Children of the Archbishop (65 page)

But already the faintness had passed, and he was able to stand there looking out once more. There was, however, none of the exultation that usually came to him when he looked out. Instead, he was aware of a strange emptiness, a feeling of sadness and fatigue and loneliness; of failure, even.

“But this is absurd,” he told himself hurriedly. “How can I possibly think of myself as having failed? Why, the laundry alone and … and this very Tower I'm standing in … It must be simply that I'm tired. I've been overworking. Perhaps I need a holiday.”

Down below, the figure of Mr. Dawlish came into sight again on the far side of the cloister, and Dr. Trump found himself actually envying him.

“What does he know of worry?” he asked himself. “He just does his job as I tell him to. He isn't waiting to have his life's work condemned by …”

At the memory of Mr. Sparkes, Dr. Trump drew in his lips tightly. This was the one thing that he did not want to do—to think about the man. And this evening Dr. Trump could not take refuge in his usual defence of feeling angry. He was too tired for anger.

The vague sensation of faintness, of standing on a gently rocking tower, returned to him and he looked round for somewhere to sit. There was a pile of planking left there by the contractors and Dr. Trump made his way towards it. When he reached it he sat with his head bowed inside his hands, almost as though he were praying. But they were thoughts, not prayers, that kept passing across his mind; the same miserable, disturbing thoughts that had been tormenting him for the past week. Only now they came tumbling out with nothing to stop them. Dr. Trump at that moment was ready to believe almost anything about himself.

“Perhaps I
am
to blame,” he began. “Perhaps if I had been gentler with Sweetie and Ginger they would never have run away. But it wasn't only those two, was it? It's worse than that; far worse. There was that Miss Wynne—the one who'd lost her mother. I shouldn't have sent her off like that—not in the circumstances. And Jeffcote. Poor old Jeffcote: I wonder what's become of him. His eyesight was failing. He was practically blind, I remember—it may have killed him … And Margaret. After all, she only did what she thought was for the best. She's a good person is Margaret … I … I think I was in love with her once.” The direction in which his thoughts carried him amazed Dr. Trump: it seemed that everything that he had been suppressing for years was now coming surging up to the surface and exploding in little bubbles in his face.

He was aware now that he was shivering. It was always cold up on the top of the tower, and to-night it suddenly seemed arctic. His hands were numb and his knees were beginning to knock together.

“I must go down,” he told himself. “I have stayed too long up here. Early to bed. If only I could sleep …”

But, when he rose, the sensation of giddiness came over him again: he had to clutch at the ornamental iron-railing to support himself. He now felt sick as well as faint.

“I'm ill,” he said miserably. “Really ill. I need a doctor.”

The return journey down the tower took Dr. Trump over ten minutes. He had to cling on to the rail all the way, and whatever
pieces of botched joinery or slipshod craftsmanship there were to find, they escaped him. When he reached the door, it was only the cross-bar that prevented him from falling. He stood there, swaying, his fingers fixed on to the Victorian waxed oak. The cloisters stretched ahead of him, wide and empty and forbidding. So long as this feeling of faintness remained, he realised that he could not possibly attempt to cross. He might do something unseemly like collapse, and have to be carried into his Lodging by Sergeant Chiswick.

Then he saw Mr. Dawlish approaching and he realised that he would have to sink his pride.

“Dawlish!” he said in a thin, strained voice quite unlike his own natural rasping one. “Dawlish, I am unwell. I need your assistance.”

It was not until Mr. Dawlish had given him his shoulder for support that Dr. Trump realised how far gone he really was. The almost suffocating odour of stale tobacco rose into his nostrils, but he ignored it. He was merely grateful, deeply grateful for a human being who could support him.

“You're a good fellow, Dawlish,” he heard himself saying as though from the other side of a curtain. “I'm very much obliged to you. Very much obliged.”

That was the last that Dr. Trump remembered until he was aware that he was half-way up the stairs with Mr. Dawlish, nearly purple in the face, and Mrs. Warple, similarly flushed but obviously delighted by her own importance, her necessariness, attempting to make a bundle of his legs.

He was still so shaken that he made no serious protest when Mrs. Warple insisted on putting him to bed herself. It was only that he wished that she would not be so coarse, so frank about it.

“Don't you worry about me,” she kept saying. “I'm an old married woman myself. I've put my own husband to bed before this, I can tell you.”

And he did not feel strong enough to object when Mrs. Warple insisted on getting the doctor round to him immediately.

“I've learnt my lesson,” she said grimly. “I'm not taking any more chances, thank you.”

The only thing that he did try to fight away was the brandy. But even that was a battle that he lost in the face of her insistence.

“Go on, Samuel,” she urged. “Get it down. What did God give us brandy for if it wasn't to drink? Do you all the more good because you don't take it regular. It's good brandy.”

Dr. Trump was asleep when Dr. Arlett arrived. Almost in a coma. He was aware of having his pyjamas unbuttoned, and of the cold nose of a stethoscope as it was applied to his bare chest. Then he was conscious of hearing Dr. Arlett say almost casually: “Don't bother about this, it's only like a prick.” It must, all the same, have been the jab of the needle that woke him up. Because he heard the next few sentences quite plainly.

“Have to get him away from here,” Dr. Arlett was saying. “The strain's been too much. Send him down to Broadstairs and let his wife look after him. He'll be better once he gets away. He's got Sweetie and Ginger on the brain …”

Dame Eleanor could feel all the loneliness of the years crowding in on her. As she lay there in the high, double bed, she knew that she had no one. It was loneliness of a kind that she had never known before, like being the last survivor on a fading and depopulated planet.

She remembered, though dimly, the figure of her dead husband. It was all so long ago, however. And he had dwindled so in her memory. He was no no more than a faint, lavishly whiskered figure, still steadily receding.

But it was not so with her son. He had never been away at all, really. If she went into any of the rooms downstairs, the billiard room particularly, she expected still to see him standing there, tall and high-shouldered and elegant, with his prematurely pouched eyes, and the weakness of his mouth concealed by the fine golden brown moustache that he always wore in full Guard's fashion. She knew that it was silly, of course. Because that was the way he had looked in 1921, and it was 1935 by now.

She lay back simply staring into the emptiness of the ceiling. For a while, motionless, she listened to the insistent
drub-drub drub-drub
of her heart. Then silently so that even the new companion should not hear, she began to cry. And, once started, she turned her head sideways on the pillow and went on crying like a schoolgirl.

After all, there was little enough to comfort her. Margaret was the one person on whom she had thought that she could rely. And Margaret had shown once again that she cared nothing for her; nothing for any single thing on earth except her own idiotic emotions—and these were all being squandered on that child that she was so foolishly anxious to adopt, to mother. Surely Margaret could see how much Dame Eleanor needed her. Wasn't it obvious that the whole episode of Sweetie and Ginger had disgraced her publicly? As one of England's leading social workers she was as good as ruined. And there is no pleasure in being an old woman whose public and private lives are both in complete collapse.

She would have to resign from the Hospital: that much was certain. At her age, it was madness, sheer madness, driving herself so hard. There could only be one end to it, the Doctor had said. And, each time, rather than describe what that end was, the doctor had simply spread his hands expressively wide open, leaving so much emptiness in between.

Not that she could give up everything all at once, not simply throw her hand in. There were her successors to be appointed. And who could possibly appoint them except herself? After all, they must be the right people. She couldn't have just anybody taking the chair at her committees, reversing her decisions, turning the accounts upside down, authorising the wrong kind of action.

At the mere thought of it, she roused herself. She must begin straightaway writing letters, telephoning, interviewing the likely ones. The sooner the better, too, while she still had her finger on things. To-morrow morning at the latest.

Thump! Thump-thump! Thump THUMPetty-thump-thump!
Her heart was pounding about inside her again. She could feel it shaking her whole body. And all the time she was waiting, waiting, waiting for that unspeakable moment when it would miss its beat altogether. Then, as she waited, the moment came.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, THUMP … thumpetty-thump-thump
.

Aaaah! She heard herself saying as the breath left her and she sank back. It was as though she were already actually dead for a moment, but still with enough life left inside her to know all the time what was happening.

The fool of a doctor wouldn't tell her how long she had got. He seemed to think that it was kinder, more professional, just to leave her there, wondering. But she didn't need any doctor to tell her: she knew. At the speed at which she was breaking up, she gave herself about another three months at the outside. Possibly less—say ten weeks. The one thing of which she was certain was that she would never know another Spring. She had the picture of blossoming fruit trees in her mind and felt convinced for some reason, that she would never see them. There comes a time, she reminded herself, when old people really do know that kind of thing.

That was why she wanted everything to be as peaceful as possible during the remainder of time that she had left to her. That was why she needed Margaret. Margaret was the only person who could look after her properly: she knew that from twenty years' experience. But, much as she wanted Margaret, she wasn't going to have her home turned into a reform school. And could anything be more absurd, she asked herself, than having a fourteen-year-old girl, and a problem child at that, suddenly introduced into the household when even the doctors said that the very things that she needed were absolute peace and quiet?

She paused.

“Of course, I suppose she
could
be put into the West wing,” she reflected. “Or over the kitchens. I need never see her then. Or somewhere right at the top of the house. Heaven knows there are spare rooms enough. She could have Derek's room, for that matter. He's never going to use it again.” She paused for a moment, and shook her head. “But it wouldn't work. Margaret would only be thinking of Sweetie or whatever the child's name is, instead of looking after me. I don't want just a part of somebody's time; I need all of it.” Again the pause, the hesitation. “But it would be nice to have Margaret in the house again. And she's so sensible, perhaps she could find a way. At least I could talk it over with her …”

She was still rambling on in her thoughts, half sleeping, half waking, when the companion came in. She was nearly five minutes late by now and she had been hurrying. The cup of Horlicks in her hand had spilled over into the saucer.

Dame Eleanor looked at it and turned away her head.

“Perhaps,” she continued with her thoughts, “if I did allow Sweetie to come here, Margaret could make something of her. It's worth trying. I wish I'd had grand-children of my own. They take away the fear of death somehow, grandchildren …”

It was nine-thirty next morning when the news of Dr. Trump's illness, his collapse, was phoned through to Dame Eleanor.

Miss Phrynne, the secretary, was first with the information. She was formal, diffident, polite: she did not like bothering Dame Eleanor, she said, or appearing to go behind Dr. Trump's back, but the Warden was very far from well and there were a lot of cheques that needed a second signature. Then Dr. Arlett came through, and what he had to say was most disturbing: it would be a month at least, he reckoned, before Dr. Trump was fit to resume—more, possibly, if he didn't get away from the place at once. And, finally, Mrs. Warple came on the line. In some obscure way she regarded Dame Eleanor as belonging to the other camp, an enemy; and she was short with her.

“So you see it's no good you asking him to carry on until you can get someone,” she told Dame Eleanor, “because I'm taking him away to-night. And it'll be a miracle if I ever get him there. I'm only ringing you up now just so that you'll know what's happening.”

That was enough. It meant that Dame Eleanor would have to stop being an elderly invalid and become an administrator, a Chairman, once more. By nine forty-five, even though her poor old heart was going thumpetty-THUMP-thump again, she had been on the phone herself and had called a Board meeting. What is more she called it immediately. For that very afternoon, in fact.

It was not an easy meeting. Everyone's mind had been full of Mr. Sparkes, and no one had given so much as a thought to Dr. Trump. In consequence, the Board met in an atmosphere of bewilderment. It was like having the principal actor fall ill before the final curtain.

It was, indeed, only Dame Eleanor who kept them to their business.

“It's no use saying we didn't expect it,” she told them. “It's happened. And it's no use pretending that this Hospital will run itself without a Warden, because it won't. We've got to appoint a
locum
, and we've got to appoint him to-day.”