Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

‘He – his body was dead,’ she replied at last.

‘There wasn’t a doctor, though, to sign the death certificate?’

‘There wasn’t anybody.’

‘No, I was forgetting. They told me you was alone with him.’

‘Who?’ Again a shiver rippled down Miss Ranskill’s spine. ‘Who told you?’

She braced herself for the answer.

‘The police, of course, not the “Special” here: he’s not much use. They sent a couple of men from Lidcot. Let me see, it would be just about three weeks ago. In the morning it was.’

The shallow blue eyes were turned towards the mantelpiece and the clock, which had, so Miss Ranskill supposed, continued its indifferent ticking all through the terrible hours when she had scrabbled like a dog in the sand on the island, and all through the hour, three weeks ago, when the police had brought their information to Mrs Reid.

She ought to have realised that there could have been no ‘revelations’ except in the newspaper sense of that word, in a room like this.

She should have remembered how intensely the police had questioned her about the Carpenter on their visit to the Mallisons’ house. Her mind harked back to that interview. She remembered how many things had been written down on the Police Inspector’s pad. Of course, it had been their business to inform the widow of what had happened.

She felt drained, as though virtue had gone out of her.

Mrs Reid went on talking.

‘It does seem a thing, doesn’t it? I mean without a doctor or clergyman and no proper funeral or nothing. Still, they seemed to think it would be all right about my having drawn the insurance money before I should have. They didn’t think the insurance people would grumble about that. Anyway, if there should be bother about that I’d have a right to his pay for all those years. I can’t stand to lose both.’

She leaned forward and lowered her voice a little.

‘Least said soonest mended, is what I always say. Talking won’t bring him back, will it?’

‘No.’ To Miss Ranskill the monosyllable sounded like the first stroke of a death-knell. ‘No, nothing will bring him back, I’m afraid.’

‘I couldn’t be expected to get into mourning twice over, could I? I mean to say I’ve not the coupons to spare now, and that’s a fact. Besides, it would make a lot of talk. You know what they are in these villages. You see what I mean, don’t you?’

Yes, Miss Ranskill saw. She had thought herself invulnerable by now, but this sudden smashing of the image created by the Carpenter shocked her so much that she felt cold and physically sick.

Could his wife think of nothing but insurance money and the neighbours? Could she not rend her heart anew just for a little while, or ask a single tender question?

For a moment the boy was forgotten, and Miss Ranskill rose to go.

‘I – It was stupid of me to come and take up your time. I hadn’t realised that of course the police would have told you about – about Reid – Mr – Reid.’

‘Oh! you mustn’t go yet. Maybe you’d like a nice cup of tea. There’s still one or two things we might talk over.’

‘Thank you.’ Miss Ranskill felt badly in need of tea after this new ordeal. Perhaps it would pull her together, and make her feel less sick.

‘I could do with a cup myself. I’ve been feeling a bit upset ever since the police came. Still,’ Mrs Reid rose and poked the ash-choked fire. ‘Still, if Harry had to die, it’s a good thing it happened when it did, and that’s a fact.’

She moved about the kitchen and set dusty teapot on dusty tray, blew some flecks of soot from a lump of margarine, embedded a spoon further into its jam-jar and gave a loaf of bread a shake.

Undoubtedly the man had been the home-maker.

‘Funny thing,’ she observed, ‘to think of me in mourning all those years ago and Harry alive.’

Miss Ranskill stared in amazement at the plump body, at the show of sleek calves and the feet crammed into over-tight shoes.

This then was the woman the Carpenter had cherished. Her indifference had been shielded by the words of his loyalty. She was naked and he had clothed her; but now the garments were dropping from her one by one with every word that she spoke.

‘Did he leave any last message?’ she now asked abruptly.

‘No, you see – there wasn’t time. It happened very suddenly. He’d been working hard. He lifted a big stone. One minute he was well and strong. It was a heart attack. He didn’t regain consciousness.’

Miss Ranskill covered her eyes with her hands.

‘I can see you’re highly-strung, same as me. I’ve always been a sufferer with my nerves. You’d better drink this down: it’ll steady you.’

‘I’m only crying because – because it should be so much worse for you than for me.’

‘Yes, I was proper upset when they told me Harry had been lost at sea.’ Mrs Reid’s voice took on a tone of pride. ‘I wouldn’t eat a thing for days and days: not a bite passed my lips. And I can tell you I was upset again when the police came. Seemed almost like as though he’d died twice.’

She drank her tea noisily.

‘But doesn’t it seem better to know that he had those extra years of life, even if they were hard ones? I–’ Miss Ranskill’s mind groped vainly for adequate words and only snatched at the commonplace, ‘I made him as comfortable as I could.’

‘I’m sure,’ replied Mrs Reid politely.

‘He talked about you a great deal.’ Miss Ranskill’s voice was pleading. ‘And about the boy and his home.’ She looked round the room. If only her glance could sweep the dust from all those smeary surfaces and her mind’s eye restore the kitchen to what it had once been to her.

‘He always was like an old woman about the house. He was handy too, I’ll say that for him. I had to let the place go a bit after he went. It’s been too much for me altogether, but what can you do in war-time. Yes, I’ve missed Harry about the house, time and again I’ve missed him. I’ll give you another cup of tea when the kettle boils up.’

Miss Ranskill, while waiting for the kettle to boil, tried to talk a little about the life on the island. It was only fair that Mrs Reid should be told as much as possible, though there was little enough to be said and less still that seemed to be understood.

‘Well, fancy that now! Poor Harry!’ was the widow’s favourite expression. Once, she remarked, ‘You’d have thought he’d have built a house while he was about it!’ and once, ‘Fancy him taking all that time to build a boat. He used to be reckoned a smart worker.’

Her eyes kept seeking the clock, once or twice she stifled yawns.

At the end she commented, ‘I shan’t say anything to anyone myself, and if I was you I wouldn’t say anything neither. Folks might think it funny you and him being alone together on the island all those years. And they’d think it funny about me too; lot of Nosey Parkers they are. It’s nobody’s business but yours and mine and the police, is it?’

‘No,’ said Miss Ranskill, and hoped she was not going to be sick.

‘Anyway, there’s no need to say anything to Colin, might upset him, there’s no knowing. It took him quite a while to get over it. Colin’s fanciful. It wouldn’t do to upset him.’

‘But there’s the boat,’ said Miss Ranskill. ‘I wanted him to have the boat that his father made.’

‘Boat!’ The tone of Mrs Reid’s voice reduced the boat to the dead wood it had been before the Carpenter’s skill had coaxed the planks to curving, before water and sun and air had quickened it to the resistance that the sea had failed to break.

‘Boat! What should he want with a boat? Colin’s the chance of something better than that. He’s brains if he chose to use them. We don’t want to go upsetting him now talking about his father.’