Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

There was nothing to be done now but to wait and hate and hold the child in her arms.

Something was burning. A curious dry smell, reminiscent of a lime-kiln, pervaded the cellar. Was the house burning above their heads, and if so, how long would it be before it crashed in on them?

Miss Ranskill laid the limp body of the boy back into the deck-chair. The wavering light from the stove showed her the bottom step of the stairs and she hurried up them. Even if the house were on fire, there might still be time to escape. It would be better to face the horror of the bombs than the terror of being burned to death.

The door at the top of the stairs resisted her. She tried to rattle the handle, but it would not even turn. She set shoulder to the panels, but made no impression on them. She felt in a non-existent pocket for the new knife, but her fingers only met the folds of Marjorie’s nightgown. Of course… she had left it upstairs in her bed. Last time she had left it in the Carpenter’s bed – in his grave. Because of that she had come to England, purposely, it seemed now, to meet this child whom she might have saved if she had not left another knife in her bed.

Not fit to look after yourself, are you, Miss Ranskill? Now if this knife was lost I reckon we’d be in Queer Street, eh?

Not fit to look after a child either. She made fresh and stronger assault on the door, but it was unrelenting. Perhaps there was something in the cellar that would be strong enough to batter a panel to splinters. A table-leg might do, but she doubted if she could make purchase enough with four legs fixed to a table.

The cellar seemed hotter when she returned to it. Then she noticed that something on top of the stove was glowing and smouldering and that the dry smell had increased. She groped for and found the teapot, took off the lid and poured the contents on to the stove. There was a hiss and a splutter, darkness and a choking smell. Then she trod on the matchbox, and in another minute the Christmas-tree smell of candles had overwhelmed the menace of fire, and the candle-lit dust turned golden in the air.

The child had fallen asleep again in the swift strange manner of all young creatures, though he was still twitching a little. Miss Ranskill covered him up again and then spent some minutes in cleaning and drying the stove with the edge of Marjorie’s nightgown. When it was alight once more and with the refilled kettle on the top of it, she sat back on her heels for a moment or two and considered what was the next thing to be done. She was dazed and exhausted. Sometime soon, she must battle with the cellar-door again, but she would have a cup of tea first; and when the child was awake she would make him cocoa. She was still hazy with shock, but another vague responsibility nagged at her mind. What was it she had to do? A tiny scuffling sound from behind the cupboard door reminded her, and, taking a candle, she crossed the cellar to see if everything was well with the little cat.

The star of the candle illumined a rumple of paper, a little mother cat and three sleek newly-licked kittens. They lay in a row, their blunt heads half hidden in their mother’s fur, their absurd tails towards Miss Ranskill, and they pulled and tugged in rhythm. The little cat’s eyes were shining, but there was anxiety in them as she rubbed her head gently against Miss Ranskill’s outstretched hand.

Now she added proud purring to the rhythmed tugging of her babies. She flicked her tail with a nonchalant air and it seemed to Miss Ranskill that she almost simpered.

‘ Good little cat. If only I’d known. Poor little cat!’

For it was a very young creature and the small number of kittens showed that they were probably a first family.

Sometime, during the shattering crashes of the night, the little cat, suffering its unheeded pains, had gone quietly about its business of kitten-bearing, had dealt with them and loved them, its love conquering fear. And somehow those blind babies, unaware that there was anything strange about their welcome to the world, had crawled to the warmth of their mother and the milk that was ready at exactly the right time. There they lay in a neat row, one black, one tortoiseshell, and one tawny striped black, their heads sleeked and shining as the heads of any nanny-pampered schoolroom children: three tiny creatures, born in disregard of Germany and all its works. The mother-cat curved a protecting paw as Miss Ranskill’s finger went towards her babies.

‘All right, it’s quite all right. Nothing shall take them from you. These ones shan’t be drowned, I promise you.’

So, in the cellar, Miss Ranskill guaranteed succession to a long line of cats and kittens. It was a tiny contribution to the triumph of life over death.

‘No bucket-party for you,’ she said, as she returned with a saucer of milk and warmed water.

The cat shook herself free of her war-babies and lapped hungrily.

Miss Ranskill had lost her own desire for tea. Exhaustion was overwhelming her. Only sleep would bring comfort. She rolled a rug round her.

Miss Ranskill opened her eyes to see a low-hung star, so crisscrossed with bars as to suggest that it was suffering a strange eclipse. She blinked at it, puzzled by the new wonder above the island. Then, in a second or two, she remembered events, concisely and unemotionally as though they had been chapter-headings from a book – the death of the Carpenter, the voyage from the island and all the bewilderments and terrors of day and night. This, then, was her first awakening in England, not to sheets and fine china, a bedroom nosegay and birdsong in the garden.

Things aren’t what you’d think, Miss Ranskill, never have been yet. Seems as though there’s always someone having a game with us. Like as not when I get home I’ll find my little lad’s got the mumps so I’ll not know the shape of his face for a month of Sundays.

The barred light was not a star but the reflection from an oil-stove. She was in a cellar, and she did not know if it were night or morning since she was imprisoned against the light from sun or moon that, with the tides, had been her time-keepers. She groped on the floor until the rattle of matches in a box bespoke an old familiarity.

It must still be night or very early morning, for, when she had lit the candles, she saw that the boy on the bed was still in heavy sleep. Children, she knew, awakened lively as sparrows and at about the same time.

Her throat was dry. There was grit on her teeth and dust on herself, the child, and everything in the cellar. The sharpness of it on her lips recalled her struggle with sand on the day she had buried the Carpenter.

The silence was rather frightening, for the whisper of the boy’s breathing did not reach her, and there was no mockery of gulls to add truth to the Carpenter’s maxim that There’s always someone having a game with you.

Presently the little cat rustled out of the cupboard and reminded her that there were six instead of two to share in this present isolation and three mouths to be fed from the stores. It insinuated itself between her leg and a chair bar and purred cajolingly. It curved itself against the milk-bottle in feline worship, and Miss Ranskill began to count the rows of tins on the shelf opposite. There were two, four, six, eight that held milk. While one part of her mind made mechanical note, another part of it was astray. Eight tins would be enough for more than a week. Supposing that last bomb had been an infernal device, killing everyone else in the country? The four flat tins looked as though they held sardines…. They would get out of the cellar some day, of course. It was only a question of chip by chip, like hacking down a tree, but working at brick not timber. The round tins held soup and the bigger ones salmon, enough, so she calculated, for another week. England would be strange as a deserted island. She remembered reading a book about the last survivor of the world, his tour through the empty shops, his possession of all things and of nothing. Perhaps there would be mice for the cat until they could free themselves. Then there would be a different motor car every day, new clothes and no posterity. The boy could have the Crown of England as a hoop to trundle down the wide emptiness of Piccadilly – rattle, rattle, rattle until moss grew in the streets, though a hoop snatched from a toy-shop might run more smoothly and be just as valuable. The big square tin held tea.