What adventures steel suffered, tempered by fire, shrunk by water, tired by use and revived by rest, keeping its vitality for longer than a man could, whether it was worked for centuries, rested in an armoury or left to rust out its virtue at the bottom of a grave!
The jack-knife had been chief servant to the Carpenter for years, and he had been its sole employer. He had oiled it with fish-oil, whetted it on carefully chosen stones. Its blade had grown thinner and narrower as the years went by. Every time it was shut, it closed upon a story. Its blade had known the resistance of ships’ tobacco, codline and hemp, as well as unseasoned wood.
It had been made in Sheffield: its steel had been tempered by men who had never been out of England and who took their girls to the cinemas at nights to see pictures of desert islands.
‘Coo!’ they said, when the heroine (her hair freshly waved, as though by some barber of Neptune) was lifted out of the sea by an immaculate and bronzed young man. Her dress was only damp enough to cling prettily to her perfect curves. And the young man, even though his shorts might be a trifle ragged, wore a shirt that must, surely, have been put on clean that morning. That was all that the makers of steel knew about desert islands, but the steel itself had learned everything: it had mirrored cracked fingers and ragged nails. Its steel had been true and flawless, but now it was powerless to help any more as it lay close to the Carpenter’s hand just as it had done through all the years of its working life.
She felt again in the pockets of the coat. There was just a chance that in her hurry she might have searched one of the pockets twice, that she had only buried the knife in nightmare, but of course she had not.
The rough tweed caressed her hand as she fumbled.
Thing I like best about you, Miss Ranskill, you never make a fuss.
Memory of the Carpenter’s approval lifted her heart a little. Suddenly it became important to him as well as to her that she should not make a fuss. It would be disloyal to their friendship, a denial of the quality in her – the quality he had admired – to make a fuss now. She must continue to be the same person.
Friendship with him had changed her so that she had, in a way, become a part of him.
Loyalties were important: they outlive the grave and whatever it is that we label death.
No use crying for the moon, Miss Ranskill, we’ve got to make shift with what we can get.
No use crying for a knife either.
She raised her head from the rough tweed and blinked at the sunlight.
From the horizon, the sea stretched like a broad scimitar, fretting and chipping the tide’s edge to silver splintering. Its great curving blade took on all the blue-and-grey and white tones of tempering, with gold as well where the sunlight touched it. There was the cutting hurtful blade-edge towards her and beyond, where the blue thickened to grey, the harder less acute tempering – the safer stronger side of the blade.
Mind once more took possession of Miss Ranskill’s body, easing its strain by virtue of that sudden command. She had the boat, which was all ready except for stowage – storage, what was the word? They had meant to go, anyway, and now she would continue the plan. There was work to do in England. She must use the boat the Carpenter had made. The years of his labour must not be wasted. She must find his wife and tell her the manner of his death because she had no right to keep the last years to herself. It was a pity she was so tired, but it didn’t really matter. She would sleep all the better when she got home.
Beds cried out to her to come and sleep in them, cool beds in summer and warm ones in winter. China tea would be waiting at her bedside in the early morning and she would put her lips to thin-fluted china. There would be thin bread crumbling under its load of butter. There would be flowers to ‘do’ – pink-stemmed primroses to be gathered in woods.
Now she must hurry. She must be quick, very, very quick over everything before her mind sagged again. She must begin work now if she were to leave the island tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.
CHAPTER THREE
It was early in the morning, but Miss Ranskill had been at sea for some hours. The island would soon be out of sight now. Already, it looked no bigger than a handkerchief – a small grey-blue one with an edge of fluttering white lace.
So far, thanks to the patient instructions of the Carpenter on two trial trips, she had managed the paddles fairly well. The boat had a tiny mast but no sail – that was to have been made later from her skirt and his shirt.
Not that we’ll risk a lot of sailing, Miss Ranskill. I’d not trust the stepping of that mast too much. No, we’ll only have a bit of a sail for when the wind’s middling lazy and we’re feeling slack the same. Tell you what though, Miss Ranskill, when we do want a bit of a blow we’ll stick the knife-blade in the mast. That’s a sailor’s trick, and they say it never fails. Yes, we’ll use the knife to call the breeze up, and we’ll sail along looking like mother’s washing-day. Your skirt and my shirt’ll make it more homely-like. Yes, the knife’ll do one more good turn for us.
Without the knife there could have been no boat. The big blade, helped by fire and flint, had laid the small trees low and made slits for the stone wedges before they could do their work of splitting. It had made wooden rivets, smoothed the tiller and shaped the rudder.
The boat had been three and a half years in building, for the wood had had to be seasoned and there had been all the heartbreaking hindrances of knots and splits and snaps. The ribs had been bent to shape while still green, but the longer planks had been coaxed to curving by water boiled laboriously in large shells set round the fire. Rivet-holes had been caulked with resinous tree-sap, helped by clay.
The same clay secured the tops and bottoms of the shells that lay in the stern-sheets and held Miss Ranskill’s water supply. She had brought quite a lot of water, because she knew that the slabs of sun-dried fish would make her thirsty. She felt thirsty now, so she shipped her oars, slipped forward from the thwarts and grovelled for a shell. Luckily it was a calm day, even so, it was not easy to break away the clay binding without spilling the water. Some of it splashed on to her lap, a dribble trickled down her chin, and the rest tasted fishy.
And now the island had disappeared, had slipped away unnoticed while she wrestled with the shell. There seemed to be nothing left in the world but the monotonous sea, the curving sky and the golden pathway of the sun – a path she had decided to follow. An aching loneliness possessed her for a moment or two – a loneliness that must not be realised lest it turn to terror.
‘There might be a ship,’ Miss Ranskill comforted herself. ‘There might be a ship any time now.’
But there was no ship. There was nothing. Even the birds seemed to have left the world.
‘One couldn’t go on for very long without seeing anything,’ she thought. ‘One must see something in time. One must.’