O Caledonia

She remembered little after that. But now she was well, miraculously reprieved, and she was to go home for several weeks, perhaps even for the rest of term, and rest. They believed that she had been overworking. Her eyes were strained, the middle finger of her right hand had developed a permanent ink-stained bump from too much writing. Twice she had behaved strangely in class; they had been reading Propertius’ poem about the springs of Clitumnus, and when they reached the lines which describe the great white oxen wading through the shallows Janet had burst into tears, uncontrollable, flooding tears which she had been unable to explain, apart from saying that she found the image moving. Then there had been the mortifying and hideous moment when, in her solitary Greek lesson, the mad old prophet Tiresias’ description of fat floating in the blood of sacrificial beasts had caused her to vomit hugely across the room. And besides, Miss Smith the housemistress, while exercising her trio of Skye terriers in the gloaming, had observed Janet, who was supposedly supervising the younger ones at their prep, emerging furtively from the Catholic church beneath the windswept headland. Great was the fear that she might be succumbing to the blandishments of the Scarlet Woman of Rome. In fact, Janet sometimes went to this lonely church because she loved its glowing banks of candles and the heavy perfume of the air, and the mysterious altar, shrouded in purple draperies in the sad days before Easter. She did not like the statues, saints ecstatic or agonised, blood spouting from every visible orifice. But the place had a powerful feeling of sanctuary; it made her think of the lost traveller’s dream under the hill. And she felt for its abandonment, remote from the life of the town, almost forgotten; she was angered by remarks she had overheard about popery and its works and the triumph of righteousness, which meant that the little church would one day soon slump down the eroding cliff face and into the whelming Protestant waters.

Some of this she told the various people who took it upon themselves to reason with her and warn her of the corruption which threatened her soul. As usual they paid no attention; if she had informed them that she was a pagan, and a moongazer, they would have continued with their obsessive anti-Catholic tirade in just the same way. She let them rant and rave, and thought instead about albatrosses, the doomed bird in the “Ancient Mariner,” Baudelaire’s haunter of storms and rainbows, reduced to clumsy crippledom on earth, object of mockery to man, and the albatross who had been swept off course into the wrong hemisphere and now dwelt on a barren peninsula in the far north of Scotland, obliged to consort with kittiwakes; there it was waiting in vain for the high thermals which might waft it back to that unattainably distant south. As she imagined the plight of this bird her hands clenched, she bit her lip, and she stared hard ahead, willing and praying for its release. People mistook this for the outward show of inner religious turmoil. All in all, it would be best for her to spend some time in the carefree, relaxed atmosphere of her home, concluded Miss Smith. “And not too much of the old bookwork.” She twinkled. “Gosh no, golly, you bet not!” agreed Janet, pretending to be a different sort of person, as was clearly required.

Vera, initially depressed by the prospect of a summer shadowed by Janet’s presence, remembered her dream of girlish camaraderie and decided that now was the moment to implement it. When Janet arrived home, she was astonished to find that her bedroom’s bleak cream walls had been transformed by sprigged wallpaper. Coral pink curtains billowed at the open window and in one corner, confronting a coral-seated stool, there was a dressing table, bridally veiled in swags and festoons of net, as though, thought Janet, her direct reflection might cause the mirror to crack. But her bookcase was still there, and her table, and although there was now a pretty rosy lamp by the bed, her Anglepoise hovered like a lone heron on the wide margin of wooden floorboards at the edge of the coral carpet. She could soon put things right. In fact, she reflected, it might be interesting to live in a new environment, so long as she could see to read and had room for her books.