Children of the Archbishop (49 page)

“Are you listening to me?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“What was I saying?”

“About a report, sir.”

“Then why were you looking out of the window?”

“There's a bee, sir.”

“A what?”

“A bee, sir. It's got shut in.”

“We'll soon see about that.”

Dr. Trump got up hurriedly and snatched hold of the massive brass-knobbed blotter that stood upon his desk. What made it all so simple was that the bee was now stationary. It was blankly and angrily contemplating the bright sunny world from which it was cut off by this mysterious transparent barrier. And Dr. Trump's blotter landed right on top of it. When the blotter came away there was no bee—only a bright smear upon the window-pane.

“There,” said Dr. Trump triumphantly.

But he could scarcely believe his ears.

“You beast,” Sweetie said to him. “I wouldn't have told you if I'd known.”

And Dr. Trump was not by any means satisfied when he received Sweetie's letter of apology for her rudeness.

“
I am sory I was rude
,” it ran. “
It was bad to call you a beest. I am sory. I must not shout at old people. Shouting at old people is rude. I am sory. I did not know you hated bees. I should have knowed. I am sory
.”

He dropped the sheet of note-paper into the wastepaper basket. Really it was heartbreaking, simply heartbreaking, the ignorance and stupidity of the child. He did not hate bees. On the contrary, he rather liked them. And he was not old. The phrasing, the handwriting
and the spelling of Sweetie's all depressed him equally. He rose and began walking up and down the room.

“Really it's maddening,” he told himself. “Sweetie and that boy Ginger are more trouble than the rest of the Hospital put together. They'll be the end of me, these two.”

And though he did not actually utter the words there was the authentic note of despair, of prophecy almost, about them.

Mrs. Warple was now a permanent resident in the Warden's lodgings. And, all during those long months of planning and devising and arranging, when Dr. Trump's mind should have been fully concentrated upon the Pageant, the presence of his mother-in-law ominously hung over him, distracting and destroying. Even at night—sometimes, indeed, especially at night, when he was wakeful—he was aware of her in a sullen, uneasy way as though she were a low thundercloud that threatened at any moment to burst over him.

Not that Mrs. Warple had at first given the slightest cause for complaint. She had been exemplary. That is, as exemplary as any permanent invalid can be. There were, of course, the “little cups of tea” as Felicity always referred to them—though to Dr. Trump's eye they looked exactly the same size as other cups—that she was constantly taking to her mother. There were the packets of cigarettes for her nerves. There was the breast of chicken, the only part of the meat that Mrs. Warple in her weak condition could tolerate. And, as Dr. Trump scraped gloomily at a leg, Felicity would come downstairs happy and radiant, to say that Mrs. Warple could just manage the other side.

Also, there were her library books. Indeed, to keep Mrs. Warple's mind off her own inescapable tragedy, Felicity was for ever going out for fresh reading material. Dr. Trump had already taken out an “On Demand” subscription, and he shuddered every time Felicity passed him on the stairs with new loads, all at 2d. a day extra.

But this was not the worst. For as Dr. Trump noted gloomily,
Mrs. Warple was growing stronger every day. She now had what she called her “good spells.” And when these were on her she went round the house from room to room, interfering, managing and rearranging things. She had been up three whole days last week.

And because of Mrs. Warple, Dr. Trump spent more time than ever in his makeshift upstairs study. Not that he was unhappy there. On the contrary, the Pageant was already opening in his mind like a flower. And new buds on the parent stem were unfolding every day. He had already thought of a Physical Fitness Display by the Under Fives, a Breeches Buoy Deep Sea Rescue Demonstration on the tennis court by the Senior boys, and First Aid and Folk Dancing Sections for the girls—all in addition to the great central theme of Charity Through the Ages. This, he had decided, was to be treated in the boldest manner with the staff as well as the children participating. He had already marked down Nurse Stedge for Queen Bess, Mr. Dawlish for Robin Hood, Margaret—because of that extraordinarily queenly bearing of hers—for Boadicea, and … and yes, of course, himself for St. George.

It was only St. George's horse that worried him. Clearly, the horse was essential to the whole conception. Who had ever heard of St. George on foot? But even if he took riding lessons now, how could he be sure that no one would see him before he became proficient? How could he be certain that no one would guess that he had never ridden before? Not on a horse, that is. There had been a fortnight long ago at Broadstairs when he was quite small and his aunts had tried him on a donkey. But he had not persevered. There was something in the motion once the beast trotted, that had alarmed and terrified him.

But he was a man now, he reminded himself. Childish fears could play no part in his plans any longer. And surely there must be some quiet horses. It wasn't as though he wanted to do circus tricks. All that he was concerned about was that he should be able to ride in through the shrubbery, spear the cardboard dragon that Mr. Dawlish would have to make in the Manual Workshops—and so, out again—until the triumphal procession at the end when he would, of course, lead the whole company.

Dr. Trump's mind kept returning to the idea. Wouldn't Richmond be the place for learning, he asked himself? It was far enough away for no one to recognise him. And once inside the Park there would be plenty of room in case the animal bolted.

The physical restoration of Mrs. Warple and the discovery about Sebastian's chest were practically simultaneous—and, in prospect, almost equally alarming.

For a start, Mrs. Warple was almost completely recovered: every day was a good day now. She had not merely taken to coming down for breakfast, but she actually came down singing. Nor were the snatches of song the kind of thing that Dr. Trump liked to hear: only this week the words “Ta-ra-ra-bom-de-ay” had reached him clearly from the bathroom landing.

Moreover, she was displaying a highly-developed and peculiarly maddening form of nervous energy. It was obvious—pathetically obvious—that she was trying to make herself useful, to take some of the strain off Felicity as she put it. In the result, Dr. Trump lived in a state of perpetual apprehension. His coffee cup was snatched from him at breakfast almost before he had been given time to put it down; his shaving-brush which he left always in full lather like a creamy white cauliflower was, on Mrs. Warple's instructions, carefully rinsed each morning under the cold tap; and the cushion of his chair which he preferred hard and flat was assiduously thumped and pounded into the consistency of a soufflé. It was like having a loving enemy about the place.

But all this was nothing compared to the news about Sebastian. It had, of course, been known right from the start that the child was delicate. A sudden change in the direction of the wind; the slightest dampness around the feet or legs; the nursery door left thoughtlessly ajar; or a button come undone amid the several thicknesses of his chill-proof underwear, and Sebastian's snufflings and wheezings would inevitably begin.

In such circumstances, there would within any household have been precautions. A son and heir, especially where he is an only child, is naturally precious, not to say irreplaceable. There could be no argument about that. But when he had once raised the point, asking diffidently, even timidly: “You don't think, do you, dear, that perhaps we might try the other method—the hardening process, you know?” the effect on Felicity had been deplorable. It had roused the she-tiger and the vixen. For she had instantly rounded on him, demanding whether he wanted to lose Sebastian in just the
way she had lost her own poor father and for precisely the same reason, too.

And then what made it so deeply humiliating for Dr. Trump was that Felicity's worst fear was suddenly confirmed. Expert, three-guinea opinion from Harley Street agreed in everything. The child's lungs were not yet actually affected: that much was agreed on by general practitioner and specialist alike. But at least there was a weakness. And the air of Putney, though bracing, was not apparently bracing enough. Switzerland was mentioned. There was talk of Montreux, Grenoble, Chamonix.

And, though very much to Dr. Trump's relief it was Broadstairs that finally was chosen, there was an uneasiness within his mind that he was powerless to dispel. For, from the moment when the truth about Sebastian's lungs had been discovered, Dr. Trump had been uncomfortably aware of being ignored, passed over, spurned. Whenever he had tried fleetingly to re-assert himself he had been brushed aside.

Try as he could, he could no longer conceal from himself the fact that, compared with his own son, he himself apparently did not exist. Even one sentence: “Much as I love my son, my place is still beside my husband,” or: “But if I go off like this, who is to look after poor Samuel?” would have been sufficient. As it turned out, however, there was nothing. Just silence. Complete and deeply wounding silence.

There had, moreover, been a sudden marked increase in Felicity's affection for her mother. The two of them were always whispering together nowadays. And, on one occasion, it had been even worse. Felicity and her mother had been sitting there together, bunched occupyingly around the fire, when Felicity had turned her head slightly and remarked: “If you want to do anything, don't bother about us.”

Spiritually, man is an animal lodged insecurely upon this planet: he is in need of constant cherishment and reassurance. And a terrible feeling of unwantedness passed through Dr. Trump as he heard the words. It seemed as though within the Warden's Lodging it was he and not Mrs. Warple who was the visitor, the object of compassion; as though, to put it bluntly, he had been out-manoeuvred and was in the way.

And now, suddenly, the whisperings were all explained, and the worst—the worst imaginable—had happened. While Felicity and Sebastian were wintering in the fine, preventive air of Broadstairs,
Mrs. Warple was to stay in Putney to look after Dr. Trump!

It was all so matter-of-fact, so diabolically well calculated that Dr. Trump found himself sweating from its sheer inescapability. He demurred, he argued, he protested. But it was too late. Everything had been arranged, Felicity said, and there was nothing left to be discussed: he would merely, she added, have to be more considerate about little things because mother wasn't so young as she had been.

Within the week everything had been arranged. It was February at the time and Felicity and Sebastian, accompanied by Dr. Trump, went down in a hired car at odious expense to install themselves in the private hotel that Felicity had selected.

It was the Ragusa that she had chosen. The rooms themselves seemed as comfortable as anything can be in the out-of-season wilderness of a seaside town. Indeed, so far as bead-mats and fancy stencilled runners could make them, they verged upon the lavish. But the position! As Dr. Trump sat muffled in his greatcoat during the return journey, he prayed that Felicity and Dr. Arlett and the specialists—the whole damn bunch of them, in fact—had not blundered. It seemed to him, however, unthinkable that anyone let alone a delicate child, should be carted off somewhere to a place where the wind came ripping in off the foreshore like a cascade of iced razor-blades, and a sea-fog like a wet Shetland shawl tucked the town up for the night immediately after tea-time. If he had been compelled to stay there for as much as a single week-end he did not doubt for a moment that it would not be merely his lungs but the very marrow in his bones that would be affected.

It was therefore with a kind of despondent relief to be back again amid the almost balmy air of Putney that he turned the key of his own front door—and was confronted by Mrs. Warple who had been sitting up for him.

It had been one of Margaret's bad days.

An outbreak of summer colic had filled the sick-bay, and Margaret had been on her feet since early morning. She was tired now; very tired. And as she lay in bed, she rubbed one swollen ankle against another and tried to find softness between the ridges of the hard, unyielding mattress.

She ought to be asleep, that was certain. Fast asleep. She needed all the sleep that she could get. Because to-morrow was going to be quite as heavy as to-day. But there was too much on her mind for sleep. It wouldn't come to her. When the one thing that she wanted was to drift off and forget about things, all that she could do was to lie there restless, while the Hospital clock rattled out the hours somewhere just above her head.

It was either three or four now—she could not remember which had struck last. There was, in fact, only one thing that she could remember. And that was a letter that she had to write. Or, rather couldn't write because she didn't know what to say. It was her secret life catching up with her again, something that kept creeping in and intruding just when it looked as though everything was beginning to settle down again. And she hadn't got any more money left. At least, not enough to make any difference. Not enough to keep another human being going.

Because this wasn't blackmail. Or, at least, not blackmail in the ordinary sense. This was a sort of wheedling, insidious, emotional blackmail. The kind of thing where nothing unpleasant could happen even if you didn't pay anything—nothing that is except for another of those anguishing, cry-baby letters, and a hint of prison or suicide.

As it was no use trying to sleep, she put the light on again. It shone straight down into her eyes. But that didn't trouble her because she wasn't going to lie there looking up at it. She was going to read. Read what had been written to her. It was within arm's reach as she lay there, in her handbag down between the bed and the wall.