An Episode of Sparrows

by Rumer Godden

  “It can’t be much of a gang,” said Inspector Russell.

  “It is!” cried Sparkey furiously. “It’s the worst gang for miles.” And he flung at the inspector, “Maxey Ford was in it.”

  “Maxey Ford.” Now the inspector’s face, as well as his voice, was grave. He looked at Tip. “I am sorry to hear that. You know what happened to Maxey.”

  “Yes,” said Sparkey reverently, and he declared, in an access of loyalty, “It wasn’t fair. Tip’s much better at stealing than Maxey.”

  “Oh, shut up, Spark,” said poor Tip, but Sparkey took this for modesty and went on, “Tip’s chief; Maxey never was.”

  “I see,” said the inspector, and he said suddenly, hardly, to Tip. “Do you always get other people to do your jobs for you?”

  “I—don’t,” said Tip, astounded.

  “He’s not that kind of boy,” cried Mr. Malone in anguish, and to Tip, “Oh, I wish your mum would come.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then Angela’s voice came, clear and imperious. “It seems quite obvious, Officer—”

  “Inspector Russell,” said the inspector.

  Angela makes them angry by not thinking of them, thought Olivia. She thinks it doesn’t matter, but it does.

  “Inspector, then,” said Angela impatiently. “It’s obvious that this boy should be charged.”

  “But on what charge?” said the inspector.

  “What charge?” said Angela. “I shall charge him with stealing the earth, of course.”

  “But can you?” said the inspector. “I’m not sure you can.”

  “Why ever not?” In Angela’s astonishment the “ever” slipped out. She isn’t handling this, it’s handling her, thought Olivia.

  “The houses in Mortimer Square are leasehold, isn’t that right?” asked the inspector.

  “Yes, but what has that to do with it? Why can’t I charge him?”

  “I don’t think you can steal earth,” said the inspector, “and anyway it’s not your earth,” and all the faces turned to look at Angela; even the blue-winged lady, it seemed, could not have everything her own way.

  “Oppose her and that’s the best way to make her go on”—both Olivia and Ellen could have told them all that. “The Garden Committee’s, then,” said Angela more impatiently still. “Why quibble?”

  “It’s not even the Garden Committee’s,” said the inspector. “The earth belongs to the freeholders, whoever they are; I don’t know much about it but I can guess that even if you started a private prosecution, on a charge like that you would end up in a good old legal tangle.”

  “Then I’ll charge him with trespass,” said Angela, but the inspector shook his head.

  “Trespass isn’t an offence,” he said, “except on a railway.”

  “Well, I can charge the boy with assaulting Lucas.”

  “You can’t,” said the inspector again.

  “Are you trying to be obstructive?” demanded Angela.

  “I’m keeping to the law, madam,” said the inspector crisply.

  “Why can’t I charge him with assaulting Lucas?” Angela’s eyes were very blue, very frosty. She’s angry, thought Olivia, but the inspector was not a Mr. Wix or a Doctor Dagleish; he was quite unperturbed. “Why can’t I charge him with assaulting Lucas?”

  “Only Mr. Lucas can do that,” said the inspector.

  “Lucas, then,” said Angela, and the inspector looked at him.

  “Do you wish to make a charge?”

  “Of course he does,” said Angela.

  “Miss Chesney, will you let him answer for himself?” And the inspector asked Lucas again, “Do you want to make this charge?”

  Angela made a movement, but Lucas seemed curiously unwilling to answer. He looked at the inspector, at Angela, at his hands, and was silent.

  “You heard the officer,” said Angela.

  “I don’t want to make no trouble, be unpleasant,” murmured Lucas to his boots.

  “It’s sometimes one’s duty to be unpleasant,” said Angela. “The boy hurt you, he might hurt other people.”

  “He never hurt anyone,” bellowed Mr. Malone to the skies.

  “He hurt Lucas,” said Angela. “Well, Lucas?” Another silence while Lucas fidgeted. “You are acting for the Garden Committee, remember,” Angela said.

  Lucas looked this way and that. How like a rat he is, thought Olivia; almost she drew her skirts aside. Angela was looking steadily at him, the cold glint still in her eyes. At last, “I’ll charge him,” said Lucas. It sounded like a groan.

  The inspector was looking over their heads to the third policeman, who had come in again and was standing inside the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Combie are both out, sir,” he said.

  “Out?” Lovejoy came two steps away from the bench; in the warm room she steamed as she walked. “Out? They’re never out.”

  “They are both out,” said the policeman evenly. “They left a message on the door—for the little girl, I suppose—that they had gone to see a Mr. Montague.”

  “Mr. Montague?” said Lovejoy, puzzled.

  The policeman went away, and the inspector turned to Tip and put the charge in words that Tip could understand. “You’re charged with assaulting Mr. Lucas at approximately six o’clock this morning, the fifth of June, on the pavement of Mortimer Square. You needn’t say anything if you don’t want to; if you do say anything I shall take it down and tell it to the magistrates. Do you want to say anything?”

  Tip stared dumbly at the inspector. “No reply,” said the inspector after a moment, and he wrote that down. Then he spoke to Mr. Malone. “Will you go bail for him to appear at the Juvenile Court—let’s see, it will be Chelsea Juvenile Court—next Wednesday at ten o’clock? The bail will be five pounds.”

  “But—I haven’t got five pounds,” said Mr. Malone in dismay. Olivia made a movement, but Angela caught her.

  “That’s all right,” said the inspector to Mr. Malone. “You don’t have to pay it if the boy appears. Now sign here, on the back of the charge sheet.”

  Breathing suspiciously, glaring at them all, with the pen held like some sort of dangerous weapon in his hand, Mr. Malone signed. Olivia noticed how the pen trembled; she did not like to see that little tremble. “Now you can take him home,” said the inspector to Mr. Malone. “You too,” he said to Sparkey.

  “Can’t I be charged?” said Sparkey. “Please. Please,” he said frantically.

  “You go along home,” said the inspector. “In any case you’re under eight.”

  “I’ll never be big,” wailed Sparkey in despair.

  “And I must go,” said Angela and gathered up her things. “Olivia, you take Lucas home,” she said as she went out, but Olivia did not hear.

  She was looking at Tip and Lovejoy. Mr. Malone had come to Tip and taken him by the shoulder, but Lovejoy’s hand was locked in Tip’s.

  “Now be a good girl,” said Mr. Malone. Lovejoy shook her head. He tried to prise her fingers away, but he, who seemed really as big as Olivia’s ox or one of his own great dray-horses, seemed unable to loosen that small hand.

  “I’ll stay with him,” said Lovejoy.

  There was a noise outside as if a henhouse full of hens had broken loose in the police station. Mr. Malone swung round, his face happy with relief, and a second later Mrs. Malone burst into the room; as a policeman hastily caught and shut the swing door, Olivia caught a glimpse of five other Malones outside.

  “Did you see the mother?” Olivia asked Angela afterwards.

  “I did, and a whole tribe of Malones. I told you he was a Malone.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “No. She’s a real virago and I was in a hurry. Did you?”

  “Yes. She called me a dirty old Judy,” said Olivia. “I liked her.”

  “Liked her?”

  “Yes. If I had a boy I hope I should fight for him like that.”

  When she had finished with Olivia, Mrs. Malone had started on Inspector Russell.


  “There’s no name I wouldn’t put on you,” she said.

  The inspector nodded to the jailer, and presently he and Mr. Malone prevailed on Mrs. Malone to go. When finally she swept Tip, Mr. Malone, and Sparkey out of the room, “we were left in a sudden flat silence,” said Olivia.

  “Who were left?” asked Angela.

  “The inspector, the little girl,” said Olivia, “and I.” She paused. “Then a policewoman came in.”

  “Lovejoy,” Inspector Russell had said, “this is Woman Police Constable Mountford. She wants to talk to you.”

  The extreme gentleness of his voice made Lovejoy afraid. Vincent sometimes spoke to her like that when he was deeply sorry. The woman policeman made her more afraid. Last time—that time, thought Lovejoy, it was a woman policeman, asking those questions. Lovejoy could hear them still, and her own answers—baby answers, thought Lovejoy scornfully.

  “Where do you live?”

  “We don’t live anywhere.”

  “You don’t know where you stayed?”

  “We don’t stay. We can’t, because of the bill. They want us to pay it so we go somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else?”

  “Yes. That’s where we were going.” That Lovejoy had been a stupid little silly, thought Lovejoy scornfully, but this Lovejoy now had the same vision of that big hole and thousands and thousands of little ant people being swept into it. “I don’t want her to talk to me,” said Lovejoy, looking at Woman Police Constable Mountford with horror. She looked round for Tip, but Tip had gone with his mother. His mother! thought Lovejoy and quivered.

  “You’re not afraid of us, are you?” said the inspector coaxingly. Lovejoy might have said, “Yes,” but instead she stood glaring and breathing hard. Then, “You say it, not her,” she said to Inspector Russell. He and the policewoman looked at each other. “All right, but stay,” he said in an undertone.

  Lovejoy darted across the room and caught Olivia’s hand.

  “You stay too,” she croaked.

  “But—” Olivia was half dismayed, half touched. She was always to remember the clutch of Lovejoy’s hand. “They want you alone,” she said.

  “Stay. Stay,” begged Lovejoy.

  “Perhaps it would help if you would,” said the police-woman.

  “I? Not my sister?” Olivia could not believe it.

  “You, please,” said Inspector Russell.

  He beckoned Lovejoy to his desk. She advanced warily and stood in front of it. “He’s going to try and make me tell,” she thought and braced herself, dropping her lids, but the inspector was speaking in this same extraordinarily gentle way.

  “I have to talk to you,” he said, “about your mother.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  BY EIGHT o’clock that evening the episode of the sparrows had been considerably overlaid in Angela’s mind. For her the day had held many things: a meeting of the C.W.B.—“I’ve forgotten what the C.W.B. is,” said Olivia; “Child Welfare Board,” said Angela patiently—a luncheon party; work in the afternoon with Miss Marshall; “And I had to take a taxi to get to the lecture in time,” said Angela. “You know what lecture, Ollie, I told you. The Contemporary Arts Society in Gower Street, of course. It’s a pity you didn’t come. You ought to be more interested in things.” After that a publisher friend had arrived—“He came, she didn’t go to him,” Olivia told Ellen, marvelling again—to talk about Angela’s book, Simple Accountancy for Women; it seemed anything but simple to Olivia, but Angela had almost finished it, and, “I think he will do it,” she said. Then she had signed her letters, changed, and had a quick dinner—quick because the Discussion Group was meeting at Number Eleven that night. “Not to discuss,” said Angela, “but to lay down our programme for after the summer recess. We’ll meet in the dining room, then have sandwiches and tea up here in the drawing room at half-past nine.”

  Olivia had spent most of the day alone. The happening—“Call it an episode if you want,” she said in thought to Angela, “to me it was a happening”—was whole and extraordinarily important in her mind. After dinner her voice talking to Angela, the taste of coffee in her mouth, even her headache, seemed to be outside Olivia—on my skin, she thought—while deep, deep in her the morning’s interview was still going on.

  “Lovejoy, your mother has gone away for a little longer than she thought,” Inspector Russell’s careful voice had said. “She forgot to give Mrs. Combie an address. I wonder if there’s anything you can tell us that will help us to find her quickly.”

  Lovejoy said nothing.

  “Does she write to you when she’s away?”

  “She sends postcards.”

  “Have you any of them?”

  Lovejoy put her hand in the pocket of her coat and drew out a small wad of postcards which she gave to the inspector. There were nine or ten—seaside postcards, thought Olivia. There was one of a pig with a caption, “I may be a little piguliar but I do like Eastbourne,” some bathing-dress ones, and seaside views. They were all very dirty but Lovejoy watched them jealously as he turned them over, looking at the postmarks. “But these are two years old,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Lovejoy and held out her hand for them.

  “She hasn’t written for some time?”

  “No.”

  The inspector studied his pen. “When she was here, this time, was she any different?” he asked.

  There was a pause; a thought that was evidently sharp-edged struggled to speak in Lovejoy; then, “She didn’t buy me any clothes,” she said in a low voice.

  “Does she usually?” asked the policewoman.

  “Of course,” said Lovejoy as one would say, “Clothes before bread.”

  “Haven’t you anyone she might have gone to? An aunt or uncle?” suggested the inspector. Lovejoy shook her head.

  “Cousins?” asked the policewoman. “A grandmother?” Lovejoy went on shaking her head.

  “No friend?” The inspector watched her narrowly. “No new friend?”

  Another pause, and Lovejoy said unwillingly, “There was Uncle Francis.”

  “Was Uncle Francis’s name—” they looked at a paper—“Colonel Baldcock?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you called him Uncle Francis?” Lovejoy breathed disdainfully through her nose, her nostrils pinched. “Perhaps she told you to?” said the inspector.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where Colonel Baldcock stayed in London?”

  “No.”

  There was a silence; then Lovejoy had looked up and put an end to the skilful and delicate fencing. “Has Mrs. Combie been landed with me?” she asked.

  Olivia put down her coffee cup with such a sudden rattle that Angela looked up and frowned.

  “Angela,” said Olivia suddenly, “wouldn’t anything make you change your mind?”

  “Change my mind about what?”

  “The children. Let Lucas withdraw the charge against the boy. There is, I’m sure there is a different—complexion,” said Olivia, floundering.

  “Complexion? You don’t mean complexion,” said Angela.

  “Yes, I do,” said Olivia more certainly. “Something that would put a different colour and look on it.”

  “The charge is right,” said Angela decidedly. “Tip Malone is part of a really bad gang, Olivia, and leading the others astray. You heard what the little one said.”

  “The little one was boasting.”

  “And he gave away the truth. Ollie, don’t you think people as experienced as I and that inspector—Inspector—”

  “His name is Inspector Russell,” said Olivia. “You should remember it.”

  Angela disregarded that, as Olivia had known she would. “—that we know what we’re doing?” finished Angela.

  “I sometimes think,” said Olivia, “from watching, of course, because I am not experienced, I think experience can be a—block.” Again it was clumsy, but she knew what she meant.

  “And why?” asked Angela, amused.
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br />   “Because if you think you know, you don’t ask questions,” said Olivia slowly, “or if you ask, you don’t listen to the answers.” Olivia had observed this often. “Everyone, everything, each thing, is different, so that it isn’t safe to know. You—you have to grope.”

  “That would be a nice efficient way to deal with things,” said Angela. She looked up again from the notes she was making. She’s not even listening to me, thought Olivia. “What is it, Ellen?” asked Angela.

  “There’s a Father Lambert,” said Ellen.

  If Ellen were dubious about anyone she always said “a” before the person—“a Mr. French,” “a Miss Smithers.” “A Father Lambert.” Ellen was rigid with disapproval. She called Catholic priests “black beetles.”

  “He wants to see you, Miss Angela,” said Ellen as if she advised against it.

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “I think it’s about those children.”

  “If he thinks he can get at me—” said Angela.

  We English, thought Olivia, always think that priests will get at us. I wonder why? That seemed to put the words in her mouth. She had not meant to take the Father’s part against Ellen and Angela but she said, “You sound as if you were afraid.”

  Ellen frowned at Olivia. “Now I suppose you’ll see him,” she said to Angela.

  “Why you should think I’m afraid I can’t imagine,” said Angela. “Ask him to come up, Ellen.”

  If Ellen called Catholic priests “black beetles,” Angela treated this one as an unpleasant species. She asked Father Lambert to sit down, but she did not introduce him to Olivia. “I am Miss Angela Chesney,” she said distantly. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes,” said Father Lambert, “about a parishioner of mine, a young Irishman, Tip Malone.”

  “I warn you, we’re not feeling whimsical about him,” said Angela.

  “I wasn’t being whimsical,” said Father Lambert quietly. “That boy always seems to me like a young man.”

  “If he is manly,” said Angela, “it’s all the more important that he should be taught the difference between right and wrong. I feel you have come here to make some sort of an appeal. It has been decided that the boy ought to be prosecuted. I must tell you that nothing you can say will make me change my mind.”