Children of the Archbishop (50 page)

The letter was written on that kind of thin, crinkly paper that people use overseas. It was as though it had been dried up in
sunlight that had been too hot for it. Either that, or it was the cheapest that could be bought. Both, probably. And the fact that it was written in pencil did not make it any more encouraging. Harder to read that way, and with a suggestion of real poverty.

Holding it down so that the light didn't shine through, Margaret began to read: “…
just like my bad luck and when everything seemed to have turned the corner, too. If I'd had the capital and could have hung on a bit longer, I'd be worth something to-day. All the other lots showed a profit—eventually. As it was, I had to sell out for what I could get. And when I'd settled everything I was stony again, quite cleared out in fact. I think I shall go back up North where the competition isn't so fierce. It's really chronic down here, what with the Jews and everything. But before I see anyone I need a decent suit and a pair of shoes. It's no good going after a job looking like a beachcomber. I'd rather be on the land, but beggars can't be choosers and if I'm presentable enough, there's a new place opening down at
…”

Margaret did not read any farther. There was another full page asking her not to misjudge him and saying how he hated to seem like a sponger. But she had read all that before in his last letter and the one before and the one before that, too. In every letter, in fact. He never wrote to her unless he wanted something. And even though, somewhere towards the end, he always said that he loved her and that everything would turn out all right, and that he was living for the day when he could send her the money for the fare, it never came to anything. And what was worse she had entirely given up believing him. Given up years ago. She had even become reconciled to the fact that he was a waster—a no-good, a remittance man. But she still loved him, and that was all there was to it.

Not that she was going to send him anything. Not this time. She still had herself to think about. It wasn't the same being at the Hospital as it had been with Dame Eleanor. The money wasn't so much for a start. And she wasn't getting any younger. It was all right slaving away for twelve hours a day at thirty. But what about ten years farther on, or fifteen, or twenty? She'd be fifty by then. And it wouldn't be such a good idea to find herself with nothing in the Post Office Savings Bank at fifty. Not with her other responsibilities, that is. She put the letter back into its envelope and thrust it deep down into the handbag alongside the other letters, all in the same handwriting. Then she lay there, still with the light on, staring up at the ceiling. Right into the glare of the bare bulb this time.

Why was she in this small upper attic, anyway, instead of in the big comfortable bedroom at The Cedars? Because of Sweetie. Sweetie wasn't like the other little girls. Other little girls could take care of themselves. But Sweetie couldn't. She was always getting herself into trouble. There was some trouble at the present moment about a bee and a letter. If she went on like that she would be in bad trouble one day. Really bad trouble. That was why someone who cared for her had to stand by and see that everything went right.

But how long could that go on? Sweetie was nearly twelve already. She had been born … well, say about ten days or a fortnight before she had been delivered on the Archbishop Bodkin doorstep. And she was twelve now: in two years the Hospital would have finished with her. She would be out in service somewhere. On her own then. Completely and absolutely on her own at last. Margaret couldn't go trailing all over London after her. Of course, she would try to see her, if the child wanted it. And if she could find out from Miss Phrynne where Sweetie had been sent she could keep an eye on her without Sweetie knowing anything about it. But it wouldn't last. Sweetie would change her situation. And her half day mightn't be the same as the Hospital's. Or she might take a place outside London. Somewhere right away in the country too far for Margaret to get to. After all, Sweetie had her own life ahead of her.

And when Sweetie left, Margaret realised that her real reason for being at the Bodkin Hospital would have been taken away from her. She liked to think that she cared for all children in the way she cared for Sweetie. But it simply wasn't true. When Sweetie left, she was going to leave too. She was going to earn all she could to buy that steamer ticket. If her passage money didn't come from the other end, she was going to find it at this one. All on her own account, she was going to join the waster.

As much to rest her eyes as anything else, she thrust out her hand to put the light out again. And, as she did so, she found that the skylight pane of glass was shining, and that it was already morning.

Margaret need not, however, have bothered about the steamer ticket. At least, not yet, when if she'd had it all ready in her bag, she could not have used it. Because Sweetie suddenly showed how much she needed her.

In a sense, it was all Ginger's fault. He was missing. Been out all night—two nights, in fact. And, when Sweetie heard, she grew quite hysterical about it. It was this side of Sweetie's nature that alarmed Margaret: it revealed everything that she had feared for in the child. And it reminded her that no matter what happened, her place was beside Sweetie until she had grown out of that kind of thing.

In comparison with the fuss that Sweetie made, there had been little or no commotion about Ginger's departure. He had been on so many of these outings by now that routine had supplanted melodrama. He merely rolled his day clothes into a bundle, laid it carefully on the centre of the bed, pulled the sheet and blanket up round it and tucked in the pillow—not that Mr. Dawlish would have noticed anything amiss if Ginger had hung a placard “BACK IN HALF AN HOUR” on the end of his bedstead.

Apart from the counterfeit beneath the bedclothes, there was the little matter of the money. Ginger had drawn the whole of his savings for this expedition—eightpence, all in coppers. And not being accustomed to having so much loose cash about him he took extraordinary precautions. There was twopence in each trouser pocket and fourpence in a belt around his middle. What was more, the twopences were wrapped inside strips of old shirt because the holes in his trouser pockets were so large that the pennies by themselves would just have slipped through like quicksilver.

The good-byes were formal and deliberately casual.

“S'long, Ginger,” was all that Spud said.

And “S'long Spud. See yer inner mornin',” was what Ginger answered.

With that, he was gone: over the leads, down the drain-pipe, along the catwalk to the jumping-off place—with the jungles and gold-mines of London lying there waiting for him as soon as he chose to go among them.

It was June, and the night was fine and rather sultry. There was still a lot of daylight left hanging about in the heavens and there were more people in the streets than Ginger had expected. That was why he had to look so slippy. And once he got going he did not spare himself: Archbishop Bodkin Hospital to St. Mark's Avenue bus-stop in under two minutes.

After the run, it was a bit slow, a sort of silly anti-climax, waiting for the bus. There had been two buses in the other direction by the time Sid Harris swerved in from the Wimbledon direction. He was driving worse than ever nowadays, Sid was; not deliberately taking risks, but just swinging in and out of the other traffic as though there was no one but himself to think about. Nor, in a sense, was there. He was more self-absorbed and pre-occupied than ever nowadays. He was still proud of his bus—it was the new model T, 40 h.p., double back-wheels that he was now driving—and still waiting for the surprise legacy to come along.

He almost overlooked the boy standing at the bus stop, he was thinking so hard about his fortune. But he wasn't callous or despotic; not one of those wave-and-drive-on sort of drivers. Merely absent-minded. And as soon as he saw Ginger he slammed the brakes on hard and swung the bus into the kerbside. But not for long. He was off again before Ginger was properly on the step. But that wasn't callousness either; he just wanted to get back home as soon as he could to see if anything had come by the second post …

Ginger made his way on to the top deck and took the outside front seat. This was exciting, this was: he had never been on a bus before. And it got better. There in front of him was a river. A river—and, incredible fact, no one at the Hospital had ever so much as mentioned it. What was more, the river was behaving in the most enchanting way possible: it was supporting shipping.

The bus was actually on the bridge by now. And there below him was a barge, his first barge, a long black hull piled high with
bundles of something, and with a man standing on top of them. As Ginger looked, the barge slid silently between the piles of Putney Bridge. Naturally Ginger got up to see it out of the opposite window as it emerged. And in doing so he bumped into Mr. Edward Musk, the conductor, who had come up to collect the fares.

This was one of Mr. Musk's down days. Mrs. Musk was still lingering on—even though it was obvious that the end was due almost any day now. And what with the housework and reading the Bible to her and seeing to pussy, Mr. Musk was so tired he kept wishing that he were dead himself. That was why he was rather short with Ginger. He couldn't forgive him either for dragging him right upstairs when the bus was half empty inside, or for taking the very foremost seat. And when Ginger held out twopence and asked for St. Paul's Cathedral he thought that he was being fresh with him.

It was as a matter of fact a bad moment for Ginger, too. Because when Mr. Musk said that they didn't go anywhere near St. Paul's Cathedral, it left Ginger sullen and incredulous. Then, at the sight of the twopence held under his nose, Mr. Musk suddenly asked Ginger if he was under twelve.

For all Ginger knew there was a law against people of under twelve riding about in buses.

“I'm fifteen, wod'jer fink?” he replied.

Fifteen sounded better than thirteen; altogether more manly and independent. And that settled it.

“Sarth Kensington, that's where you get orf,” Mr. Musk told him, as he punched a twopenny ticket. “An' if you don't get orf when I say Sarth Kensington, I'll come up and put you orf.”

It was a nice ride and Ginger enjoyed every moment of it. He had become very fond of public houses, and the route seemed particularly rich in them. There was one on almost every corner. And from the top of the bus he could see right inside, with views of barrels and cash-registers and trays of glasses and shining beer-engines all spread out below him. Also, he had seen an unusually good cemetery on the way. But South Kensington itself was not very interesting. No better than Putney, in fact.

Standing afterwards at the corner of the Brompton Road he felt desperate. Desperate and lost. He paused to consider. Unless he did something definite, and did it soon, the expedition was going to be a wash-out. He was still in search of London, and the real trouble seemed to be that London was so big that he couldn't
find it. There was a policeman opposite whom he could have asked. But he was keeping clear of policemen. So he tried a paper-seller instead. The paper-seller was altogether better: he looked the sort of man who might be keeping clear of policemen himself.

And he was very nice and understanding. He knew all about St. Paul's Cathedral and Paddington Station and Buckingham Palace and the Zoo. Buckingham Palace was easiest, he said: a penny bus to Hyde Park Corner and you were practically on top of it. After that, he added, Ginger had better ask again.

Not that things were going too well for Ginger. It was another penny bus ride to Hyde Park Corner—and there was more than a third of his capital simply frittered away on travel! Nothing to show for it.

And Hyde Park Corner itself was rotten. The rottenest place he'd been to yet. It was all open spaces, simply flat fields with street lamps strung across them. He turned his back on it. And because it looked brighter that way he set off, mothlike, down Piccadilly towards the lights. The farther he went, the better it got. The houses closed in and it became a town again. But what a town! Lights in the windows, the smell of scent and cigar smoke in the air, the noise of voices all round him. Long gleaming cars threaded in and out of the scarlet rows of buses, and some of them had lights on inside, so that it was like looking into other people's drawing-rooms as they slid past.

He noticed one car, in particular. There was a man just getting into it. The man himself was peculiar enough. He was dressed like a sort of monster penguin, with a shiny white shirt front like polished enamel and little pointed shoes as bright as black diamonds. But it was at the lady who was with him that Ginger looked most. She seemed happy enough, not miserable and crying as Ginger would have expected. But there was nothing on her shoulders, absolutely nothing. Naked, in fact. At the sight of her, Ginger blushed. He could feel a fiery wave of hotness passing right through him. A sort of tingly shudder that left him a bit ashamed of himself because he hadn't expected it.

Then an entirely novel thought came over him. He felt as though he had grown up suddenly. Perhaps until this moment he had got things all wrong. Perhaps this was the way ladies, real ladies, always behaved. Perhaps they didn't mind if their men friends saw them undressed. Perhaps that was only what boys in places like Archbishop Bodkin's imagined. Perhaps they liked it. Perhaps … but what was the use of thinking about it? The car
with the penguin millionaire and the naked lady had already been caught up and swirled away in the rapids of the traffic.

And there were plenty of other sights just as remarkable. Couples with arms entwined were strolling along together in a kind of maudlin ecstasy, or lingering before the lighted shop-fronts. Ladies, real ones again, wearing short fur capes and heels that were like something out of a circus balancing act, were standing about in the doorways, smiling politely at everybody. Some of them even smiled at Ginger, they were so friendly; and Ginger smiled back, conscious again of that strange hot feeling inside him.