Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

The rabbit quivered, its ears flicked backwards. For a moment it crouched in the girl’s lap, and then, it seemed only in another moment, its white scut was disappearing under the cover of a stook two yards away.

‘It is all right then – for today, anyway.’

‘ For today, anyway .’ Miss Ranskill wondered how often the young wife had used that same phrase in her heart after the night bombers had returned. She shook the thought away, and asked a question.

‘Are you staying here?’

‘Yes, at a guest house. Rex is on leave, and I managed to get my holiday at the same time. He’s stationed near here now. We would have gone right away, but we’ve been looking for rooms for later on. There isn’t any inch anywhere . We can’t afford hotels, and anyway they’re crammed, besides – it wouldn’t do. We thought perhaps two rooms in a friendly house. I’d help with the cooking and everything as soon as I could, of course. But people seem so frightened of babies.’

She continued to talk in jerky sentences while her hands moved restlessly in her lap, as though she were still caressing the rabbit.

‘One’s got to look ahead – even if it’s going to be a quite different “ahead” from the one we had planned. It wouldn’t be yet, of course. But presently they’ll release me from my job, and then I shall have to go steady for a bit. I could go into a nursing-home to have the baby. It’s afterwards that’s going to be so difficult. Mummy’s been living in hotels ever since our house was bombed. There is Rex’s mother, but – I ask you!’

Miss Ranskill had no need to be asked. Her mind, busy home-hunting, had already rejected Marjorie’s battle-eager establishment.

‘No, not unless you have triplets who could be made to form threes when they’re learning to walk.’

‘Poor tinies! They’d have to be boys too, one for the Navy, one for the Army, and one for the Air Force!’

She laughed suddenly, and Miss Ranskill remembered Rex’s description of her – ‘She laughs a lot and she’s comforting.’

As though the word had carried from one mind to another, the girl used it again in her next sentence.

‘Mother-in-law’s such a silly name, isn’t it? It ought to be mother-in-love or – or something comforting . It’s so stupid too. Fancy being a wife – in-law; there’d be legal disputes at once! I say, I’m keeping you from your harvesting.’

‘No, it’s very wet still; anyway, this is important.’

Without the young green corn there could have been no harvest; without the young generation, bred in war-time and nurtured through danger, there would be no meaning in the golden fields. The sun would shine in vain.

‘The mater (I’ve got to call her that) is against the baby. I mean she thinks we ought to wait till after the war. She thinks it will distract – that’s what she said – distract Rex from his job, bothering about me and it. As if, as if he oughtn’t to be distracted in that way. What’s the use of killing if you aren’t giving anything back? I mean, well, I mean, a gardener spends a lot of time weeding, doesn’t he? But what’s the use if he’s just going to leave bare beds and not plant better things instead of the weeds? It wouldn’t make sense; it wouldn’t be worth while.’

Truth was throbbing in Miss Ranskill’s mind. She, in her confusion, had been irritated by all the little affairs and incessant pin-pricks of war-time, had made too many lazy journeys back to the island to rest in the comforting shadow of the Carpenter’s memory. This girl had a clearer view.

‘You see, it isn’t as if they like killing. Rex says it’s only the old women who think they do. Even when they hate, as most of them do, because of things that have happened to their friends in the Forces and relations at home, it’s all too sort of impersonal to be satisfactory. It’s all sort of – oh! I can’t explain, deadening in a way, except to the few. It’s different in Fighters, of course, their fighting is closer. But if you’ve got to kill, well then, you’ve got to, well, birth as well. I can’t think of another word. It’s compensating . Rex is clever. He understands better than I do. He can explain things, but I know .’

Yes, she knew now: she was a woman. Reason made way for wisdom in her. For the next months, anyway, she would be guided by instinct. Her body would obey the tiny indomitable unreasoning will within her, would give way to its slow growth with perfect timing, and make ready for its later needs.

The corn-stook was rustling now and she smiled as she looked towards it.

‘It’s easier for rabbit mothers, isn’t it? I don’t mean in the silly way people talk about having babies as easily as rabbits do. I mean there’s plenty of room in a burrow, and there doesn’t seem to be any room in houses. That’s another thing the mater said. She said it was selfish to bring babies into the world just now, when everyone ought to be doing war-jobs and not thinking about milk-bottles. The only thing she will like, will be being a grandmother in ARP uniform. She’ll get a sort of kick out of that; because everyone will tell her how splendid she is, and what an example to people like me – young mothers.’

She gave a fair imitation of Marjorie’s voice.

‘“Young mothers who have nothing better to do than to idle along the roads pushing perambulators.” That’s one of the things she said, and she sort of hinted that I was only having the baby so that I could leave my job. Just as though it isn’t my job.’

A small quivering nose thrust out between the corn-stalks, and then the whole of the rabbit emerged, glanced in horror at the humans, and went bobbing across the field.

‘It’s quite all right again, look!’ The girl pointed. ‘Perhaps it’s a sort of omen against all the things they say about not having babies in war-time, not bringing them into such a dangerous world. The rabbit had a bad time, but it’s all right now.’

‘It’s all right now,’ echoed Miss Ranskill. ‘So are the kittens that were born in the cellar. Do you remember? They’ve all gone to different homes.’

The smooth forehead wrinkled again.

‘Oh yes! And you told me you’d promised the cat they shouldn’t be drowned because they’d been born in a cellar and in spite of Germany. I must have been remembering without knowing it all the time I’ve been talking to you. That’s why I’ve said so much. And of course you know the real reason.’

‘What reason, about what? ’ asked Miss Ranskill.

‘The real reason why I must have the baby. In case there wasn’t any – any Rex after the war; there’d still be a Rex in a way, wouldn’t there?’

‘Yes.’

One couldn’t deny in the face of truth. One couldn’t say that everything was bound to be all right. Miss Ranskill groped in her mind for the quotation she needed and found it.

‘You mean – “And those who would have been, their sons, they gave, their immortality.”’

‘Yes, I suppose so. He mustn’t give that as well if he’s got to give–’

She jerked up the cuff of her white sweater and looked at her watch.

‘I must go. Rex was writing letters, but he’ll have finished now. We’re going to look at another lot of rooms, but I don’t suppose they’ll be any use. Thanks most awfully for bothering to stop to talk–’

Miss Ranskill smiled as she remembered how very little she had spoken at all. The young and the old, she remembered, were always in the greatest need of listeners.

‘I say, if by any chance you should hear of anything near here, could you let me know? Rex’s mother would always forward a letter. It mustn’t be grand or expensive. We wouldn’t be any bother in the house. Anywhere , where the people wouldn’t hate a baby. And about Christmas time. Goodbye.’