Children of the Archbishop (8 page)

It was only after he had sent the letter that Canon Mallow began to have doubts about it. For a start, he wondered whether Dr. Trump would be interested in the bit about the suspension pier. And hadn't he been a bit untactful in referring to the Hospital as though he were still a member of it? But what was worse, he began to wonder whether he had really done Ginger much of a service by drawing attention to him at all. Might it not even prejudice him, and make Dr. Trump suspicious and unduly on the alert where Ginger was concerned? He could not now remember exactly what it was that he had said. And because the letter had been posted he could not refer to it. He began to wish now that he had not sent it at all. And wasn't that reference to Mr. Dawlish a bit disloyal to an old colleague? It made the man sound like a monster.

As for Dr. Trump, he sat at his desk with the letter in one hand and the other tapping irritatedly on the arm of his chair.

“Can't the man understand that he is a back number already?” he asked himself. “Is he proposing to pester me indefinitely?”

In the bed a child is lying. She is an angry child. And because she is angry she is taut and rigid, with her fingers clenched. Her arms are bent, and her rounded fists are faintly visible over the top of the bedclothes. On her cheeks the splashes of tears still glisten in the light of the one gas-mantle that has been left burning. But she is not crying now. She is far too angry to cry. She just lies there alone, angry and unsleeping,

All the other children in the ward are asleep. Have been asleep for hours. The sound of their breathing fills the room, rising and falling in unison as though even in sleep they are well-trained and disciplined. This one little girl is the only rebel among them. A fiery and self-consumed anarchist, not quite three feet high.

Usually at this time of night if she wakes up she is frightened. The ward looks so long. And wide. And high. It seems to extend for ever, going on and on from the glow of light of the one gas-burner into a world of complete outer darkness. It is black night itself that reigns at the far end.

And when the lights are out children in the other beds look strange somehow. Not like children at all. One of them, the little girl with thick curly hair, is a sheep-dog. Next to her, with the snub of her nose just showing, is a pig. And, in the bed beyond, the little girl with the clothes humped up over her, is a bear. A sheep-dog, a pig and a bear. They are horrid companions for bedfellows. And once seen they are generally too frightening for her to be able to go off to sleep again.

Luckily she can't see the little girl opposite to her. That one is a particularly alarming little girl: she breathes growlingly and turns into a leopard as soon as the lights go out. She is probably a leopard at this moment. But the angry little girl isn't bothered by her to-night because she is lying on her back and her feet make two mounds in the bedclothes that cut the leopard clean off from sight. Besides she is far too angry to feel frightened by anything to-night.

How can so small a child be so angry? What is it that makes her draw her legs up to her chin and then thrust them straight out again, thin and bony towards the bottom of the bed? It is injustice.
A cruel injustice that she has had inflicted on her. An injustice from which there is no appeal because everyone, the other little girls, the day-nurse and the night-sister are all in a conspiracy against her.

The cause of the trouble is a pink plush rabbit. There isn't more than this one pink plush rabbit in the whole world. That's what makes it so precious. And how would you feel about it if just such a rabbit had been taken away from you by force? How would you feel if you had been held screaming while thick fingers prised open your arms and snatched your cherished, your favourite, in fact your one and only piece of personal property from you? Well, that is just what had happened less than six hours ago to this little girl.

It is because she is all alone and unbefriended that she has got to do something about it herself. And she means to do it. First she has to get out of bed. This isn't easy because the bedclothes have been tucked in so tight. But at last she manages it and, businesslike and deliberate, she slides down on to the floor.

Now that she is standing up you can see what a skinny child she is. Her black hair is plaited into two rats' tails that stick out over her shoulders and her small face is grave and anxious-looking. She goes over to the hook where her clothes are hanging—the blue cape and red hood of the Hospital—but they are too high up for her to reach. She can't even reach up to the shelf that holds her vest and knickers and the rolled-up black stockings. There is nothing for it, therefore, but to set out as she is in her long flannel nightgown.

The only things she can reach are her shoes which are on the floor underneath the shelf. And, without stockings, these feel ice-cold and sloppy as she puts them on.

Then she sets off down the main avenue of oilcloth between the double row of beds. It is to the far end of the ward that she is going, away from the light; and this means passing quite close to the sheep-dog, the pig and the bear. In her sleep the bear girl is growling faintly and, under the bedclothes, her limbs are moving as though she is getting ready to spring.

But the little girl gets past her safely. She goes on, slop-slopping in her big clumsy shoes. At the far end of the ward is the door—the door leading to the corridor with the door of the playroom on the other side. It is in the cupboard of the playroom that the pink plush rabbit has been put away. And it is to this cupboard that the little girl is going.

The door opens silently and the moonlight shining in through the slanting window in the roof makes the corridor bright and empty-looking. It is a specially cold kind of light that the moon gives, and the little girl suddenly realises that she is shivering. Her teeth are chattering and her nightgown that had seemed so warm in bed now doesn't seem to have any warmth in it at all. But she keeps on across the corridor. And then, for a moment, she pauses to listen. Someone is breathing. Slow, heavy breathing as though the person who is breathing ought to have her nose blown for her. It is the night-sister's breathing. And she is in the conspiracy, the night-sister. She is on the other side. An enemy.

The door of the playroom opens just as easily as the door of the night ward; and the little girl goes in. The windows here face full on to the moonlight and the room looks even colder and emptier than the corridor. But it is easy to find the cupboard and straightaway the little girl begins to drag a chair over to it. She doesn't pause to think about the noise she is making because, in a moment now, the pink plush rabbit will be in her arms, and everything will be all right again. She can feel the feel of him already.

But the cupboard door is locked. All that she can do is to rattle it. And that makes the chair wobble. And rattling and wobbling don't do any good. Realising suddenly that she has lost, it all comes back to her—the injustice, the wickedness, the true sin of what has happened. Only it is not simply despair this time. It is revenge that is eating up her heart inside her.

She can't hit the night-sister because she is too big. It is Susan that she can hit. And she means to do it. Because Susan was behind it all. If Susan hadn't cried because she had toothache, the day-nurse would never have thought of giving her the pink rabbit to comfort her. And the night-sister wouldn't have let her have it afterwards while she was waiting for her bath. It wasn't even as though Susan usually played with the pink rabbit. She is a thief, is little Susan. A mean, nasty, horrible thief. And she is going to be punished.

So the little girl goes back in her direction. Slip-slop in her big walking shoes she goes across the empty corridor and back into the night-ward with the solitary gas-mantle burning at the far end. It is easy to find Susan's bed. It is the second one from the end, next to the pig-girl's. And as soon as she gets there she goes up to Susan, the girl with the toothache, and does the most dreadful thing she knows. She pinches her in the face with her finger-nails.

Then appalled by the awfulness of what she has done, she bursts
out crying. She simply stands there in the dim ward, her pig-tails sticking out and her outdoor shoes, her clod-hoppers, showing under the hem of her nightgown, crying at the top of her voice. The ward looks bigger than ever now. And because the little girl has left the door open there is a draught, and the shadow of the gas-bracket keeps twisting round like a big worm on the ceiling. She isn't angry or revengeful any more, this little girl. She is simply cold. And miserable. And very frightened.

Susan is awake too. She doesn't know what has happened. But at the sound of the little girl's crying, and because her face hurts her, she cries too. Then the pig-girl starts. A moment later there is the sound of someone in the corridor and the night-sister comes in pulling her dressing-gown around her. She catches sight of the little girl by the bed and whisks over to her.

“You bad, naughty little girl,” she says. “How dare you get out of bed. I declare you're more trouble than all the others put together.”

She snatches hold of her under the arm-pits and starts back down the ward with her. The little girl is too wretched to resist and just hangs there in her arms boo-hooing.

“I'll tell Matron about you,” the night-sister goes on. “You're a wicked child and you've got to be punished.”

When she reaches the little girl's bed she thrusts her back under the bedclothes and tucks them down so tightly that escape is impossible.

“And stop that silly noise,” she says. “You'll wake up Dr. Trump.”

Then she goes across to comfort poor Susan and the pig-girl.

The little girl turns her head to one side and lies there watching her. The moon has moved round a bit and her pillow is full in the moonlight now. We can see her face quite plainly. And we have met her before. Known her practically from birth in fact. She's the little girl who was left on the doorstep, the one who helped to keep the numbers up.

She's Sweetie. And she's getting on for four. Must be just about four, in fact. Within a week or so either way.

Could be her birthday to-day, for that matter.

Everything that Dame Eleanor had said to Dr. Trump had rankled. There had been two more board-meetings since then, each one as bad as the last. And the words of advice, of instruction even, with which he had come away remained in his mind, pricking and wounding him like a hedgehog.

“I'll show 'em,” he told himself vulgarly. “I'll show 'em whether I can run a children's home, or not.” And then remembering his vocation, his calling, he rephrased his intentions: “With God's help, I will redouble my efforts. I will reveal myself as not unworthy.”

The trouble was that he was feeling tired. It had been a long session, and the ledgers spread out on the big mahogany desk in front of him went back a full ten years into history, right back to nineteen-seventeen, in fact. As he had turned over the pages, his nostrils had been filled with the leathery mustiness of sheer antiquity. But even now he couldn't feel sure that he had really got to the bottom of it, that he wasn't being bamboozled about the shortages.

There they were, accusingly set forth in his clear, angular handwriting, and he started to read them through again:

137 pairs boys' cotton underpants

224 girls' vests (small)

139 girls' vests (medium)

127 girls' vests (large)

218 girls' nightdresses (medium)

136 …

But after that he could restrain himself no farther. Spearing downwards with his pencil point on to the cotton underpants, he raised his eyes and addressed Mrs. Gurnett. She was placed exactly opposite to him, bolt upright upon the hard carved chair on the far side.

“They can't have vanished,” he said. “They can't have walked away. They can't have been eaten. Therefore they must have been lost. Or stolen.”

“Or worn out,” Mrs. Gurnett snapped back at him.

There was an interval during which Dr. Trump's dark, deep-set eyes stared unwaveringly into Mrs. Gurnett's resentful grey ones. Then he spoke again.

“If they were worn out as you put it,” he said, “why weren't they entered in the replacement ledger?” He paused. “One hundred and thirty-seven pairs of anything is … one hundred and thirty-seven pairs, you know,” he added with indisputable logic.

The crescent of Mrs. Gurnett's mouth turned down lower still at the corners. Her shoulders were squared defiantly and her hands lay tightly clenched in her lap. The whole body was held rigid and immovable. But, to relieve her feelings, she was twiddling her thumbs. It was a habit that annoyed Dr. Trump and made him determined, at some suitable moment, of course, to speak to her about it.

“It's over ten years,” she replied stoutly. “Don't forget that.”

Dr. Trump drew his breath in sharply.

“If it was over a hundred years, one hundred and thirty-seven pairs would still be one hundred and thirty-seven pairs,” he replied, wishing that Dame Eleanor could hear him. Then he braced himself. “I'm afraid there has been carelessness.”

“Meaning me?”

The words had come darting out at him like a stab from a jack-knife. He was astonished, positively astonished, that there could be so much malice and vindictiveness in any woman. But he was ready, and more than ready for the assault. He parried the blow neatly, not even showing that he had been aware that he had been struck.

“Meaning the system,” he replied quietly. “The entire miserable system my predecessor left behind him.”

He paused and, sitting back in his chair, held his pencil horizontally like a handlebar.

“What is lacking,” he said, “is supervision. Real, proper, thorough supervision.”

As he said the word, it struck him suddenly as being a beautiful word. There was an augustness about it that overwhelmed him. And, warming to the subject, he resumed.