O Caledonia (21 page)

She remembered little after that. But now she was well, miraculously reprieved, and she was to go home for several weeks, perhaps even for the rest of term, and rest. They believed that she had been overworking. Her eyes were strained, the middle finger of her right hand had developed a permanent ink-stained bump from too much writing. Twice she had behaved strangely in class; they had been reading Propertius
'
poem about the springs of Clitumnus and when they reached the lines which describe the great white oxen wading through the shallows Janet had burst into tears, uncontrollable, flooding tears which she had been unable to explain, apart from saying that she found the image moving. Then there had been the mortifying and hideous moment when, in her solitary Greek lesson, the mad old prophet Tiresias
'
description of fat floating in the blood of sacrificial beasts had caused her to vomit hugely across the room. And besides, Miss Smith the housemistress, while exercising her trio of Skye terriers in the gloaming, had observed Janet, who was supposedly supervising the younger ones at their prep, emerging furtively from the Catholic church beneath .the windswept headland. Great was the fear that she might be succumbing to the blandishments of the Scarlet Woman of Rome. In fact, Janet sometimes went to this lonely church because she loved its glowing banks of candles and the heavy perfume of the air, and the mysterious altar, shrouded in purple draperies in the sad days before Easter. She did not like the statues, saints ecstatic or agonised, blood spouting from every visible orifice. But the place had a powerful feeling of sanctuary; it made her think of the lost traveller
'
s dream under the hill. And she felt for its abandonment, remote from the life of the town, almost forgotten; she was angered by remarks she had overheard about popery and its works and the triumph of righteousness, which meant that the little church would one day soon slump down the eroding cliff face and into the whelming Protestant waters.

Some of this she told the various people who took it upon themselves to reason with her and warn her of the corruption which threatened her soul. As usual they paid no attention; if she had informed them that she was a pagan, and a moongazer, they would have continued with their obsessive anti-Catholic tirade in just the same way. She let them rant and rave, and thought instead about albatrosses, the doomed bird in the
‘
Ancient Mariner
'
, Baudelaire
'
s haunter of storms and rainbows, reduced to clumsy crippledom on earth, object of mockery to man, and the albatross who had been swept off course into the wrong hemisphere and now dwelt on a barren peninsula in the far north of Scotland, obliged to consort with kittiwakes; there it was waiting in vain for the high thermals which might waft it back to that unattainably distant south. As she imagined the plight of this bird her hands clenched, she bit her lip, and she stared hard ahead, willing and praying for its release. People mistook this for the outward show of inner religious turmoil. All in all, it would be best for her to spend some time in the carefree, relaxed atmosphere of her home, concluded Miss Smith.
‘
And not too much of the old bookwork,
'
she twinkled.
‘
Gosh no, golly, you bet not!
'
agreed Janet, pretending to be a different sort of person, as was clearly required.

Vera, initially depressed by the prospect of a summer shadowed by Janet
'
s presence, remembered her dream of girlish camaraderie and decided that now was the moment to implement it. When Janet arrived home, she was astonished to find that her bedroom
'
s bleak cream walls had been transformed by sprigged wallpaper. Coral pink curtains billowed at the open window and in one corner, confronting a coral-seated stool, there was a dressing table, bridally veiled in swags and festoons of net, as though, thought Janet, her direct reflection might cause the mirror to crack. But her bookcase was still there, and her table, and although there was now a pretty rosy lamp by the bed, her Anglepoise hovered like a lone heron on the wide margin of wooden floorboards at the edge of the coral carpet. She could soon put things right. In fact, she reflected, it might be interesting to live in a new environment, so long as she could see to read and had room for her books.

There was a new tin of Field
'
s French Pink talcum powder on the dressing table. Recklessly she flung some into the air to impart feminine fragrance. It drifted down like chalk dust and lay in blotches on the carpet. Chastened, she rubbed it in with the sole of her shoe; she must think before she acted. For a long time she had affected to despise what she thought of as the world of women, its preoccupations with clothes and spring weddings (and hey nonny no) and needlework and babies. While she still had no interest in any of these matters, there were other aspects which drew her, as a lighted window glimpsed in a house unknown can rouse in the passer-by a sense not only of obscure longing for other warmer lives but also of sharp exclusion, harsh as a door slammed in the face. The delicious tracery of scent pervading the upper regions of a house, so that as you climbed the stairs you felt that you were entering a domain of excitement, romance and opulence, where silks rustled, where there was soft conspiratorial laughter, the easy understanding of those who speak in the same idiom, knowing nothing of painful silences
–
all this Janet had apprehended but never achieved; it seemed beyond her personal reach; a heavenly version of Fuller
'
s.

Little did she know, and astounded she would have been to know, how this longing of hers echoed that of Vera. Janet could see that Rhona would have no difficulty in entering this realm, just as automatic access seemed granted to the girls at school; for herself it was otherwise. She seemed to lack some essential quality of girlishness. She pondered the phrase
‘
young girl
'
which she had observed gave rise to so much sentiment, rather like
‘
spring, the sweet spring
'
: she thought that she had never been a young girl, never would be. She wondered what a young manatee looked like. Then she checked the thought; she was feeling increasing kinship with this creature, and it troubled her. She had discovered that if she gazed into her own eyes in the mirror for long enough her features would alter and resolve into those of another person, and she feared that she might one day find a manatee staring back at her.

Vera was gratified by Janet
'
s pleasure in her room, although she was less pleased a few days later to find books littered across the floor in their usual fashion and the Anglepoise lamp reinstated by the bed. However, she reminded herself, she had always encouraged the child to read; it was the disorder and the unsocial nature of her reading habits which were depressing. Indeed there was something peculiarly irritating about the sight of Janet reading. She sat bolt upright at her table on a plain wooden schoolroom chair, ignoring the chintzy armchair which had been provided. Her eyes protruded as she read and she breathed heavily. She was unaware of anything happening around her; she turned the pages in a voracious, feral manner as though she were rending the limbs of some slaughtered beast. Immersed in this solitary, private and obsessional activity, she reminded Vera of a girl she had known once, who was said to be a pathological eating maniac.

 

*

 

Janet would be sixteen in the coming winter. Vera decided that it was time she stopped being a child and became an adult. She bought her a good tweed suit, badge of the grown Scottish female, a cashmere twinset, shoes and pretty cotton dresses. It was clear that something must be done about her hair. Janet refused to have it cut. She tried to pin it up; it fell down again at once. She wound her pigtails round her head. She looked like a menacing
Hausfrau.
Vera insisted that a short, boyish style would be best:
‘
Carefree for summer. Think, you
'
d only have to run a comb through it.
'
Janet
'
s face grew heavy with anger. She didn
'
t want to think about combing her hair; she didn
'
t want to be a grown-up; this was all a boring waste of time. She shut herself in her room and read Baudelaire. Vera, alarmed by the prospect of a wardrobe full of unworn new clothes and a huge daughter in ankle socks, made a compromise. She must have her hair cut, but only to shoulder length.
‘
Then you
'
ll have the best of both worlds. It will look long, but be much more manageable.
'
Janet unwillingly agreed. She despised compromise, but was tempted by some of her new clothes and the possibilities they offered for wearing her paper nylon petticoat.

An appointment was made with a famous hairdresser in Edinburgh, a great distance to travel, but then, as Vera said, this was an important moment in the life of a young girl. It was a dank, misty day and Janet wore her new tweed suit. It prickled incessantly and drove her to such a point of irritation that she did not feel car sick on the journey. Her legs felt strange and suffocated in their wrappings of twenty-denier nylon. She longed for it all to be over. Vera, who had begun the journey in high spirits, feeling that at last they were off on a mother-and-daughter spree together, became fretful and depressed after long hours of lugubrious silence on foggy roads. As they waited for the ferry to bear them across the Forth, each had a vengeful fantasy of the car overshooting the pier and engulfing the other for ever.

The salon reminded Janet of the lunatic asylum. People came in, looking normal and cheerful. They were ushered by white-coated, unctuous attendants into a neon-lit inner torture chamber of throbbing machines. There they sat, gowned and scarlet-faced and in no time at all they had lost their identity, their features had lapsed and swollen in the intense heat, their hair bristled with small metal daggers or their scalps were packed with wiry cylinders. Glassy-eyed, they gazed into the mirrors. Hope ebbed from the day. The place reeked of sulphur and brimstone, like hell. As Janet, swathed in billowing pink nylon, followed Monsieur Andre down the gleaming corridor, she glimpsed her fearful reflection.
‘
To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead
'
st thou that heifer lowing at the skies?
'
Well, she knew the name of that altar, the dim, blood-boultered altar of womanhood.

When she emerged she looked worse than she could ever have anticipated. Vera and Monsieur Andre had chosen to discuss what was to be done when Janet was helpless, her head forced backwards into a stream of scalding water while a smiling sadist clawed her scalp into ribbons. Far from being shoulder length, her hair now scarcely reached her collar. They had curled it and baked it and lacquered it and now she looked old enough to be Vera
'
s mother; indeed she looked not unlike the Queen Mother. As a final insult she was handed a shiny green box which contained her severed locks, plaited and coiled like a treacherous reptile.
‘
For a chignon,
'
said Vera.
‘
Isn
'
t this fun!
'

 

*

 

Zephyr the west wind roared like a mighty ocean through the rhododendrons. In the sheltered sunken garden the azaleas
'
scarlet blossoms tossed and curvetted for a moment, then dreamed again in the perfumed haze of early summer. Janet lay on the grass in a little glade among the azaleas, listening to the roar fade to a sigh, recede and retire. She stared at the sky and remembered how she used to watch the fleeting gold chasms between the clouds for glimpses of God or the dead. She could imagine the spirits of the dead disporting themselves on such a wind as this. She thought of George Peele
'
s astonishing line
‘
God, in a whizzing summer wind, marches upon the tops of mulberry trees
'
. Such a day this was, such a wind. It filled her with yearning and exhilaration; the shining leaves were charged with poignancy. Tendrils of ivy flickered down the wall, curling into the grass among the starry flowers of wild strawberry.

A tiny bird was there; it watched Janet. Janet watched the bird. Its eye was bright and anxious; it opened and closed its beak, beseeching, soundless. Gently she picked it up. It was a jackdaw nestling, not even fledged, and its beak was crossed. It had been flung to the ground to die. Janet thought that there was little hope for it, but she took it indoors to the warmth of a haybox on the back of the Aga. To her surprise and delight the bird survived. Soon she was able to move the box to her bedroom where she tended the incessant cheepings night and day. She decided that he was a male bird; his name was Claws. Now when she entered the room he came hopping to meet her, wings outstretched in welcome, beak agape. She took her old doll
'
s house from the nursery. At last it had a purpose. She had never played with it and its only previous use to her had been on the long-ago occasion when a friendly rat had sauntered up to Francis in the woodshed. He had brought it in, and he and Janet had installed it in the doll
'
s house, where it crept about on its belly, peering balefully out of the latticed windows and gnawing the staircase. They secreted liberal quantities of mince and stew in their table napkins and ferried them up the stairs to the voracious and grateful rodent. Lulu had become suspicious of Janet
'
s sudden interest in the despised mock Tudor residence; she opened the house when no one was around, saw the rat with delight and stroked its tremulous snout. It sank its teeth into her plump pink thumb. She was rushed to hospital for injections against Weil
'
s disease and the rat was banished back to the woodshed. Word spread through the village; rats teeming in the very nursery at Auchnasaugh. Just what they would have expected. When Francis and Janet took their rat its evening meal beneath the fragrant wood pile, they found it murdered, ripped apart by other rats, maddened by the taint of mankind.
‘
Like King Lear,
'
pronounced Janet.
‘
Someone says,
“
O let me kiss that hand
”
and he says,
“
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality
”
.
' ‘
That
'
s not what he means,
'
said Francis.
‘
Yes it is,
'
said Janet. It was what Lear meant, and it was what she meant too.