‘I know what you mean,’ said Miss Ranskill, because quite suddenly she did. ‘You mean that if I were a Cavalier and you were a loyal cottager, you’d hide me up the chimney until the Roundheads went by, but that if I were a modern spy or –’
She stood up, because the relief of having hinted that she knew what was thought of her stimulated her tired limbs and she was not frightened any longer.
Marjorie strode to the door and struck a Casabianca attitude with her back to it. No, decided Miss Ranskill, she was playing Kate-Bar-the-Gate now, as she snipped at the air with inadequate nail-scissors.
‘I mean,’ said Marjorie, ‘I mean that if my puppy, and I adore my puppy, chewed up the Union Jack I almost think I’d have him shot. He could have my last pair of silk stockings. He could destroy anything I have but not the Flag.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Ranskill. She flopped down on to the bed, laid her shaggy head on the pillow and burst, not into sobs for lost loyalties, but into laughter. ‘I’m sorry, but if only you knew how funny you are!’
‘I don’t see anything funny about it.’
‘Except that I haven’t chewed up the Union Jack.’
For the moment Miss Ranskill had forgotten all her horror and loneliness and fear. She shook with laughter. The sight of Marjorie, looking so exactly like the Marjorie of St Catherine’s, almost made her forget the torment she had been through. The link of past laughter was between them: she was the impudent mocker again, and her friend stood for dignity.
‘Spiritually, you may have done. How do I know what you’ve done? You’ve behaved very oddly and now you begin laughing at things that matter. I mean –’
‘Yes,’ Miss Ranskill checked her laughter, ‘but your trouble is that you’ve always fancied yourself as Joan of Arc and an out-and-out Britisher.’
‘Well,’ Marjorie chucked up her chin, ‘what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing except historically – and it’s rather a strain on the loyalties.’
‘If you had any loyalties –’
Miss Ranskill stood up again and Marjorie braced herself against the door.
‘You needn’t think you can get away. I wouldn’t have taken this job on if I hadn’t known I was jolly strong. I’ve never let myself get out of training ever.’
Miss Ranskill looked at the firm straddled legs. They were muscled certainly, but there was a good layer of fat. Marjorie had not wrestled with boulders and tides, or fought for food and warmth and shelter.
Strong as most men you are, I reckon, Miss Ranskill, nearly as strong as me.
A little puff of sea-air came in through the slightly open window, fluting the curtains and soothing Miss Ranskill’s cheek. What was she doing in this conventional room, bickering with an old friend?
Your friends will be mighty glad to see you when we do get ashore, Miss Ranskill. When I think what you’ve been to me. Lots of friends, anyone like you must have.
For years she had lived and thought in freshening sea-air. She must try to think clearly now: she went to the window and pushed it up.
‘Not that way!’ shrilled Marjorie. ‘You can’t get out.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Miss Ranskill wearily. ‘I thought you’d asked me to stay the night. Didn’t you?’ She gasped a little as she returned to her seat on the bed. ‘I’m not used to being shut up in rooms. I only wanted some air. If I did go away I’ve nowhere to go.’
For a moment or two there was silence in the room. Then Marjorie’s lips began to tremble like a troubled baby’s.
‘This is perfectly beastly,’ she gulped. ‘You don’t know how I’m hating it. When I think of the good times we used to have and now you… . If there’s anything you’d like to tell me, I wish you would. I mean, I can’t promise to do anything, but … I don’t know how to put it… . We were pals at school … if you’d sort of give me your parole.’
Miss Ranskill made no reply.
‘Haven’t you anything you could tell me that would make it easier?’
‘Nothing, really,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘except that I only came back to England this morning. I’ve spent nearly four years on a desert island.’
‘A desert island? But there aren’t any now.’
‘There is one, because I’ve lived on it.’
‘Was it a British possession?’
‘I don’t know: there wasn’t anything to show. It wasn’t coloured red, if that’s what you mean.’ Miss Ranskill nearly explained that sea-gulls do not sing national anthems, but she restrained herself.
‘And were you quite alone for four years?’
‘No, there was a carpenter there as well.’
‘A carpenter. What sort of a man was he?’
I never was much to look at, Miss Ranskill, but I’ve always been well set up. Seems to me if you’re born with a good body it’s right to use it right, keep it clean and healthy and don’t let it sag… . This I can say, I’ve never owed a penny for a minute more’n I could help. I’ve never ill-treated an animal or a child or been rude to a girl. I’ve not been what you’d call a vicious man.
‘He was a good man,’ answered Miss Ranskill.
Marjorie left the door, her watch and ward forgotten for the moment.
‘A desert island – for nearly four years. How frightfully thrilling. Why didn’t you tell me at once… . It must have been queer, living there all alone with a man like that, I mean. It must have seemed a bit funny.’
‘No funnier than being alone with a woman.’
Miss Ranskill’s mouth shut firmly on the words.
‘Oh! I know you wouldn’t go in for any Blue Lagoon sort of stuff, but was he quite all right all the time, I mean –?’
There was no answer from the woman on the bed, but an unassailable expression came into her eyes and she clenched one hand slightly.
‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry, I oughtn’t to have asked, only I am one of your oldest friends, and it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to me. I mean, ordinarily it would, but a desert island’s different. I only meant that over anything like that I’d have done anything I could to help.’
The voice went blundering on, as Miss Ranskill’s knuckles whitened.
She was seeing a figure on the sand and a whirl of sea-gulls.
‘I mean, of course, I hate anything like that, but I’m quite broad-minded, I suppose it’s being a doctor’s wife. I only wanted to help, I mean.’
Marjorie’s voice tailed off, and, at last, Miss Ranskill answered.
‘If you mean did he rape me, he did not.’
‘Nona!’
‘That was what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course not, not put like that, anyway.’
Miss Ranskill made no answer. She was trying to see her island again, cool in the morning light, set in a fretwork of silver splinters, but the image was tarnished now.
‘Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ asked Marjorie. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Tone-deaf,’ Miss Ranskill’s mind made answer but her lips did not move.
CHAPTER NINE
I
The police had come and gone, and now Miss Ranskill was sitting in the Mallisons’ overcrowded drawing-room.
‘It’s only a matter of form,’ her mind repeated. ‘This is a purely formal question… . Just a matter of routine, you know; no need to worry about it.’
She wondered if the Prince had murmured, ‘Just a matter of routine,’ before bestowing on the Sleeping Beauty that formal kiss that must have awakened her, also, to more practical matters than the buzzing of bees in the hedge of roses.
After each little bout of questioning, the elder had nodded to the younger, who had murmured, ‘Excuse me, Madam,’ and disappeared, not, as Miss Ranskill had at first imagined, to fetch suitable handcuffs, but to hold long telephone conversations.
He verified the fact that Miss Nona Ranskill, passenger in The Coraltania
, had not been among the passengers who disembarked at Southampton a month before war was declared.
‘It is so much better for you, Madam, that we should check up on everything. And now, if you wouldn’t mind writing your signature, your usual signature, on that pad… . Three times, if you don’t mind… . The Midland Bank, you said, didn’t you? We can describe the signature by telephone.’
The younger policeman excused himself again, this time taking the pad with him; and the inquisition continued, to be interrupted by his return.
‘That seems to be all right, sir. The full-stop just below the first i, and the short rising line under the signature. The Will was proved in 1940.’
‘My Will?’ asked Miss Ranskill.
The elder inquisitor pursed his lips and nodded gloomily, adding: ‘They would be obliged to do that, of course, just as a matter of routine, but there should be no difficulty – just a few formalities.’
An hour and a half passed by, but at the end of it Miss Ranskill was in possession of her sister’s address in an inland Hampshire village.
She was told that certain formalities must be observed ‘merely as a matter of routine, of course’, and gathered that when her identity had been established more formally, she would be given the identity card and ration books that would prove her right to exist, as well as to be fed and clothed. In the meanwhile, and, again purely as a formality, it would be more convenient for everyone if she would remain where she was for the next few days.
‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Ranskill. ‘I must ask my hostess.’
It was then that Marjorie had made an entry and announced, while plumping uneasily on to the arm of a chair, that she had no intention of butting in.
‘Quite,’ replied the elder inquisitor, and saved Miss Ranskill from embarrassment by asking if she might remain as guest while matters, tiresome but necessary to routine, were completed.
‘But, of course.’ Marjorie hitched up a stocking and patted her sleek head. ‘And, I hate suggesting it, but I do think it would be an awfully good idea if Nona, Miss Ranskill, I mean, gave her parole not to do a bunk. I mean, we were at the same school, and that sort of simplifies things, doesn’t it?’
Assurance that nothing of that kind would be necessary stirred Marjorie to curious forms of activity. Miss Ranskill and the policemen watched and waited while she scratched her leg, opened and shut her mouth, tugged at her shirt collar and writhed as though the arm of her chair were a bed of stinging nettles.
‘I say,’ she gasped at last. ‘It’s no good, I simply must get it off my chest. I’d feel awful if I didn’t. I mean, private loyalties and being at the same school with a person aren’t absolutely everything in war-time, and so though I feel frightful and exactly like Lancelot –’
The younger policeman raised his eyebrows, and Marjorie explained:
‘You know – faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. I’m afraid I don’t go in much for poetry as a rule, I mean, there isn’t time, especially in war-time, and it’s mostly so sloppy, but Tennyson’s different, Tennyson and Kipling.’
‘Are you trying to tell us anything, Mrs Mallison?’ enquired the elder of the men.
‘Yes. It’s awful, but I am. I never have been the sort of person to say one thing behind people’s backs and another to their faces, and I just can’t sacrifice the whole country for the sake of one friend.’
‘Of course not. Well?’
‘And so,’ Marjorie writhed on the chair, ‘if Miss Ranskill has deserted from any of the Women’s Services and my husband did say over the telephone that she’d done a bolt from the Navy, I somehow don’t really think I could have her to stay.’
‘I quite understand that.’ (To Miss Ranskill’s relief there seemed no need for her to say anything.) ‘But I think you can feel quite easy about it. Miss Ranskill has explained to us how she and one of the Naval officers from the convoy happened to miss each other. We have been in touch with him since.’
But Marjorie’s loyalties, so the activities of her legs and arms hinted, were not at rest yet.
‘There’s something else,’ she gulped. ‘I hate saying it. I’ll probably never have another happy moment if I do, but if I don’t I’ll be a traitor.’
‘What is this information, Mrs Mallison?’ The policeman’s voice was a little weary.
‘She, Miss Ranskill I mean, tried to steal my identity card. I caught her with it in her hand, and when I came into the room suddenly, she crumpled it up and dropped it. And then she told me that her sister was in a prohibited area. If it’s true that she’s only just arrived in the country, how did she know that?’
She stared accusingly at her guest and then spoiled the dramatic effect by exclaiming, ‘Nona, old thing, I’m dreadfully sorry, but I had to.’
Miss Ranskill scarcely heard the apology, for she was worn out now by explanations. Already she had rebuilt the boat with words, till her mind was as sore as her hands had been on the island. She had dug the Carpenter’s grave afresh, and opened the secret places of her heart in doing so. She had conjured up the wind and the rain again, and answered questions until her head ached with remembering. Now she must reconstruct the scene in Marjorie’s bedroom and explain the results of the telephone call to Lynchurch.
At last the final act was over and the two men had said polite goodbyes.
‘We’ll be seeing you again,’ said the senior one. ‘I should have a really good rest if I were you, you look pretty well beat to the wide.’
‘Anything we can do to help,’ murmured the younger. ‘By the way, we will take charge of your boat for you, until you can decide what you want to do with it.’
‘My boat,’ Miss Ranskill addressed the patch of hearthrug recently covered by black boots. ‘But it isn’t my boat: it belongs to the Carpenter’s wife, at least, part of it does.’
Perhaps when she visited his home there would be more restfulness.
She looked at the collection of ornaments on the mantelpiece, appraising not their worth but their power of usefulness on a desert island. Those blackwood elephants would have come in handy, their tusks could have prised small fish from their shells, the lace curtains could have been turned into fishing-nets and the fire-shovel would have made a spade. The picture frames would have been better as part of the boat than as supporters of pallid seascapes. Miss Ranskill scarcely glanced at the pictures for the static waves annoyed her. She was used to changing seas, and discontented skies for ever shuffling themselves into beauty and maintaining their restless artistry by night and day.
The patterns of the chintz irritated her with the same repeated blue-bird on a bough that gushed flowers and leaves against a fawn background. The Dresden figures were no use for anything, but she resented the Lowestoft bowl on the wall-bracket in the corner. There it had stood, she supposed, empty and useless, year after year; while she had had nothing to clean fish in but a pool an eighth of a mile away from the rocky dining-table.
She shifted in the chair that was too comfortable – a hummock of sand and a jag of rock might have induced her to sleepiness, but presently she fell into a kind of waking nightmare.
There was no trust in the country. Her old friend had doubted her. Even her rescuers had been suspicious in a polite and formal way. She understood now that she would never have been allowed through the dockyard gates except under escort. The young officer had been only a courteous policeman.
II
Miss Ranskill was in bed, but she was not sleepy any more because Marjorie had been tucking her up, dragging at the sheets, pounding at the pillows, creaking on tiptoe round the room and speaking in the voice she reserved for churches.
‘Harry says you’re to have absolute rest and quiet and you’re not to worry about anything. Sure there isn’t anything more you want, old thing? You’ve only to sing out if there is. Are you dead-sure there’s nothing you want?’
‘Only peace and quiet,’ answered Miss Ranskill’s mind, ‘only quietness, and the chance to remember the island
before you rub out its memory.’
‘I’m going to put this bell by your bed because it’s my fire-watching night, and I’ve got to buzz off soon. Give the bell a tinkle if there’s anything you want, and Harry will come bounding up in a sec. You needn’t mind him: he’s a doctor, remember, and absolutely used to seeing people in bed. I’m afraid Mrs Bostock is going out. Well, so long.’
‘Good night!’ said Miss Ranskill firmly.
‘I’ll be back about five o’clock and I’ll peep in on you then.’
‘Good night,’ said Miss Ranskill.
‘I say, you aren’t still feeling huffed, are you? You do realise, old thing, don’t you, that I was only doing my duty?’
Her guest, in the corner of her mind’s eye, saw the island getting smaller and smaller, as it had done on the day she rowed away. Another word would scatter its frailty: it was the only place she knew now or understood.
‘You do realise that I had to be beastly, don’t you?’
‘Of course. Yes, of course I do.’
‘I say,’ Marjorie plumped down on to Miss Ranskill’s feet, ‘I say, I’ve got an absolutely marvellous idea. After the war’s over, we’ll find out where that island of yours is exactly, and we’ll all go there and spend a summer holiday. We’ll take camping kit and have no end of a time. Isn’t that a grand idea?’
‘No.’
‘Oh! I forgot you did have rather a doing there, didn’t you? Still, I should have thought that in a year or so – I say, I must fly now, or I’ll get it in the neck from the senior warden.’
Marjorie bounced off the bed.
‘There! I’m going to put your light out and then you’ll go to sleep straight away. Night-night! Happy dreams.’
There followed bumpings and bangings, and at last the door was shut.
Miss Ranskill felt breathless. There was no air or movement in the room. She missed the shuffle of the tide and the stir of the wind. Perhaps if she had more air she could sleep. She switched on the light and hurried to the window. It was queer that Marjorie, who had always described herself as an out-of-door person, should have fastened the curtains to the window-frame with drawing-pins, but perhaps it was part of the nursing programme. And why were the curtains black? Possibly Doctor Mallison disapproved of the early morning light. Even very ordinary doctors had queer fads sometimes.
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