Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

‘I’ll give you five Indians for that Hungarian; then we’ll each have a full page.’

‘You can’t have that as well ,’ Nona’s voice was savage, for was not Hungary the home of opals and was not opal cousin to rainbow?

‘But we’d each have a page then.’

‘I don’t care.’

For years after that, the lonely Hungarian stamp, dirty at the edges and blurred by tear-stains, bore testimony against Edith, to whom stamps were reckoned by numbers; and never by the magic of their lands, to whom a rainbow lost on Monday was no more important than a pencil found on Wednesday, provided, of course, that Wednesday was drawing-day, and Monday afternoon the time fixed for ‘doing stamps’.

The kittens squawked an end to reminiscence as Edith came into the room. She carried a pair of bedroom slippers and she still looked worried.

‘Put these slippers on while I look at the potatoes.’

‘And then can’t we talk?’

‘Of course. We’ll talk at lunch and afterwards for a bit. A pity it’s pie day. I suppose I could get somebody else, but I’ve got out of the WI Meeting tomorrow because I thought you were coming, and you know what villages are. ’

Edith, looking as she always had done, a paler, more annotated and yet expurgated edition of her sister, stirred the heap of kittens with her toe.

‘You don’t have a long-lost sister returning every day!’

‘Oh! Nona, and I’ve never even kissed you or said I’m glad to see you, or–’ Edith stooped down, somehow kissed the damp kitten instead of her sister’s face, rubbed some hairs from her mouth and said, ‘There!’

‘I suppose it would have been different on Tuesday?’

‘Well, better because I’d have got everything prepared , and–’

‘And, I suppose kisses scheduled for Tuesday can’t be expended on Monday.’

‘Nona!’ Edith protested, but her face showed relief that her sister was beginning to understand. ‘Don’t be silly. Let’s come and have lunch, what there is of it. Philippa won’t be back.’

‘Who is Mrs Phillips?’

The question was not answered until the pilchards had been laid out on a bed of lettuce and carried into the dining-room, where they lay for a time side by side with the bowl stuffed full of roses.

Mrs Phillips, so Edith explained and as her sister had already guessed, was the widow of an Army officer. She was the owner of the house and was very kind, very energetic and very patriotic. It was clear that Edith, who did the housework and cooking, half the garden and a certain amount of secretarial work in exchange for board, lodging and the privilege of Mrs Phillips’ society, was afraid of her.

‘But it works very well,’ she told her sister. ‘After my – our house was requisitioned I had to go somewhere and do something. I’m too old for the Forces, and I don’t think I could quite stand up to munitions, and so–’

‘And so you are general servant and gardener and unpaid secretary to Mrs Phillips!’

‘Well, lots of people are , I mean, we all are these days practically.’

‘Does she need so many?’

‘I don’t mean we’re all working for Mrs Phillips , I mean we’re all doing something of the sort.’

‘I saw some advertisements for servants in The Times . Really they were more pleas than advertisements, and cooks seem to be getting about three pounds a week.’

‘Yes, but it’s not quite the same . We share the house and Mrs Phillips does the flowers, and–’

Miss Ranskill looked at the rose-bowl and shuddered.

‘Yes, I know , but she likes them like that and they are her roses.’

‘Do you get afternoons out and evenings off?’

‘No, it isn’t like that exactly. Of course, we can’t both be out at the same time for long because of the telephone. I have to go down to the shop sometimes. I’ve got one or two Committee Meetings too. The arrangement works quite well, really . We aren’t in each other’s way too much, and I have my own things in the drawing-room. Besides–’

Here Edith hesitated.

‘Besides what?’

‘Oh! well, I’m always allowed to have visitors for an odd weekend or so. We share the spare room, I mean we ration our guests. Philippa has one or two nephews and nieces who come here for leaves and things, so, of course, they really have first claim.’

‘I see.’

Miss Ranskill was beginning to see. She understood, too, that it wasn’t entirely Edith’s fault that her unexpected arrival was, so oddly, thought awkward. Mrs Phillips had to be considered and possibly conciliated. There was only one little spare room. Leaves mattered more than the arrival home of a sister, who should have been dead, of course they did: it was Mrs Phillips’ house.

‘Philippa is thrilled at the idea of meeting you. All her people have lived abroad most of their lives, and she says she finds the village frightfully insular .’

‘All the same,’ persisted Miss Ranskill, ‘she seems to get a good bargain in you. And if those advertisements in The Times are to be believed.’

‘But did you really manage to get The Times regularly on a desert island or did you just call it a desert island? I’ve only had that one letter, you know, and I want to hear everything.’

Miss Ranskill tried, she tried very hard indeed to explain her life on the island, but lunch was finished and cleared and the washing-up was nearly done before Edith understood that there had been no ship-stores, no savages, no passing ship, no wreckage, nothing to read, nothing to sew, and no calendar.

‘But you must have been so terribly bored .’

No, Miss Ranskill hadn’t been bored. She tried to explain the games they had played and to indicate that the Carpenter had been a good companion.

‘But a common – well, ordinary sort of man like that !’

‘He wasn’t ordinary.’

‘Well, not educated.’

‘It depends what you call education. He taught me more than I’ve ever learned in my life before.’

‘But it must have been so awkward sitting down to table – well, I suppose you hadn’t got a table , but sharing meals . A picnic seems even worse, so much more intimate. It must have been dread ful, Nona.’

‘It wasn’t.’ Miss Ranskill’s voice began to give a warning. ‘And I’ve no doubt if I’d asked that he’d have waited on me first and had his own meal afterwards. You’ll be surprised to hear that I didn’t ask.’

‘No? Well, I suppose it would have been a bit difficult . The trouble is that sort of person never seems to think about that sort of thing. Still, I think he might have let you have tea alone, anyway .’

‘There wasn’t any tea , and if you’d been on a desert island you would have been glad of any companion who might sometimes make you forget that the fish you were swallowing was fish.’

Edith hung up the dish-cloth and turned a concerned face towards her sister.

‘Fish! Oh! you poor dear, and I’ve given you fish for lunch. Why didn’t you say? ’

Mrs Phillips loomed large in the cottage, the village and the nearby town. She had, so she frequently hinted, blue blood in her veins. Certainly some of it showed through the skin of her nose, which was of an aquamarine tint in chilly weather. Her politics were blue and rather bleak; so, though she admitted with generous gesture that the Russians were wonderful, she always added, ‘It seems strange now to think how we talked about “poor brave little Finland”.’ For some time Miss Ranskill, uninformed in recent history, was very perplexed by the statement.