Barbara Todd - Miss Ranskill Comes Home

Miss Ranskill picked up her pitchfork.

‘I wish my sister – but it’s not her house and there’s only one spare room.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that, of course. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye. And–’

‘I wish you could have come to see us this evening, but it’s the very last day. Rex goes back this afternoon, and I go back to London. I’ll ask him to look you up. Goodbye, thank you so much.’

For what? thought Miss Ranskill, as she watched the girl out of sight. For not being able to say, ‘Come to my house and I’ll look after you.’

She stooped down and picked up a couple of stooks, tucked one under each arm, plumped them down into place and brought their heads together. A plan was struggling for birth. The rhythm of her work might help it to be born.

‘About Christmas time.’

Her last Christmas Day had been spent on the island. She remembered the little presents. She had polished a new set of shells for plates. The Carpenter had wrapped the powder-bowl he had made her in a packet of dried seaweed.

Next Christmas we might be home, Miss Ranskill, you never know. Filling stockings and singing carols. It’s the grandest day in the year, but you need to have children about you. Not that there’s anything to stop us singing a carol now. Maybe cheer us up a bit. Now then, Miss Ranskill – Hark the Herald –

They had sung to grey sea and to grey mist and to sea-gulls, whose white wings flickering up and down between sea and sky heralded the approach towards shore of the fish they needed.

It was difficult to think of Christmas time in this field under the blazing, burning sun that was also beating down on the Sicilian vineyards, on the tanks and the men and the menacing slopes of Etna.

The letter to Edith came during an epidemic of influenza.

Mrs Phillips, just recovered, was striding from Committee to Committee. Her illness had been unnecessarily long because she had insisted on answering her country’s rallying cries by trumpeting through her handkerchief on platforms in draughty halls until her bark had become a very great deal worse than her bite. She had refused to let up or let down, until speechlessness made her work in lecture halls a sinecure. The household had suffered; so, too, had many of the loyal listeners who had received largesse of germs from her cornucopia of a nose.

Edith’s temperature was at its height when the letter came. She summoned her sister plaintively.

‘The tenants have given notice. The ban is being lifted and Lynchurch isn’t in a prohibited area any more. Mrs Staples says the people they sub-let to have gone already, and so have most of the troops. It would happen just now, wouldn’t it? No,’ Edith picked up the letter again, ‘they go tomorrow…. What are we to do, Nona?’

‘I don’t see that we can do anything, can we? I suppose the Wilsons, poor things, will have to go on paying the rent till Christmas time. I wish you’d keep your arms under the bedclothes.’

Edith obeyed petulantly.

‘I know, but Mrs Wilson says if we could re-let the house, it would make things much easier for them. I don’t think there’s anything but his pay . I’d hate to take money when they aren’t using the house, but if all the soldiers are going I don’t suppose we’ll have a chance of re-letting. And it’s so bad for a house to be left empty now with winter coming on and everything .’

Edith produced her next sentence between coughs and chokes, ‘I suppose… old Emma… can see to fires and… things.’ (Old Emma had once been the Ranskills’ housemaid. She was married now, but still in the village.)

‘You oughtn’t to talk so much.’

‘I must talk.’

‘You needn’t talk now. I’ll write to Emma.’

‘But there’s the inventory . Nona, I wonder if you could go down tomorrow?’

Miss Ranskill’s heart gave an excited little jump. Of course she could go down. It would be lovely to be alone again and in the old house and among remembered villagers, and the friends who had known her since girlhood.

‘I simply don’t think I can go myself.’

Edith’s voice was reproachful and she sneezed pathetically. ‘I know it isn’t in your line ’ (the reproachfulness increased), ‘but old Emma would help. She’s quite methodical even if she is slow . I’ll send her a telegram if you think you can go.’

‘Of course I can go.’

‘Very well then, I’ll send her a telegram, or you might, and ask her to spare what time she can. Then you and she and the man from the agents can go over the inventory together. And do try to remember that it does matter if the right number of sheets isn’t returned. You can’t get teacloths now without coupons…. The inventory should be comparatively simple if the Wilsons are as careful as they sound. They’ve always written very nice letters…. Oh! how my poor head aches!’

‘Shall I get you an aspirin and a cup of hot tea?’

‘Oh, Nona, not now , when there’s so much to think about. We’ve got to make arrangements.’

‘It’s no use thinking at a distance. I’ll do all the thinking when I get down there.’

‘The house isn’t the only thing we’ve got to think about. There’s the nephew too.’

‘The Wilsons’ nephew?’

‘No, Philippa’s nephew, Martin, the taller of the twins. He wants to come down next week on indefinite sick-leave.’

‘I see.’

Miss Ranskill’s thoughts skipped to the small spare room. At other times, when the nephews had come home for their short leaves, she had occupied a room in Miss Banks’ house at the other end of the village. She wouldn’t be able to do it again though, because Miss Banks had let the room to a government official, who was employed in the neighbourhood.

‘I’d meant to tell you last night, but I felt so ill. My head was going round and round and I couldn’t think .’

‘Something will turn up.’

‘You don’t understand , and my head’s simply racking .’

Edith was always angry when she was ill. Her mental dominance increased with her body’s powerlessness.

‘Much better let me make you some tea, and then, if you must think, we can both think quietly.’

Miss Ranskill longed to escape from the room and collect her whirling thoughts. These were not concerned with tea-cloths and bed-linen, but with the waiting garden and the empty rooms.

‘Think quietly !’ repeated Edith. ‘You could scarcely call me noisy just now except when I have one of my sneezing bouts and they simply rack me. No, it isn’t the inventory that worries me so much, it’s the wear and tear and what’s fair and what isn’t. We can’t expect them to do too much in war-time: there isn’t the labour and one can’t get the things . But they must replace burned-out saucepans and badly cracked crockery as well as the things that are actually broken . And if they’ve spilled things on the carpets. Are you listening, Nona?’

Miss Ranskill returned from her vision of welcoming fires, clothes drying before a fender and happily-lived-in rooms and looked at her sister.

‘Stained carpets,’ she repeated dutifully.

‘Yes, but now I’ve forgotten what I was going to say next. Hadn’t you better get a pencil and make a list , Nona. After all, it is your house as well as mine.’

So it was. Miss Ranskill had forgotten that. She wasn’t even quite a pauper any more. The Death Duty had been returned, and though she had refused, so far, to touch her share of the joint income, she had earned money in the harvest-field and did Mrs Phillips’ garden now in exchange for her keep. The plan in her mind began to prosper.