “They're all asleep by then.”

But while he was speaking, Dr. Trump had removed from his pocket a small black notebook.

It was a new notebook and at the top of the first page, Dr. Trump wrote the single word “key.”

“And what would you like to show me next?” Canon Mallow suddenly heard Dr. Trump addressing him. “You are still Warden here—until tomorrow remember.”