O Caledonia

At last they were all sitting in the dunes, much farther along the bay than usual, for it was the Glasgow holiday and the nearer beach contained roistering Glaswegian families. Hector and Francis and Janet collected driftwood and made a fire and the smoke for once went straight up into the still air and blinded no one. Rhona helped Vera amuse baby Lulu while they bathed, then she and Vera ran down into the sea while Hector tried to hold Lulu, who squirmed and rolled and finally yelled. Janet and Francis skulked off behind the dunes but Rhona was back in a moment, hugging her, soothing her. It was time for tea. Vera handed around special bags, one for each child. Janet grabbed hers and retreated to a sand throne she had made high above them, near the spikes of marram grass and pink thrift. Vera called her back. “Come on; Janet, Rhona’s been helping all afternoon. It’s time you did something. Let Lulu sit beside you; just hold on to her and don’t let her tip over.” Lulu couldn’t sit at all and she flopped all over Janet and pulled her hair and put sand in her sandwiches and dribbled on her knee. “Stupid baby,” hissed Janet. “Why did they have to bring you?” Lulu stared at her doubtfully, put a sandy fist in her mouth, choked on the sand, and began to yell again. Vera snatched her away. “For goodness’ sake, you could make just a little effort sometimes for other people. Look how thoughtful Rhona is, and she’s much younger.” Janet flicked sand into Rhona’s gentle, beaming face. “That’s it. Off you go, take your picnic right down the beach and don’t come back until you can say sorry.”

Glowering, Janet shambled to her feet and tramped off, gripping her paper bag. She would go as far as possible, so they could hardly see her and so she couldn’t hear them. She went towards the sea, where the receding tide had left great shining rocks. She cast a scornful glance back at her family but they were not watching her. They had their backs turned, gathered about the small fire. Janet turned west towards the looming black headland where the cave was. Today she did not fear it. She was powerful with a cold anger; she was an outcast, a tragic dwindling figure soon to be seen no more. When she reached the basalt cliffs and the cave, the darkness would take her. This would be her revenge. Her paper bag began to tear where she clutched it. She decided to sit down and eat her picnic first. She found a long low grey rock, pleasingly warm and dry, and clambered onto it. She ripped open her paper bag and began to eat in a savage, vulpine manner, tearing the rolls apart, chewing with her mouth open, staring grimly out at the hazed blue sea and the great sinking sun. Gradually her anger left her; she breathed the soft air of early evening, heard the gulls cry, watched them swoop and skim over the tiny waves at the water’s edge, over the track of radiance which led to the horizon. She thought of Orion, the blinded giant who had to wade through the farthest depths of the ocean, following the setting sun to the limit of the world, and her heart stirred with pity for his lonely fate. She would forgive her family and go back to them. She would even say sorry although she would not mean it.

The headland seemed menacing now and she felt cold. She scrambled to her feet and as she did so she was aware of a strange and dreadful stench all about her. It seemed to come from the rock. She jumped off it and stared at it. Then she screamed loud and long and again and again. She had been sitting on a huge dead bull seal.

Chapter Three

Auchnasaugh, the field of sighing, took its name from the winds which lamented around it almost all the year, sometimes moaning softly, filtered through swathes of pine groves, more often malign, shrieking over the battlements and booming down the chimneys, so that the furnace which fed the ancient central heating system roared up and the pipes shuddered and the Aga top glowed infernal red. Then the jackdaws would explode in a dense cloud from their hiding places on the roof and float on the high wild air crying warning and woe to the winter world. “A gaunt place,” said the village people, and they seldom passed that way. Besides, the narrow road which ran along the floor of the glen, far below the castle on its hillside, was crossed by two fords, swollen brown and turbulent through the winter months, treacherous and glinting in the brief summer; either way your bicycle would rust up, your car would almost certainly break down in them, you would be soaked through and you could depend on no one helping you. People kept themselves to themselves in those hills and in the village too.