For eight years, Janie had dreamed of such whispers, troyed within the limited landmarks of Skeyne. And waiting, had forgotten to mark off the days on the calendar. Except, of course, days that had marked themselves off, cutting their inscriptions deeply on the small, memorial cairns of the mind.
How angry Mrs. Thane had been when Janie had discovered a ‘secret’ way of commenting on the food. Orphanage Table Etiquette ruled that you must not ‘talk’ about your food. But there was no law against composing ‘forewarning’ chants.
Pease brose, Pease brose,
Pease brose again, Chris,
They feed us a’ like blackbirds.
And that’s a bloody shame, Chris.
And how annoyed she had been over the desperate postscripts added to the letters home:
‘Be sure not to die soon, Mam. Try hard not to get into any fights with Poll and Battleaxe.’
‘Don’t send any more Love Stories. Mrs. Thane says they’re rubbish. But mind to tell me in your letter when William Corder gets catched and hanged for murdering Maria Marten.’
But that was long ago. Janie still added desperate postscripts, but transferred them now to the tail-end of her prayers in the Kirk.
It had taken her longer to learn to part with her dirty underclothes to ‘the wash’ on Monday mornings, and even longer to give up sleeping with her vest and knickers huddled to her in a bundle, because they had smelt homely and personal, an antidote to the sterility of Jeyes’ fluid that pervaded the Orphanage.
‘I’ve lost the best chamois, Janie. The new one. The impregnated one for the front windows.’
Chris worried into the kitchen:
‘She’ll go off her head when she finds out. She’s at high doh already, all because it’s Trustees’ Day. I was sure I put the chamois into this press with the brooms.’
‘Stay quiet, Chris,’ Janie advised with the calm objectivity of the safe onlooker. ‘Stay awful quiet for a long minute, you’ll be able to look for it right when your belly stops heaving up and down.’
‘You’d better get a start to your front windows.’ Mrs. Thane stalked into the kitchen, dropping through its apprehension like a stone that sent Chris wheeling round and round amongst the brooms.
‘What on earth are you rummaging there for, Chris? And it’s high time you set off down to the village with the morning milk, Janie! You can take Craig’s milk. The shop milk, the police milk. And you’d better take Mrs. Mudie’s milk too on your first round.’
‘But Donnie always takes Mrs. Mudie’s milk now, Mrs. Thane. You said . . .’
‘I know what I said, Janie!’ Mrs. Thane shot up tall. Her black frock stiffened. The small spots on it leapt out large and white. ‘I said that if there was a bit of dirt lying anywhere around, you’d be sure to stop and pick it up. I can’t spare Donnie this morning. And if you haven’t learned yet at your age to close your eyes and ears to improper things, you’ll never learn now. Get your coat on, and I’ll away and fill your milk pails.’
‘What’s all that about Mrs. Mudie’s milk?’ Chris’s curiosity momentarily overcame her anxiety.
‘I told you, Chris.’ Janie’s mind had already flown off at a more intriguing tangent. ‘Mind? About Mrs. Mudie having “the change”. Chris. Chris. Some folk would be a lot nicer if they never wore any clothes at all.’
Chris stood shocked into stillness, considering the strangeness of the idea.
‘Not everybody,’ Janie explained incoherently. ‘Just folk like Nurse Conduit in the School Clinic at the Lane. And the Green Ladies. And the Cruelty Man and Mrs. Thane. I once saw her without her frock on. She was rushing to the lavatory. She had bowdie legs, Chris. And black silk knickers. I could have spoken to her about anything when she hadn’t her frock on. She just looked ordinary. I bet the School Nurse and the Green Ladies are just ordinary too, when they haven’t got their frocks on.’
‘Haven’t you got a start to your front windows yet, Chris? Well, get on with them. Don’t stand gaping at me with your mouth open. Your head’s in the clouds this morning!’
But Janie knew that Chris was just trying to imagine what lay beneath Mrs. Thane’s frock.
‘And you get going too, Janie. Don’t you dawdle down in the village all day either. The Trustees will be here by two o’clock. And mind! No gossiping with Mrs. Mudie!’
‘High,’ Skeyne whispered Mrs. Mudie was. Though, God knows, other Skeyne women just took ‘the change’ in their stride. Whiles a bit cantankerous right enough. Whiles going clean off their men folk altogether. But never going clean off the Kirk instead and taking to singing dirt or Evangelistic choruses, like orra town’s folk at street corners, the way the Mudie wife was doing now. Her that was not only country born, but Auld Kirk bred into the bargain.
Despite that, Janie had missed her morning encounters with Mrs. Mudie. They had ceased abruptly one morning when Mrs. Thane had inquired about Mrs. Mudie’s health. And Janie had told her, had just said: ‘Mrs. Mudie’s got hot flushes coming all over her, Mrs. Thane. And she says she’s losing something terrible every month now.’ Donnie delivered Mrs. Mudie’s milk after that, leaving Janie with a bewildering sense of disgrace. She had learned over her years in the Orphanage that tact was as important as truth, but had not yet learned to combine them successfully. Nor had she outgrown her affinity with what Grandmother would have called ‘Ne’er do weels’, the Lane ‘Riff Raff’, and Skeyne ‘Ootlins’. Skeyne’s word was the best word. The most accurately descriptive. Ootlins. Queer folk who were ‘oot’ and who, perversely enough, never had any desire to be ‘in’.
Entering the low doorway of Mrs. Mudie’s cottage, Janie always felt the enjoyable appre-hension of Gretel entering the Gingerbread House, uncertain whether Witch or Fairy Godmother was in occupation.
Witch this morning. Transforming Mrs. Mudie into a tiger dimly pacing the cluttered kitchen. Blind to Janie and the morning milk, but bright and beckoning to her own reflection in the overmantel mirror. Urging it shrilly:
There is life for a look at the crucified one.
There is life at this moment for thee.
The whole room throbbed in dark quick rhythm with its owner’s mood. The grandfather clock gasping the seconds over and past; the kettle hissing on the crook, curled, ready to spring. The dresser still but wary, the saucer eyes of its blue china glinting and watchful.
‘Here’s your morning milk, Mrs. Mudie.’
Janie spoke to the face reflected in the mirror. It seemed the realest face. It stared at its own origin, without recognition. Abjuring it in a shrill, high voice:
Look, Sinner, look
Unto Him and be saved.
Janie tried to put the milk pail down very quietly. But the table quivered with life too; the milk pail rattled in protest. The face reflected in the mirror went on exhorting, as Janie backed swiftly out through the low door.
Unto Him who was nailed
On the tree.
The village had lost all its own livingness since Janie had last looked on it, short seconds ago. Its cottages stood as small and still as the images of themselves, for sale on postcards in Beaton’s shop in summer. Or like dolls’ houses. Craig’s car a toy car now. Craig himself, a tiny tin man at its wheel. Mrs. Mudie’s garden shot up round Janie’s feet. A jungle of boxwood, wild and pungent and bitter. A ladybird, huge and red and clockwork, ticked and hummed across the bewildering boxwood in a blind, mechanical panic.
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
Your children all gone.
The sound of her own voice soothed Janie. The childishness of her words shamed her. No wonder Mrs. Thane was always puzzling about what was to become of her when she ‘got out into the world’.
Here she was, almost going, and part of her still half believed that ladybirds could interpret and understand. Strange thing, Mrs. Thane was either annoyed because, ‘You’re far too knowing for your years, Janie,’ or anxious because, ‘You’re going to find the world a
tough place. I’m sorrier for you than for the other bairns I’ve brought up.’
‘You’re all behind with your milk this morning, Janie!’ Schoolchildren rushed round Leuchar’s corner, shouting in their going, ‘It’s gone ten to nine, Janie. You’ll be late!’
‘None of the Orphanage is coming to School the day,’ Janie shouted to their retreating backs. ‘The Trustees are coming. And it’s my last Trustees’ Day!’ Her triumphant words missed their targets vanishing down Barclay’s Brae. But the normality of the words set Janie’s feet free now. Willing them to carry her out of Mrs. Mudie’s garden. Out through the village, thinning down into scattered crofts. Out towards the Cairngorms, slinking behind their own protective mists with every step she took in their direction. She could have seen the whole of the world, if the Cairngorms didn’t rise immense and blue, shutting Skeyne away from it all.
O Cairngorms, sae heich and blue
I’d see the warld
Were’t na for you!
Long ago Janie had thought that if she ran very fast and hidden, along by the side of Leuchar’s Wood, she could catch up on the Cairngorms. Rush right into their foothills and take them by surprise, before they had time to hide behind their mists again.
‘Aye, Janie. It’s a right fine morning.’
But no matter how fast she ran nor how hidden her race was, no matter, the Cairngorms were ever swifter, ever more wary, and she had never caught up with them.
‘I was saying that it’s a fine morning, Janie.’
Lower Hempriggs peered over his byre door, his eyes staring out into the fine morning.
‘But mebbe your mind’s no’ on the weather the day at all now, is it?’
‘No.’ Janie reddened under the crofter’s twinkling stare. ‘No. I was thinking about something else.’
‘Some lad or ither, mebbe?’
‘Not that either.’ Janie’s embarrassment increased. ‘I was just watching the Cairngorms.’
Lower Hempriggs turned sidewards and watched the Cairngorms too.
‘Aye faith. But they’re gey hills, the Cairngorms,’ he concluded thoughtfully, bringing his keen stare round on Janie’s face again. ‘And so you’re just no’ for letting on your thoughts at all this morning, Janie?’
‘No. Not this morning.’ Janie laughed herself awkwardly out of reach of the crofter’s curiosity, and into the safety of Leuchar’s Wood.
‘I’m leaving the Orphanage, Mr. Tocher!’ she shouted back, remembering suddenly. ‘The Trustees are coming the day. And I’m leaving soon!’
Her shout startled the wood, set all its cushats off on the scold, its insects hurrying on the hum. Janie stood till the hot, scattered haze subsided. And the wood gathered itself together again in still, dark concentration. Listening. Staring absorbed at its own reflection in the loch below.
Two woods there always were, on fine, mist-threatened mornings like this. One stood high and sentinel over Skeyne. The other, down and distant in the loch.
Twa woods there was
Before ma een,
But yin lay drooned
In Loch of Skeyne.
The play of thoughts and words carried Janie to the end of Leuchar’s Wood. To where it gave up its own large being with tortuous reluctance. Tearing itself apart and flinging its tattered pieces all over the hill in a blind frenzy. Its remnants rose in sullen copses. Dark and disconsolate.
All else that was broken and rejected by Skeyne lay here too. Crushed beer bottles bejewelled the dump. Jags of emeralds still uncut, glistening through smithereens of crockery, myriad-coloured and many-shaped. Swift and acquiescent to the imagination. The rusted frame of a bicycle rose grotesquely up out of the moss. Rooted there in mounting position, awaiting a strange rider. Some mad man or wise child, to whom the desire could always become the deed.
Lost civilisations had been discovered down under the earth, Janie remembered, as she stood fiercely absorbing the dump. Maybe that’s why dumps were always so exciting. Always like coming across some small, lost civilisation too.
‘I’ve found an old world. Older even than the Roman world. What if it really was so?’
The largest of Leuchar’s copses, the Duck’s Wood, dipped down towards the Orphanage. It closed in on Janie. Its waves of near-memory surging up and over her, dark and ice cold!
And old worlds red with pain.
And old worlds . . .
She fixed her mind to the image of the dump, desperately, a drowning man grabbing a drifting flotsam—
And old worlds . . .
For once a poem refused to come to her rescue. Its author, origin and ending eluded her, crying Halt! Only its sparse words rose baldly in the mind:
And old worlds red with pain.
Black with pain. That’s what the Duck’s Wood was. Ever since the day that Liza had arrived from the Lane, setting the seal of her suffering upon it.
‘I thought,’ Chris had accused, after Liza had gone, ‘that your Mam was awful bonnie, Janie. You was always telling us that. And I thought it was just my Mam drunk, when she came staggering up the avenue.’
‘She wasn’t drunk!’ Janie had defended wildly. ‘My Mam never never got drunk. She always hated drunk folk. She was just ill, Chris. Awful ill. She had a doctor’s line to prove it. I saw it. So did Mrs. Thane. You can ask her. My Mam wasn’t drunk.’ Janie brought out the name of Liza’s illness triumphantly, completely vindicating the shameful accusation of drunkenness. ‘She’s got an illness called chronic syphilis. That’s what made her stagger. And that’s what made her white and not bonnie any more.’
But Liza had been beautiful, Janie remembered. Almost like Shelley said. Her beauty made the bright world dim. Not quite the same though. All the other women of the Lane had been grey. Prisoners clamped firmly into the dour pattern of its walls and cobblestones. But Liza had always leapt, burnished, out of her surroundings. And in the leaping had made the dim world bright.
Her Mother’s changed appearance had shocked Janie into numbness. The Lane, and the dream of returning to it, disintegrated in the wrecked reflection of Liza’s face. Dulling in the dimness of her eyes, withdrawing into the pale hollows of her cheeks. Not easily though, nor suddenly. They had sat here in the wood, crouching over the smouldering ashes of old loyalties, trying to coax them into flame again.
‘And Poll and Battleaxe and the Duchess?’ Janie had inquired, her question sounding from the voice of a stranger. ‘How are they all?’
‘Fine. Just fine.’ Liza had cheered at the deceptive narrowing of a gulf. ‘Aye, asking for you, all of them. Did I mind to tell you that poor old Annie Frigg is dead and gone? She never got over a fall from the top landing to the bottom. One Saturday night with a good shot in. The one and only conscious word Annie ever uttered after that was a swear.’
‘Did it begin with F, Mam?’
‘Aye. It did that.’
‘I thought that.’ Janie congratulated her memory with a smile. ‘That was always the swear that Annie used.’
‘At least she wasna’ a hypocrite.’ The old Liza, amused and satirical, peeped out for a brief instant. ‘Not like old Balaclava when she kicked the bucket, cringing and whining to God at the last minutes. Annie, game to the end, went out with a curse. It was gey pitiful though, when you come to think of it. Annie had just been “saved” again. But I’ve no doubt that your soul saved is of little comfort till you when your body’s sel’ is coming to its end. Your soul’s a stranger to you, like. But you ken your body’s sel’ awful well.’
‘Who got Annie’s room, Mam?’ An old wonder had prompted the question. The one room in the Lane into which Janie had never penetrated, thereby still retaining its probability of all Annie’s bygone promises redeemed.
‘None got it.’ Liza had shattered probability. ‘And deed it was fit for none when Annie was through with it. We had the Sanitary on the top of us for days. Fumigating and disinfecting. Before any of us could get by her landing without getting knocked down with the stink that com
e from her room. And that’s another thing, Janie.’ Liza’s voice had allowed no period for mourning. ‘We’re all getting new Council houses down by the Cathedral. Another good reason for you coming home again. The Duchess’s moving into her house next week. She managed to wangle herself to the top of the list. Her cry aye being the loudest, like. And there was Poll, all set to step into her shoes. All ready to take over the rule of the Lane, when she got a notification about her new house too. Poor Poll. She didna’ ken whether to mourn over the loss of power, or rejoice over the acquisition of property. Anyhow it left the road fine and clear for Battleaxe. There’s a queer kind of truce in the Lane just now, Janie. Its rulers are no’ on speaking terms at all. And their subjects are fair going mad with new freedom. Oh, and you mind on wee Lil? She got the chance of a new house too. She turned it down flat. Said that she would never be able to pass herself amongst a crowd of complete strangers. And that she preferred to stay on in the Lane amongst her old friends. The pathetic thing about that, of course, is that wee Lil hasna’ got one friend in the Lane. But she doesna’ realise that. And I hadna’ the heart to point it out to her. It would have been a real unkindness. Because wee Lil’s happier no’ realising.’
The White Bird Passes Page 9
