Children of the Archbishop (63 page)

“No. On second thoughts, no. That is to say …”

“Which
do
you mean, Dr. Trump?” Mr. Sparkes asked him, his neck held practically horizontally by now. “A fact must either surprise you or not surprise you. It cannot do both.”

“It … it seems rather a lot,” Dr. Trump replied lamely.

He was really sweating by now: the palms of his hands were so moist that they made little sucking sounds as he pressed them together.

“It may seem a lot to you, Dr. Trump,” Mr. Sparkes resumed, “but I assure you that it is what the book says. Have you any reason, Dr. Trump, to think that the book may be wrong?”

“None at all.”

“Thank you.”

There was a pause.

“And before we leave this boy”—here Mr. Sparkes referred carefully to his papers, as though he hadn't been listening properly and had forgotten his name already—“this boy, Ginger,” he resumed, “what were your feelings towards him? Did you dislike the boy?”

“No.”

The reply was crisp and definite. This time, Dr. Trump was confident that he had read Mr. Sparkes's mind. And he had no intention of being accused of harbouring petty animosities.

“But you felt him to be a bad influence?”

“I did.”

“And in your view he was a thief?”

“That is so.”

“And he once showed physical violence to you?”

“He did.”

“At least on two occasions he ran away and stayed out all night?”

“He did.”

“And he illicitly associated with this girl?”—again the quick glance at the papers—“this girl, Sweetie?”

“I agree.”

Mr. Sparkes's neck slowly withdrew itself. He appeared temporarily to be resting. At any moment now it seemed that he might be going to tuck his head out of sight somewhere underneath his wing, and go clean off to sleep in front of them. But instead of that he addressed Dr. Trump again.

“And even though you felt him to be a bad influence, and a thief, and physically violent, and a fugitive, and a forbidden associate with the other sex still under age, nevertheless you still did not dislike him?”

“That is difficult to answer.”

The neck had come out again by now. The whole extent of it had shot right forward like a snake.

“But you have already answered it, Dr. Trump. “You said ‘no.'”

“I meant personally.”

Mr. Sparkes nodded.

“I meant personally, too,” he replied.

There was perspiration on the back of Dr. Trump's hands as well as on the palms by now: small beads of it were visibly clinging to them.

“In himself, he is a good boy,” Dr. Trump explained desperately. “But bad … that is to say that underneath the badness there was something good. It was the goodness that I was trying to bring to the surface.”

“By caning him?”

“If necessary, by caning.”

“And do you feel satisfied with the result, Dr. Trump?”

“I do … I mean no, I don't. That is to say …”

It was five minutes to eleven by now. That meant that Dr.
Trump had already had forty minutes of Mr. Sparkes's questioning to contend with. And there was no point in disguising the fact, he was disappointed in himself: he had, in fact, been his own betrayer—shifty, evasive, contradictory, even on occasion unintentionally rude. Whereas Mr. Sparkes had been consistently polite and gentle throughout, rather like a bland, insistent schoolmaster. He had not wavered. And his memory was apparently bottomless. When he really got going he was like a turn in the music hall. He was able, a full half-hour afterwards, to repeat word for word exactly what Dr. Trump had said even after Dr. Trump himself had long since forgotten it.

It was the matter of Sweetie that they had got on to by now.

“… and so you decided to lock her up for the night in a room by herself?” Mr. Sparkes had just repeated after him.

“That is so.”

“It was a rather unusual punishment, was it not?”

“I wished the punishment to fit the crime,” Dr. Trump replied severely.

“And you felt confident that you could handle the situation?”

“I did.”

“And could you?”

Dr. Trump recovered some of his earlier spirit.

“I don't understand you, sir.”

“Then I will try to make myself clearer,” Mr. Sparkes volunteered. “Did you persist in this punishment, this imprisonment, or did you end it summarily?”

“I ended it.”

“Why?”

“I felt that it had gone on long enough.”

“Long enough for what?”

“For … for the child's good.”

“You mean that longer might have done her harm.”

“Possibly.”

“These timings must be very difficult to calculate, are they not?”

“Very.”

“And you were not influenced by the views of other people who may not have agreed with your treatment.”

“No.”

“But there were those people, weren't there?”

“There were.”

“How many?”

“Two or three.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“One of the ward maids.” Dr. Trump's lips tightened as he remembered the incident.

“You mean this woman”—again the quick glance at his notes—“this woman, Margaret.”

Dr. Trump started. So that was known, was it? Evidently people had been talking.

“I do,” he replied briefly.

“And what did she say, pray?”

“She threatened to interfere with the course of justice,” Dr. Trump replied slowly.

Mr. Sparkes stroked the side of his nose as though whetting it.

“Justice, Dr. Trump?” he asked. “Do you possibly mean discipline?”

“I do. I mean orders. My orders.”

“Thank you, Dr. Trump …”

And so it had gone on. Right on to twelve forty-five, in fact. In the result, Dr. Trump was so exhausted when he came away that he accepted the glass of sherry that his mother-in-law offered him.

Mr. Sparkes, however, did not seem to be susceptible to either exhaustion or hunger. He went straight on with other witnesses until nearly one-thirty. And then after a bun—left, merely with the mark of nibblings round the edges—and a cup of coffee only half drunk, he resumed at two o'clock sharp.

Annie was the first witness and she had been looking forward to this opportunity. She was determined to give all she had.

“… crool, that's what it was, sir. Crool.”

“Did you see the child?” Mr. Sparkes inquired. “Was she crying?”

“She was too frightened, sir. Her little face was set all rigid like a board.”

“Where were you when you saw her?”

“I was in the kitchen, sir.”

“Then you didn't see her?”

“No, sir. But I heard.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard the screams.”

“Loud screams?”

“Terrible, sir.”

“You're quite sure you heard them?”

“Almost sure, sir.”

Mr. Sparkes stroked his long nose.

“And has Dr. Trump ever been cruel to you personally?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“In what way?”

Annie blushed. This was her moment. Her flat pink face assumed its happiest expression, and she dropped her eyes.

“I'd rather not say, sir …”

Mr. Prevarius's evidence also verged upon the unsatisfactory.

“… as you understand, my dear sir,” he was busy explaining, “cruelty, hardness in any form, oppression—these … these are anathema to me.”

As he said it, he screwed his face up as though even the memory were too painful for him.

Mr. Sparkes's neck lengthened.

“And what did you do, pray?” he asked. “Did you protest to Dr. Trump? Or ask to see Dame Eleanor? Or inform the police, possibly? What action precisely was it that you took?”

Mr. Prevarius shook his head.

“Alas,” he said. “I was too busy. Too much occupied by my professional duties. But I … I thought about it deeply …”

“Thank you, Mr. Prevarius.”

The replies of Miss Britt and Nurse Stedge were in their separate ways both highly revealing. But they revealed more of Miss Britt and Nurse Stedge than of Dr. Trump.

When asked by Mr. Sparkes whether she felt Sweetie's punishment to be unduly harsh, Miss Britt did not hesitate.

“Matters of that kind are the prerogative of the Warden,” she answered stiffly. “They are not for me to question—unless, of course, the health of the child is threatened. I satisfied myself that the room was clean and dry and that the ventilation was adequate, and then I withdrew …”

Nurse Stedge, however, was by no means so confident that she had done the right thing.

“I didn't like it, sir,” she said. “Not a bit, I didn't. It seemed so … gruesome somehow. I ought to have spoken up, I did really. But I couldn't make myself. That's all there is to it. I did ought to have done something, but I didn't.”

It was, however, Margaret's evidence that was the most remarkable. Mr. Sparkes had questioned her for quite a long time, and, with his neck withdrawn to the full somewhere right inside his collar, had then said in that quiet, easy voice of his: “Is there anything else that you would like to tell me?”

Margaret leaned forward.

“Only this, sir,” she said. “I don't want you to think the Warden's a bad man because he isn't. He means well: I'm sure of that, sir. And he works very hard for the Hospital. And he doesn't spare himself, sir, not for a moment. It's … it's just that he doesn't understand children. That's all it is.”

Mr. Vivvyan Sparkes had gone away again in another taxi, and Dr. Trump and Mrs. Warple were sitting on either side of the fireplace. It was still quite early; not yet eight o'clock in fact. But dinner—merely pecked at by Dr. Trump, and pushed away scarcely tasted—was already over. Mrs. Warple was just finishing her first after-dinner cigarette.

“I should,” she said. “It's better than just sitting here moping.”

“But I've told you: I never go to such places. I have never entered one in my life.”

“Do you good for once,” Mrs. Warple replied. “Have a good laugh or a cry. It's the same either way—makes you forget your own troubles.”

“No, really, thank you.”

Mrs. Warple came over to him.

“Well, do it for my sake,” she asked. “Take me.”

She was now using that husky, wheedling sort of voice that showed that she was really trying. And Dr. Trump began to feel alarmed: he was convinced that it was to just such throatiness that the late Bishop, his father-in-law, had once succumbed.

But why shouldn't he go to the pictures? he suddenly asked himself. After his encounter with Mr. Vivvyan Sparkes he was completely drained; washed out; good for nothing else. And there was nothing actually wrong in going to the pictures: Canon Larkin, he remembered, had once confided that he had been himself on several occasions.

“Oh, very well then,” he said at last. “Just this once. But not in Putney. Nowhere that I am known. Let us try the City.”

The Matron of the Arkleydale and District Institution to which Sweetie and Ginger had been taken was frankly puzzled by her two new inmates. She was used to runaways and juvenile outcasts in general, and she had expected something far worse. By the end of the first week she was on their side completely, and she went round telling everyone that she knew quite enough about children to be able to tell that they weren't the sort who would have run away from anywhere without good reason. She even added that she would like to have that Dr. Trump to herself for a few minutes.

About Ginger she had not been quite sure at first. He looked as though he might be rebellious. But as soon as he was allowed out of the Infirmary, she put him on to odd jobs in the garden. And, when he found that there was a motor-mower for the large front lawn, he settled down immediately. Ginger and the motor-mower came together like Platonic souls. By the time he left, the approach to the Arkleydale Institution was like a piece of worn-down billiard baize.

As for Sweetie, the Matron lost her heart to her straight away. She thought she was lovely—and lovely in a more delicate, fragile way than the big boned northern girls to whom she was accustomed. Admittedly it was probably Sweetie's big, dark eyes that won her—Sweetie's eyes usually had that sort of effect on people when they met her for the first time. But there was also the fact that the Matron felt sorry for her. The child was so obviously miserable. And the wound in her foot turned out to be worse than the doctor had expected. More than a fortnight after she had been delivered at the Arkleydale and District, she was still going round in a wheelchair with her bandaged leg stuck out in front of her on an ankle-board.

That was why the Matron was so glad that Margaret was still up there in Arkleydale with them. She had taken a room somewhere in the village and practically had the run of the institution by now.
The Matron did not even quite know how Sweetie could have got along without her.

The effect on Sweetie of Margaret's arrival at the Institution had certainly been remarkable. When Sweetie had first been brought there in a police ambulance she had been more dead than alive; and, what was more, she had persisted in saying that she actually
wanted
to die. There was even a lot of quite unaccountable nonsense about having
tried
to die.

It was the appearance of Margaret that changed all that. As soon as Sweetie saw her she held out her arms like a seven-year-old, and then burst into tears. Like all sensible women, the Matron was a great believer in tears. She knew that Sweetie would be all the better for them. What she did not know was how much better. Before the week was out Sweetie had recovered sufficiently to be able to persuade the Matron to allow her to see Ginger.