Children of the Archbishop (70 page)

“Thank you very much. That's very kind of you,” Sweetie said before Margaret could speak.

Dame Eleanor had closed her eyes again by now. It was no use. The string orchestra in her ears was starting up again, and she knew that the real danger signal, the thumpetty-THUMP-thump was due at any moment now.

But she was still as anxious as ever that Sweetie should think kindly of her.

“Come … and see me again … one afternoon,” she said huskily.

“Thank you very much,” Sweetie answered. “I'd like to, any time.”

Outside the door, Sweetie looked up at Margaret.

“Was I nice enough to her?” she asked. “Did I do what you told me?”

She paused.

“And now can I go and do my eyebrows, please?” she added.

The letter from the China and East Indies Missionary Society had arrived at last. And Dr. Trump was jubilant.

He had already written five drafts of his letter of resignation to the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital, and was now busy on the sixth. This one was easily the best: it embodied all the key points from the previous five. But it contained one noticeable defect. For Dr. Trump had spent so much time in polishing up the prose that he had somehow missed the main point. Even after re-reading it, he could not himself quite make out whether after all he was actually resigning, or merely writing a letter to the Governors thanking them for past kindnesses.

His letter of acceptance on the other hand had been simple and emphatic. If the office boy had opened it he would have known at once that the job had been snapped up. And that was just what Dr. Trump intended. There were to be no fumblings,
no dropped catches, this time. And already Dr. Trump was absorbed in missionary thoughts. He had done some pretty hard reading during the past fortnight. Naturally, until the job was definite he had not wanted to waste his time in picking up odd facts about outlandish places like Singapore and Hong-Kong. But for the last fortnight he had been making up for lost time. He now knew almost everything there was to know about population statistics, climatical conditions, means of communication, ethnological types, competitive religious systems, conversion rates. So far it was only the Tamil primer and the Ku-Yu Dictionary that had defeated him.

That is not to say, however, that everything was equally simple and straightforward on the domestic side. On the contrary, Felicity was opposed to the whole idea of his going. While all too obviously she did not mind—indeed, seemed rather to prefer—having her husband separated from her by some sixty-five miles of Southern Railway, she apparently could not bear the thought of having him separated by five thousand miles of P. & O. And she raised every objection she could think of to the whole project. She needed him, she said. His son needed him. Mrs. Warple needed him. Everybody needed him. It would be a loss to the country if he went away.

And with Sebastian's chest as it was, how, she demanded, could she contemplate either taking the youngster out there amid the fevers and high temperatures, or leaving him behind to be looked after by other and less loving hands? To all this Dr. Trump had been forced to make the most evasive of replies. Secretly—so secretly, in fact, that he scarcely admitted it even to himself—he was rather hoping that he would be able to go alone. He was not, even in his mind, disloyal to Felicity; there was nothing of the cheap or the fugitive about it. It was simply that the prospect of a job, and nothing but a job—no entertaining, no chest troubles, no womenfolk and, above all, no Mrs. Warple—seemed the kind of earthly bliss for which he had always longed. He wanted to be a busy, celibate missionary. And, flushed with the new enthusiasm, his whole being was now aflame with the desire to convert the heathen, baptise him, get him organised.

“What a field!” he reflected. “What boundless scope! Above all what an opportunity for modern methods—lectures and leaflets and lantern-slides and things.”

And while Dr. Trump was guiltily, surreptitiously planning this new bachelor life under an Oriental sky, Canon Mallow was enjoying himself immensely, going round taking down notices, arranging extra free periods for the juniors, slackening things off generally. Another window, one of the stained glass ones this time, had gone during yesterday's morning break.

Apart from that, it was Miss Bodkin on whom most of the attention had been focused. By now, it wasn't only her hearing that was on the way out: it was her eyesight as well. At the last General Meeting she had first signed her name clean over the top of Canon Larkin's, and had then crossed out Mr. Chitt's in error when somebody had pointed the slip out to her.

But it was still Sweetie to whom most of the interesting things were happening. During her first six weeks with Dame Eleanor she had merely been installing herself. It was the succeeding three months that really counted. And by the time these were over she had fairly turned things upside down.

Or rather, Dame Eleanor had turned them upside down for her. It had all started from the day when she had sent for Sweetie in order to see the new dress, the twenty-five and ninepenny one, that she had inspected and then said that she wouldn't have at any price. She had got herself so much worked up about it at the time that she had to spend three days flat on her back without seeing anyone. But, as soon as she was well enough, she sent for Sweetie again. And this time, having sent for her, she wouldn't let her go. She monopolised the child. Nowadays, Sweetie came in first thing in the morning, immediately Dame Eleanor had been tidied up, simply to say good-morning; looked in again before lunch; had her tea at the bedside; and came in last thing to say good-night.

There had been the brief experiment of getting Sweetie to read to Dame Eleanor. But that had been abandoned after the first attempt. Dame Eleanor was an exacting listener, and Sweetie read appallingly, with no pauses except for breath and, so far as Dame Eleanor could make out, no understanding of even the simplest words.

It was because of this revelation of ignorance—that Dame Eleanor would have put down to sheer stupidity if she had found it in any other child—that she decided to engage someone to keep
Sweetie on with her school work in the mornings. Dame Eleanor did not consult Margaret. She did not even tell Sweetie. She simply engaged the woman.

In consequence, Sweetie now hated the mornings. From 9.30 to 12, she was closeted with the widow of a church schoolmaster and found herself right back in the middle of things—Scripture, English, History, Geography—that she had hoped that she had escaped from for ever. Progress was slow. There was complete agreement between Sweetie, Dame Eleanor and the schoolmaster's widow about that point. But as the woman was a dependent of Dame Eleanor's anyhow, it seemed to Dame Eleanor better that she should be paid for doing something—even though it was something useless—than for doing absolutely nothing.

And, if five mornings a week were now utterly ruined for Sweetie, there were still compensations. For a start, Dame Eleanor, in a commanding, uncontradictable sort of way, was so unpredictably generous. Her sudden interest in Sweetie's clothes had not stopped at one new dress. When she discovered that the child had practically no underclothes, no nightdresses worth speaking of, no winter overcoat, no shoes, she sent Margaret off immediately, and told her to buy everything that Sweetie needed. Only they must be good, she kept reminding her; they must be good.

Then there was the matter of Sweetie's bedroom. As soon as Dame Eleanor could get up and move about again, she came up and inspected it. And immediately she found everything wrong. It was too small, she said; too dark, and it faced North. And, becoming suddenly sentimental about Sweetie she declared that a child of Sweetie's age needed all the sunlight she could get.

There was the blue bedroom, of course—but that looked over the drive and you could never be certain that you weren't going to be disturbed. Or the Chinese room—but, though it was never used nowadays, Dame Eleanor was very fond of its suite of lacquer furniture and felt sure that Sweetie would damage it somehow in the slapdash way young girls always do damage things. But why not Derek's room? It had stood empty for all that time. Indeed, there had been a time when she had thought of just leaving everything as it was and simply screwing up the door. As for herself it must be getting on for sixteen years since she had even been inside it.

And the fiery impetuousness that in her time had carried her roughshod through innumerable councils and committees now focused itself upon Derek's room. First there was the problem of re-decoration. A young girl's room she explained, as though
she had been designing young girls' rooms all her life, must be pale cream; with chintzes, not cretonnes; and the furniture kept as little like bedroom furniture as possible.

“What a fifteen-year-old wants is somewhere she can call her own; somewhere the rest of the household aren't bothering her all the time,” Dame Eleanor declared, looking hard at Margaret as she said it. And she added as though she herself had been brought up in some kind of a crèche: “At least, that's what I always wanted when I was her age.”

When, finally, everything had been settled to her satisfaction, Dame Eleanor put her hand on Sweetie's shoulder.

“There you are, dear,” she said. “I've got it right at last. That's the way you want it. It's always worth taking the trouble when it's something personal. It's your room, dear and I was determined to have everything in it just the way it should be.”

She paused.

“Thank you ever so much,” Sweetie answered, squeezing Dame Eleanor's hand—they had got to the hand-holding stage about a month ago—“I think it's lovely. I never knew I should have such a beautiful room.”

Dame Eleanor smiled contentedly. All her life she had been doing things for other people. It had become a dedicated purpose with her. She saw now, however, that what she had done was to make the mistake of doing things for people in the mass. In consequence, she had never known whether they were grateful or not; whether, in fact, they even realised. It had all been a one-way traffic. But this was different. To see the eager face, the shining eyes of this girl who had so surprisingly not only come into he life, but into the very centre of it, was the real reward. It made her feel warm and thankful just to think about the child's delight.

“And if there's anything at all you want,” she told her, “anything you don't like, or anything that I haven't thought of, you've only to say so. Then we can forget all about getting it ready, and it'll be up to you to make it—a happy room. Is there anything you'd like?”

There was a pause.

“Could I have a gramophone, please?” Sweetie asked.

Margaret was angry afterwards when she heard about the gramophone: she insisted that Sweetie should not have asked for it. Asking for it had made her look greedy, mercenary, acquisitive, she kept saying.

“I don't like to see any girl growing up into a cadger,” she told her.

She had been trying hard to bring Sweetie up properly. And to some extent, she supposed, she had succeeded. It had been easy to teach Sweetie how to dress properly and how long to spend on brushing her hair, and how to wash without leaving a brown horse-collar half-way down her neck. They had taught her most of these things at the Hospital. But, after all, they weren't the most important things: and it was upon Sweetie's mind that Margaret was unable to make any impression whatsoever. It seemed to be entirely self-enclosed. Appeals were useless, and Sweetie continued exactly as she was—selfish; self-confident; loving in a sprawling, desultory sort of way, and often rather bored.

It was Sweetie's boredom more than anything else that worried Margaret. And she was convinced that she was bored because she accepted everything so easily. It never even seemed to occur to Sweetie that instead of this room of hers with the pink-shaded light over the dressing-table, she might have been sleeping in a basement somewhere in Finsbury Park or Balham.

She took it all for granted, just as she took for granted the new dresses that Dame Eleanor had insisted she should have. Took them for granted. And then left them lying about in heaps on the floor as soon as she got out of them.

Part of the trouble was that Margaret didn't see enough of Sweetie nowadays: if she had seen more, she felt certain, she would have been able to have some effect simply by what she referred to as “keeping on at her.” But Dame Eleanor was reserving Sweetie for herself. When she went for drives it was now Sweetie who sat beside her. And Sunday afternoons had suddenly been taken away from Margaret, too. At first, Margaret had been able to have Sweetie entirely to herself from lunch-time onwards. For the last three Sunday afternoons, however, Dame Eleanor had decided to have Sweetie downstairs with her. It would be good for the child, she said; give her confidence; take away her shyness.

In a sense, it was everything that Margaret had ever hoped for to find Sweetie made one of the family in this way. But there was one thing about it that she did not like: she kept hearing things about her at second-hand from Dame Eleanor. It was from Dame Eleanor that she learnt that Sweetie wanted to have riding-lessons; it was from Dame Eleanor that she first heard that Sweetie wanted to
let her hair grow; and it was from Dame Eleanor that she discovered that Sweetie had not forgotten Ginger.

Dame Eleanor seemed merely to be amused by it. It even showed a friendly, childlike disposition, she said, to want to know how her old schooldays' companion was getting on.

“After all, they did see a lot of each other during those three days together,” she went on. “We must remember that. For my part I think it's wonderful the way she's got over it. Sometimes when I look at her I just can't believe it. She's a sly little puss, that's what she is,” she added. “I know her: I can tell.”

But Margaret was worried. And that night she spoke to Sweetie about it.