She dreaded and yet longed for the moment when the door would open. It was going to be difficult, painful, both for herself and the poor widow, but it would be easier in his house than in any other place. Surely there would be a spirit of sanity about his hearth and comfort and strength and common sense.
You’ve got to take things as they come, Miss Ranskill, and not get flummoxed. Troubles look big when they start, and less when you get on with them. It’s the same with building a house: that looks a big job, but when you’ve the first two courses of bricks laid, it only seems fit for dolls, so little it looks.
A window was flung open above her, and a head, decked with curling-pins, was framed in it.
‘Yes?’ said a voice.
Miss Ranskill looked up into the face of buxomness turned to slattern, at tortured hair, and pink cheeks smeared with powder.
All the rehearsals failed her. You could not break news or condole when your neck was cricked at such an angle and when the face above showed such impatience. One slim hope was left: perhaps she was addressing Mrs Thompson.
‘Is Mrs Reid in?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I wonder – I, I have a message, a –’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it’s rather – I mean, if –’
‘Are you from the gas?’
There was suspicion in the voice, but the words meant nothing to Miss Ranskill.
‘From the gas?’ she repeated.
‘Because, if that’s what it is, I’ve got something to say. That young man of yours read the meter all wrong. Must have done.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Miss Ranskill, meaning that she was not an agent from any inferno of blue hisses and stenches of tortuous pipes. ‘Oh no, certainly not.’
‘It’s no use “oh-noing” me. I tell you he must have done, and that’s why the bill’s not been paid. I’ve a friend who can read meters, and I’ve a letter all ready written to the Management. It’ll be there by tomorrow; so there’s no use your waiting.’
The window was edging downwards as Miss Ranskill spoke despairingly.
‘I’m not from the – from the gas. I came to give you something.’
The window shot up again.
‘Beg your pardon, Miss, I’m sure, but you know how it is. They send so many young ladies round now instead of the men you don’t know where you are. And talk about cheating … I’ll be down in a minute. I was just giving myself a bit of a wash. Where’s that boy?’
A frowsty black curtain blew outwards.
‘Colin! Colin! There’s a lady at the door. Let her in, can’t you? Colin!’
Colin’s the one I want to see. He’ll be getting a big lad now. The girl was all for her mother and the first boy died like I told you, but I reckon Colin’ll remember his dad though he was only six then.
Steps sounded on a stairway inside the house and Miss Ranskill’s knuckles grew white as her fingernails met her palms. She was used to shocks by now. Supposing the boy, with the name that suggested a sheep-dog in all its faithful steadfastness, was a snivelling brat or a cock-a-hoop or –?
The door opened and he stood before her – a little Carpenter with the same grey eyes and serene forehead, the same stocky shoulders and nervous hands. She wanted to put an arm round him and take him away to some quiet field outside the village, there to tell him stories about his father, to weave the thread of the Carpenter’s eternity closer into the spiritual fabric of his son. This then was what she had come to do, not to pick flowers in woods or sip tea from thin china but to be a joiner.
Joiner and Carpenter, Miss Ranskill: there’s worse things than that.
She smiled suddenly and the boy responded, making confidence between them.
‘Mum’ll be down in a minute. She said you was to come in.’
There was reassurance in his manner of leading the way into the small kitchen.
Miss Ranskill looked first at the hearth. It was grey and dusty. She remembered the tale of the besom made for the ‘little lass’.
‘You’re Colin,’ she said. ‘You’re twelve years old, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
But she couldn’t tell him that, not now and not here in this slatternly room with its filming of dust and the unwashed pans in the sink. She could not tell him anything yet: there was too much between them.
The boy did not seem to expect an answer, for his hands (his father’s hands) were busy about some pieces of wood on the table.
Seems to me, Miss Ranskill, seems to me the mind moves faster when the hands are moving too. Me, in a sort of way, I was always fanciful. When I’m planing a door, I’m thinking about the grain all right, but I think most of the door when it’s hung; and who it’ll open and shut on. Hands carry one on when they’re busy: they’re always learning themselves.
She noticed how the boy’s hands were being taught by the wood as he picked it up and put it, piece by piece, into a rush bag bound with webbing. He touched it in the way that some people fondle animals, communicating with them. His fingers curved, surely and gently as though the chisel had a bloom on it.
‘What are you making?’ she asked.
‘I was building a boat, but –’ he hesitated.
‘Yes?’
‘You need fine grain for a small one. I’ve only got rough bits here.’
‘Would you like to go to sea?’
‘Dad did.’
‘What’s that about Dad?’
The door had opened and Mrs Reid was standing on the threshold. She was dressed now in an artificial mauve satin blouse and an over-tight brown skirt. Powder covered the smeariness of her face: her hair frizzed bad-temperedly.
‘I was only saying that Dad went to sea.’
From the boy’s expression, Miss Ranskill guessed that the word only was in his constant use. It would often be necessary for him to explain that he was only doing that or thinking this, that it was quite harmless only he wished he could be left alone sometimes.
‘Yes, he went to sea right enough, and he didn’t come back. You’ll stay where you are and work and get that scholarship. Now clear that clutter away and look sharp about it.’ Mrs Reid turned to Miss Ranskill, ‘How anyone keeps a house to rights when there’s a boy in it, beats me. Dirt and litter all over the place!’
Miss Ranskill was looking at the place where the bowl of nasturtiums should have been set on the table, at the window-sill empty of the blossoming geranium, and at the rag rug where no cat lay.
A cat on the rug, a plant-pot in the window and a bunch of flowers on the side-table, they make home if you ask me, Miss Ranskill, they and a clean hearthstone. Stands to reason, doesn’t it, what’s the first thing you learn to read at school? The cat sat on the mat, of course, well then!
Something had gone wrong with the Carpenter’s home and badly wrong too; unless distance had made him see it rosily or pride lent loyalty to his tongue. Yet he had always spoken with conviction.
My missus says I’m a rare woman in the house, a home-maker, if you know what I mean, Miss Ranskill. It’s only fair to share the work.
‘Look sharp, can’t you, Colin? How many more times I’d like to know!’
When the boy had left them, Miss Ranskill tried to begin her story. She began by describing how she had fallen overboard and been washed ashore on the island.
‘It may seem queer to you that I should come to you like this, and begin to talk about myself, but I wanted to – to break it to you that there was somebody else on that island. I expect you believed as my sister did, I mean as my sister believed about me, that your husband was drowned a good many years ago, but –’
Miss Ranskill hesitated. She was telling the story very badly. She had been trying to build up a picture, but the words had all gone wrong.
‘Your husband – the Carpenter – wasn’t drowned after all. Oh! please,’ she looked up into the unmoved face of the widow, ‘I hadn’t meant to raise your hopes. Forgive my clumsiness. Your
husband isn’t alive now, but –’
‘I know that,’ said Mrs Reid. ‘I’ve known that for some weeks now.’
So there had been a link between them after all. His death had stirred some extra sense or intuition in the woman.
Miss Ranskill felt humble: she need not have seen herself as newsbreaker or worried about a choice of words. The Carpenter’s spirit, blowing where it listed, had ended the need for words.
Mrs Reid was the first to break the silence. She spoke conversationally.
‘So you’ll be the lady then?’
‘The – the lady?’
‘The lady that was on that island with him.’
A sudden chill jerked down Miss Ranskill’s spine; for an instant her heart felt icy. By what strange communication did the Carpenter’s wife know that she, Nona Ranskill, was ‘the lady that was on the island’?’
She looked into the woman’s eyes: they were pale, insignificant and rather wary, more the eyes of a shrew than of a clairvoyante.
‘From what they said, I thought you’d have been older, but then I don’t suppose you’d be feeling up to much.’
‘They?’ Miss Ranskill’s thoughts were whirling madly, as once a flight of sea-gulls had whirled above the Carpenter’s body.
Who were ‘They’, birds or voices, the kind of voices that the Maid of Orleans had heard?
‘Yes,’ continued Mrs Reid reminiscently, ‘you could have knocked me down with a feather when they told me. It didn’t seem natural somehow.’
No, it would not seem quite natural. And now a great curiosity overwhelmed Miss Ranskill. She leaned forward.
‘Who were “They?”’ she asked, and braced herself for the answer.
‘He was a good husband in his way,’ Mrs Reid made the statement automatically, almost as though she felt it were expected of her. ‘Headstrong always, but he wasn’t mean.’ She looked down at her lap, then at Miss Ranskill. ‘You’re quite sure he was dead? You made sure of that, I suppose. You’re certain he’s dead all right?’
‘Dead all right.’ Miss Ranskill, caught back from her memory of that morning on the beach, the knife in the grave and all the abomination of desolation that had followed, felt herself trembling a little. How could she make answer to a woman possessed of the strange knowledge that ‘They’ had made known to her?
‘He – his body was dead,’ she replied at last.
‘There wasn’t a doctor, though, to sign the death certificate?’
‘There wasn’t anybody.’
‘No, I was forgetting. They told me you was alone with him.’
‘Who?’ Again a shiver rippled down Miss Ranskill’s spine. ‘Who told you?’
She braced herself for the answer.
‘The police, of course, not the “Special” here: he’s not much use. They sent a couple of men from Lidcot. Let me see, it would be just about three weeks ago. In the morning it was.’
The shallow blue eyes were turned towards the mantelpiece and the clock, which had, so Miss Ranskill supposed, continued its indifferent ticking all through the terrible hours when she had scrabbled like a dog in the sand on the island, and all through the hour, three weeks ago, when the police had brought their information to Mrs Reid.
She ought to have realised that there could have been no ‘revelations’ except in the newspaper sense of that word, in a room like this.
She should have remembered how intensely the police had questioned her about the Carpenter on their visit to the Mallisons’ house. Her mind harked back to that interview. She remembered how many things had been written down on the Police Inspector’s pad. Of course, it had been their business to inform the widow of what had happened.
She felt drained, as though virtue had gone out of her.
Mrs Reid went on talking.
‘It does seem a thing, doesn’t it? I mean without a doctor or clergyman and no proper funeral or nothing. Still, they seemed to think it would be all right about my having drawn the insurance money before I should have. They didn’t think the insurance people would grumble about that. Anyway, if there should be bother about that I’d have a right to his pay for all those years. I can’t stand to lose both.’
She leaned forward and lowered her voice a little.
‘Least said soonest mended, is what I always say. Talking won’t bring him back, will it?’
‘No.’ To Miss Ranskill the monosyllable sounded like the first stroke of a death-knell. ‘No, nothing will bring him back, I’m afraid.’
‘I couldn’t be expected to get into mourning twice over, could I? I mean to say I’ve not the coupons to spare now, and that’s a fact. Besides, it would make a lot of talk. You know what they are in these villages. You see what I mean, don’t you?’
Yes, Miss Ranskill saw. She had thought herself invulnerable by now, but this sudden smashing of the image created by the Carpenter shocked her so much that she felt cold and physically sick.
Could his wife think of nothing but insurance money and the neighbours? Could she not rend her heart anew just for a little while, or ask a single tender question?
For a moment the boy was forgotten, and Miss Ranskill rose to go.
‘I – It was stupid of me to come and take up your time. I hadn’t realised that of course the police would have told you about – about Reid – Mr – Reid.’
‘Oh! you mustn’t go yet. Maybe you’d like a nice cup of tea. There’s still one or two things we might talk over.’
‘Thank you.’ Miss Ranskill felt badly in need of tea after this new ordeal. Perhaps it would pull her together, and make her feel less sick.
‘I could do with a cup myself. I’ve been feeling a bit upset ever since the police came. Still,’ Mrs Reid rose and poked the ash-choked fire. ‘Still, if Harry had to die, it’s a good thing it happened when it did, and that’s a fact.’
She moved about the kitchen and set dusty teapot on dusty tray, blew some flecks of soot from a lump of margarine, embedded a spoon further into its jam-jar and gave a loaf of bread a shake.
Undoubtedly the man had been the home-maker.
‘Funny thing,’ she observed, ‘to think of me in mourning all those years ago and Harry alive.’
Miss Ranskill stared in amazement at the plump body, at the show of sleek calves and the feet crammed into over-tight shoes.
This then was the woman the Carpenter had cherished. Her indifference had been shielded by the words of his loyalty. She was naked and he had clothed her; but now the garments were dropping from her one by one with every word that she spoke.
‘Did he leave any last message?’ she now asked abruptly.
‘No, you see – there wasn’t time. It happened very suddenly. He’d been working hard. He lifted a big stone. One minute he was well and strong. It was a heart attack. He didn’t regain consciousness.’
Miss Ranskill covered her eyes with her hands.
‘I can see you’re highly-strung, same as me. I’ve always been a sufferer with my nerves. You’d better drink this down: it’ll steady you.’
‘I’m only crying because – because it should be so much worse for you than for me.’
‘Yes, I was proper upset when they told me Harry had been lost at sea.’ Mrs Reid’s voice took on a tone of pride. ‘I wouldn’t eat a thing for days and days: not a bite passed my lips. And I can tell you I was upset again when the police came. Seemed almost like as though he’d died twice.’
She drank her tea noisily.
‘But doesn’t it seem better to know that he had those extra years of life, even if they were hard ones? I –’ Miss Ranskill’s mind groped vainly for adequate words and only snatched at the commonplace, ‘I made him as comfortable as I could.’
‘I’m sure,’ replied Mrs Reid politely.
‘He talked about you a great deal.’ Miss Ranskill’s voice was pleading. ‘And about the boy and his home.’ She looked round the room. If only her glance could sweep the dust from all those smeary surfaces and her mind’s eye
restore the kitchen to what it had once been to her.
‘He always was like an old woman about the house. He was handy too, I’ll say that for him. I had to let the place go a bit after he went. It’s been too much for me altogether, but what can you do in war-time. Yes, I’ve missed Harry about the house, time and again I’ve missed him. I’ll give you another cup of tea when the kettle boils up.’
Miss Ranskill, while waiting for the kettle to boil, tried to talk a little about the life on the island. It was only fair that Mrs Reid should be told as much as possible, though there was little enough to be said and less still that seemed to be understood.
‘Well, fancy that now! Poor Harry!’ was the widow’s favourite expression. Once, she remarked, ‘You’d have thought he’d have built a house while he was about it!’ and once, ‘Fancy him taking all that time to build a boat. He used to be reckoned a smart worker.’
Her eyes kept seeking the clock, once or twice she stifled yawns.
At the end she commented, ‘I shan’t say anything to anyone myself, and if I was you I wouldn’t say anything neither. Folks might think it funny you and him being alone together on the island all those years. And they’d think it funny about me too; lot of Nosey Parkers they are. It’s nobody’s business but yours and mine and the police, is it?’
‘No,’ said Miss Ranskill, and hoped she was not going to be sick.
‘Anyway, there’s no need to say anything to Colin, might upset him, there’s no knowing. It took him quite a while to get over it. Colin’s fanciful. It wouldn’t do to upset him.’
‘But there’s the boat,’ said Miss Ranskill. ‘I wanted him to have the boat that his father made.’
‘Boat!’ The tone of Mrs Reid’s voice reduced the boat to the dead wood it had been before the Carpenter’s skill had coaxed the planks to curving, before water and sun and air had quickened it to the resistance that the sea had failed to break.
‘Boat! What should he want with a boat? Colin’s the chance of something better than that. He’s brains if he chose to use them. We don’t want to go upsetting him now talking about his father.’
‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ thought Miss Ranskill as she watched her hostess pouring water into the teapot. ‘It doesn’t seem fair to cheat him of the years his father was alive.’ But she only said, ‘I shall keep the boat then, I mean, I shall have it kept. Perhaps when the boy is older he might like it. It’s the sort of thing that a boy would like.’
Miss Ranskill Comes Home Page 20