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Janet’s hatred of the sea is explained thus: “There was so much of it, flowing, counter-flowing, entering other seas, slyly furthering its interests beyond the mind’s reckoning; no wonder it could pass itself off as sky; it was infinite, a voracious marine confederacy.”
“The lass had only herself to blame.” The subject lost its appeal and was closed in favour of the living, who offer continuous material for persecution.
while others left behind girls who were even lonelier now, alone with tiny children in the unrelenting chill of a Calvinist world.
“Showing off. Talking to men. I never saw the like. Your poor grandfather.” Janet’s eyes stung and her legs burned and stung, but she was filled with happiness. She had rid her life of one haunting fear. And she had known the toxic joy of power.
She wanted to ask Grandpa about this, but she could not find the words. She was left with a sense of agonised pity, a powerless pity which made her cry sometimes when she was alone and looking out of the nursery window at the unforgiving sea and the seagulls, who lived nowhere but on air and water, floating free and comfortless above it.
Janet did not like dolls; they were too like babies and entirely without the charm of animals, real or toy.
She had seen the grown-ups smiling in approving complicity at other small girls as they tucked up their celluloid infants or rocked them to sleep. Her bear could not be demeaned in this manner,
“Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me”; but it was not God’s forgiveness she craved, it was the slug’s; and never could this be given, so she must carry her guilt with her forever.
It was a rigorous life, but for Janet it was softened by the landscape, by reading, and by animals whom she found it possible to love without qualification. People seemed to her flawed and cruel.
She recognised in herself a distaste for people, which was both physical and intellectual; and yet she nurtured a shameful, secret desire for popularity, or at least for acceptance, neither of which came her way.
Janet stumbled over the gaping shards of fallen chestnuts and made her way painfully down the path through the beech trees to her pony Rosie’s field. Rosie was grazing but when she saw Janet she lifted her head and whickered and trotted to the gate. Janet sat on the gate and buried her face in Rosie’s mane and breathed in her warm tarry smell; Rosie nuzzled her jersey, champing over her last few blades of grass, leaving a trail of green slobber across the Fair Isle pattern. Janet hugged her tightly. Here was comfort, here was communion. A great peace descended on her, bestowed by the still
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No matter how many times she did it, it always filled her with a strange and intense excitement, the traveller coming home through cold and darkness, returned from a great distance and after many days, moving silent and unseen towards the lighted windows.
But she had assumed that people were different, metaphysical. After all, there had been the Angel Gabriel. No wonder God had driven Adam and Eve out of Paradise. What a disgrace.
It was lucky that she had never had any intention of having babies; now she would certainly never marry either. She would live out her days at Auchnasaugh, a bookish spinster attended by cats and parrots, until that time when she might become ethereal, pure spirit untainted by the woes of flesh, a phantom drifting with the winds. What fun she would have as a ghost. She could hardly wait.
She watched the sun rise over the far hills, the mist float in steamy filaments off the glen, and the silent golden day bring glory to the sombre pines. She was the first person in the world; only she disturbed the dew. Riding back she saw secret wonders: three baby hedgehogs feasted on a rotten chestnut husk; a doe and her fawn moved across her path, unafraid, absorbed in their separate world.
It became clear to her that she would have to pretend to like hockey and she would have to try to talk in simple language,
She began to laugh. “So what’s the joke, Janet?” “Nothing,” she said, and then, with a new daring, “Nothing you would understand.”
It was Janet’s view that forgetting was the only possible way of forgiving. She did not believe in forgiveness; the word had no meaning.
Christmas, too, the starry sky and the beauty of language and music caused a great surge of mystic yearning in her; then Mr. McConochie would harangue them, remind them of their unworthiness and guilt, the innocent babe born to die on their behalf. “Sighing, crying, / Bleeding, dying, / Shut in the stone cold tomb,” they sang, and the glory faded to heartbreak and desolation, the bleak light of afternoon.
She dreaded the journey and she did not care to leave Auchnasaugh at any time. Nor did she take pleasure in other people’s birthdays. This one had been more than usually provoking because Hector and Vera had given Lulu her very own shaggy black Shetland pony. Janet felt that ponies belonged to her personal area of expertise which she did not want to share with anyone. They were invading her territory.
She knew she was behaving horribly, she knew that she was indeed horrible, a despicable compound of arrogance, covetousness, and self-centred rage. She was like one of those seething, stinking mud spouts which boil up in Iceland and lob burning rocks at passers-by.
She felt guilt for blighting Vera’s pleasure and excitement; she felt shame. Her shame and guilt only made her angrier. Where would it end?
Lulu, in her ecstatic joy, pronounced that the pony’s name was to be Blackie. Blackie! Not Satan, not Lucifer, not Plut...
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They look holy, she thought, visionary. A vision of gentle beasts; she loved this idea.
Were ancestral voices whispering to these lions, reminding them of what might be done with missionaries?
She could no longer have faith in God or man. She transferred any religious impulse which might yet linger within her to the Greek gods, who did not even pretend to care especially for humanity or to value its efforts and aspirations, being far too busy with their own competing plots, feuds, and passions.
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.
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?
Looking at her, Janet thought in sharp sorrow, “I will not see this again,” for now the labrador could scarcely walk; her hind legs were emaciated and she had to be helped in and out and up the stairs. Yet she was couched out there, unafraid, welcoming with dignity whatever was to come, among the reckless, gaudy flowers whose time was even briefer. “Fair Daffodils, we weep to see / You haste away so soon.” Fair Labrador. Sometimes Janet thought that life’s sole purpose was to teach one how to die. As in most spheres, so in this, animals did better than people.
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.
Many are the Fates which Zeus in Olympus dispenses; Many matters the Gods bring to surprising ends. The things we thought would happen do not happen…
Their footsteps echoed in the frosty air. Old people came hopefully to their doors as they passed, and retreated in disappointment. Through lighted windows Janet glimpsed tables laid out with black buns and trays of glasses and whisky, and anxious faces peering out into the darkness. She could not bear it. Where were the heartless young? She clenched her hands and prayed with all her might that each house would have at least one visitor, one traveller bearing memories of love and loyalty and the irredeemable unquenchable past.
Janet stood there. Again, she did not know what to do. Nothing she had read, nothing she had been taught, nothing in her life had prepared her for this. If she kept very still perhaps it would turn out that it had not happened; or perhaps she would cease to exist. She stood motionless, but her offending bosom rose and fell. She must not breathe. She held her breath. Now she was truly motionless. She fainted.
