‘It – it was quite a small island.’
Miss Ranskill’s voice sounded so loud in her own ears that it startled her. It should have been loud enough to scare any sea-gulls.
‘It was really quite small. It was not much bigger than – well, smaller, of course, than the Isle of Wight, but not so big as – as–’
As what? She didn’t know. She only knew that she couldn’t tell them anything, wouldn’t tell them anything, couldn’t remember –
Still they sat on in their long straight rows. They were sorry for her, but she mistook their sympathy for inquisitiveness, their tenseness for malevolence. Why couldn’t they have the decency to go away?
‘It was, it was–’ (a phrase from her first geography book shot into her numbed mind) ‘it was a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.’
They shouldn’t hear anything about the Carpenter, or anything about feelings at all. She was here to talk about the island. Very well, then, she would talk about the island. Where had she got to?
‘It was a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.’
Miss King gave a little titter, the titter of one determined to appreciate jokes, even if she didn’t quite understand them.
‘There was a beach all round it. There – there was a stream of fresh water – We – I drank from it. It was nice clear water.’
The picture of the island was clearing in her brain. She saw the pretty stream, the shelf where the Carpenter had set the drinking shell as a surprise, the gleam of the sun on rock, the glint of water, and the perpetual gulls, watching sardonically, waiting for the slip that could turn man or woman into carrion.
She was being watched again now. She was also watching herself.
We’ll have to watch ourselves when we get home, Miss Ranskill. We’ll have to watch our table-manners and watch out what we say or they’ll not believe half of it.
She continued:
‘We lived mostly on fish and there was a sort of seaweed that was quite good to eat. We – I–’
Once more Miss King giggled encouragingly, and Miss Ranskill looked down at the rows of faces. She couldn’t distinguish one from another. They were all exactly the same: they were all gull-like and watching.
‘The island was – the island was – I can’t go on.’ Her voice rose. ‘There are too many of you. There isn’t anything to say.’
Someone began to clap politely. Others followed the example. The clapping was subdued because they were sorry and embarrassed. To Miss Ranskill it sounded like the mocking of wings. The birds would rise soon, scatter and come wheeling round her head. She put up her hands to guard her face. There was something else she must say, but what was it?
‘Nothing but a pack of cards!’ she remarked quite loudly and clearly.
Now she was sitting in her chair again and the President was holding a glass of water to her lips. Voices were whirling round her. ‘It’s the heat of the room.’… ‘It’s the reaction.’… ‘Perfectly natural after all those dreadful experiences.’… ‘I always think just two aspirin and then a glass of very hot milk.’… ‘When my sister had her nervous breakdown.’… ‘Of course, it is very hot in this room.’
‘I feel so ashamed.’
Miss Ranskill looked appealingly at the President.
‘Not at all. Why, I could tell you of one quite well-known broadcaster who always breaks down if he has to speak in a public meeting.’
But she wasn’t a broadcaster.
So she had broken down, had she? She had hoped the speech had not been quite so bad as that. She had thought a lot about the island, but evidently she had not expressed the thoughts even coherently.
‘A good night’s rest and then a good day’s gardening,’ recommended Mrs Phillips savagely, ‘I’ve always heard that work is the best cure for nerves, so I suppose that’s why I’ve never suffered from them.’
‘You had better come home now, my dear,’ said Edith gently, much, much too gently. The tenderness in her sister’s voice made Miss Ranskill afraid.
‘Thank you so much for coming,’ said the President. ‘We shall look forward to a talk from you another day when you are feeling stronger.’
Kind little Miss King (too, too kind Miss King) came forward and spoke in a chirruping voice.
‘I was enjoying the talk immensely. I only wish it had been longer. The island sounded most interesting. Now don’t forget – two aspirin and a glass of very hot milk.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Summer in England had softened to harvest time. The downs were a shimmer of gold and blue. Men and boys, women and children laboured in the blazing sunshine to harvest the best crops of any war and Miss Ranskill, recovered now, worked with them; her ankles ragged by stubble and her forearms sore from the rubbing of stooks. Summer, a most glorious summer, was passing and she, like all the other women in the village, had scarcely had time to notice it. In some couple of dozen cottages middle-aged ladies, without domestic help, had somehow or other done all their own housework as well as keeping their gardens gay and profitable. The deck-chairs in summer-houses were bound by cobwebs, for there was no time to sit in them. It had become a sin to idle, and the fear of that sin was rife in the land. Yet never before, in all the long histories of villages, had houses been better kept, furniture more beautifully polished or cooking more exquisitely done.
If a word in common could have been inscribed on every female heart in the village it would have been ‘bottling’. The spinsters became savage in their quest for bottles and jars, snap-closures and every variety of airtight cover. Never were women so determined and indomitable, in their lust to avoid waste, and in their haste to fill store-cupboards. They had an uphill fight too. At the time when sugar was scarcest because stewed fruit was eaten at every meal, a glut of plums followed a glut of soft fruits. No sooner were two-pound jars collected than two-pound snap-closures went off the market.
‘But, Edith,’ protested Miss Ranskill, ‘in peace-time we never had so much bottled fruit.’
‘In peace-time we could buy all the tinned fruit we wanted.’
‘But we scarcely ever did buy any.’
‘There was suet in peace-time.’ The remark seemed irrational to Miss Ranskill, who had been a desert island housewife, unaware of war or peace, and without suet or bottled fruit. She felt disloyal in her conviction that the old way of eating apples till apples came again (or very nearly) was quite as healthy and a great deal less complicated than this new turmoil.
However, the Ministry of Food fed the prevailing passion by printing instructions for bottling in every newspaper nearly every day. The bookshops and bookstalls pandered too. Nearly all the literature on the bookstalls was devoted to new ways of growing food; and the other half to ways of cooking and preserving it.
‘I must,’ said Edith, ‘I must save two pounds of sugar somehow from now until the rose-hips are ripe.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Rose-hip syrup, of course, for the children.’
‘Whose children?’
‘My dear Nona, don’t be ridiculous, all the children, of course. Now that they can’t get oranges they must have rose – hip syrup and black-currant juice to make up for the vitamins they don’t get in orange juice.’