O Caledonia

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.