SPARKEY sat on his folded newspaper and looked down the Street.
It was almost time to go home; his mother was selling the last batch of her evening papers. Most people were home from work, only a few got off each bus now and hardly anyone got on; there was a quiet, a relaxation in the air; far overhead the evening smoke went up from the chimneys, some of the windows were lit. The bigger children, slipping in and out of the shadows, were still playing, but the little ones had gone to bed. The very big boys and girls were parading up and down the High, and a couple or so had already come down the Street, where they disappeared in a doorway—to kiss, thought Sparkey accurately. A few women stood talking late on their doorsteps—there was time to talk now—but most of them were indoors. Istanbul, full of herrings’ heads up to his throat, sat purring on the portico wall.
Sparkey’s mother came and wrapped a paper round Sparkey’s bony little knees. The October wind was chilly and in it was a tang of wood smoke; Sparkey knew where that came from; Lucas, reinstated, had been burning leaves in the Square Gardens.
“An old rating, a naval man, give him another chance,” said the admiral. Mr. Donaldson had nodded agreement. Angela, surprisingly, had allowed herself to be guided; she was oddly quiet and amenable; a little later she had resigned from the Garden Committee.
The wood smoke made Sparkey think of Guy Fawkes Day. Tip had promised that Sparkey could help with the gang’s Guy. It was Tip’s last Guy. In January he was going to the Arethusa.
Suddenly Sparkey sat up on his step. A green car, the green car, had turned into Catford Street. It drove slowly down the length of the Street as if it were looking for something, then stopped at the river end, where Vincent’s used to be. Sparkey’s patrolling was accepted now, even by his mother. “After all, I’m nearly big enough to be in the gang,” he said hopefully. “I’m four months nearer six,” and he unwrapped the newspaper swiftly from his legs and ran down the Street.
“Where are you going?” called his mother.
“Hist!” said Sparkey over his shoulder.
Charles—Sparkey had heard Lovejoy call the gentleman Charles—was out of the car, standing and looking; after a moment Liz—Sparkey remembered her name too; unlike Lovejoy he thought it pretty—got out as well. They were looking at the restaurant. What’s the good of that? thought Sparkey. It’s shut.
He knew how shut it was. Like all the other boys, he had tried to get in, but the door was locked and the windows were covered with bolted-on grids; through their mesh the rounded glass could be seen covered in grime and cobwebs and dust; the place where the bay trees had stood was full of litter and rubbish swept into the doorway by the wind, and the paper flapped eerily; the polish had gone off the door and the brass-work was black. Even the board where VINCENT’S still showed was grimed and dim. “The minute you give up cleaning a place,” any woman in Catford Street could have said, “the minute you give up, it’s done for and black.”
After a moment Charles and Liz got back into the car, which turned and drove up to the church. Sparkey ran back to the steps and was on the pavement when Charles opened the car door and got out. “But it’s gone,” said Liz, looking where the church had been.
Charles laughed. “Didn’t you expect it to be gone?”
Hut, steps, walls, bell, aeroplane notice had been swept away, and in their place was a big empty pit; where the rubble and marble had been was space. The steps in the Street sounded hollow in this emptiness, and the wind that Sparkey’s mother had been frightened of made a howling noise as it caught the open walls. Sparkey came closer. “There were bodies here,” he whispered. “They found them when they cleared away the church. They dug them up.”
“Cut along,” said Charles sharply to Sparkey.
“They put them all in a hole and sealed them up,” said Sparkey, ignoring Charles.
“Go away, you little ghoul,” said Charles.
He laughed, but Sparkey thought he, Sparkey, had frightened Liz.
“It’s life stamped out,” she said, looking round the empty pit. “Our restaurant, the funny church, and I wanted to see my little saint.” She sounded almost as if she were crying.
“You’re hungry,” said Charles. “Come along.” Lovejoy would have been surprised to know that grown-up people were sometimes told to come along. “I’ve seen all I need to see,” said Charles. “You’ll feel better when you have had some dinner, even if it’s not our little man’s.”
“I don’t want any dinner,” said Liz, as Sparkey often said. Then, “Look,” said Charles.
He turned her to the old back wall; on a bit of brick was a tiny spurt of copper-pink and green. It was so small that it was easy to overlook it but it was there, on its piece of brick, a plant in a strange round pot. “It’s—is it?” said Liz. “But—how can it be?” she cried. Charles went across and brought it to her, trying to dust the wreath pot with his handkerchief. “You’ll dirty your gloves,” he told Liz, but she took it from him.
“What was it she called it?” she asked Charles.
“Jiminy Cricket,” said Sparkey obligingly.
“That was it, Jiminy Cricket,” said Charles. He looked at Sparkey. “It seems to be a famous rose.”
“But how can it be Jiminy Cricket?” asked Liz.
“It must be,” said Charles. “It isn’t likely there would be another rose like that in Catford Street.”
“It’s blooming,” said Liz. “Someone must have watered it.” The tiny leaves were dusty but they were green, and on the little standard tree were two roses and a bud, a deep pink bud.
The watchman came out of his hut. “Do you have to have a watchman on a ruin?” asked Liz.
“It isn’t a ruin,” said Charles. “We’re building.”
The watchman looked at Jiminy Cricket. “A boy comes in and waters it,” he said. “He must have put it up there, on the wall.”
“A boy? Not a little girl?” asked Liz.
“I think it was a boy,” said the watchman. “Of course, it may have been a girl. There are hundreds of girls. I spend my life chasing kids out of here.” And he glowered at Sparkey.
“Hundreds of little girls,” said Liz. “Little churches, little restaurants. What does it matter what happens to one?”
“Don’t be impertinent,” said Charles and he took her arm and swayed her as if he were gently shaking her. “Look at Jiminy Cricket and what he has come through. Perhaps Vincent’s the new head waiter at the Savoy; perhaps he has won a football pool and opened a better restaurant somewhere else. As for the little girl,” said Charles, “no one, nobody, has the faintest idea what that little girl will do.”
•
Olivia had died in August. It was very inconvenient, almost another of her social lapses; everyone was away, the Miss Chesneys themselves should have been in Scotland, and Noel had to interrupt his holiday. “Though why he should interrupt it to see Olivia dead when he would never have dreamed of it to see her living,” Angela had begun, then, shocked at herself, said, “Hush.” Once or twice in those days she had found she was saying “Hush” to herself, as she used to say it to Olivia, but then, most oddly, she seemed to be thinking some of Olivia’s thoughts. She even found herself leaving the office and coming up by herself to the schoolroom. Olivia had insisted on moving there when she was ill so that she could hear the noise of the Street. “Such an odd thing to want to hear,” said Noel. “And very inconsiderate,” said Angela. “It made a great deal of work for Ellen.”
“I didn’t mind,” said Ellen. “She died so happy,” but Olivia’s face when she died had not looked happy as much as satisfied. “What was she so satisfied about?” asked Angela. Angela had forgotten the sparrows.
On the afternoon of the funeral Mr. Anstruther, the Chesneys’ young lawyer, had come to read the will.
“It isn’t much more than a month ago,” he said, “that Miss Chesney came to see me.”
“Mr. Anstruther,” Olivia had said, “you are young, but I’m sure you have some sense. Please will you tell me? Do you think I’m in my right mind?”
“My dear Miss Chesney!”
“I am asking you,” said Olivia, “because presently Angela will tell you I’m not. You may have trouble so I should like you to telephone my doctor, Doctor Wychcliffe—I have just come from him—who will tell you that though I’m not very well, I’m perfectly sane.”
“I don’t need to telephone Doctor Wychcliffe,” said Mr. Anstruther.
“But please do it.” Olivia spoke firmly but the hand that smoothed her gloves had trembled. “You see, I want to alter my will,” she said. “Alter it in rather a monstrous way.” And she smiled. “When you have telephoned the doctor I should like you to draw up a draft.”
“I drew it up, there and then,” said Mr. Anstruther to Noel and Angela.
“I haven’t so very much to leave,” Olivia had said, “not like Angela, but I think it will be enough—enough for what I want,” she had added, seeing Mr. Anstruther’s inquiring look. “Noel and Angela think I should leave it to Noel’s children. Well, they must be disappointed. The annuity to Ellen is to stand, of course,” said Olivia, “but the rest . . .”
Noel’s face had had a look of complacent expectancy as Mr. Anstruther came to that, but Angela had asked, “The rest?” with sudden disquiet.
When Mr. Anstruther had finished reading there was such a dazed silence that he said, “Perhaps I had better explain it to you in non-legal terms.”
Olivia had apologized for the will herself. “It seems a roundabout way of doing it,” she had told Mr. Anstruther, “but it was difficult to find a way that would fulfil all requirements. All requirements,” she had said, smoothing her gloves. “If I had left it all to Lovejoy, she would have been separated from Tip, and that little girl needs not to be separated. She needs a home, and the home she wants is with Vincent and Mrs. Combie, so . . .”
“A trust is to be set up,” Mr. Anstruther began to explain, “to open a restaurant in the West End—” But Angela interrupted.
“Olivia and a restaurant! I can’t believe it!”
“How did she come to be mixed up with people like this?” asked Noel wrathfully. “It’s you and your miserable charities, Angela.”
“But she never would be mixed up in my charities,” said Angela. She still sounded dazed.
Mr. Anstruther went on. “The restaurant is to be managed by this man Vincent, Mr. Combie, once of Catford Street, on condition that he and his wife provide a home for Lovejoy Mason, treating her, in all respects, as if she were their own child. If the restaurant seems profitable, Vincent is to be given a half-share after five years; the other half is to be divided between the boy Tip Malone and Lovejoy Mason. Mrs. Combie, the wife, is to be paid three pounds a week by the Trustees for the care of Lovejoy, who is to have thirty pounds a year paid to her personally for her clothes.” Miss Chesney said, “Lovejoy will manage well on that.” “When Lovejoy Mason is eighteen, or when she marries, she is to have two hundred pounds for a training or towards furnishing a home.
“Tip Malone is to visit Lovejoy when he and she like, or when his mother will let him. The trustees are Inspector Russell of Mortimer Street Police Station”—“That nice Inspector,” Olivia had called him—“the man Vincent, Mr. Combie, Father Lambert of the Church of Our Lady of Sion in Catford Street, and you, Miss Angela, if they will serve on the trust with you.”
“And if not?” asked Noel hotly.
“Then the trustees are Inspector Russell, Vincent, and Father Lambert.”
Olivia had always been blunt, but, anxious for the smooth working of the trust, she had not foreseen that it would sound quite as blunt and hard as it did—it had an effect she would never have believed, for Angela began to blush. It was a blush as painful and humiliating as any of Olivia’s own.