O Caledonia

It was time for prep. Arithmetic prep. What a dreadful day. She hated arithmetic and was spectacularly bad at it. Year in, year out, new maths masters spoke kindly to her about her special difficulties. Each assured her that with his guidance she would understand; she must not worry anymore. She didn’t worry; she just went on hating it, went on failing to grasp any concept more advanced than simple fractions and percentages. Geometry was also boring, abstract and incomprehensible, but at least she could learn the theorems by heart and have the tiny pleasure of writing QED and being done with them. Algebra was less awful because there were letters mingled with the numbers and there was even something satisfying about tracking down the identity of the mysterious x.

But tonight, after half an hour of futile conjecture about how long various baths would take to empty or fill, her head had become a bombinating vacuum. With relief she turned to English. They had been reading “Sohrab and Rustum” and now they were to learn the closing passage. This was wonderful, so wonderful that later, when Hector and Vera were giving her a serious talk about responsibility, duty and caring for others, she heard their voices only as “the mist and hum of that low land,” while she floated with the majestic river “into the frosty starlight / And there moved rejoicing, through the hush’d Chorasmian waste.” The hush’d Chorasmian waste!

Chapter Six

During the next few months a dreadful thing happened. Knobby protrusions appeared on Janet’s chest. They hurt. The boys noticed them through her jersey and liked to punch them. Then they hurt seriously. “Show us your tits, Janet,” became their new taunt. These bumps felt like the tender horn buds on calves’ foreheads. If only they would produce horns, short, spiky, stabbing ones. What a surprise that would be for the boys. She prayed for this without much hope. It was not to be. She went about with her arms permanently folded across her chest. Vera, exasperated by her new stooping posture, explained to her that there was nothing to be embarrassed about: “It’s just part of growing up. A bosom is a beautiful and natural thing.”

Hector and Vera went away on a spring holiday, leaving Janet a small book to read. It was an account of more of the beautiful and natural things which lay in store for her. Janet was appalled. This meant that all the peculiar jokes the boys told — jokes she had thought were just part of the whole oddity of being male, like obsessions with war and Meccano and cars and tearing wings off insects — were based on truth. She had known how animals procreated, of course. The feral cats coupled all over the washing green and she had often seen the dogs locked together, straining in a union which seemed painful and protracted; only buckets of water could separate them. But she had assumed that people were different, metaphysical. After all, there had been the Angel Gabriel. No wonder God had driven Adam and Eve out of Paradise. What a disgrace. It was lucky that she had never had any intention of having babies; now she would certainly never marry either. She would live out her days at Auchnasaugh, a bookish spinster attended by cats and parrots, until that time when she might become ethereal, pure spirit untainted by the woes of flesh, a phantom drifting with the winds. What fun she would have as a ghost. She could hardly wait.

But then it was summer and a rare, most exquisite summer. The honeysuckle which drooped down the terrace wall scented the air all day and all evening, the azaleas lingered on and on, wood pigeons throbbed and cooed, and only the softest of breezes stirred the pines. Janet forgot her earthly doom and rose before light to ride bareback up the grassy tracks through the woods to the moors. She watched the sun rise over the far hills, the mist float in steamy filaments off the glen, and the silent golden day bring glory to the sombre pines. She was the first person in the world; only she disturbed the dew. Riding back she saw secret wonders: three baby hedgehogs feasted on a rotten chestnut husk; a doe and her fawn moved across her path, unafraid, absorbed in their separate world. Once she came upon an avenue of Phallus impudicus, gleaming white and joyous in the fresh grass, an elfin priapic festival or a tribute to a fairy queen. She thought of True Thomas’s faery queen, with her grass-green dress and the silver bells on her horse’s mane; fifty silver bells and nine. She would be her for a while. When she reached the glen she galloped the length of the meadows by the burn, wild with glee, the pony wild too, until they skidded to a panting stop at the gate to the stable drive.