O Caledonia

On one such evening Grandpa was off at a conference, and Vera was away, bicycling around Scotland in search of somewhere else to live, far from her mother-in-law. Ningning had invited some Polish officers to dinner. Polish officers were the guests Nanny hated most, apart from merry widows. That evening she lay awake for a long time, listening to distant laughter and imagining the ingestion of the evil water-coloured spirits which Poles always had about them, even bulging in their uniform pockets. They were singing too, “And not hymns either,” as she said later. At last she heard Ningning go into the kitchen and fill the kettle. She heard her put it on the stove. They must be going soon. She was almost asleep when the smell of burning roused her. Down the stairs she billowed, and there in the steam-filled kitchen was the kettle, boiled dry on the stove, and Ningning dead on the floor: a heart attack. From the far side of the hall, behind the dining room door, the sounds of revelry continued.

Janet knew nothing of Ningning’s death, for she continued to see her, holding her hand as she climbed the stairs, walking beside her in the sunlit garden up the long path between low, fragrant box hedges to the raspberry thicket, hurrying past the droning beehives. Once they stood together in the greenhouse under the rampant tomato vines. Ningning picked a tiny scarlet tomato and rolled it carefully over her palm, weighing it, treasuring it; then she gave it to Janet to hold. The leaves engulfed them in warm underwater light, smothering and pungent. At midday when Janet and Francis were playing in the garden, someone would beat a gong to call them in for their rest, and just before they heard the gong, Ningning would wave to them from her bedroom window. One day Vera came out to fetch them because the gong was broken. She saw Janet waving and asked what she was doing. It was then that Janet was told that Ningning had gone and would not come back; she did not see her again.

She became devoted to Francis; she loved the way his beret sat on his round head, over his round face. She loved his stout form, snugly buttoned for winter, in coat and leggings and gaiters. She loved the way she could make him laugh, and the shining of his eyes in conspiratorial merriment. In the garden stood an old laburnum tree with rippling satin bark. There, in a fissure of the trunk, Janet found some handsome striped shells and brought them in to give to Francis after their rest. Carefully she arranged them by her pillow. When she awoke, she put her hand out to find them; they had gone. Instead, dreadful horned creatures were contracting and elongating with silent purpose across her sheet, clambering over the peaks and troughs of the blankets, silhouetted monstrously against the curtained light. In terror she screamed and screamed for Ningning, who did not come. Nanny came and was angry; “You’re a dirty girl, Janet, bringing in the likes of thon.” She threw them out of the window.

And now there was a new baby, scarlet-faced, blackhaired Rhona. Nanny and Vera were preoccupied. Francis and Janet spent their mornings banished to the garden and the wet fallen leaves; they stumped about, endlessly filling and emptying a small wooden wheelbarrow. When the sun shone they stared at the rents in the clouds, searching for glimpses of God. Nanny had told them about God’s watchful and punitive presence and his place of residence. Janet dreamed about going to heaven, up a ladder from the beach, into the blue sky; God greeted her at the top, clad in a butcher’s striped apron. In the afternoons Nanny put on her coat and her felt hat, skewered to her head with an abundance of jewel-bright hatpins, and they went out walking, one on each side of the pram, the baby prone within. When Francis was tired, he was allowed to sit in the end of the pram, but Janet must walk.

“You’re a big girl now.” She didn’t want to be a big girl. It seemed she was punished for something which happened without her choice or knowledge. Her dismal feet discerned miles of walking, interminable pavements, a vista of life-long streets. In the draper’s shop there were consolations. The oily smell of the paraffin heater and the clean smell of piles of linen and furled spools of cloth offered a warm, ordered atmosphere. In tall, glass-fronted cupboards behind the long dark counter were gleaming reels of thread in every colour. Janet was mesmerised by the rusts which shaded to orange, to coral, almost imperceptibly to pinks; the deep glory of crimson, and the holy splendour of all the purples. Which purple did she like best? She could have dedicated all her day to resolving this question.