Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

The table was laid with a clutter of plaster from the ceiling, but in the middle of it stood a Cona coffee-machine, its frail bubble rising among chunks and chips of ceiling and layers of dust. The black blind was jagged to shreds and arrows of glass were embedded in the white panelling of a cabinet.

A posy of pale grey flowers in a pale grey bowl on the dresser astonished Miss Ranskill. They looked exactly like Dresden china; and not till she had touched one, releasing a shower of fine dust from the petals, did she realise that they were marigolds. The wall by the fireplace was bulging, a cupboard door hung squalidly from one hinge and a plate on the mantel-shelf lay in two half-circles.

‘Well!’ said Mrs Bostock.

Then, clear and cool, crowding a woodland into a mad kitchen, sounded the voice of the cuckoo. For an instant Miss Ranskill felt moss at her feet and the stirring of wet leaves against her cheek. This was one of the things she had travelled to hear: the kitchen was gone and May was alive in England.

‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

‘They’ll not get their ’ot breakfast. They can’t expect it!’ declared Mrs Bostock. Her torch swung round again and shone momentarily on her red face and tawdry hat.

‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

Parody skeltered through Miss Ranskill’s mind.

‘A slattern and a cuckoo’s song will never come together again.’

‘They’ll have to get help to clear up this mess.’ Light from the torch glinted on the jagged daggers of glass low down in the woodwork and the tiny body of a mouse scurried across a lit circle of floor.

‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

Miss Ranskill fancied she smelled hawthorn blossom, but the scent of singeing candle-wick took its place as Mrs Bostock flung down a match. Was it possible that the woman didn’t hear?

‘Cuckoo!’

A tiny wooden door clicked above the face of the clock that hung on the wall behind Miss Ranskill.

‘Wrong as usual: it’s nearer two,’ said Mrs Bostock, and added aggrievedly: ‘You’d have thought They might have stopped the clock while They was about it, wouldn’t you?’

Miss Ranskill was back again in the cellar and once more she was in the company of a sleeper. Marjorie’s boy was lying in a deck-chair. His cigarette had fallen to the floor and the fingers of his right hand seemed to be fumbling for it.

The voice of the wooden cuckoo had exhilarated her, but now she felt tired, helpless and impatient. She was lonely too, and in need of speech.

We’ll have plenty to tell each other, won’t we, Miss Ranskill, after we’ve both got back to our homes. I’ll write to you and you’ll write to me. We won’t have to think what to say. I’ll not have to chew up my pencil then, same as I used to, thinking what to say.

Yes, she must write to the Carpenter and tell him about coupons and bombs, a cuckoo and a cat, cellars, laddered stockings and the blackness of a house by night. News thrust itself into her mind before she could remember that he was dead. Then she tried to imagine him living and alone on the island and receiving, perhaps by carrier pigeon, the letter she would write from the world – a world that now seemed more fantastic to her than ever the island had been. Her thoughts were harking back now instead of forward. She felt like a country child who, in the middle of a whirling day in London, was thinking, not of the treats and new excitements to come, but of the little village station whence the start had been made, of the station-master’s wallflowers and the safe familiar seat by the luggage trolley.

‘Flowers in their wounds,’ muttered the airman, ‘that’s what she couldn’t get over, flowers in their wounds, flowers.’

It was a strange remark, strange enough to send a whole series of pictures flashing through Miss Ranskill’s mind. There was a wayside Calvary she had once seen in France. It had been newly painted, and with such realism that the tall foxglove growing beside it had seemed a spear, piercing the Wounded Side with brutal tenderness. There was a poster done by a young artist during the last war, a poster showing a wounded man lying among the Flanders poppies. There was a dying harvest rabbit whose blood had stained a patch of vetch and stubble by the side of a field. There was a blind man smelling a bunch of carnations held by his wife – ‘Are they red or white ones, darling? No, don’t tell me, I must follow my nose now.’

A ballad jigged into her brain –

She hummed it, as she began to wipe the dust from the table. Marjorie might return at any time now, she supposed, and though seven maids with seven mops might not clean the house in half a night, the cellar might be made habitable. While she was sweeping the dust into a saucer, the airman gave a sudden shout and opened his eyes.

‘Gosh! I woke myself up. Have I been asleep long?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Miss Ranskill.

‘I say, will you tell me something, please?’

‘If I can.’

‘Have I been talking in my sleep?’

Miss Ranskill hesitated. The remark about the flowers in the wounds became embarrassing as she thought about it. She guessed that a young man would not care to have his dreams overheard by a strange woman.

‘I’ve a reason for asking – it’s important, really it is.’

‘You muttered something a little time ago.’

‘What was it? I know doctors and nurses always lie, and swear that you haven’t uttered under anæsthetics, but you might tell me.’

‘You only said–’ again she hesitated.

‘Was it something indecent? If it was, you needn’t repeat it. Just give me a hint.’

‘No, it was only – I expect you were having a queer dream, you only said something about flowers in their wounds.’

‘Flowers in their wounds.’ He looked blank for a moment and then nodded his head. ‘Oh! yes, I remember now. It rather impressed me, I don’t know why. I’d better tell you or you’ll think I’m bats.’

‘Don’t,’ said Miss Ranskill suddenly, ‘don’t tell me if you’d rather not.’

Marjorie’s son looked grateful.

‘I might as well. It’s not the sort of thing I could tell mater: she’d think it so frightfully unhygienic. You see, I went to see one of our chaps in hospital today – a friend of mine. As a matter of fact, he died before I got there. It’s all right, you needn’t be sorry or anything. It wouldn’t have been any good, anyway, if he’d lived, I mean. He was too badly burnt. Blind, you know, and that’s not so much fun. Well, I met a nurse at that hospital who’d been out in Algiers when the big do was on there, and she said she couldn’t understand why it was that all the wounded, who kept coming in from one particular sector, had flowers in their wounds. She said it was quite uncanny. It turned out that they’d all copped it on one particular bit of road, and the wayside had been lined with flowers. Nothing in it, of course, really – only in war-time! I mean, she said it seemed queer, to see all those big wounds simply stuffed with little wayside flowers. It – I suppose it impressed me a bit. I don’t know why it should, simple enough really. I mean, if they’d fallen on to a muck-heap one wouldn’t have thought anything about it. Funny thing to talk about in my sleep?’

He looked at her enquiringly, but Miss Ranskill guessed that silence would be the best answer.

He gave a little gulp and asked, ‘Did I say anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Are you absolutely sure? Cross your heart and say die?’

Miss Ranskill, supposing that he was afraid he might have given some important secret away, paused, while trying to choose the words that would reassure him.