Even to Miss Ranskill’s unwarlike mind an unexploded bomb sounded dangerous and the attitude of its warders not unreasonable.
‘But perhaps–’ she began.
‘I’m not saying anything against the unexploded bomb, what I’m getting at is They ought to have put up a notice at the turn into Maddison Avenue, not let us walk all along and then turn us. They don’t think, that’s what’s the matter with them. I told them strite, I said, “You don’t think!” I said, “You can’t never be fathers yourselves. How would you like it,” I says, “if you was a mother and didn’t know if your boy was alive or dead and you was turned back by a notice that ought to have been set up a quarter of a mile back? And like as not,” I said, “thanks to you,” I said, “I’ll be too late to hear the last dying words of my little son.” Come ’ere, Sissle.’
But by now Cecil too was in tears, and he clung desperately to Miss Ranskill and wailed, ‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!’
‘’Ark at ’im!’ said Mrs Bostock, proudly, but making no attempt to comfort her responsibility. ‘’Ark at ’im, and no wonder! A lot They care! I knew just how he’d be when they turned us back in Maddison Avenue. I said, “he’ll be shouting for his Mum, screaming himself into a fit most likely.” A lot they cared!’
Encouraged more than ever he had been by the shattering of bombs, Cecil’s voice, raised more and more loudly, seemed to offend his mother’s ears.
‘Give over now,’ she threatened. ‘Give over at once or I’ll give you something to cry for as’ll make ’Itler seem soft.’
Miss Ranskill began to feel more and more a foreigner. Was there any truth in this strange island where laddered stockings, a lack of notice-boards and an illiterate song had more power to rouse emotion than death and destruction and the smashing of bombs! Had it been worth while to take the sea-lane to a wonderland where young men resented their leaves and their mothers kept up the conventions of the fifth form?
‘Come on, Sissle, we’d best go and see what the kitchen’s looking like. I come in by the side door, and I’ve not looked round yet. The light’s gone though, so if they think they’ll get ’ot breakfast sharp at eight, they’ll have to think again.’
Miss Ranskill would have returned to the cellar, but the boy’s fingers were clinging to her own and they tugged urgently as he followed his mother through the green baize door.
The kitchen, seen by electric torchlight, was fantastic, more like a half-witted property-manager’s idea of what a kitchen might look like after a raid than anything Miss Ranskill could have imagined in sanity.
The table was laid with a clutter of plaster from the ceiling, but in the middle of it stood a Cona coffee-machine, its frail bubble rising among chunks and chips of ceiling and layers of dust. The black blind was jagged to shreds and arrows of glass were embedded in the white panelling of a cabinet.
A posy of pale grey flowers in a pale grey bowl on the dresser astonished Miss Ranskill. They looked exactly like Dresden china; and not till she had touched one, releasing a shower of fine dust from the petals, did she realise that they were marigolds. The wall by the fireplace was bulging, a cupboard door hung squalidly from one hinge and a plate on the mantel-shelf lay in two half-circles.
‘Well!’ said Mrs Bostock.
Then, clear and cool, crowding a woodland into a mad kitchen, sounded the voice of the cuckoo. For an instant Miss Ranskill felt moss at her feet and the stirring of wet leaves against her cheek. This was one of the things she had travelled to hear: the kitchen was gone and May was alive in England.
‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’
‘They’ll not get their ’ot breakfast. They can’t expect it!’ declared Mrs Bostock. Her torch swung round again and shone momentarily on her red face and tawdry hat.
‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’
Parody skeltered through Miss Ranskill’s mind.
‘A slattern and a cuckoo’s song will never come together again.’
‘They’ll have to get help to clear up this mess.’ Light from the torch glinted on the jagged daggers of glass low down in the woodwork and the tiny body of a mouse scurried across a lit circle of floor.
‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’
Miss Ranskill fancied she smelled hawthorn blossom, but the scent of singeing candle-wick took its place as Mrs Bostock flung down a match. Was it possible that the woman didn’t hear?
‘Cuckoo!’
A tiny wooden door clicked above the face of the clock that hung on the wall behind Miss Ranskill.
‘Wrong as usuaclass="underline" it’s nearer two,’ said Mrs Bostock, and added aggrievedly: ‘You’d have thought They might have stopped the clock while They was about it, wouldn’t you?’
Miss Ranskill was back again in the cellar and once more she was in the company of a sleeper. Marjorie’s boy was lying in a deck-chair. His cigarette had fallen to the floor and the fingers of his right hand seemed to be fumbling for it.
The voice of the wooden cuckoo had exhilarated her, but now she felt tired, helpless and impatient. She was lonely too, and in need of speech.
We’ll have plenty to tell each other, won’t we, Miss Ranskill, after we’ve both got back to our homes. I’ll write to you and you’ll write to me. We won’t have to think what to say. I’ll not have to chew up my pencil then, same as I used to, thinking what to say.
Yes, she must write to the Carpenter and tell him about coupons and bombs, a cuckoo and a cat, cellars, laddered stockings and the blackness of a house by night. News thrust itself into her mind before she could remember that he was dead. Then she tried to imagine him living and alone on the island and receiving, perhaps by carrier pigeon, the letter she would write from the world – a world that now seemed more fantastic to her than ever the island had been. Her thoughts were harking back now instead of forward. She felt like a country child who, in the middle of a whirling day in London, was thinking, not of the treats and new excitements to come, but of the little village station whence the start had been made, of the station-master’s wallflowers and the safe familiar seat by the luggage trolley.
‘Flowers in their wounds,’ muttered the airman, ‘that’s what she couldn’t get over, flowers in their wounds, flowers.’
It was a strange remark, strange enough to send a whole series of pictures flashing through Miss Ranskill’s mind. There was a wayside Calvary she had once seen in France. It had been newly painted, and with such realism that the tall foxglove growing beside it had seemed a spear, piercing the Wounded Side with brutal tenderness. There was a poster done by a young artist during the last war, a poster showing a wounded man lying among the Flanders poppies. There was a dying harvest rabbit whose blood had stained a patch of vetch and stubble by the side of a field. There was a blind man smelling a bunch of carnations held by his wife – ‘Are they red or white ones, darling? No, don’t tell me, I must follow my nose now.’
A ballad jigged into her brain –
She hummed it, as she began to wipe the dust from the table. Marjorie might return at any time now, she supposed, and though seven maids with seven mops might not clean the house in half a night, the cellar might be made habitable. While she was sweeping the dust into a saucer, the airman gave a sudden shout and opened his eyes.
‘Gosh! I woke myself up. Have I been asleep long?’