Children of the Archbishop (47 page)

For what Canon Mallow dictated was as follows:

“
Dear Dr. Trump. In case you should need me suddenly
”—the idea that the Hospital might find that it could not get along without him was something that was constantly in his mind—“
I am dropping you this line to say that because of a congestion in my chest I am moving into the above nursing home. The doctor thinks that I shall be here for about a month. After that, I shall go to a convalescent home somewhere. I hope that Mrs. Trump and yourself are both well. Please give my regards to the staff and ask them to remember me to any of the children that still know me. Particularly Sweetie and Ginger. With kind regards, Tours sincerely, Edward Mallow
.”

He was able to manage the signature himself. And then satisfied, as though it were something really important that he had achieved, he took his sleeping tablets and dozed off.

Dr. Trump was annoyed rather than gratified by receiving the letter. Its extreme unnecessariness displeased him. How, in any circumstances, could the Bodkin Hospital possibly require Canon Mallow suddenly? And the reference to Sweetie and Ginger. It coupled their names together in a way that he disapproved of most strongly: he would certainly not pass that bit on.

It was Miss Phrynne who carefully read all letters before filing them, who passed the news of Canon Mallow's illness round the Hospital. And the effect was remarkable. Everyone—that is the older ones, the pre-Trump era appointments—promptly wrote to him. And Mr. Dawlish, dirty, unsentimental Mr. Dawlish, decided
to start a small subscription list, a mere bob apiece affair, so that the staff could send a small token—a basket of fruit, or a book or two for when he felt like reading again.

In the end, one pound sixteen was collected, and Mr. Prevarius made the diplomatic error of asking Dr. Trump if he would like to subscribe.
Like
to? The answer to that was obviously no. But how could he refuse? It would look mean; grudging; even possibly un-Christian. So reluctantly Dr. Trump forked out his bob along with the rest of them.

And then something else occurred that annoyed him. It was a phone call from Dame Eleanor asking if it were true that Canon Mallow was ill, and if Dr. Trump was satisfied that everything possible was being done to look after him properly. As though Dame Eleanor of all people did not know how deeply occupied he was. As though she imagined that whenever elderly clergymen on the Isle of Wight caught a chill he could go chasing off to see that the sheets were aired and the stopper had been properly screwed down into the hot-water bottle. He replied briefly and coldly saying that he was entirely satisfied. If anything untoward occurred he would, he added, get in touch with Dame Eleanor immediately.

Then, on the very day when Mr. Dawlish was wasting Dr. Trump's time showing him what had been bought with the money—a folding bedside-table with an adjustable flap—Miss Phrynne showed herself at her most tactless. She had written to Mrs. Gurnett, she said, and Mrs. Gurnett was proposing to go down to the Isle of Wight to see for herself.

Dr. Trump could hardly believe his ears. The waste of time. The money squandered on the fare. The busy-body nature of the whole expedition. For some reason, the whole incident rankled deeply. He realised now that he resented Canon Mallow.

Going over to the window, he stood there drumming with his fingers on the glass, and observed that one of the “keep off the grass” notices was crooked.

Down below, Mr. Dawlish was crossing over from Latymer to the boys' playground. In the shelter of the buttress he stood long enough to light his pipe. When at last he had got it going properly, and an expression of depraved animal satisfaction had come over his face, as he sucked the smoke inwards, Dr. Trump saw him toss the used match-stick idly over his shoulder.

Immediately Dr. Trump shot back the catch of the window.

“Mr. Dawlish,” he called. “Mr. Dawlish. You'll find you've dropped something.
There
, man,
there
! Just behind your foot.”

The abduction of Canon Mallow—for that was what it amounted to—was carried out swiftly and efficiently.

Less than twenty-four hours after Mrs. Gurnett had arrived in Ryde, Canon Mallow, wrapped up like a mummy in thick fleecy blankets was being transported northwards at Heaven knows what expense in a vast private ambulance.

Not that the removal had been easy. Or rather, not that it would have been easy for anyone other than Mrs. Gurnett. In the ordinary way, matrons of nursing homes do not surrender their patients. The whole idea of surrender is foreign to them. For matrons are aloof and unassailable. Even the night sister is respectful to them. Matrons are rarely contradicted, never challenged. But that, it must be remembered, is only because matrons are not frequently brought face to face with other matrons.

And though at first, Miss Tremlett of the Creevedale Nursing Home was confident, even contemptuous, when she heard that the afternoon visitor to No 3 had a complaint to make, she very soon came to realise that this was no casual encounter.

A foxy, red-haired woman with two bright spots of colour on her cheek bones, Miss Tremlett made her way quickly and purposefully—her low rubber-heeled shoes squeaking on the polished oilcloth—towards the unexpected trouble centre.

That it was not Canon Mallow himself who had complained, she was certain. Male patients were never like that. Even strong men in the prime of life became extravagantly, idiotically grateful for the most trifling attentions—for a fresh bed-warmer, or an aspirin tablet, or even for a drink of water. It was women who were the mischief makers; and women visitors were worst of all. Miss Tremlett hated them.

At the thought of the indignity of a complaint, the spots of colour in her cheek bones began burning like twin dabs of rouge. And by the time she opened the door, the corners of her mouth were drawn down, and the phrase “Don't you think that perhaps we're upsetting our patient?” was all ready on her lips.

Then as she stepped inside her eyes met Mrs. Gurnett's. She
stopped short. She wavered. For the female figure who faced her was that of another woman-hater, someone not in the least likely to be impressed by mere technique. And there was a massiveness about her that made Miss Tremlett feel lightweight and chittish. As Miss Tremlett looked she realised that the visitor had been in no need to set her mouth for this interview. The visitor's mouth had been tucked grimly down at the corners for years.

But this was not the worst. For before Miss Tremlett could speak, the visitor had addressed her.

“Hadn't we better close the door?” she asked, in a phrase as polished as Miss Tremlett's. “We don't want draughts as well as pneumonia, do we?”

And with the use of the plural, that adroit, commanding “we,” Miss Tremlett recognised that this was no amateur bout. It was professional up against professional. And the weight was in favour of the challenger. …

The preliminary skirmishes took place at the bedside. The real stuff, the clinches and the body blows, went on in the privacy of Miss Tremlett's private room. And Mrs. Gurnett did not spare her. Air-bubbles in the water-carafe on the side table, the used teacup not removed from the sick room; fluff behind the dressing-table; the position of the bed; the uncovered basket of fruit; the hole in the pillow-case—Mrs. Gurnett left nothing unmentioned. And when, beaten down and sagging, Miss Tremlett referred to her bill for professional services already rendered, Mrs. Gurnett retaliated with talk about the Town Hall and the County Medical Officer.

In all, the match lasted for forty-five minutes—and less than two hours afterwards, Canon Mallow was being carried downstairs to the waiting ambulance.

It was a long journey from Ryde to Bedford, and Canon Mallow slept most of the way. Because of his high temperature—he was still somewhere away up above the hundred—he could not think very clearly. He was, indeed, rather confused by the whole occurrence. Creevedale had seemed very nice to him, even though they had been a bit slow whenever he had rung the bell for anything.

But he did not question that Mrs. Gurnett was right. In his experience, she had always been right about everything. And it was so nice of her to take the trouble. With all those children on her hands—but, no; he was forgetting. She wasn't at Bodkin
any longer. She was … What was it she was doing? He couldn't remember. But whatever it was, he was still sure that she was right.

And Mrs. Gurnett was sure, too. Through the whole long journey she sat on the inadequate canvas-backed chair that was provided for the attendant and gloated. Whenever Canon Mallow stirred, she covered him up again. And, each time she gave the bedclothes a little pat as well. When the ambulance-driver asked her thoughtfully if she would like him to break the journey for her own convenience, she ordered him sternly to drive straight on.

It was late—really late: getting on for midnight when they reached Bedford and drew up before the Lamorna Nursing Establishment in Bunyan Gardens. But everything was exactly as Mrs. Gurnett had directed. The light over the porch was burning and the night sister opened the front door as the ambulance came to rest. No. 1—the big room with the bow windows—had the gas-fire on in readiness and the bed was positively padded with hot-water bottles. Fresh water stood in the carafe on the side-table. And there was a large screen at the foot of the bed so that the window could be wide open without so much as the first flicker of a draught.

Mrs. Gurnett insisted on doing most of the settling-in herself. And the night sister noticed that she had never seen this large, rather grim-looking woman so gentle and solicitous. When, after the tucking up, the time came to switch off the light, leaving only the night-light burning, Mrs. Gurnett stood there for a moment smiling down on him.

Then, tired as she was, she said something that surprised the night sister.

“If he needs anything, send for me,” were the words she uttered.

And she meant them. She was, in fact, conscious of one thing and one thing only. She had got back under her own roof the nicest gentleman she had ever known.

The event that shook Dr. Trump's life was sudden and unanticipated. It came with a fierce and dreadful emphasis that left him stunned, resentful and rebellious. There seemed something so entirely
unnecessary
in this disturbance of the pattern that he had designed for himself.

There was not even any accounting for it. The weather was warmer, considerably warmer, than it had been when Canon Mallow had caught his careless, vexing chill. And, in comparison with Canon Mallow who was moving appreciably towards the shadows, Bishop Warple was in the very prime, the mere mid-afternoon of life. A Suffragan Bishop to-day—who knows what to-morrow might have held in store?

And now—nothing. A yawning, horrid blank simply because the clay at Highgate Cemetery had been damp after another interment, and Bishop Warple had stood about on it for too long burying a lay preacher.

What was so maddening, too, so absolutely infuriating, was that the deceased had been someone of practically no importance; merely one more zealous church worker among so many. And to think that the course of Dr. Trump's life, the very course of ecclesiastical history, possibly, should have had to be re-written because of him. It simply did not make sense.

Not that anyone detected at the time that Bishop Warple had done anything other than got his feet wet. Even Bishop Warple himself did not suspect it. He travelled back to Putney, his mind full of plans—for a revised Church hymnal for the blind; for a Mission drive that would somehow or other help to utilise the services of a young coloured deacon who had been foisted on to him; for the establishment of a diocesan re-building fund; for everything, in fact, that overloads the thinking of a busy Bishop.

On the following morning, he was snuffly, but continued with his duties. The day after that he retired to bed. And forty-eight hours later—a mere four days after the first funeral—Dr.
Trump was sitting again in the chintzy drawing-room where Felicity had proposed to him. Only this time the curtains were drawn, and it was not Felicity but a solicitor who was sitting there beside him.

The intervening moments—that brief, disastrous gap between funeral and funeral—had by now become fused within Dr. Trump's mind into one dark and desolating whole. As for the events themselves, they had been so swift and terrible that, in retrospect, he recalled only certain of them; mere isolated signposts all pointing ominously towards the grave.

For even on Friday it had still seemed nothing, this ailment of the Bishop's; a sort of summer cold with general lassitude and marked irritability. Dr. Trump had, indeed, spent from 7.30 p.m. until 10 on Friday evening alone with the Bishop. And so lightly had he regarded the whole matter that he had taken the invalid nothing—not even a grape or a bunch of flowers.

And apart from his querulousness, Bishop Warple had seemed lively enough. He had even suggested a game of chess. As it happened it had proved a bad, desultory kind of game in which both of them lost their Queens through sheer carelessness. But at least the
intention
of chess had been there: Dr. Trump clung to that. And afterwards they had drunk cocoa; chatted mostly on secular subjects—as Dr. Trump could not subsequently help remembering, the Bishop's worldliness had become magnified rather than diminished in the face of impending dissolution; and tried to do
The Times
crossword. Altogether it had been a pleasant, rather lazy sort of evening.

At 10 o'clock, when Dr. Trump announced that he must be going, he left the Bishop sitting comfortably in his chair. He was just going to glance through this week's
Popular Cycling
, he said, and then toddle off to bed. There was nothing in the least surprising about his choice of reading: indeed, it was reassuringly normal. A keen amateur cyclist in his undergraduate days, Bishop Warple had maintained a lively interest in the subject. He read himself to sleep every Friday, the day on which
Popular Cycling
appeared, with details of patented spring handlebars and built-in hub dynamos and other refinements that had come in since his time.