‘But gloves, I think, as well as the canvas shoes,’ decided Miss Ranskill as she doubled up her fingers.
She walked over to the window and looked down into the street. The people there were her own people, she could walk among them now inconspicuously: she had a place in the world again.
For a moment she wondered whether to leave the old clothes to be put in a shop dustbin, but as she stepped back she trod on the coat and her footfall released a salty, sandy, seaweedy odour. She would keep them for so long as the island tang lingered about them.
Just then there was a tap on the door and the assistant came into the cubicle.
‘I wondered how you were getting on, Madam?’
‘I’ll take everything, please.’
Miss Ranskill picked up her old jacket and took the nine pound notes, some shillings and coppers from a pocket.
‘I’ll wear them now if you will be so kind as to have these clothes made up into a parcel for me.’
‘Suit six-and-a-half, jersey a guinea, vest five-and-eleven, knickers five-and-eleven: that’s eight pounds three shillings and fourpence, please Madam.’
So there would be just enough left for the canvas shoes, a very cheap pair of gloves, perhaps, and carpentering tools.
‘Thank you, Madam, and –’
‘Could you have these clothes parcelled up while I go to the shoe department? I’ll call back for them.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Madam.’
Why in the world not? Miss Ranskill racked her brain and remembered the word ‘understaffed’.
‘Then if you’ll let me have some paper and string I’ll make up the parcel myself.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m no more allowed to do that than to wrap up the new clothes for you.’
‘Why?’ began Miss Ranskill, but as the eyebrows started their perilous raising, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll go to the shoe department and then come back.’
‘Very good, Madam. Let me see now, eighteen, and then four for the jersey and three for the vest and three for the knickers – that’s –’
‘But I’ve paid you, you’ve got the money in your hand.’
‘That will be thirty coupons.’
‘Thirty what?’
‘If you’ll give me your book, Madam.’
‘But I don’t want you to book them: I’ve just paid you.’
Exasperation raised Miss Ranskill’s voice and made the assistant’s take on a patient level tone.
‘Will you give me your clothes ration book, Madam, so that I can cut out the coupons, please.’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘You have your clothes ration book, Madam?’
you have your india-rubber, nona, your mapping-pen, your rough note-book and your pencils. they were all issued to you at the beginning of the term. where are they now?
‘Clothes ration book?’ repeated Miss Ranskill.
‘Yes, Madam.’
‘But I haven’t –’
‘I’m afraid if you haven’t any coupons left, we can’t accept your order. The new ration books do not come into use until next month, but if you have any coupons in the old ration book issued to you last June –’
‘Last June I wasn’t even being Swiss Family Robinson. I was being Robinson Crusoe at least practically.’
Blankness answered the outburst.
‘I don’t want to be stupid,’ pleaded Miss Ranskill. ‘But I simply don’t understand. If you could explain –’
‘Haven’t you got a clothes ration book, Madam?’
‘No, and no clothes except the ones I stood up in, and –’
‘Then I’m afraid we can’t serve you until you can find it. We can keep the new clothes if you would care to post the coupons.’
‘You mean –’ Miss Ranskill glanced at the new Miss Ranskill in the mirror and then looked down at the old Miss Ranskill’s clothes lying on the floor beside the Midshipman’s shoes and stockings. ‘You mean that unless I can give you these coupons or whatever they are, you can’t sell me the clothes I’m wearing?’
‘I’m afraid not, Madam.’
‘Not even if I give you the address of the friends I’m going to stay with – Doctor and Mrs Mallison, Hillrise, Newton Road?’
‘I can make a note of the address, but –’
‘It won’t help?’
‘No, Madam. I’m sorry, but we can’t make exceptions.’
‘Exceptions!’ Miss Ranskill laughed, as she took off the coat of the new jersey-suit that had turned her into a woman again.
‘I haven’t got anything… . I’ve only just arrived in England – only this morning after three years. I didn’t mean to say so because – well, there are reasons. I’ve been trying to learn the language, but it means nothing to me: it all sounds mad.’ Off came the skirt. ‘I may seem stupid to you: you may seem obstinate to me, but can’t we try to understand each other? I have tried …’ Off came the jumper… . ‘I’m a foreigner here and I thought I was coming home. Nobody can explain or tell me anything. That seems to be the trouble with the world: nobody can tell anyone anything. I’ve been isolated on an island but the isolation’s worse on this island just because one can’t speak the new language properly; it’s changed so since last I was here.’
The stockings were off by now.
‘If you’ll wait just a moment, Madam, I’ll go to the manager and see if he can help you.’
Miss Ranskill hardly heard the interpolation.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You’re a woman and I’m a woman. If you came to me – if your brother was dead and if you had had to bury him, scrabbling with a paddle in the sands and then with your hands till they were raw, I –’
‘My brother is dead, Madam; there was nothing left to bury. If you’ll excuse me for a moment.’
The door clicked behind the assistant and Miss Ranskill was left alone with the mirror’s reflection of her humble self.
The dead keep us busy all right, almost as if they knew what was good for us. Wouldn’t do for those that’s left behind if they packed up their trunks before going and then set out by train to Heaven.
This then, this England, was to be her desert island, a place where the dead left without aforethought and where there was no reckoning but hardness, where there was no solitude for mourning, where one was prisoned (if one was a shop assistant) alone in a crowd, and the servant of women yattering for new clothes and nagging for string and brown paper. In comparison, she, on her island, had been a lotus – no, a fish-eater living with loving kindness and dying her own little death with, at any rate, no interruption to be borne from people without.
Miss Ranskill stripped the artificial silk from her body and dragged herself into the clothes she had worn before.
The Cinderella dream was a niggling fancy now.
She opened the door of the cubicle and tiptoed across the carpet.
II
‘No, Madam, I’m afraid they haven’t come in yet: we expect them at any moment, though.’
‘But you told me you were certain they’d be in this week.’
‘Well, that’s what we thought. We were promised them. We didn’t get our full quota last month. Everything’s getting more difficult.’
Another assistant was talking to another customer as Miss Ranskill, her hair looking more than ever like the plumes of a demented cockatoo, tiptoed out of the cubicle.
A dozen similar little choruses reached her ears, but made no further penetration, as she made her furtive way out of the shop.
‘Oh no, Madam, no ribbed stockings at all.’
‘Nothing fully fashioned at all.’
‘We shan’t have any more in when the stock is exhausted.’
‘I should advise you to take them while you can get them, Madam, I hear they’re to be couponed soon.’
‘These are slightly substandard, but they are pre-war stock.’
‘Quite unobtainable, Madam, I’m sorry.’
‘Well
, it’s a case of new covers for the chairs or new vests for me.’
‘Molly’s going to stain her legs with walnut juice in the autumn and go without stockings all the winter.’
‘Pam’s made herself some heavenly frocks out of dust-sheets.’
‘I’m making shirts out of dusters.’
‘I can’t think how Fay always manages to look like a hundred pounds. Black Market, I suppose.’
‘Not Black Market, my poppet – black-out material.’
‘Fay?’
‘No, silly, but she makes Edward’s pyjamas out of curtain stuff and pinches his coupons.’
It was not until Miss Ranskill had left the shop, turned down a side-street and stepped into a puddle that she realised she had forgotten to put on the Midshipman’s shoes. She might not have noticed then if she had not been wearing the stockings: her feet were hardened to sharper things than pavements, but were not yet used to squelching wool. She pictured the shoes lying toe to toe on the carpet of the little cubicle. It was not worth while going back for them: nothing was worth that. After all, the addition of a pair of shoes wouldn’t make much difference to her scarecrow appearance, and walking was easier without them. Presently she would take off the stockings too.
III
The Midshipman’s shoes were not in the cubicle: one was on the desk of Mr P M Ebbutt, Manager of Messrs Dimmet and Togg, and the other was in Mr Ebbutt’s pudgy hand.
‘Service pattern,’ he said. ‘No toe-cap, you see. Supplied by Gieves. Must have belonged to a Naval officer.’ He adjusted his pince-nez and gave a petulant tug at the laces. ‘I can’t think why you let the woman go, Miss Mottram.’
‘I did come up to see you, the moment I suspected anything, Mr Ebbutt, but you were telephoning.’
‘Yes, well, but if you’d only use initiative. Pretty fools we’ll look if we’ve let a spy slip through our fingers. It won’t do the shop any good, I can tell you that, Miss Mottram.’
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Ebbutt.’
‘Well, it can’t be helped. I suppose we’ve done all we can in letting the police know. They’ll be round any minute, I suppose. Let’s get the points clear. Couldn’t speak English, you say?’
‘She spoke it all right, but she said she didn’t, and she said she was a foreigner.’
‘Gimme my pencil, will you? Now then –’ The gold pencil travelled slowly across the paper. ‘Said she was a foreigner, hadn’t read a newspaper for years… . Hadn’t got a ration book: that’s pretty damning, you know. Wanted complete change of clothes – looks as though she wanted to cover her tracks, doesn’t it? … Said nobody would tell her anything … evidently she’d been nosing round… . I hope you didn’t tell her anything, Miss Mottram?’
There was numbing silence for a moment.
‘No, Mr Ebbutt, I did not.’
And now Miss Mottram looked Mr Ebbutt full in the stomach, a habit which, so she had discovered, always disconcerted him. One can turn one’s face away from an unflattering stare: it is not so easy to turn away a stomach, especially so high a one as Mr Ebbutt’s.
‘You can send Miss Smith to me now. I’ll want her to take down some notes. I’ll probably want you when the police come. Meanwhile you’d better trot round the shop once more and see if anyone did notice this woman go out. So busy chattering, all of you, that you never see a thing.’
Miss Mottram removed her elegant person in an undulatory way not indicative of trotting, and Mr Ebbutt let his stomach rise again.
At the door she turned.
‘I did give one piece of information, Mr Ebbutt.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t think it matters, but as you asked –’
‘Yes, what was it?’
‘I told the customer that because of the war,’ – there was a long deliberate pause – ‘that because of the war we hadn’t any silk stockings in stock!’
Then Miss Mottram, happy in the knowledge that in another week she would be making munitions, retired with dignity from the manager’s office.
IV
In the shop, gossip fluttered like a washing-day.
Girls behind counters became human beings, suddenly changed from creatures that (so they believed the customers thought) stopped short just below the waist-line or wherever the edge of the counter chopped them.
‘Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a German one – couldn’t speak a word of English and she came to buy a disguise.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Miss Smith told Doris.’
Girls in cashiers’ cubby-holes were livened by the tale.
‘Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a woman dressed as a man: she left a pair of men’s shoes behind her.’
‘We’ve had a spy in here – a woman dressed as a Naval officer.’
‘I say! Have you heard the latest? Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a German Naval officer dressed as a woman.’
‘Old Ebbutt’s a spy. The police have just been, and a plainclothes man too.’
‘Old man Ebbutt’s arrested for black marketing and trading with the enemy. They’ve found out he’s been selling naval uniforms to German spies, the old beast!’
‘You’re telling me! I always knew he was a nasty bit of work.’
V
Meanwhile, Miss Ranskill was nearing disgrace again. Hunger, though not so great as to urge her into the publicity of a restaurant, suggested a picnic lunch, and she planned the menu in her mind – rolls and a carton of cheese, a packet of sweet biscuits, a slab of chocolate, a banana and two or three Jaffa oranges to quench her thirst.
She chose a little shop in one of the poorer streets – a shop where the stock was shelved behind the counter and blacking brushes kept company with packets of cereals – almost a village shop. Here might be friendliness, and here seemed to be the beginning of friendship as the owner, in answer to the jangle of a bell behind the door, hurried out of the back room and smiled a gappy smile.
‘Yes, dear?’
The rolls, rather dusty-looking, were plumped down on to the counter at once.
‘We’ve no cartons of cheese though, only Woolton.’
Miss Ranskill nodded, not wishing to give herself away.
‘How much do you want?’
‘Oh! just enough for lunch.’
‘Better have the three ounces while you’re about it, then I shan’t have to mess up your book.’
A length of greasy string did its work of cutting through a piece of cheese.
‘Anything else, dear?’
‘A packet of biscuits, digestive if you have them, and a half pound packet of plain chocolate, and have you any really ripe bananas?’
‘’Ave I any really ripe bananas?’
Plump red hands were placed on ploppy hips, and their owner laughed flatly.
‘’Ave I any bananas? Think I’m Lady Woolton, do you? Never mind, I likes a yumourist. No, Ducks –’ the wheezy voice broke into song –
Yes, we ’ave no bananas,
We ’ave no bananas today!
‘Funny thing, when you and I was singing that song in the old days we never knew how true it’d be, did we?’
Miss Ranskill, to whom the song had always been a puzzle, smiled forcedly.
It would, she felt, be better to say no more about bananas: evidently in this strange new world they were a dangerous and difficult topic. But the owner of the shop, after stabbing home a loose hair-pin, ‘Worth its weight, that is!’, continued:
‘Funny thing about bananas, I mean the things they will carry over and the things they won’t. Meself, I think it’s a mistake and hard on the kiddies. Take my young Albert now – he’s never seen a banana: it don’t seem natural to think of a kiddy growing up and not seein’ a banana. Give us a few bananas and not so much tinned fish, what do you say?’
‘No tinned fish,’ Miss Ranskill agreed from her heart – ‘No fish at all.’
‘That’s what I say.’ A grin, showing a complete broderie anglaise of gaps, followed th
e statement.
Miss Ranskill, emboldened by her puzzling success as a humourist and thankful for friendliness of any sort, unbridled her tongue.
‘I’ll have oranges instead of bananas – Jaffas, if you’ve got them.’
‘Is your kiddy sick?’
Miss Ranskill heard the words clearly but they made no sense. For a mad moment she believed the question to be part of a music-hall song, and expected the woman to change voice again.
‘Is your kiddy sick? I’m only asking because we’re short this month. I don’t want any of the kiddies to go short if I can help it, but if your kiddy’s sick, poor little mite –’
Such a yearning of mother-love was in the voice, such jellying of human flesh shook the vast shoulders that Miss Ranskill gave reassurance.
‘It isn’t sick. I mean I haven’t got a – a kiddy. I was only going to have a picnic lunch. I wanted the oranges for myself.’
‘Well!’
Not, ‘Well, fancy a great girl like you, Miss Nona!’ but the tone implied it.
‘Only instead of lemonade,’ explained Miss Ranskill. ‘But it doesn’t matter a bit.’
‘I’ve only been sparing the oranges to sick kiddies till we see how they go round. Anything else I can get you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Let’s see now, I’ll want your personal ration book for the chocolate and the other for the cheese and biscuits.’
A hand was held out in anticipation.
‘Ta?’
‘I haven’t got –’ began Miss Ranskill, and then scenting confusion, said, ‘I haven’t brought any books, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, there now, after I’ve cut the cheese! It’ll only go stale. We’ve little enough as it is, without letting that go stale.’
‘I’d pay for it willingly.’
‘Pay? You could pay for Buckingham Palace, maybe, but payin’ won’t keep cheese fresh once it’s cut. Could you fetch your ration book and I’ll keep the stuff till you come back?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. It’s – you see, I came a very long way.’
Miss Ranskill Comes Home Page 7