Children of the Archbishop Read online

  Children of the Archbishop

  by

  Norman Collins

  To

  Audrey and Patrick

  Contents

  Introduction in a London Bus

  BOOK ONE: The Bundle on the Doorstep

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  BOOK TWO: Boy Meets Girl

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  BOOK THREE: The Night of the Fire

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  BOOK FOUR: On Forgiving a Sleeping Child

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  BOOK FIVE: The Runaways

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Chapter LVII

  Chapter LVIII

  Chapter LIX

  Chapter LX

  Chapter LXI

  Chapter LXII

  Chapter LXIII

  Chapter LXIV

  Chapter LXV

  Chapter LXVI

  BOOK SIX: The Portrait and the Frame

  Chapter LXVII

  Chapter LXVIII

  Chapter LXIX

  Chapter LXX

  Chapter LXXI

  Chapter LXXII

  Chapter LXXIII

  Chapter LXXIV

  Chapter LXXV

  Chapter LXXVI

  POSTSCRIPT: The Bus Goes Out of Sight

  A Note on the Author

  And he who gives a child a home

  Builds palaces in Kingdom come.

  And she who gives a baby birth

  Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth.

  JOHN MASEFIELD

  The Everlasting Mercy

  Introduction in a London Bus

  There are too many of them. Too many. Too various. And, in their separate and divergent ways, all too supremely important.

  Take just one bus-load, for example. An ordinary No. 14, type S, plying somewhere between Hornsey and Roehampton. It isn’t even full, this particular bus. But, for all that, it’s crowded. Packed solid. Overflowing.

  Start anywhere you like. Right up in front, for instance, with the driver. His name’s Sid Harris. He’s been driving buses for nearly ten years. Ever since 1910, in fact. Even during the war—the Great War, that is—he was still hard at it. And, when he came out, he was a full Corporal in Army Transport. He still talks a lot about those days. It was the crown of his life that fine September morning in 1914 sitting behind a slung tarpaulin wind-screen—they were the old B–type buses in those days—driving forty-eight of Sir John French’s men—thirty-two inside, twelve standing—to meet General Hindenburg’s army just south of Arras. Naturally it was the peak, you will say. It was history in the making, raw stuff of empires, and all that. But that wasn’t the way Sid saw it. It was the behaviour of his bus that impressed him—the way the engine boiled over but the old thing still chugged along for another thirty miles or so before seizing up. He’s mad about buses, is Sid.

  And not only about buses, either. He’s got hold of the extraordinary notion that someone is going to die and leave him a fortune. It’s a good enough idea in its way, only somehow it hasn’t yet got round to the other person. The dim benefactor apparently knows nothing of it. Not that this makes Sid doubt the truth of it. Only last night as he was getting into bed he woke his wife up specially to mention it. “Not long now, Vi,” he told her in the kind of voice that he always used when he was talking about his legacy. “You wait and see. Just you wait. May be there in the morning.”

  In short, poor old Sid’s practically barmy about legacies by now. Barmy but, in a way, happy too. Happy from sheer, unrealised expectation.

  Far happier than his conductor, Edward Musk. And that’s funny when you come to think of it because Edward Musk actually married money. When he took on Andrew McInerney’s widow she was worth every penny of four hundred pounds. And Edward Musk got all of it. But he also got Mrs. Mclnerney. In consequence, when he isn’t actually taking fares, he spends his time washing up; carrying trays; cooking little things in saucepans; opening the window; putting the cat out; letting it in again; turning the mattress; going round to the Public Library; buying little bunches of flowers; and generally trying to be as kind, loving, patient and thoughtful as one should be with an invalid. For Mrs. Musk is nowadays completely bedridden. It is something internal, something incurable. What’s more, she’s gone all religious. And Edward Musk, with the four hundred still untouched in the bank, and nothing to show for it except tracts and missionary magazines and holy pictures, is often so fed up that he wishes that he could do something to speed up Nature.

  Not that he ever will. He’s far too quiet and timid and spiritless for that kind of thing, is Edward Musk. It’s simply that he’d like to. And what makes it all so queer when you come to think of it is that, if only he had known, he might have been able to pick up a hint or two just now from a twopenny-fare. But how was he to guess that the twopenny, Warren Street to Brompton Road, was a wife-poisoner? That even now the dark stranger, with all the deep cunning of the murderer, is on his way to buy another bottle of Emmott’s Arsenical Insect Spray from a chemist in order to dispose of Number Two?

  The other passengers aren’t all so sensational as that one. Poisoners are special. But in their own ways the others are interesting, too.

  There’s the little faded, frightened-looking spinster in the second seat. She’s a music mistress and she’s just been giving a private lesson to the practically tone-deaf daughter of a family grocer in Clerkenwell. Half a crown for the hour is what she got for it. And how is she going to spend her money? Sheet music? Oratorios? A new case for her second-hand, two-guinea violin? Not a bit of it. She’s saving up for a steamship ticket to Australia. Her brother’s wife died just over a year ago. And ever since then the little music mistress has seen herself at his side, a big, motherly creature in a vast new world; a heaven-sent, full-bosomed auntie bringing up her four little nephews and three little nieces. She has only got £7 10S. so far towards the ticket, so she hasn’t told her brother anything about it yet. But she’s in earnest all right. And because she’s cut her personal expenses down to the bare minimum and is living on about twopence-farthing a week, the nervous flicker of the eye-lids which was so bad when she was a child has come back again. At times she can’t even see enough to read the headlines, let alone her music. And she isn’t sleeping so well because of the nervous strain and excite
ment. That’s why she’s so jumpy that she can’t bear to have people touch her. She nearly screamed out just now when she felt Edward Musk thrusting the change into her hand.

  There’s nothing like that about the man opposite. He’s in a state of positively splendid equilibrium. He wears his ticket stuck into his hat-band and has thick, smooth lips, like slices of orange-peel. Through them, he whistles snatches of recent song-hits. His suit is brown with a broad white stripe in it, and his boots have cloth uppers. In his tie is a five-carat diamond. Or white sapphire. Or zircon. Or glass. Whatever it is, it’s five-carat and defiant. When he fingers it—which he does constantly—it looks strange somehow, because his fingernails are so short and broken. But that comes from carrying his bag. He’s a commercial traveller, and because he’s in the fancy-goods line—pocket-mirrors and manicure sets and that kind of thing—the contents are full of points and edges. He’s fifty-two. His name is Solly Green. He’s got forty-five pounds in fivers strapped round his waist. There are two boa-constrictors tattooed across his middle. His wife hasn’t seen him for seven years, and she hopes that she never sees him again.

  He’s living at the moment with a girl called Daisy. She’s nearly twelve years his junior and calls him Daddy—only of course there aren’t any children. Not by her at least. And that’s a pity. Because perhaps a pair of little pattering feet would help to keep them together. But only perhaps. There were three pairs of little patterers all at once, remember, in his real home. And that didn’t help. Quite the contrary, in fact. But it would be hard to find a formula for keeping Solly Green chained permanently to any woman. And poor Daisy, a ghost-designate already, is on her way out to join all the other ghosts in Solly’s past, poor Olive, poor Pearl, poor Elsie, poor Mabel, poor Doris and poor all the rest of them. In the meantime, Solly is still whistling. And he can afford to. He is now representing a powder puff with a small, pink china doll in the centre for a handle. The doll is nude, and its tiny hands cover up its embarrassed eyes most appealingly. It’s all the rage with the trade, that powder-puff—though only with a certain class of customer, of course.

  There’s a very different kind of man beside him. A nice, neat young man with flat, fair hair and a closely trimmed moustache and a weak, receding chin. He’s reading a book entitled Heroes of Peace. But he’s really thinking about his fiancée, Miss Mills. They’re going to be married next month and they’ve found a house in Stroud Green, within a stone’s throw of the water-works. Miss Mills is a pale, pretty little thing of twenty-two, and she is looking forward ever so. Thank goodness that she doesn’t know what is coming to her. Doesn’t know that, by Christmas, Harold—it’s still less than six months since she first called him by his name—will be dead and in his coffin with the wreaths and crosses piled whitely on top. It’s only a hundred and sixteen days to Christmas. And on December 21st, this brand-new husband of hers is due to go under a District train at the Mansion House in an unaccountable fainting fit following on a nasty bout of influenza. By then—and this is the sad part—the pale, pretty thing his wife will be paler than ever but not half so pretty. She’ll be feeling sick most of the time because there’s a baby on the way. But in the meantime Harold, of course, knows nothing of all the misery he is bringing to Miss Mills. Contented and engrossed, he holds out his penny to Edward Musk. He is reading about Madame Curie and thinking about Miss Mills.

  On the seat behind him is an elderly woman in black, obviously a grandmother. She is holding the hand of a solemn, preoccupied little girl. The solemn little girl sits bolt upright, her eyes fixed hard on space, her small mouth drawn into a thin, firm line. And there is something of the same fixity, the same preoccupation in the face of the grandmother. They sit there, the old woman and the little girl, holding hands and not speaking. They’ve been like this for the last five minutes and it is obviously some important, private silence that they’re sharing. Then the little girl suddenly wrinkles up her nose and, as she does so, a tear runs down her cheek. Because the tear tickles, she puts out her tongue to intercept it. It is the tip of the pink tongue that the elderly woman notices. And when she sees what is happening she squeezes the child’s hand harder.

  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.

  BOOK ONE

  The Bundle on the Doorstep

  Chapter I

  I

  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.