Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

‘Pam’s made herself some heavenly frocks out of dust-sheets.’

‘I’m making shirts out of dusters.’

‘I can’t think how Fay always manages to look like a hundred pounds. Black Market, I suppose.’

‘Not Black Market , my poppet – black-out material.’

‘Fay?’

‘No, silly, but she makes Edward’s pyjamas out of curtain stuff and pinches his coupons.’

It was not until Miss Ranskill had left the shop, turned down a side-street and stepped into a puddle that she realised she had forgotten to put on the Midshipman’s shoes. She might not have noticed then if she had not been wearing the stockings: her feet were hardened to sharper things than pavements, but were not yet used to squelching wool. She pictured the shoes lying toe to toe on the carpet of the little cubicle. It was not worth while going back for them: nothing was worth that. After all, the addition of a pair of shoes wouldn’t make much difference to her scarecrow appearance, and walking was easier without them. Presently she would take off the stockings too.

The Midshipman’s shoes were not in the cubicle: one was on the desk of Mr P M Ebbutt, Manager of Messrs Dimmet and Togg, and the other was in Mr Ebbutt’s pudgy hand.

‘Service pattern,’ he said. ‘No toe-cap, you see. Supplied by Gieves. Must have belonged to a Naval officer.’ He adjusted his pince-nez and gave a petulant tug at the laces. ‘I can’t think why you let the woman go, Miss Mottram.’

‘I did come up to see you, the moment I suspected anything, Mr Ebbutt, but you were telephoning.’

‘Yes, well, but if you’d only use initiative. Pretty fools we’ll look if we’ve let a spy slip through our fingers. It won’t do the shop any good, I can tell you that, Miss Mottram.’

‘I’m very sorry, Mr Ebbutt.’

‘Well, it can’t be helped. I suppose we’ve done all we can in letting the police know. They’ll be round any minute, I suppose. Let’s get the points clear. Couldn’t speak English, you say?’

‘She spoke it all right, but she said she didn’t, and she said she was a foreigner.’

‘Gimme my pencil, will you? Now then–’ The gold pencil travelled slowly across the paper. ‘Said she was a foreigner, hadn’t read a newspaper for years…. Hadn’t got a ration book: that’s pretty damning, you know. Wanted complete change of clothes – looks as though she wanted to cover her tracks, doesn’t it?… Said nobody would tell her anything… evidently she’d been nosing round…. I hope you didn’t tell her anything, Miss Mottram?’

There was numbing silence for a moment.

‘No, Mr Ebbutt, I did not.’

And now Miss Mottram looked Mr Ebbutt full in the stomach, a habit which, so she had discovered, always disconcerted him. One can turn one’s face away from an unflattering stare: it is not so easy to turn away a stomach, especially so high a one as Mr Ebbutt’s.

‘You can send Miss Smith to me now. I’ll want her to take down some notes. I’ll probably want you when the police come. Meanwhile you’d better trot round the shop once more and see if anyone did notice this woman go out. So busy chattering, all of you, that you never see a thing.’

Miss Mottram removed her elegant person in an undulatory way not indicative of trotting, and Mr Ebbutt let his stomach rise again.

At the door she turned.

‘I did give one piece of information, Mr Ebbutt.’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t think it matters, but as you asked –’

‘Yes, what was it?’

‘I told the customer that because of the war,’ – there was a long deliberate pause – ‘that because of the war we hadn’t any silk stockings in stock!’

Then Miss Mottram, happy in the knowledge that in another week she would be making munitions, retired with dignity from the manager’s office.

In the shop, gossip fluttered like a washing-day.

Girls behind counters became human beings, suddenly changed from creatures that (so they believed the customers thought) stopped short just below the waist-line or wherever the edge of the counter chopped them.

‘Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a German one – couldn’t speak a word of English and she came to buy a disguise.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Miss Smith told Doris.’

Girls in cashiers’ cubby-holes were livened by the tale.

‘Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a woman dressed as a man: she left a pair of men’s shoes behind her.’

‘We’ve had a spy in here – a woman dressed as a Naval officer.’

‘I say! Have you heard the latest? Mr Ebbutt’s caught a spy – a German Naval officer dressed as a woman.’

‘Old Ebbutt’s a spy. The police have just been, and a plainclothes man too.’

‘Old man Ebbutt’s arrested for black marketing and trading with the enemy. They’ve found out he’s been selling naval uniforms to German spies, the old beast!’

‘You’re telling me! I always knew he was a nasty bit of work.’

Meanwhile, Miss Ranskill was nearing disgrace again. Hunger, though not so great as to urge her into the publicity of a restaurant, suggested a picnic lunch, and she planned the menu in her mind – rolls and a carton of cheese, a packet of sweet biscuits, a slab of chocolate, a banana and two or three Jaffa oranges to quench her thirst.

She chose a little shop in one of the poorer streets – a shop where the stock was shelved behind the counter and blacking brushes kept company with packets of cereals – almost a village shop. Here might be friendliness, and here seemed to be the beginning of friendship as the owner, in answer to the jangle of a bell behind the door, hurried out of the back room and smiled a gappy smile.

‘Yes, dear?’

The rolls, rather dusty-looking, were plumped down on to the counter at once.

‘We’ve no cartons of cheese though, only Woolton.’

Miss Ranskill nodded, not wishing to give herself away.

‘How much do you want?’

‘Oh! just enough for lunch.’

‘Better have the three ounces while you’re about it, then I shan’t have to mess up your book.’

A length of greasy string did its work of cutting through a piece of cheese.

‘Anything else, dear?’

‘A packet of biscuits, digestive if you have them, and a half pound packet of plain chocolate, and have you any really ripe bananas?’

‘’ Ave I any really ripe bananas?’

Plump red hands were placed on ploppy hips, and their owner laughed flatly.

‘’Ave I any bananas? Think I’m Lady Woolton, do you? Never mind, I likes a yumourist. No, Ducks–’ the wheezy voice broke into song –

Yes, we ’ave no bananas,

We ’ave no bananas today!

‘Funny thing, when you and I was singing that song in the old days we never knew how true it’d be, did we?’

Miss Ranskill, to whom the song had always been a puzzle, smiled forcedly.

It would, she felt, be better to say no more about bananas: evidently in this strange new world they were a dangerous and difficult topic. But the owner of the shop, after stabbing home a loose hair-pin, ‘Worth its weight, that is!’, continued:

‘Funny thing about bananas, I mean the things they will carry over and the things they won’t. Meself, I think it’s a mistake and hard on the kiddies. Take my young Albert now – he’s never seen a banana: it don’t seem natural to think of a kiddy growing up and not seein’ a banana. Give us a few bananas and not so much tinned fish, what do you say?’

‘No tinned fish,’ Miss Ranskill agreed from her heart – ‘No fish at all.’

‘That’s what I say.’ A grin, showing a complete broderie anglaise of gaps, followed the statement.