Windfalls, by Margaret Ormondroyd

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Cissie Pinnock came to Wellow Green on the last bus from the station with nothing but a brown suitcase, which she would not let anybody carry. Mrs Lilwall, who had asked the billeting officer for a strong boy to help with the apples and had been given a thin girl from Bermondsey instead, showed her up to the back bedroom with its sloping ceiling and its window over the orchard.

‘You can put your things in the chest of drawers,’ she said. ‘The bottom two are empty.’

Cissie slid the suitcase under the bed, still fastened. ‘I won’t need them, thank you. I’m not stopping.’

She did not need them in September, or in October either. Every morning she knelt on the rag rug, unsnapped the catches, took out what she meant to wear and put back what she had worn the day before, folded small. Then she snapped the catches shut again. When Mrs Lilwall offered to wash her other frock, Cissie said her mother did her washing. When Mr Lilwall brought her a pear from the tree by the gate, she said thank you and left it on the windowsill until the wasps found it.

‘She’s a funny little article,’ Mr Lilwall said.

‘She’s a Londoner,’ said his wife, as though that explained it, though she was not certain it did.

Every morning Cissie was at the gate before the post came, because her mother had promised to write every week. Mrs Lilwall, watching from the bakehouse window across the green, saw her wait there in all weathers, never once going back for her coat, in case the postman should pass without her seeing what he had in his hand.

Two letters came before Christmas. Her mother worked long shifts at a jam factory near the river, and there was never time to write, Cissie said, and paper was short.

In the middle of November the newspaper carried a photograph of Bermondsey after a night raid, and Mrs Lilwall folded it inside out and put it at the bottom of the coal scuttle. In the morning the paper was gone. That night, through the wall, she heard the catches of the suitcase open and close, open and close, until long after midnight, and in the morning Cissie came down with her coat already buttoned, as if she might be called for at any moment.

Nobody called for her. She went to school. She came home. She ate what was put in front of her and said it was all right.

The letter came in March, when the orchard was white. Cissie read it at the gate, and came back up the path very slowly and sat down at the kitchen table, and then stood up again. Her mother was safe. She had found two rooms over a cobbler’s in Rotherhithe. If Cissie wanted to come home, she could come in April.

Cissie went upstairs without a word. Mrs Lilwall stood at the sink and listened to the catches snap open. She found that she was holding a wet plate very tightly and that she did not want to put it down.

When she went up at last with a pile of ironing for the journey, the suitcase was lying open on the bed, and it was empty. The bottom two drawers of the chest were shut. Cissie was at the window with her elbows on the sill, looking out at the blossom.

‘Mum says I can choose,’ she said, without turning round. ‘So I’ve chosen.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘Somebody’s got to help you with the apples.’

“Cissie is presented as an ungrateful and stubborn child.”

To what extent do you agree with this view?

You should write about:

• your thoughts and feelings about how Cissie is presented in the extract
• how the writer has created these thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.