Miss Ranskill Comes Home

by Barbara Euphan Todd

  The remark was not received pleasantly by Mrs Phillips.

  ‘Nona’s so difficult,’ was becoming Edith’s favourite remark. ‘If only that man on the island had been someone of her own class, things might have been very different. As it is, she doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.’

  Certainly, Miss Ranskill was finding life in the village difficult. Her only pleasure (a strange one) was the fact that she had been made an ARP Warden and was occasionally summoned to patrol her ‘beat’ by night. Others might grumble, but she was perfectly happy and bore the discomfort of the tin helmet for the sake of free feet. No orders had been issued about shoes, so, though she wore the official blue overcoat and respirator, she carried her shoes and stuffed her stockings into her pockets.

  The 1943 moons matched that year’s harvest in their generosity, and, on one memorable night, she saw sunflowers, golden as at noonday, against the wall of a cottage and below them a row of tobacco plants, silver as the moon itself.

  In some ways, the moonless nights were even better. Then the tiny illegal strips of light, chinking down the sides of cottage windows, gave her excuse to knock. Sometimes she would be given a cup of tea or an apple: and a slow easy friendship would be made in that friendly hour between today and tomorrow, when evening has slipped away and morning is still far off.

  Sometimes there would be an encounter on the road with a soldier, who had snatched the last hour of his embarkation leave and was walking to the town to catch the midnight train. The soldiers were mostly local lads, a little sad after their recent goodbyes, a little solemn at the thought of what might be coming; but glad to meet a middle-aged woman to whom, just for a moment or two, and because she was almost a stranger, they could stop pretending to be real soldiers and show what was in their minds before they turned the corner that ended her beat.

  Other wayfarers went overhead – the great night bombers on their flights to France or Germany or the Low Countries. Their lights helped her to conjure up their shapes – the long bodies and the great stiff wings. Her own thoughts soared with them as she tried to understand the feelings of the men in the machines. Were their minds exalted as their bodies? Were they excited? Did they think of the return or only of the setting forth? Were they afraid, or numbed to a sense of fatality? Were they squandering their thoughts, fussing perhaps over a mounting mess-bill, feeling irritable or nagged by the difficulty of finding lodging for their wives in the crowded villages near the aerodrome? Or were they, perhaps, concentrating on the beauty of the moonlight, looking their last on all things lovely, so that they could store it up as spiritual armament against what might befall, if ever they needed to turn their inward eyes towards an English moonscape at the moment when the foreign ground roared up to meet them?

  It was easier to hear them go when she was helping (or trying to help) to safeguard the land they were leaving than when, lying in her bed, she listened to the pulsing of the machines overhead, beating like heavy hearts in rhythm one with another. Then it seemed betrayal to feel sleepy, to turn between the sheets while the engines beat out their reproach – Could ye not watch with me one hour, one hour, one hour? Could ye not watch with me one hour?

  Often, towards the end of a night-patrol, she watched the machines coming back. One safe, another and another and another. Surely there was a gap in that formation? No, another lonely one was coming in. Soon the men would be breakfasting in the mess; they would have made their reports, and, later in the day, she might see some of them in the village, unchanged outwardly, carrying their wounds and scars within.

  She knew now what happened when a bomber crashed.

  One day when she was harvesting, alone with an old farmer in an upland field, a low-flying bomber had swooped towards them, tilting its wings while the shadow it threw rocked in blackness across the golden stubble, then turned and flew away.

  ‘Like a great bird!’ said the farmer.

  They watched it fly low into the valley, swoop towards a hedge, rise, clear it, and go winging its way towards a belt of trees that fringed the village.

  ‘Queer!’ said the farmer. ‘I’ve never seen a bomber stunt like that.’ He turned to his stook, but Miss Ranskill stood watching. Even in that moment, she felt a little guilty. She was used to aeroplanes by now and should have learned better than to stand, like a lazy child, gazing at something that would relieve the monotony of stooking.

  The bomber couldn’t possibly be so near the ground as it looked. It couldn’t surely be going to land in front of those trees. Suddenly it rose on its tail, its wings outstretched like giant arms in the position of crucifixion – up, up – and, with what seemed no more to spare than when a Grand National horse clears Beecher’s Brook – over. Then, a crash (a memorable horror of sound so impressing itself on Miss Ranskill’s mind that she recognised it again on nights when others said bombs had fallen) and a pillar of smoke rising black against the sky.

  The aeroplane had managed to fly just clear of the village. The young men had saved the old ladies, but three of the crew were killed.

  II

  One morning, when Miss Ranskill had entered a field of corn that had been cut the day before, she saw that a girl was sitting by the side of the hedge. Her dark hair was tumbled across her cheek and her head was bent over something she was making a lap for. The sight of her roused memory, and, as Miss Ranskill walked nearer and saw what she was holding, she realised it was significant that a girl, who looked as this one did, should be nursing a rabbit so tenderly. A girl and a baby rabbit, where had she seen the two together before?

  She turned a stook with her pitchfork, seeing dew-silvered cobwebs against the gold of the straw, seeing the amazing red and blue brilliance of the trespassing flowers that always seemed to draw more colour from a wheat-field than from any other soil. But she was watching another scene as well, a scene in a cellar where a bare-legged girl, looking at her young man, had somehow reminded her of a young and very frightened rabbit newly aware of horror in the world.

  ‘Does it matter my being here?’ The girl was looking at her. She was also soothing the rabbit with her fingers.

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t. We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  The girl furrowed her forehead.

  ‘It’s all right, my pet: don’t wriggle so. Sorry! I wasn’t speaking to you. Yes, I think we did meet, but I can’t remember quite where –’

  ‘In Marjorie Mallison’s cellar.’

  ‘Oh! yes, of course. It was the night our house was bombed out and Mummy and I and you and Rex – and you were kind. It’s awful of me, but I can’t quite remember your name?’

  ‘Ranskill, Nona Ranskill. And you’re Mrs Mallison now.’

  The gold of a slim wedding-ring was half buried in rabbit’s fur until the girl lifted her left hand a little.

  ‘To strangers I am. I’d rather be Lucy to you, though. Don’t you remember how we talked that night, and how I hadn’t any wedding-clothes or anything?’

  ‘And now?’

  Miss Ranskill dropped her coat by the hedgeside and sat down.

  ‘Same clothes.’ Young Mrs Mallison patted her brown tweed skirt. ‘And they gave me some extra coupons.’

  That wasn’t what Miss Ranskill wanted to learn.

  ‘Look at this poor little rabbit. It’s sopping and frightened. It must have been out all night. It doesn’t seem damaged though. I wonder if it got a wump on the head from one of those beastly harvesters and hid and then sort of fainted. It’s coming round now.’

  ‘Probably it did.’

  Miss Ranskill fingered the soft fur, grey like matted cobwebs where it was not darkened by dew. She remembered the last strip of corn and the gang of children surrounding it. Their knuckles had whitened as they gripped their sticks tightly, and, as the terrified rabbits darted towards the cover of the fallen stooks, shrilled an age-old cry of persecution – ‘Yi-yi-yi. Yi-yi-yi.’

  ‘Sorry, I suppose you are a harvester too.’ The girl glanced towards Miss Ransk
ill’s pitchfork.

  ‘Yes, but not that sort. It’s the one thing I hate about harvesting, especially when the little girls join in.’

  ‘It seems so frightful somehow, just as though there weren’t enough ghastly things going on.’

  Miss Ranskill looked at her anxiously for a moment and then her anxiety slipped away. For the girl had that undefinable bloom on her that flourishes through love and cherishment. There was serenity on her forehead and awareness in her goldeny eyes. Possession shone in her. She had her armour now against bewilderment and fear and loneliness, if these things should assail her.

  The rabbit quivered, its ears flicked backwards. For a moment it crouched in the girl’s lap, and then, it seemed only in another moment, its white scut was disappearing under the cover of a stook two yards away.

  ‘It is all right then – for today, anyway.’

  ‘For today, anyway.’ Miss Ranskill wondered how often the young wife had used that same phrase in her heart after the night bombers had returned. She shook the thought away, and asked a question.

  ‘Are you staying here?’

  ‘Yes, at a guest house. Rex is on leave, and I managed to get my holiday at the same time. He’s stationed near here now. We would have gone right away, but we’ve been looking for rooms for later on. There isn’t any inch anywhere. We can’t afford hotels, and anyway they’re crammed, besides – it wouldn’t do. We thought perhaps two rooms in a friendly house. I’d help with the cooking and everything as soon as I could, of course. But people seem so frightened of babies.’

  She continued to talk in jerky sentences while her hands moved restlessly in her lap, as though she were still caressing the rabbit.

  ‘One’s got to look ahead – even if it’s going to be a quite different “ahead” from the one we had planned. It wouldn’t be yet, of course. But presently they’ll release me from my job, and then I shall have to go steady for a bit. I could go into a nursing-home to have the baby. It’s afterwards that’s going to be so difficult. Mummy’s been living in hotels ever since our house was bombed. There is Rex’s mother, but – I ask you!’

  Miss Ranskill had no need to be asked. Her mind, busy home-hunting, had already rejected Marjorie’s battle-eager establishment.

  ‘No, not unless you have triplets who could be made to form threes when they’re learning to walk.’

  ‘Poor tinies! They’d have to be boys too, one for the Navy, one for the Army, and one for the Air Force!’

  She laughed suddenly, and Miss Ranskill remembered Rex’s description of her – ‘She laughs a lot and she’s comforting.’

  As though the word had carried from one mind to another, the girl used it again in her next sentence.

  ‘Mother-in-law’s such a silly name, isn’t it? It ought to be mother-in-love or – or something comforting. It’s so stupid too. Fancy being a wife – in-law; there’d be legal disputes at once! I say, I’m keeping you from your harvesting.’

  ‘No, it’s very wet still; anyway, this is important.’

  Without the young green corn there could have been no harvest; without the young generation, bred in war-time and nurtured through danger, there would be no meaning in the golden fields. The sun would shine in vain.

  ‘The mater (I’ve got to call her that) is against the baby. I mean she thinks we ought to wait till after the war. She thinks it will distract – that’s what she said – distract Rex from his job, bothering about me and it. As if, as if he oughtn’t to be distracted in that way. What’s the use of killing if you aren’t giving anything back? I mean, well, I mean, a gardener spends a lot of time weeding, doesn’t he? But what’s the use if he’s just going to leave bare beds and not plant better things instead of the weeds? It wouldn’t make sense; it wouldn’t be worth while.’

  Truth was throbbing in Miss Ranskill’s mind. She, in her confusion, had been irritated by all the little affairs and incessant pin-pricks of war-time, had made too many lazy journeys back to the island to rest in the comforting shadow of the Carpenter’s memory. This girl had a clearer view.

  ‘You see, it isn’t as if they like killing. Rex says it’s only the old women who think they do. Even when they hate, as most of them do, because of things that have happened to their friends in the Forces and relations at home, it’s all too sort of impersonal to be satisfactory. It’s all sort of – oh! I can’t explain, deadening in a way, except to the few. It’s different in Fighters, of course, their fighting is closer. But if you’ve got to kill, well then, you’ve got to, well, birth as well. I can’t think of another word. It’s compensating. Rex is clever. He understands better than I do. He can explain things, but I know.’

  Yes, she knew now: she was a woman. Reason made way for wisdom in her. For the next months, anyway, she would be guided by instinct. Her body would obey the tiny indomitable unreasoning will within her, would give way to its slow growth with perfect timing, and make ready for its later needs.

  The corn-stook was rustling now and she smiled as she looked towards it.

  ‘It’s easier for rabbit mothers, isn’t it? I don’t mean in the silly way people talk about having babies as easily as rabbits do. I mean there’s plenty of room in a burrow, and there doesn’t seem to be any room in houses. That’s another thing the mater said. She said it was selfish to bring babies into the world just now, when everyone ought to be doing war-jobs and not thinking about milk-bottles. The only thing she will like, will be being a grandmother in ARP uniform. She’ll get a sort of kick out of that; because everyone will tell her how splendid she is, and what an example to people like me – young mothers.’

  She gave a fair imitation of Marjorie’s voice.

  ‘“Young mothers who have nothing better to do than to idle along the roads pushing perambulators.” That’s one of the things she said, and she sort of hinted that I was only having the baby so that I could leave my job. Just as though it isn’t my job.’

  A small quivering nose thrust out between the corn-stalks, and then the whole of the rabbit emerged, glanced in horror at the humans, and went bobbing across the field.

  ‘It’s quite all right again, look!’ The girl pointed. ‘Perhaps it’s a sort of omen against all the things they say about not having babies in war-time, not bringing them into such a dangerous world. The rabbit had a bad time, but it’s all right now.’

  ‘It’s all right now,’ echoed Miss Ranskill. ‘So are the kittens that were born in the cellar. Do you remember? They’ve all gone to different homes.’

  The smooth forehead wrinkled again.

  ‘Oh yes! And you told me you’d promised the cat they shouldn’t be drowned because they’d been born in a cellar and in spite of Germany. I must have been remembering without knowing it all the time I’ve been talking to you. That’s why I’ve said so much. And of course you know the real reason.’

  ‘What reason, about what?’ asked Miss Ranskill.

  ‘The real reason why I must have the baby. In case there wasn’t any – any Rex after the war; there’d still be a Rex in a way, wouldn’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  One couldn’t deny in the face of truth. One couldn’t say that everything was bound to be all right. Miss Ranskill groped in her mind for the quotation she needed and found it.

  ‘You mean – “And those who would have been, their sons, they gave, their immortality.”’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. He mustn’t give that as well if he’s got to give –’

  She jerked up the cuff of her white sweater and looked at her watch.

  ‘I must go. Rex was writing letters, but he’ll have finished now. We’re going to look at another lot of rooms, but I don’t suppose they’ll be any use. Thanks most awfully for bothering to stop to talk –’

  Miss Ranskill smiled as she remembered how very little she had spoken at all. The young and the old, she remembered, were always in the greatest need of listeners.

  ‘I say, if by any chance you should hear of anything near here, could
you let me know? Rex’s mother would always forward a letter. It mustn’t be grand or expensive. We wouldn’t be any bother in the house. Anywhere, where the people wouldn’t hate a baby. And about Christmas time. Goodbye.’

  Miss Ranskill picked up her pitchfork.

  ‘I wish my sister – but it’s not her house and there’s only one spare room.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that, of course. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye. And –’

  ‘I wish you could have come to see us this evening, but it’s the very last day. Rex goes back this afternoon, and I go back to London. I’ll ask him to look you up. Goodbye, thank you so much.’

  For what? thought Miss Ranskill, as she watched the girl out of sight. For not being able to say, ‘Come to my house and I’ll look after you.’

  She stooped down and picked up a couple of stooks, tucked one under each arm, plumped them down into place and brought their heads together. A plan was struggling for birth. The rhythm of her work might help it to be born.

  ‘About Christmas time.’

  Her last Christmas Day had been spent on the island. She remembered the little presents. She had polished a new set of shells for plates. The Carpenter had wrapped the powder-bowl he had made her in a packet of dried seaweed.

  Next Christmas we might be home, Miss Ranskill, you never know. Filling stockings and singing carols. It’s the grandest day in the year, but you need to have children about you. Not that there’s anything to stop us singing a carol now. Maybe cheer us up a bit. Now then, Miss Ranskill – Hark the Herald –

  They had sung to grey sea and to grey mist and to sea-gulls, whose white wings flickering up and down between sea and sky heralded the approach towards shore of the fish they needed.

  It was difficult to think of Christmas time in this field under the blazing, burning sun that was also beating down on the Sicilian vineyards, on the tanks and the men and the menacing slopes of Etna.

  III