O Caledonia

It occurred to her now that Lulu looked pretty much like Old Caspar’s awful little grandchild. Lulu turned, caught Janet’s broadly grinning and sarcastic stare, and pinched her sharply on the calf. Janet pinched her back, harder. A silent struggle ensued; then, “Mummy, Mummy, Janet’s pinching me.” “Miserable little clipe,” muttered Janet, subsiding to the far end of the seat. She stared out of the rain-dashed window, where the light was already fading. They were passing out of the hills, over the crossroads, towards the bare stone-walled pasturelands where the few trees hunched and bent inland, straining away from the bitter blast of the sea wind, their branches clawing vainly for the shelter of the glens. The hills stood enigmatic and shadowy, guarding their own.

Lady, weeping at the crossroadsWould you meet your love

In the twilight with his greyhoundsAnd his hawk on his glove?

thought Janet, looking back at them with a strange yearning. She felt that she was being borne away from the lands of high romance and magic towards a bleak world of making do and commerce and department stores and petrol fumes; headscarves and gabardines. Looking at that grim and vengeful sea she could imagine the satisfaction with which it had disposed of Sir Patrick Spens’s lords and their plumy hats and their cork-heeled shoon.

Then up rose the mermaidenWi’ a comb and glass in her handHere’s a health to you my merrie young men

For you never will see dry land.

Was the mermaiden drinking the blood-red wine or was she somehow holding a mirror and looking in it amid the green billows?

There was a clicking noise beside her and a rush of cold air. The far door was swinging open. Lulu was gone. Silently Janet leaned across and closed the door. She sat rigid, her mind spinning. “Oh God,” she prayed, “bring her back, let no one notice, let them not blame me.” How long would they not notice? Could she jump out? They were driving along the stretch of cliff road above the dreadful caves once inhabited by Sawney Bean and his descendants. Sawney Bean had run away with a maid from the great house where they both worked; they were wanted for theft; they would be hanged. They hid in these caves and kept themselves diverted and alive by making man-traps on the high road to Aberdeen and consuming their prey. When the law finally tracked them down they found a pullulating tribe of Beans, mainly the issue of incestuous unions, but still guided by the patriarchal Sawney. Smoked black flitches and plump haunches of human flesh were suspended from the cavern walls drying, in the salt breeze; the babies cut their teeth on finger bones. They were all burned in Aberdeen market square, the last cannibals in Europe. Or so it was said. Janet wished that one of Sawney’s man-traps would gape open in the road and the car plummet into it. Anything rather than the doom which waited for her.

Rise again Sawney Bean, Sawney Bean, Sawney Bean,Rise again Sawney Bean, come from your cave and eat me

squeaked a mad voice in the back of her brain. The car slowed for the first traffic lights of Aberdeen. Vera glanced back, grimly helmeted by the “Into Battle” scarf. “Lulu, sit up!” she commanded. “Lulu, what are you doing? Are you down on the floor? Get up at once. Janet, where is LULU?” “She got out,” said Janet. Her gorge rose. “A while ago,” she said and vomited mightily.