Shan’t know ourselves, shall we, Miss Ranskill, when we’ve got ourselves all togged up again. I’ll buy a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and wear it for a month of Sundays, and when I see you coming along I’ll say to myself, ‘Who’s this fine lady? I’ll bet she’s never done a stroke of work in all her born days. Why, it’s Miss Ranskill, who’d ever have thought it.’ We’ll smarten ourselves up one day, never you fear.
She had forgotten her figure was so good, forgotten the subtle curving and the flatness where flatness should be that now made cheap wool sliding over silkiness look expensive. She fitted the clothes: they were not cajoled into fitting her. The humble colour of the jersey exalted the jackdaw blue of her eyes and paid compliment to the sunbleached streaks of her hair. That was shaggy and ragged, but the comb did something to help and the vanishing cream toned down the snatches of red where the sun had caught her cheek-bones.
‘But gloves, I think, as well as the canvas shoes,’ decided Miss Ranskill as she doubled up her fingers.
She walked over to the window and looked down into the street. The people there were her own people, she could walk among them now inconspicuously: she had a place in the world again.
For a moment she wondered whether to leave the old clothes to be put in a shop dustbin, but as she stepped back she trod on the coat and her footfall released a salty, sandy, seaweedy odour. She would keep them for so long as the island tang lingered about them.
Just then there was a tap on the door and the assistant came into the cubicle.
‘I wondered how you were getting on, Madam?’
‘I’ll take everything, please.’
Miss Ranskill picked up her old jacket and took the nine pound notes, some shillings and coppers from a pocket.
‘I’ll wear them now if you will be so kind as to have these clothes made up into a parcel for me.’
‘Suit six-and-a-half, jersey a guinea, vest five-and-eleven, knickers five-and-eleven: that’s eight pounds three shillings and fourpence, please Madam.’
So there would be just enough left for the canvas shoes, a very cheap pair of gloves, perhaps, and carpentering tools.
‘Thank you, Madam, and–’
‘Could you have these clothes parcelled up while I go to the shoe department? I’ll call back for them.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Madam.’
Why in the world not? Miss Ranskill racked her brain and remembered the word ‘understaffed’.
‘Then if you’ll let me have some paper and string I’ll make up the parcel myself.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m no more allowed to do that than to wrap up the new clothes for you.’
‘Why?’ began Miss Ranskill, but as the eyebrows started their perilous raising, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll go to the shoe department and then come back.’
‘Very good, Madam. Let me see now, eighteen, and then four for the jersey and three for the vest and three for the knickers – that’s–’
‘But I’ve paid you, you’ve got the money in your hand.’
‘That will be thirty coupons.’
‘Thirty what?’
‘If you’ll give me your book, Madam.’
‘But I don’t want you to book them: I’ve just paid you.’
Exasperation raised Miss Ranskill’s voice and made the assistant’s take on a patient level tone.
‘Will you give me your clothes ration book, Madam, so that I can cut out the coupons, please.’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘You have your clothes ration book, Madam?’
you have your india-rubber, nona, your mapping-pen, your rough note-book and your pencils. they were all issued to you at the beginning of the term. where are they now?
‘Clothes ration book?’ repeated Miss Ranskill.
‘Yes, Madam.’
‘But I haven’t–’
‘I’m afraid if you haven’t any coupons left, we can’t accept your order. The new ration books do not come into use until next month, but if you have any coupons in the old ration book issued to you last June–’
‘Last June I wasn’t even being Swiss Family Robinson. I was being Robinson Crusoe at least practically.’
Blankness answered the outburst.
‘I don’t want to be stupid,’ pleaded Miss Ranskill. ‘But I simply don’t understand. If you could explain–’
‘Haven’t you got a clothes ration book, Madam?’
‘No, and no clothes except the ones I stood up in, and–’
‘Then I’m afraid we can’t serve you until you can find it. We can keep the new clothes if you would care to post the coupons.’
‘You mean–’ Miss Ranskill glanced at the new Miss Ranskill in the mirror and then looked down at the old Miss Ranskill’s clothes lying on the floor beside the Midshipman’s shoes and stockings. ‘You mean that unless I can give you these coupons or whatever they are, you can’t sell me the clothes I’m wearing?’
‘I’m afraid not, Madam.’
‘Not even if I give you the address of the friends I’m going to stay with – Doctor and Mrs Mallison, Hillrise, Newton Road?’
‘I can make a note of the address, but–’
‘It won’t help?’
‘No, Madam. I’m sorry, but we can’t make exceptions.’
‘Exceptions!’ Miss Ranskill laughed, as she took off the coat of the new jersey-suit that had turned her into a woman again.
‘I haven’t got anything…. I’ve only just arrived in England – only this morning after three years. I didn’t mean to say so because – well, there are reasons. I’ve been trying to learn the language, but it means nothing to me: it all sounds mad.’ Off came the skirt. ‘I may seem stupid to you: you may seem obstinate to me, but can’t we try to understand each other? I have tried…’ Off came the jumper…. ‘I’m a foreigner here and I thought I was coming home. Nobody can explain or tell me anything. That seems to be the trouble with the world: nobody can tell anyone anything. I’ve been isolated on an island but the isolation’s worse on this island just because one can’t speak the new language properly; it’s changed so since last I was here.’
The stockings were off by now.
‘If you’ll wait just a moment, Madam, I’ll go to the manager and see if he can help you.’
Miss Ranskill hardly heard the interpolation.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You’re a woman and I’m a woman. If you came to me – if your brother was dead and if you had had to bury him, scrabbling with a paddle in the sands and then with your hands till they were raw, I–’
‘My brother is dead, Madam; there was nothing left to bury. If you’ll excuse me for a moment.’
The door clicked behind the assistant and Miss Ranskill was left alone with the mirror’s reflection of her humble self.
The dead keep us busy all right, almost as if they knew what was good for us. Wouldn’t do for those that’s left behind if they packed up their trunks before going and then set out by train to Heaven.
This then, this England, was to be her desert island, a place where the dead left without aforethought and where there was no reckoning but hardness, where there was no solitude for mourning, where one was prisoned (if one was a shop assistant) alone in a crowd, and the servant of women yattering for new clothes and nagging for string and brown paper. In comparison, she, on her island, had been a lotus – no, a fish-eater living with loving kindness and dying her own little death with, at any rate, no interruption to be borne from people without.
Miss Ranskill stripped the artificial silk from her body and dragged herself into the clothes she had worn before.
The Cinderella dream was a niggling fancy now.
She opened the door of the cubicle and tiptoed across the carpet.