She switched on the lamp beside her and the clock on the table told her that it was three o’clock.
Could ye not watch with me one hour?
But an hour of watchfulness had nothing to do with Colin. That was the sentence she recalled when the night bombers flew across the house and she remembered the cry of another Carpenter’s son in a dark garden. There were no bombers overhead tonight.
She could hear the rain slushing from the walnut tree, but she had no sense of comfort. As a rule, wild or wet weather added to her happiness, making her realise her bed and the security of walls.
She turned out the light and lay for some time in that state of restless confusement that is not quite sleep and not quite consciousness. Presently, the squalling of a cat drifted her into dreaming.
Colin was running down the village street. A tin-can was tied to his pyjama coat and children with rat-like faces pelted him with sea-shells, crowding and scrabbling, making a Pied Piper of a nightmare.
Now he was in a boat, the boat his father had made. He was baling out water with a sea-shell, but the water was gaining. Waves were rushing over the bows and every wave had a rat’s face. The water was snapping. White teeth and white spray were indistinguishable.
Miss Ranskill shrieked, and this time her own voice awakened her.
Memories of the boy dominated her all the time she was dressing. Certainty of his need took possession of her. She scarcely realised, even, that she had put on her only tidy coat and skirt instead of her gardening clothes.
She was lacing her best shoes when Emma arrived, and she answered the enquiring glance automatically.
‘I’ve just heard I must go away for the day. I shall be back this evening, I expect. Could you lay the fire in the sitting-room, please, Emma.’
‘Yes, Miss. And shall I put the egg ready by the saucepan. That would be as nice as anything for your supper, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, two eggs, please. We’ll want something else though when we come in. Don’t let’s bother to arrange now. I can make something. I didn’t know until this morning that I should have to go away.’
A knock sounded on the front door.
‘Postman,’ said Emma, ‘I passed him in the lane. He’s late this morning.’
She went out of the kitchen and returned with an envelope: it was penny-stamped, an unmistakable bill.
‘It’s for Mrs Wilson, Miss. We’ll have to forward it.’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Wilson seemed very far away, as far as the Carpenter’s boy was near. ‘Emma, if you’ve got time, you might make up the bed in the little south room, just in case – I don’t really know yet.’
‘In the little south room?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Miss Edith never did care much for that little room.’
‘Miss Edith?’
‘It wouldn’t take me long to get her own room ready. We could leave beating the carpet till later if I just gave it a good sweep and washed round the skirting boards. It wouldn’t take all that time–’
The sound of a tinkle interrupted her. The noise was repeated.
‘Didn’t the men come then, Miss?’
‘What men?’
‘The Telephone men. You said they’d promised to come yesterday afternoon to set the wires to rights?’
For all through the wind and rain of yesterday, the telephone bell had kept up a ceaseless tinkling. It was a thing that sometimes happened, so Emma had told Miss Ranskill, when the telephone lines became entangled in the walnut tree. Until they could be disengaged the telephone was useless. It had been useless all yesterday.
‘No,’ said Miss Ranskill slowly, ‘they didn’t come after all.’
She noticed Emma’s bewildered expression, saw how the elderly woman glanced again at the single letter on the table. She had been too well trained by Edith to ask questions, but Miss Ranskill felt sorry that she could not satisfy a curiosity that was born only out of the friendliness that had gathered through long years of service.
But how could she explain the inexplicable and say that what she had heard in the morning had not been learned by written word or over the telephone?
‘I must go now or I’ll miss the train. I’ll leave everything to you, Emma. If you’ll just leave the key in the usual place.’
‘And which room shall I get ready?’
There was just a hint of hurt disapproval in the voice.
‘Oh! the little south room, please. It isn’t for Miss Edith. I must go now. I – I’ll explain when I come back.’
She must go now, even though she might have to wait for the train. She must go before the matter-of-factness of everyday things smothered the sense of power within her, before the mockery of reason killed the compelling instinct; and made her slave to what Emma might think if she chanced to return alone in the evening.
‘Don’t forget your mackintosh, Miss.’
She had not, until she stood for the second time in her life outside the Carpenter’s cottage, thought what she must say or how she could explain her anxiety over the boy.
There was nothing about the cottage to hint at any tragedy. Indeed, it was more like the cottage she had seen as the Carpenter talked, than the one she had entered a few months ago.
White curtains hung crisply between frames of glossy green paint. The doorstep was whitened; the knocker gleamed so that it showed a little contorted reflection of her face.
She thought, as she waited for the knock to be answered, that perhaps she had misjudged the Carpenter’s wife. Women, like houses, have their off days. There was nothing slovenly now about the house or about the diamond-shaped beds on either side of the door. They had been freshly forked and the edging of little green plants lay in tranquillity, waiting for spring.
Footsteps sounded along the passage within and Miss Ranskill strained her ears. The footsteps were quick and light, but they did not suggest a boy’s movements – a boy would walk more stumpily.
The door opened and she looked into the face of a stranger – a pleasant, well-washed face.
‘Is Mrs Reid in?’
‘Mrs Reid doesn’t live here now.’
‘Oh!’ Miss Ranskill’s voice was flat. ‘Do you mean she’s left the village?’
‘No, she and her husband have taken one of the new bungalows in Westley Road.’
‘Her husband?’
‘She’s married again. Let me see now, she married about six weeks ago. I doubt if you’d find her in this morning, though, but you might try.’
Married again? Miss Ranskill wondered if Mrs Reid had married the gross-faced man who had interrupted the song heard in the sea-shell. She understood now why the cottage was so transformed.
‘The name’s Amery now. Amery, Woodway, Westley Road. You can’t mistake the bungalow. It’s right at the end, and it’s got yellow railings. Do you know Westley Road?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
Miss Ranskill felt dazed as she listened to the directions, and that was not because they were complicated. She felt that the Carpenter had suffered yet another death. There was so little of his pride left.
Then the voices of boys, shouting to one another on the other side of the road, reminded her that it was Saturday morning.
‘First right, then left, and it’s on the right-hand side at the far end of the road. As I say, I shouldn’t think she’d be in this morning, but there’s no telling with her.’
The face of the speaker was not quite so pleasant now and the last words were spoken rather viciously.
‘Perhaps the boy, Colin, perhaps he’ll be in.’
‘He won’t be in – not this morning. If it’s the boy you want, you can save yourself the trouble.’