The aeroplane had managed to fly just clear of the village. The young men had saved the old ladies, but three of the crew were killed.
One morning, when Miss Ranskill had entered a field of corn that had been cut the day before, she saw that a girl was sitting by the side of the hedge. Her dark hair was tumbled across her cheek and her head was bent over something she was making a lap for. The sight of her roused memory, and, as Miss Ranskill walked nearer and saw what she was holding, she realised it was significant that a girl, who looked as this one did, should be nursing a rabbit so tenderly. A girl and a baby rabbit, where had she seen the two together before?
She turned a stook with her pitchfork, seeing dew-silvered cobwebs against the gold of the straw, seeing the amazing red and blue brilliance of the trespassing flowers that always seemed to draw more colour from a wheat-field than from any other soil. But she was watching another scene as well, a scene in a cellar where a bare-legged girl, looking at her young man, had somehow reminded her of a young and very frightened rabbit newly aware of horror in the world.
‘Does it matter my being here?’ The girl was looking at her. She was also soothing the rabbit with her fingers.
‘No, of course it doesn’t. We’ve met before, haven’t we?’
The girl furrowed her forehead.
‘It’s all right, my pet: don’t wriggle so. Sorry! I wasn’t speaking to you. Yes, I think we did meet, but I can’t remember quite where–’
‘In Marjorie Mallison’s cellar.’
‘Oh! yes, of course. It was the night our house was bombed out and Mummy and I and you and Rex – and you were kind. It’s awful of me, but I can’t quite remember your name?’
‘Ranskill, Nona Ranskill. And you’re Mrs Mallison now.’
The gold of a slim wedding-ring was half buried in rabbit’s fur until the girl lifted her left hand a little.
‘To strangers I am. I’d rather be Lucy to you, though. Don’t you remember how we talked that night, and how I hadn’t any wedding-clothes or anything?’
‘And now?’
Miss Ranskill dropped her coat by the hedgeside and sat down.
‘Same clothes.’ Young Mrs Mallison patted her brown tweed skirt. ‘And they gave me some extra coupons.’
That wasn’t what Miss Ranskill wanted to learn.
‘Look at this poor little rabbit. It’s sopping and frightened. It must have been out all night. It doesn’t seem damaged though. I wonder if it got a wump on the head from one of those beastly harvesters and hid and then sort of fainted. It’s coming round now.’
‘Probably it did.’
Miss Ranskill fingered the soft fur, grey like matted cobwebs where it was not darkened by dew. She remembered the last strip of corn and the gang of children surrounding it. Their knuckles had whitened as they gripped their sticks tightly, and, as the terrified rabbits darted towards the cover of the fallen stooks, shrilled an age-old cry of persecution – ‘Yi-yi-yi. Yi-yi-yi.’
‘Sorry, I suppose you are a harvester too.’ The girl glanced towards Miss Ranskill’s pitchfork.
‘Yes, but not that sort. It’s the one thing I hate about harvesting, especially when the little girls join in.’
‘It seems so frightful somehow, just as though there weren’t enough ghastly things going on.’
Miss Ranskill looked at her anxiously for a moment and then her anxiety slipped away. For the girl had that undefinable bloom on her that flourishes through love and cherishment. There was serenity on her forehead and awareness in her goldeny eyes. Possession shone in her. She had her armour now against bewilderment and fear and loneliness, if these things should assail her.
The rabbit quivered, its ears flicked backwards. For a moment it crouched in the girl’s lap, and then, it seemed only in another moment, its white scut was disappearing under the cover of a stook two yards away.
‘It is all right then – for today, anyway.’
‘For today, anyway.’ Miss Ranskill wondered how often the young wife had used that same phrase in her heart after the night bombers had returned. She shook the thought away, and asked a question.
‘Are you staying here?’
‘Yes, at a guest house. Rex is on leave, and I managed to get my holiday at the same time. He’s stationed near here now. We would have gone right away, but we’ve been looking for rooms for later on. There isn’t any inch anywhere. We can’t afford hotels, and anyway they’re crammed, besides – it wouldn’t do. We thought perhaps two rooms in a friendly house. I’d help with the cooking and everything as soon as I could, of course. But people seem so frightened of babies.’
She continued to talk in jerky sentences while her hands moved restlessly in her lap, as though she were still caressing the rabbit.
‘One’s got to look ahead – even if it’s going to be a quite different “ahead” from the one we had planned. It wouldn’t be yet, of course. But presently they’ll release me from my job, and then I shall have to go steady for a bit. I could go into a nursing-home to have the baby. It’s afterwards that’s going to be so difficult. Mummy’s been living in hotels ever since our house was bombed. There is Rex’s mother, but – I ask you!’
Miss Ranskill had no need to be asked. Her mind, busy home-hunting, had already rejected Marjorie’s battle-eager establishment.
‘No, not unless you have triplets who could be made to form threes when they’re learning to walk.’
‘Poor tinies! They’d have to be boys too, one for the Navy, one for the Army, and one for the Air Force!’
She laughed suddenly, and Miss Ranskill remembered Rex’s description of her – ‘She laughs a lot and she’s comforting.’
As though the word had carried from one mind to another, the girl used it again in her next sentence.
‘Mother-in-law’s such a silly name, isn’t it? It ought to be mother-in-love or – or something comforting. It’s so stupid too. Fancy being a wife – in-law; there’d be legal disputes at once! I say, I’m keeping you from your harvesting.’
‘No, it’s very wet still; anyway, this is important.’
Without the young green corn there could have been no harvest; without the young generation, bred in war-time and nurtured through danger, there would be no meaning in the golden fields. The sun would shine in vain.
‘The mater (I’ve got to call her that) is against the baby. I mean she thinks we ought to wait till after the war. She thinks it will distract – that’s what she said – distract Rex from his job, bothering about me and it. As if, as if he oughtn’t to be distracted in that way. What’s the use of killing if you aren’t giving anything back? I mean, well, I mean, a gardener spends a lot of time weeding, doesn’t he? But what’s the use if he’s just going to leave bare beds and not plant better things instead of the weeds? It wouldn’t make sense; it wouldn’t be worth while.’
Truth was throbbing in Miss Ranskill’s mind. She, in her confusion, had been irritated by all the little affairs and incessant pin-pricks of war-time, had made too many lazy journeys back to the island to rest in the comforting shadow of the Carpenter’s memory. This girl had a clearer view.
‘You see, it isn’t as if they like killing. Rex says it’s only the old women who think they do. Even when they hate, as most of them do, because of things that have happened to their friends in the Forces and relations at home, it’s all too sort of impersonal to be satisfactory. It’s all sort of – oh! I can’t explain, deadening in a way, except to the few. It’s different in Fighters, of course, their fighting is closer. But if you’ve got to kill, well then, you’ve got to, well, birth as well. I can’t think of another word. It’s compensating. Rex is clever. He understands better than I do. He can explain things, but I know.’