Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

Today or tomorrow (and it might, so she calculated absurdly, be either of those days now) she must count the stores and ration them. Meanwhile, she would dare to be generous to the cat. She filled a saucer full of milk and then crossed the cellar to the shelf where the candles were stored. Light would be the most important thing in this new desolation, where there was no spendthrift sun or wiser moon to lavish and withdraw their gold and silver.

There was more provision in the cellar than there had been on the island, but fewer promises. Its infertility was horrible.

When she had counted the candles in the packets, Miss Ranskill made a detour round the cat so as not to disturb its lapping. So, in the island days, she had always, however tired she had been, moved gently or taken a longer path if the shorter had led past a gull’s feeding-place. She, when hungry, had known despair when a hooked fish had escaped her, and had learned to respect the hunter for food.

She did not know that always in the future she would pause on a pavement till a sparrow had finished its crumb, and that the sound of a thrush breaking snails on a rockery would still her movements.

She wondered if the boy had a large appetite. He was lying very still, his head on the crook of his arm, and his smile told that he was not a prisoner.

There is something terrifying in the isolation of anyone who watches a sleeper, and Miss Ranskill, looking at the slumbering boy, wondered about the feelings of wardens as they glanced through the grilles at night and saw the bodies, meaningless as bolsters arranged by practical jokers, and no more occupied than the clothing in second-hand shops. Sleep, for all prisoners, is the time of triumphal escape. She had sometimes seen the Carpenter lying in his freedom, had wondered if he were at home by the fireside or taking stocks of his tools in the shop with the carpeting of wood-curls, or at sea or still on the island. Sometimes he had been able to tell her in the morning. She had often wondered where the final dream had taken him when he lay, still breathing on the beach, his body performing its mechanical work until the empty exertion exhausted it too much.

It seemed, while she watched, as though the boy too had stopped breathing: the blanket scarcely moved above him. Then a little pucker of his lips told her that his dream was changing and she felt exasperation instead of fear. Children were always selfish. The Carpenter would have been up and about and helping her.

She picked up the cat’s saucer and then rearranged the cups. Whatever the time, one might as well be busy now that sleep had gone. There was no need to be particularly silent either. The other prisoner might just as well be roused.

Two heads are better than one, Miss Ranskill, even if the second’s an addle-pate.

‘Coo!’ The boy sat up and rubbed his eyes with dusty knuckles. ‘Are we going to have cocoa now? What time is it? How did the cat get down ’ere?’

‘The cat’s had three kittens,’ Miss Ranskill told him. ‘And we’re going to have cocoa.’

He scrambled out of bed through a cloud of dust released by the scattered blankets. Except for the dirt that covered his head and pyjamas, he seemed unmarked by the night’s experience. A bomb had mattered a few hours ago: a cat and her kittens mattered now, and there was no more or less excitement over the one than the other.

When Miss Ranskill had refilled the kettle, and while the boy was still half in and half out of the cupboard, she went once more up the cellar stairs to see if the door were as tightly jammed as she had thought. As she pressed her shoulder against the stubborn wood, the voice of the siren was raised in a long gruesome wail that seemed unending.

She hurried down the steps, expecting to find the boy in a state of terror, but, though the monotonous wailing continued, he did not withdraw his head from the cupboard. He was lying on the floor, his dusty legs waving in the air, his toes curling happily.

‘That’s Jane,’ he remarked as Miss Ranskill stooped over him.

‘Is Jane the cat?’ Miss Ranskill tried to sound interested, but her ears were alert for bombs and not for cats’ christenings.

‘Coo! You don’t know much, do you?’ The boy wriggled backwards. ‘Jane’s the All Clear.’

‘The All Clear?’

‘You know, the siren that sounds when the bombing’s over and Jerry’s gone ’ome. We always calls ’er Jane. I’d an aunt just like ’er, always kickin’ up a dust about nothing. Mum ’ates Jane. She can sleep through the Alert, and then Jane goes and wakes ’er after it’s all over. Doctor Mallison says the All Clear’s like the man that shuts the stible door arter the ’orses are gone. What shall we call the kittens?’

‘Shall we call one Tibby?’

The suggestion came from that section of Miss Ranskill’s brain that was not entirely bewildered, but she scorned herself as she spoke.

‘I shall call ’em Montgomery an’ Eisenhower and Beveridge.’

‘Why?’

There was contempt in the boy’s eyes as he replied, ‘Most cats and pups that’s not strays gets called Beveridge or Montgomery or Eisenhower, same as most all dogs is called Winston. That kettle’s boiling now.’

The boy chatted while Miss Ranskill made the cocoa.

‘If Mum was at the pictures she’ll be back soon now the All Clear’s gone. Tell you what,’ he edged closer to her, ‘tell you what, let’s bolt the door at the top of the cellar stairs so she can’t come down till we’ve had the cocoa.’

‘Why shouldn’t she come down?’

‘She’d only want me to wash. Let’s bolt the door and keep ’er out.’

‘All right then, we’ll keep her out.’

The boy’s eyes showed amazement at such unexpected agreement.

‘We’ll keep her out all right. You stir the cocoa and I’ll go and see to the door.’

But before Miss Ranskill could hand over the spoon, the boy was scuttering and squealing across the cellar floor: He was up the stairs before she could think of a word that might stop him.

He would discover the state of the door and be frightened, and the fear would be driven from one to the other and grow quickly and increase in quality. It was better where there were two people that only one should be afraid, else there were no consolation and dominance nor any of the pretence that is the only weapon against terror.

‘Cocoa!’ said Miss Ranskill feebly. ‘Come and give the kittens some cocoa.’

But the boy was pounding on the door already, and she followed up the stairs.

She heard a new voice from the house side of the door as she reached the top step.

‘Is that you, mater? Are you coming up or shall I come down?’

It was a male voice, quick, and of a light tense quality. Miss Ranskill answered it absurdly.

‘It’s I, and the door’s jammed; we can’t get out.’

There was a thud on the other side of the wood.

‘I think I can do it. You’d better stand clear of the stairs though, in case the door comes down with a wallop.’

He was a thin, swiftly-moving young man, with none of the bull-headedness that Miss Ranskill would have expected from Marjorie’s son. His eyes were restless and his hands never quite still. They tensed and flexed in between all the definite movements of stroking the kittens, brought to him one after another by the boy, flicking ash from his cigarette and stirring his cocoa.

From his jerked replies to the boy’s questionings, Miss Ranskill understood that he had been on night operations for the last three months and that that meant dropping tons of bombs on Germany.