Children of the Archbishop (35 page)

Then, her work done, she sat back. Her face softened and the hard crescent of her mouth began to relax and draw downwards no longer. After all those years of waiting, of saving every penny, everything was coming right at last. Compared with the sixty-three pounds that she had been wanting, this was affluence. The Lamorna Private Nursing Establishment, resident matron, Mrs. Gurnett, would be able to have its own white-tiled operating theatre, its seven-guineas-a-week surgical wing, after all. In short, dear, dead, derided, misunderstood Mr. Gurnett had put her on the road to affluence.

And then, as another thought crossed her mind, Mrs. Gurnett uttered a loud “Ah,” and this time—the first time for years—the corners of her mouth tilted upwards.

“This means that I'm a free woman,” she said exultantly. “I'm as good as he is now. As soon as I've actually got the money, I can tell that Dr. Trump just what I think of him.”

Marriage, Dr. Trump was discovering, is not necessarily the quiet and placid haven that sentimentalists make it out to be. The last twelve months, indeed, had been appalling: simply one confounded rush after another.

And it was not his fault. It was Felicity's. She was organising him. Taking him in hand completely. Re-making him. And, with every fresh outburst of wifeliness, Dr. Trump shuddered as he remembered Mrs. Warple's words from the sick-bed. “She runs this house,” was what Mrs. Warple had said to him. At the time he had not realised that the words were not merely a statement, but a warning.

For a start, there were his friends. He had got to make some, Felicity said; and quickly. And not merely any friends: they had got to be of the right kind. At first Dr. Trump had agreed. He
had been indulgent, even cordial. It seemed a capital idea to have a lot of the right kind of friends. Come to think of it, who could possibly want the wrong kind? But he soon saw that there were snags, disadvantages to the process. Friends took up such a terrible lot of time. And while these new and, he still hoped, beautiful friendships were ripening and developing, the candidates had to be fed.

Already, the Trump household accounts were rocketing; positively rocketing. The grocer's bill for one week had shown two botts. claret, one bott. sherry, one bott. invalid port—the invalid port was for a well-known lay Evangelist—as well as little expensive oddments like one jar olives and half-pound salted almonds. Indeed, late at night, as Dr. Trump went over the bills, he decided that the price of friendship might in the end prove so high that he would have to call the whole thing off, revert to solitariness.

There were, of course, compensations. Invitations were a two-way affair. And though, for the time being, Felicity could not accept, Dr. Trump was by now a regular luncher and diner-out. Ever since his ordination, for instance, it had been one of Dr. Trump's ambitions to receive a luncheon invitation to Lambeth. And now it had happened: “Lambeth Palace,” he had been able to say to the taxi-driver as he left the Bodkin Hospital.

Admittedly, the top sparkle, the sheen, of the affair had been removed when Dr. Trump saw the seating plan. No matter how he reviewed it, he could still not understand how he had come to be placed one from the end on the left-hand side. But his neighbours, if not exactly distinguished—no rings, no large amethyst-studded crosses reclining on scarlet—were at least stimulating. They were two missionaries from Illinois. And very plump, milk-fed little missionaries they were, too. Their bright concave spectacles flashed like the head-lamps on a smart sports car, and their gold fountain pens and fancy wrist-watches added that indefinable note of the exclusive coach-builder. It was the World Kingdom of Apostolic Churches—a body of which Dr. Trump had not previously heard—that they represented, and they were in the course of a lightning nine-day tour that was to include London (England), Paris (France), Geneva (Switzerland) and Rome (Italy) on the way.

Dr. Trump was right between them, with their National President, Professor Zollberg on his left and Mr. Sussman, their Organising Secretary, on his right. And after a few moments of plain caution and resentment, he sat there speechless and entranced.
It was Propaganda and Publicity that was Mr. Sussman's speciality and, as Dr. Trump listened, he felt himself being reborn into a richer and more charitable world. Doors began to open all round him, and the future that lay beyond seemed at once immense, wonderful. He even wondered how the Church had contrived to crawl through those impoverished early centuries before Mr. Sussman's services had been available.

“So it's money you want, is it, Doc?” Mr. Sussman inquired.

He leant forward as he said it and came so close that Dr. Trump had the uncomfortable impression that the little man had climbed on to the cloth and was now sitting on the table-top facing him.

“The needs of the Hospital are certainly very pressing,” Dr. Trump admitted guardedly. “Very pressing indeed.”

“Well, name it,” Mr. Sussman instructed. “Put a figure to it.”

“It's about … about eleven thousand pounds,” Dr. Trump told him.

Mr. Sussman turned towards his National President.

“Say, what's that in dollars, Professor?”

Professor Zollberg took out his pen.

“Times four,” he said. “I calc'late that as forty-four thousand.”

Mr. Sussman shook his head.

“Wrong sort of sum,” he said. “Ask for fifty thousand. Sounds bigger.”

“It
is
bigger,” Dr. Trump pointed out.

But already the Organising Secretary was hard at work organising.

“What's your literature like?” he asked.

“Our literature?” Dr. Trump inquired. “You mean … er … English studies.”

“Naw. Naw,” Mr. Sussman told him. “Appeals literature. Brochures. Pamphlets. Booklets. Hand-outs. Give-aways. Just how do you set about it?”

“We appeal twice yearly,” Dr. Trump replied. “With an … er … Roneo-ed letter. And, of course,
The Times
and
Telegraph
. In the personal column, you know.”

“Who signs the letters?” Mr. Sussman demanded.

“Oh, Dame Eleanor,” Dr. Trump answered. “It is always our Chairman who signs.”

“Is she Royalty?” Mr. Sussman persisted.

Dr. Trump drew in his breath quickly.

“I am afraid not,” he admitted.

Mr. Sussman took up the point at once.

“Oh don't imagine that I've got anything against the lady. It's just that I wonder whether she's big enough for you. Whether she's got the name.”

Dr. Trump said nothing.

And it was now evident that Mr. Sussman was really warming up to his subject.

“Have you studied Appeals Research?” he asked. “The statistical side, I mean.”

Dr. Trump paused. He would have liked to be able to say “yes”; that he had graduated in Appeals Research; that the standard work on the subject was one that he had written himself. But somehow he did not feel that Mr. Sussman would believe him: those head-lamp spectacles of his would see through anything. He was compelled therefore to humiliate himself for the second time.

“No,” he confessed awkwardly. “I am afraid I have never had the time. I am not … er … a professional appeal-maker. I am a theologian.”

He was pleased with this arrow as he fired it. But he might have saved himself the trouble. After all, Mr. Sussman was only trying to help, and there was no call for rudeness. Not that it mattered: the armour of the Organising Secretary was perfect and impenetrable. He brushed the sentence away like a fly and went straight on.

“Seventy-eight point four per cent of all donations to charity,” he said, emphasising each syllable by prodding Dr. Trump with his thumb, “are the result of photographs. Children on crutches. Blind babies. Old people in wheel-chairs. It has been definitely established by the psychologists …”

But Dr. Trump never knew what it was that the psychologists had been so definite about. For, at that moment, his neighbour—a gaunt, wolf-like Prebendary with whom so far Dr. Trump had not exchanged so much as a single word after the original snarl of greeting—leant right across him and addressed Mr. Sussman.

“Quiet, please,” he said reprovingly. “His Grace is trying to address us …”

All the same, Mr. Sussman's words had not been wasted. Within Dr. Trump's mind the seed germinated and took root. Little prickly feelings inside kept reminding him of his new mission,
his self-appointed task. And exactly eight days after the planting, Dr. Trump got out pen and paper and began cultivating the first tender shoots.

This title had come as one of the happiest of his inspirations. First he printed the words, “THERE IS A HOME FOR LITTLE CHILDREN” in block capitals half-way down the page. Then, after contemplating the beauty of the design for a few moments he deleted the words “THERE IS.” Yes, that was it—“HOME FOR LITTLE CHILDREN”—that was what the booklet was to be called. And above the words he drew two large balloon-shaped frames for the photographs of the two prettiest children in the Hospital. His own likeness he decided would go inside; nothing formal or studied—just a simple picture of himself with his hands outstretched appealingly, or a casual snap taken unaware as it were, showing him romping on one of the lawns with the toddlers.

And, as he worked, he became a kind of super-Sussman: ideas for new phrases, new photographs, new captions, came pouring in on him. He seethed and bubbled with creation, and began furiously making notes on the cover of his sermon pad. “Big Friend” was what he was going to call himself throughout, not Warden. There was something altogether too chilling, too prison-like about his official title for the purpose of this heart-breaking little booklet. How easily it flowed, too. “Big Friend tastes the breakfast porridge”; “Big Friend leads the Sunday sing-song”; “Big Friend visits the tiny sick ones”; “Big Friend talks to his small friends”; “Big Friend shows the way”; “Big Friend says a prayer”; “Big Friend asks
you
for
your
help”.

What was more, even the format of the booklet was plain to him by now. It was to be sixteen pages of large note-paper size, and the back of it was to be in the form of a Banker's Draft, perforated so that the charitably-minded could simply fill in the particulars, rip it off, and pop it in the post-box.

Already Dr. Trump was itching to get down to the letterpress itself. For it was here that the subtlest touches of all, the real conscience-tweakings, could be got in. And in his fine, angular script Dr. Trump began to write: “Dear Other Friend,” it started, “Do you carry a tear in your heart?” But here Dr. Trump paused. It wasn't a sermon that he was writing and how could he be sure that the reader would understand him? He meant, of course, the crying kind of tear, not the torn sort. But as, apparently, there was no means of conveying this simple fact without the aid of the human voice, he drove his pen through the
entire sentence and began again more simply. “I have lately become the father of five hundred children …” But this was clearly impossible, and he hurriedly put his pen through that, too. Then he thought of another approach, the direct, manly one: “Were you ever an unwanted child? Was it your shame to have no father's name on your birth-certificate?” But this would never do: it sounded somehow so gratuitously insulting. How could he possibly expect generosity from people who opened a perfectly nice-looking letter only to find that it contained a lot of nasty allegations from some unknown clergyman? So out went that sentence as well. For a moment or so he toyed with the notion of: “Our beds are full, but our pockets are empty.” But that had the unmistakable note of a begging appeal that he most wanted to avoid: most recipients would not even trouble to read any farther. And the variant, “Last week I could not pay the milk bill,” was even worse. So he made one more shot at it. “Dear Other Friend,” he wrote, “Wouldn't you like to ‘adopt' a Little Friend? Big Friend has five hundred Little Friends to choose from—sweet, appealing little girls and fine manly little fellows. Perhaps yours is there waiting for you …” Then, remembering the somewhat misty parenthood of some of the five hundred, Dr. Trump decided that perhaps the last sentence was just a shade unfortunate. It sounded too much like a police trap. So down came the pen once more obliterating, scratching out, erasing.

By lunch-time Dr. Trump was moody and preoccupied. When Felicity told him quite clearly and distinctly that the Editor of the
Missionary Times
and his wife were coming, he merely nodded. Indeed, he particularly did not want to be interrupted at that moment. He could feel the mood coming on him and the perfect first sentence, at once arresting and provocative, was forming in his mind as he sat there.

“Would you like to become a surprise father or a surprise mother?” he was going to say. “If so, all that you have to do is to ring Putney Hill 1236 and Big Friend will make everything easy for you.”

The letterpress was now finished. And, by the time Dr. Trump reached the last page he had acquired a profound respect for the Mr. Sussmans of this world. But there it was at last, five and a
half quarto pages all neatly typed by Miss Phrynne on the office Oliver, and with the initial words of each paragraph underlined in red. There now remained only the photographs. And here Dr. Trump showed the deep resourcefulness of his nature. He did not go to any of the local firms, the Putney regulars who exhibited wedding groups and football elevens and newly-married couples in their windows. Instead, he wrote to a firm entitled “Child and Camera” whose shop window he had seen somewhere off Baker Street. And he was imperious and commanding. He told “Child and Camera” to come to him.

The letter was acknowledged next day on a strange-looking heliotrope-coloured postcard signed in green ink with a name that Dr. Trump could not read. But at least it was civil. It announced that the mysterious writer would be there on the following day at 3 p.m., and looked forward to making the Warden's acquaintance.