O Caledonia

There was a new tin of Field’s French Pink talcum powder on the dressing table. Recklessly she flung some into the air to impart feminine fragrance. It drifted down like chalk dust and lay in blotches on the carpet. Chastened, she rubbed it in with the sole of her shoe; she must think before she acted. For a long time she had affected to despise what she thought of as the world of women, its preoccupations with clothes and spring weddings (and hey nonny no) and needlework and babies. While she still had no interest in any of these matters, there were other aspects which drew her, as a lighted window glimpsed in a house unknown can rouse in the passer-by a sense not only of obscure longing for other warmer lives but also of sharp exclusion, harsh as a door slammed in the face. The delicious tracery of scent pervading the upper regions of a house, so that as you climbed the stairs you felt that you were entering a domain of excitement, romance, and opulence, where silks rustled, where there was soft conspiratorial laughter, the easy understanding of those who speak in the same idiom, knowing nothing of painful silences — all this Janet had apprehended but never achieved; it seemed beyond her personal reach; a heavenly version of Fuller’s.

Little did she know, and astounded she would have been to know, how this longing of hers echoed that of Vera. Janet could see that Rhona would have no difficulty in entering this realm, just as automatic access seemed granted to the girls at school; for herself it was otherwise. She seemed to lack some essential quality of girlishness. She pondered the phrase “young girl,” which she had observed gave rise to so much sentiment, rather like “spring, the sweet spring”: she thought that she had never been a young girl, never would be. She wondered what a young manatee looked like. Then she checked the thought; she was feeling increasing kinship with this creature, and it troubled her. She had discovered that if she gazed into her own eyes in the mirror for long enough her features would alter and resolve into those of another person, and she feared that she might one day find a manatee staring back at her.

Vera was gratified by Janet’s pleasure in her room, although she was less pleased a few days later to find books littered across the floor in their usual fashion and the Anglepoise lamp reinstated by the bed. However, she reminded herself, she had always encouraged the child to read; it was the disorder and the unsocial nature of her reading habits which were depressing. Indeed there was something peculiarly irritating about the sight of Janet reading. She sat bolt upright at her table on a plain wooden schoolroom chair, ignoring the chintzy armchair which had been provided. Her eyes protruded as she read and she breathed heavily. She was unaware of anything happening around her; she turned the pages in a voracious, feral manner as though she were rending the limbs of some slaughtered beast. Immersed in this solitary, private, and obsessional activity, she reminded Vera of a girl she had known once, who was said to be a pathological eating maniac.

Janet would be sixteen in the coming winter. Vera decided that it was time she stopped being a child and became an adult. She bought her a good tweed suit, badge of the grown Scottish female, a cashmere twinset, shoes, and pretty cotton dresses. It was clear that something must be done about her hair. Janet refused to have it cut. She tried to pin it up; it fell down again at once. She wound her pigtails round her head. She looked like a menacing Hausfrau. Vera insisted that a short, boyish style would be best: “Carefree for summer. Think, you’d only have to run a comb through it.” Janet’s face grew heavy with anger. She didn’t want to think about combing her hair; she didn’t want to be a grown-up; this was all a boring waste of time. She shut herself in her room and read Baudelaire. Vera, alarmed by the prospect of a wardrobe full of unworn new clothes and a huge daughter in ankle socks, made a compromise. She must have her hair cut, but only to shoulder length. “Then you’ll have the best of both worlds. It will look long, but be much more manageable.” Janet unwillingly agreed. She despised compromise, but was tempted by some of her new clothes and the possibilities they offered for wearing her paper nylon petticoat.