Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

At last the final act was over and the two men had said polite goodbyes.

‘We’ll be seeing you again,’ said the senior one. ‘I should have a really good rest if I were you, you look pretty well beat to the wide.’

‘Anything we can do to help,’ murmured the younger. ‘By the way, we will take charge of your boat for you, until you can decide what you want to do with it.’

‘My boat,’ Miss Ranskill addressed the patch of hearthrug recently covered by black boots. ‘But it isn’t my boat: it belongs to the Carpenter’s wife, at least, part of it does.’

Perhaps when she visited his home there would be more restfulness.

She looked at the collection of ornaments on the mantelpiece, appraising not their worth but their power of usefulness on a desert island. Those blackwood elephants would have come in handy, their tusks could have prised small fish from their shells, the lace curtains could have been turned into fishing-nets and the fire-shovel would have made a spade. The picture frames would have been better as part of the boat than as supporters of pallid seascapes. Miss Ranskill scarcely glanced at the pictures for the static waves annoyed her. She was used to changing seas, and discontented skies for ever shuffling themselves into beauty and maintaining their restless artistry by night and day.

The patterns of the chintz irritated her with the same repeated blue-bird on a bough that gushed flowers and leaves against a fawn background. The Dresden figures were no use for anything, but she resented the Lowestoft bowl on the wall-bracket in the corner. There it had stood, she supposed, empty and useless, year after year; while she had had nothing to clean fish in but a pool an eighth of a mile away from the rocky dining-table.

She shifted in the chair that was too comfortable – a hummock of sand and a jag of rock might have induced her to sleepiness, but presently she fell into a kind of waking nightmare.

There was no trust in the country. Her old friend had doubted her. Even her rescuers had been suspicious in a polite and formal way. She understood now that she would never have been allowed through the dockyard gates except under escort. The young officer had been only a courteous policeman.

Miss Ranskill was in bed, but she was not sleepy any more because Marjorie had been tucking her up, dragging at the sheets, pounding at the pillows, creaking on tiptoe round the room and speaking in the voice she reserved for churches.

‘Harry says you’re to have absolute rest and quiet and you’re not to worry about anything. Sure there isn’t anything more you want, old thing? You’ve only to sing out if there is. Are you dead-sure there’s nothing you want?’

‘Only peace and quiet,’ answered Miss Ranskill’s mind, ‘only quietness, and the chance to remember the island before you rub out its memory.’

‘I’m going to put this bell by your bed because it’s my fire-watching night, and I’ve got to buzz off soon. Give the bell a tinkle if there’s anything you want, and Harry will come bounding up in a sec. You needn’t mind him: he’s a doctor, remember, and absolutely used to seeing people in bed. I’m afraid Mrs Bostock is going out. Well, so long.’

‘Good night!’ said Miss Ranskill firmly.

‘I’ll be back about five o’clock and I’ll peep in on you then.’

‘Good night,’ said Miss Ranskill.

‘I say, you aren’t still feeling huffed, are you? You do realise, old thing, don’t you, that I was only doing my duty?’

Her guest, in the corner of her mind’s eye, saw the island getting smaller and smaller, as it had done on the day she rowed away. Another word would scatter its frailty: it was the only place she knew now or understood.

‘You do realise that I had to be beastly, don’t you?’

‘Of course. Yes, of course I do.’

‘I say,’ Marjorie plumped down on to Miss Ranskill’s feet, ‘I say, I’ve got an absolutely marvellous idea. After the war’s over, we’ll find out where that island of yours is exactly, and we’ll all go there and spend a summer holiday. We’ll take camping kit and have no end of a time. Isn’t that a grand idea?’

‘No.’

‘Oh! I forgot you did have rather a doing there, didn’t you? Still, I should have thought that in a year or so – I say, I must fly now, or I’ll get it in the neck from the senior warden.’

Marjorie bounced off the bed.

‘There! I’m going to put your light out and then you’ll go to sleep straight away. Night-night! Happy dreams.’

There followed bumpings and bangings, and at last the door was shut.

Miss Ranskill felt breathless. There was no air or movement in the room. She missed the shuffle of the tide and the stir of the wind. Perhaps if she had more air she could sleep. She switched on the light and hurried to the window. It was queer that Marjorie, who had always described herself as an out-of-door person, should have fastened the curtains to the window-frame with drawing-pins, but perhaps it was part of the nursing programme. And why were the curtains black? Possibly Doctor Mallison disapproved of the early morning light. Even very ordinary doctors had queer fads sometimes.

Miss Ranskill flung up the window and went back to bed.

She could hear the sea now, shuffling away in the distance. A gentle flapping of the curtains told that the wind was at work too. Sea and wind would be busy with the island too, slurring out footprints – not human ones now though; there would only be the delicate patterning of gulls – coaxing the flesh from bird skeletons and making everything ready for the morning.

Perhaps this island would be better in the morning too. Always, no matter how wearily a day had ended or how fiercely the night had raged, the silver wash of morning had brought revival. It had been the same in the old life too: memories of disastrous tea-parties, smashed china and turmoil of spring-cleaning had never seemed so bad when remembered over early morning tea.

Miss Ranskill closed her eyes, content to feel that she need not open them again until the sanity of daylight freshened her mind.

‘Put out that light!’ Somebody was shouting in the street below, it was a menacing cry and was repeated by a voice with a snarl in it. ‘Put out that light! Lights! Lights! Lights!’ So might the kin of sailing men have shouted to the wreckers years ago in this very same part of the country.

‘Put out that light!’

Miss Ranskill turned over and, in her half sleep, visualised the bobbing lantern and the ship drawing nearer and nearer to the rocks, while merciful men, savage in their fury against a murderer, scrambled towards him and threatened till their throats ached.

‘Put out that light!’

The handle rattled, the door was burst open and Marjorie pounded into the room.

Miss Ranskill closed her eyes more firmly, and wished she could close her ears as well. Her gathering dreams would be shredded by any more conversation.

‘Are you mad? Are you quite mad?’

Something clicked, darkness followed, the bed was shaken, and the end of the room near the window became noisy with bumpings and rattling as curtain-rings tinkled and things were knocked over.

‘I should have thought… I mean, especially after what’s happened with the police and everything…. This house of all houses…. As ARP warden I’ve always prided myself on having an absolutely watertight black-out.’

The room was still in darkness except for the faint torchlight that showed Marjorie’s right hand as she stabbed the drawing-pins back into place.

‘Do you mean I shouldn’t have drawn the curtains?’

‘Of course you shouldn’t!’

‘I’m sorry, I only wanted more air. I’ve been so used to sleeping almost in the open.’