O Caledonia

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.

Among the swirling daffodils the old labrador lay out in the teeth of the gale. Her head was raised, her ears were pricked; alertly she snuffed the air; she watched the world turn, the new season approach. Looking at her Janet thought in sharp sorrow, “I will never 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 and down the stairs. Yet she was crouched there, unafraid, welcoming with dignity of 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

She recognized 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.

And there had been the occasion when a friend of her parents had told them she thought Janet had a lovely face. Vera had reported this in accents of astonishment. Janet’s delight had rapidly turned to fear. She must never again meet this woman in case she changed her mind.

Nos contra mundum, Claws,” she told him. She wondered whether she could teach him to say this. But first he must learn to say “Nevermore”. If she were given any money for Christmas, she planned to spend it on lengths of purple taffeta which she would nail to her walls as a start to redesigning the room in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe.

It was a rigorous life, but for Janet it was softened by the landscape, by reading, and by the animals whom she found it possible to love without qualification.

and rock buns were assembled on snowy doilies, malignly aglitter with the menace of carbonized currants.

And she had known the toxic joy of power.

There seemed no place for gallantry or romance among Calvinists.

She snatched the package and ripped it open. “Knickers, knickers, knickers. Knickers, knickers, knickers. These are for me, seein I’ve nane.” She pirouetted, lifting her skirt. Janet averted her eyes. Nudity had no part 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 out of the room.

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 pitless nature and her own was no better.

Janet began to hate the sea. 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.

Sometimes Janet thought that life's sole purpose was to teach one how to die

Hink, minx, the old witch winks, / The fat begins to fry; / There’s no one at home / But Jumping Joan, / Father, Mother and I.