Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

Miss Ranskill, emboldened by her puzzling success as a humourist and thankful for friendliness of any sort, unbridled her tongue.

‘I’ll have oranges instead of bananas – Jaffas, if you’ve got them.’

‘Is your kiddy sick?’

Miss Ranskill heard the words clearly but they made no sense. For a mad moment she believed the question to be part of a music-hall song, and expected the woman to change voice again.

‘Is your kiddy sick? I’m only asking because we’re short this month. I don’t want any of the kiddies to go short if I can help it, but if your kiddy’s sick, poor little mite–’

Such a yearning of mother-love was in the voice, such jellying of human flesh shook the vast shoulders that Miss Ranskill gave reassurance.

‘It isn’t sick. I mean I haven’t got a – a kiddy. I was only going to have a picnic lunch. I wanted the oranges for myself.’

‘ Well! ’

Not, ‘Well, fancy a great girl like you, Miss Nona!’ but the tone implied it.

‘Only instead of lemonade,’ explained Miss Ranskill. ‘But it doesn’t matter a bit.’

‘I’ve only been sparing the oranges to sick kiddies till we see how they go round. Anything else I can get you?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Let’s see now, I’ll want your personal ration book for the chocolate and the other for the cheese and biscuits.’

A hand was held out in anticipation.

‘Ta?’

‘I haven’t got–’ began Miss Ranskill, and then scenting confusion, said, ‘I haven’t brought any books, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, there now, after I’ve cut the cheese! It’ll only go stale. We’ve little enough as it is, without letting that go stale.’

‘I’d pay for it willingly.’

‘Pay? You could pay for Buckingham Palace, maybe, but payin’ won’t keep cheese fresh once it’s cut. Could you fetch your ration book and I’ll keep the stuff till you come back?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t. It’s – you see, I came a very long way.’

‘We’ll have to eat the cheese ourselves, I suppose, as our ration. You’ll just take the rolls then?’

‘Could I,’ said Miss Ranskill, very humbly and nervously, ‘could I buy something to put on them instead of cheese?’

‘Fish paste?’

‘No,’ Miss Ranskill checked a shudder. ‘Not fish . Marmalade or jam would do.’

‘That’s points again.’

‘Points! Jam.’

‘Jam’s on points.’

‘Oh!’ Miss Ranskill changed a conversation that was, to her anyway, becoming absolutely idiotic. ‘Never mind, I’ll have them as they are.’

‘You could have turkey-and-tongue paste if you like.’

So, with the rolls in one pocket and a small pot of turkey-and-tongue paste in the other, Miss Ranskill went down to the beach. There with her back against a boat, and her toes scuffling sand again, she felt more at home than she had done for weeks, even though the barricading of barbed wire behind her annoyed her by its ugliness.

There was the sea that she had alternately loved and hated. There were the waves, up to their old tricks again, frittering themselves against the rocks, teasing the seaweed, rolling and shuffling the pebbles to a shushing rhythm. There were the gulls mewing, mocking, and crying their plaints.

‘It will take a lot of getting used to,’ thought Miss Ranskill, referring to the new world.

She choked down the dry roll and the paste she had spread using a piece of cuttle-fish, then closed her eyes against the sun’s brightness, and dozed for a little.

Presently she awoke with a jerk, startled from a dream of the island by a sound only half familiar – the sound of crying. But it was not the crying of a gull. Sunshine dazzled her eyes so that at first she saw only a dizziness of gold shot with blue and a small figure standing near her.

A child on the island – a small living jetsam?

She was on her feet before she remembered, but memory did not check her feet. Here, at last, in her unwelcoming country, was something in distress – something that needed her.

The little boy was sandy and shabby – almost as shabby as she was. There was too big a gap between his shorts and his scarred knobbly knees. His jersey was hunched up pathetically under one ear. Tears poured down his face and he was licking them up as fast as they ran.

‘What is it?’ asked Miss Ranskill. ‘Oh! what is it?’

‘I’ve lost my knife, my new knife and it matters.’

‘Of course it matters.’ Didn’t she know how much it mattered? Didn’t she know what the loss of a knife might mean?

She was on her knees by now and the conviction in her voice sent his head bumping into her shoulder. One cold sea-wet hand found her own, the other one wriggled up between his face and her shoulder-hollow to knuckle the tears away.

‘How many blades?’ she whispered.

‘Two and only one broke’; his voice was still choking. ‘It was give me by a carpenter.’

‘I shared a knife with a carpenter once, and then he – he went away and I lost my knife too.’

The head came up now, and only the rubbed lashes and a streak on each cheek showed where the tears had been.

‘Did you find it?’ asked the boy.

Miss Ranskill shook her head. It was queer that she could speak of the Carpenter to this rumple-headed brat.

‘You can’t by the sea.’

He scuffled a bare foot in the sand, took a few steps and looked about vaguely.

‘’Tisn’t here,’ he said. ‘Did you lose yours here?’

‘No.’

‘How many blades had it?’

‘Only one.’

‘Mine was better.’ The little-boy swagger was returning. ‘Mine had two and only the little ’un broke.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Miss Ranskill, and the thought raised her voice to excitement and tossed her head for her. ‘Tell you what–’ But another thought checked her.

‘What?’

‘I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me something.’

The boy hunched up his shoulders, doubled his fists and pushed them into the pockets of his shorts.

The attitude suggested he had been had that way before and preferred to keep himself to himself.

‘Dunno,’ he muttered.

‘Try then. Can you buy knives without ration books or anything?’

Suspicion lightened and interest increased.

‘’Course you can. Anyone knows that!’

‘You’re sure? Tell me what does need ration books?’

‘Cheese, butter, sweets, bacon, soap–’

The boy’s hands were out of his pockets and he was checking off the items on his fingers.

Miss Ranskill listened and tried to memorise the list. He seemed to her to be a very well-informed small boy indeed, a most superior war-child.

‘Sugar, corn-flakes and marge. Oh! and oranges and meat and tinned stuff and jam. Not knives.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I go shoppin’ for Mum. What do you want to know for?’

‘Because if you’d like to, and if you know a shop, we could go and buy new knives now – one for me and one for you.’

‘Coo!’

He knew a shop, of course. ‘Mr Jackson’s just round the corner past the quay.’

Miss Ranskill followed him. She was bare-footed and bareheaded because she had taken off the woollen stockings, the scarf-turban and the suspenders, but quite unselfconscious. Beside the Naval officer and beside the girl with the ring she had looked a figure of fun. Now, hurrying after a bare-foot boy through the poorer quarters of the town she was only a shabby woman with rather peculiar hair.

‘Come on,’ begged the boy as he scuttled round a corner. ‘Here’s Mr Jackson’s.’

The little shop smelled of tar and rope, oil and new leather.

The sight of a single-bladed knife with a horn handle stabbed at Miss Ranskill’s memory and her fingers curved their longing to hold it.