CHAPTER EIGHT
Miss Ranskill wondered what to do next. She strolled round the room, and was again shocked by her reflection in the mirror. Then a pair of nail-scissors on the dressing-table gave a hint that she might as well trim some of the jags of her rusty hair, for there was now no need to keep it long as she had done on the island, where it had been a substitute for darning thread. The Carpenter had made the shell needles.
A woman’s glory is her hair, Miss Ranskill, that’s what they say. Where we’d be without yours beats me. I reckon when your old Nanny was brushing it she never thought you’d be hacking it off by the handful to coax the fire to light again. You’d have laughed though, wouldn’t you, when you were a little lass to think your hair would be used to tie the bait to fish-hooks and fix on buttons! Pretty hair too, I’d like to see it smoothed again. A silk handkerchief, that’s what my missus used to polish the children’s hair.
All the same, she trimmed economically at first, till the hair swung free of her shoulders and showed a curved edge patterned by the scissors. In another ten minutes it only reached the tips of her ears and a sleeking of brilliantine made the rusty strands gleam. She looked younger now and less like a castaway. Marjorie’s scentless face-cream and powder made more improvement.
It would be pleasant to take a book from the shelves and read herself into a different world, away from the difficult one she had left and from this new one that had no welcome.
There was another row of books on top of the fumed oak writing-table, and they included a ready-reckoner, a dictionary, and a cookery book full of potato recipes. Miss Ranskill read a few more of the titles: Grow Your Own Food, The Kitchen Front, Food From the Garden, and I Was a Spy. Then she took the last book from its place.
We’ll have plenty of time for reading when we get home, Miss Ranskill, reading and writing. I’ll write down all that we did on the island, I shouldn’t wonder.
There was a relief-nibbed pen on the desk, an inkstand and a blotter. Somewhere in the crowded pigeon-holes there would be paper and envelopes. Marjorie could not possibly mind if she looked for them. They had often shared desks at St Catherine’s.
There was plenty of paper but no new envelopes. The last pigeon-hole held a bundle of old ones, a packet of sticky labels, some ration books, and a stiff folded card bearing Marjorie’s name, address and a number.
‘Never mind,’ thought Miss Ranskill, ‘I’ll ask for an envelope later.’
She sat down at the desk and began to write to her sister – ‘Dear Edith–’
It was difficult to know how to begin. Stiff little sentences formed themselves in her mind. ‘I hope you are very well…. I hope this letter will find you…. You will be surprised to hear from me after so long, but I have just returned from a desert island…. I would have written before but have been so far away from post offices.’ Anything she could write would sound incredible. Her arrival might be inconvenient as well, because her death would have been presumed years ago, and Edith, as sole legatee, would have readjusted her own life, disposed of most of Nona’s possessions, and settled herself somewhere in a house for one. She would be playing the part of a brave woman with a great sorrow – the shock of her sister’s sudden and terrible death. The letter would steal thunder from the sorrow and set Edith to the counting of tea-cups and the pairing of sheets.
Miss Ranskill crumpled the card in her left hand and stirred up the ink with her pen.
The door opened and Marjorie strode in.
‘I’ll be forgetting my head next. I thought I’d got all the beastly lists. Can I come to the desk for a sec?’
Miss Ranskill got up from the chair.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind my writing to Edith. I’ve just heard our house is in a prohibited area or something, and–’
‘You would think,’ said Marjorie, rootling through a pigeon-hole, ‘that they could remember to bring their own lists, wouldn’t you. No sense of responsibility – that’s their trouble.’
She picked up the book Miss Ranskill had taken down and looked disapprovingly at the title. ‘That shouldn’t be here.’
‘I’m so sorry, I’ll put it back.’
A piece of crumpled card slipped from between the visitor’s fingers as she held out her hand for the book.
Marjorie pounced on it. ‘I do like a clear desk,’ she announced as she began to smooth out the cardboard. ‘And it really is important to keep even waste-paper flat: it saves the salvage people such a lot of trouble.’
Miss Ranskill waited for further reproof. It had always been the same at school when ink or an india-rubber or blotting-paper pellets in an ink-well had stirred Marjorie to speeches.
‘Gosh!’ she exclaimed now. ‘My identity card. My identity card, Nona, what have you done to it?’
‘I’m awfully sorry. I think I was just fiddling with it while I was trying to write that letter. I didn’t know I’d got anything in my hand. Is it something that matters?’
‘Something that matters! I ask you!’
Marjorie’s cheeks were pinker than usual, and then she gave a little jerk of the head that had long been familiar to Miss Ranskill. Better nature, self-conscious better nature and good sportsmanship were going to take the place of annoyance. Fair play would be called up at any moment.
‘But, of course, it’s my fault, really. Serves me jolly well right for being so careless. I always do carry it in my wallet, but I was a bit fagged last night. Not that that’s any excuse. My being fagged doesn’t matter an atom. When one thinks of Russia.’
Marjorie’s chin went up and she straddled her legs slightly as though she were taking firm stance on the burning deck. The gesture suggested a salute, and Miss Ranskill wondered why it was necessary.
‘Now where’s that list?’ Her friend rummaged in a pigeon-hole, snatched what she wanted and hurried to the door.
‘Tea will be ready in two ticks,’ she announced. ‘If you don’t hurry up, we’ll have wolfed all the buns. Heavens! what’s that?’
One of her competent fingers was pointing to the dressing-table with its litter of rust-red hair.
‘It was so long and shaggy,’ said Miss Ranskill. ‘I’d meant to go to a hairdresser before I came, but–’
‘Aren’t you a scream!’ Marjorie delivered her last speech from the doorway. ‘Good old happy-go-lucky Nona. So long! See you at tea. After that we’ll have no end of a jaw.’
The door shut with a bang and Miss Ranskill began to collect her rags of hair from the toilet-table. Before she had finished, the telephone-bell gave a brief tinkle and she snatched up the receiver.
She had always been one of those people who never see a telegraph boy, even in a strange town, without expecting delivery of an important wire, and so it never occurred to her, even when a man’s voice asked, ‘Is that you, darling?’ that the call was not for her. ‘I say, this is rather important. Are you alone?’
Before Miss Ranskill could open her mouth she heard the unmistakable voice of Marjorie replying, into a mouth-piece in some other room. ‘Yes, yes. What is it, Harry?’
Here Miss Ranskill should, and would, had she not been for so long a stranger to the land where people of her kind do not read other people’s letters or listen to other people’s telephone conversation, have hung up the receiver. But her mind was clumsy in this queer new world just as her feet were awkward on a carpeted floor, so she listened as a child might have done.