Conversation was difficult. One could not discuss the events of the afternoon, but she did make a little attempt to explain the future because the boy had followed her hopelessly as a lost dog, trailing a strange pair of heels, without question or interest.
‘Colin.’
He had glanced up at her.
‘You do understand, don’t you, that you are coming to stay with me in Hampshire?’
He nodded.
‘The house we’re going to live in isn’t far from the sea. You’ll like that, won’t you?’
‘I don’t mind.’
She went on to describe the house, and then told him about the little potting-shed that he could use as a workshop in the evenings and on holidays.
‘Won’t it be rather nice to have a workshop of your own?’
He flushed and bent his head still lower over his plate.
‘Not if there’s no wood.’
The flush deepened. Miss Ranskill remembered that one of the charges against him had been one of stealing wood, finely-grained wood for boat-building from the workshop of his father’s successor. He had taken some tools too. He had also stolen a bicycle lamp from another house and a tin of varnish from the local shop. All these things had been found in an old chicken-house at the bottom of his mother’s garden. He had been trying to equip the chicken-house as a workshop. The light shining through the window had given him away to the policeman. The boy had not remembered the need for black-out curtains.
Miss Ranskill waited until the flush had faded from his cheeks. Then she spoke again:
‘But there will be wood this time. You can buy some if you work in the garden and earn money.’
‘Can I?’
It was the first responsive thing he had said, and though he ducked his head again immediately, Miss Ranskill was satisfied.
Later on, she would tell him stories about his father, but not just now while his mind was closed and clutching on misery. One thing must make room for another.
There’s one thing I reckon you can’t do, Miss Ranskill, you can’t hurry comfort. You can’t give happiness while a misery’s still there. I remember when I was a little lad and my pup had been run over, they wanted to give me a new one straight off. That didn’t do. I’d got to get shut of a part of the misery first.
No, she must not hurry comfort.
That was why, so far, she had left him alone with his misery, allowed him to hunch himself up in the far corner of the carriage, to twiddle with the window-strap and swing his legs, now with seeming nonchalance and now listlessly. Even his knobbly and rather grubby knees looked forlorn. His face, travel-stained and white with misery though it was, still carried the likeness of his father’s. His right hand lay relaxed on the seat of the carriage.
Miss Ranskill was not sure now whether he was asleep or not. His lips had parted a little.
She took the sea-shell from her pocket and laid it on the seat two inches from his fingers. Then she lifted his hand gently and laid it on the cool curved surface. He shrugged away from her resentfully, nuzzling his head into the corner between the upholstery of the seat and the window-blind with a movement suggesting that of a small wild animal, carried in from darkness to the publicity of a room.
But she noticed, when she had returned to her own seat, that his fingers were gripping the shell.
It was time now to close her eyes.
Presently she became conscious of small scuffling movements in the far corner of the carriage. She did not dare to look yet.
In her own mind, the island was taking possession of the railway carriage.
She would wait for two minutes and then she would open her eyes. She began to count sixty twice over and slowly.
One leg was crossed over the other, his elbow was pressed into his knee, the shell was against his ear and he was listening.
The water-music was pouring into his mind, sweeping it clear of trouble, lulling the nightmare thoughts and making peace. And, as the magic of the shell did its work, the boy’s face changed. Surliness slipped away, the grey eyes lost their furtiveness and the lips smiled. He was enchanted back into himself again.
His fingers pressed harder against the shell, and Miss Ranskill, who remembered her own listening, knew that he was hearing a crescendo now – a tumult and surging of many-voiced waters.
Suddenly he dropped the shell. His face puckered and his right hand groped at emptiness until Miss Ranskill reached him. He was a little boy, haunted by ugliness, bewildered and softened by sudden beauty, crying into her shoulder, ‘I didn’t want to be bad.’
‘Yesterday’s over. Listen, Colin, today’s finished too: it’s tomorrow that counts.’
He began to quieten slowly as he nuzzled into her shoulder and choked, ‘I didn’t have anything – nothing at all.’
‘Listen, and I’ll tell you a story.’ His fingers were gripping the lapel of her coat.
‘Once upon a time there was a man on an island. He was a carpenter, like you’re going to be, and he hadn’t anything either except his clothes and a jack-knife. And he wanted to build a boat – a big one. There were trees on the island, but there was no felled timber. It took him more than four years, but he made his boat and he made it seaworthy, so that I could come across the sea to England to look after you because he wasn’t able to come himself.’
Colin’s head jerked up for a moment.
‘Did you know him?’
‘Yes, and so did you.’
‘Not–’ the boy’s eyes pleaded queerly in the strange light, ‘not – it wasn’t my Dad?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘But, my Dad’s dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘yes, but he made the boat first.’
The boy’s eyes were hazy with sleep and weeping. His hand groped for the shell. Miss Ranskill gave it to him and settled him into his corner. He gave a little whimpering sound and fell asleep, his fingers twitching on the shell. He handled it as his father would have handled it.
Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.
The engine took up the refrain Into something rich and strange, rich and strange, rich and strange. Yesterday’s over, yesterday’s over, yesterday’s over. A re-eed shaken with the wind, a re-eed shaken with the wind.
Yesterday was over for Miss Ranskill too.
The island was still there, but she did not need it any longer. This other island needed her more. There was so much to be done, so much to be restored to compensate for what had been destroyed.
The Carpenter was not really dead: he was alive in his boy and she could share in that immortality.
Her mind was harking forward, away from the island and into a garden, forward to a spring morning, to a thrush whistling on a walnut tree and a boy whistling in a woodshed, to a liver-and-white spaniel, very fat and very kind, waddling beside a perambulator, to Lucy’s voice repeating, ‘What’s the use of killing if you aren’t giving anything back?’
The engine was hurrying now and Miss Ranskill’s thoughts speeded with it.
The train stopped with a jerk, and Colin opened his eyes.
Then the carriage door was opened and a porter bawled ‘Lynchurch! Lynchurch!’
‘We’re home now, Colin.’
He blinked sleepily and smiled at her as he tucked the sea-shell into his pocket.
Miss Ranskill had come to the end of her journey.