O Caledonia (18 page)

One day as she trudged up the drive at Auchnasaugh she came upon a squirrel, hit by a car. It lay in a semblance of repose, its head bowed in the meekness of violent death, its paws curving inwards. Its fur was sodden and dishonoured by rain and mud. Mechanically she picked it up and carried it off for burial. She could only find the big old gardening fork. As she dug, the wet red clods of earth clung to it so that she kept having to stop and wipe them off; her hands were sticky and sharp grit pressed into her palms. Suddenly on the prong was a frog, transfixed and splayed, kicking wildly. Janet
'
s heart lurched.
‘
O son of man,
'
she gasped. She heard the words so loud they filled the rainy sky, louder than the wind which rocked the tree tops. Gently she drew the frog off the spike; it struggled into the nettles. Janet knelt on the ground. She buried the squirrel and then she sat by the small grave and was overwhelmed by grief. Pity, she thought, pity like a naked newborn babe, pity like the frog threshing on the fork, the desolate manatee, the melted eyeballs of the people of Hiroshima, the burning martyrs clapping their hands, pity was needed and was not in the world; if it existed, none of this could be. Divine pity. Human pity was not enough. A bleeding heart could only bleed and bleed. It seemed to her then that the nature of Caledonia was a pitiless nature and her own was no better. What use was it to be racked by pain for animals and the general woes of the world when she was unmoved by the sorrows of the people she knew? She thought again of the students drowning in the cold summer sea; they would have heard the church bells ringing out from the far invisible cliffs beyond the dawn mist, ringing and calling people to the love and knowledge of God; but not one of those people had heard their cries for help, and God had chosen to ignore them. Anger rose in her and merged with her grief, confusing her utterly. She had had enough, she could not cope. She placed a token frond of bracken on the grave, picked up the fork and plodded onwards up the drive. She passed the frog, spread-eagled and lifeless on the grey winter grass. Another burial; she could not bear it. She thrust the corpse into a heap of dead leaves.
‘“
Nine peacocks in the air, I wonder how they all came there. I don
'
t know and I don
'
t care
”
,
'
she remarked to the rustling, watchful Heracleum grove.

 

*

 

The empire of the winds is shared between the offspring of Eos the dawn and Astraeus the starry sky. Chill Boreas of the North and wild sorrowing Zephyr from the West were lords of the air at Auchnasaugh. Occasionally a mean blast blew from Eastern Eurus, straight off the heaving sea from the forlorn polderlands and farther barbarian territories, homes of the Goths and Vandals. The South wind Notus was a stranger to Caledonia,
‘
Ig
notus
'
as Janet said, making one of her boring, pedantic jokes. But most beautiful, most haunting and haunted, was the wind of dawn, which brought the next day, and whirled the past off into the breaking clouds: a wind thrilling and melancholy, tender and cruel, a wind of beginning and ending.

Janet lay in the darkness listening to it sweep and wail about the battlements. She felt weightless and abstract, almost the spirit she hoped one day to become. Then she heard her parents
'
warring voices down the corridor. She tried to switch on her lamp, simultaneously stubbing her toe on her cold stone hot-water bottle. As she had expected, the lamp was not working. Hector and Vera had fused all the lights yet again. This had been happening all winter, since their acquisition of a Goblin Teasmaid. Vera had wanted one of these machines for many years, ever since she had visited Constance in her sterile apartment in Edinburgh and enjoyed the benison of solitary and effortless early morning tea, provided by a friendly automaton which required no gratitude. However, Hector
'
s desire to wring six cups out of a system which believed that four were enough for anyone had dampened her enthusiasm and was now making her dislike the Goblin. The start of each day was nerve-racking. As Janet listened to the dawn wind, so Vera, tense with anxiety, listened to the Goblin swing into action. It sighed, puffed, panted, convulsed, hissed and then, if all were well and the day was to be a day of modest success, there was a hideous blast like a road drill and a lurid neon light flooded the room. Tea was ready. However, if Hector had overfilled the squat kettle, couched in homely conjunction with its squat teapot spouse, the Goblin would fall eerily silent in the midst of its heavy breathing, water would seep into the intricacies of the hydroelectric and as late as possible in the wrecked day a gloomy workman would arrive and restore light to the castle. What a good thing that they had kept the old Tilley lamps.

Hector refused to accept that he was responsible for these disasters. He claimed that it was the fault of the hydroelectric and its minions; they had not wired the place properly. Although he was not a practical man, he loved gadgets. He had become deeply attached to the Goblin and would hear no criticism of it; indeed, according to Constance, he had identified with it,
‘
and I have to say, Vera, that this makes me a little anxious for you both
'
. Vera, looking into a bleak future of dawns shattered either by the Goblin
'
s manic triumph roar or by Hector
'
s fulminations, began to ponder the chances of some form of mutual extinction or electrocution as she lay awake, earlier and earlier, in dread of day. And so it was that at three o
'
clock on a summer morning she wandered silently in her dressing gown down the steep tower staircase, along the galleried corridor above the hall, down the great stone steps. The moon was still high and shining through the stained-glass window. Her dark shadow obliterated the rubies and emeralds which it cast on the flagged floor. She passed through the green baize door into the passage which led to the kitchen. The back door stood wide open and a host of feral cats fled through it as she approached. She slammed it shut. No one ever locked the doors, but they could at least close them. In the kitchen she found the pony Blackie eating a geranium; wearily she pushed him out, ignoring his swishing tail and bared teeth. The geraniums had been another of Vera
'
s attempts at domesticising Auchnasaugh, doomed as usual to failure. Miss Wales had been annoyed. She didn
'
t want to water them; in fact she never had watered them and now most of them were shrivelled brown stumps. As she waited for the great domed kettle to boil on the sullen Aga, Vera was overcome by yearning for a normal house, of a normal size, warm and bright, and cheerful, with doors which could be locked at night, and a cooker not subject to the wayward whims of the wind. Three friendly children (not one of them being Janet) would sit smiling round the tea-table and her husband would go out in the morning and return in the evening. How tired she was. She made tea and set it with one cup on a tray. It was her intention to create her own tea-drinking scenario in her bedroom, in defiance and anticipation of the Goblin/Hector. With reluctance she turned away from the meagre warmth of the Aga and out into the draughty passages. Wind skittered about her ankles, lifting and flapping the hem of her pink silken gown, a garment ill suited to the climate of Auchnasaugh. Someone must have left the boiler room door open too, and now she would have to go and shut it. This was ridiculous.
She put her tray down and hurried round the corner, just in time to witness Jim, the hunchbacked gardener, emerging stealthily from Lila
'
s room.

Now Vera no longer felt cold. Her heart thumped; adrenalin pulsed through her body. Forgetful of the tray, she sped up the stairs, burst into her bedroom and woke Hector. Hector was not impressed by her news. He felt that it could have waited at least until the hour of the Goblin.
‘
She
'
ll have to go,
'
shrieked Vera.
‘
This absolutely clinches it. We have the children to think of, let alone the boys in term time. How could she do such a thing, and under our roof.
' ‘
Or Jim could go. After all it takes two to...
'
mumbled Hector.
‘
Don
'
t be so disgusting. It doesn
'
t bear thinking of. Of course Jim can
'
t go. It
'
s all Lila
'
s fault. Anyway no one else would ever do a fraction of what he does. Though if his mother finds out she
'
ll never let him near us again. No, you must arrange something with Lila. Or I will.
'
But where could Lila go? A sense of numbing hopelessness descended on Vera. Round and round in circles her brain scurried; Hector made the occasional monosyllabic comment. But there was no escaping the fact that she could think of no place for Lila. The room reverberated to the Goblin
'
s cry of victory.

Neither Jim nor Lila went. For a while nothing much happened, as was so often the case at Auchnasaugh. Hector, staring at a point three feet above Jim
'
s stooped head, told him that he believed he had been working late into the night and although of course he appreciated his selfless efforts, his duty after five in the evening was to be with his old mother. Jim, staring at Hector
'
s conker brown brogues, nodded wordlessly. Thereafter he ignored Lila, even when he was working on the lawn outside her window and she was standing there, framed by her torn curtains, glowering at him.

Hector told Vera, untruthfully, that he had spoken to Lila. Vera, hissing with rage, made forays to Lila
'
s room and, without mentioning anything so crude as factual evidence, informed her that she was a slut, an outcast, an unwelcome parasite who would be moved out at the first opportunity. And she was to keep away from the children:
‘
We both know what I mean.
'
Her fury fragmented her sentences. Phrases,
‘
abuse of trust
'
,
‘
disgusting
urges
'
,
‘
flouting of protocol
'
winged off her lips and bombed like hornets about the room. Lila refused to speak. She turned her back and drank more whisky. But as the days passed her small reserve of appetite for life began to drain away. She no longer searched for mushrooms, no longer cared to paint her minute, intricate watercolours of mosses and lichens. Her face lost its contours and sagged, her eyeballs were veined in pink and yellow, fluff and dust gathered, unheeded, in her shorn, locks. Sometimes at dusk she slipped out among the trees and howled like a wolf. Alone in her room she uttered strange cries and clawed her face into raw furrows so that she seemed to be weeping tears of blood. She played her John McCormack records at full volume to drown her own noise. All this Vera witnessed with grim satisfaction. She flung Lila
'
s door open, without knocking.
‘
I
'
ll thank you to turn that noise down. You might show just a little consideration for others.
'
Lila lay like a basilisk on the sofa; she stared at Vera without expression. Firelight flickered and gleamed on her whisky bottle, glittered across her black eyes.

 

O love is fair and love is rare,

A little while when love is new,

But when it's old, it waxes cold

And fades away like morning dew

 

intoned the gramophone. Vera stalked across to it:
‘
And that record belongs to me.
'
She switched off the control, wrenched off the record and slammed from the room.

Early one September morning Vera ascended the stone staircase with her tea tray. She was in good spirits. Her campaign against Lila was going well. Her campaign against the Goblin was proving even more successful. Hector did not enjoy pouring his own tea (albeit four cups) and drinking it in silence while his spouse lay comatose beside him. His enthusiasm for the machine was flagging. Sometimes now he did not even switch it on at night. Her tiresome older children were both far off at their boarding schools; the boys
'
term had not yet begun. Life felt almost normal with Rhona, Lulu and Caro, Nanny and the pleasures of the nursery. With persistence one may achieve one
'
s ends, she thought. She hummed an invigorating hymn tune:

 

Soldiers of Christ arise,

And put your armour on,

Strong in the strength which God supplies...

 

Lila erupted from the shadows by the great stained-glass window. She was swinging a wet towel, twisted into a rope. She walloped Vera across the face. The tray crashed down the stairs. Vera toppled, Lila swung the towel again and knocked her backwards. She rolled down the stairs, pursued by Lila in her flapping black garments. Lila kicked her as she went, lost her footing and fell over too. Horribly entwined they landed on the hall floor. Each sank her nails into the other
'
s face. Lila suddenly let go. Vera pulled herself free and stood up, shaking. She grabbed the banister and heaved herself painfully up the stairs. Lila lay on the floor staring up at the dying cockatoo. She was laughing; her eyes were alive with merriment.