Children of the Archbishop (61 page)

“Cor,” thought Ginger. “It'll be rotten if it rains. She'll git wet.”

And now when he looked he was conscious of another feeling, too. It was at her hair that he was looking, her hair that he had been stroking last night when they had huddled up together among the trees. But it was different hair now. It was loose and shining now, streaming back from her head like a comet's tail. Little wisps of it brushed across his face as he walked. Then suddenly Ginger's heart gave a bump. This was awful: she looked like a girl and nothing else but a girl. There was no disguising her.

“Wot yer done with my cap?” he demanded.

“It's gone,” Sweetie admitted. “It blew off. I couldn't help it.”

“Why didn't yer say?”

“I did try to,” she explained. “Only you wouldn't stop. I didn't know you'd mind that much.”

Not mind! But it was no good saying anything now. They were
too near to the man on the telegraph pole to be able to hang about any longer.

“Well, come on can't yer,” Ginger said. “Don't stop talking. An' keep yer 'and over yer ‘air. Yer don't want people to see yer.”

It was the sight of a girl walking along with her hand on her head that first made the Post Office linesman take any real notice of them at all. Up there in all that wind and with a cracked insulator on his hands he had plenty to do without playing at being a sheriff. But when he looked he became interested. The girl seemed to have hurt her foot: she had a bandage or something round it. And then he remembered. There had been a paragraph about a boy and girl in the evening newspaper. And there they were to the life; boy with red hair, girl with black, and apparently trying to go North, just like the paper said.

He could get through to the exchange whenever he wanted to: the telephone instrument was hanging from a hook on his belt. So it was easy. He passed word up the line that he had seen the two runaways, or thought he had; and then got back to his broken insulator. He was not a melodramatic sort of chap; just sensible. He didn't go charging off in the Post Office van trying to collar them. Didn't do anything else in fact. Apart from reminding himself that it would be something to tell his wife, he forgot all about them.

But the police got busy straight away. Within five minutes, a blue Wolseley was drawing out of the yard of the police station, and was on its way towards the moors. Even so, Sweetie and Ginger had moved on by then, going across country again. And it is doubtful whether the two policemen sitting inside a saloon car on the main road would ever have found them, if it had not been for the Arkleydale and District Ramblers' League.

The ramblers were coming over the moor, thirty strong, with rucksacks swinging and bare knees glinting in the sunlight. At the sight of the police car they stiffened. They had been in trouble with the police before over rights of way, and they immediately suspected something sinister like a plot to close the moor to hikers. But when the sergeant merely asked them whether they had seen a boy with red hair and a girl out on the fells, they relaxed. And more than relaxed: they gloated. The fugitives, they said, were sheltering in a small copse on the way over to the reservoir. And suddenly becoming enthusiastic about the whole affair, the hikers suggested that if they fanned out across the moor, they could come
down sickle-shape, cutting off all hope of escape while the two policemen took the direct path and made a neat arrest.

It was Sweetie who first noticed that something unusual was happening. She was seated beside Ginger in a small spinney, and wasn't looking at anything in particular. The bare moor extended on three sides of them, and down below in the valley lay a great lake walled in by concrete. The lake reflected the clouds and was beautiful. If only there had been some way of getting a meal, and if Ginger could have found a job in those parts, she would have been content to stay there for ever.

Then she noticed something moving, or rather a whole collection of somethings. As she looked closely she could see that they were people, a lot of people; and they were advancing in a long curved line.

She watched them with the casual interest of someone looking at something that can be of no possible personal concern. She was merely interested. And then she looked away. She did not even tell Ginger, who seemed cross and sulky about something. But when she looked again, the long line of people had come nearer. Much nearer. The nearest of them could not have been more than a quarter of a mile away by now. And it had become so interesting that she told Ginger.

She was surprised how excited he was immediately. He scanned the whole line of them and then looked directly behind them where Sweetie hadn't thought of looking. And what he saw he was prepared for. Climbing up the steep path to the spinney were two policemen.

“Come on,” said Ginger. “It's the cops.”

There was only one way clear for them, and that was the way towards the reservoir. It lay below them down the hillside, with its high stone wall cutting off the end of the valley. And the hillside fell away sharply. Sweetie and Ginger were not merely running now, they were falling and scrambling. He had hold of her hand, too, and was pulling her. As they ran, they heard shouts behind them. Then, when they turned for a moment, they saw the row of figures up against the skyline. The ground in front dropped away from them. It was a little ledge that they had come to.

“Can yer jump?” Ginger was asking. “I'll go down first and catch yer.”

It was then that Sweetie really understood what it felt like
to be hunted, knew why Ginger had said that he would never give himself up alive. Her heart was banging about inside her and her mouth was dry. But these were the only physical sensations that she was aware of. Even when she jumped and landed on her damaged foot, she did not feel it. All that she wanted to do was to escape from the shouting and the running feet that were behind her.

They had reached the grounds of the reservoir by now and a long row of spiked railings confronted them. But Ginger seemed to know all about spiked railings. He put his foot sideways between the spikes and jumped over as easily as if they had been made for climbing. He didn't even tumble when he landed. But he was breathless.

“Put yer foot up there,” he said hoarsely. “I'll pull yer.”

There was now nothing between them and the wall of the reservoir. It looked taller now than it had done from a distance. It towered. But there was a long flight of stone steps dwindling up to the summit, and they made for them.

“We gotter hurry,” said Ginger. “I'll help yer.”

They had reached the first landing before they looked down. And it was not so bad. The spiked railings were doing their work nicely. Only one of the hikers had got over, and the rest were clustered in groups trying to help each other. But one was enough for Ginger.

“Faster,” he said. “We gotta go faster.”

And as he ran, he remembered that time on the zig-zag fire-escape up to Sweetie's bedroom. He had known then what it was like to hear footsteps behind him on a ladder. But that time he hadn't had to drag someone up after him.

“Faster,” he kept repeating. “We gotta go faster.”

“I can't,” Sweetie began saying. “I'm trying but I can't.”

She knew then that it was hopeless. She wasn't as strong as Ginger, she couldn't keep up with him. Because of her they would catch him. And that must never happen.

“You go on,” she said. “Leave me here.”

“Shut up,” was all the answer he gave her. “You hurry.”

They had reached the top of the wall by now and they were on a kind of level horse-shoe concrete road. It was wide and level. On one side, ten feet below them, lay the lake itself, dark and cold-looking. And seen close it wasn't so placid as it had looked from the hillside. There were waves on it, and spray where the waves came slapping against the concrete. But it was better than
the other side. There was a forty-foot drop there, with rocks and boulders at the bottom of it.

“Come on,” Ginger was saying again. “Don't start looking.”

But no boy dragging a girl behind him can run as fast as a man. And already there were others on the concrete roadway. One of the policemen had got up there. And it was obvious that he was in training. Even after his climb he still seemed to have plenty of breath left in him. He was fairly pounding along after them. In less than ten seconds he was leading.

It was the sound of the footsteps closing in on them that decided Sweetie. They were nearer now. Only ten yards away. Or eight. Or five. In another moment he would be on them. He'd be grabbing at her.

Suddenly, she snatched her hand away from Ginger's. She was right on the edge of the wall now with the black water breaking just beneath.

“You go on,” she called after him. “I'm doing like you said, Ginger.”

Then she jumped.

But that wasn't by any means the end of Sweetie. They fished her up again before she had even been down for the second time. Admittedly, she looked a pretty forlorn sort of figure in the policeman's arms, with her face deathly white and her dark hair plastered across her forehead. But she was still breathing, and that was the only thing that mattered.

It was Ginger who caused the real trouble. And that was because he had tried to do the gallant thing by her. When Sweetie jumped, he jumped in after her. And he was not so lucky as Sweetie. On his way down he struck one of the big stone bastions that projected into the water, and it stunned him. In consequence, when he reached the surface he simply disappeared under it.

They were nearly five minutes searching for Ginger and, when
they did find him, it looked hopeless. They had to use artificial respiration, kneeling in the small of his back and squeezing the water out of his lungs before they could get a single breath to come into him. And even then it wasn't easy, without stretchers or anything of the kind, to get two half-conscious children down from the top of a forty-foot concrete wall, and up quarter of a mile of broken moorland to the police car that was waiting by the roadside.

The news that the fugitives had been found reached the Archbishop Bodkin while a board meeting was in progress. It was an emergency Governors' Meeting, called specially to discuss the two runaways. And already feelings were running high. There were rival factions. One, led by old Miss Bodkin, was for forgiveness; complete, unconditional forgiveness. The other, dominated by Canon Larkin, insisted on punishment, on bringing it forcibly home to the miscreants what trouble and anxiety they had caused to their elders and betters.

Dr. Trump, as it happened, had just been asked for his view, and, frowning, he had cleared his throat in readiness.

“I … I can see no other way,” he was saying. “There is not merely the truancy and … er … all the undesirable publicity. There is also the theft. The three shillings, remember. I can see no alternative. I fear that we must proceed. That is, of course, assuming that they are both all right …”

It was at this point that the message from the local police station was brought into the meeting. Its effect was tremendous. For a moment there was silence—complete silence, as though the entire boardroom, chairs, tables and everything, had uttered up a sigh. And then, with the knowledge that Sweetie and Ginger were both living, the two sides, the forgiveness group and the punishment group, both started up again.

Finally, it was Dame Eleanor who tapped sharply on the table with the handle of her lorgnette and summed things up for the lot of them.

“Well,” she said bitterly, “there's one thing that you may depend on, and that is that it's out of our hands now. We haven't heard the end of this yet, not by a long chalk we haven't.”

And Dame Eleanor was right. The Press alone would have been enough to see to that: Sweetie and Ginger had been working their way steadily upwards. They were worth front-page banner
headlines by now. And, though Dr. Trump did not know it at the time, there was still plenty in reserve to keep the item going.

Take Margaret's part in the affair, for instance. The moment she knew that Sweetie had been found she went to her. Leaving basins, and worse, unemptied, she went up to her room, changed into her outdoor clothes and slipped out of the Hospital. Forty minutes later, with two pounds that she had drawn from her Post Office savings account, she had bought a ticket for Arkleydale and was already in the train on the way up there. It occurred to her only when the train had reached Rugby and was getting under way again in its journey north that perhaps she ought to have told Dr. Trump where she was going.

The omission, as it happened, was unfortunate. For the Press promptly got on to her story, too. And Dr. Trump, tired and nervous as he was, allowed himself to be trapped. Asked if it were true that Margaret was missing too, he replied that he had no idea of where she was. And, pressed on that point, he elaborated—always a fatal thing to do when answering Press inquiries. It was entirely without his permission, he said, if she had gone anywhere; and disciplinary action, he hinted, would certainly be taken as soon as she got back.

That was enough for the Press. By the time Dr. Trump opened his evening paper he was front-page news again. “RUNAWAY HALL” was the heading, and the mischievous black type continued gloatingly: “THIRD BODKIN FUGITIVE IN FOUR DAYS. WARD MAID MISSING.”

There was, indeed, only one comfort anywhere. Canon Mallow had been ill again, and Mrs. Gurnett was keeping him in bed. That hadn't prevented him from writing—by almost every post in fact. But anything—
anything
, Dr. Trump repeated—was better than having Canon Mallow hanging about the Hospital at a time like this.

Indeed, the strain of the past few days had been intolerable. Dr. Trump had not eaten. He had not slept. He had not done anything, in fact, except walk up and down his study wondering, waiting for the telephone to ring, praying.