Children of the Archbishop (53 page)

But what happened? Instead of producing the handcuffs, he took two smart paces to the rear to avoid being trampled on, and let the procession, with Ginger within arm's reach, surge right under his nose.

Not that he ever knew, of course. Standing upright and foursquare upon the kerb-stone, he continued to keep a skilled and
roving eye open for a missing boy, aged thirteen, five foot two inches, six stone five, red hair, freckled nose.…

Once inside the Zoo, there was for Ginger only one note of discord in an otherwise perfect and unblemished outing. And that note was hunger. Breakfast had evidently not been so satisfying as he had imagined and he became conscious of himself, not as a boy at all, but simply as a big rumbling emptiness. He ached. And the more he ached, the fainter and less interesting the animals became. The paths grew harder and longer. The seats less comfortable, with wider spaces between them.

By now, Ginger felt himself so much one of the party—a regular St. Botolph boy, in fact—that he would certainly have remained with them until closing time if it had not been for an unfortunate incident at a one-way turnstile.

The turnstile was placed in the thickness of a hedge dividing the Zoo from the rest of London. And in consequence, there was an air of mystery and enticement to what lay outside. At the mere sight of that turnstile the Zoo suddenly had become dull and commonplace, and the streets wonderful and rich in all surprises.

Ginger was first to pass through the turnstile, and he stood agreeably surveying the stream of traffic, the car park, the waiting taxis, the curved and sunny road. Then the awful thing happened. When he wanted to go back, the turnstile wouldn't budge.

If it had been a prison gate, it couldn't have been more massive and unyielding.

And he saw now that he had over-estimated the road. The traffic, after all was just ordinary; the taxis hadn't even got their engines running; there wasn't a jeweller's shop or a public house in sight; in fact nothing worth looking at. Already, in retrospect, the Zoo seemed a vanished Eden, a corner of fairyland glimpsed for a moment in a dream, only to be snatched away and lost for ever.

But once he reached the Prince Albert Road on the far side he found something really worth while looking at. It was a daffodil-and-vermilion ice-cream wagon with the words “Luigi Rapporto, Pure Cream Ices” on the side. And it had broken down. The bonnet of the little car was up, and a man in a dirty white overall
was fiddling with the engine. The presence of Ginger, standing appreciatively on the kerb-side in the sunshine, appeared to irritate him.

“Getta along with you,” he said. “You standa in da light.”

Ginger moved back a pace. Then he stationed himself again. Any farther would have been unthinkable: the spectacle was too fascinating.

But after a few minutes' contemplation, Ginger decided that the fat man was not very good at mending motor-cars. And evidently the fat man came to the same conclusion at about the same time. For, bringing down the bonnet with a crash, he thrust one arm into the driving compartment and began to push.

It looked a long way wherever he was going, and Ginger felt sorry for him. He hadn't, however, been particularly nice to Ginger. And Ginger didn't want to risk another snub. So he didn't say anything. He just went behind and pushed.

He had as a matter of fact been pushing for nearly quarter of a mile—the Prince Albert Road was entirely flat and the ice-cream wagon moved almost effortlessly—before Mr. Rapporto even noticed that Ginger was there. And when he did discover it he was not pleased. He had paused for a moment to wipe his brow, and the daffodil-and-vermilion vehicle, instead of remaining stationary had mysteriously moved on without him. It was, indeed, only as it came abreast that he saw Ginger, head down, back bent double, pushing hard.

“Wotta you do?” he shouted. “You wanta make da collision?”

After that, Ginger just followed. He remained near, of course, so that he could still do a bit of pushing whenever Mr. Rapporto wasn't looking. But, for the most part, he merely followed. Whenever Mr. Rapporto stopped, Ginger stopped. And as soon as Mr. Rapporto moved on Ginger moved on, too.

He seemed a very excitable sort of man, this Mr. Rapporto, Ginger noticed. And expostulatory. He kept on shouting out things. Once when a bus passed a shade too close to him he pursued the conductor with insults “… and tella your friend in fronta he trieda da murder me,” he was still saying, long after the bus was out of ear-shot. And again, when a policeman who was holding up traffic at Clarence Gate told him to hurry, Mr. Rapporto turned on him, too. “Wotta you thinka I am?” he demanded. “A bloody horsa?”

It was this little episode that made Ginger particularly respectful towards Mr. Rapporto. He had no idea that anyone ever spoke to policemen like that. Polite, almost obsequious, he drew nearer. And it was then that Mr. Rapporto had an idea.

“Whya you follow me?” he asked. “You lazy boy. Donta you see I braka ma back? Give da hand. Pusha. Pusha me hard.”

That was all Ginger needed. It was acknowledgment. It cured that lonely and unwanted feeling. He pushed so hard, in fact, that all Mr. Rapporto had to do was steer. And with no pushing to do himself, Mr. Rapporto's spirits rose. He steered with one hand and waved to passers-by with the other. Soon he was singing as well.

It was fun, pushing: Ginger enjoyed it. But it was hard work, too. He was out of breath.

Then Mr. Rapporto stopped singing.

“Here we are,” he said. “We gotta there. Thissa da garage.”

With that he pulled on the hand-brake, and Ginger bumped his head.

But Mr. Rapporto was his friend by now, his guardian.

“Nevera mind da head,” he said, consolingly. “I giva you da cornet. I giva you da cornet or da wafer. Da cornet or da wafer, becausa you pusha so good.”

He kept patting Ginger on the back with his large hot hand. But he was still quick to take offence. And he was obviously disappointed, affronted even, by Ginger's answer.

“Please, I'd rather have the penny,” was what Ginger said.

Mr. Rapporto stopped patting him.

“You Jewa boy?” he demanded. “You worka only for da money? Whata you wanta da penny for? To buya da ice-cream, ha!”

“Please I want it for my bus fare,” Ginger told him. “I got to go to Putney.”

“And if I no giva da penny, you walka?” Mr. Rapporto asked. “You walka from here to Potney?”

Ginger nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

It was then that the Mediterranean munificence of Mr. Rapporto's nature revealed itself.

“I goa to Potney, too. I driva you there,” he said. “As soona da car she goes, I driva you. And I giva you da cornet. Anda da wafer. I doa everything. You gooda boy. You pusha me verra
good.” He paused. “I driva da Vicar once,” he confided. “He jumpa about. Likea da monkey. He smasha everything.”

And while Ginger was slowly eating his way through lumps of frozen custard, the drama of his absence was developing inside the hospital.

When Margaret went up to the dormitory last thing she found Sweetie crying.

“Ginger's dead,” she kept saying. “Ginger's dead. And all because we didn't love him enough.”

And when Margaret told her what nonsense she was talking, Sweetie turned on her.

“Go and find him,” she said. “If you really liked him, you'd go and find him. I shall hate you for ever if you don't go and find him.”

And after that it was Sweetie who was surprised when Margaret turned on
her
. She had never known Margaret so cross before—never known her cross at all, in fact—and certainly never known her cross with her. Instead of going off to look for Ginger, or even being all nice and comforting because Sweetie had lost her friend, Margaret took hold of her and shook her. Then twisting her round so that she was looking straight into her eyes, she went on being cross.

“… and don't start getting interested in boys,” Margaret said to her in a hard, bottled-up sort of voice, “It's wicked. Do you understand what that means? Wicked.”

“It isn't wicked,” Sweetie answered. “It isn't wicked to love Ginger.”

“It's wicked to love anybody,” Margaret repeated. “It's wicked to love anybody until you're sure you're going to marry them.”

“But I
am
going to marry Ginger,” Sweetie replied. “I'm going to marry him as soon as I'm grown up.”

Then quite the most extraordinary thing of all happened. Because this time it wasn't Sweetie who was crying. It was Margaret. She held Sweetie close to her and put her head down on Sweetie's shoulder.

“Don't say such things,” she said. “Don't say them. Why
can't you be like other girls? Boys are bad, I tell you. Bad. They get girls into trouble. Terrible trouble. You don't want to be a disgrace to everybody, do you? You don't want to have to go away somewhere …”

It was late by the time Mr. Rapporto delivered Ginger on his own doorstep. The whole day had passed away by then, and it was evening again.

Ginger made his way back into the Hospital by the fire-escape route. It was not easy without Spud to help him. But there was a drainpipe that came in very handy. And Ginger had become pretty good at drainpipes. When, at last, he managed to get up as far as the gutter, the rest was easy. He could reach the coping from there. With both hands he grabbed hold of it and the next moment he was on the comfortable flat surface of the leads.

There was a bit of trouble with the window because it was locked on the inside. Spud was usually a heavy sort of sleeper, but to-night he might almost have been waiting for Ginger to turn up. At the second rap on the window-pane, he was out of bed. But, though prompt, he was not comforting.

“Where you been?” he asked. “You aren't half going to cop it.”

“Garn,” was all that Ginger answered.

He was tired and he didn't want to begin explaining things immediately. But Spud was not so easily put off.

“They've got the police out looking for you,” he went on. “How d'you get past 'em?”

Ginger began peeling off his jersey.

“Shut up or I'll bash you,” he said.

Spud shut up. It was nice hearing Ginger say that. It meant a lot to Spud having his friend back again.

And Ginger was asleep a minute later. Fast asleep. In so deep and dreamless a sleep, that he did not wake up when the door of the dormitory opened and Dr. Trump appeared, dormitory register in one hand, electric torch in the other. Mr. Dawlish edged in just behind him.

Dr. Trump was highly professional. He did not, as Mr. Dawlish had done, rely on a quick glimpse in the pale light that came
seeping in through the open doorway. Instead, he moved carefully from bed to bed shining his torch like a searchlight on to the sleeping occupant: it was a new drill that he had instituted since Ginger's disappearance, and he was putting it into operation for the first time to-night.

He had already been down one side when he came to the bed on which Spud was lying. And here he paused. Had he—or was it only his imagination?—detected a movement, a tremor, beneath the bedclothes? He stood where he was without moving, carefully training the beam of his flashlight full on Spud's face. Then, breathing heavily, and with a faint look of disappointment, he moved on.

And when, in the neat circle of illumination that the torch made, Dr. Trump saw Ginger's head upon the next pillow, he was so surprised that he nearly dropped the torch. He simply stood there, staring.

“Look,” he said to Mr. Dawlish. “Look, man.”

It was his most terrible voice that he was using; a voice made somehow more alarming still because the words were spoken through clenched teeth.

“He … he wasn't there last night,” Mr. Dawlish said idiotically.

“Well, he's there now,” Dr. Trump replied. “Arrest him!”

Altogether, Ginger's disappearance was the biggest event of 1930. It started Canon Mallow writing again, and the affair didn't die down immediately, either. The Press got hold of it. And, after there had been a lot of irritating headlines of the “MYSTERY OF THE MISSING ORPHAN” and “POLICE INVESTIGATE 24-HOUR DISAPPEARANCE” variety, there were a whole lot more with a rather nasty sinister tone to them, as though the Press had turned against Dr. Trump.

“SENTENCE OF SILENCE,” “THE MUTE ORPHANS OF PUTNEY” was how the new batch came out. And that was because Dr. Trump
had imposed sentence of Coventry on the entire Hospital by way of punishment.

In the end, there had been a special Board Meeting to consider the situation. The meeting was longer than it need have been because of Miss Bodkin. She had reverted to Nature this morning, and was entirely instrumentless. In consequence, she heard nothing. And understood less. Every so often a stray word, as random and unpredictable as a meteor, would soar into her intelligence and the trouble would begin.

“But why did Mr. Dawlish run away?” she asked. “Surely he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't been unhappy.”

Then again.

“It still seems to me a pity that Dr. Trump ever wrote all those articles. If he hadn't written it nobody need ever have known what happened …”

But in the end it was, as usual, Dame Eleanor's meeting. She dominated. And her summing-up caused Dr. Trump to flush angrily and bite his lips. Indeed, it was only the knowledge of his hidden ace that enabled him to remain there, bitter and resentful, while Dame Eleanor proceeded.

“Well, I must say, things have come to a pretty pass when boys begin running away,” she said. “It'll be the girls next, and then where shall we be? There's only one explanation of it all—slackness. The whole place needs tightening up. And now those ridiculous stories in the Press. If we go on like this we shall be a public laughing stock.”