‘But think of the work?’
‘There wouldn’t be much work if they did their own rooms and took it in turns to do the cooking. They’d pay a reasonable amount. I could have three mothers and the husbands could come down for leaves. I don’t see why not.’
‘Well,’ Edith was weakening. ‘I suppose you could try. It would be better than having the house empty, I suppose. And now that Martin’s coming down on this indefinite sick-leave – you could try it till Doctor Fenton lets you do some proper war-work.’
‘Isn’t it war-work,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘isn’t it war-work to make it possible for the next generation to be born and to have somewhere to go when they are born?’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The walnut tree had finished work for the year, and now its sap was seeping downwards. The last of the leaves, their life-current withdrawn, clung listlessly to the branches or allowed the air to drift them down to settle and whisper among their more impetuous fellows.
‘That’s that! That’s that!’ remarked the very last of the nuts as their shells rapped the gravel, and wakened Miss Ranskill.
The air of her bedroom was moist with the heavy breath of autumn: it carried little whiffs of damp leaves, the scent of late violets, the stable smell of chrysanthemums and little hints from roses that had almost outworn their fragrance. The air also carried excitement with it, and, for a moment or two, she lay with closed eyes, postponing the moment of actual parting from sleep and return, by morning light, to the house she had left all those years ago.
There was still a little hump in that part of the mattress that met her right shoulder-blade. The bed creaked as she stretched out her legs – that was because the worn hollow in the floor-board had never been repaired.
She turned her head. Should she open her eyes now and let the mirror on the gate-legged dressing-table be her first welcomer or should she turn to the open window and the walnut tree where a robin (surely the descendant of cheekier and Ranskill-tamed robins) was singing?
The mirror had held all her changing portraits from childhood to middle-age. From its breath-smudged surface another blue-overalled child had grimaced back, in perfect timing, as Nona Ranskill had contorted her own features. Its little girl had grown smaller and had also backed towards the door – the door that led to goodness-knew-where, step by step as Nona had backed towards the door that only opened on to the familiar landing. She had never been able to catch out the mirror’s child who mocked each movement, slow or fast, jerky or surreptitious, whose features followed hers (she knew by the feel) making simpering or hideous or pathetic ‘faces’.
She had worked very hard, after reading Through the Looking-Glass, to make friends with the other child who, at times, looked wistfully back, as though she too wanted to play and to take Nona through that other door that led into the enchanted house where the dear feckless White Queen fiddled with her rakish crown, the Red Queen bossed, and the Sheep used fourteen pairs of knitting-needles at once.
She had tried every method. She had even held up the black kitten, but the other child had produced a Dinah’s daughter too; and each little creature had patted the mirror, prettily, but in vain.
There was a red-brown mark on the right-hand corner of the mirror. It stood as perpetual memorial to the day when Nona Ranskill had used scissors and pliers to remove the wooden backing, and had then scraped at the paint in order to discover if any magic lay between it and the glass.
She had been sent to bed for what the governess described as a ‘piece of wanton destruction that a big girl ought to be ashamed of.’ What had that mattered? The other little girl had been sent to bed too, and the pliers and scissors lying on her carpet had proved that she had wanted to break through from Looking Glass Land in order to play with Nona.
Yes, the mirror was a very old friend and had been quite kind at times when the light was rather dim, though it had been more brutally frank even than her sister Edith, during the half hours she had prepared herself for parties.
So Miss Ranskill turned towards the window and opened her eyes to the tree, whose branches had thickened since last she had looked at them.
She was back in her old home, alone in it, free to love its blemishes – the kicked white paint, the protests of the stairs, the doorstep that must surely hold an even deeper puddle in wet weather now that more footfalls had left memorial on it.
Presently she would get up and make some tea. At nine o’clock Emma, one-time housemaid and now the mother of a growing family, would ‘slip in’ and help ‘Miss Nona’ put things straight after the tenants.
Three weeks later, Miss Ranskill awoke suddenly in the dark hours of the morning.
Recently, she had always wakened happily, assured (as when she was a child on Christmas morning) that something lovely had happened, secure in the knowledge that she was home again.
For everything had been going smoothly, and even the inventory had been correct. Lucy Mallison would be coming in a few weeks. Later a friend of hers, who had one small child and was expecting another, would join the party. Miss Ranskill had answered a third advertisement and the reply might come any time.
There would be a Christmas tree in December. There would be socks hung on the ends of cots. The old house, accustomed to children since the days of Queen Anne, would be contented again. Its stairs would respond with little excited creakings to the sound of small footsteps and its echoes would be happy.
The war news was better too. The Allies were heading towards Rome. The triumphant salvoes from the big guns in Russia sounded more frequently now.
There seemed just a hope that the unborn children, soon to be lying in their cradles in the friendly house, might make their first staggering footsteps into the way of peace.
Yet, this morning’s awakening was alarming. She had been dreaming of the island and something had startled her. This time it was not the cry of a gull, winging to the very edge of sleep and hovering on the horizon where dreams merge into wakefulness.
There was something wrong this time. There was a surge of water in her ears. Waves were hurrying towards her, summoning restlessly – ‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’ Those were the little ones shuffling up the shingle. ‘Cr-ash! Cr-ash! Crash!’ She could almost hear the big ones curling before they deafened. ‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’
If only they would hush and give her the chance to listen to whatever it was she ought to hear.
Yet she was awake and she was in bed. Her feet felt the sheets and her ribs were conscious of her right elbow’s pressure. She raised her head from the pillow and the surging died away.
After all, she had only been cupping her ear with her hand. That was all. Her hand had been curved like a sea-shell and she had heard the sea again, as once she had heard it through the shell from the mantelpiece in the Carpenter’s kitchen.
She repeated the experiment. Once more the swirl of waters overpowered her thoughts and again she heard the insistent – ‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’
She closed her eyes, but sleep had been sent away by the water-music.
She thought of Colin, the Carpenter’s son, and wondered if he were in distress. She pictured him standing, barefooted in the little kitchen, pressing the shell to his ear, listening (Hush! Hush! Hush!) for the comfort that only she could bring.
That was nonsense, of course, a silly sentimental idea. The boy would be in bed now and asleep.
If there were such a thing as telepathy, it would not need the invocation of a sea-shell and the hand of a middle-aged woman cupped against her ear.