‘But I thought they did get orange juice through the children’s ration books.’
For by now Miss Ranskill understood all about ration books and points and the ‘zoning of certain commodities’ as well as clothing coupons; and she thought that a most unnecessary fuss was made about the whole lot.
‘They don’t get nearly enough. It’s most important that we should do all we can for the children. They are the future generation; they are a sacred trust.’
‘We didn’t even have orange juice and we grew up all right. Don’t you remember Mother wouldn’t let us eat oranges within two hours of drinking milk because she said the juice would curdle it?’
Edith Ranskill sighed.
‘Really, Nona, you are difficult. I suppose things were different then. Times change. Anyway, we’re told to collect rose-hips, and it is so important that the children should have the best of everything.’
Miss Ranskill, aware that she was being difficult and now being so deliberately, hurled another dart.
‘You did tell me you’d tried not to have evacuees. And when you had to have them, you got rid of them as soon as possible.’
‘They were different: they were absolute savages – not even house – trained.’
‘The future generation all the same,’ quoted Miss Ranskill as she pushed another plum into her nearly-full jar, ‘and a sacred trust, Edith.’
Her sister shook herself, remarked that she must collect sticks for the boiler because it was bath-night and strode out of ear-shot.
Baths were another great mystery to Miss Ranskill. The boiler was lit only two or three times a week and a broad red line had been enamelled at a height of five inches all round the inside of the bath. It had been indicated to Miss Ranskill by Mrs Phillips that in the interest of national economy she must not fill the bath above that level and she had replied loyally that if it would be any help to the country she would give up baths altogether.
Mrs Phillips had replied disapprovingly that two were allowed each week.
One morning at breakfast she announced archly that someone, she wouldn’t say who, but certainly someone had taken a bath at least ten inches deep.
‘I did,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘I had the last bath and there was lots of hot water that would have been cold by the morning, so I didn’t see the point of not using it.’
The remark was not received pleasantly by Mrs Phillips.
‘Nona’s so difficult,’ was becoming Edith’s favourite remark. ‘If only that man on the island had been someone of her own class, things might have been very different. As it is, she doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.’
Certainly, Miss Ranskill was finding life in the village difficult. Her only pleasure (a strange one) was the fact that she had been made an ARP Warden and was occasionally summoned to patrol her ‘beat’ by night. Others might grumble, but she was perfectly happy and bore the discomfort of the tin helmet for the sake of free feet. No orders had been issued about shoes, so, though she wore the official blue overcoat and respirator, she carried her shoes and stuffed her stockings into her pockets.
The 1943 moons matched that year’s harvest in their generosity, and, on one memorable night, she saw sunflowers, golden as at noonday, against the wall of a cottage and below them a row of tobacco plants, silver as the moon itself.
In some ways, the moonless nights were even better. Then the tiny illegal strips of light, chinking down the sides of cottage windows, gave her excuse to knock. Sometimes she would be given a cup of tea or an apple: and a slow easy friendship would be made in that friendly hour between today and tomorrow, when evening has slipped away and morning is still far off.
Sometimes there would be an encounter on the road with a soldier, who had snatched the last hour of his embarkation leave and was walking to the town to catch the midnight train. The soldiers were mostly local lads, a little sad after their recent goodbyes, a little solemn at the thought of what might be coming; but glad to meet a middle-aged woman to whom, just for a moment or two, and because she was almost a stranger, they could stop pretending to be real soldiers and show what was in their minds before they turned the corner that ended her beat.
Other wayfarers went overhead – the great night bombers on their flights to France or Germany or the Low Countries. Their lights helped her to conjure up their shapes – the long bodies and the great stiff wings. Her own thoughts soared with them as she tried to understand the feelings of the men in the machines. Were their minds exalted as their bodies? Were they excited? Did they think of the return or only of the setting forth? Were they afraid, or numbed to a sense of fatality? Were they squandering their thoughts, fussing perhaps over a mounting mess-bill, feeling irritable or nagged by the difficulty of finding lodging for their wives in the crowded villages near the aerodrome? Or were they, perhaps, concentrating on the beauty of the moonlight, looking their last on all things lovely, so that they could store it up as spiritual armament against what might befall, if ever they needed to turn their inward eyes towards an English moonscape at the moment when the foreign ground roared up to meet them?
It was easier to hear them go when she was helping (or trying to help) to safeguard the land they were leaving than when, lying in her bed, she listened to the pulsing of the machines overhead, beating like heavy hearts in rhythm one with another. Then it seemed betrayal to feel sleepy, to turn between the sheets while the engines beat out their reproach – Could ye not watch with me one hour, one hour, one hour? Could ye not watch with me one hour?
Often, towards the end of a night-patrol, she watched the machines coming back. One safe, another and another and another. Surely there was a gap in that formation? No, another lonely one was coming in. Soon the men would be breakfasting in the mess; they would have made their reports, and, later in the day, she might see some of them in the village, unchanged outwardly, carrying their wounds and scars within.
She knew now what happened when a bomber crashed.
One day when she was harvesting, alone with an old farmer in an upland field, a low-flying bomber had swooped towards them, tilting its wings while the shadow it threw rocked in blackness across the golden stubble, then turned and flew away.
‘Like a great bird!’ said the farmer.
They watched it fly low into the valley, swoop towards a hedge, rise, clear it, and go winging its way towards a belt of trees that fringed the village.
‘Queer!’ said the farmer. ‘I’ve never seen a bomber stunt like that.’ He turned to his stook, but Miss Ranskill stood watching. Even in that moment, she felt a little guilty. She was used to aeroplanes by now and should have learned better than to stand, like a lazy child, gazing at something that would relieve the monotony of stooking.
The bomber couldn’t possibly be so near the ground as it looked. It couldn’t surely be going to land in front of those trees. Suddenly it rose on its tail, its wings outstretched like giant arms in the position of crucifixion – up, up – and, with what seemed no more to spare than when a Grand National horse clears Beecher’s Brook – over. Then, a crash (a memorable horror of sound so impressing itself on Miss Ranskill’s mind that she recognised it again on nights when others said bombs had fallen) and a pillar of smoke rising black against the sky.