O Caledonia

Janet stood at the nursery window, high in the central tower. It was a golden, hazy morning in mid-September. She gazed down the glen at the autumnal trees and the scarlet rowanberries which scarcely trembled in the mild air. She was trying to learn this view by heart, for today she was to be driven away, far south to St. Uncumba’s. She wore her new school uniform with pride and excitement. In her brown felt hat and oatmeal tweed coat she felt that she was refashioned, a different person, vibrant with possibilities. Behind her on the big green chest of drawers Polly leant from his cage, intent on his woodwork, skilfully prising splinters from the top surface, shredding them and flinging them to the floor. The dogs shifted and groaned in their derelict armchairs. A striped cat was coiled like an ammonite on the sunlit window ledge. The boys were at morning prayers. They were singing “By cool Siloam’s shady rill.” Their voices floated up to her, pure as holy water. Down in the terrace there was a flicker of movement. She saw a weasel glide through the fallen leaves, almost on its belly, slower, slower. It was motionless. In the shadow crouched a rabbit, palpitating. It stared at the weasel, the weasel stared back.

O thou whose infant feet mere foundWithin thy father’s shrine

sang the boys. The weasel leapt, a chestnut streak in the sunlight. The rabbit screamed, threshed violently, was still. Limp and open-eyed, it lay on the green grass; the weasel was curved lovingly at its throat. Janet shivered.

Thine be the glory, forever and ever,Forever and ever amen

sang the boys. It was time to go.

Janet’s boarding house at St. Uncumba’s stood above the cliffs on a rocky peninsula. It overlooked another heaving expanse of the North Sea. The main school buildings were a short walk away, sequestered by high walls from the grey town. Once there had been a great cathedral here, and a mighty fortress had reared up from the edge of the sea bed, higher than the cliff, its outer defences running along the shore and curving inland to encircle the town. Now only shattered towers and the ribs of arches loomed against the starry sky, faintly phosphorescent. In their memory, it seemed to Janet, bells tolled almost continuously — sometimes faint, tossed back and forth by the wind; sometimes heavy with portent. The air was wet with the haar. From her dormitory window Janet could see the grey sea imperceptibly merging into the grey sky; nothing else at all. It was like living at the end of the world.