Miss Ranskill had felt grand too, because they had maintained their values and not squandered the red gold of the fire. If a ship should pass that night, their beacon would be seen. Tomorrow could be spent in boat-building and not niggling savagely with dry twigs to start a story-book flame.
Reckless, that’s what we are, Miss Ranskill, but we’ve kept the lending library. Wait till we see their faces at home when we get back and brag about our patent fire-lighters.
Now she was back, and the sight of one of the faces was an ugly thing. Its expression softened the Carpenter’s death to her because, if he had seen it, it would have killed his laughter.
‘How much money was there?’ asked Mrs Reid.
‘Three pounds ten, in ten-shilling notes. The rest of his money was in the ship.’
‘They sent me that,’ said Mrs Reid reluctantly, ‘but I thought there’d have been more. You ought to have stopped him. To think of him lighting fires with his money and Colin outgrowing his boots.’
It was strange that values should make such a flashing change. In one world the thought of citizens wasting matches could be dementing: in another the idea of islanders feeding a flame with the price of boots could rouse rage. There was not one truth but many. Was it possible for anyone to be innocent of the death of one just man?
Miss Ranskill answered humbly.
‘But, of course, I will give you the money: it was my fire too. And look.’ She dragged the wallet containing the note-book from one pocket and the big silver watch from the other. ‘These were his, I brought them back for you.’
Mrs Reid stretched out a plump hand and picked up the watch. The rims of her nails were edged with dirt though their surfaces were blood-red with varnish. She smoothed the silver with her finger-tips and Miss Ranskill, remembering how the watch had mirrored the reflection of other fingers, whose nails were blunted and broken by rocks, felt the tears pricking against her eyelids. And now Mrs Reid was crying too, and the tears were making runnels down the powder on her cheeks.
‘There’s nobody can say I didn’t miss him,’ she said. ‘And now, seeing this – the times I’ve seen him pull it out of his pocket. I’d best put it away now before Colin comes in. What’s this?’ Her fingers were on the wallet.
‘His note-book,’ answered Miss Ranskill. ‘We used the blank pages, but the written ones are all there, though some of them are loose.’
‘All these pages to spare and yet you used notes for fire-lighting.’ The indignant jerk of Mrs Reid’s head shook a couple of tears to raise blobs on the sea-stained leather and add their salt to it. ‘The very idea! What next I wonder!’
‘What, indeed!’ thought Miss Ranskill.
Then the door opened and Colin came in.
He walked straight over to the table. And now the fingers of his right hand were curving round the watch while the fingers of his left smoothed the sea-salt leather of the wallet, stroked and pressed it, as though through them he could learn its story.
‘What’s these, Mum?’
‘Never you mind. They’ve nothing to do with you, anyway.’
His fingers, so it seemed to Miss Ranskill, still urged the question.
‘Leave them alone, can’t you, and give over fidgeting.’
The boy’s right hand moved reluctantly, but he raised his left one to his mouth and licked his forefinger.
‘It tastes salt,’ he observed.
‘And why shouldn’t it be salt? Have you fed the chickens?’
‘Yes, I’ve done that.’
‘Then give me hold of those.’
Mrs Reid snatched the watch and the wallet. The former was put to join a débris of pepper-dust, soup-square wrappers, greasy bills, string, cloves and a three-penny magazine in the drawer of the kitchen table. With the wallet in her hand she hesitated, flicked over a page or two, and then walked towards the stove.
‘There!’ she said. ‘That’s what it should’ve done a long time ago – helped to make a fire burn better.’
The salt of the note-book quickened the flames to a blue burning: they licked upwards as though relishing the flavour.
Miss Ranskill sat very still. She scarcely dared to blink lest the movement of her lids should disturb the tears in her eyes so that the boy would see them. His presence tied her tongue as he looked questioningly from her to his mother, and then at the blue-spattered flames.
‘What was it, Mum?’ he asked.
‘Nothing but a bit of old rubbish that should have been burned before.’
‘We could have saved it for salvage, couldn’t we?’
His lips made the question to his mother, but his eyes asked Miss Ranskill, before he moved quickly over to the fireplace. For a moment she was wondering if he were going to attempt a rescue, but he reached up for a big shell that lay on the mantelpiece beside the clock.
‘Now what are you after?’ asked Mrs Reid. ‘Oh! that!’
The last words were spoken irritably, but only Miss Ranskill heard them. The boy was listening to something else. His right hand cupped one ear, his left pressed the big shell to the other.
‘He never gets tired of that game,’ said Mrs Reid as she tipped more sugar into Miss Ranskill’s tea. ‘I’ve known the baker knock three times before he’d heard.’ All the same she lowered her voice as she added, ‘It was best not to let him see the note-book. It would never do to upset him now and start him asking questions.’
The words meant nothing to Miss Ranskill, who was watching the death of the note-book – a death that reduced all the Carpenter’s loyalty and all patient stoking of a fire to the level of child’s play. There was only a small black fluting of paper left, a fluffing of ash and a red glow, and now the powder of the rest settled with a little sigh into the heart of the fire.
‘Will you take another cup of tea?’ asked Mrs Reid affably.
Miss Ranskill shook her head. She was looking at the boy now, noticing how the pupils of his eyes responded to the intensity of his listening, and how the pink curving of the shell lay closely against the dark hair that grew, as his father’s had done, from the undisciplined crown at the back of the parting to a thick smooth sweep in front.
They say you can hear the sea in a shell, Miss Ranskill, would you like to try?
Surrounded as she was by the sea then, she had not bothered to make the experiment.
The boy smiled suddenly, as though enchanted by the song of a siren. He took the shell from his ear and held it out to the visitor.
‘You can hear the sea,’ he said gravely. ‘Would you like to try?’
It was very nearly his father’s gesture, and they were his father’s words.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Ranskill, wondering if he had guessed she was in need of comfort, whether the ashes in the fire meant anything to him and whether it was habit, or some sixth sense that had made him want to listen to the sea just then, and to let her share his listening.
And now the shell, warm from his ear, lay against her own. The boy and his mother moved silently about the room as the surge of waters deafened her to everything else. They were roaring and the wind was whining and the breakers were crashing inshore. Surely the others must hear too. She released the pressure of the shell. Instantly the crashing eased to a tender shuffling. It was the morning after a tempest and the little waves were tumbling up the beach. She closed her eyes and now she could see the long shifting lines with their silver edges. She was back on the island again: the Carpenter was fishing from the low rocks to the west of the bay while the pebbles frolicked underneath the water before being sucked back with a hushing swish as the waves receded.
By pressing hard on the shell she could raise a tempest. What an instrument to play! By flexing or unflexing her fingers she could bring any sea-weather to her ears, and be at home on the island again.