She was lacing her best shoes when Emma arrived, and she answered the enquiring glance automatically.
‘I’ve just heard I must go away for the day. I shall be back this evening, I expect. Could you lay the fire in the sitting-room, please, Emma.’
‘Yes, Miss. And shall I put the egg ready by the saucepan. That would be as nice as anything for your supper, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, two eggs, please. We’ll want something else though when we come in. Don’t let’s bother to arrange now. I can make something. I didn’t know until this morning that I should have to go away.’
A knock sounded on the front door.
‘Postman,’ said Emma, ‘I passed him in the lane. He’s late this morning.’
She went out of the kitchen and returned with an envelope: it was penny-stamped, an unmistakable bill.
‘It’s for Mrs Wilson, Miss. We’ll have to forward it.’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Wilson seemed very far away, as far as the Carpenter’s boy was near. ‘Emma, if you’ve got time, you might make up the bed in the little south room, just in case – I don’t really know yet.’
‘In the little south room?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Miss Edith never did care much for that little room.’
‘Miss Edith?’
‘It wouldn’t take me long to get her own room ready. We could leave beating the carpet till later if I just gave it a good sweep and washed round the skirting boards. It wouldn’t take all that time –’
The sound of a tinkle interrupted her. The noise was repeated.
‘Didn’t the men come then, Miss?’
‘What men?’
‘The Telephone men. You said they’d promised to come yesterday afternoon to set the wires to rights?’
For all through the wind and rain of yesterday, the telephone bell had kept up a ceaseless tinkling. It was a thing that sometimes happened, so Emma had told Miss Ranskill, when the telephone lines became entangled in the walnut tree. Until they could be disengaged the telephone was useless. It had been useless all yesterday.
‘No,’ said Miss Ranskill slowly, ‘they didn’t come after all.’
She noticed Emma’s bewildered expression, saw how the elderly woman glanced again at the single letter on the table. She had been too well trained by Edith to ask questions, but Miss Ranskill felt sorry that she could not satisfy a curiosity that was born only out of the friendliness that had gathered through long years of service.
But how could she explain the inexplicable and say that what she had heard in the morning had not been learned by written word or over the telephone?
‘I must go now or I’ll miss the train. I’ll leave everything to you, Emma. If you’ll just leave the key in the usual place.’
‘And which room shall I get ready?’
There was just a hint of hurt disapproval in the voice.
‘Oh! the little south room, please. It isn’t for Miss Edith. I must go now. I – I’ll explain when I come back.’
She must go now, even though she might have to wait for the train. She must go before the matter-of-factness of everyday things smothered the sense of power within her, before the mockery of reason killed the compelling instinct; and made her slave to what Emma might think if she chanced to return alone in the evening.
‘Don’t forget your mackintosh, Miss.’
III
She had not, until she stood for the second time in her life outside the Carpenter’s cottage, thought what she must say or how she could explain her anxiety over the boy.
There was nothing about the cottage to hint at any tragedy. Indeed, it was more like the cottage she had seen as the Carpenter talked, than the one she had entered a few months ago.
White curtains hung crisply between frames of glossy green paint. The doorstep was whitened; the knocker gleamed so that it showed a little contorted reflection of her face.
She thought, as she waited for the knock to be answered, that perhaps she had misjudged the Carpenter’s wife. Women, like houses, have their off days. There was nothing slovenly now about the house or about the diamond-shaped beds on either side of the door. They had been freshly forked and the edging of little green plants lay in tranquillity, waiting for spring.
Footsteps sounded along the passage within and Miss Ranskill strained her ears. The footsteps were quick and light, but they did not suggest a boy’s movements – a boy would walk more stumpily.
The door opened and she looked into the face of a stranger – a pleasant, well-washed face.
‘Is Mrs Reid in?’
‘Mrs Reid doesn’t live here now.’
‘Oh!’ Miss Ranskill’s voice was flat. ‘Do you mean she’s left the village?’
‘No, she and her husband have taken one of the new bungalows in Westley Road.’
‘Her husband?’
‘She’s married again. Let me see now, she married about six weeks ago. I doubt if you’d find her in this morning, though, but you might try.’
Married again? Miss Ranskill wondered if Mrs Reid had married the gross-faced man who had interrupted the song heard in the sea-shell. She understood now why the cottage was so transformed.
‘The name’s Amery now. Amery, Woodway, Westley Road. You can’t mistake the bungalow. It’s right at the end, and it’s got yellow railings. Do you know Westley Road?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
Miss Ranskill felt dazed as she listened to the directions, and that was not because they were complicated. She felt that the Carpenter had suffered yet another death. There was so little of his pride left.
Then the voices of boys, shouting to one another on the other side of the road, reminded her that it was Saturday morning.
‘First right, then left, and it’s on the right-hand side at the far end of the road. As I say, I shouldn’t think she’d be in this morning, but there’s no telling with her.’
The face of the speaker was not quite so pleasant now and the last words were spoken rather viciously.
‘Perhaps the boy, Colin, perhaps he’ll be in.’
‘He won’t be in – not this morning. If it’s the boy you want, you can save yourself the trouble.’
‘He isn’t ill, is he?’
‘No, he’s not ill, wasn’t yesterday, anyway.’
The new owner of the house stepped back a pace, but there was reluctance in her tread. Her lips were pursed and she shook her head knowingly.
‘If you want to know about Colin you’d best ask his mother. I’ve had trouble enough with the lot of them. I’d sooner not say anything than have her throwing it up at me that I’ve been talking. If you ask me, though, she’s nobody to blame but herself. I wash my hands of the lot of them.’
‘Well,’ Miss Ranskill turned to go, ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope –’
‘I’d sooner not say. Good morning.’
Miss Ranskill was left alone in the narrow strip of garden. First to the right. Her feet rustled through dead leaves as the wind whistled up the broad street of the village.
She passed a group of boys playing ‘conkers’ and thought she heard the name Colin.
He wasn’t ill, but he wouldn’t be in this morning. That ought to be natural enough. The wind had blown the rain away and other boys were out at play. She came on another group of them as she turned the corner, but the stocky figure of the Carpenter’s son was not among them.
A red-haired boy was twirling his conker on a string and shouting:
‘Anyone else want his block knocked off? I’ve beat you all same as I always does.’
‘No, you don’t.’ A shrill-voiced child with greyish-golden hair was piercing another chestnut. ‘You’ve not beat Colin yet!’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘No, you’ve not.’
Another child shouted.
‘Bet you Colin’d like to be playing “conkers” this morning.’
‘Not half he wouldn’t.’ The fair boy swung his chestn
ut and rapped his neighbour on the head. ‘My Dad says Colin’ll never come back.’
‘Go on!’
‘Go on yourself!’
Miss Ranskill, shuffling through the wayside leaves, felt as though she were walking in a nightmare. She must hurry, but it seemed to her that her legs were moving ridiculously slowly. They would not stretch far enough. Her feet, cramped by shoes, were inelastic. She began to run at a jog-trot.
At last she reached the bungalow with the yellow railings. The gate was open. She forced herself to walk slowly up the cinder path. It would be silly to be breathless when she arrived and unable to speak except in gasps, but she was still gasping a little when she pressed the bell.
For a long time there was silence, or rather a series of silences, punctuated by Miss Ranskill’s frequent ringing of the bell. Yet, although there was neither response nor promise of it, she felt certain that someone was inside. It was almost as though the house were breathing and asserting its habitation. She looked at the lace-hung window to the right of the door and saw that the curtain was moving. It was being more closely drawn from inside. She caught a glimpse of reddened finger-nails. Then she turned to the door again. This time she hammered as well as ringing.
At last her insistence won, and she heard shuffling reluctant footsteps. The door opened chink by chink and the Carpenter’s wife; no, Mr Amery’s wife looked out furtively. Her face, under its thick coating of powder, was puffy and the eyelids were reddened.
‘What is it now?’ The voice was weary and petulant.
‘Don’t you remember me? I’m Miss Ranskill. I called to see you a few months ago.’
‘I remember all right.’
‘I came because I wondered –’ And then because the face looked so dreadfully unhappy and lifeless, Miss Ranskill ended impulsively. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘It’s all right, thank you.’
Voices sounded in the road behind – the shrill lively voices of boys, heartless in their exuberance.
Mrs Amery opened the door a little wider and spoke reluctantly.
‘You’d best come in for a minute, if you don’t want to go. I don’t want all that lot standing around and gaping. We’ve had about enough of them.’
A cat-call shrilled from the road. It was followed by another one, and Miss Ranskill went into the house.
She followed her hostess into a small pretentious sitting-room. Coloured crinkled paper filled the grate. A vase of artificial roses stood beside a biscuit-barrel on a fumed oak dresser. The chairs were upholstered in green plush. Nothing was familiar except the clock in the centre of the mantelpiece and the great sea-shell that lay beside it.
‘Will you sit down a minute?’ Mrs Amery jerked a chair out of place and sat down on another one. She stared at the fireplace and did not even look at Miss Ranskill as she asked, ‘I suppose you’ve heard something?’
‘I went to the house where – where you used to live, and I was told –’
‘Trust her to talk,’ interrupted Mrs Amery bitterly. ‘All said and done, it was his father’s work-shed, and if he did think he’d a right –’
‘How is Colin?’ asked Miss Ranskill, dreading the answer to direct question less than information given in the belief that she had been listening to gossip.
‘You wouldn’t know him for the same boy since all this. Nobody would.’
‘Is he at home?’
‘No.’ Mrs Amery gave a furtive glance, and said no more.
‘I should have liked to see him again.’
‘He’ll not be in till late – if he’s back at all. I ought to have gone with him, but the doctor said “no”. He wouldn’t hear of it. “Best stay at home, Mrs Amery,” that’s what he said, “best stay at home and let your husband get on with it.” Yes, the doctor knows how I suffer from my nerves.’
‘Then Colin is ill?’
‘It’s me that’s ill. All gone to pieces my nerves are. No wonder neither, after all that I’ve been through. And what his poor Dad would have said.’
‘Where is Colin?’
‘If you must know,’ Mrs Amery dabbed at her eyes, ‘if you must know they’ve taken him to Court.’
For a moment the words conveyed nothing but grandeur to Miss Ranskill, glittering grandeur, soft with feathers, shining with the glint of orders and jewels and swords. Mrs Amery’s next words banished romance.
‘The Juvenile Court at Mallingford.’
‘Oh! poor little boy!’
‘He done it all right,’ said Mrs Amery, and not, perhaps, without a touch of pride. ‘Five charges, petty larceny mostly.’
If Colin was to turn out bad, Miss Ranskill, it would break my heart.
‘He was all right till after the wedding,’ continued Mrs Amery. ‘You couldn’t have found a better boy anywhere – not if you’d looked… . Yes, he was all right till then, but he and his stepfather never did hit it off and it got worse. I suppose I might have taken a bit more notice, but you know what it is when you’re just married. Mr Amery got sick of him mooning about in the evenings and always fiddling with his bits of carpentering. It isn’t as though we’d a shed here. I don’t say Mr Amery wasn’t a bit sharp. Pushing him out of the house and that. I ought to have noticed what was going on, but then, you see, he never brought his friends back home, so how was I to know? I did have one or two complaints, but I didn’t take much notice of them. You know what boys are, you can’t expect them to be angels all the time.’
There followed a long description of Mrs Amery’s nerves, but the visions in Miss Ranskill’s mind spared her from noticing those details. She was looking at the boy’s face and his father’s face: she was looking into the future. Six weeks couldn’t be long enough to make a criminal surely?
‘It’s what’s going to happen next that’s worrying me,’ said Mrs Amery. ‘It’s the idea of the probation officer or the police nosing round that gets me down. Mr Amery says he won’t have it, and you can’t really blame him. They might send him to an approved school, but Mr Amery says that’s not likely; it’s not as though he’d a bad record up to now. He says he’ll not have him back in the house at any price. It is an upset and no mistake.’
‘Would, could –’ Miss Ranskill had made up her mind, and the words came tumbling out. ‘If the magistrates will allow it, will you let the boy come and stay with me for as long – as long as he likes?’
‘I’m sure it’s ever so good of you,’ declared Mrs Amery.
‘I owe his father a debt,’ Miss Ranskill told her, adding hastily as the expression of distress on Mrs Amery’s face turned to one of suspicion, ‘I don’t mean a money debt: he taught me things I shall never forget.’
‘It’s ever so good of you. I don’t see that there’s anywhere else he could go, seeing Mr Amery’s determined he shan’t come back here.’
And now Miss Ranskill was in a hurry to be gone. She asked a few more questions, and learned that it was unlikely that Colin’s case would be heard until after lunch.
‘There are so many cases just now. It’s this dreadful war and the fathers all being away. The boys go about in gangs. One’s as bad as another. The policeman told me that when he said they’d got to make an example of Colin seeing as how he was a leader. Yes, there’ll be a lot of cases on today. There’s young Pyecroft, for instance – now he’s a bad boy if ever there was one – a real bad-hearted boy.’
But Miss Ranskill had not time to listen to the iniquities of young Pyecroft. She asked a few questions, discovered that the coal merchant had a taxi and might be persuaded to drive her into Mallingford, since it was within the nine-mile limit for taxis, said goodbye and let herself out of the front door. The little gang of boys was still lurking and cat-calling by the gate.
The sea-shell was in her pocket. She had taken it as a talisman. His clothes would be sent on.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The little boy sat hunched up in the corner of the third-class carriage. He had scarcely spoken a word through the
journey that was very nearly at an end.
The distressing blue light that made war-time travel so melancholy showed Miss Ranskill that his eyes were closed. She did not believe that he was asleep; his eyelids were pressed down too tightly and his lips were too firm. He was defending himself from question and scrutiny; and containing within himself all the horrors of the courtroom – the looming police, the inquisition of the prosecution, the publicity and the inner loneliness.
Miss Ranskill had not witnessed his humiliation but she had seen his face, dour and defiant, before he went into the court; tear-blotched and glum when he came out. She had seen him shrug away when his stepfather had laid hand on his arm, had seen his contemptuous eyes as he listened to the half-jocular, half-bullying words, spoken more for the benefit of the ghoulish onlookers than for the boy himself.
‘Let this be a lesson to you, my lad. I can tell you, you’d have copped it proper if I’d been the Magistrate. You will next time, make no mistake about that. Don’t you look at me in that saucy way neither, as though you fancied yourself a hero, you dirty little sneak-thief, you.’
She had seen him duck his head and look into all the corners of the outer room as though searching for cover.
She, herself, had had an exhausting day. There had been interviews with the Magistrate, another with the Probation Officer, a third with the stepfather, besides formalities that seemed endless. Her own credentials, as a suitable and responsible guardian of the boy, had had to be established. There had been telephone conversations with the doctor in her own village and with old Mr Jelks, the local Magistrate, who had known her since girlhood.
The Probation Officer had been kindly and helpful.
‘We get so many cases like this. From our point of view it is always more difficult when the child does not come from a really bad home. We have more power, when we can prove neglect and can make use of an Approved School. There was neglect in this case, of course, but not physical neglect. The boy is well-nourished and well-clothed. His sort of case is more puzzling to the outsider than it is to us. Here we have a boy with a perfectly good previous record, a fairly quiet, well-mannered boy, who suddenly becomes a little villain, loses all sense of right and wrong, and, when he comes before the Magistrates refuses to say a word that might help him. What has happened? He may have been to too many gangster films. He may have come under the influence of older, more sophisticated boys. He may have had too much love or too little, or his pride may have been hurt so badly that he felt an urge to assert himself and become important to someone. I think that is what happened here. This little boy became the leader of a gang of small hooligans.’
Miss Ranskill Comes Home Page 25