Children of the Archbishop (14 page)

On the other hand, she was restful. After a day spent with the GCS., the NAVPTCW and the Unmarried Mothers, it was positively soothing to get back to Putney and find Margaret waiting for her. In fact, she had by now grown to rely upon her entirely. She even intended to make some small token recognition of her dependence—say “£100 if still in my service at the time of my
decease”—in a codicil to the will that Messrs. Thring, Thring, Goodfellow and Thring of Lincoln's Inn held for her.

There had, in fact, been only one tussle between them during the whole of the seven years—and that took place during the week succeeding Margaret's promotion. Clothes, Margaret's clothes, were the cause of the trouble. The foolish creature did not seem properly to appreciate her new position: she simply went on wearing housemaid's uniform. And when Dame Eleanor told her, quite definitely, that this would have to stop, she was greeted by a most astonishing revelation. Margaret had no money.

At first, Dame Eleanor was totally unable to believe this. The girl never went anywhere. Her walking-out clothes were of the simplest. She didn't bet. She didn't drink. She didn't go to theatres. She hadn't got a family. Her only sister was married and provided for. She had no brothers. For seven years she had been fed, housed and paid a regular weekly wage—lately she had been getting as much as twenty-five shillings a week—and for all that she had to show for it she might have been giving her services free. Dame Eleanor was astounded.

In the end, she advanced the money herself. Enough to buy two plain black dresses for house wear and a blue costume with a white blouse for public appearances. Miss Ridley, Miss Arbuthnot, Miss Perriter, Miss Stanley, Miss Gibbs and the rest of them, had all had plain black dresses and a blue costume. But where Margaret's money had gone still fascinated her. She could conclude only that the girl had some indigent relations somewhere that she was supporting. It was typical of her class to behave in that way. One of the chief failings of the poor was that they never knew where to draw the line with relatives. They went on helping them long after they had shown themselves unrescuable.

Then, suddenly, sharply, Dame Eleanor remembered her own son, and her lips tightened. God knew she had done enough to set him on his feet again. And God knew also that she had gone on doing it after he had proved that it was no use. But it had been nearly five years before she had stopped his allowance. By now he had either made a man of himself or gone under. She didn't know which because it was so long since she had heard from him. She prayed for him every night. But that was the only contact she had.

Dame Eleanor had just been settled in. Her detective story from the circulating library was on the table beside the bed, with a volume of memoirs underneath just in case she lost patience with the detective story and cut things short by jumping straight away to the last chapter. A little to one side, with her reading-glasses on top of it, stood a small volume of Radio sermons, entitled “The Voice In Your Ear,” and a prayer-book—these were for reading last of all, a kind of final late extra, just before she put out the light.

On the other side stood the water-carafe, a small bottle of sleeping tablets, some aspirins, and an inhaler. The telephone, Dame Eleanor's diary, a small writing-pad, a propelling pencil, an electric torch (in case the mains failed) and a police-whistle stood on the lower shelf of the table.

Margaret had prepared the cup of malted milk extract herself and seen to it that the two Bath Olivers were crisp and unbroken. She had made sure that the hot-water bottle wasn't leaking. She had opened the side-window exactly six inches, and had drawn back the curtain so that it shouldn't get wet if it came on to rain. She had closed the door of the adjoining bathroom so that the noise of the pipes should not penetrate into the bedroom. She had turned off the gas-fire at both taps. Last of all she had switched off the two shaded lights on the dressing table and said “good night.”

Dame Eleanor, her head swathed in a muslin mob-cap, her two strawlike plaits resting on her shoulders, was now sitting up in her bed-jacket that was quilted like a diver's. Since she had left home at 9.15 that morning on her way to the Crusade Headquarters until she had returned at 10.30 p.m. from an evening rally of the Anti-Vice Association this was the first moment that she could really call her own.

But not her own entirely. That worthless son of hers kept coming into it again. When she was tired like this she was always defenceless against him. He had a peculiarly destroying effect, too; a sort of bleakness that hung round her for days after she had been thinking about him. It all became clear to her. She knew why it really was that she spent all her time on these committees—simply because she hadn't got Derek. If she had still had him by her, there would have been grandchildren, a whole new life, to occupy her. And she wanted grandchildren more than anyone
would believe. She was crying now. Yes, actually crying. And angry as well. Her detective story had slid off the bed and was lying there, crumpled and ignored.

“Oh God,” she said fervently. “Help me to forget. Make him a good man, God. But
please
help me to forget.”

But it wasn't really Dame Eleanor we were meeting. She only came into it because of that sudden outburst about Derek. It was Margaret that we were trying to get to know. And now that Dame Eleanor has been put down for the night, Margaret is a free woman until 7.15 to-morrow.

Margaret doesn't go upstairs to bed these days. Her bedroom is now at the end of the passage on Dame Eleanor's floor. It is a pleasant room with flowered wall-paper, and a Wilton carpet only a little faded—it had done service earlier in one of the guest-rooms—that has been cut to fit the walls. Margaret is very proud of the carpet. It is the first time she has ever had a carpet in her bedroom. The stain where Miss Arbuthnot had spilt her hand-lotion and the burn where Miss Gibbs's electric-fire had toppled forward are scarcely noticeable the way she has arranged the rug and the easy-chair.

But to-night she is not thinking about the carpet. She has a letter to write. There is no desk in the room and whenever she wants to write a letter, which is once every fourteen days, she has to use the dressing-table. The ink and the paper and the pen are in one of the small drawers close at hand. But before she starts her letter she takes out a newspaper that she keeps specially for the purpose and spreads it out on top of the embroidered linen runner. She does not want any tell-tale blots or splashes to reveal what she has been up to.

From the way she arranges the paper and then pulls the dressing-stool exactly into position, it is obvious that she is not an easy letter-writer. Nor does she hold the pen as though writing were natural to her. She writes with her forefinger bent as though only enormous pressure will produce any words at all. But she knows what it is that she wants to say and she remains there, bent over the dressing-table, her image in the mirror leaning forward to meet her, for five, ten, fifteen minutes.

Then she sits back and slowly reads what she has written. There is one place where she had left out a word; and there is only one word “believe” that she did not know how to spell. Bending up her forefinger again, she inks in the “i” and the “e”
so that no one could know which one really came first. And last of all she opens her handbag—it is a plain black bag with a snap-clasp that Dame Eleanor had given her last year for Christmas—and takes out a Money Order for two pounds. She studies it closely for a moment to make sure that it has been filled in properly and then pops it in the envelope. After she has written the address and stamped the envelope and made sure that it is stuck down properly, she sits there, thoughtfully staring out of the dark window.

Two pounds! If Dame Eleanor could have got hold of the envelope she would have known where Margaret's money went to. But Margaret has no intention of her knowing. And she is taking no chances. When she gets up, she puts the letter in her handbag and puts the handbag under her pillow. No need for such precautions, of course. Just one of those silly things that people do when they have a secret.

There must have been something to Margaret. More, that is, than there is to most dark-haired rather handsome women who have made their way upwards from housemaid to lady's companion. Because Dr. Trump found himself thinking quite a lot about her. At odd, foolish moments he even wondered whether the difference in their two stations in life was insurmountable.

Ultimately he decided that it was not only insurmountable but unthinkable. But that didn't prevent his mind from returning to the thought at quite unsuitable times—in the middle of sermons, for example, or even when at prayer; and always when he least expected it.

Then something occurred that put it out of his head altogether—it was the burglary, or the breaking-in or the false alarm, or whatever you care to call it. But no matter what it was—and certainly no one was murdered or assaulted; nothing was found to be missing—it left the Hospital jittery and on edge for several weeks afterwards. Dr. Trump even authorised the purchase of a fierce Alsatian to go the round with Sergeant Chiswick—but the strain, the eeriness of those midnight patrols must have proved too much for the animal: one overcast night it ran away and was never seen again.

To explain the mysterious affair that kept the whole Hospital awake and on its toes from midnight until dawn, it is no use going to Dr. Trump or to any of the authorities. The only person who could have given a satisfactory explanation was Ginger Woods—Ginger for the opening of the incident, and Sweetie for the finish.

Even then, it started only because Ginger had always wanted a weapon. Not any particular kind of weapon. Just a weapon. Something sharp to stab or slash or jab with. Once, more than a year ago—and then for something less than a week—he had been the owner of a penknife. But it had been taken from him—confiscated in class by Mr. Dawlish. The knife was still in Mr. Dawlish's
possession: Ginger knew that, because Mr. Dawlish brought it out sometimes and used it for scraping round inside the bowl of his pipe. The bowl of Mr. Dawlish's pipe was old and clogged-up, and every time it was used, the blade came away blunt and messy.

Ginger resented this, resented it with a bitterness that Mr. Dawlish with his stained moustache and his misted glasses and his unbuttoned waistcoat had never realised. As Mr. Dawlish saw it, the penknife was safer with him than with Ginger, and that was an end of it.

But, from Ginger's point of view, it was different. There were only three penknives in the whole of the boys' side. Only three, and one of them was being used as a pipe-cleaner. It made him mad just to think about it. Not that it mattered so much now. Because of some freshly entwined initials that had appeared mysteriously on one of the lavatory doors, Dr. Trump had forbidden penknives entirely.

That was why Ginger was so pleased with his new weapon, his bow-and-arrow, his invention. And it was a real weapon this time, something that should be able to kill, or at least maim, at anything up to twenty-five yards. He had been unusually lucky to get the pieces, and luckier still to have the opportunity of putting them together. In the entire Hospital, only one other boy, Spud Carter, knew anything about it and Ginger had pledged Spud to secrecy by promising that he could have a turn with it when it was finished.

In point of fact, it was going to be finished after tea today. That was what made this afternoon so important. He had got the string—better than string, in fact, blind cord—in his pocket. And that was all that was needed. The frame was a bamboo curtain rod that should by rights have belonged in one of the masters' dormitories. The shaft was a long slither of wood that had been lying about on the manual side. Not that the shaft was just a slither of wood any longer. Ginger had pointed it by rubbing it up against the brickwork of the storehouse at the far end of the playground, and he had feathered it as well. His last two cigarette cards were now neatly folded at right angles to each other and rested in a slot at the hilt.

Ginger had already made one or two surreptitious practice throws and knew that the flight was true. What is more, the brickwork had proved a good sharpener. If you pressed down hard enough on the point you could draw blood.

The fact that the weapon was there meant almost as much to Spud as it did to Ginger. Usually there was nothing much to do in the tea-break. The whole of it had to be spent in the walled playground and, because of the windows, nothing larger than a tennis-ball was allowed. Moreover, under a new order of Dr. Trump's, a master had to be on duty the whole time. Anything worth doing was therefore definitely ruled out.

Indeed, on the face of it, to-day looked exactly like any other day. Mr. Dawlish, with his coat-collar accidentally turned up as though he were in the midst of a private winter of his own creation, was mooching up and down, his feet dragging and his eyes suspiciously slanting from side to side on the look-out for horseplay, or smoking behind the boiler sheds, or worse. Ginger and Spud went by him, deliberately sauntering and saying nothing. They knew that as soon as they had passed he would turn and look over his shoulder. That was why they kept up this aloofness until he was at the far end of the playground and out of sight behind the Senior block. Then Spud spoke.

“Fink it'll work?”

“Wot'll work?”

“Our bowanarrer.”

“‘Oo says it's ours?”

“You did.”

“I didn't.”

“You said I could 'ave turns.”

“‘Aving turns don't make it yours.”

“But I can, can't I?”

“You can, if you shut up.”

“Shut up yourself.”

There was silence. The two boys walked on together. Equity had been maintained. And also friendship. But, because Spud was not seeking to press his point of ownership, it was a clear victory for Ginger. And both boys knew this.