O Caledonia (22 page)

When the doll
'
s house had been scrubbed out and flooded with Jeyes fluid, it was handed over to Lulu and Caro who could be trusted to use it sensibly. Now they shrieked with fury as Janet tipped their furniture on to the floor and contemptuously shook out their apple-cheeked happy family.
‘
You
'
re far too old to play with it. What do you want it for? I
'
m going to tell on you.
' ‘
Shut up, it
'
s mine,
'
snapped Janet. It was just the right size for Claws and his personal furbishments, at this stage of his development. She left the windows and doors open so that he could come in and out as he wished. The house needed a name. She loved addresses; she had memorised the St Uncumba
'
s list of five hundred, imagining each one, furnishing it, in some cases providing gardens or parkland, in others, lamplit alleyways where assassins prowled. Her favourites were the ones which sounded suburban. She imagined soft, deep wall-to-wall carpets, imitation log fires which gave out real heat and did not burn holes in carpets, divan beds, perfumed bathrooms with pastel accessories en suite (unlike the looming, glacial Elderslie Washdown which clanked and gurgled in the mildewed nursery bathroom at Auchnasaugh); in such places the feminine mystique might flourish like the green bay tree, which would be growing in a neat tub by the diamond-paned porch. As usual she felt guilty and treacherous for these thoughts. Her allegiance was to Auchnasaugh. But there was no reason why Claws
'
residence should not be named for that discreet, charming and muted world. Carefully she painted
‘
8, Belitha Villas
'
above the front door.

Alas for human aspiration. Claws grew apace and although he could stalk about quite comfortably in his villa he made it clear that Janet
'
s whole room was to be his territory. He skittered about the floor and clambered, flailing his wings, on to the bed. He was fascinated by the dressing table and spent much of his time grimacing in the mirror and overturning the shiny little pots and bottles which Vera had bought for Janet on their day in Edinburgh. At feeding times he nestled in her lap while she dropped squamous delicacies down his throat from a silver salt spoon. She stroked his stubby, growing feathers. Soon he must learn to fly and to feed himself. She worried about his crossed bill.

He taught himself to fly, launching himself from the gable of his villa and hurtling on to Janet
'
s shoulder as she sat reading. Each fine afternoon she took him down to the terrace garden where she had found him, so that when the urge came he might go, take up the life of a jackdaw, forget her. He hopped about, pecking at the earth, and she was glad to see that his damaged beak was only a slight handicap. He could fend for himself. He flew farther now, sometimes out of sight among the trees, but he always came back, fluttering and drifting down to the azalea bushes. The day came when he did not return. With heavy heart, Janet tramped up the steep path; she had dreaded this necessary parting and although she knew she must be glad for him she could not restrain her tears. Listlessly she began to reassemble her ravaged bedroom. Claws hurtled through the open window and skidded across her Greek dictionary.
‘
Kya,
'
he observed, settling on the Anglepoise lamp.

After this they were seldom apart. When Janet walked up the great staircase, Claws hopped beside her; he could have flown up the stairs but he never did. She carried him along the corridors, fearful of the cats. Out of doors he would fly to great heights, turn and plummet out of the clouds to her shoulder. He came to her call. To call a bird from the sky! It seemed beyond a mortal
'
s lot. If he was outside and she was inside he would search for her, peering in through every window until he saw her; then he hovered, knocking on the pane with his crossed beak until he was admitted. If she went off in the car he would follow, making darting swoops at the car windows so that they had to stop and take him back and shut him in his villa. Janet could not understand how he knew that she was in the car at all, for on many of these occasions he had been indoors when she left, in the care of Rhona or the boys. On walks or rides he flew far ahead, exploring; sometimes he hopped companionably alongside her or perched on the front of the saddle. He was free to range wherever he wished; always he came back to her and at night they repaired to her room, where he roosted like a guardian spirit on the iron rail of her bed. He was a magic bird. She loved him more than she had loved anything, anything or anyone.

Her room looked like a rock in mid Atlantic.

 

Miss Buss and Miss Beale Cupid's darts do not feel.

How different from us,

Miss Beale and Miss Buss.

 

declaimed the girls. On Saturday evenings they danced together in the boot room to the strains of someone
'
s record player.
‘
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
'
or
‘
Once I had a secret love
'
. Janet remained aloof from this, as always, but was now surprised to find herself stirred by romantic impulse. It was as though her intense love for her jackdaw had unlocked her heart and left it open to the weather.
‘
Set me as a seal upon thine arm
'
, she wrote in her book,
‘
Set me as a seal upon thy heart. For love is strong as death
'
. She also inscribed the closing lines of
Medea
:

 

Many are the Fates which Zeus in Olympus dispenses;

Many matters the Gods bring to surprising ends.

The things we thought would happen do not happen...

 

The gods whom Janet had chosen played tricks on mortals for their pleasure; this she had not considered. She believed that she could control her destiny. She dreamed of unutterable, unearthly love, passion of the spirit, not of the flesh, a pure and searing fire. She did not expect to find an object. She brooded upon poets distanced by death, heroes of legend, demon lovers, powerful yet insubstantial.

Her life seemed to have entered a period of calm, a stretch of slow, clear-flowing water, illuminated by her love for her jackdaw and quickened by her apprehensions of romance. It was her last year at school and she was able to spend most of her time in the library, an ancient building overlooking a garden of weeping trees and lavender. The scent of rainy leaves hung in the mild air. Another window looked down on to the street. On the sill stood a wide glass carafe, half full of water, and in the water she could see the miniature and upside-down reflection of everything that happened far below and out of sight. Columns of girls passed through it, hurrying to their houses. They looked like swarms of midges. Once a bride and her attendants came from the church and drifted like petals across the greenish depths. When dusk fell, the street lamps were golden sea anemones. Janet was happy there, working on into the evening. When she came out, the frosty night sky filled her with excitement; she felt intensely alive. Her hair had now grown long enough to touch her shoulders and it crackled and stood on end as she brushed it; electric sparks whirled about her head.

 

*

 

Vera was planning to launch Janet into society that winter. To this end she had arranged a fearsome programme of subscription dances, commencing unfortunately with the event which should have been its climax; the hunt ball. Janet was appalled; she had looked forward to spending the holidays in her room with her books and her jackdaw. To her huge relief Claws had not been seduced by the charms of Rhona
'
s room, where he had been an unwelcome and unwilling lodger during the term. By day he had been thrust out of doors, and at night when he flew back, always to Janet
'
s room, he had been shut firmly in his villa.
‘
You see,
'
said Vera,
‘
It
'
s perfectly simple to keep a bird and still have a fresh, pretty room.
'
Janet ignored her.
‘
8, Belitha Villas
'
resumed its role as a place of safety in the dismal event of outings by car. Claws roosted on Janet
'
s bed by night and kept her company by day. Sometimes, when the wind was wild and other jackdaws flocked and shrieked across the racing clouds, he flew out to join them. They drove him off and sent him plunging headlong back to the battlements and Janet
'
s window. She was glad that he too was an outcast.
‘Nos contra mundum
,
Claws,
'
she told him. She wondered whether she could teach him to say this. But first he must learn to say
‘
Never more
'
. If she were given any money for Christmas, she planned to spend it on lengths of purple taffeta which she would nail to her walls as a start to redesigning the room in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe.

Vera declared that Rhona should also go to the hunt ball. There had been trouble over Janet
'
s choice of an evening dress. She had refused to be guided by her mother or by the lady in Watt and Grants. When they had peeped into the fitting room to see how she was faring in the white chiffon they had selected, they found her sitting on a chair, sucking her thumb. She had not even taken off her coat. With the thumb hovering a fraction outside her lower lip she announced,
‘
It
'
s no good. It doesn
'
t fit.
'
Vera was speechless, doubly mortified by the thumb and the blatant lie. The thumb was about to be reinserted. Hastily she said,
‘
Well, have you seen anything you really like?
'
Janet brightened.
‘
Yes,
'
she said,
‘
the purple one.
'
Vera had also noticed the purple dress; it was uniquely hideous, festooned with massive bows and encumbered by a bizarre scalloped train like a dragon
'
s tail. It might be worn with panache by a mad old person whose brains had been jumbled by hunting accidents, and who was indulgently regarded as
‘
game
'
, but by a young girl never.
‘
Never. Never. Never,
'
she said aloud, surprising herself. Janet leered at her.
‘
Tricolonic anaphora
'
, she remarked in her most irritating, pedantic voice. The familiar sense of numb despair began to creep over Vera.
‘
Oh all right then, try it on.
'
Surely even Janet would see how monstrous it looked. Janet emerged from the fitting room with flushed cheeks and shining eyes; she looked almost pretty for a moment.
‘
It
'
s absolutely beautiful. Exactly right.
'
It was then that Vera decided to take Rhona to the ball. At least she could find pleasure in the appearance of one daughter. And although Rhona really was too young, she was tall for her age and naturally elegant. She would look delightful in the white chiffon, a winter rose. And Francis was always presentable, if annoying.

In view of the great frozen distances to be covered, from diverse directions, they were to meet with the rest of their party at the ball itself. Hector and Francis were resplendent in kilts and jabots.
‘
I shall be fiendishly handsome,
'
Francis had prophesied.
‘
Like Clark Gable in
Gone With The Wind.
There will be quite a flutter in the dovecotes.
'
Gone With The Wind
: Janet could only remember the piled dead and litter of wounded in the great square of Atlanta, and far up against the blue sky the Southern flag flickering in the breeze like the tongue of a snake. Rhona looked like a nymph from a Greek vase. She was incandescent with excitement. Vera and she had spent the whole day in girlish conspiracy. Janet was envious and contemptuous; she wished them to know of her contempt.
‘
What is the late November doing, with the confusion of the spring?
'
she asked Vera. Vera paid no attention. She was sorting through boxes of old lipsticks, sharing secrets of the past with Rhona.
‘
And can you imagine, this is the colour we all wore in 1946.
'
Janet slunk off to her room.

Now as Hector drove them northwards, sipping occasionally from his hip flask, Janet was in good spirits, for she felt like the queen of the night in her purple dress. The queen of air and darkness. Perhaps she would meet a kindred spirit:
‘
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.
'
This was just what she wanted. But how did anyone recognise a pilgrim soul? She had sat for a long time in front of her mirror turning her head about and twisting her features into soulful expressions. Nothing was quite right. Face turned to three-quarter profile, raised chin and upturned eyeballs gave an impression of an ecstatic pre-Raphaelite maiden, but she could hardly walk around like that. Vera had once said that in infancy Janet had beautiful eyelids. She felt that little could be made of this. She recalled that one of the bad-tempered Greek goddesses shared this meaningless asset with her. Hera probably, the worst of the lot. Calliblepharous; an unappealing adjective. And there had been the occasion when a friend of her parents had told them she thought Janet had a lovely face. Vera had reported this in accents of astonishment. Janet
'
s delight had rapidly turned to fear. She must never again meet this woman in case she changed her mind.