The boy chatted while Miss Ranskill made the cocoa.
‘If Mum was at the pictures she’ll be back soon now the All Clear’s gone. Tell you what,’ he edged closer to her, ‘tell you what, let’s bolt the door at the top of the cellar stairs so she can’t come down till we’ve had the cocoa.’
‘Why shouldn’t she come down?’
‘She’d only want me to wash. Let’s bolt the door and keep ’er out.’
‘All right then, we’ll keep her out.’
The boy’s eyes showed amazement at such unexpected agreement.
‘We’ll keep her out all right. You stir the cocoa and I’ll go and see to the door.’
But before Miss Ranskill could hand over the spoon, the boy was scuttering and squealing across the cellar floor: He was up the stairs before she could think of a word that might stop him.
He would discover the state of the door and be frightened, and the fear would be driven from one to the other and grow quickly and increase in quality. It was better where there were two people that only one should be afraid, else there were no consolation and dominance nor any of the pretence that is the only weapon against terror.
‘Cocoa!’ said Miss Ranskill feebly. ‘Come and give the kittens some cocoa.’
But the boy was pounding on the door already, and she followed up the stairs.
She heard a new voice from the house side of the door as she reached the top step.
‘Is that you, mater? Are you coming up or shall I come down?’
It was a male voice, quick, and of a light tense quality. Miss Ranskill answered it absurdly.
‘It’s I, and the door’s jammed; we can’t get out.’
There was a thud on the other side of the wood.
‘I think I can do it. You’d better stand clear of the stairs though, in case the door comes down with a wallop.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He was a thin, swiftly-moving young man, with none of the bull-headedness that Miss Ranskill would have expected from Marjorie’s son. His eyes were restless and his hands never quite still. They tensed and flexed in between all the definite movements of stroking the kittens, brought to him one after another by the boy, flicking ash from his cigarette and stirring his cocoa.
From his jerked replies to the boy’s questionings, Miss Ranskill understood that he had been on night operations for the last three months and that that meant dropping tons of bombs on Germany.
‘Bet you killed masses of people.’ The boy’s cocoa-moustached lips grinned admiringly as he spoke, and he crossed his legs swaggeringly.
‘Shut up!’
‘But you said last time–’
‘Even a butcher wants a Bank Holiday.’
‘But you said–’
‘Will you shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I–’ Marjorie’s son turned to Miss Ranskill, ‘I don’t mind anything but the leaves.’ His light voice was raised in fury. ‘It’s the leaves that are so bloody awful – Sorry! It’s all nag and questions and tactfulness, and let’s give him a jolly time. And they make special things for you to eat and watch you eating it with a sort of Last Supper look in their eyes. And, just before you go off again, they pile on the heartiness and talk about all you’ll do on the next leave though they know what you know. If they’d only be ordinary about it: it is quite ordinary, at least it is to us. And then kids like that–!’
He was interrupted by the shrilling of a female voice.
‘Sissle! Sissle! Where are you, Sissle?’
‘That’s Mum,’ said the little boy.
Mum, so Miss Ranskill discovered when she had hurried the little boy up the stone stairs, was half angry and half tearful; and her anger was directed not so much against Hitler and the German bombers as against an unspecified body who had allowed her (Mrs Bostock) to suffer inconvenience. ‘They’ had left a piece of wire-netting lying about at the entrance to the ARP shelter so that her stockings had been laddered in two places – ‘and that’s qpons, mind you!’ ‘They’, being what ‘they’ were, would be most unlikely to refund the shilling she had paid for her seat in the cinema, although the siren had sounded halfway through the ‘Big Picture’, Desert Theme Song. ‘Ever so lovely it was. If we had our rights, they’d let us go back and see it all through tomorrow. Robbery, that’s what it was. And I’ve half a mind to go back now this very instant and give them a piece of my mind.’
‘Who?’ asked Miss Ranskill, and was answered by a dark look that made her feel responsible personally for all the happenings of the night.
‘We was all singing in the shelter,’ continued Mrs Bostock triumphantly. ‘It was “Roll out the Barrel” at first and then those of us that had been at the picture started up with the song Babe Fenelly sings when she’s sitting all alone in the desert, and she thinks her boy’s been killed, and all the while he’s lying gagged and bound be’ind a palm-tree with a nasty-looking Arab gettin’ ready to knife ’em.’
Mrs Bostock raised her voice and sang in a piercing tremolo:
Tears poured down Mrs Bostock’s face as she continued –
‘Ever so pathetic it was, and they kept on showing you close-ups of the young man’s face as he listened from be’ind the palm-tree. She was dressed in white.’ Mrs Bostock paused, and added: ‘Pure white,’ as vehemently as if she feared that some doubting thought of Miss Ranskill’s might sully the film-star’s garments. ‘White, from top to toe. You ought to have heard us singing in the shelter – that ought to show Hitler something if nothing else does. He ought to be a fly on the wall in some of our shelters, that’s what he ought to be.’
‘Then we’d swat ’im, wouldn’t we, Mum?’
A small hand tightened its grip of Miss Ranskill’s and she remembered the child.
‘I think perhaps the little boy ought to go to bed now if it’s safe. I heard him crying and took him down to the cellar–’
But Mrs Bostock continued her story relentlessly.
‘These air-raids aren’t run like the Plymouth ones was, and it’s no use saying they are. We’d plenty of canteens there and the tea was ’ot, ’ot and strong. You’d think they put straw in it ’ere. Well, as I was saying, after the All Clear went, and they let us out, you’d think that was enough, but was it? Oh! no. You’d think They thought we ’adn’t ’ad enough, sitting like sardines singing in a damp shelter.’
What horror was coming next, wondered Miss Ranskill.
In the flashing light from the torch, waved so erratically by Mrs Bostock, her son’s face looked white and strained.
‘Do you think we should put him to bed: he’s not had very much sleep?’
‘He’ll not sleep if he goes now neither: too much excitement; he always was highly-strung,’ answered the mother. ‘Well, as I was saying, I’d gone right the length of Maddison Avenue when they turned me back for an unexploded bomb. I’d a gone on, mind you, if they’d not got ropes right across the road and a coupla ARP men guarding it.’