O Caledonia

She and Francis were usually sent out quite soon because they were fidgeting but Rhona loved helping with the baby and was allowed to stay. She was a peaceful, self-contained child; her black hair was smooth and shiny and it hung in a neat curve about her pointed face. Vera took great pleasure in her “piquant little features” and her neat, nimble ways. Francis, like Janet, was naturally untidy, but then as Nanny would say to Vera, “He’s a real boy.” Janet had no hope of ever being tidy: her hair grew wilder and frizzier, escaping from its pigtails, tangling in everything it touched; her hair ribbons fell off, her buttons pinged to the floor, she tripped over and collided with objects so often that she had to have a special eyesight test. There was nothing wrong with her eyes. Soon after this she had a hearing test too, occasioned by her habit of not answering because she was reading or day-dreaming. People didn’t mind the reading so much, but the day-dreaming really annoyed them. “Wake up! For goodness’ sake wake up!” they would suddenly yell in her ear, causing her heart to lurch, almost to stop, and thrusting their cross faces into hers; and always for some meagre purpose: the setting of a table or the grim afternoon walk. One afternoon she was told to bring the baby in from the garden. Reluctantly she trailed out into the still early autumn air. The pram was on the lawn some way from the house. With clumsy fingers Janet undid the stiff navy cover, pulled back innumerable blankets, and scrabbled under the hood for the swaddled occupant, who began to roar, fixing Janet with an unblinking glare. It was difficult to pull her from under the hood; Janet tried to lower it and cut her finger in its joint so that blood dripped onto the baby’s shawls. Louder came the roars. It began to rain. The shawls were unravelling and catching on the metal parts of the hood; she pulled at them and tore a great hole in the lacy cobweb. In desperation Janet seized the infant by her head and dragged her out, clutching at corners of shawl and looping them over the flailing torso. The whole bundle slithered through her hands and lay shrieking frantically on the dank grass. Janet could not lift it up; it was far heavier than she would ever have guessed; when she had held the baby before, she had simply been deposited on her lap; she had never carried her. So she grabbed such projections as she could find, a shoulder and a fiercely resisting arm and dragged the whole mass, shawls trailing, through mud and snagging on leaves, over the grass and across the gravel and at last to the kitchen door where Vera and Nanny greeted her, first with horror and then with fury.

“What in the world have you been doing? What have you done? Where’s the pram? You were told to bring the baby in, in the pram

, of course. You’ve no business to try to carry her. How dare you?” Not one word of Janet’s explanations did they hear. Once again it was spanking and disgrace and a distant overheard muttering of “… simply can’t be trusted,” “We should have known better,” “After what she did before,” “Keep her away from the little ones.” Good. But then, “Best not to tell her grandfather, it’ll break his heart.” A BROKEN HEART. Nanny’s sister had died of a broken heart. She crept away to the glory-hole under the stairs and sat howling in an abyss of guilt among the boxes of candles and dusty jars of lentils and syrupy bottled gooseberries and raspberries, until she could howl no more. Then she went to the nursery and lay on the floor and read stories of princesses with broken hearts. She was bad and she knew she was bad and she could see no end to it.

September was a beautiful month in Scotland, even by the sea. The air was soft and delicate, the headlands shadowed in mild green and violet, the sea calm, an aftermath of limpid azure in the fading days of warmth. Hector and Vera took the children for a last picnic. Soon they were to move to a place far to the north, a huge place with an unpronounceable name which Hector had been left by an uncle on condition that he allowed his cousin Lila to continue to live there. Vera, at first overjoyed at the prospect of a house of their own at last, had been angry about Cousin Lila, whom she had met once—“And once was enough. She’s very peculiar, even you must admit that, and she reeks of whisky.” “Poor woman,” said Grandpa, “she’s had her sorrows. A wee dram never hurt anyone.” “That’s as may be, but it’s not a case of a wee dram with her. You can always tell.” “Tant pis!”

yelled Hector, who relished the occasional French phrase, “Je m’en fous. There’s room enough for the whole clan. She’ll have her own little place at the back and you’ll never need to see her. Anyway, look at your family. Particularly look at your aunt Maisie.” At this point Vera became aware of Janet’s interested face hovering about the doorway, seized her, and bundled her off to find bathing things for the picnic.