She forgot her disgrace and spoke urgently.
‘Why have none of the stations got names?’
‘Because,’ said her neighbour at last, ‘because we do not believe that the Hun has learned geography. A few of us have maps of Germany, but we do not believe that there are any maps of this country outside the British Isles. We removed the names from railway stations on the same glad day that we painted the sign-posts white. We decided it would be a good idea for the invading Hun to mistake Huddersfield for London. We thought it would be a joke to hear him sing, “Oh! Mr Porter, whatever shall we do? The Fuehrer’s taken Birmingham and he thinks he’s taken Crewe.”’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Ranskill. ‘Then how?’
‘It’s perfectly easy, really, because the porters bawl out the names. We do not believe that any of the invading Huns will understand English, nor, of course, will the spies. As a matter of fact, none of our porters speak English either – rather a vicious circle, don’t you think?’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The inhabitants of the garden were declaring war and peace in their several ways.
‘Buzinezz as uzual!’ buzzed a bee as it blundered against a spray of lilac before flying down to settle on the velvet of a wallflower, ‘Buzinezz as uzual!’ Its action released two scents, the sharp of the lilac, the soft of the wallflower. Each, as it drifted through the air, maintained for a moment the peace and permanence of village gardens. Then the bee-swung wallflower flicked against a clump of chives that edged the bed so that a stronger fragrance gave a taste of war. The chives stood stiffly for battle, so did the garland of parsley round the rose-bed on the lawn, and so did the seedling lettuces under the windows of the low red cottage. The aviary that had once sheltered budgerigars told a sad empty little story of the famine that had lasted a week too long for short lives.
The thrush on the rockery rapped out a grace with his snail-shell. The wagtail on the lawn flicked an insolent tail. There was nothing wrong with his world, so the tail remarked with frequency.
Even if the swallows had seen untoward sights during their crossing, their arrow flights suggested no mechanised progress since Crécy. A spider arranged its larder between gate and gate-post with the skill used by its ancestors before any child had learned to say ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum’.
The entry of Miss Ranskill caused some stir in the garden. The spider’s web snapped. The thrush left its snail-shell, the wagtail flicked indignation as it left the lawn; and the bees bumped irresolutely from flower to flower, releasing so many tiny gusts of scent that her nose might have been bewildered if she had not been concentrating so hard on seeing.
So this was where Edith lived, in this contented cottage on an island of flower-bordered lawn. This was where she would live too, she supposed. At any moment the white door might be opened or a window flung up. She put down the cat’s basket and turned to the gate, where stood the boy who had carried her suitcase and tool-bag. She must give him his sixpence so that he could go before the door opened.
But there was no stir from the house, even when the gate had clicked, even while she walked crunchingly up the path, or when her footsteps made the scraper jangle on the flagstone.
She cried, ‘Edith! Edith!’ while her right hand fumbled for the bell-push and her left pounded at the knocker. The clangour of the bell went on for too long: she wanted to hear the running of feet and the creak of the opening door. The silence that followed was too long also, and very unwelcoming. Could she, but then how could she, have missed Edith on that tiny deserted platform? Edith had said in her letter that she would meet the train: the cottage was only two minutes’ walk from the station.
Miss Ranskill rang again, and now the crying of the bell’s voice through emptiness was almost frightening. She knocked until echoes interrupted echoes. Then she went round to the back of the house.
She followed a path that led between shrubs to a small drying-green bordered by currant bushes. Pegged out on the line, as the first proofs of Edith’s habitation, were some underclothes, two striped shirts that she recognised and (signal this time of Edith’s belief in her own death) a very much worn and rather shrunken cardigan of her own. Its colour had faded since the days of peace; it had been clear blue when she had left it behind at home. The little nosegays of flowers on the pockets had been picked off and bright patches showed where they had been. It was all right, of course. It was sensible and practical of Edith to have made use of her clothes. All the same, she need not have flaunted the cardigan on the very day of her homecoming.
‘She’s worn it for a long time too,’ thought Miss Ranskill. ‘She must have begun wearing it almost as soon – anyway, blue never suited her; it always made her look rather sallow. She takes sixes, so she can’t be wearing my shoes.’
She knocked on the back door, rather more sharply than she might have done if she had not seen the line of clothes.
There was something wrong about the ensuing silence. Even if the knock stirred no householder, there should have been the scutter of paws and a bark, sharpened to ecstasy as her voice was recognised. There should have been a bowl of water by the doorstep and a cloth for the drying of feathered pads. Edith was always finicky.
Miss Ranskill stooped down and lifted up the door-mat, but there was no key there. Then she remembered that the door-mat had always been her key-cover and that Edith had used a flower-pot.
‘A door-mat’s so obvious. It’s the first place a burglar would look.’
‘People don’t always think of the obvious. A burglar could get in any way.’
‘A flower-pot’s safer. He’d probably hunt for a bit before smashing the windows.’
‘If he’s going to smash the windows anyway, why not leave the key in the door?’
A butterfly flicked on top of an inverted bee-skep near the door. If she had been a burglar, thought Miss Ranskill, it would probably have given the same delicate hint. She stooped and picked up the key.
The kitchen was very clean, very tidy, but empty of life. She noticed, with a pang, that the old nursery tea-canister with its painting of Queen Victoria, stood on the mantel-shelf. A scar ran across the face of the Queen. She remembered her tears on the day that the new flakes of paint had been sprinkled on the nursery fender. It seemed a very long time ago, and the Queen looked old and more faded now. There was nothing else that she recognised except a little lustre jug standing on a tray on the kitchen table. There were two trays, each with its small sugar basin, jug, teapot, plates and toast-rack.
Her heart warmed towards Edith. Here was the first sign of welcome. The sight of a dish marked ‘puppy’ was heartening too, unless, of course, the spaniel had a successor.
Two places were laid in the little dining-room, but the flat bowl of flowers in the middle of the table puzzled Miss Ranskill as much as the mock Jacobean sideboard. It was unlike Edith to behead monthly roses and cram them together in a shapeless mass like so many dollops of pink blancmange. They had always cut sprays of the monthly roses and set them among the sincere blue of forget-me-nots and the lace of cow-parsley. Edith had added a buttercup or two – ‘pink needs yellow.’ They had arranged flowers as though they were growing – ‘I like to bring the garden indoors.’
The sitting-room was almost frightening in its ugliness. It had yellow-washed walls and powder-blue chair-covers. ‘Sunday school blue,’ thought Miss Ranskill, quoting from her mother and the objections she had raised over their choice of summer ginghams in the nursery days. A mock Jacobean ‘what-not’ was decorated with a scattering of Indian silver knick-knacks. There were anæmic water-colours on the walls. There was an insipid mauve carpet and shiny mauve cushions in the chairs. There were more dollops of flowers – purple and yellow pansies, this time in a black bowl on a walnut occasional table. The sight of her great-grandmother’s sampler suspended from the silver-embossed sheath of a scimitar enraged Miss Ranskill. Edith might have been obliged to take a furnished house, but surely she could have ‘played houses’ in it better than this.