Children of the Archbishop (21 page)

Up to six feet, the walls of the kitchen were painted a deep bottle green; next a dado of dark chocolate ran round the whole interior; and finally, the upper walls and ceiling carried a coat of
smooth slaty distemper. The whole effect was both serviceable and sedative. And also strangely smothering. It was as though the decorator had risen temporarily from some submarine existence to choose and supervise his colour scheme.

At this moment—10 o'clock a.m. on the morning of Wednesday the 3rd—Mrs. Gurnett was standing at one end of the kitchen beside a small table that was bare except for a pair of kitchen scales and a metal spike on which was impaled the day's collection of tradesmen's bills and store accounts. She was not looking at them, however. She was not even thinking of them. Instead, she was gazing down the long line of white scrubbed tables at which the kitchen staff were working. They all looked exactly alike, these women, dressed in the blue-and-white-striped working uniform of the hospital. And facing each other across the table tops they conveyed the air of a cotillon of wardresses.

But Mrs. Gurnett was not thinking even of the women. She was adding up figures in her head. Private figures. Figures that no one except herself and the bank manager knew anything about. It was the mystical number “four hundred and fifty-nine” that kept swimming before her eyes. And, as she gazed at it illuminated as brightly as if in neon, she was reasoning silently within herself.

“Not yet,” she cautioned. “Not before it's the full five hundred. I mustn't do anything that I shall regret later. There's only me to consider. But once I've burned my boats, where am I? Who's going to step forward if anything goes wrong?”

For a moment her eyes re-focused and she could see the kitchen staff once more. One of the women had paused and was scratching her head with the end of a long wooden skewer that she had been using. Mrs. Gurnett decided to speak to the woman about it. But not now. For the time being she was continuing with her secret thoughts, her confidential plans for her own separate and exciting future.

“It'll take three years,” she went on to herself. “Every month of it. And only if I'm careful at that. But if it isn't then, it's never. I shall be too old for it. No patients of mine are ever going to say that I can't do justice by them.”

At the thought of patients of her own, not mere Archbishop Bodkin weaklings but real paying patients, with laundry and cotton wool as extras, Mrs. Gurnett's soul became suffused with a warm inner radiance. She saw it as the one thing in life worth living for—her own private nursing home, with her own private operating
theatre, her own private sterilisers, her own private nursing fees. Even the words on the brass plate set above the gate-post—THE LAMORNA NURSING ESTABLISHMENT: RESIDENT MATRON: MRS. GURNETT—were plain to her. She had decided already in favour of engraver's script for the lettering, because it looked less cold somehow than the Roman.

“That is, if I can stick it for another three years,” she reminded herself. “There's my limit and I can't go beyond it. It's in his hands as much as in mine.”

As she stood there, dwelling already in the brilliant but uncertain future, she became aware that the kitchen hands had stopped their work and were staring intently in her direction. At her? Apparently. But why? It was none of their business how long she chose to stand over them. And then she became aware of someone who was beside her. And, turning sharply, she found herself face to face with Dr. Trump.

“Ah,” said Dr. Trump, his face creased in readiness for the smile he always used on such occasions. “I fear I startled you.”

Mrs. Gurnett's chin stiffened and the crescent of her mouth descended sharply.

“Did you want something?” she asked.

Dr. Trump's smile remained fixed and purposeful.

“I wish to see the kitchens,” he replied.

Mrs. Gurnett did not move.

“Well, there they are. That's all there is of them.”

“Then perhaps we might go round them together,” Dr. Trump suggested.

“Now?” Mrs. Gurnett asked. “Just when there's lunch to get.”

“And what better time could there be?” Dr. Trump inquired.

Mrs. Gurnett was about to tell him. Then the figure of five hundred pounds rose up before her, clear and tantalising, and she checked herself.

“I'm ready,” was all she said.

As the two of them advanced along the centre gangway, a rigid and unnatural silence descended upon the room. And, at the realisation of what this sudden hush portended, Dr. Trump smiled. A genuine and unpremeditated smile. A smile of sheer gratification at this latest proof of his tremendous presence.

He turned to Mrs. Gurnett.

“And are they happy at their work?”

“I'd soon hear about it if they weren't,” she replied.

“Then let us put it to the test,” Dr. Trump proposed. “Let us speak with some of them.”

He paused opposite one shapeless aproned figure and addressed it. As he spoke, the girl turned round. She was a large, vacant-looking girl with a flat, white face across which tendrils of pale hair were straying. By now Dr. Trump was wearing his smile again.

“And what might your name be, may I ask?” he inquired.

The girl appeared puzzled as though there were a catch in the question somewhere.

Mrs. Gurnett came to her assistance.

“He asked you your name, Annie,” she explained.

“Annie, sir,” the girl repeated in a whisper as though imparting a closely guarded secret. She had somehow the air of a lunar visitor who had been captured and held for questioning.

“Well, Annie,” Dr. Trump went on, “and what is it that we have here?”

“It's a rice pudding,” Mrs. Gurnett interjected.

But Dr. Trump motioned her to stop.

“I want her to tell me herself,” he explained.

There was a pause.

“Well,” Dr. Trump insisted. “Tell me.”

“S'rice,” the girl confirmed, still in the same hoarse whisper.

“And do you enjoy making rice pudding?” Dr. Trump inquired.

This time the girl merely smiled back at him nervously. She had never had this question put to her before, and needed Mrs. Gurnett to help her with the answer.

Dr. Trump overlooked her silence.

“And are rice puddings all that you make?” he went on.

The girl gave the same nervous smile. It was evident that, under so exacting a cross-examination, she was getting rattled.

“It's apples to-morrow,” Mrs. Gurnett reminded her.

Dr. Trump took up the cue.

“And do you like making apples?” he asked. “Apple pudding, I mean.”

Again the smile. Again the look of complete bewilderment.

“You are, in fact, happy?” Dr. Trump asked her point-blank.

It was this question that really floored her. She could not make head or tail of it, could not understand this insatiable questioner who was interested only in enjoyment and happiness. So she smiled again and wiped her forehead with her apron sleeve.

Dr. Trump smiled back at her.

“That's all I wanted to know,” he said.

As they moved off Dr. Trump turned to Mrs. Gurnett.

“She doesn't appear to be a particularly bright sort of girl,” he said quietly.

“She isn't,” Mrs. Gurnett replied.

“Then why employ her?”

“Because she's cheap,” Mrs. Gurnett snapped back at him.

“How much?”

“Ten shillings a week, and her keep. She's an old Bodkinian, remember.”

Dr. Trump's eyebrows came together with a little wriggle. He was frowning.

“How many of them are there?” he asked.

“Who?”

“These hired girls.”

“Six,” Mrs. Gurnett replied. “There should be more. I've asked for them.”

Dr. Trump ignored the second half of the answer.

“Six at ten shillings a week?” Mrs. Gurnett nodded.

“A hundred and fifty a year!” Dr. Trump observed disapprovingly. “And could not the older girls in the Hospital perform these simple duties?” he inquired.

“Cooking isn't simple,” Mrs. Gurnett replied.

“But parts of it are,” Dr. Trump pointed out. “The … er washing up, for example.”

“The children do the washing up, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

Mrs. Gurnett sniffed. “There'd be breakages,” she said. “They'd need too much looking after.”

“But,” Dr. Trump reminded her, “that is what you are here for … to look after them.”

“I couldn't hold myself responsible,” Mrs. Gurnett replied briefly.

There was a pause. A long awkward pause.

“We shall see,” Dr. Trump replied enigmatically. “We shall see.”

They had now reached the end of the main kitchen and were facing the entrance to a small inner dungeon, where a single electric light was burning,

“And this?” asked Dr. Trump. “Are there more rice-puddings being made in here?”

“This,” said Mrs. Gurnett, “is the scullery.”

“Ah,” Dr. Trump exclaimed cryptically, as though he was cherishing special plans for the sculleries.

After the heat of the kitchens, there was a sudden, unnatural chill about the scullery. The earthenware sinks, the slate draining boards, the bare lavatory-like tiles all seemed to have been refrigerated in the builders' yard before installation. And despite the naked electric light bulb that blazed over the taps there were corners of the room still left in darkness. Dr. Trump almost bumped into a solitary figure seated in a low chair, with a sack of potatoes on one side and an enamelled pail on the other.

“I beg your pardon,” he said gallantly.

“Thash all right, shir,” the woman replied.

Now that he could see her he realised how old she was. It was a toothless old crone who was sitting here in the twilight, amid a litter of potato peelings.

“And are
you
happy in your work?” he asked. “Do you like … er peeling?”

The old woman paused for a moment and looked up to catch Mrs. Gurnett's eye.

“Sho, sho,” she said. “I'm shatishfied. No complaintsh here.”

“Good,” said Dr. Trump. “Then we will leave you.”

He had just noticed that a small heap of freshly peeled potatoes was lying in the old woman's lap, and the apron that she was wearing looked as though other things had lain in it before. He was relieved to think that potatoes are not eaten raw.

“Come,” said Dr. Trump to Mrs. Gurnett. “We must not detain the lady.”

“Thash all right,” the old woman replied, without even looking up again. “Taksh more than thish to shtop me.”

Back in the warmth of the kitchens, Dr. Trump turned to Mrs. Gurnett.

“And what is her pay, might I ask?”

“Fifteen shillings,” Mrs. Gurnett replied. “Mornings only. She lives out.”

“And is peeling potatoes skilled work?” Dr. Trump went on.

“Not particularly,” Mrs. Gurnett replied.

“Then why pray do we employ a paid peeler?” Dr. Trump demanded.

“To avoid waste,” Mrs. Gurnett told him briefly.

This time Dr. Trump's eyebrows gave another little squirm and then climbed up high on to his forehead.

“Could anyone, even a child,” he asked, “waste fifteen shillingsworth of potato peelings in a week? It seems unlikely.”

Mrs. Gurnett was silent for a moment. Then she faced round angrily.

“Well, anyway,” she said, it's all the old thing's got. Just that—and her old age pension.”

“Quite so,” Dr. Trump replied. “But we must remember whose money it is that we are spending. If it were yours or mine I would say nothing.”

“Then what do you want me to do—sack her?”

Dr. Trump spread out his hands in a gesture of deprecation.

“Oh, no,” he said. “This is clearly a matter for the Board to consider. I am only their servant, remember. Not my own master.”

It was on the first Thursday of the month that the Board meetings were held. And, as the calendar moved round towards this one, Dr. Trump found himself growing steadily happier with every day that passed. By the first Tuesday of April he had his speech word perfect; and, on the Wednesday night, he could not sleep for thinking about it.

Appropriately, Dame Eleanor placed the item first on the Agenda: “
Proposed economies in catering and management (Dr. Trump)
” was how it read. And the meeting proceeded, wrapped in Canon Larkin's approving smile. Even the minute was exactly as Dr. Trump would most have liked to see it. “
Agreed
” the paragraph ran, “
that to provide more practical instruction in domestic science and housewifery, girls in senior grades to assist in kitchens under close supervision from Mrs. Gurnett. Estimated saving for financial year 29/30 £175 per annum. The Board thanked Dr. Trump for his proposals
.”

Sweetie was seven when the Board, prompted by Dr. Trump, came to that decision. And the sevens, of course, were no more than juniors: they weren't affected. But there is less than five years to go before Sweetie reaches the senior school. She is already more than half-way, in fact, along the pilgrimage towards the scullery and the potato pail. And perhaps it is just as well. Domestic service has always been the one great opening for old Bodkinians from the girls' side.

Ginger was in trouble again and Dr. Trump was standing upon the faded hearthrug of his study, his arms crossed and his chin held high in readiness to receive him.

Twice before he had drawn himself up to his full height only to relax again as the footsteps had gone on past the door and down the corridor. But on this occasion something told him that the time had come. And he was right. On the panel of the door came the knock for which he had been waiting. And it was just as he had expected—a knock as timid and nervous as though a moth were fluttering there.