Green and gold willows edged a stream. But what went ye out for to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
A re-eed shaken with the wi-ind, a re-eed shaken with the wi-ind. The chant of the engine was so clear to Miss Ranskill that she felt the other occupants of the carriage must interpret it too.
Ten days ago she had shuffled away the broken glass below Marjorie’s spare room window, had looked through the empty frames to see Lucy Brown running hatless and bare-legged down the path on her way to a wedding. Before that, the girl had talked to her for a few minutes.
‘Rex says you know about us. Nobody else must till afterwards. Rex is being awfully sweet about it. He says he likes me better in these things. Mummy would be horrified. She’d always planned a white wedding and never in May either. But you can’t wait for June in war-time when – when we may only have one week of May ever – for all our lives.’ The goldeny eyes had shown fear for a second time. ‘Rex doesn’t think about what – what might happen. I don’t think he’s ever thought he mightn’t be lucky. Boys don’t when they’re that age: it’s only the women who know. So we laugh a lot and I don’t think he ever guesses.’
A re-eed shaken with the wi-ind, chugged the engine, But what went ye out for to see?
Now the carriage window framed a seascape and then a tangle of barbed wire made Teignmouth beach ugly. The red rocks of Dawlish had kept their shape and the waves were scudding inland. Miss Ranskill remembered journeys taken to the West Country as a child, her first sight of the sea and the thought that the waves were hurrying inland to cool the hot tired wheels of the train so that it could run faster to the land of buckets and spades, sandy buns, jelly-fish and seaside lodgings.
The label on the kittens’ basket flapped in the salty breeze. There had been trouble about the kittens. The clank of a bucket-handle on the morning after the air-raid had reminded Miss Ranskill of a promise she had made in the cellar.
‘Oh! well,’ Marjorie had looked cross and tired. ‘Oh, well, I suppose if you promised Cecil, we’ll have to keep one. I suppose we shall get a lot of mice from the bombed houses. All the same –’
‘Can I draown the kittens?’ the request came from Cecil, ‘lemme draown them!’
‘There you see, he doesn’t want a kitten at all. No, Cecil, nice little boys don’t drown kittens. Your mother can do it properly. You’d better do it now, Mrs Bostock, but I suppose you’d better keep one or the cat will be ill.’
‘But, Marjorie, I didn’t promise Cecil.’
‘I thought you said you did.’
‘I promised,’ and here Miss Ranskill hesitated because it was quite impossible to say in the presence of Mrs Bostock, ‘I promised the cat.’
She did not feel sure that, even to one with as high a sense of honour as Marjorie, a promise made to a cat would count. Anyway, it would sound idiotic, and was unreasonable. She would never be able to explain the instinct that had forced her to guarantee cathood for three blind kittens.
‘Oh! well, I suppose Rex wants them for mascots or something. If you promised him, we’d better keep them. They’ll have to stay where they are though. You know we’ve got to go to a hotel for at least a fortnight while the windows and things are repaired.’
Later, feeling guilty because she was using part of the money lent by Marjorie, Miss Ranskill had bought a basket, big enough for the cat and her unweaned kittens.
The days that had wrought such a change in them had altered Miss Ranskill too, and brought her knowledge.
She was now recognised as a citizen and had an identity card to prove her right to exist. She had three ration books, one for clothes, one for food, and a third that enabled her to buy three-quarters of a pound of sweets each month.
But what went ye out for to see? A reed shaken with the wind or three ration books?
She had an identity disc too – a parting present from Marjorie, who had delivered a speech when she gave it.
‘You won’t think me morbid or anything, will you, old thing? But honestly it’s the most practical present I could think of. If you should cop it in a blitz, it would save an awful lot of fag to the people who’d dig you out. I mean, nowadays when time’s so precious one really oughtn’t to go on giving bother after one’s dead. Besides, if there should be an invasion, and I honestly hope, I mean, I think there may be one, it might save you being shovelled into a Hun grave. Because, after all, there’d be some women among the invaders, nurses and things. Besides, there’d probably only be odd bits of you left and a few scraps of clothes. Honestly, I can’t think of anything more ghastly than being buried with Huns – enough to make you turn in your grave, if you’d anything left to turn, I mean. And, I say, old thing, I’ve had the school motto engraved on the back of the identity disc to make a sort of link between us.’
The patch of her wrist that lay underneath the identity disc began to itch a little and she scratched it, rubbing out traces of the embossed legend, Honour before Honours.
‘Anyway,’ she thought, ‘if I am blitzed and am due for a George Medal, they won’t bother to give it to me if they read the school motto, and they won’t think I’ve been looting shop- windows either.’
For by now Miss Ranskill knew a little about the war, just enough to keep her as quiet and wary as the occasional rider of a hired hack should be, if ever he were daring enough to allow himself to be shown round a Newmarket training-stable. She knew England had won the Battle of North Africa, that it was no longer ‘done’ to bewail Communism, that the Government Evacuation Scheme had been a failure, but that it had laid bare the most appalling pocks in our civilisation. She knew what ‘V’ stood for, and what ARP meant. She knew that it was smart to be shabby, and that it was also rather clever to turn coloured linen bedspreads into dresses and to imagine that the Government didn’t know. She knew that Lord Woolton ruled flesh, fowls and a few good red herrings. She knew just as much about the Battle of Britain as little Wilhelmine had known of Blenheim, but had learned to be as loyal as old Caspar to Marlborough’s successor.
Yet, in spite of identity card and disc, three ration books, a third-class ticket to Hampshire, a suitcase, a collection of carpentry tools, three kittens and a cat, Miss Ranskill was a woman whose will had been passed for probate three years ago.
Marjorie had been generous and had lent money for clothes and the journey and at least a week’s future expenses.
If, retaining her present knowledge, she could put back the clock, return to the island and (her heart lifted at the thought) talk to the Carpenter, what would she have to tell him? There they had struggled for food against the wiles of that food and the elements. Here, they must submit to the dictates of bureaucracy before being allowed to buy food and clothing. There the dying of the beacon fire had been a tragedy: here the showing of a light by night was a crime. On the island two people had done the work of two. In England a thousand might do the work of four thousand or ten do the work of two. On the island, they had obeyed the rules they had made, in this other island, in spite of the need for weight-pulling, in spite of the equal need to win the war, thousands were employed to see that the rest did not cheat. What would the Carpenter make of that?
I tell you this, Miss Ranskill, I tell you this, we might be a lot worse off than what we are here. Fancy trying to live anywhere else with nothing but what we’ve got here. We think now we’d be grateful for a roof over our heads, wait till we’ve got it and then see how we’ll clutter up the rooms. Wait till you see the shops, Miss Ranskill. You’re pleased with the powder-puff I made you, but it’ll only be fit for the dustbin by the time you’ve looked in one shop-window. Too much or not enough – that’s what it is all over the world and nobody knows when they’ve got enough, that’s how it is, Miss Ranskill.
A fidgeting in the carriage compelled her mind to return from its sea-lit voyage. The woman opposite was groping in her handbag. Since the beginning of the journey she had read a few pages from one book and a few from another, had written down one or two cro
ssword puzzle clues and done several rows of knitting. Now she had lit a cigarette and was turning the contents of her handbag out on to her lap. There were two boxes of matches: those were still invaluable to Miss Ranskill’s eyes. There were two handkerchiefs, a cigarette-case, a lipstick, some orange sticks, a pocket-diary, a tiny mirror, a book of stamps, a railway ticket, an identity card, a powder compact and a letter.
Only the handkerchiefs and the matches would have been the slightest use to the Miss Ranskill of the Island. Only the handkerchiefs, the identity cards and (well, yes) the powder compact were much use to anyone in a railway carriage. Miss Ranskill was beginning to feel superior until a fluttering label attracted her and she remembered the kittens and the set of tools.
You’ve got to keep a sense of proportion, Miss Ranskill, there’d be nothing to laugh at else.
She too was a fool in the company of at least one other fool, and for the first time during the journey she felt the warmth of companionship.
The young airman in the far corner of the carriage was asleep. There were dark shadows under his eyes and his mouth was restless. It must be odd to him to be travelling like this. He and his kind were evolving slowly into a race apart. Engendered just before the last war, they were already incomprehensible and remote. They had seen what none but their generation could see – cities burning below them and the bowl of the stars above. The wings of Icarus melted when he was still young. What would happen to these men when the money they had been used to burn in the air was dissipated to other purposes? How would they, who had seen the ten-acre meadows as inch-wide patches for a county’s quilt with the warp and weft of streams and hedges no thicker than rows of stitching, keep the bounds of a counter in the years to come and employ their fingers to cut patterns of crêpe-de-Chine for customers?
Miss Ranskill remembered their fathers in the days after the last war. So many of them had journeyed through the valley of humiliation, worn smooth by the steps of commercial travellers; and had waited diffidently on doorsteps to sell vacuum cleaners and gimcrack gadgets. Fingers that had gripped joy-sticks had closed gratefully on the tips of war profiteers at petrol-filling stations.
To the young airman, asleep in his corner, the war must be a dream – half nightmare, half enchantment: perhaps even now he dreamed of the awakening.
The sailor beside the airman was leaning forward a little so that his view through the window was not interrupted. He was not such a puzzle to Miss Ranskill. She too had looked at the sea until her eyes had ached for the grey of a ship to break the greater grey of water, and her own eyes now showed the same network at the corners. He had the scoured look that makes every seaman ashore appear more immaculate than his civilian fellows. The unconfined muscles of his neck showed arrogantly above his collar and the straight line of his flannel. He was taking his fill of the land, but he looked rather bored by it. Suddenly Miss Ranskill remembered that in all her life she had never seen a sailor in a field. She wondered if there were any sea-superstition that banned meadows as unlucky, wondered what the sailor would reply if she asked him, imagined the astonishment of the other passengers supposing she did, and laughed out loud.
Now on a desert island one may laugh as freely and inconsequently as one chooses, and very slight things serve to amuse. The expression of a gull may remind one of a woman in the village at home, its gait and consequential air of someone about to open a bazaar. The astonished eyes of a crab may seem funny. Memory too plays such an important part in desert island life that one is ready and eager to be amused.
When we’ve given over remembering how to laugh, Miss Ranskill, we’ll be no better than the fishes. Many’s the time I’ve laughed out loud before you was washed ashore to cheer me up, and many’s the time I burst out laughing still even when I’m in one cove and you’re in another. Laughter’s the only thing that keeps one sane to my way of thinking.
A desert island is a more suitable place for laughter though than a railway carriage in England. Miss Ranskill realised this truth, as she was made self-conscious by the alarmed gaze of the woman opposite. The sailor found her more interesting than the meadows he had been watching. He turned to look at her, and his sudden movement awakened the airman, who blinked amazedly.
A three-year-old child, on its mother’s lap, pointed a sticky finger and demanded, ‘Do it again!’ The elderly civilian at her side coughed rather peevishly.
Some explanation seemed necessary. Since Miss Ranskill found it impossible to give one, and equally impossible to keep silence throughout such concern, she compromised by saying, ‘I do apologise!’ in a voice that was very much louder than she had meant it to be.
Instantly all the eyes, except those belonging to the small child, were averted from her. Had she been naked, she could not have been treated with such severe seemliness.
‘Do it again!’ repeated the child.
‘’Ush!’ said the mother. ‘Give over looking at the lady,’ and she dumped the child round on her lap until it shared the view through the carriage window with its embarrassed elders.
And now Miss Ranskill was very much alone, reproved and excommunicate from the society of her fellow-beings. She sought consolation by looking at the identity card, which did not do much to reassure her, though it should have assured any official that Ranskill Nona M/FURL/2388/2 was a British citizen and had a right to existence.
The child turned round to glance at her but was again twisted into position by its mother.
‘Miaou!’ said the little cat from the basket on the rack, ‘Miaou! Miaou!’
Once more the occupants of the carriage stirred to look at Miss Ranskill. Some peeped furtively, some glanced once and then away.
‘Do it again!’ cried the child.
‘Miaou! Miaou!’ repeated the cat obligingly.
The extremely perturbed face of the child’s mother suggested that she thought it bad manners to practise ventriloquism in a train.
Miss Ranskill sighed, as she stood up and took the basket from the rack.
From the moment she opened the lid she stopped being an alien. She and the little cat and the kittens became the most popular travellers.
‘Did you ever!’ said the mother of the baby. ‘What little dears!’
The sailor raised the chin of the black kitten with a forefinger until the milky eyes blinked at him.
‘We’d one the spit of this in the ship,’ he said. ‘It fell overboard off Gib – a bad day’s work that was. Might have been this little chap’s twin.’
The airman plucked the tortoiseshell from Miss Ranskill’s lap and laid it in the palm of his hand.
The woman opposite became confidential.
‘I’d a lovely cat at home, orange with a great white ruff,’ she traced the tawny stripes of the smallest kitten with a scarlet fingernail. ‘I had to give him away when I went into digs and started office work. Then I found my landlady would have looked after him for me, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.’
‘Kitty! Kitty!’ shrilled the child.
‘The very spit of this one,’ repeated the sailor. ‘I wouldn’t mind being a ship’s cat myself. Want to come to sea, do you?’
He addressed the black kitten and Miss Ranskill answered for it.
‘Would you like to have it? If you would I could send it to you as soon as it can leave its mother, if you give me your address. It might be lucky.’
‘What about making a few flights over Germany, eh?’
The airman was questioning the tortoiseshell but the child’s mother reproved him.
‘All very well, but suppose you was shot down, what happens to the kitten then?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ replied the airman humbly.
The man by Miss Ranskill’s side spoke for the first time.
‘We are a truly remarkable people!’ he declared. ‘I have always maintained that if the Speaker kept a supply of puppies to be produced in the House at appropriate moments, the most heated debates would end amicably.
In fact, if the Germans were dog-lovers there need have been no war. An International Kennel Club could have done much more than any League of Nations. You, Madam, who can anticipate so glibly the tragedy of a kitten’s death and ignore what to you is, presumably, the minor accident of the loss of a man’s life, prove my point.’
And now, the man in the waterproof took Miss Ranskill’s place as outcast.
The child’s mother sucked her teeth ostentatiously, and muttered, ‘Well, I mean to say, poor dumb animals!’ and turned her offspring’s back on the brutal speaker.
‘Poor little beggar,’ said the airman, as he stroked the kitten under its golden chin.
‘If you was wanting a home for the black one,’ suggested the sailor.
In five minutes, Miss Ranskill had found homes for all the kittens. Three slips of paper, bearing addresses to which they might be sent as soon as they could leave their mother, joined the identity card and ration books in her handbag. Once more she was a person of some consequence, a giver of gifts with a place in society.
The man by her side craned a vulture neck to peer at the huddle of kittens in her lap.
‘A remarkable people,’ he repeated. ‘You, Madam, have probably drunk milkless tea for the last few years and sacrificed your butter ration for the sake of a cat’s paws. You would think it generosity to take meat from the mouth of a child and give it to your lap-dog.’
‘For the last few years,’ Miss Ranskill told him, ‘I have not tasted milk or tea or butter. I’ve robbed gulls’ nests and snatched at the fish they dropped from their mouths whenever they were fools enough to open them.’
And now she was in isolation again, outcast with the man who had no truck with kittens. The females in the carriage looked uncomfortable, the males, except her partner, incredulous.
‘Sounds like a desert island,’ he muttered.
‘It was a desert island.’
Miss Ranskill Comes Home Page 16