Children of the Archbishop (25 page)

Three out of the five had been easy. First, there was Mr. Dawlish. Then Mr. Jeffcote, who was 63 and had trouble with his eyes. It was obvious that
he
couldn't double games or woodwork with anything. Then Mr. Prevarius. It certainly wasn't age in this case. At most, the man was no more than an abominably well-preserved 50. With him, it was something that went deeper even than time: it was his moral attitude. Whenever Dr. Trump had been with Mr. Prevarius for any period he felt as though he had been in the presence of someone not entirely, not scrupulously, clean.

On the women's side, it was the question of Mrs. Gurnett that had troubled Dr. Trump most. That she was obstinate, uncooperative,
even openly hostile, had been apparent from the start. But who was there to replace her? Dr. Trump had to admit that, at the thought of actually dismissing her, he grew apprehensive. Not, of course, that he was afraid of the woman—that would be ridiculous. It was merely that he recognised her position, her influence, her long seniority. Who knows but that, with the corner stone removed, the whole edifice might not come toppling?

So, in the end, Dr. Trump left Mrs. Gurnett untouched and decided on Miss Wynne and Mrs. Glubb instead. And with good reason. Both were on the verge of sixty. Neither was well. Each again had private sorrows that were interfering with her work—with Miss Wynne, it was the death of her mother that had affected her and, with Mrs. Glubb, it was a goitre. So far as Mrs. Glubb was concerned, indeed, this was doubly unfortunate, for her ailment was both unsightly and incurable. Dr. Trump therefore decided that, in the interests of everyone, he had better act now and immediately. There was no provision anywhere amid the Archbishop's benefactions for elderly invalids and nursing cases among the staff. What he had to do might be painful but it was certainly his duty.

There it stood then, the final list of the condemned. On the men's side, Mr. Dawlish, Mr. Jeffcote, and—admittedly Dr. Trump licked his lips as he came to this one—Mr. Prevarius. And from among the women, Miss Wynne and Mrs. Glubb. Moreover, now that his mind was made up, there was nothing to be gained by hesitation. Unscrewing the top of his presentation fountain pen, Dr. Trump began to write:

“
The Warden presents his compliments to Mr. Dawlish and would be obliged if Mr. Dawlish would attend in the Warden's study at
…”

Dr. Trump had cancelled all other engagements. The entire morning from 9 a.m. till lunchtime was set aside for the dismissals. And when the first knock came on the door he was ready.

“Oh God,” he had prayed fervently less than five minutes earlier, after going over the last of the staff files, “make me worthy of my task. Make me strong. Let neither pity nor weakness blind me or deter. Let me be ruthless in my righteous cause.”

Even so, it did not prove easy. He had been forced to change
his original order and it was Miss Wynne whom he was seeing first. The accident of sex embarrassed him. Because it was a woman that was being sacrificed he tried to make things easy for her, to be ruthless in a kindly, almost paternal fashion. And, in the result, he rather overplayed his hand: he was too disarming. For the first few minutes of the interview, in fact, Miss Wynne simply did not know what he was driving at. And then, when she discovered, she burst into tears.

“You mean you want me to leave?”

“Not until the end of term,” said Dr. Trump gently.

“It's the same thing,” Miss Wynne replied.

“Oh no,” Dr. Trump corrected her. “It is not yet even
half
-term. There is no element of … er … urgency.”

There was a pause while Dr. Trump sat there looking at her. As he did so he noticed with distaste that her skin was yellow rather than pink in colour, and that it had a loose, puckered appearance that he had seen previously only on the breasts of slaughtered fowls. There was no doubt about it, Miss Wynne was elderly all right. Deuced elderly. He even began to wonder if she had been keeping her real age from him. There, abruptly, the silence was broken.

“It all seems so unfair,” she blurted out suddenly. “First mother's death. And then this.”

“But I,” said Dr. Trump, drawing back a little, “can hardly be held responsible for your poor mother's death.”

“No, but you can for her daughter's,” Miss Wynne snapped back at him.

And before Dr. Trump could reply—a grave, crushing sort of reply that would make further rejoinder impossible—Miss Wynne had snatched up her handbag and, with her handkerchief pressed hysterically against her face, had flounced out of the room, leaving him there.

Dr. Trump sighed and sat for a moment staring at the ceiling. Then he braced himself again—did no one ever pause to consider his feelings at such a moment?—and, taking up the little brass bell with a Swiss milking scene engraved on the side of it, rang for Mr. Jeffcote to be sent in.

And how differently Mr. Jeffcote responded. Even if Miss Wynne was not a lady, at least Mr. Jeffcote was a gentleman. He sat with bowed head listening silently while Dr. Trump talked. And, instead of resenting it, when Dr. Trump came to the real
reason for his dismissal—failing eyesight—he seemed positively contrite about his affliction. He apologised. And, more than apologised. He confessed. His near-blindness, he admitted quite openly, was something that he had been seeking to conceal.

Pressed by Dr. Trump as to why he had not come forward like a man and said openly: “I am going blind: you must get rid of me,” he explained that he simply could not afford to do so. Up to eighteen months ago, it turned out, he had been making a regular monthly allowance to an invalid sister seven years older than himself, and in consequence he had not been able to save a single penny. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to go on, even though from the back of the classroom he could not so much as see the blackboard. In short, it was sheer poverty that had made him so dishonest.

Dr. Trump pondered. It was only, he reflected, in actually getting rid of people that he had to banish all thoughts of compassion: afterwards, there remained much to be said for it. Besides, Mr. Jeffcote had been so respectful throughout. So respectful, when he might have been so difficult.

He took all these factors into account. Then going over to Mr. Jeffcote, he put his hand on the man's shoulder.

“But do not imagine,” he said, “that I, or the Governors of this Hospital, would wish anyone with nearly thirty years' service to go out into the world unprovided for. There is unfortunately no pension scheme. That was an oversight on the part of my predecessor. But there is still perhaps something that I can do.”

“Yes?” asked Mr. Jeffcote eagerly, screwing up his pale, failing eyes as he looked into the light. “What is it, please?”

“Our bishop, Bishop Warple,” said Dr. Trump, looking at his watch, “is an … er … intimate of mine. He is also Honorary President of the St. Nicholas Alms Houses in Wimbledon. I cannot promise anything, of course, but I will drop a hint, a broad hint, next time we are together.”

There was a pause.

“Thank you,” replied Mr. Jeffcote feebly.

“And, in the meantime, take my advice,” said Dr. Trump, still speaking in the same mild but manly voice, “and avoid all unnecessary reading. That could only make matters worse.”

As for Mrs. Glubb, she astounded him.

After the seemliness and humility of Mr. Jeffcote's behaviour, it was as though Mrs. Glubb, near-invalid as she was, had rushed
at him with a bread-knife. And this time it cannot be charged against Dr. Trump that there was anything wrong with his method. On the contrary, for Mrs. Glubb's benefit he chose an approach that was really midway between the one that had deceived Miss Wynne and the one that had knocked the stuffing out of poor Mr. Jeffcote. And, for all the good it did, he might have spared himself the pains. For no sooner did Mrs. Glubb catch his meaning than she flared up and insulted him. Her eyes, already grotesquely large and protruding because of her misfortune, blazed up suddenly, and she moistened her lips before speaking.

“I knew it,” were the words she uttered, “I knew it the first moment I caught sight of you. You want to get us old ones out so that you can get your own friends in.”

Dr. Trump rose while she was still speaking.

“That, my good woman,” he said coldly, “is a lie.”

But he was allowed to go no farther.

“Don't you start good-womaning me,” Mrs. Glubb told him, “I'm not going to stand for it.”

“And I,” said Dr. Trump, “have no wish to prolong this interview. Good morning.”

“You mean that you are through with me?”

“I mean that you are through with us, Mrs. Glubb. You give me no alternative. You may leave as soon as you are ready.”

After Mrs. Glubb had withdrawn—and the way she slammed the door made the pictures of the Holy Land and the Old Boys' football team rattle on the thin deal panelling—Dr. Trump found that he was trembling. It was as though a powerful electric current was passing right through him. And it made him despise himself to think that any member of his staff, a woman moreover, could have upset him in this way.

He rose slowly and took a long drink of cold water from a glass on the side-table. It was only when he had half-finished it that he realised that the water was stale and rather warm: it could not have been changed this morning. With a frown of displeasure, he went back to his desk and wrote the single word “carafe” on his pad. Then, bracing himself a second time, he rang for Mr. Dawlish to be sent in.

And this time it was all exactly as he had expected. If Dr. Trump had ever been assailed by doubts, one glance at Mr. Dawlish would have been enough to overcome them. The pathetic creature had again dropped something messy and disgusting on his waistcoat; haddock it looked like. What was more, as soon as he began
to speak he condemned himself out of his own mouth: in short, he was a grumbler.

“Canon Mallow would never have done this,” he said, as soon as he had heard Dr. Trump's ultimatum.

“But Canon Mallow is no longer Warden here,” Dr. Trump replied. “Canon Mallow does not enter into it.”

“And it's always the old ones who catch it,” he went on. “Years of service—and then this.”

“I didn't invent
anno Domini
,” Dr. Trump said pointedly.

“And it isn't as though the Hospital paid enough for the rainy day when it comes,” Mr. Dawlish muttered. “Same now, as when I came here.”

Here Dr. Trump saw his opening. And, like a leading counsel, he pounced.

“I am unaware that you ever asked for any increase,” he said.

“If I had, I shouldn't have got it,” Mr. Dawlish answered in the same flat dissatisfied voice that had always annoyed the Warden.

“That,” Dr. Trump replied, rising, “is another matter. We are not discussing fancy. We are face to face with fact …”

Even with the surprises, such as Mrs. Glubb's unreasonableness, Dr. Trump's sense of timing had been immaculate. Four of them were gone already, and it was now 11 a.m. precisely. He rang the little Swiss bell again. But this time it was not to summon a victim: it was for his elevenses. And while he stirred his Ovaltine and broke the Marie biscuits into small pieces so that he could eat daintily and without making crumbs, he pondered on the morning's work.

“Mallow would never have had the guts to do it,” he told himself. “That's what a job like this needs—guts.”

The coarseness of the word privately rather delighted him, there was something so essentially masculine about it, so strong, so robust, so—so gutful.

And he would certainly need all his strength for the next interview, the one with Mr. Prevarius. This, in fact, was going to be the set piece of the whole morning. And, when it was over, the Hospital, Dr. Trump told himself, would be a purer place.

At first Dr. Trump had resolved to finish his elevenses before seeing Mr. Prevarius. But Ovaltine made with freshly boiled milk conserves its heat amazingly. And he saw no reason why, for Mr. Prevarius's sake, he should risk scalding himself. He liked his Ovaltine and wanted to be able to sip it slowly and worthily. Moreover, he asked himself, wasn't there something impressively
unperturbed about such behaviour? Wouldn't it, more than anything else, show Mr. Prevarius the unassailable contempt that he felt for him if he went on sipping throughout the interview?

Therefore, with his cup no more than tasted, he rang his fatal bell for the last time. Only on this occasion he was unaccountably kept waiting. It was as though Miss Phrynne had not heard him. He was, in fact, about to ring again when he heard Mr. Prevarius's voice in the corridor outside.

“Thank you, thank you, Miss Phrynne,” he was saying. “My hands are full, you understand. Otherwise …”

A moment later, the door opened, and Mr. Prevarius stood there, smiling.

“I am not too early, I hope,” he began, gazing upon Dr. Trump with a smile that every moment was mounting to a leer.

“Come in,” Dr. Trump replied coldly. “I am waiting.”

“And I have brought my own mid-morning snack along with me,” Mr. Prevarius answered, stepping out of the shadow of the doorway. “I thought that you would not mind if we shared our modest refreshment together.”

In his hand was a cup and saucer. From above the rim of the cup a thin veil of mist was rising. Dr. Trump did not trust himself to catch Mr. Prevarius's eye. Instead, he glared at the offending object.

Mr. Prevarius intercepted the glare.

“Milk,” he explained. “Plain boiled milk. I rarely change. Cocoa, sometimes. But, in the end, I always go back to plain, pure milk.”

“Sit down,” said Dr. Trump.

“Thank you, thank you,” Mr. Prevarius answered. “You are more than kind.”

Dr. Trump paused. Now that he could see Mr. Prevarius clearly he disliked him more strongly even than he had realised. For a start, Mr. Prevarius had suddenly become almost atrociously well-dressed. He was wearing a double-breasted black jacket and striped trousers, with an open butterfly collar. The impropriety of it shocked Dr. Trump. It was the sort of clothing that a bank manager or a Harley Street specialist might have worn, or a county solicitor. But, for a music master in an orphanage, it was frankly presumptuous.