Miss Ranskill Comes Home

by Barbara Euphan Todd

  Without the knife there could have been no boat. The big blade, helped by fire and flint, had laid the small trees low and made slits for the stone wedges before they could do their work of splitting. It had made wooden rivets, smoothed the tiller and shaped the rudder.

  The boat had been three and a half years in building, for the wood had had to be seasoned and there had been all the heartbreaking hindrances of knots and splits and snaps. The ribs had been bent to shape while still green, but the longer planks had been coaxed to curving by water boiled laboriously in large shells set round the fire. Rivet-holes had been caulked with resinous tree-sap, helped by clay.

  The same clay secured the tops and bottoms of the shells that lay in the stern-sheets and held Miss Ranskill’s water supply. She had brought quite a lot of water, because she knew that the slabs of sun-dried fish would make her thirsty. She felt thirsty now, so she shipped her oars, slipped forward from the thwarts and grovelled for a shell. Luckily it was a calm day, even so, it was not easy to break away the clay binding without spilling the water. Some of it splashed on to her lap, a dribble trickled down her chin, and the rest tasted fishy.

  And now the island had disappeared, had slipped away unnoticed while she wrestled with the shell. There seemed to be nothing left in the world but the monotonous sea, the curving sky and the golden pathway of the sun – a path she had decided to follow. An aching loneliness possessed her for a moment or two – a loneliness that must not be realised lest it turn to terror.

  ‘There might be a ship,’ Miss Ranskill comforted herself. ‘There might be a ship any time now.’

  But there was no ship. There was nothing. Even the birds seemed to have left the world.

  ‘One couldn’t go on for very long without seeing anything,’ she thought. ‘One must see something in time. One must.’

  For it had always seemed to her and the Carpenter as they waited on the island, and strained their eyes with starings-out to sea, that there must be a ship just beyond the horizon, a ship or another island.

  Just out of eye-shot, Miss Ranskill, just out of eye-shot, that’s the devil of it.

  She snatched at the paddles and began to row frantically. The faster she could make the boat travel the sooner she would be – where? If only there were corners to be turned or the top of a hill to reach. As she tugged savagely at the paddles visions of maps filled her mind, big splodges of continents, little spatterings of islands set in the immense splashes of blue. She was jerking at the paddles now in her exhaustion and presently she was obliged to rest in order to relieve her sobbing breath.

  Would it be better, after all, to go back – home? What a ridiculous word, for there was no home on the island now. It took more than one person to make a home where there wasn’t even a dog or cat or canary. But there was her shelter there – her shelter and a grave and a familiar stream where she could drink and wash. There was space to walk about. If the island was not home then this boat was hell – a tiny wooden hell. There was nothing between her and the deep water except a frail planking, nothing at all between her and the sky. Perhaps there were other little floating hells, dotted about, beyond any sight, on the surface of the sea. If people could fall overboard from ships as she and the Carpenter had done without being noticed, perhaps other people had done the same. There must be ships somewhere.

  She began to paddle faster along the golden path (now paling to silver) that streamed eastward. Yes, she must get away if there were anywhere to go.

  Easy now, Miss Ranskill, you don’t need to dig, see.

  II

  It was noon, and the sea was still calm, monotonously interrupting and fretting by the lip-lap of its restless tongues of water. The sun was high overhead, glaring down at her with a demoniacal gold eye.

  ‘And how do I know where to go now?’ thought Miss Ranskill, ‘I shan’t know, till the sun begins to go west so that I can row away from it if I’m to keep an eastward course. I don’t know my way about the sea. I don’t know whether to go to the right or left.’

  Naturally, port and starboard meant nothing to her.

  Now, with the sea as empty as the tracing paper she had admired in childhood, before she had spoiled it with her spluttering pen, how was she to find her way?

  III

  It was evening and Miss Ranskill was asleep, her head against the gunwale and one arm crooked round a paddle. Not so very far away a small island deepened to indigo against the red-gold of the setting sun. She stirred her cramped legs, opened her eyes, blinked and looked at it.

  It was the most beautiful island, welcome and welcoming. In that moment of half-wakefulness when she seemed roused from the horror of nightmare into the peace of a happy day, she had no doubt of its friendliness, just as when she was a child she had always been sure of recognising her own among the many mansions of Heaven and all her ancestors too. Yes, she was quite familiar with the island.

  She knew that creek and the outline of rock that was like a sleeping giant. She knew that tree with the solitary lopped branch. She knew that tree very well.

  ‘Oh, no!’ She spoke the words aloud. ‘Oh, no, it can’t be: it mustn’t be.’

  But the lopped-off branch was part of the planking beneath her feet. The boat had drifted back to the island while she slept.

  If the beacon fire had been alight, perhaps she would have pulled inshore towards homeliness and warming flames.

  ‘But I can’t start again,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘I can’t.’

  She hated the island then, as she unshipped the paddles and began to pull away from the sun; and hoped to get further away this time before sleep won another battle or the currents played their alien tricks.

  IV

  One-two-one-two. The rhythm of rowing was beating her body and beating into her brain until it seemed she would never forget it.

  A few stars were out now – small delicate hazy ones. Presently she would choose one to steer by. If she did not, she might row in a great circle for ever – the island out of sight but never any nearer or any farther away.

  She must rest sometime, but the trouble was that if she slept by day she might not see the ship as it crept over the horizon. If she slept by night she would have no guiding star.

  One-two-one-two-one-two.

  V

  There was neither sun nor star to steer by, and hard grey waves cracked and slapped at the boat.

  For hours, Miss Ranskill had abandoned the paddles; and now she was clutching the tiller in an attempt to make the boat ride bow-first through the water instead of broadside on, as she had done for the sickening minutes when Miss Ranskill had left the tiller to grovel for the dried but now sodden fish.

  She was terribly exhausted and frightened too, for the water seemed to crash from every direction, now cracking against the bows as though determined to split them, now leaping at the port gunwale, now hurtling at the starboard. Those sudden rushes up the sides of steep waves were terrifying, so was the shudder and humping of mounted water as it shook the small boat from its shoulder to the trough before the upward ploughing began again.

  The tiller quivered and fought for freedom.

  Suddenly Miss Ranskill surprised herself by a yawn, for she was not sleepy. Terror is not a soporific until after it is passed. The yawn was followed by another and by jaw-stretching successors. Something seemed to be clutching at her solar plexus: something inside her responded to the rise and fall of the sea. She felt colder than ever and realised she was going to be sick.

  Her hands let go their grip and she sagged sideways into the stern-sheets.

  As she did so the tiller caught her sharply on the side of the head and she was not conscious of any more movement for some time.

  VI

  Now Miss Ranskill was riding a horse and the animal was running away with her. It charged at a telegraph pole, but the jarring crash scarcely checked its speed. It swerved sideways and jumped a stone wall – jumped it sideways too. On it went over brooks and hedges and walls, over
a cottage once – up and up, then crack on the tiles and down again.

  A small boy, sitting on a rock by the sea, called out to her.

  Don’t dig, Miss Ranskill, you’ve no need to dig, see.

  She was riding a merry-go-round ostrich now, and there was whirligig music. Faster and faster, up and down, round and round went the ostrich, and it smelled of fish.

  The merry-go-round spun so quickly that the bird broke away, and went striding round and round in a widening circle, until it hopped on to a swing and flapped its wings.

  ‘Faster! Faster!’ screeched the ostrich. ‘We’ll swing level and then we’ll go over the top!’

  She was slipping off its back now, and all the tail feathers came away in her hand. Down she went, splash into a pool of water, but when she tried to swim she found she was moving her limbs in glue which hardened swiftly.

  Now she was in a picture-gallery and searching desperately for the Botticelli Venus because she needed the great curved shell: it was full of clear water that did not smell of ostriches.

  There were a great many pictures in the gallery and nearly all of them moved. There was a still-life painting of a knife that lay on a tray with a bowl of pansies, a toy boat and an orange. As Miss Ranskill looked, the blade of the knife closed, folding up into itself the golden reflection of the flowers. One of the pansies made a face at her.

  There was a picture, too, of the flight into Egypt. Joseph, the Carpenter, tugged at the donkey’s bridle until it moved forward, carrying its burden of Holy Mother and Holier Child, and only stopping when its muzzle touched the heavy gilding of the frame. The next picture showed the face of another Carpenter, bearded too, but more familiar. As she looked, he died.

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Miss Ranskill, as once she had said when very wide awake. ‘You should never have tried to lift that rock with your heart in the state it is.’

  The Carpenter did not answer.

  The next picture was the same, and so was the next and the next. There was no getting away from it. When Miss Ranskill shut her eyes it was inside her lids.

  She rushed through the gallery though the cords of the pictures wound themselves about her ankles. Presently she came to the last room of all, and there was no picture – only an unglazed window opening on to a grey-blue sky with a touch of gold hinting through cloud and a white bird lazing in the air.

  That was the picture Miss Ranskill saw when she opened her eyes to the sky again and was conscious of the gunwale digging into her shoulder-blades.

  VII

  There had been sunrises and sunsets, stars at night, birds and clouds by day, but never a wisp of smoke from any funnel.

  The weather, so far as Miss Ranskill knew, had been fairly good after the first. Her head ached so that she could not remember much about the voyage except that she had finished the fish and drunk the last drop of water from the last shell, even sucking her skirt afterwards because a sudden lurch of the boat had jerked her elbow. The skirt was soaked with salt water too. She slept now and then, half-sitting, half-lying propped against the thwarts.

  Nothing mattered very much any more. There were no other boats on the whole of the sea, but she was too tired to care. She did not even resent the mist that came swirling in shreds and skeins, dowsing the horizon, limpening her salt-stiffened hair and making her shiver and huddle together.

  If one got very cold in this mist one might die more quickly.

  She got very cold but still she did not die, though the fog came down like a chilling blanket.

  Suddenly there came the sort of bellowing that might have been made by a great sea-cow with colic. The bellow was repeated but it conveyed nothing at all to Miss Ranskill, whose brain was now too tired to connect sound or sight with cause. She felt faintly annoyed at having been roused from what she had hoped would be her last sleep.

  She huddled herself together, drew her left foot up from the water that covered the bottom boards, and rested her aching head on her hand.

  Just then the mist lifted suddenly, and, as the last shreds blew away, she noticed the ships – long grey ships in a long line. High above them, swinging buoyantly, were two silver-grey monsters, immense and bloated-looking. Their entrails dangled from them – ridiculously thin, trailing entrails.

  Miss Ranskill laughed as she had not laughed for years. They couldn’t be true, of course. Whales did not float about the sky like that. All the same they were frightfully funny.

  She was still laughing when they took her aboard one of the destroyers of the convoy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  ‘Delayed concussion, I think, sir,’ reported the Surgeon-Lieutenant as he walked into the Commander’s cabin. ‘She’s had a nasty jab on the side of her head.’

  ‘How does she seem now?’ asked the Lieutenant-Commander. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Well, she ought to be all right soon, but she’s suffering a bit from shock. We’ve got some soup into her and I’ve given her a shot, and she’ll probably sleep till morning. What I can’t understand –’

  The young doctor hesitated and frowned. He was fresh from his medical school and the etiquette that forbids discussion of cases with the laity was strong in him. So too were the facts, so constantly impressed during his three months’ service in HM Navy, that he must make his own diagnosis swiftly and certainly and then take his own responsibility for his cases. Consultants are not supplied to destroyers on convoy duty.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I can’t understand why she’s in such a mess, sir. Her knees and legs are all hacked, and –’

  ‘If she’s a survivor from some torpedoed ship, you’d expect her to be hacked by floating wreckage or anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course, but you’d not expect gravel-rash all over her. She looks as though she’s been buried in sand and then pickled in brine. There was sand under her nails and in her ears. And her breath –’

  ‘Must you just before dinner? Can’t you be the best friend and tell her when she wakes?’

  ‘But it smells of fish, sir, fairly reeks of it.’

  ‘She probably likes fish: some do. Any other wealth of detail about this Barnacle Belle?’

  ‘Well, sir, her clothes – her underclothes. Damn it, we’ve picked up survivors before, and they’ve never been like that.’

  ‘If you’re suggesting I should give her gifts of lingerie, I won’t do it. I was brought up conventional-like. Time and again my old Nanny said to me, “Never give panties to pretties unless they’re legworthy.” You’ve told me about her legs. By the way, what’s she wearing now?’

  ‘Number One’s pyjamas, sir: he’s the smallest.’

  ‘How romantic, and she’s in his cabin too, isn’t she? Anything else you can think of to make me cast the vome?’

  ‘No-o, sir – except – I was just wondering if she’s a genuine survivor or if there’s anything fishy about her.’

  ‘Apart from her breath I should say no, but you should know more about that.’

  The Surgeon-Lieutenant smiled politely. He was not yet quite sure of his dignity.

  ‘I only meant I wondered if she was a spy. One does hear odd things.’

  ‘I doubt if the Huns, though they have queer ideas of amusement, would hit a woman on the head, roll her in sand, feed her on bad fish and dump her into a boat. The boat’s the only thing that puzzles me. I’ll have another look at it now and I’ll talk to the mermaid in the forenoon if she’s receiving visitors.’

  II

  Next morning Miss Ranskill opened her eyes to fluffy white blankets and a glinting of bright-work and mahogany. Gradually her ears attuned themselves to a sort of humming rhythm.

  Back in the ship, was she? Oh no, she couldn’t still be pleasure-cruising: it couldn’t all have been a dream. Those sky-borne whales were no nightmare. She closed her eyes because they ached so badly but opened them again three seconds later to the rattle of curtain rings.

  A young man was peeping at
her from under the shadow of a peaked cap.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘That’s splendid. Are you feeling better?’

  Miss Ranskill answered the question with another.

  ‘Am I in a ship?’

  ‘Yes, that is –’

  ‘Then will you please ask the stewardess to come to me.’

  ‘If there’s anything you want, I –’

  ‘I want the stewardess, please,’ said Miss Ranskill as firmly as aching throat and swollen lips would allow.

  ‘I think I had better give you the once-over first. I’m a doctor, you know.’

  The Surgeon-Lieutenant produced his thermometer.

  It would, he decided, be better not to worry her with the knowledge that she was the only woman aboard. These delayed concussions were tricky things to deal with.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, after he had shaken down the mercury, ‘by the way, how did you manage to get so sandy?’

  Miss Ranskill answered him briefly.

  ‘I had to bury the Carpenter.’

  ‘Bury the Carpenter? Why?’

  Suspicion made him jerk out the question in his newly-acquired voice of authority. He might have been addressing some scrimshanking rating.

  ‘He was dead. There wasn’t anybody else there.’

  The Surgeon-Lieutenant attempted the bedside manner – a thing he had only heard of in lecture-rooms, read about in books and practised, whenever possible, on his admiring mother. There is not much time or space for that manner among rows of hospital beds or in the Sick Bays of the Navy.