‘But not today,’ said Miss Ranskill to herself, ‘and not tomorrow: perhaps not for quite a long time. I must get used to being by myself first for a bit. The sea would be too lonely yet.’
She felt more content now that she had made up her mind. She would keep the fire going, catch and dry some more fish, tidy the Carpenter’s grave and recover her strength for a little while.
There was, after all, no very great hurry, and it would be sensible to check over her provisions in a seaman-like way. It would be as well, too, to take a few trial trips in the little boat.
There’s no hurry, Miss Ranskill, see. You’ve not got a train to catch.
No, there was not any hurry, but she must see to the fire now. She picked up her coat and skirt and began to walk along the shore. Already, thoughts of occupation were renewing the elasticity of her mind.
It’s a queer thing to say, Miss Ranskill, but I’ve smiled to think of all the work that the dead give to the living. Regular slave-drivers they are in their hurry to be buried. They keep us busy all right, almost as if they knew what was good for us. Mourning to get and pies to bake and all the sorting up afterwards. 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.
Well, there would not be much sorting-up to do in the stone and wattle shelter that had been the Carpenter’s bedroom. He had left little behind him but a blurred catalogue from an ironmonger’s shop, a leather wallet of sea-stained snapshots and newspaper cuttings, an indelible pencil, a pouch that had once held tobacco, and a watch that had, by a miracle, survived its long sousing.
‘I must take the watch to his wife,’ thought Miss Ranskill as easily as though she were contemplating a journey from one English town to another. ‘She’d like to have it.’
Queer thing about this watch is we don’t know whether it’s lost or gained in all these years: water plays odd tricks with works. I’ve never let it run down and I’d been marking down the days by it before you came along to keep me company. Still, we’ll not know till we get to England if we’ve lost two or three days out of life or been given a few extra to play with. What shall we do with ’em, Miss Ranskill, eh, go to the pictures or what? And talking of that, let’s go to the pictures now, shall we?
‘Going to the pictures’ had been their favourite game. It had been invented by the Carpenter one evening as they sat round the fire during the first month of their acquaintanceship.
Tell you what, Miss Ranskill. I’ll shut my eyes and you tell me all about your home till I see it. Start at the beginning when you were a little ’un, and then I’ll do the same for you.
He had done the same for her, building with slow words all the houses in the small Berkshire village, laying a patchwork quilting of downs, raising a church steeple, thatching the wheat straw roofs, setting out the gardens and opening the school-house door for her so that she could see a little earnest boy, kicking at his desk with rough boots while he carved his initials with his first pocket-knife.
It was the smell of the pitch-pine sawdust that started me, I reckon. I’d always wanted to go to sea, same as most boys, but carpentering was nearer to hand, and I wanted that too. I got apprenticed easy enough – there was a grant from the school.
She saw him standing boot-deep in the shavings that curled away from the flying plane, saw his sawdusty hands, the tendrils of wood that clung to his hair and the play of the muscles on his forearms.
He had gone to sea in the last war and had liked the life.
Always something to look at and something to do. It was then I started making ships in bottles so’s my fingers wouldn’t get clumsy. Wish we’d a bottle here, Miss Ranskill, so’s I could make you one. Never mind, that’ll have to wait till we get home.
After the war when the ship was paid off, he had worked for a time in the shipbuilding yards before going back to the village, where he had learned his trade, and taking over what remained of his old master’s business. Then he had married.
You should have seen Annie then – pretty girl she was. We did very well at first till a new carpenter came and set up his sheds in the village. He could afford to wait for his money and I couldn’t. Then the old folks, the ones that knew the difference between good wood and bad, died off, and the new customers they didn’t like it if you sent in a bill twice, and we’d the children to think about. It wasn’t so easy then.
Miss Ranskill had known the children very well indeed.
There was Ada, so pretty that ‘she couldn’t be blamed for wanting a bit of fun,’ fond of shop windows and towns and cinemas and gay clothes. It was hoped that Ada would settle down, but the Carpenter, though loyal, was doubtful.
I ought to have made more money for Ada since she wouldn’t stay at home or go into service. The shops don’t pay enough wages for girls that have got to find their own lodgings. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough.
There was Donald, who died when he was twelve, and there was Colin, who had been ‘just over seven’ when his father saw him last.
It was just when times got bad that I went to the shipyards again – it was regular money and no bad debts, and the missus got a lodger – schoolteacher she was, and she could pay regular, so it seemed the best thing to do. Then there was the chance of a sea-going job – just for six months, and I took it just in time, before they closed down the yards.
He had been knocked overboard on a dark night. It was something to do with a winch, Miss Ranskill thought, but she could never understand his sea-language and he always went on to describe his thoughts about Colin when he found himself alone in the dark water.
I said to myself, it’s not good for a lad to be brought up by women, Colin needs his Dad. I’d have given up long before if it hadn’t been for that. I was just going to give up when that bit of driftwood went by.
Then, as always, Colin dominated the picture. Colin, handling tools as though he loved them, Colin running down the road to meet his Dad. Whenever she thought of Colin she thought of the Carpenter until they seemed, not like father and son but like two little boys, the one stepping into the other’s shoes and taking his place against the pattern of village life that was so curiously undisturbed by partings or even death, because each family produced more families to live in the same place and inhabit the same houses and inherit the same way of life.
She knew that Colin would come to think as his father thought, use his hands in the same way and see the same things.
Yes, Miss Ranskill, you’ll have to see Colin.
But she had seen him already.
Go on, Miss Ranskill, it’s your turn now. I want a turn at the plush seat next.
So she had made him presents of her own comfortable and carefully guarded childhood, set the brass guard round the nursery fire, conjured up the bowls of bread and milk, red dressing-gowns, the smell of soapy flannel, and all the ritual of bedtime when Nona and her elder sister, Edith, had listened to the shouts of the village children playing in the street and had envied them.
You may have been a Miss Independence, but you never thought you’d get to a desert island, did you, Miss Ranskill? Tell you what – it’s all very well playing cinemas, but when we get back to England we’ll have to see each other’s homes, eh? There’s the front bedroom that’s never used only when the wife’s sister comes to stay. We’d make you welcome any time, if you’d honour us by coming, Miss Ranskill.