O Caledonia (14 page)

 

*

 

Janet returned to school on the train, relishing the first two hours of the journey, when she was alone. She could still see the hills massed and remote to the west, to the north, guarding her dream kingdom. But already, even before they rattled over the Tay and into the flat coastlands, she was aware that she was slipping into that sense of half life, of a two-dimensional existence. Troops of girls got on at Edinburgh. To her surprise they greeted her and some came and sat in her compartment. They chattered among themselves and Janet stared out of the window, thinking of what she had left, trying not to think of what lay ahead, trying not to think of Lila. She concentrated on Rhona, who had been forced to practise the piano for forty minutes every day during the holidays, including Christmas and New Year
'
s Day. Vera was determined that she was musical. Francis was musical, Rhona and Francis had so much in common, therefore Rhona must be musical. The fact that Janet was not musical didn
'
t count. Janet took pleasure in the memory of Rhona grimly thumping out a lugubrious melody whose title was
‘
Myrtle the Turtle
'
. You moved on to
‘
Myrtle the Turtle
'
after you had mastered
‘
Rabbits in the Corn
'
.
‘
Rhona tries hard but makes little progress
'
had been the piano teacher
'
s verdict at the end of the autumn term. It had been worse for Janet, who had not tried at all and had made no progress.
‘
Myrtle the Turtle
'
had been her musical debacle.

 

Myrtle the Turtle is just a slow poke,

Myrtle the Turtle thinks life is a joke.

 

She would not, could not get it right. It made her feel ill. Finally she had knocked the sheet of music over and the piano lid had slammed down on her knuckles and she had burst into tears. The music teacher had also burst into tears and that very afternoon had persuaded Hector and Vera that Janet should give up piano lessons. Janet urged Rhona to do the same, but Rhona was not like that.
‘
She
'
s a sticker,
'
said Constance. Janet laughed aloud now, thinking of nimble- fingered Rhona
'
s dismal fate. The other girls glanced uneasily at her, saw that she was not laughing at them, exchanged winks, rolled their eyes, and resumed their chatter.

But nothing could assuage the cold, familiar dereliction of night in the dormitory, with the sea booming below the cliff and the sea wind whipping the sleet against the windows. Then she could not ward off thoughts of Lila, the enormity of her exile and her own part in it, her treachery, her guilt.

The days passed, merging without colour, as the melancholy sea merged into the melancholy sky. She was finding ways of coping with life in the boarding house; not only was she in demand over matters of prep but she had discovered that she could make people laugh by telling them exaggerated stories of her incompetence in every aspect of the day
'
s routine, and the dire consequences it provoked. Work remained an exception to all this. It was her pride and joy, of necessity secret, for no one cared to hear about it. Lessons were regarded as the tedious, time-wasting price you had to pay for the thrills of sport, the pleasures of gossip and girlish society. Janet learnt never to mention the intense excitement which she found in Dido
'
s doomed love or Medea
'
s implacable heart. She took a perverse delight in caring for anything the others found especially wearisome. Sometimes she still went too far, as when she had listened vaguely to endless moaning about the subjunctive, its futility, its stupidity, the drab impossibility of learning it; unable to contain herself she announced in patronising tones,
‘
I
love
the subjunctive. You just don
'
t understand what it
'
s for. It
'
s subtle, it makes the meaning different, or it gives you a clue to the rest of the sentence. And it
'
s perfectly easy to learn.
'
They were silent, staring at her with loathing.
‘
I call my cats subjunctives,
'
she finished. This was true; she felt the word had a wonderfully feline shape and sound. But even as she spoke she knew that she should never have said this.
‘
And I suppose you call your parents past participles?
' ‘
Or ablative absolutes?
' ‘
Bet her brother
'
s called Gerry, short for Gerund.
' ‘
God, how pukey can you get?
' ‘
Show-off, show-off, pukey little show- off.
'
Soon it was round the whole school.
‘
Janet
'
s family all talk Latin to each other and wear togas.
'
Girls lay in wait for her.
‘
Miaow, miaow subjunctive,
'
they squealed, leaping out of the shrubbery. The queenly head of house drew her aside:
‘
You will get nowhere at St Uncumba
'
s by that sort of behaviour. We are simply not impressed. Life here is about give and take, caring and contributing. That
'
s why games are so important; you learn the rules, you obey them and you move in harmony with your team. If you make your own rules you let the whole side down. Contrary to what you clearly believe, you are not superior to the rest of us. In fact you are a rather silly, very conceited little girl and if you don
'
t make a huge effort now you will never fit in, here or anywhere else. I shall be watching you.
'

For a week or two Janet crept about looking humble. She complimented Cynthia on her tackling, she stood in the front line of the yelling crowd at hockey matches; she listened admiringly when girls boasted of their boyfriends or described the excitement of the Boxing Day meet. The phrase from Oscar Wilde
‘
The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable
'
, which she had gleefully copied down for use at such a time, remained silent in her notebook. She even pretended that she wished she was a member of the Pony Club. Gradually her crime was forgotten, if not forgiven. It was Janet
'
s view that forgetting was the only possible way of forgiving. She did not believe in forgiveness; the word had no meaning. At last she was reinstated in her roles of idiot jester and brainbox (pronounced as though it meant leper). Only at night under the bedclothes did she allow herself the tiny luxury of muttering two expressions favoured by characters in Greek tragedy:
‘
Woe for me in my misery
'
and
‘
My woe is their laughter
'
.

To placate Cynthia further she took up riding at school. Red-faced, shrill-voiced Mrs Jarvis led them out at great speed, trotting, trotting, trotting along the slippery roads, regardless of weather. Sometimes they performed exercises in her field instead. Cynthia excelled at these and was much admired by Mrs Jarvis. Janet hated them; it was just like Pony Club, which she had attended once, as a spectator only. The riding out was not much better; Mrs Jarvis harangued her pupils, sometimes reducing them to tears, and effectively destroying the little pleasure such outings on a February afternoon might provide. One day as they clattered and slithered down the steep road to the stables, they met an old woman and her obese spaniel. The aged, puffing dog shrank back against its mistress
'
s legs; it cringed and shuddered. Its mournful eyes rolled in mute terror and yet there was about it a passivity, as if it accepted that it might be crushed and trampled by those flailing hooves; this would be its lot, and it would not resist. Janet was overwhelmed by pity; something was stirring in her memory. Then it came to her; it was Lila
'
s face. This was how she looked after Vera had been talking to her. She remembered Vera
'
s special satisfied look.

Back at the stables, as she made her way out into the yard, Mrs Jarvis suddenly called to her,
‘
Watch that horse
'
. Obediently Janet stood and gazed at the rounded chestnut hindquarters and the swishing chestnut tail. Nothing happened; it was boring; her feet were very cold. She became aware that Cynthia and the others were giggling at the doorway.
‘
Come on, Janet, whatever are you doing? We
'
ll be late for tea.
' ‘
Mrs Jarvis said I was to watch this horse.
' ‘
She meant keep away from it, not stand staring at it, you idiot.
' ‘
What did I tell you?
'
Cynthia added, to the faces by the door.
‘
Gormless. Completely gormless.
'

 

*

 

Janet began to hate the sea. There was so much of it, flowing, counter-flowing, entering other seas, slyly furthering its interests beyond the mind
'
s reckoning; no wonder it could pass itself off as sky; it was infinite, a voracious marine confederacy. She saw how it diminished people as they walked along the shore; they lost their identity, were no more than pebbles, part of the sea
'
s scheme. Once there had been a great forest below the cliffs; there the hairy mammoth had browsed and raised his trunk and trumpeted. There had been mountain crags and deep, sweet valleys of gentle herbivores. The sea had come and taken them. Later it had taken churches too, and on wild nights you could listen for their bells. The air was loud enough with bells already; Janet preferred to listen for the hairy mammoth.

On Sunday in church she sang with fervour

 

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea

 

The minister often chose a maritime text:
‘
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord
'
, or
‘
Many waters cannot quench love
'
. The wonderful words were almost enough to make Janet believe in God. At Christmas too, the starry sky and the beauty of language and music caused a great surge of mystic yearning in her; then Mr McConochie would harangue them, remind them of their unworthiness and guilt, the innocent babe born to die on their behalf.
‘
Sighing, crying, Bleeding, dying, Shut in the stone cold tomb
'
they sang and the glory faded to heartbreak and desolation, the bleak light of afternoon.

She thought now of something which had happened the previous summer. Early one morning four students from Edinburgh University had stolen a fishing boat from the harbour and merrily set course for deep waters. The sun, an enormous orange disc, cleared the misty horizon, the air was still, the sea sparkled. They dived from the high bows and swam and frolicked. Then they realised that they had forgotten to put a ladder down; there was nothing, no rope, no lifebelt, only the steep black sides of the boat, slippery and glistening in the cold sunbeams and a great stretch of empty sea. They all perished; the paintwork was scored and runnelled by their fingernails.
‘
Many waters cannot quench love.
'
That could be so; the sea nevertheless had taken them and there had been no help from God. Some of course said that it was a judgement; they should not have taken the boat. Mr McConochie was of this opinion; he had discussed the incident with her parents outside his church one Sunday morning:
‘
Aye, well, they kent the rules fine and they broke them. The commandment is there to be obeyed, whether ye be a floozy wee student or the Lord High Advocate. Ye
'
ll recall the words of Knox
“
And if thou wilt not, flatter not thyself; the same justice remaineth in God to punish thee, Scotland, and thee, Edinburgh, in especial, that before punished the land of Judah and the city of Jerusalem.
”'

It did not seem to Janet that this was justice; it was a most cruel quenching of merriment, and there was little enough of gaiety or recklessness around those rocky shores. She thought of that moment when Lorna Doone
'
s father, riding ahead of the family carriage up a mountain road in Italy, turns in his saddle, doffs his plumy hat and bows, laughing; then he spurs his horse into a gallop; round the bend they vanish, to plummet over a precipice. There seemed no place for gallantry or romance among Calvinists. They would say that he should have looked where he was going. Clearly he had not been one of the Elect who were distinguished by perseverance or grim stoicism, and were offered secret divine assistance. But another memory came to her. At the top of a great flight of rickety steps two small boys had paused; the sun shone down on them; they looked back at her and waved and then they vanished into a black void. She had felt no pity for them then, did not feel any now.