Children of the Archbishop (39 page)

That was why she was so grateful for Margaret. Margaret made her forget all that. The woman understood. And she was devoted. It was obvious, in fact, that apart from the Hospital she had no other serious interest in her whole life. She simply lived for Dame Eleanor, treating her in the way which in large families the best kind of unmarried daughters look after their mothers. Dame Eleanor would not have minded, would rather have liked
it, in fact, if Margaret
had
been her daughter—and now that Margaret was dressed properly, she certainly looked quite respectable enough to be a daughter.

Dame Eleanor had already definitely determined to increase Margaret's bequest in her will. A hundred and fifty, she had decided, would be about the right sum. There was no point in
showering
money on servants, especially on servants like Margaret who had shown that they were spendthrift with their money. Something substantial, however, was certainly called for: she owed it to the girl. As the car drew up at the front porch, she was even wondering whether the bequest should not be two hundred.

She could tell that there was something wrong as soon as she entered the house. The broad hall with its big vases of flowers looked normal and welcoming enough. But Dame Eleanor
knew:
she could feel the whole place tingling with hostile currents.

“Margaret! Margaret!” she began calling. “Where are you? I want you, Margaret.”

And it seemed afterwards that she had known all the time that Margaret would not be there. Dame Eleanor was prepared for it, yes, positively prepared, when the housekeeper came towards her bringing an envelope in Margaret's handwriting.

But even then Dame Eleanor did not waver. She simply put the unopened envelope into her hand along with all her papers and things and said sharply: “Hurry up the dinner, please. I've got to go out again.”

Because of Margaret's deceitfulness, her unforeseen and unimaginable disloyalty, Dame Eleanor saw nothing for it but to dismiss her altogether. Altogether, and immediately. Nor did the awkward and rather halting sort of letter that Margaret had left for her do anything to make her change her mind. “…
I feel awful having to go off like this
” the letter ran in the clumsy house-maidish handwriting, “
but another of the children is ill and with Mrs. Gurnett gone there is no one to look after her. I am very sorry and the moment she's better I do want to come back and
…”

But Dame Eleanor only shook her head. She had liked Margaret, had raised her from the kitchen, had lavished gifts on her—the very shoes that Margaret had on her feet at the moment were a pair that Dame Eleanor had worn only once because the instep was too high—had been fully prepared to do a great deal more than merely pass on second-hand footwear. But the foolish girl
had, so to speak, decided to fling her gifts in her face and go off blindly on this self-invented mission of mercy.

Well, if that was how she wanted it, Dame Margaret would say no more. She wasn't her keeper. And Margaret would very soon learn which side her bread was buttered. It would take just about one week, Dame Eleanor reckoned, for Margaret to discover that the staff quarters of the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital weren't quite so agreeable as one of the guest bedrooms at The Cedars. And if Margaret seriously imagined that she could whisk back to The Cedars as soon as she got tired of a lot of children being sick all over her she was mistaken. Because Dame Eleanor intended never to have her in the house again.

What was more, she intended to attempt no further experiments with kitchenmaids. They were the wrong material. They hadn't got it in them. They didn't know the meaning of words like “loyalty” and “service” and “responsibility.” These were upper class words that had taken generations to instil.

And to make sure that she didn't weaken, didn't get taken in a second time by those dark appealing eyes and that gentle loving manner, Dame Eleanor decided to act first thing in the morning. Even so her hand trembled quite noticeably as she put the letter down. Why, she asked herself, had Margaret had to do this thing to her? Wasn't she as important as one of the Archbishop Bodkin inmates? Didn't Margaret realise that while she was nursing one solitary child she was neglecting someone who had devoted her whole life to the care of children? Someone who without a share of this world's attention simply could not keep up under the strain of it?

“It would serve her right,” Dame Eleanor told herself, “serve her absolutely right, if I were to drop dead to-morrow. And I may do, with no one to look after me.”

But Margaret was too busy to worry about her future with Dame Eleanor. Too busy to worry even about herself. Too busy to worry about anyone except Sweetie.

Sweetie had certainly got the disease all right. And more than merely got it. She was now a classic case—it was as though she had been reading up the symptoms and was now practising them. Dr. Arlett was at her side constantly.

Nor was this all. For Dr. Arlett, as visiting physician to a Hospital that was apparently riddled with infantile paralysis, was something of a celebrity in his own right: he could call on whom he wished. And though Sweetie hardly noticed them—with her temperature already up at one hundred-and-four, she was more than a little hazy about her immediate surroundings—there was at one time the Medical Officer of Health for the Borough; a Dr. Bengin from Harley Street, who was something of a connoisseur of high fevers; and a doctor from one of the teaching hospitals, who was secretly convinced that all polio was waterborne and was always anxious to get his head inside cisterns.

Their presence, however, was of no assistance to Sweetie. Her temperature continued to rise swiftly and devouringly. She became delirious. She gabbled nonsense. She fought them away when they tried to test her reflexes. She slept. And by 10.30 that night, when the bedside conference broke up, the three doctors exchanged glances. They knew exactly what to expect by the morning. And they warned Nurse Stedge about it.

Nurse Stedge, who was fond of Sweetie, nearly broke down from sheer misery and anxiety and loss of sleep as soon as they had gone. It seemed so unfair, somehow, that it should have come now and that she should have had to face this crisis alone; alone, and desperately short-staffed.

From sheer nervous exhaustion—and she had been all of a jitter ever since poor little Evelyn's death—she went sick herself. Nothing serious, as it turned out, just a sore throat and a temperature.
A touch of summer laryngitis perhaps. But it was near enough to the other thing to scare everybody, Nurse Stedge included. And it left Margaret in practically sole charge. Between Friday and Monday Margaret got rather less than twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And it was a revelation. She had never loved anything so much before. She felt as though she had been waiting all her life for that moment. Everything about it was perfect, and she felt that she would remember it always—the way she smoothed back the hair from Sweetie's forehead; the smallness and hotness of the hand that had held hers; the last exquisite moments when Sweetie fell asleep still with Margaret's arm under her. And the kisses that she had given her. Gentle, bedtime kisses of the kind that would have been impossible by day with the other children all looking on.

The memory of it would not leave her. Nothing that she had ever known before had been so complete and satisfying.

“It ought to be like this always,” she kept saying. “I can't ever leave her again. She belongs to me.”

There was one evening in particular. The worst was over by now, and Dr. Arlett had only been to see Sweetie once that day. Margaret was simply sitting beside her. She wasn't asleep—wouldn't allow herself to drop off just in case Sweetie did want anything—but she was resting. Had never felt more restful in her whole life, in fact.

And Sweetie felt restful, too. She wasn't even sleepy any more. She was just lying there, looking at Margaret. She liked looking at Margaret: it gave her a warm, safe feeling. And Margaret had noticed that she was awake. She asked Sweetie if she wanted anything. And, simply to be polite, Sweetie said a glass of water.

It was nice feeling Margaret's hands as she raised Sweetie's head to give her the drink. It was nice, too, the way Margaret smoothed her forehead after she had put her back down again. Sweetie felt that she could go on like that for ever. And it may have been the stroking feeling that did it: it is difficult to be on your guard when someone is stroking your forehead. Whatever it was, the words simply slipped out of her.

“I don't want to die,” she said suddenly.

And Margaret laughed at her. But it was not the kind of laugh
that hurt. It only showed that Margaret wasn't afraid of dying the way Sweetie was.

“You're not going to die, silly,” she said. “Why do you think you are?”

And Sweetie told her. All about having seen the doctor pull the sheet up over Evelyn's face; and about that other night in the Infirmary, when she had been small and had seen the other little girl die. She told Margaret everything. About the screens. And about the way the doctor had taken his coat off. And how the doctor had fixed something on to the little girl's nose. And how Dr. Trump had come into the ward in his dressing-gown.

By the time she had finished, it was getting late. Sweetie had been talking for nearly an hour and she felt hungry. She told Margaret so and Margaret heated up some milk on a gas-ring and gave her some dry biscuits that she had in a tin all ready, just as though she had been expecting Sweetie to sit up and ask for them.

And then just as Margaret was putting Sweetie down for good, the most extraordinary thing happened. She bent over to kiss her good-night—one of those things that Nurse Stedge always forgot. But instead of kissing her the way Sweetie expected, Margaret went on kissing her, kissing her over and over again, on her forehead, on her hair, on her eyes, on her nose, on her mouth, on her chin, everywhere. And when she stopped for a moment Sweetie saw that Margaret was crying. Really crying, with proper tears.

“Oh, Sweetie darling,” she said. “You do need me so. I mustn't ever leave you. Not even for a moment.”

Sweetie didn't know quite what to say. She was still breathless from all those kisses.

“Well, I won't ever leave you either,” she replied.

Ginger had been growing restless. Restless, even for him. He felt enclosed. And, in consequence, he became dreamy and unable to concentrate. Lessons simply didn't exist any more—he heard dates, the names of rivers, numbers, tribes of Israel,
and gems of English poetry; and they were too faint and far away for him even to think about.

And, because of this enclosed feeling, his social nature deteriorated. He was rude to Spud. He punched out at people for no apparent reason when he came near them. He let a door fly back deliberately just as Mr. Dawlish was going through it. And worst of all—what any practising child psychologist would have spotted at once as the real danger signal—he avoided his fellows. For the last couple of days he had spent the breaks simply mooching round the playground by himself, or—another unmistakable symptom of a rapidly advancing neurosis—inflicting pain upon himself. For minutes on end he would stand up against the grey wall of the Hospital conscientiously kicking at it with the toe of his regulation Archbishop Bodkin boot.

In other words, he was fed up. Not about anything in particular. He hadn't been caned lately, or got into any fresh kind of trouble. He was just fed up with everything. And he was planning to run away. He had considered such a course before. Had considered it carefully in all its detail. And in the end, he had broken the problem down into its three essential elements. First he had to have money. Then he needed clothes. And finally he must decide on somewhere to go. All three points presented difficulties. The half-crown that Canon Mallow had given him was more money than he had ever had before, but Dr. Trump had stolen it from him: all that he now had was threepence-halfpenny that had been acquired with pain and perseverance over the preceding six months. But threepence-halfpenny wasn't much. He supposed that it was enough for him to go by bus somewhere. Buses, however, were not what Ginger wanted. He wanted to put a length of shining railway track between him and the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital; preferably, a length of shining railway track with a waiting boat at the far end of it.

Then there was the question of clothes. Suppose they started looking for him, they would find him at once if he had on the Archbishop Bodkin uniform. But here Ginger had his own private reserve again. There was a pair of flannel trousers, rather large, that had got left behind somehow when the builders had been there, and a blue woollen jersey that had been circulating mysteriously round the Hospital for years.

But when it came to choice of destination, Ginger was frankly beaten. The only places in London that he could remember were Whitehall, Paddington Station, St. Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham
Palace, and he could not imagine what he would do in any one of them. Apart from them the only other place he had ever heard of was Bombay. But that was out of the question: it was in South America somewhere.

All the same, it gave him an idea. Suppose he didn't run away entirely. Suppose he just made one or two little trips outside the grounds so that he could find his way about—discover at which end of Whitehall St. Paul's and Paddington Station happened to lie; establish where the big boats really sailed from, and all that kind of thing. What he wanted was simply to get the layout of the place in his head: that was essential. Because, living the kind of life that the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital provided, he realised that he knew no more about London than an intelligent Eskimo.

The one thing that he did know was about the boats. Not once but a hundred times had Mr. Dawlish taught them: “London is not merely the capital, but also the greatest port. Liverpool and Southampton are only …” It was one of the bees in Mr. Dawlish's bonnet: he was practically potty about ports. But it sounded promising all the same.