O Caledonia (19 page)

 

*

 

When Janet came home for the Christmas holidays she was horrified to find that Lila had been committed to a lunatic asylum, an appropriately Gothic establishment near the coast with the inappropriate name
‘
Sunny Days
'
. Vera made it clear that Lila was to play no further part in their lives. Janet knew better than to argue, or even to speak of her. After Christmas she caught the bus from the village to Aberdeen, to exchange her Christmas presents. This had become an accepted part of Christmas ritual as they all grew older. Francis and Rhona did not care to travel with Janet; her frequent requests to the driver for halts and fresh air were a great embarrassment. Janet was inured to it; she did not feel quite so ill on the bus as she did in cars; there was no smell of leather upholstery to convulse her stomach. Now, jolting down the long winding road out of the hills, she felt wonderfully confident. Over her new tartan skirt she wore her new white duffel jacket. Beneath the tartan skirt lurked her romantic new paper nylon petticoat, tiered and flounced. It crackled loudly as she moved and swelled the brusque pleating of her skirt outwards into strange sagging contours like those of a homemade lampshade. Her ensemble was completed by ankle socks and the perennial StartRite walking shoes, laced very tight. On her knee she clasped a brown paper parcel containing six pairs of Celanese knickers, eau de nil, turquoise and sticking-plaster pink, cut like twin pillowcases. These hideous gifts arrived each year from one of Vera
'
s many aunts and Janet was well aware that she would not be able to exchange them as, apart from anything else, they had been bought in Glasgow. But herein lay her alibi. No one would be surprised that she had done something so silly as to travel a total of eighty miles to change the unchangeable and had returned still burdened with it.
‘
Typical Janet
'
, they would say, and that would be that.

Her plan was to leave the bus at the second coastal village and walk the short distance to the lunatic asylum. For the first time, Lila would have a visitor. Later she would catch the same bus back to the village where Hector or Vera would meet her as arranged. A foolproof plan, conceived and executed with daring efficiency, such efficiency that she had escaped without cleaning her shoes and without Vera noticing the presence of the paper nylon petticoat. (
‘
For parties
'
, she had purred, as Janet opened the parcel. What parties, Janet asked herself. Rhona and the little ones went to parties but she did not. She remembered them from earlier days, without pleasure. She was always first to be out in games and she either became hectically over-excited so that she behaved appallingly and had to be spanked later, or was so consumed with shyness and nerves that she was sick. She had enjoyed the afternoon time before a party, however, with the electric fire glowing in Vera
'
s bedroom at an unaccustomed hour, and the scent of starch as Nanny ironed their organdie dresses, and the lovely sight of Shetland shawls pinned out by their points across the carpet like a sequence of giant cobwebs.)

‘
Sunny Days
'
had been built as a seaside hotel in Edwardian times. A glassed verandah ran the length of the building, offering an uninterrupted view of the bitter sea and bitter sky beyond the cliff edge. Little wooden balconies, their paintwork weathered and blistered, trembled outside shuttered windows. There was a lofty conservatory, starkly empty. The grounds were extensive, open and windswept. A few stunted trees pointed inland, signalling escape. There had been little demand for it as an hotel. The boulders and sharp outcrops of the shore made bathing impossible and the constant wind made people uneasy and fretful. There was agreement that its only possible use could be as a place of confinement for people who had already been disordered
–
by war, weather, humanity or what you will. As they were mad they would not notice its disadvantages. So it became a full house, and in constant demand.

Janet rang the doorbell, was admitted and directed along the hallway towards Lila
'
s ground-floor room. A few people wandered about, looking normal if a trifle abstracted. A tall young man came towards her, smiling cordially. Janet smiled graciously back, making it clear that she was not one to be prejudiced against the deranged. As he drew level with her he suddenly bared his teeth and snarled. Janet
'
s kindly smile disintegrated, her heart thumped. She hurried along the corridor, tightly clutching her parcel. She wished now that she had not worn her new petticoat; it seemed to alarm people; they recoiled and stared after her as she went crackling by. Lila occupied Room 24. In the middle of the corridor outside her door a mountainous and ancient woman was moored in an armchair. Her flesh lapped over the sides; her manifold chins bristled like St Uncumba
'
s. One of her eyeballs was rolled upwards so that only the white showed; the other swivelled sharply towards Janet.
‘
Fit like, hen?
'
she enquired.
‘
I
'
m very well, thank you,
'
responded Janet, banging on Lila
'
s door and simultaneously opening it. Lila lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
‘
Hallo Lila, I
'
ve come to see you,
'
Janet announced.
‘
Oh,
'
said Lila.
‘
Hallo,
'
she added. There was silence, broken by a series of squawks from the corridor, beyond the closed door. Janet tried to think of something to say.
‘
How are you, Lila? Do you like it here?
' ‘
It
'
s all right really,
'
said Lila, still looking at the ceiling.
‘
I
'
m just very tired. In fact I must go to sleep now.
'
She closed her eyes. The room was very small and white, the bed was white, Lila wore a white garment like a grocer
'
s overall, but back to front. There was no furniture, apart from a chest of drawers. Beyond the uncurtained window a great stretch of bleached grass ran down to the cliff edge. At least the sea was out of sight. A clothes-line festooned with dusters and dishcloths flapped and flopped at the empty sky. Janet felt silly, standing there with her parcel. She wondered whether she could sit on the chest of drawers. Lila looked strange and small, asleep in the white bed, as though nothing had ever happened to her, she had never been anywhere, as though all her existence had contracted to this point and would proceed no further. The door burst open. In rushed a beak-faced little woman with stubbly hair like a
collaborateuse.
She wore a child
'
s black velvet party frock, undone down the back and exposing a sweep of yellowed flesh. Janet looked at her with distaste, then was smitten with sudden pain by the innocent moulding of her spine. Her legs and feet were bare, and mottled with cold.
‘
Gie us a fag,
'
she cried.
‘
Come on Lila, gie us a fag.
' ‘
I think she
'
s asleep,
'
ventured Janet.
‘
Och, rubbish.
'
She shook open a drawer and seized a packet of Craven A. She stared at Janet; her eye fell on the parcel.
‘
Fit
'
s in yon? Ye
'
ve brought us a giftie; awfy guid. Gie us.
'
She snatched the package and ripped it open.
‘
Knickers, knickers, knickers. Knickers, knickers, knickers. These are for me; ye see I
'
ve nane.
'
She pirouetted, lifting her skirt. She spoke the truth. Janet averted her eyes, appalled. Nudity had no part to play in her life.
‘
Please do have them, if they
'
re any use to you,
'
she began.
‘
Oh Lady Bountiful, oh how too too kind.
'
Beakface was mimicking Janet
'
s voice; then she resumed her own.
‘
I
'
ll have them whether you like it or no.
Milksop
!
'
she yelled and ran from the room. Janet heard her negotiate her way round the wheezing armchair woman.
‘
And haud yer wheesht, ye muckle great sumph.
'

Janet wondered what to do now. She wanted to go; she wanted very much to go. But if Lila woke and found her gone, she might be disappointed and hurt. She gazed gloomily out of the window. Someone had taken in the washing. Would Lila care if she went? She was distracted by voices outside the door. The mountainous sedentary woman, not unlike the manatee, now she thought of it, seemed to be engaged with a nurse. Said nurse, brisk but kind,
‘
Of
course
you
'
re not a snake.
'
Mountain:
‘
And hoo dae ye ken, can ye say that for a fact?
'
Nurse:
‘
I most certainly can. Snakes have scales. You have lovely soft skin.
'
Mountain:
‘
I
'
m no a lass. Ye ken, I
'
m no a lass nae mair.
'
Nurse:
‘
Well, you
'
re not a snake either.
'
Mountain:
‘
Then wha
'
s the snake?
Ye
maun be the snake. Aye, it is yersel
'
.
'
A series of squawking gasps. Nurse:
‘
For heaven
'
s sake, Mrs Farquharson. I
'
m getting the doctor.
'
Then, meaningfully,
‘
I think you
'
ll have to Go Downstairs.
'
There was a click of retreating heels. The squawks rose to a gruff choking climax, then subsided. They were replaced by sonorous mutterings. Janet looked again at Lila. She lay there like an effigy, the sheet scarcely rising as she breathed. She looked out at the blank sky. There was still one object hanging from the washing line. It was a tiny black velvet child
'
s party frock, pinned by its lace-trimmed sleeves, as though Beakface had shrunk like Alice in Wonderland, and evaporated into the bitter wind. For a moment Janet thought she had caught the madness or crossed into a realm where all was possible. She pulled her left pigtail hard. It hurt. She was Janet, and the thing on the line was a clothes-peg bag, made perforce in some heartless handicrafts session, by a person of tragic destiny.
‘
Goodbye, Lila,
'
she said. There was no answer. Out in the corridor the woman in the chair was lying back, breathing heavily, eyes half closed. Now both eyeballs showed only white. As Janet warily skirted round her, she mumbled,
‘
Rabbits
'
.

The bus toiled noisily into the twilit hills. Janet reflected on her expedition. Strategy apart, it could not be called a success. She had imagined Lila
'
s ravaged face softening into her rare sweet smile at her arrival. Her black eyes would glow with pleasure as Janet told her of the infant Heracleum which she had dug up arid transplanted to adorn the grave of Mouflon. There would be talk of animals and trees, of fungi and the great draughty castle, but not of its inhabitants. Lila shared Janet
'
s distaste for the Teutonic and she had hoped to describe St Uncumba
'
s German nativity play and reproduce the turgid gutturals of Gabriel
'
s message to Mary. It seemed curious to her that the Germans, who had murdered so many Jews, should be widely regarded as a people appropriate to proclaim, in folksy manner, the miraculous birth of the doomed and Jewish babe. Why not perform a Latin play about the slaughter of the Innocents? It would be more honourable and at least it would sound beautiful, apart, of course, from the yells of the Innocents. The hideous short
‘
u
'
which occurred in so many English words of disparagement, insult or plain dreariness, she ascribed to the Teutonic influence.
‘
Rut,
'
she thought.
‘
Ugh. Lump.
'
And there were worse, far worse. Such sounds did not exist in Latin or Greek. Francis claimed to have found an especially satisfying and characteristic German word:
Ein beutelrattengittenwettenhof.
‘
In other, simpler words, a kangaroo shelter. Current among ex-Nazis, hiding their shame by farming kangaroos in the Australian outback. Their wives take the Joeys, or Johanns more properly
–
baby kangaroos to you
–
into the house and dress them in
lederhosen.
Sometimes they don
'
t notice as they bustle about attending to
Kinder, Kirche und Kiichen,
that little Johann has grown up and is now nearly six feet tall. Sometimes
Hausfrau
and Johann meet in a rather unexpected manner in the corner of the kitchen. But this is not for your girlish ears, Janet.