O Caledonia

After Twelfth Night they took down the Christmas tree which had stood so proudly in the hall, by the foot of the stairs, its gold and blue and crimson lights vying with the great stained-glass window; the dying white cockatoo in his luminous circle of leaves seemed to hover above it like the Paraclete and at times the blood drops from his breast were scattered over the piled and gaudy presents. A bonfire was built and Nanny seized her chance to rid the nursery of the dogs’ armchairs. A couple of days later Hector and Francis had replaced them with others of almost equal dereliction; there was no shortage of such furniture at Auchnasaugh.

One afternoon Janet was returning from the stables through the trodden snow; it was twilight and the sky was the soft intense blue which occurs at the close of sunny days in the cold of winter. The stars and crescent of moon were already brilliant and in the air was a haunting sweetness, no sooner sensed than gone, a harbinger of spring, no matter how long yet the days of darkness. She saw that Lila was sitting in one of the chairs on top of the bonfire, staring at the black humps of the hills. Janet climbed up and sat beside her in the other chair. Lila did not speak; suddenly Janet realised that she was weeping. Great tears rolled down her cheeks, followed by a sooty wake of mascara. “Sorry,” she said. “Pay no attention. It’s nothing.” She took a quarter-bottle of whisky from her pocket and drank straight out of it. “Well, it’s almost nothing.” Her voice became steadier. “It’s only money. I have no money left and I need some.” Janet was astonished. Money was never mentioned; she had never thought about it. She never had any herself; Hector and Vera sometimes said mysteriously that they were going to give the older children pocket money because it would teach them about the world, but they never seemed to have any loose change on the appointed day and no one really cared. You would have had to go to the village to spend it, and the only things they ever wanted from the village were bottles of Barr’s Iron Brew and long black straps of liquorice. These were provided anyhow, in an erratic way, but often on Saturdays. Now, looking at Lila’s woebegone face and the bottle gripped in her shaking hand, she could, as so often, think of nothing to say. “Oh dear,” she mumbled, wishing that she hadn’t climbed onto the bonfire. “Oh gosh!”

“How now, thou secret, black and midnight hag!” came Francis’s voice. They both jumped. There was a small bright explosion in the shadow beneath them. “Thank you, mesdames

, and God bless you,” he said, winding on the film of his new Christmas camera and sauntering off. In time to come he was to make a brief reputation for himself with this photograph, and an accompanying article in which he claimed that he had discovered a place in the hinterlands of the Rhine Valley where witches were still burnt. “After all, we know now that we can believe anything of the Germans.” The thin moon was lucent in the background, curving beyond the filigree of the giant hogweed grove; the two white frightened faces stared out from the pyre, with gaping mouths and glittering eyes.

Lila said that she was hungry. They went to her room and Janet watched her prepare her frugal meal. First she chopped a wizened tomato on the cover of a handy book; then she removed a grimy tub of cottage cheese from the mantelpiece.

She put a blob of this on the palm of her hand and added the tomato; then she wandered about the room, daintily eating it with her fingers and dripping tomato pips and squelching globules onto the floor. She never sat down to eat. She said that she found it boring, a waste of time. Vera had remarked, not only once, that Lila dwelt in a waste of time. “And spirits,” she sometimes added. But Lila had told Janet that meals at tables reminded her of Fergus, and especially of Fergus’s last supper. Janet had found this a moving and noble confidence, had felt honoured to receive it.

At dinner that evening, with great boldness, she addressed Hector and Vera. “Lila seems to be very worried. She says she hasn’t any money. Couldn’t you maybe give her some?” Vera’s features tightened into icy fury. “Good heavens, that woman has squandered a fortune, and on what, one may wonder. Well, of course, it’s the whisky. She’s better off just living here and doing without it. She has everything she wants here, all provided. She should count herself lucky; not many people would put up with her. How dare she go complaining to you. I shall speak to her about this.” Hector supported Vera: “You shouldn’t meddle in grown-up people’s affairs, Janet. Lila has made her bed and now she must lie on it.” Vera stalked off to Lila’s room. In a little while she returned, her face slightly flushed, her eyes gleaming with vindictive satisfaction. No more was said.