Two diamond-shaped beds filled with geraniums lay behind the prim railings of the cottage, and on each side of the door.
After she had knocked, her hand sought the smooth comfort of the Carpenter’s watch lying in her coat pocket. She drew it out, but its ticking insisted so loudly against the beating of her heart that she tucked it away again.
She dreaded and yet longed for the moment when the door would open. It was going to be difficult, painful, both for herself and the poor widow, but it would be easier in his house than in any other place. Surely there would be a spirit of sanity about his hearth and comfort and strength and common sense.
You’ve got to take things as they come, Miss Ranskill, and not get flummoxed. Troubles look big when they start, and less when you get on with them. It’s the same with building a house: that looks a big job, but when you’ve the first two courses of bricks laid, it only seems fit for dolls, so little it looks.
A window was flung open above her, and a head, decked with curling-pins, was framed in it.
‘Yes?’ said a voice.
Miss Ranskill looked up into the face of buxomness turned to slattern, at tortured hair, and pink cheeks smeared with powder.
All the rehearsals failed her. You could not break news or condole when your neck was cricked at such an angle and when the face above showed such impatience. One slim hope was left: perhaps she was addressing Mrs Thompson.
‘Is Mrs Reid in?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I wonder – I, I have a message, a–’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it’s rather – I mean, if–’
‘Are you from the gas?’
There was suspicion in the voice, but the words meant nothing to Miss Ranskill.
‘From the gas?’ she repeated.
‘Because, if that’s what it is, I’ve got something to say. That young man of yours read the meter all wrong. Must have done.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Miss Ranskill, meaning that she was not an agent from any inferno of blue hisses and stenches of tortuous pipes. ‘Oh no, certainly not.’
‘It’s no use “oh-noing” me. I tell you he must have done, and that’s why the bill’s not been paid. I’ve a friend who can read meters, and I’ve a letter all ready written to the Management. It’ll be there by tomorrow; so there’s no use your waiting.’
The window was edging downwards as Miss Ranskill spoke despairingly.
‘I’m not from the – from the gas. I came to give you something.’
The window shot up again.
‘Beg your pardon, Miss, I’m sure, but you know how it is. They send so many young ladies round now instead of the men you don’t know where you are. And talk about cheating… I’ll be down in a minute. I was just giving myself a bit of a wash. Where’s that boy?’
A frowsty black curtain blew outwards.
‘Colin! Colin! There’s a lady at the door. Let her in, can’t you? Colin!’
Colin’s the one I want to see. He’ll be getting a big lad now. The girl was all for her mother and the first boy died like I told you, but I reckon Colin’ll remember his dad though he was only six then.
Steps sounded on a stairway inside the house and Miss Ranskill’s knuckles grew white as her fingernails met her palms. She was used to shocks by now. Supposing the boy, with the name that suggested a sheep-dog in all its faithful steadfastness, was a snivelling brat or a cock-a-hoop or –?
The door opened and he stood before her – a little Carpenter with the same grey eyes and serene forehead, the same stocky shoulders and nervous hands. She wanted to put an arm round him and take him away to some quiet field outside the village, there to tell him stories about his father, to weave the thread of the Carpenter’s eternity closer into the spiritual fabric of his son. This then was what she had come to do, not to pick flowers in woods or sip tea from thin china but to be a joiner.
Joiner and Carpenter, Miss Ranskilclass="underline" there’s worse things than that.
She smiled suddenly and the boy responded, making confidence between them.
‘Mum’ll be down in a minute. She said you was to come in.’
There was reassurance in his manner of leading the way into the small kitchen.
Miss Ranskill looked first at the hearth. It was grey and dusty. She remembered the tale of the besom made for the ‘little lass’.
‘You’re Colin,’ she said. ‘You’re twelve years old, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
But she couldn’t tell him that, not now and not here in this slatternly room with its filming of dust and the unwashed pans in the sink. She could not tell him anything yet: there was too much between them.
The boy did not seem to expect an answer, for his hands (his father’s hands) were busy about some pieces of wood on the table.
Seems to me, Miss Ranskill, seems to me the mind moves faster when the hands are moving too. Me, in a sort of way, I was always fanciful. When I’m planing a door, I’m thinking about the grain all right, but I think most of the door when it’s hung; and who it’ll open and shut on. Hands carry one on when they’re busy: they’re always learning themselves.
She noticed how the boy’s hands were being taught by the wood as he picked it up and put it, piece by piece, into a rush bag bound with webbing. He touched it in the way that some people fondle animals, communicating with them. His fingers curved, surely and gently as though the chisel had a bloom on it.
‘What are you making?’ she asked.
‘I was building a boat, but–’ he hesitated.
‘Yes?’
‘You need fine grain for a small one. I’ve only got rough bits here.’
‘Would you like to go to sea?’
‘Dad did.’
‘What’s that about Dad?’
The door had opened and Mrs Reid was standing on the threshold. She was dressed now in an artificial mauve satin blouse and an over-tight brown skirt. Powder covered the smeariness of her face: her hair frizzed bad-temperedly.
‘I was only saying that Dad went to sea.’
From the boy’s expression, Miss Ranskill guessed that the word only was in his constant use. It would often be necessary for him to explain that he was only doing that or thinking this, that it was quite harmless only he wished he could be left alone sometimes.
‘Yes, he went to sea right enough, and he didn’t come back. You’ll stay where you are and work and get that scholarship. Now clear that clutter away and look sharp about it.’ Mrs Reid turned to Miss Ranskill, ‘How anyone keeps a house to rights when there’s a boy in it, beats me. Dirt and litter all over the place!’
Miss Ranskill was looking at the place where the bowl of nasturtiums should have been set on the table, at the window-sill empty of the blossoming geranium, and at the rag rug where no cat lay.
A cat on the rug, a plant-pot in the window and a bunch of flowers on the side-table, they make home if you ask me, Miss Ranskill, they and a clean hearthstone. Stands to reason, doesn’t it, what’s the first thing you learn to read at school? The cat sat on the mat, of course, well then!
Something had gone wrong with the Carpenter’s home and badly wrong too; unless distance had made him see it rosily or pride lent loyalty to his tongue. Yet he had always spoken with conviction.