Children of the Archbishop (46 page)

It was at this point that the growing and involuntary murmur of applause was shattered by a sudden loud and inexplicable roar from the Chapel organ.

Mr. Prevarius apologised afterwards for the fact that it was his elbow that had caused it. He had, he said, been listening so intently with his chin supported by his hand that he entirely failed
to notice that the bottom ledge of the music rack on which his elbow was resting was simply not strong enough to bear his weight.

“Held in enthralment,” was how he described his state. “Quite, quite bewitched by your eloquence, dear Doctor.”

Mr. Prevarius's dream-girl had replied at last. And as soon as Mr Prevarius saw the mauve envelope with the silver deckle-edges and the name Captain Algernon FitzWinter on the front, his heart turned over.

And now that he looked closely he could see that the handwriting itself was every bit as intriguing as the envelope. For a start, the ink was heliotrope. And heliotrope on mauve gives just that note of elegance and easy grace that might be expected from a genteel young lady of artistic tastes.

Then the handwriting itself. It was rather large and backward sloping with very large twiddly bits to the under-the-line strokes. Mr. Prevarius had read enough scientific graphology to know what that meant—a dreamy nature, smothered impulses, deep and as-yet unattainable desires. Judged solely in terms of handwriting, his unknown correspondent was practically an open petrol tank waiting for her Fairy Prince to strike a match.

Because of the exquisiteness of the moment, the sudden relief after the suspense of wondering whether she was going to reply at all, Mr. Prevarius did not open the letter immediately. Paying his threepenny collection fee and buying a ninepenny cigar with the change, he passed up Charlotte Street in search of a quiet public house. And then, when he had found what he wanted and had lit his cigar and then taken the first sip of the brandy-and-soda that he had just ordered—then, and only then, did he open the letter and begin to read.

And the shock of what he saw made him very nearly upset glass, table and everything. “
Dear Fairy Prince
” the letter started. Fairy Prince! They were the very words that had occurred to him while he was still standing in the doorway of the newsagent's. It showed
an affinity of taste beyond all imagining. And from the way it went on, he could see that with Desirée he had simply been banging his head up against a brick wall.

“
I was thrilled by your wonderful letter
” the letter ran. “
you cannot imagine how I dreaded opening something from a man whom I had never seen. But I could tell at once from the handwriting that you were someone good whom I could trust
.” How extraordinary, Mr. Prevarius reflected. That was my
disguised
handwriting: in the ordinary way, it's quite different. “
But it will still be an ordeal meeting you for the first time. Will you forgive me if I am frightened. Remember, it is my life you are playing with—if you are playing. If I were older perhaps I would not mind so much. But you must know how defenceless I feel. So please, even if you don't like me, be kind and gentle when we meet or I shall run away. Would 3.30 on Sunday next, the 27th, Cannon Street Waiting Room (First Class) be convenient. you will know me at once because I never wear anything but lilies of the valley
.”

Never wear anything but lilies of the valley! No, no, of course, she couldn't mean that. But already his eyes had strayed to the last line. “
Your Beggar Girl
,” was what he read.

Sunday! Mr. Prevarius should have remembered that it was the very hardest day of all on which to get away from the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital. By rights he should have been accompanying the entire choir—boys on one side, girls on the other—in chant and sacred song at the precise moment when he was to keep his romantic assignation in the First Class waiting-room.

And, in the end, it was nothing less than a forged telegram—Mr. Prevarius carefully kept his thumb over the office of origin when showing it to Dr. Trump—reading CATHEDRAL ORGANIST GRAVELY INDISPOSED CAN WE RELY ON YOU FOR AFTERNOON MISSION SERVICE AND FULL CHORAL EVENSONG BEST REGARDS Signed EXETER that settled the matter. But Dr. Trump had a great respect for Bishops. He was indeed flattered rather than resentful that it should be
his
organist who was sent for all the way from the West Country, and he excused Mr. Prevarius immediately.

Directly after breakfast, therefore, Mr. Prevarius was already on his way out through the front gates on his way round to Deirdre Gardens to get changed into his courting clothes. He had given some thought to the costume. Had, indeed, spent whole singing periods
with the class all round him yelling their heads off, pondering over what a retired Indian Army officer would wear in this climate.

Finally after a visit to a gentleman's outfitters at the back of Covent Garden, he had chosen a blue double-breasted blazer with plain brass buttons, rather lightish flannel trousers and a pair of brown and white half brogues.

It was only at the last moment that he remembered the tie. And going back he had picked out something in green and magenta stripes with a black adder's-back zig-zag running across it at intervals. It was, the assistant said, the withdrawn version of a Sydney rowing academy's club colours. But Mr. Prevarius doubted whether the love-maiden would spot anything wrong with it. And, even if she did, Mr. Prevarius supposed that there could be queer coincidences in club ties as in other things.

Dressing in Deirdre Gardens was easy. Within twenty minutes he had changed completely. And with a quick word of explanation to the Miss Lewises that he was off to Oxford for an old Students' collegiate garden party, he was on his way. It was still early: there was a good two hours before the appointment. And he decided to take a bite of lunch on the way.

But his lunch came as an entire disappointment to him. His nerves were too much on edge for him to be able to eat anything. Drink, yes. Food, definitely no. By 2.15 he was out on the pavement again having drunk two Martinis, a large Pimm's, and a brandy, with only half a roll, a sardine and one side of a Sole Meunière to absorb the lot of it.

It was at that moment that he remembered his buttonhole. A red rose he had said. It was to be the symbol by which she would know him. And, as he made his way towards Piccadilly Circus, he kept repeating to himself:

The red rose stands for passion and the white rose stands for love Oh the red rose is a falcon and the white rose is a dove
.

But as soon as he had passed down Great Windmill Street into Shaftesbury Avenue he realised that something was wrong. There were three separate flower-sellers, and he could have had his choice of scarlet roses, pink roses, white roses, even saffron yellow tea-roses. But there was not a dark red rose among the lot of them. Evidently, the passionate had been out doing their shopping early.

He ran one dark rose to earth in the end on the steps of the National Gallery. And the old lady who was in charge of it let him have it for ninepence. It was not much of a bloom, rather
blackened at the edges of the petals, and with a pin thrust through its heart to prevent complete collapse, but he had passed the stage of being fussy. It was recognisably a dark red rose, and it would have to do.

It was two forty-five already, and Mr. Prevarius was in a fever of anxiety lest he should be late.

“Cannon Street, three o'clock,” he said to the taxi-driver. “I'll make it five shillings if you get me there.”

Not that it was difficult. There was no traffic in the City on Sundays, and Cannon Street was nearer to Charing Cross than he had realised. There was six minutes to spare when he arrived and, in the circumstances, it seemed silly to pay five shillings for a one-and-threepenny trip. He compromised in the end on half a crown and entered the station so quickly that the taxi-driver's abuse was wasted on the station-yard. Indeed, the single word “bandit” was all that Mr. Prevarius could catch.

Once inside the main hall, Mr. Prevarius carefully slackened his pace. The moment, the supreme moment, had come: he might even be under observation already. He must appear dignified, soldierly, even nonchalant. The very last thing that he wanted was to be seen bounding in like some hot Pan bursting from the bushes.

But, as it turned out, it was quite all right. He had the First Class waiting-room entirely to himself. Sitting down in the far corner, he removed his hat—a new white Panama with the hatband also in the distinctive colours of the Sydney rowing club—placed it on the knob of his ebony cane with his yellow gloves in the dent down the middle—pulled up his lavender silk socks—and waited.

By three o'clock, he was still waiting. And at five past, and ten past, and quarter past. He was by now so nervous, so anguished by the suspense, that he inadvertently pulled one of the gilt buttons clean off the blazer simply through fiddling with it.

“I've been had,” he told himself. “She isn't coming. It was a put-up job. A hoax. There may even be blackmail in it …”

And then through the plate-glass panel of the door, just below the frosting and above a poster of brilliantly sun-drenched Clifton-ville he caught a narrow glimpse of a female bosom, supporting an out-size bunch of lilies of the valley. At the sight, all self-control went from him and he sprang up.

Then the door opened, and there stood Desirée confronting him.

Dr. Trump was pacing up and down his study.

The sermon, the truly magnanimous sermon, had tided things over for the time being—and it had been gratifying having Margaret with tears in her eyes thank him for allowing her to remain—but Dr. Trump was not deceived. All was not right yet. Something else, something dramatic and momentous, was needed to wipe away all memory of the Sweetie incident. That was why Dr. Trump was unusually reserved and inaccessible. He was thinking. And out of those profound, intense imaginings emerged—the Pageant.

It was still only faint and shadowy. A spectral affair of children in gay costumes dancing on the lawn, and perhaps a Masque with words specially written by someone—himself possibly—performed in the courtyard up against the cloisters. And a hidden choir, singing from behind the bushes. And a bright marquee, with a buffet and tea-urn inside. And flags and bunting. And photographers. His mind inflated and grew buoyant at the prospect; it soared.

And instead of being dismayed at the thought of all the detail, Dr. Trump was eager; positively on tiptoe to begin. Not that there was any real hurry. The three-hundredth anniversary, the tri-centenary of Archbishop Bodkin's birth was still fifteen months away. But what a birthday Dr. Trump was planning for him.

And in the meantime, there was so much else to do. The laundry van, for instance. The present one had been bought in 1912, and it was horse-drawn. From the moment of Dr. Trump's first glimpse he had disliked it. There was something so antiquated, so decrepit about the thing. And the horse looked older than the van. It could barely totter to the top of St. Mark's Avenue. What Dr. Trump had set his heart on was a motor van. Something that, going through the streets of Putney, would remind the inhabitants that things were stirring inside the Hospital.

And there was opposition—violent in Dame Eleanor's case—when Dr. Trump chose daffodil yellow for the colour scheme. But there it was; and no one, not even Dame Eleanor, was prepared to sanction a further twenty-two pounds ten for repainting. So daffodil yellow it remained, a 23 h.p. tribute to Dr. Trump's vision and persistence, with his own name neatly lettered on the side as Warden of the Hospital, and, in law, the owner of the vehicle.

Then there was the Founder's Tower to be considered. The Founder's Tower, in fact, had been a reproach to Dr. Trump ever since he had been there. It was now nearly seven years since he had promised himself that he would re-open it. And, of course, in the meantime the structure hadn't been improving. Two hundred and twenty pounds was what the builders now wanted in order to put the upper balcony into proper repair, and it had required all Dr. Trump's eloquence to get the Board even to consider it. Miss Bodkin, in particular, had been difficult because right through the discussion she had thought that it was another tower alongside the old one that Dr. Trump was proposing to build, and she could not see why. But all that was over now, and at practically any moment the scaffolding would begin going up.

Apart from the laundry van and the Tower, there was only one other notable event during the course of the whole year. And that was Canon Mallow's illness. Considering that it all took place more than a hundred miles away—Canon Mallow was still living at Seaview on the Isle of Wight—it caused an extraordinary commotion.

It was all Canon Mallow's fault, too: that much was agreed on both sides. A walk along the front without overcoat or muffler, on a day when sensible people were wrapped up against the local
brise
that came round the corner by Bembridge—and there Canon Mallow was, flat on his back with pneumonia and the local doctor talking grimly about adequate nursing in readiness for the impending crisis.

It was the adequate nursing that did it. The landlady said flatly that it was something entirely beyond her own powers, and that it would be impossible to house a trained nurse as well as Canon Mallow in Balaclava. Not that this was entirely true. The season had not yet started—it was only March remember—and
the first floor front was entirely empty. No, it was not impossible; but undesirable. For among the delicately adjusted values that determine the fortunes of seaside boarding-houses there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that sends things crashing faster than a death on the premises.

So Canon Mallow, bundled up in a large cocoon of blankets left Balaclava, and travelled by ambulance as far as the Creevedale Nursing Home at Ryde. By the time he arrived he was ill, very ill. The doctor prescribed sleeping tablets. But Canon Mallow refused to take them until he had written a letter. And then, when he found that he was too weak to write himself, he allowed one of the nurses to write it for him. The nurse who had expected something rather more dramatic—an appeal, for example, for an only living relative to come at once to his bedside immediately, was openly disappointed.