O Caledonia (4 page)

But within the warmth of Grandpa
'
s study such thoughts could be banished as she twirled round and round, faster and faster on his magic revolving chair, reaching giddy heights where the angels in the pictures and the parrot
'
s beady eye and the shine of firelight on Grandpa
'
s spectacles all swam in dizzy, whirling confusion, then the abrupt jolt of stop and round the other way, down, down, down to the safe plateau of ordinary life, her feet planted firm on the faded hearthrug with its two worn patches, one on each side of the fire, where generations of men had stood, partaking of their evening dram. In this room was a genial liberality absent from the outer household with its routine, its timetable of rests and walks and meals, its grim insistence on self-control and cleanliness, scratchy vests and liberty bodices, tweed coats buttoned tight around the neck, hair brushed until the scalp stung, then dragged back into pigtails.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

That summer the war ended and suddenly there were men everywhere in the village and the children
'
s father Hector was home for good. There were flags strung across the village street and a great procession with bagpipes and drums and all the children following in fancy dress. Janet was in a dream of happiness for she was dressed as Snow White, the person she most wanted to be, in a tight-waisted blue and yellow gown which almost came down to her laced-up shoes. Her hair was released from its pigtails and sprang, in a wild and electric fuzz, about her shoulders; it stuck out in stiff points like a Christmas tree. Francis went as a gypsy with a scarlet waistcoat and bandanna, and to their mutual pleasure Rhona went as Rhona, being too young for it to matter. Best of all, Janet and Francis rode in the greengrocer
'
s pony trap and took turns in holding the long slippery reins. From her station above the pony Sheila
'
s gaunt hip bones, Janet mused on the new word which everyone kept saying,
‘
Victory, victory
'
, and she felt a great personal triumph as they passed through the flag-waving, cheering crowds. But when they reached the war memorial there was sudden silence and stillness.

Grandpa stood facing them in his purple vestment and the men gathered before him, with the wounded at the front. He spoke a prayer for the dead, the hurt, the bereaved, and the sun squinted through Janet
'
s tight-shut eyes, making dazzles of orange and blue. For a moment she opened them and through the blur of brightness saw two old men standing stiff and straight, with tears shining on their faces. Then the sound of the pipes spiralled upwards in inconsolable lament and the great drums beat in their midst and she saw the sombre clouds piled like monuments over chasms of sunlight, with the phalanxes of the dead gazing down. Somewhere among them must be Ningning. She felt cold and longed with a yearning as strong and tearing as the plangent music for that time when they stood together in the greenhouse, lapped in warm, sub-aqueous light, a time before needs and sorrows of men and beasts, when the world held only two people, Janet and Ningning, whom she loved, who loved her.

That summer the sun shone through long days and it was safe to go to the beach. The great concrete blocks and rolls of barbed wire were wrenched away in carts and in lorries and the children wore bathing suits and sandals and in the late afternoon the warm, prickling comfort of a jersey. There was the delight of powdery sand on the soles of their feet, then, as they ran to the sea, a sudden cool firmness, then the mirror- bright sand filmed in water and the thrill and chill of the first sparkling waves which snatched breath away into the breeze so that for a moment they were nothing but a part of air and light and water, abandoned to the elements. On colder days when the tide was out they walked across the long shore to the harbour and saw the fishermen digging for bait and the fearful blanched and bristling worms that emerged from the depths of the clean sand. In the rock pools were jewel studs of anemones and transparent shrimps like water fairies, and sometimes the black questing pincers and antennae of a lobster lurking in myopic retreat beneath the weedy ledges.

Janet built castles for princesses with strandy green lawns and walls hung in pink shells and cowrie shells, pillared gate- ways of razor shells, roof-tops of mussels and limpet battlements. She ran in and out of the curving waves or sat among them, feeling the sands pull and sink away from under her and then come billowing back with a rush and a splash. Francis stood still for hours spinning flat stones across the shining water and Rhona dug holes in tireless absorption. The dogs dug holes too, flinging up showers of sand into the wind; or they rushed after storms of seagulls barking hysterically.

The beach spread in a great curve, fringed by mournful dunes. At one end was the harbour with its high grey pier and the fishermen
'
s boats pulled up on the shingle; far off at the other end crags and cliffs loomed, with the scar of a lofty boulder-strewn cave where once Macduff had hidden for his life from murderous, mad Macbeth. Above, on the short turf scattered with pink thrift, stood the ruins of a tower and there in happier times Lady Macduff and her women had gone to bathe, clambering down the secret stairway hewn in the cliff face into a glass-green cove where the wind could not reach the water for the surrounding basalt walls. In the summer you could hear the ladies
'
laughter, for the sound of the sea then was an echo, a soft sighing, the hushed murmur in a shell; but in the storms of winter the air swirled and boomed with the howling of the damned, the outrage of the murdered innocents. Janet was afraid of this place and did not like its sinister jutting outline, even against the blue and sunny skies. She also knew that one must be brave and so she would walk carefully, accompanied by Rab, the heroic lion dog, each day a little further, but never very far, along the shore towards it. When she had felt brave enough, her hand plunged in the dense gold fur of Rab
'
s neck, she would turn around and look back at her family, diminished and vulnerable under the great sky, before the great sea
–
Francis still as a cormorant at the water
'
s edge, Rhona squat by her mound of sand, Hector and Vera laughing, smoking and flicking ash on to the lesser dog
'
s wiry coat. Then she would run as fast as she could, feet slapping through the wet, and hurl herself down beside them in the warm soft sand, sending it flying into Rhona
'
s eyes, into sandwiches, into the precious thermos of tea.

Retribution and exile immediately followed, but not for long, for those days were a breathing space between the war and the rest of life and they were days of a rare happiness, goodwill and forgiveness. When the chill of evening came on the sands although the sun still shone, they carried their baskets back up the path through the dunes, across the lane and into the manse garden. Dazed with the long hours of bright sea air, the children trailed rugs behind them through the lingering perfume of phloxes, past the clump of golden rod where Dandelion the cat was curled in his den, glaring out at the dogs with unflinching malevolence. Nanny issued from behind the white rose hedge wielding a rough towel; now came the ritual of rubbing off sand and emptying sandals and shaking out jerseys. Then, at the exact moment when they began to feel cold, it was through the house, up the stairs and into the blissful hot waters of the bath big enough to take all three of them. After the bath came Nanny
'
s dreadful question,
‘
Have you done what you should do today?
'
If the answer was wrong they were briskly purged with Gregory
'
s bitter brown powders. Janet and Francis became accomplished liars on this score and acquired a lasting hatred of the word
‘
should
'
which developed in time into a hatred of the notion of duty. Indeed, they met other children whose nannies actually asked them whether they had done their duty; never could any of those principled women have dreamt of the horde of artful dodgers they were unleashing on the world.

Vera would come and read to them when they were in bed or Hector would tell them marvellous and terrifying tales of the wartime exploits of Strongbill, a parrot secret agent. All these stories gave Janet nightmares, but she had learnt to tell herself these were only dreams and then she would wake up. They were worth it, and now she had the solace not only of the lighthouse beam and her thumb, but of a black bear dressed in a purple velvet coat. She had removed this coat from an unpleasant doll which Vera had given her at Christmas. Janet did not like dolls; they were too like babies and entirely without the charm of animals, real or toy. Once, to please Vera, she took the pink bloblike creature with its mad stare and flickering eyelids on her afternoon walk with Nanny. Halfway along the village street Nanny noticed its nude presence.
‘
It
'
s home we
'
re going right now, and you
'
ll dress that doll before you take it out again. I never saw the like.
'
Janet stuffed the doll in the very back of the nursery cupboard and took her bear instead. She had also been given a doll
'
s pram which she knew she was expected to trundle about like a little mother. She had seen the grown-ups smiling in approving complicity at other small girls as they tucked up their celluloid infants or rocked them to sleep. Her bear could not be demeaned in this manner, but she found that the pram made an acceptable chariot for Dandelion so long as in transit he could gnaw at a sparrow
'
s wing or other pungent trophy from his lair. Eventually Dandelion moved all his treasures into the pram and each day it provided Francis and Janet with a vicarious excitement of the chase; he was a prodigious hunter. By the time that Nanny and Vera decided that since Janet never played with the pram properly it should be given to Rhona, it had become a stinking ossuary of parched bones mingled with fur, feather and the sullen reptilian sheen of rats
'
tails.

Grandpa taught Janet to read, accompanied by wild alphabetical shrieks from Polly. On the great afternoon when she found that she could master a whole page fluently Hector went out and returned with a tissue-wrapped bundle. It was a china parrot, a wild green parrot rampant on a blossoming bough. Francis wept, claiming that he could read too, and indeed on the very next afternoon this was accomplished, and Hector was off to find another prize. Janet watched with anxiety as Francis tore the paper open, but all was well; this bird was no rival to her parrot; in fact it appeared to her to be a penguin, although the grown-ups maintained that it was a Burmese parrot. Francis was delighted. On the nursery mantelpiece their birds sat in beady-eyed accolade and Janet and Francis lay on their stomachs by the crinkled red bar of the electric fire and read to themselves at first in loud, jarring discord, but soon in a deep and satisfying silence.

 

*

 

Now they started to go to a little school. They walked there each morning with Nanny, over a track which crossed the fields, into the grounds of a huge house. Here, in what had once been a summer house, a tiny Hansel and Gretel cottage, ten small children learnt reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic. Janet loved it all, apart from arithmetic. At eleven o
'
clock they each had a short, squat bottle of milk, its card- board lid
'
s inner concentric circle pierced precisely by a straw, and a dark crimson apple, polished to gleaming ruby on cardigan sleeves. Wide lawns surrounded the little house and nearby stood a ruinous hayloft with a stone staircase to a black gap high on its outer wall. It was clear that a banished witch might live up there, using the platform at the top of the stairs as a useful take-off point. Janet imagined her triangular black form sweeping across the windy sky, blotting out the sun, descending to the house in which by rights she should dwell. But inside the school such fears evaporated. Reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic were soon supplemented by Nature and stories from Scottish history, and the French verbs
etre
and
avoir
, in the present tense only. At midday Miss Mackie, rosy and rounded as a robin, would cry,
‘
Let
'
s flit
'
, and they would push the tables and chairs to the side of the room and hurtle into singing and dancing games. Sometimes these were of a cautionary nature; there was one about brushing the Germs away, requiring vigorous elbow work, stooping, twisting and shaking of imaginary brooms. All the children assumed that Germs was short for Germans and performed with patriotic fervour.

In spring a dazzle of crocuses, gold and white and deepest purple, gleamed in the grass. Janet stood staring at them, breathing the sudden soft air, spellbound. Her favourite boy, James, told her that he too liked purple best and asked her to marry him when they were grown up. Janet consented. An- other boy, Bobby, also asked her to marry him; again she consented. She had no intention of marrying either as she still wished to be a princess, but she liked the idea of their hopeless dedication and she devised quests in which they might prove their devotion. At first these were modest: James was to find a ladybird, or Bobby was to bring a pink shell from the beach; but even in the brilliant light of those May mornings the black gap of the witch
'
s loft stared fearfully down and soon she knew that the boys must go together up the staircase and find out whether or not the hag was there. The children were forbidden to go anywhere near the barn and so some strategy was needed.