He looked very frail, so easily crushable, and Miss Ranskill wished she knew more about the weight of bombs.
Suddenly, there came a sound as though a giant were slamming his door impatiently in a distant county. The sound was repeated.
The boy opened his eyes for a moment.
‘’Bout twenty miles off,’ he remarked, and gripped the Teddy Bear more closely.
His sleep left Miss Ranskill lonely and rather frightened. If only she were not such an amateur in war. The sight of an ankle and slender foot protruding from the left leg of his pyjamas reminded her that there were rugs on the camp-beds.
She folded one round him, and he made a contented nuzzling movement.
She felt very much alone now.
CHAPTER TEN
I
Again a distant bomb suggested door-banging and brought back a memory of the last war, when the droppings of Zeppelins had menaced Miss Ranskill’s world. Perhaps the German machines would not come any nearer to her than those had come then, but she felt she should make some preparation.
The light from the stove made a gold-barred pattern on the ceiling and the reassuring smell of paraffin suggested warmth and comfort.
If only we could have a nice hot cup of tea, Miss Ranskill, we’d get through anything. Tea’s the thing we miss most of all.
There, on the shelf, was a kettle, and the cups were beside it. For the next few minutes she was happily busy. Fingers and thumb realised again the dry rustle of tea, and her nose appreciated its savour. This was better than the bedside tray or the tea-shop: this was a picnic and the island as it might have been. She filled the kettle from a bucket, put it on the stove and arranged the cups and saucers on the table. There was pleasure in setting each handle in line with a blue flower on the saucer, in placing the jug exactly two inches on one side of the teapot and the bowl that held granulated sugar two inches away on the other side. She took one of the tins from the shelf and shook it, recognising, after four years, the rattle of biscuits. She might never have been away except that each sound and movement was now joy.
The door of a low cupboard moved an inch or so, scraped against the bricks, and a green-eyed white and orange face peered out. The face was followed by a stripey body as a tortoiseshell cat, big with kittens, but still walking delicately, rubbed itself against Miss Ranskill’s ankles. This was another thing she had almost expected, for a singing kettle should conjure a purring cat as surely as a cottage thatch lures a starling to spangle on it.
‘Puss! Puss!’ said Miss Ranskill, and poured out milk for it, kneeling down by the saucer so that she could hear the dainty lip-lip of the rosy tongue as it flicked the milk backwards. The silk of its fur stood out in little bushy patches from the tightly-drawn skin, and beneath it, Miss Ranskill could feel the stir of tiny lumpy bodies.
When it had finished the milk, the little cat shook a paw and took its leisurely way back to the cupboard. Miss Ranskill could hear it scratching.
Steam began to puff out from the spout of the kettle, and the little boy twitched and whimpered in his sleep. Miss Ranskill longed to wake him so that he could share in the magic when boiling water met the crisp leaves in the pot. She wanted to interrupt the maternity of the tortoiseshell cat because this should be a companionable moment.
Then, as she put the lid back on the teapot, the small boy gave a shriek. It would be best to waken him, to take him from wherever he was and bring him back to the cellar, to the comfort of a Teddy Bear and the fragrance of tea. She poured out two cups, added milk and sugar, and then moved over to the deck-chair.
‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘Stop dreaming.’
The invitation was unnecessary.
There was a roar, a crash and a reverberation. Perhaps they were simultaneous, but Miss Ranskill would never know or remember that. Her ears were shocked into deafness and her chin hit the wooden bar of the deck-chair. Then she went blind. There was trembling even in the close air of the cellar, and then the little boy choked her with his arms. Somehow he tumbled himself out of the chair and on to the floor by her side. He was sobbing and whimpering and each sob shook his hard knobbly little body until it quivered like springing steel, tensed and flexed and tensed again. She could feel his head jerking against her collar-bone.
‘I don’t want to die,’ he choked.
‘You can’t die!’ Miss Ranskill’s voice convinced even herself in the lull that came before the second crash. And now the cellar itself seemed to be shaking, as lumps of plaster fell from the ceiling, guttering out the candles and suffocating her with dust. There followed the thunderous cracking of guns and other showers of plaster shuddered down into the cellar. Something splashed on to her hand and a warm wet trickle ran down her wrist. Had the child been hurt? She lifted her wrist to her mouth, dreading the salty taste of blood that might be streaming in the darkness, resenting her blindness now instead of pitying it. Her lips were wet and her tongue was exploring, not the savour of blood, but a sickliness of sugar and luke-warm tea. A cup must have turned over, that was all.
The pain in her eyes became intolerable as the other anxiety eased. She had closed her lids down on them and the lids felt razor-sharp.
‘It’s the dark that ’urts,’ shrieked the child as he threshed about in her arms. ‘It’s the dark. Where’s the matches? The dark’s making my eyes smart.’
Were they then both blind together? How else could darkness hurt?
‘Listen, I must put you down for a minute, while I try to find the matches. Lie quite still.’
She fought with him till at last he lay, sobbing and quivering, beside her, his fingers clutching at her nightgown, his heels kicking against her.
‘Only for a minute.’
Her own hand was trembling as she groped for the matches. Supposing, when she found them, no answering gleam followed the striking, supposing this darkness was not for a minute but for the rest of life? Her fingers splashed into wetness: they had found another cup.
Nothing like cold tea for the eyes, Miss Ranskill, that’s a thing I’ve proved many a time when I’ve been stripping ceilings or been a bit too slap-dash with the creosote.
From the far island, the Carpenter was still guiding her.
Not fit to look after yourself, are you, Miss Ranskill?
She lifted the cup to her face and used it as an eye-bath until at last she was able to lift her grit-embedded lids, an act that required more courage than she had ever needed; not because of the pain but because she would rather have postponed the answer to a question.
A tiny light was showing from the oil-stove, a light more beautiful than sunset or moonrise. The candle she had lit was out. She could only just see the outline of the boy, lying in a pathetic heap at her side, but she did not need much light for what she had to do. The next few moments were spent in bathing his eyes, first with the tea, and then with the hem of Marjorie’s nightgown dipped in milk. His tears helped to rinse the torturing grit from under his eyelids.
‘I don’t want to die.’
Miss Ranskill made the same answer as before but without the same conviction.
‘You can’t die.’
Once again shuddering overtook the little boy. His teeth were chattering now. Presently he stiffened, his head jerked back, and he lay still in rigid terror before sagging once more into a collapsed whimpering bundle.
Rage filled Miss Ranskill, a rage that braced her own muscles till the boy gasped and wriggled and she realised she was gripping him fiercely. Then the crashing noise began again: it was louder this time, so loud that it felt as though the whole earth was cracked into pieces and was tearing the pieces into two with a horrible rending cacophony.
There was nothing to be done now but to wait and hate and hold the child in her arms.
Something was burning. A curious dry smell, reminiscent of a lime-kiln, pervaded the cellar. Was the house burning above their heads, and if so, how long would it be before it crashed in on them?
Miss Ranskill laid
the limp body of the boy back into the deck-chair. The wavering light from the stove showed her the bottom step of the stairs and she hurried up them. Even if the house were on fire, there might still be time to escape. It would be better to face the horror of the bombs than the terror of being burned to death.
The door at the top of the stairs resisted her. She tried to rattle the handle, but it would not even turn. She set shoulder to the panels, but made no impression on them. She felt in a non-existent pocket for the new knife, but her fingers only met the folds of Marjorie’s nightgown. Of course … she had left it upstairs in her bed. Last time she had left it in the Carpenter’s bed – in his grave. Because of that she had come to England, purposely, it seemed now, to meet this child whom she might have saved if she had not left another knife in her bed.
Not fit to look after yourself, are you, Miss Ranskill? Now if this knife was lost I reckon we’d be in Queer Street, eh?
Not fit to look after a child either. She made fresh and stronger assault on the door, but it was unrelenting. Perhaps there was something in the cellar that would be strong enough to batter a panel to splinters. A table-leg might do, but she doubted if she could make purchase enough with four legs fixed to a table.
The cellar seemed hotter when she returned to it. Then she noticed that something on top of the stove was glowing and smouldering and that the dry smell had increased. She groped for and found the teapot, took off the lid and poured the contents on to the stove. There was a hiss and a splutter, darkness and a choking smell. Then she trod on the matchbox, and in another minute the Christmas-tree smell of candles had overwhelmed the menace of fire, and the candle-lit dust turned golden in the air.
The child had fallen asleep again in the swift strange manner of all young creatures, though he was still twitching a little. Miss Ranskill covered him up again and then spent some minutes in cleaning and drying the stove with the edge of Marjorie’s nightgown. When it was alight once more and with the refilled kettle on the top of it, she sat back on her heels for a moment or two and considered what was the next thing to be done. She was dazed and exhausted. Sometime soon, she must battle with the cellar-door again, but she would have a cup of tea first; and when the child was awake she would make him cocoa. She was still hazy with shock, but another vague responsibility nagged at her mind. What was it she had to do? A tiny scuffling sound from behind the cupboard door reminded her, and, taking a candle, she crossed the cellar to see if everything was well with the little cat.
The star of the candle illumined a rumple of paper, a little mother cat and three sleek newly-licked kittens. They lay in a row, their blunt heads half hidden in their mother’s fur, their absurd tails towards Miss Ranskill, and they pulled and tugged in rhythm. The little cat’s eyes were shining, but there was anxiety in them as she rubbed her head gently against Miss Ranskill’s outstretched hand.
Now she added proud purring to the rhythmed tugging of her babies. She flicked her tail with a nonchalant air and it seemed to Miss Ranskill that she almost simpered.
‘Good little cat. If only I’d known. Poor little cat!’
For it was a very young creature and the small number of kittens showed that they were probably a first family.
Sometime, during the shattering crashes of the night, the little cat, suffering its unheeded pains, had gone quietly about its business of kitten-bearing, had dealt with them and loved them, its love conquering fear. And somehow those blind babies, unaware that there was anything strange about their welcome to the world, had crawled to the warmth of their mother and the milk that was ready at exactly the right time. There they lay in a neat row, one black, one tortoiseshell, and one tawny striped black, their heads sleeked and shining as the heads of any nanny-pampered schoolroom children: three tiny creatures, born in disregard of Germany and all its works. The mother-cat curved a protecting paw as Miss Ranskill’s finger went towards her babies.
‘All right, it’s quite all right. Nothing shall take them from you. These ones shan’t be drowned, I promise you.’
So, in the cellar, Miss Ranskill guaranteed succession to a long line of cats and kittens. It was a tiny contribution to the triumph of life over death.
‘No bucket-party for you,’ she said, as she returned with a saucer of milk and warmed water.
The cat shook herself free of her war-babies and lapped hungrily.
Miss Ranskill had lost her own desire for tea. Exhaustion was overwhelming her. Only sleep would bring comfort. She rolled a rug round her.
II
Miss Ranskill opened her eyes to see a low-hung star, so crisscrossed with bars as to suggest that it was suffering a strange eclipse. She blinked at it, puzzled by the new wonder above the island. Then, in a second or two, she remembered events, concisely and unemotionally as though they had been chapter-headings from a book – the death of the Carpenter, the voyage from the island and all the bewilderments and terrors of day and night. This, then, was her first awakening in England, not to sheets and fine china, a bedroom nosegay and birdsong in the garden.
Things aren’t what you’d think, Miss Ranskill, never have been yet. Seems as though there’s always someone having a game with us. Like as not when I get home I’ll find my little lad’s got the mumps so I’ll not know the shape of his face for a month of Sundays.
The barred light was not a star but the reflection from an oil-stove. She was in a cellar, and she did not know if it were night or morning since she was imprisoned against the light from sun or moon that, with the tides, had been her time-keepers. She groped on the floor until the rattle of matches in a box bespoke an old familiarity.
It must still be night or very early morning, for, when she had lit the candles, she saw that the boy on the bed was still in heavy sleep. Children, she knew, awakened lively as sparrows and at about the same time.
Her throat was dry. There was grit on her teeth and dust on herself, the child, and everything in the cellar. The sharpness of it on her lips recalled her struggle with sand on the day she had buried the Carpenter.
The silence was rather frightening, for the whisper of the boy’s breathing did not reach her, and there was no mockery of gulls to add truth to the Carpenter’s maxim that There’s always someone having a game with you.
Presently the little cat rustled out of the cupboard and reminded her that there were six instead of two to share in this present isolation and three mouths to be fed from the stores. It insinuated itself between her leg and a chair bar and purred cajolingly. It curved itself against the milk-bottle in feline worship, and Miss Ranskill began to count the rows of tins on the shelf opposite. There were two, four, six, eight that held milk. While one part of her mind made mechanical note, another part of it was astray. Eight tins would be enough for more than a week. Supposing that last bomb had been an infernal device, killing everyone else in the country? The four flat tins looked as though they held sardines… . They would get out of the cellar some day, of course. It was only a question of chip by chip, like hacking down a tree, but working at brick not timber. The round tins held soup and the bigger ones salmon, enough, so she calculated, for another week. England would be strange as a deserted island. She remembered reading a book about the last survivor of the world, his tour through the empty shops, his possession of all things and of nothing. Perhaps there would be mice for the cat until they could free themselves. Then there would be a different motor car every day, new clothes and no posterity. The boy could have the Crown of England as a hoop to trundle down the wide emptiness of Piccadilly – rattle, rattle, rattle until moss grew in the streets, though a hoop snatched from a toy-shop might run more smoothly and be just as valuable. The big square tin held tea.
Today or tomorrow (and it might, so she calculated absurdly, be either of those days now) she must count the stores and ration them. Meanwhile, she would dare to be generous to the cat. She filled a saucer full of milk and then crossed the cellar to the shelf where the candles were stored. Light would be the mos
t important thing in this new desolation, where there was no spendthrift sun or wiser moon to lavish and withdraw their gold and silver.
There was more provision in the cellar than there had been on the island, but fewer promises. Its infertility was horrible.
When she had counted the candles in the packets, Miss Ranskill made a detour round the cat so as not to disturb its lapping. So, in the island days, she had always, however tired she had been, moved gently or taken a longer path if the shorter had led past a gull’s feeding-place. She, when hungry, had known despair when a hooked fish had escaped her, and had learned to respect the hunter for food.
She did not know that always in the future she would pause on a pavement till a sparrow had finished its crumb, and that the sound of a thrush breaking snails on a rockery would still her movements.
She wondered if the boy had a large appetite. He was lying very still, his head on the crook of his arm, and his smile told that he was not a prisoner.
There is something terrifying in the isolation of anyone who watches a sleeper, and Miss Ranskill, looking at the slumbering boy, wondered about the feelings of wardens as they glanced through the grilles at night and saw the bodies, meaningless as bolsters arranged by practical jokers, and no more occupied than the clothing in second-hand shops. Sleep, for all prisoners, is the time of triumphal escape. She had sometimes seen the Carpenter lying in his freedom, had wondered if he were at home by the fireside or taking stocks of his tools in the shop with the carpeting of wood-curls, or at sea or still on the island. Sometimes he had been able to tell her in the morning. She had often wondered where the final dream had taken him when he lay, still breathing on the beach, his body performing its mechanical work until the empty exertion exhausted it too much.
It seemed, while she watched, as though the boy too had stopped breathing: the blanket scarcely moved above him. Then a little pucker of his lips told her that his dream was changing and she felt exasperation instead of fear. Children were always selfish. The Carpenter would have been up and about and helping her.
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