‘We was in London till the war.’
‘And was that lovely?’
She longed to turn his mind to something childlike, to the Lord Mayor’s Show or a school-treat in Epping Forest or a glance at the Crystal Palace from the top of a bus.
The boy scowled at the question.
‘Dad was out of work.’ There was a little pause, and he added, ‘Dad was killed at Dunkirk.’
He twiddled the Teddy Bear’s ears while Miss Ranskill considered these two chapters of a life-history. The phrases united into a poor little poem –
No, it was a rich poem and a great one, worthy of a place in any sequel to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
She knew about Dunkirk because Commander Wrekin had instructed her in that most miraculous chapter in any history of war. Listening to him she had thought of two other sea occasions and the phrases that governed them – one: ‘He blew with His winds and they were scattered’; the other – ‘Peace, be still.’ She knew how the waters had been lulled in the Channel, so that small craft, hurrying from England, had run a silk-smooth course to the beaches where the men were crowded more thickly than any August mob in peace-time. In twenty-four hours the word ‘beach’ had changed in value: and lost its power to call up a holiday. The men who had come from that place would never be quite the same again.
‘Dad was killed at Dunkirk.’ He had died, presumably, that his son might inherit the land. The child, so far, had inherited Plymouth air-raids and his enemies had stolen his birthright of fearlessness. Miss Ranskill felt furious that anything so small could be counted as enemy.
The boy’s knuckles were rubbing his eyes now and he yawned.
‘Where were you before you come ’ere?’
‘I was on an island.’
‘Sheppey?’
His head was nodding before she could answer, his chin prodded the Teddy Bear’s head and the lids closed over eyes that had seen more than any child should have imagined and would, for always, be liable to darken because of the bad news-reel stored in his mind’s cinema.
He looked very frail, so easily crushable, and Miss Ranskill wished she knew more about the weight of bombs.
Suddenly, there came a sound as though a giant were slamming his door impatiently in a distant county. The sound was repeated.
The boy opened his eyes for a moment.
‘’Bout twenty miles off,’ he remarked, and gripped the Teddy Bear more closely.
His sleep left Miss Ranskill lonely and rather frightened. If only she were not such an amateur in war. The sight of an ankle and slender foot protruding from the left leg of his pyjamas reminded her that there were rugs on the camp-beds.
She folded one round him, and he made a contented nuzzling movement.
She felt very much alone now.
CHAPTER TEN
Again a distant bomb suggested door-banging and brought back a memory of the last war, when the droppings of Zeppelins had menaced Miss Ranskill’s world. Perhaps the German machines would not come any nearer to her than those had come then, but she felt she should make some preparation.
The light from the stove made a gold-barred pattern on the ceiling and the reassuring smell of paraffin suggested warmth and comfort.
If only we could have a nice hot cup of tea, Miss Ranskill, we’d get through anything. Tea’s the thing we miss most of all.
There, on the shelf, was a kettle, and the cups were beside it. For the next few minutes she was happily busy. Fingers and thumb realised again the dry rustle of tea, and her nose appreciated its savour. This was better than the bedside tray or the tea-shop: this was a picnic and the island as it might have been. She filled the kettle from a bucket, put it on the stove and arranged the cups and saucers on the table. There was pleasure in setting each handle in line with a blue flower on the saucer, in placing the jug exactly two inches on one side of the teapot and the bowl that held granulated sugar two inches away on the other side. She took one of the tins from the shelf and shook it, recognising, after four years, the rattle of biscuits. She might never have been away except that each sound and movement was now joy.
The door of a low cupboard moved an inch or so, scraped against the bricks, and a green-eyed white and orange face peered out. The face was followed by a stripey body as a tortoiseshell cat, big with kittens, but still walking delicately, rubbed itself against Miss Ranskill’s ankles. This was another thing she had almost expected, for a singing kettle should conjure a purring cat as surely as a cottage thatch lures a starling to spangle on it.
‘Puss! Puss!’ said Miss Ranskill, and poured out milk for it, kneeling down by the saucer so that she could hear the dainty lip-lip of the rosy tongue as it flicked the milk backwards. The silk of its fur stood out in little bushy patches from the tightly-drawn skin, and beneath it, Miss Ranskill could feel the stir of tiny lumpy bodies.
When it had finished the milk, the little cat shook a paw and took its leisurely way back to the cupboard. Miss Ranskill could hear it scratching.
Steam began to puff out from the spout of the kettle, and the little boy twitched and whimpered in his sleep. Miss Ranskill longed to wake him so that he could share in the magic when boiling water met the crisp leaves in the pot. She wanted to interrupt the maternity of the tortoiseshell cat because this should be a companionable moment.
Then, as she put the lid back on the teapot, the small boy gave a shriek. It would be best to waken him, to take him from wherever he was and bring him back to the cellar, to the comfort of a Teddy Bear and the fragrance of tea. She poured out two cups, added milk and sugar, and then moved over to the deck-chair.
‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘Stop dreaming.’
The invitation was unnecessary.
There was a roar, a crash and a reverberation. Perhaps they were simultaneous, but Miss Ranskill would never know or remember that. Her ears were shocked into deafness and her chin hit the wooden bar of the deck-chair. Then she went blind. There was trembling even in the close air of the cellar, and then the little boy choked her with his arms. Somehow he tumbled himself out of the chair and on to the floor by her side. He was sobbing and whimpering and each sob shook his hard knobbly little body until it quivered like springing steel, tensed and flexed and tensed again. She could feel his head jerking against her collar-bone.
‘I don’t want to die,’ he choked.
‘You can’t die!’ Miss Ranskill’s voice convinced even herself in the lull that came before the second crash. And now the cellar itself seemed to be shaking, as lumps of plaster fell from the ceiling, guttering out the candles and suffocating her with dust. There followed the thunderous cracking of guns and other showers of plaster shuddered down into the cellar. Something splashed on to her hand and a warm wet trickle ran down her wrist. Had the child been hurt? She lifted her wrist to her mouth, dreading the salty taste of blood that might be streaming in the darkness, resenting her blindness now instead of pitying it. Her lips were wet and her tongue was exploring, not the savour of blood, but a sickliness of sugar and luke-warm tea. A cup must have turned over, that was all.
The pain in her eyes became intolerable as the other anxiety eased. She had closed her lids down on them and the lids felt razor-sharp.
‘It’s the dark that ’urts,’ shrieked the child as he threshed about in her arms. ‘It’s the dark. Where’s the matches? The dark’s making my eyes smart.’
Were they then both blind together? How else could darkness hurt?