Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

Mrs Phillips was a possessive woman. She possessed her Committees, she possessed Edith and she still possessed Major Phillips, making herself the trumpet of statements, worn threadbare, even before he had uttered them, many times before his death.

She did not talk of the Country but of ‘My Country’, and she talked of it frequently. The bed in the spare room was never referred to as the spare room bed: it was ‘my nephew’s bed’. Miss Ranskill tossed in it uneasily and considered the war, as though she were turning over an album of photographs, some superimposed one upon the other, some under and some over-developed, some distorted and others freakish. As she reviewed them in her mind’s eye, some of these pictures changed character, so that, at times, the village snapshots, seen through tenderness, became beautiful through their purpose and simplicity. Then she saw the village as a miniature country at war, with the Home Guard as its veteran and boyish defenders. Each cottage became a castle, each housewife obeying orders to save money (though prices had risen), fuel (though war-time joints and vegetable dishes required long cooking), clothing (though the extra work in gardens and houses racked out garments), time (though shopping and mending took longer than they had ever done before), light (though work must be continued into the night and every home was filled with evacuees, bombed-out relatives, or war-working lodgers), petrol (though all private cars had been put up long ago, buses were crowded and shoe-leather poor) became a bulwark on the home front.

At other times she saw a little petty people, strangled by red tape, nagging along, intent on their own tiny quarrels, fretting over the fat ration, playing at war and pretending to be important in their ARP uniforms and gardening dungarees.

The newspapers pandered to her bewilderment too. Side by side on the same page, she would read an account of the horrors of fighting in Russia and see the photograph of a smug child whose mother had withdrawn her from school because of the trifling injustice of a mistress.

Only the Carpenter’s cottage stood secure in her mind during that first fortnight in a war-time village. Now the time was drawing very near when she must put that to the test also.

‘I don’t see why you can’t simply write to that Mrs Reid of yours,’ said Edith. ‘You’ll only harrow yourself; besides, Doctor Fenton said you were to take things easily for at least a month.’

‘I can’t write. I’ve tried, and there’s too much to say.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t get involved . You never know with those sort of people.’

‘I must go,’ said Miss Ranskill, and, staking her future in a sentence, she added, ‘I shall go next Thursday. I can get there and back in a day.’

‘If I were you, I should write first,’ persisted Edith.

‘Don’t forget,’ Mrs Phillips glanced at her husband’s photograph as though seeking counsel from it, and then spoke solemnly, ‘Don’t forget that we are asked not to hamper troop movements. We are asked not to travel unless it is absolutely necessary.’

‘We’re asked to save paper as well,’ snapped Miss Ranskill. ‘Whatever we do we seem to be breaking some rule. I’ve got a choice of breakages, anyway, and I shall go on Thursday.’

Edith looked distressed and apologetic, Mrs Phillips gave a patriotic sigh, impaled a ball of khaki wool on a knitting-needle and left the room in a marked manner.

The first person Miss Ranskill spoke to in the village was a stranger there himself, and obviously proud of it. The second gave directions so assuredly that she felt doubtful at once.

‘I mean Mrs Reid, the Carpenter’s wife,’ she elaborated.

‘Thompson’s the carpenter now. Reid, he’s been dead these four years or more.’

‘No, oh no,’ her heart made silent answer. ‘The Carpenter was alive when those dahlias were in bud. He was singing when that hedge of sweet peas was fresh.’

‘Mrs Reid, though, she still lives in the same cottage alongside the carpenter’s shed. Straight along the road and on the right; you can’t mistake it.’

And now her feet were taking the road his feet had taken. A hobnail from a man’s boot lay shining in the pathway, and she wondered absurdly if it could be the Carpenter’s, until she remembered that even broken nails do not stay for long in village streets. Presently the sound of hammering disturbed her thoughts; and then she saw the shed, standing flush with the pathway, as he had described it so often. She noticed resentfully the board with the name Thompson , and underneath the words ‘Carpenter and Undertaker’.

Two diamond-shaped beds filled with geraniums lay behind the prim railings of the cottage, and on each side of the door.

After she had knocked, her hand sought the smooth comfort of the Carpenter’s watch lying in her coat pocket. She drew it out, but its ticking insisted so loudly against the beating of her heart that she tucked it away again.

She dreaded and yet longed for the moment when the door would open. It was going to be difficult, painful, both for herself and the poor widow, but it would be easier in his house than in any other place. Surely there would be a spirit of sanity about his hearth and comfort and strength and common sense.

You’ve got to take things as they come, Miss Ranskill, and not get flummoxed. Troubles look big when they start, and less when you get on with them. It’s the same with building a house: that looks a big job, but when you’ve the first two courses of bricks laid, it only seems fit for dolls, so little it looks.

A window was flung open above her, and a head, decked with curling-pins, was framed in it.

‘Yes?’ said a voice.

Miss Ranskill looked up into the face of buxomness turned to slattern, at tortured hair, and pink cheeks smeared with powder.

All the rehearsals failed her. You could not break news or condole when your neck was cricked at such an angle and when the face above showed such impatience. One slim hope was left: perhaps she was addressing Mrs Thompson.

‘Is Mrs Reid in?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘I wonder – I, I have a message, a–’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, it’s rather – I mean, if–’

‘Are you from the gas?’

There was suspicion in the voice, but the words meant nothing to Miss Ranskill.

‘From the gas?’ she repeated.

‘Because, if that’s what it is, I’ve got something to say. That young man of yours read the meter all wrong. Must have done.’

‘Oh no!’ cried Miss Ranskill, meaning that she was not an agent from any inferno of blue hisses and stenches of tortuous pipes. ‘Oh no, certainly not.’

‘It’s no use “oh-noing” me. I tell you he must have done, and that’s why the bill’s not been paid. I’ve a friend who can read meters, and I’ve a letter all ready written to the Management. It’ll be there by tomorrow; so there’s no use your waiting.’

The window was edging downwards as Miss Ranskill spoke despairingly.

‘I’m not from the – from the gas. I came to give you something.’

The window shot up again.

‘Beg your pardon, Miss, I’m sure, but you know how it is. They send so many young ladies round now instead of the men you don’t know where you are. And talk about cheating… I’ll be down in a minute. I was just giving myself a bit of a wash. Where’s that boy?’

A frowsty black curtain blew outwards.

‘Colin! Colin! There’s a lady at the door. Let her in, can’t you? Colin!’