My missus says I’m a rare woman in the house, a home-maker, if you know what I mean, Miss Ranskill. It’s only fair to share the work.
‘Look sharp, can’t you, Colin? How many more times I’d like to know!’
When the boy had left them, Miss Ranskill tried to begin her story. She began by describing how she had fallen overboard and been washed ashore on the island.
‘It may seem queer to you that I should come to you like this, and begin to talk about myself, but I wanted to – to break it to you that there was somebody else on that island. I expect you believed as my sister did, I mean as my sister believed about me, that your husband was drowned a good many years ago, but–’
Miss Ranskill hesitated. She was telling the story very badly. She had been trying to build up a picture, but the words had all gone wrong.
‘Your husband – the Carpenter – wasn’t drowned after all. Oh! please,’ she looked up into the unmoved face of the widow, ‘I hadn’t meant to raise your hopes. Forgive my clumsiness. Your husband isn’t alive now, but–’
‘I know that,’ said Mrs Reid. ‘I’ve known that for some weeks now.’
So there had been a link between them after all. His death had stirred some extra sense or intuition in the woman.
Miss Ranskill felt humble: she need not have seen herself as newsbreaker or worried about a choice of words. The Carpenter’s spirit, blowing where it listed, had ended the need for words.
Mrs Reid was the first to break the silence. She spoke conversationally.
‘So you’ll be the lady then?’
‘The – the lady?’
‘The lady that was on that island with him.’
A sudden chill jerked down Miss Ranskill’s spine; for an instant her heart felt icy. By what strange communication did the Carpenter’s wife know that she, Nona Ranskill, was ‘the lady that was on the island’?’
She looked into the woman’s eyes: they were pale, insignificant and rather wary, more the eyes of a shrew than of a clairvoyante.
‘From what they said, I thought you’d have been older, but then I don’t suppose you’d be feeling up to much.’
‘They?’ Miss Ranskill’s thoughts were whirling madly, as once a flight of sea-gulls had whirled above the Carpenter’s body.
Who were ‘They’, birds or voices, the kind of voices that the Maid of Orleans had heard?
‘Yes,’ continued Mrs Reid reminiscently, ‘you could have knocked me down with a feather when they told me. It didn’t seem natural somehow.’
No, it would not seem quite natural. And now a great curiosity overwhelmed Miss Ranskill. She leaned forward.
‘Who were “They?”’ she asked, and braced herself for the answer.
‘He was a good husband in his way,’ Mrs Reid made the statement automatically, almost as though she felt it were expected of her. ‘Headstrong always, but he wasn’t mean.’ She looked down at her lap, then at Miss Ranskill. ‘You’re quite sure he was dead? You made sure of that, I suppose. You’re certain he’s dead all right?’
‘Dead all right.’ Miss Ranskill, caught back from her memory of that morning on the beach, the knife in the grave and all the abomination of desolation that had followed, felt herself trembling a little. How could she make answer to a woman possessed of the strange knowledge that ‘They’ had made known to her?
‘He – his body was dead,’ she replied at last.
‘There wasn’t a doctor, though, to sign the death certificate?’
‘There wasn’t anybody.’
‘No, I was forgetting. They told me you was alone with him.’
‘Who?’ Again a shiver rippled down Miss Ranskill’s spine. ‘Who told you?’
She braced herself for the answer.
‘The police, of course, not the “Special” here: he’s not much use. They sent a couple of men from Lidcot. Let me see, it would be just about three weeks ago. In the morning it was.’
The shallow blue eyes were turned towards the mantelpiece and the clock, which had, so Miss Ranskill supposed, continued its indifferent ticking all through the terrible hours when she had scrabbled like a dog in the sand on the island, and all through the hour, three weeks ago, when the police had brought their information to Mrs Reid.
She ought to have realised that there could have been no ‘revelations’ except in the newspaper sense of that word, in a room like this.
She should have remembered how intensely the police had questioned her about the Carpenter on their visit to the Mallisons’ house. Her mind harked back to that interview. She remembered how many things had been written down on the Police Inspector’s pad. Of course, it had been their business to inform the widow of what had happened.
She felt drained, as though virtue had gone out of her.
Mrs Reid went on talking.
‘It does seem a thing, doesn’t it? I mean without a doctor or clergyman and no proper funeral or nothing. Still, they seemed to think it would be all right about my having drawn the insurance money before I should have. They didn’t think the insurance people would grumble about that. Anyway, if there should be bother about that I’d have a right to his pay for all those years. I can’t stand to lose both.’
She leaned forward and lowered her voice a little.
‘Least said soonest mended, is what I always say. Talking won’t bring him back, will it?’
‘No.’ To Miss Ranskill the monosyllable sounded like the first stroke of a death-knell. ‘No, nothing will bring him back, I’m afraid.’
‘I couldn’t be expected to get into mourning twice over, could I? I mean to say I’ve not the coupons to spare now, and that’s a fact. Besides, it would make a lot of talk. You know what they are in these villages. You see what I mean, don’t you?’
Yes, Miss Ranskill saw. She had thought herself invulnerable by now, but this sudden smashing of the image created by the Carpenter shocked her so much that she felt cold and physically sick.
Could his wife think of nothing but insurance money and the neighbours? Could she not rend her heart anew just for a little while, or ask a single tender question?
For a moment the boy was forgotten, and Miss Ranskill rose to go.
‘I – It was stupid of me to come and take up your time. I hadn’t realised that of course the police would have told you about – about Reid – Mr – Reid.’
‘Oh! you mustn’t go yet. Maybe you’d like a nice cup of tea. There’s still one or two things we might talk over.’
‘Thank you.’ Miss Ranskill felt badly in need of tea after this new ordeal. Perhaps it would pull her together, and make her feel less sick.
‘I could do with a cup myself. I’ve been feeling a bit upset ever since the police came. Still,’ Mrs Reid rose and poked the ash-choked fire. ‘Still, if Harry had to die, it’s a good thing it happened when it did, and that’s a fact.’
She moved about the kitchen and set dusty teapot on dusty tray, blew some flecks of soot from a lump of margarine, embedded a spoon further into its jam-jar and gave a loaf of bread a shake.
Undoubtedly the man had been the home-maker.
‘Funny thing,’ she observed, ‘to think of me in mourning all those years ago and Harry alive.’
Miss Ranskill stared in amazement at the plump body, at the show of sleek calves and the feet crammed into over-tight shoes.
This then was the woman the Carpenter had cherished. Her indifference had been shielded by the words of his loyalty. She was naked and he had clothed her; but now the garments were dropping from her one by one with every word that she spoke.
‘Did he leave any last message?’ she now asked abruptly.
‘No, you see – there wasn’t time. It happened very suddenly. He’d been working hard. He lifted a big stone. One minute he was well and strong. It was a heart attack. He didn’t regain consciousness.’