Children of the Archbishop (2 page)

Is there tragedy here, too? Has Papa got himself caught up in the machinery at the works? Or has Mummy died, and does
the little girl keep on remembering her? Or have they just been taking poor old Rover to be put down by the vet? No, as a matter of fact, it is none of these. The old lady and her grand-daughter have just been to a performance at the Finsbury Empire where there was a performing seal that the little girl loved very much and knows she won't see again. It's the seal that she keeps remembering, not her mother. And once they're home again Granny's brief authority will be over, and she'll just be a useless, lonely old woman again. That's what's on Granny's mind, and that's what she's so quiet about.

That about accounts for everyone inside the bus. And there's no one outside because it's raining so hard. Ever since lunch-time it's been coming down by the bucketful, and Sid Harris on his little seat in front is soaked right up to the elbows. He's got one of his mad theories, has Sid, that when it's wet it's always wetter up Putney way. And that certainly seems reasonable enough tonight because they're over Putney Bridge already and mounting slowly towards the Common. Meanwhile the rain is coming down like a bath-waste. In fact, Sid is just blindly cutting his way through water, darkness and reflections. Plunging through mirages. It's nearly nine o'clock already. But, before he can call it a day, he's got to take the bus back all the way to Hornsey to garage it. And then, just when he thinks that he's got to a clear stretch where he can let her rip, the little bell above his head tings suddenly. He recognises it for Edward Musk's delicate professional touch and prepares to draw the bus up neatly and correctly alongside the next Request Stop.

It's a young woman with a baby in her arms who is getting out. We haven't seen anything of her simply because she was sitting in the back seat and, from the way she was bending forward over the infant, her face was in shadow all the time. Not that there's anything in the least unusual about her. Just any young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three in a raincoat and carrying a baby. She pauses for a moment and arranges the folds of the shawl carefully so as to protect the baby's face and turns up her own coat-collar before she reaches the platform. Then, noticing the raindrops that are falling on the baby's forehead, she opens the lapels of her coat almost as though she were going to feed the child and clasps it close up against her bosom. The child whimpers faintly as she does so. And Sid Harris applies the handbrake.

The young woman gets down carefully and is grateful when Edward Musk helps her off the step. But even though she is getting
wetter every moment she does not move off immediately. She stands there on the kerb in a dazed, stupid kind of way looking after the dull red lozenge that is the retreating rear lamp of the No. 14.

Then abruptly, as though remembering some forgotten purpose, she crosses the road, splashing through the puddles without even seeming to notice them. And with head averted from the driving rain, she begins to mount the steep slope of St. Mark's Avenue.

Well, that's that. The bus with all its load of human treasure has gone on. And the young woman whom we scarcely noticed is all that is left of it. But she's probably better than nothing: so perhaps we'd better follow. There'll certainly be no one else about on a night like this.

It's a quiet, neglected sort of thoroughfare up which she is going. There is a high stone wall on one side, and the hedges and front drives of substantial family mansions on the other. The avenue itself is composed of lime trees that climb up the hill one above the other and obscure the sky-line. Not that there's any sky this evening. The avenue is simply a sheer black chasm with the gas-lamps dotted faintly along it, more like clues to steer by than street-lighting. Because the rain is rushing down the hill so fast there are tracks of watery light leading up to each one of the lampposts. And it is outlined against one of these that we see the young woman, still pressing on her way, her body bent forward as she climbs.

Then, where the outline of the high stone wall is broken by the roof of a gate-house, the woman stops suddenly and glances behind her. Even though it's too dark to see her face, the gesture is revealing. It is furtive, anxious—almost as though she is apprehensive of being followed. But there is no one else in sight either way, and apparently she is reassured. For, without further hesitation, she opens up her coat and holding the baby in her arms long enough to kiss it on the forehead she places it gently and tenderly on the porchway of the gate-house. She pauses for a moment to make sure that the small bundle is secure there; that the rain can't reach it; that its shawl is keeping the chill of the stone away from it; that it can't roll over and smother itself. Then she reaches up for the heavy ornamental bell-pull and jerks it violently.

Somewhere inside the gate-house a bell starts to jangle madly. And, as though frightened by the din that she has made, the young
woman starts to run. Up the hill she goes, her heels showing under her bedraggled skirt. On up the hill and clean out of sight. Clean out of sight and not a chance of catching up with her. She's lost. Disappeared from view. Vanished. At this moment she's simply number ninety-nine in London's daily hundred mysteries.

So you see, it didn't do us much good following her. We're left behind all alone in the wet and darkness of St. Mark's Avenue with nothing except the black doorway and the empty street.

But not quite alone. There's the thin whimper of a child coming from that doorway.

And a moment later there is the creak of a bolt being withdrawn, and a shaft of pale, daffodil-coloured light shows up the polished brass plate of the Archbishop Bodkin Orphan Hospital, and reveals the white woollen bundle on the doorstep.

The gate-house bell hung immediately above Sergeant Chiswick's chair in the porter's room. It was a small room, and an uncommonly large bell. Even when the wrought-iron handle outside was pulled ever so gently the bell inside blazed forth like a tocsin. It had a high, hysterical note, that bell. And, because it was suspended very delicately on its pivot, it always continued to ring even after the front door had been opened.

To-night, however, it was as if some new kind of musical bomb had exploded just over Sergeant Chiswick's head. At one moment, there he was, sitting quietly stirring a thick spoonful of condensed milk into his cocoa and, at the next, the bell had pealed forth and he had spilt half the contents of the cup—all the rich, frothy part—on to his knees as he got up. Then, mopping at his trousers to prevent himself from being scalded, he glanced apprehensively above him and saw that the bell was swinging through its full arc of a hundred and eighty degrees. He had seen it swing like that before and knew that it meant trouble. Sliding his feet hurriedly into his carpet-slippers he started slopping off down the stone passageway.

He saw the bundle immediately, but he knew better than waste his time on it. Sergeant Chiswick was not a man to be fooled by runaways. If strange women on dark nights were going to dump unwanted babies on his doorstep he was ready to do his best to get even with them, catch them, hand them over to the law. Reckless of the weather, he went right into the middle of St. Mark's Avenue and shouted, “Hi, there! Hi!” as loudly as he could utter. And, having shouted it once, he shouted it again.

But it was no use. After the brightness of the porter's room, the night outside was as black as a cellar. And, though he thought he saw the figure of a woman—a figure which in the course of time became transformed in Sergeant Chiswick's memory into that of someone wearing a large picture hat and an expression of almost unearthly tragedy—he was never really sure. All that he knew
for certain was that his shirt and waistcoat were already soaked through, and that in the porchway behind him there was a baby crying.

It tickled up Sergeant Chiswick's lumbago, bending over to lift the baby. But by going right down on one knee he was able to gather it up all right. And pulling the door shut behind him with his foot he shuffled back along the stone passage to the Lodge. Because his arms were entirely filled by the bundle he opened his own door with his shoulder and sidled carefully into the living-room. The bell on the wall was still swinging—but the baby was crying so shrilly that Sergeant Chiswick hardly noticed the bell. Besides, he was busy undoing the shawl that was damp from the rain that had driven on it.

When he had unrolled the outer layer of the cocoon, he straightened himself and placed the baby in his own arm-chair. Then he stood back and inspected it. He was a good judge of babies and he reckoned this particular one to be somewhere round a fortnight or about three weeks—under a month certainly—and as well-nourished as a baby of that age should be. It was clean, healthy—not like some he'd seen—and despite the fact that its face was as wrinkled as a monkey's and flushed crimson by its crying—probably not bad-looking. It had more hair than most babies. Dark, shining hair. Sergeant Chiswick began to stroke it with his forefinger. No more sentimental than most regimental sergeant-majors, Sergeant Chiswick nevertheless suddenly felt strangely compassionate towards this particular baby. And more than compassionate: he felt positively paternal.

A moment later, he felt flattered as well. For, either because of his gentle, regular stroking of its skull, or because of the heat of the tiny room—Sergeant Chiswick lived for preference in an atmosphere that would have parched and withered up a cactus—or because of the pleasant tinkling that was all that now remained of the original bell-peal, the baby abruptly stopped crying. It lay there on its back in Sergeant Chiswick's own arm-chair, its face still flushed and puffy from its recent paroxysms, its nether lip quivering, its clenched fist slowly unfolding. Then opening its dark, unfocusing eyes very wide it stared straight up at its rescuer.

“Poor little chap,” Sergeant Chiswick said feelingly. “You poor little unwanted old thing.”

While he was addressing it, Sergeant Chiswick had temporarily forgotten his stroking. In consequence, the baby immediately started to crease up its face again. Wide white circles appeared
around its eyes. Its mouth began to distend and the chest swelled up under the folds of the inner woollen shawl. But Sergeant Chiswick was too quick for it. Before the first yell could reach the surface, he had run his finger rapidly round the lid of the condensed milk tin and thrust a sweet, sticky fingernail between the baby's lips. Then hastily re-wrapping the shawl and tucking the fringe in carefully, he shored up the bundle with a couple of cushions on either side of it, and went off in search of Mrs. Gurnett.

Mrs. Gurnett's room was on the far side of the courtyard, past the boys' lavatories and the statue of Archbishop Bodkin. It was the Cranmer block where Mrs. Gurnett was quartered. And to get there Sergeant Chiswick had to make a hundred-yard dash from this, the Latymer side.

The Putney rain was still coming down just the way Sid Harris always said it did. The expanse of shelterless asphalt in front of him became a pool, a lake, a reservoir. But Sergeant Chiswick could not afford to stop now. Taking off his jacket and putting it over his head like a poke-bonnet he made a dash for it.

And there was no relief even when he had reached the high Gothic doorway on the other side. The green front door marked MATRON was already shut fast for the night, and there was nothing for it but for him to stand there in the wet, tugging at the bell-pull. This bell-pull was a miniature, domestic version of the bell-pull that hung outside the gate-house. And as Sergeant Chiswick pulled, there reached his ears from somewhere inside the Cranmer nunneries a faint treble jingling like distant sheep-bells. It didn't sound half loud enough to satisfy him, and Sergeant Chiswick pulled again, harder this time.

A moment later a window on the second floor was raised violently and a female head appeared. It was too dark to see very plainly and, in any case, the rain was getting in his eyes. All that he could make out was a blur against the white window curtain. But the voice was Mrs. Gurnett's all right.

“Well?” it asked.

Sergeant Chiswick tilted back his head and screwed up his features as the rain beat down into his face.

“There's beener narrival,” he said.

A gust of wind sweeping across the courtyard tore the words away from his lips and swept them into the far corner of the courtyard.

“What's that you say?”

“A baby. Somebody's just left one.”

“Where?”

“On the doorstep.”

There was a pause.

“Stay where you are. I'm coming down.”

The head withdrew itself and the window was slammed down again. Then, a second later, a light appeared. Mrs. Gurnett was dressing.

It was her mouth that was Mrs. Gurnett's most remarkable feature. Thin and bloodless, it curved downwards like the new moon inverted. There was disgust in that mouth. Bitter, unconcealed disgust. Disgust at the very pattern of life as human beings lived it—the unbridled desires of men, the wantonness of women and young girls, the whole displeasing unnecessariness of sex. And all because of a nuptial flight of her own that long ago had been so full of Spring, so brief, so disastrous.

It was thirty-two years ago when it had all happened. But she remembered every minute, every incident, every single detail of the shame as clearly as though even now the waxed tip of Mr. Gurnett's ginger moustache was still tickling her cheek-bone through the open meshwork of her veil. And she remembered other things as well—the tainted metal of the ring, the breathless tobaccoladen kisses, the hotel at Ramsgate with its private bathroom, that horrible slot machine on the pier on which Mr. Gurnett spent no less than sevenpence on the second day of the honeymoon, going back to it again and again until his bride had felt like jumping fully-clothed into the sea from sheer humiliation. And then the awful third day—the arrest, the charge of bigamy, the hysterics and the last glimpse of Mr. Gurnett with his wonderful white teeth gleaming and tears in his deep, bedroom eyes as he was whisked away to the Police Station in a growler.