Miss Ranskill Comes Home

by Barbara Euphan Todd

  You should a let me done that, Miss Ranskill. I don’t like to see you roughing your hands. Doesn’t seem right somehow.

  Yes, the Carpenter, tired as he was, had respected her hands and what he called her ‘ladyship’, and the remembrance of his solicitude made a magnet for pride. Her own ragged appearance was only a phase in her life. In a week or two she would be restored. But there were people better than herself and as good as the Carpenter who would always be despised and rejected – not for themselves but because of what they wore, not because they had stolen and lived infamously, but because work had roughened their skins, because they blew on their tea or used the back of their hands for table-napkins. They were edged away from in railway carriages because their clothes smelled of their work and the sweat their work brought out, instead of reeking of the civet cat or a whale’s disease.

  It was more for the sake of the Carpenter and his kind that Miss Ranskill spoke now.

  ‘Look!’ she said, spreading out her swollen fingers before the girl. ‘Look at my hands. It wouldn’t matter being unkind if you weren’t unutterably stupid as well.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The girl’s voice had taken on the high-pitched tone used by certain people in speech to subordinates, but Miss Ranskill’s overmastered it when she spoke again. She might have been a schoolmistress addressing a class of giggling stupids.

  ‘Look at my hands and think again if your ring would be any use to me. You were afraid I might steal it, but it wouldn’t go over my little finger. Look at my face! I don’t rub lard into it at night.’

  ‘I – I –’ the girl edged away from the mirror. ‘Really!’

  Just then the attendant returned, counted out the change offendedly, put a penny in a slot, performed swift ritual with a towel and sidled away.

  And now Miss Ranskill was alone and trembling in a cell six foot long by four wide. The outburst had tired her.

  It couldn’t really be true. Homecoming couldn’t really be like this. It wasn’t fair that, after all the loneliness of the island and the emptiness of the sea, she should have returned to a worse desolation of scorn.

  All the comforting small pictures she had made for herself of bedroom armchairs, tea by the fireside, the welcome of friends and the safe luxury of houses had left her mind. There was nothing left of them.

  Had she really come back all that way to see nothing but four white walls, the ugly furnishing of a water-closet and a roll of toilet-paper – enough paper to have made the island fire-lighting easy for weeks.

  Until this moment other pictures had persisted – snapshots of England, needing only a touching-up or a toning-down.

  See now, Miss Ranskill, I’d give most all I’ve got at home to be able to make you a cup of good hot tea. That’d make you feel different. Just you think of all the cups of tea we’ll have when we get home to England.

  And now, with not even a stream to cross, no further away than two flights of carpeted stairs, a cup of coffee was waiting for her, for a fool who was lucky to be between any walls at all.

  She opened the door a crack and the sound of voices made her pause.

  Another woman was talking to the attendant. She was a small, thin person dressed in black.

  ‘My own girl wants to join the ATS, but I’d sooner she was a WAAF. myself. Bert’ll have to register soon. He’s mad to get at the Nasties after the time he had in London.’

  ‘I thought Bert was an Objector.’

  ‘Not now. He says they’re nothing but a lot of Fifth Columnists, and that all conchies are Quislings. No, Bert’s been mad to get at the Nasties ever since he was through one of the bad blitzes in London that time. It was seeing his uncle’s barber’s head in the gutter that changed him.’

  The attendant sucked her teeth.

  ‘How was that then?’

  ‘Bert had been staying with his uncle near Victoria and they’d been dropping a packet. When it was over, see, they went out to look at the damage. He says you’ve got to see the broken glass to believe it. Well, they thought they’d go across the road to have a quick one, and while they was stepping across, Bert’s uncle clutched his arm and pointed at the gutter. There was a head laying by the pavement – clean cut off by the flying glass, they thought. But what gave uncle such a turn was that the head was his barber’s, the little fellow that shaved him regular every Saturday.’

  ‘You don’t say!’

  ‘Shocking, wasn’t it. Bert’s mad to join the Ack-Ack now. Well, I’ll have to be getting on or I’ll miss my Woolton eggs. And I’ve got to get some shoes for Emma. Five coupons for a pair of gym shoes. Wicked, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wicked! Well, bye-bye.’

  ‘Ta-ta, I’ll be seeing you, Ducks. Give my love to your sister. How is she these days?’

  ‘Never been the same since that blitzing, but she’s a NAAFI now.’

  ‘I’d forgot she was blitzed.’

  ‘Oh! ever so long ago – three times altogether – the last was a land-mine. Luckily they was all out at the time. They’d evacuated the kiddies at the beginning, and it was her night on for fire-watching at the office. Her husband (he’s a key man, you know) was out on ARP. Yes, they was lucky all right, but the house got it properly: the demolition squad said they’d never seen such a sight. Well, I must go.’

  Miss Ranskill put a hand to her aching head. Had the language changed or had she forgotten words? Was she, perhaps, a trifle mad? Rip Van Winkle could scarcely have felt more puzzled than she did. What had happened in her absence that fantastic horrors could be described so casually? Even the language was secret from her, full of strange words and alphabetical sequences.

  She emerged from her cell now. She must hurry or the coffee would be cold.

  As she moved towards the outer door the attendant stared at her – a strangely hostile stare. How stupid! she had forgotten to tip her. She fumbled for and found two pennies among the change in her coat pocket.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘and thank you.’

  ‘I’ll take that roll of paper too, if you please,’ said the attendant, and there was a bullying note in her voice.

  Miss Ranskill became aware that she was clutching the roll of paper she had noticed in the water-closet.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, ‘I am so sorry. I never noticed I’d taken it.’

  The attendant pursed her lips obstinately, clattered the pennies on to a tray and held out her hand.

  ‘I must explain,’ pursued Miss Ranskill. ‘You see on the – I mean where I was before I came here we hadn’t any paper for fire-lighting, and I suppose when I saw so much –’

  ‘There’d not be much for salvage if everyone went on like that. Toilet-paper for fire-lighting, indeed!’

  ‘It was, was absentmindedness. If you had been on a desert island –’

  Here the roll slipped from Miss Ranskill’s fingers and trundled away across the floor under the basin, trailing a long streamer of paper after it.

  ‘There now!’ shrilled the attendant. ‘We can’t use that after it’s been sopping up all the slop from the wash-basins. If I did my duty I’d report to the Manageress.’

  ‘I am more than willing to pay for it, and more than willing to explain to the Manageress.’

  Then the looking-glass above the basins humiliated Miss Ranskill again, and she gave a sad little gulp.

  ‘You’ll see her right enough if you come here again. The public conveniences in the town are meant for people like you.’

  Shame took further possession of Miss Ranskill as she hurried down the stairs. Some day, of course, she would be able to laugh about this, but not this morning, not if she were really looking as the mirror on the stairs told her.

  It seemed an hour since she had left the downstairs room.

  Supposing the attendant reported her to the Manageress, and supposing, while having coffee, she was to be accused of petty pilfering?

  ‘In mixed company, too,’ thought Miss Ranskill. ‘In Naval com
pany “to the Derogation of God’s Honour and the Corruption of Good Manners.”’ For the first time that morning a smile cracked the parched skin of her lips.

  It would be better to be accused of stealing a ring – more dignified and not nearly so humiliating.

  A figure in blue uniform was standing with his back to a table by the door. Beside him, slick from ash-blonde head to silky ankles was the owner of the sapphire ring. Her voice was raised.

  ‘Well, from your description, it must have been your girl friend I met when I was powdering my nose. Darling, I do think you’re marvellous! You ought to get a GM for being seen alive with her. She’s positively septic.’

  Miss Ranskill tiptoed down the last two stairs and hurried out into the street. Tomorrow she would write a note to the ship, and make some excuse for not accepting the kind invitation to coffee.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  It was better outside in the pale wavering sunlight. The wind, blowing inland, carried gallantry with it, ruffled the puddles to a mackerel shimmering, snatched the scents of a flower-shop at the corner and made Miss Ranskill the swift present of them.

  She raised her head. The world would be better in half an hour, for she would be wearing silk against her skin and her shoes would fit. The tautness of her stockings would make her a woman again and her story might take on more dignity if she wore a new dress.

  A flash of red in a draper’s window caught her eye and she stopped to look. The sight of a jersey-suit in soft vermilion made her realise how much she had missed all the red shades of the world and how tired she was of blue and grey. But she must not begin with the frock – that must be kept to the end like the cherry on the cake. First of all she would buy some of the little trappings of civilisation.

  She went into the shop and hurried towards the haberdashery counter where she bought a comb, a pair of nail-scissors and a tube of face-cream. Then she asked for hair-grips.

  ‘Sorry, we’ve not seen one for months,’ said the queenly girl who reigned behind the counter.

  ‘Never mind, I’ll get them somewhere else.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky if you do. They’ve all gone to tanks.’

  ‘Tanks?’

  ‘Tanks or Bevin or Beaverbrook, I never know which.’

  ‘Tanks or Bevin and Beaverbrooks,’ repeated Miss Ranskill carefully. ‘Thank you so much, I’ll try them.’

  ‘It’s a good thing someone can make a joke of it,’ giggled the girl. ‘You wouldn’t believe how tired we get saying “No” all the time.’

  A frown worried Miss Ranskill’s forehead. It was all most puzzling. Still, it was better to make a fluke joke in an unknown language than be suspected of trying to steal rings or toilet-paper.

  And now her great moment had come. She set foot on a stairway that led, so instinct told her, to a department where underclothes were ranged in shimmers of pink and peach and white and blue and yellow, and to another department where dresses for morning and afternoon hung shoulder to shoulder and hem to hem. Nine pounds fourteen shillings and fourpence should go far enough if she economised over shoes: a pair of cheap canvas ones would be good enough for a day or two.

  A plan formed in her mind as she went slowly up the stairs, slowly because she was savouring the adventure to come. As a child she had always been reluctant to open her eyes when she was awake on Christmas morning: it had been enough to know that the stocking was there bulging in shapelessness and full (just for those moments) of magic, singing loudly as the stars of the morning and all the Herald Angels.

  Yes, she had a plan – she must find a friend and tell the truth, though not all of it, because she could not speak of the Island without thinking of the Carpenter. She dreaded the question, ‘Were you all alone there?’ She must possess herself, before she could allow the life they had shared to be touched by the new life she was to live.

  She shook her head and the gesture set two cockatoo-like plumes free from her turban. Once again she saw herself in a mirror at the turn of a staircase, but the horror had passed. Better to be a Cinderella and be a Cinderella properly if one was to enjoy metamorphosis thoroughly than to be a fiddle-faddler in the brown satin rags of pantomime.

  Now for the Fairy Godmother. Miss Ranskill hurried up the second flight of stairs.

  When she reached the top of it, a woman in a black frock made an undulating movement towards her.

  ‘Can I help you –’ (the word ‘Madam’ quivered her lips, thought better of it, and retired).

  ‘Yes, I think you can, if you will?’

  For the eyes of the interrogator were kind and her mouth was finely and firmly flexed.

  ‘I think you can. I want everything new. I’ve been wearing these clothes for four years, and now –’

  ‘Yes, Madam, I know how it is. In war-time one hangs on to one’s oldest clothes, but the time comes when –’

  ‘Yes, I know, but it isn’t because of the war exactly. Never mind that. You’re a woman and I’m a woman. You can see the clothes I’m wearing, and my under ones are worse. I want to start underneath. I want –’

  Here Miss Ranskill became aware of the comb, the scissors and tube of face-cream clutched in her right hand. Assurance left her.

  ‘I – I quite forgot about these being wrapped up.’

  ‘I know, Madam, it is awkward. Only the other day a customer bought a really lovely suede coat. In it had to go, on top of the herrings in her shopping basket, though the newspaper was sodden already. Still, I suppose we ought to be thankful to get any fish at all.’

  ‘Should we?’

  Memories of fish invaded the shop, of fish in every stage, fish with a nauseating lining that must be removed, fish half-dried by sun and going rotten in rain, greedy fish that gulped down the hooks whittled by patient labour, birds that tasted so heartily of fish that every fish, for weeks after, tasted so of sea-bird that the palate revolted, fish in the boat – soused and sodden by the sea.

  ‘When one thinks of the risks –’

  There was reproof in the voice and Miss Ranskill took her hint.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You were saying, Madam?’

  ‘I wondered if it would be possible to buy some underclothes and put them on, and then choose a frock and some stockings?’

  ‘Certainly. If you would care to look at the frocks and select some to try on. I can take you to the underwear department.’

  ‘And stockings?’

  ‘Stockings are on the ground floor, Madam. Would you like to buy them first?’

  ‘Couldn’t you possibly have a pair sent up? I don’t want to go downstairs again until I’m looking – looking different.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, Madam, but we are very understaffed, you know. Besides, there are still a good many shades to choose from.’

  ‘It would be kind,’ pleaded Miss Ranskill. ‘I only want one fawn-coloured pair, either in a thickish silk (not artificial), or fine lisle thread. Perhaps I’d better have lisle.’

  Memory of the nine pounds, fourteen shillings and fourpence made it seem wiser not to buy silk.

  ‘There may be a few cotton pairs left.’

  ‘I only want one pair.’

  ‘No real silk, of course, and certainly no lisle.’

  Miss Ranskill had heard the same tone of voice in her nursery days – ‘Not jam and cake, Miss Nona: the very idea!’ As she had done then, so she argued now.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, there’s a war on.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A war, Madam. Naturally it is difficult to get exceptional articles.’

  Shocked reproof could not have been greater if Miss Ranskill had demanded the martial cloak of Sir John Moore on a charger.

  Apology seemed necessary, and was made.

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’

  This time raised eyebrows and tightened lips conveyed more sorrow than anger, but more contempt than both.

  ‘You see, I haven’t read a n
ewspaper for over three years.’

  She had made everything worse than ever now – outcast herself completely.

  ‘Or listened to the wireless except just once the other day.’

  ‘Really, Madam. Of course, I know some people make a point of only reading escapist literature. I couldn’t bear not to get the news myself, though.’

  There was no chance of making friends now: an icy politeness prevailed between them as between a tea-party hostess and the guest who has made unwise comment on some relation or friend.

  Miss Ranskill was led to a counter where she chose two garments in artificial silk whose sheen seemed to fade as she looked at them. Then she asked the price of the jersey-suit she had seen in the window, heard it was too expensive, chose another in meek fawn and accepted the assistant’s choice of a paler toned sweater.

  ‘Utility garments, Madam, and really it is more practical to select neutral colours when one has to wear clothes for such a very long time.’

  ‘I shall buy the red suit tomorrow and the green one next day,’ said Miss Ranskill thoughtfully, and was quite unaware she had spoken aloud.

  Raised eyebrows answered her and the arrival of a girl with stockings ended the pause that followed.

  Two minutes later, Miss Ranskill, who had arranged to pay her own reluctant assistant ‘for everything at the end’, was alone in a mirrored cubicle.

  Shan’t know ourselves, shall we, Miss Ranskill, when we’ve got ourselves all togged up again. I’ll buy a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and wear it for a month of Sundays, and when I see you coming along I’ll say to myself, ‘Who’s this fine lady? I’ll bet she’s never done a stroke of work in all her born days. Why, it’s Miss Ranskill, who’d ever have thought it.’ We’ll smarten ourselves up one day, never you fear.

  She had forgotten her figure was so good, forgotten the subtle curving and the flatness where flatness should be that now made cheap wool sliding over silkiness look expensive. She fitted the clothes: they were not cajoled into fitting her. The humble colour of the jersey exalted the jackdaw blue of her eyes and paid compliment to the sunbleached streaks of her hair. That was shaggy and ragged, but the comb did something to help and the vanishing cream toned down the snatches of red where the sun had caught her cheek-bones.