Children of the Archbishop (5 page)

Still Warden? Why, yes; he supposed he was. But he hadn't thought out any formal itinerary: he was just going round the place in the way in which he had always done. He was about to suggest the sick ward, because the children always liked to see a new face—even possibly Dr. Trump's—when the top of the Founder's Tower caught his eye.

It was the most imposing feature of the Hospital, the Founder's Tower. Nearly eighty feet in height and pinnacled in Victorian Gothic, it rose proud and dominant, like a vast and gritty
bombe-glacé
in two contrasting shades of brickwork. Supported in the structure were a clock with four faces, the Big Bell, an ornamental bronze weathercock and a narrow balcony enclosed by a frilly railing, bearing an iron-founder's version of the acanthus leaf.

The balcony was the highest point to which any ordinary sight-seer could climb. Or, rather, could have climbed until Canon Mallow had closed it. The trouble was that the steep spiral stairway, lit only by arrow slits, made some people giddy. And, after a sister of one of the governors had been brought down feet first one Easter Sunday, he had shut up the whole thing. And this was a pity because, at one time, the Canon had hoped that by charging sixpence or even threepence for admission he could, especially on public holidays, have made the Founder's Tower practically self-financing.

Not that anything of the kind had ever actually happened. For a start, there had been few visitors. Then, as no proper receipt books were kept, no one knew how many the few amounted to. And, in the end, Sergeant Chiswick, who had always pocketed the price of admission along with the tips, was relieved rather than resentful when he found that he would never again have to climb the hundred and fourteen steps in order to be able to rescue someone who was overcome on one of the upper landings.

The moment which Canon Mallow chose to draw Dr. Trump's attention to the Tower was an auspicious one. The late afternoon sun, slanting through the limes of St. Mark's Avenue, lit up the pile with a warm amber light as though the bricks themselves were glowing; and, on top, the bronze weathercock blazed like a firework.

Canon Mallow balanced himself on his heels and peered upwards. Because he was wearing his reading spectacles—he had left his others somewhere in the study—he could see no more than a dim blurred streak stretching upwards into the sky. But he had seen it often enough before. And with a wave of his hand he indicated it.

“That,” he said, not very revealingly, “is the … er Tower.”

“The
Founder's
Tower,” Dr. Trump corrected him.

Within the past twenty-four hours, Dr. Trump had read the handbook of the Hospital carefully and thoroughly—starting at the beginning and marking the important passages in pencil as he came to them—and he knew all about it; knew more than Canon Mallow, that was obvious.

“Just so,” Canon Mallow answered casually. “The Founder's Tower. We usually call it ‘The Tower.'”

Dr. Trump's eyebrows rose a little.

“A pity,” he said. “Our Founder's memory is a trust handed down to us.”

“Oh I'm not worried about that,” Canon Mallow replied easily. “It was children the Archbishop cared for, not towers. He never even knew about that tower. It was after his time.”

“But not after ours …” Dr. Trump began, and then stopped himself. There was no point in stressing it. He paused.

“Can I go up?” he asked.

Canon Mallow seemed surprised.

“Well, you
can
” he said. “But I shouldn't if I were you. You see, it's all been shut up for years.”

“Shut!” Dr. Trump repeated.

“That's right,” Canon Mallow told him. “I closed it after Miss Larkin got taken ill up there. It's a long time ago now.”

“I take it that you would have no objection to my going up,” Dr Trump asked.

“Objection?” Canon Mallow said in astonishment. “Good gracious, no. That is if your ankle's all right. After all it's your tower now. Or it will be to-morrow. But do be careful.”

The reply was so charming, so placating, that Dr. Trump felt mollified completely. His face lit up for a moment in a warm, natural smile.

“Then perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting for me,” he said.

There was delay—the kind of delay that smelt of inefficiency—while Sergeant Chiswick found the keys. And Dr. Trump was not pleased to discover that the stout wooden door had warped so badly that it required the combined efforts of himself and Sergeant Chiswick to open it. He was so much displeased, in fact, that he declined Sergeant Chiswick's suggestion that he should go up with him. He would mount alone, he said.

And he was not sorry that he had got rid of the man. There was something exciting—yes, strangely exciting—about being alone in the Tower in this way. It was the first time in his life that he had ever owned a Tower; and he did not want to share the experience with anyone.

He was even more pleased to be alone when he found how out of breath he was. Badly out of breath. Winded, in short. And this shocked him. It showed that, apart altogether from his injured
ankle, he must be out of condition. And as he mounted, he began prescribing his own treatment.

“I must do exercises,” he told himself. “Regular exercises. Hip bending. Touching the toes. Lifting the knees to strengthen the stomach muscles. Prone falling. Swedish clubs. I must be fit.”

The prospect of the exercises pleased him. There was that note of self-discipline, of martyrdom almost, that was distinctly gratifying. And, above all things, it could be entirely private. If he was careful to put the Swedish clubs away again in the wardrobe afterwards, no one was to know that he had ever needed this toning-up process.

When, at last, he reached the balcony he was blinded as well as breathless. The early evening sun was shining full into the top doorway like a light-house beam. Dr. Trump put up his hand to shade his eyes. And, as he did so, he placed his other hand upon the railing. It trembled. But its flimsiness did not alarm him. He was too pleased at having got there. He was right on top of everything by now.

And the view was certainly reward enough. The Hospital, spread out beneath him, was like a toy farm. He could see the sports-field, the kitchen gardens, the girls' playground, the boys', the high raking roof of the main hall, the little dolls' house that was the Warden's Lodging set on its own strip of bright green baize, the entrance gateway, the laundry block. And around all, ran the great wall. Fifteen feet high, and without a break except where the spiked gates were let into it, it enclosed the landscape.

On the outer, the barbarian side, stood the little houses, row upon row of them. Grey-roofed and regular like furrows in a winter wheatfield they stretched away into the distance, their tiny chimneys smoking. And beyond them glinted in places small fragments of mirror that were the river.

“But this is magnificent,” Dr. Trump told himself. “It shall be my first task to re-open this Tower. My very first—”

Then Dr. Trump cast his eyes to the ground beneath him. There directly below, stood Canon Mallow so violently foreshortened that the tips of his toes were emerging from underneath his chin. His pink round head looked ridiculous with the fringe of white hair surrounding it. Ridiculous, yes, that was exactly the right word. Not that it mattered any longer. The man was already on his way out. Practically packed up and ready for despatch. His foolishness, his futility, his fumblings did not matter any longer.
By to-morrow the Hospital would be in other and far stronger hands. In Dr. Trump's hands, in fact.

Then, obscured by a cloud, the sun disappeared abruptly. It grew colder. Only the coolness of the breeze remained. Striking against his forehead, it chilled him. Dr. Trump shivered. It was as though inside him the sunlight had gone out too. And it was he himself who had extinguished it. He had recognised his earlier mood of exaltation for what it was—pride. Arrant spiritual pride.

“Oh God make me humble,” he said devoutly. “Make me worthy of my new vocation.”

And, eager as he was to get started, it seemed to Dr. Trump next day as though he would never get rid of Canon Mallow after all. The man was so abnormally slow and absent-minded. He did things, even quite little, unnecessary things, like showing Dr. Trump where the gas-meter was, twice or even three times. He pottered. And, above all, he wasted his time with the children.

Indeed, from the way he said good-bye to them you might have thought that they were his own children. Two of them, in particular. One of these was Ginger, the small boy who had thrown the ink-well: Dr. Trump had already been sizing him up as someone who would be all the better for not having too much notice taken of him. And the other was Sweetie. Also an exhibitionist kind of child, Dr. Trump had noticed. With the sheer genius that such natures possess for attracting attention, little Sweetie was on everybody's lips practically all the time. She seemed to cause more commotion than the other four hundred and ninety-nine put together.

It was silly, doubly silly, therefore of Canon Mallow to make such a fuss over saying good-bye to her. He had even taken her up in his arms and kissed her, finally giving her a farewell sixpence just as he was leaving. Dr. Trump had promptly confiscated the sixpence: but there had been nothing that he could do about the kisses.

Anyhow, all that was over now. He had really said good-bye to Canon Mallow for the last time. In point of fact, he had thought that the first time was the last time. But he had not known then that, at the end of St. Mark's Avenue, Canon Mallow would suddenly tell the taxi to return to the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital because he had just discovered that he had come away with all the keys.

Seven-sixteen a.m. Seven-sixteen precisely on Monday, the 24th of September, nineteen hundred and twenty-four. And there, alone under the sheets of the double bed in the front bedroom of the Warden's Lodging lay the new Warden, Dr. Trump, propped up against the pillows and sipping his early morning tea. It was his one personal indulgence, this tea, drunk scalding hot and—since it was solitary drinking—punctuated between the gulps with loud exhalations like long drawn out sighs.

But even in his self-indulgence he did not entirely lose control. Not once, for example, had any housekeeper of his ever found him sleeping when she entered. There was, indeed, a strict drill in such matters—the knock on the door, the pause, the slow, deliberate “Come in.” And by the time the woman was actually inside his bedchamber, Dr. Trump would be sitting up, wide-awake, tidy (he kept a small pocket comb on the bedside table especially for the purpose) and smiling. It was a recurrent fear of his, especially when he had been overworking, that he might die in the night suddenly and without warning. And then … he shuddered to think what awfulness, what grim, unposed mortality would greet his domestic in the morning.

But last night had proved to be one of his lucky ones; he had not died during the course of it. He felt remarkably well, in fact. And those quiet minutes before he rose at seven-thirty were probably the best in the whole day for clear thinking. This very morning, for instance, he saw things clearly and distinctly as a whole—with himself as a separate and important part of the whole. He was a cog, a breathing sentient cog in the vast, intricate machine of life. And for a cog he was not doing so badly. Seven-fifty per annum was not exactly a flea-bite. Especially when there was an eight-roomed house thrown in. And, of course, washing.

Nor was it nothing for one particular cog to be responsible for
the entire well-being and livelihood of five hundred and forty-five other cogs, forty-five of whom were full-sized adult cogs. Five hundred and forty-five. What a total! And all supported by private donations, too.

Not that he was convinced that every one of the forty-five was really deserving of such charity. Sergeant Chiswick, for example. The Sergeant, he could not help noticing, was elderly. And he looked as though at one time he might have been a drinker. He seemed inclined, moreover, to be sullen. And worse than sullen: he was a mumbler. Dr. Trump could not always hear what he was saying. Whereas with Mrs. Gurnett, he had more than once heard only too plainly. The woman, in short, was downright rude. Only yesterday, when he had inquired why the milk bill was so large, all that she had said was that if he knew of anything else other than milk on which to bring up small children she would be glad to hear of it. He had not forgotten that reply, even though he had done nothing more at the time than merely raise his eyebrows. And Mrs. Gurnett was not going to forget it either. In due course, when Dr. Trump was ready, she was going to apologise for it; apologise—or go. Because it wasn't even as though he had asked why the bill was
large
. He had asked why it was
so
large.

Then there were the others, the masters. Mere names at the moment—Jeffcote, Prymore, Rushgrove, Dawlish and the rest. And the women—Mrs. Glubb, Miss Wynne, Mrs. Entwhistle, Miss Sattell: as yet, also mere names. He had not yet had time to get to grips with any of them, the male or female, as human beings; had not explored, probed, analysed them. Already, though, he recognised that there was some pretty promising probing to be done.

Take Mr. Prevarius, the organist, for example. A trifle too much inclined, perhaps, to the arpeggio and the cadenza, but an excellent church organist nevertheless—and entirely in Dr. Trump's power. Helplessly and inextricably bound. And why? All because of what had happened thirteen years before in a fortune-teller's booth at a charity garden party under church auspices near Banbury.

There was a complete dossier of the incident attached to Mr. Prevarius's private file locked away in the filing-cabinet, marked STAFF CONFIDENTIAL. By now, Dr. Trump knew that dossier by heart; yes, practically by heart; knew why the name on the index tab was simply Mr. S. Prevarius and not The Rev.
Sidney Prevarius, B.D.; knew why the correspondence which had opened with a humble and contrite letter of apology had closed with affidavits, depositions, statements witnessed by Bishops; knew, in fact, as much about the whole shameful incident as though he had been there in the rectory meadow on that sunny August afternoon.