‘He isn’t ill, is he?’
‘No, he’s not ill, wasn’t yesterday, anyway.’
The new owner of the house stepped back a pace, but there was reluctance in her tread. Her lips were pursed and she shook her head knowingly.
‘If you want to know about Colin you’d best ask his mother. I’ve had trouble enough with the lot of them. I’d sooner not say anything than have her throwing it up at me that I’ve been talking. If you ask me, though, she’s nobody to blame but herself. I wash my hands of the lot of them.’
‘Well,’ Miss Ranskill turned to go, ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope–’
‘I’d sooner not say. Good morning.’
Miss Ranskill was left alone in the narrow strip of garden. First to the right. Her feet rustled through dead leaves as the wind whistled up the broad street of the village.
She passed a group of boys playing ‘conkers’ and thought she heard the name Colin.
He wasn’t ill, but he wouldn’t be in this morning. That ought to be natural enough. The wind had blown the rain away and other boys were out at play. She came on another group of them as she turned the corner, but the stocky figure of the Carpenter’s son was not among them.
A red-haired boy was twirling his conker on a string and shouting:
‘Anyone else want his block knocked off? I’ve beat you all same as I always does.’
‘No, you don’t.’ A shrill-voiced child with greyish-golden hair was piercing another chestnut. ‘You’ve not beat Colin yet!’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘No, you’ve not.’
Another child shouted.
‘Bet you Colin’d like to be playing “conkers” this morning.’
‘Not half he wouldn’t.’ The fair boy swung his chestnut and rapped his neighbour on the head. ‘My Dad says Colin’ll never come back.’
‘Go on!’
‘Go on yourself!’
Miss Ranskill, shuffling through the wayside leaves, felt as though she were walking in a nightmare. She must hurry, but it seemed to her that her legs were moving ridiculously slowly. They would not stretch far enough. Her feet, cramped by shoes, were inelastic. She began to run at a jog-trot.
At last she reached the bungalow with the yellow railings. The gate was open. She forced herself to walk slowly up the cinder path. It would be silly to be breathless when she arrived and unable to speak except in gasps, but she was still gasping a little when she pressed the bell.
For a long time there was silence, or rather a series of silences, punctuated by Miss Ranskill’s frequent ringing of the bell. Yet, although there was neither response nor promise of it, she felt certain that someone was inside. It was almost as though the house were breathing and asserting its habitation. She looked at the lace-hung window to the right of the door and saw that the curtain was moving. It was being more closely drawn from inside. She caught a glimpse of reddened finger-nails. Then she turned to the door again. This time she hammered as well as ringing.
At last her insistence won, and she heard shuffling reluctant footsteps. The door opened chink by chink and the Carpenter’s wife; no, Mr Amery’s wife looked out furtively. Her face, under its thick coating of powder, was puffy and the eyelids were reddened.
‘What is it now?’ The voice was weary and petulant.
‘Don’t you remember me? I’m Miss Ranskill. I called to see you a few months ago.’
‘I remember all right.’
‘I came because I wondered–’ And then because the face looked so dreadfully unhappy and lifeless, Miss Ranskill ended impulsively. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘It’s all right, thank you.’
Voices sounded in the road behind – the shrill lively voices of boys, heartless in their exuberance.
Mrs Amery opened the door a little wider and spoke reluctantly.
‘You’d best come in for a minute, if you don’t want to go. I don’t want all that lot standing around and gaping. We’ve had about enough of them.’
A cat-call shrilled from the road. It was followed by another one, and Miss Ranskill went into the house.
She followed her hostess into a small pretentious sitting-room. Coloured crinkled paper filled the grate. A vase of artificial roses stood beside a biscuit-barrel on a fumed oak dresser. The chairs were upholstered in green plush. Nothing was familiar except the clock in the centre of the mantelpiece and the great sea-shell that lay beside it.
‘Will you sit down a minute?’ Mrs Amery jerked a chair out of place and sat down on another one. She stared at the fireplace and did not even look at Miss Ranskill as she asked, ‘I suppose you’ve heard something?’
‘I went to the house where – where you used to live, and I was told–’
‘Trust her to talk,’ interrupted Mrs Amery bitterly. ‘All said and done, it was his father’s work-shed, and if he did think he’d a right–’
‘How is Colin?’ asked Miss Ranskill, dreading the answer to direct question less than information given in the belief that she had been listening to gossip.
‘You wouldn’t know him for the same boy since all this. Nobody would.’
‘Is he at home?’
‘No.’ Mrs Amery gave a furtive glance, and said no more.
‘I should have liked to see him again.’
‘He’ll not be in till late – if he’s back at all. I ought to have gone with him, but the doctor said “no”. He wouldn’t hear of it. “Best stay at home, Mrs Amery,” that’s what he said, “best stay at home and let your husband get on with it.” Yes, the doctor knows how I suffer from my nerves.’
‘Then Colin is ill?’
‘It’s me that’s ill. All gone to pieces my nerves are. No wonder neither, after all that I’ve been through. And what his poor Dad would have said.’
‘Where is Colin?’
‘If you must know,’ Mrs Amery dabbed at her eyes, ‘if you must know they’ve taken him to Court.’
For a moment the words conveyed nothing but grandeur to Miss Ranskill, glittering grandeur, soft with feathers, shining with the glint of orders and jewels and swords. Mrs Amery’s next words banished romance.
‘The Juvenile Court at Mallingford.’
‘Oh! poor little boy!’
‘He done it all right,’ said Mrs Amery, and not, perhaps, without a touch of pride. ‘Five charges, petty larceny mostly.’
If Colin was to turn out bad, Miss Ranskill, it would break my heart.
‘He was all right till after the wedding,’ continued Mrs Amery. ‘You couldn’t have found a better boy anywhere – not if you’d looked…. Yes, he was all right till then, but he and his stepfather never did hit it off and it got worse. I suppose I might have taken a bit more notice, but you know what it is when you’re just married. Mr Amery got sick of him mooning about in the evenings and always fiddling with his bits of carpentering. It isn’t as though we’d a shed here. I don’t say Mr Amery wasn’t a bit sharp. Pushing him out of the house and that. I ought to have noticed what was going on, but then, you see, he never brought his friends back home, so how was I to know? I did have one or two complaints, but I didn’t take much notice of them. You know what boys are, you can’t expect them to be angels all the time.’
There followed a long description of Mrs Amery’s nerves, but the visions in Miss Ranskill’s mind spared her from noticing those details. She was looking at the boy’s face and his father’s face: she was looking into the future. Six weeks couldn’t be long enough to make a criminal surely?
‘It’s what’s going to happen next that’s worrying me,’ said Mrs Amery. ‘It’s the idea of the probation officer or the police nosing round that gets me down. Mr Amery says he won’t have it, and you can’t really blame him. They might send him to an approved school, but Mr Amery says that’s not likely; it’s not as though he’d a bad record up to now. He says he’ll not have him back in the house at any price. It is an upset and no mistake.’