‘To running down the village and doing all the messages?’ Mima asked hopefully.
‘No. Of course not.’ Janie guarded her present privilege jealously. ‘This is the very last job you get promoted to. You’ve got to be old like me and almost leaving the Orphanage, before you get to go down to the village amongst other people. Your next job,’ she continued severely, ‘will just be to scrape the mud off all the boots in the boiler house. It isn’t really a bad job, Mima,’ Janie added, touched somewhere by the desolation on the small girl’s face. ‘I used to be awfully happy scraping the boots. The Mannie boils all the hens’ tatties in the boiler house. It’s lovely and warm in there in winter. And he always gives you a hot tattie in its jacket, when he finds you there. You could,’ Janie added, viewing the stretch of yard still to be raked, ‘you could say to Mrs. Thane that you’ve got an awful gripping pain in your belly, Mima.’
‘But I have got a pain in my belly, Janie.’ Mima looked up wonderingly. ‘Honest I have. Just here.’
‘I know.’ That was accepted. ‘I sometimes used to get one there too, when I had to rake the yard. Mrs. Thane will likely give you a dose of senna though, but it’s better than raking. Don’t you tell that I mentioned it now. And don’t say your belly,’ Janie warned over her shoulder. ‘That’s vulgar. Mind and just say your stomach!’
The stir had reached its height in the kitchen. That moment when the confusion is so great that nobody cares any more, and everybody is light and hilarious with the burden of caring suddenly gone from them. The mood provided cover for Janie’s belated entry.
‘You’d better get down to the printing of the place names for the table, Janie.’ Mrs. Thane spoke as if Janie hadn’t been away for a long time at all. ‘Your best printing mind! And write “The Reverend Mr. John McLaren”. Not just plain “Mr. McLaren” the day.’
‘Yes, Mrs. Thane.’ Relief at not being scolded for lateness made Janie expansive. ‘I’ll print them in two different colours if you like. They’ll look extra good in black and red.’
The offer was almost accepted.
‘But Donnie spilt all the red ink,’ Alice remembered smugly. ‘That time when he was doing his graph.’
‘Yes. And the stain hasn’t come out of the desk yet, I see.’ Mrs. Thane examined the desk frowningly. Her finding jolted her out of good humour. ‘You would all be a sight more careful if you had to pay for all the stuff you waste and destroy. You’ll just have to use black ink, Janie. And get on with it now.’
The task had a certain prestige. Janie studied the list of Trustees’ names with an importance that impressed the children busied with much humbler tasks.
‘Is the Head Trustee coming the day, Janie?’ Chris peered over Janie’s shoulder with suitable deference.
‘He’s my favourite,’ Alice admitted, approaching the desk curiously.
‘Mine too,’ Janie agreed. ‘He’s so quiet. He hardly ever says anything. But you’ve got a feeling that he understands about everything.’
‘You’ll be left behind with them on your own today, Janie. I wouldn’t be you for anything.’
Donnie’s commiseration sparked off a thought in Janie’s mind.
‘I’m excited in a way about that,’ she confessed. ‘I think I’ll feel like a real person when I’m alone with them. Not just one of the crowd. And I’m glad because the Dominie went to see the Trustees about preparing me for the University Prelims. I bet they never even knew I was good at lessons, till he told them.’
‘That’s one good thing, Janie,’ Chris pointed out. ‘I bet the Dominie didn’t tell them one bad thing about you. He’s always liked you.’
‘He might just say one thing that’s not too good,’ Janie admitted. ‘And he’s always saying it to myself, that my essays are the best in the School, but my endings are always sad. And I just can’t write happy endings,’ she explained, ‘because things don’t end that way.’
Strange thing that. Janie sat pondering it quietly. You knew the instant you were sad. But happiness always lay either in the past or in the future. I was happy this morning, Janie realised with surprise. About nothing. Just walking along watching the mists steam out from the seams of the Cairngorms. And I know I will be happy when I leave the Orphanage. But I can never pin the actual moment of happiness down in an essay, and recognise it. Saying it is now.
The reception room was loud with coughs and nervous with the scraping of chairs. The children in the back row fumbled for the touch of each other’s hands and found little reassurance in the contact. They fixed their eyes anywhere, except upon the Trustees’ faces. Each trying to find calmness in the contemplation of ordinary things.
But familiarity itself had turned into strangeness. The Wife of the Founder of this Orphanage stared down over everyone from her large canvas above the fireplace, as if she was really seeing them and felt slightly surprised by what she saw.
The Mannie had put on the unease of Sunday with his stiff, black suit, strumming his fingers along the window-sill, tapping his foot in rhythm to a tune heard only by himself.
Mrs. Thane was the one person whom the children could see without setting eyes on. Stand erect. Don’t stare at your feet. Her warning signals trembled on invisible wavelengths. Your eyes rested on no particular face, but you were intensely aware of all the faces slanting around you. Most of them familiar. But each of them isolated.
‘Well! Well! Well! You’re to be congratulated, Mrs. Thane!’
The small Trustee’s greeting riveted all eyes frontwards.
‘A fine, healthy crew! A fine, healthy crew indeed!’
The smaller children, not yet familiar with the exuberance of his greetings, stared wide eyed and puzzled, as if he were referring to Sinbad and his Sailors and not to themselves at all. The older children took a sudden, collective interest in the fir trees outside the window, steeling themselves against a fit of the giggles.
If I look at the Mannie now, Janie realised, turning her face swiftly towards the fir tree too, I know he’ll wink. And that will be the end of me for certain.
‘And this can’t be Alice, Mrs. Thane! You don’t mean to tell me that this is Alice! When you think of the scrap she was.’
The children’s minds scornfully rejected the small Trustee’s assumed ignorance. But their eyes slanted, compelled, in the direction of their unfortunate companion. Groping unwillingly over her. Reluctant to discover Alice enlarged and transformed.
‘And. My word! Alick’s spectacles certainly improve him.’
Alick shot into focus now. Ping Pong. Ping Pong. Ping. And we’re coiled up quiet in our inner selves. Pong. And we spring quivering out into a glancing space.
I wish I could change when my turn comes, Janie thought. Into something big enough and strange enough to fit the small Trustee’s vision.
‘Goodness! Hasn’t Donnie shot up in the past year.’
If Donnie turned into a giraffe right now, Janie’s thoughts raced, the Trustee would get such a surprise that he wouldn’t be able to utter another word. The ridiculous thought got out of control, spreading itself grinningly across Janie’s face.
Of his bones are coral made . . .
Nothing of him that doth fade.
The lines rushed to Janie’s rescue. She steadied her thoughts against them:
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Her grin wrecked itself on the wide and wonderful phrase. Into something rich and strange. She could look with serious face now at the small Trustee. At Mrs. Thane. At all the Trustees. She wouldn’t have changed places with one of them. Not for anything. They were all so old. Nothing was ridiculous, or rich, or strange to them any more.
‘And Janie? We’re going to be losing Janie soon. How many years, Mrs. Thane? How long have we had Janie?’
The Head Trustee rose to his feet. The gesture signalled the dismissal of the children, and cut off the flow of the small Trustee’s words.
‘Stay behind the
others,’ Mrs. Thane whispered in Janie’s ear. The children filed past her, their small, sidelong glances of awe lengthened her in spirit and in stature. The door closed behind them. Its click separated her from childhood.
‘We’ve had a visit from your Schoolmaster, Janie.’
The Head Trustee was speaking long enough for Janie to know the sound of his voice for the first time.
‘He tells us you have made excellent progress at school.’
‘Did you know,’ Mr. McLaren, the Minister, leant forward, cutting Janie from the scene, ‘that her English papers were the best in Aberdeenshire? Most unusual,’ he explained, ‘I read the particular essay. The lifetime of an old woman, complete in a single page. It was difficult to understand how anyone so young could have written it, without having possibly experienced it.’
‘I didn’t realise that Janie was in any way . . .’ The small Trustee faltered, his eyes searched Mrs. Thane for aid. ‘I always had the impression that she . . . well, that she . . .’
Mrs. Thane came to his rescue.
‘She’s a puzzle. She can be as crude and knowing as they come. And, at the same time, she’s less sophisticated and more sensitive than any of the other children, who haven’t had such a deplorable background.’
‘A disintegrated personality?’ the Minister suggested.
‘I’m afraid so,’ the Head Trustee admitted. ‘That’s why this question of further Education presents a problem. The pity is that we sometimes get them too late to adjust the balance.’
‘How old was Janie when she came to us, Mrs. Thane?’ The small Trustee put the question.
‘Nine. Just on nine.’
‘Give me a child till it is seven,’ the small Trustee deplored. ‘After that, anyone can have it. What’s bred in the bone, you know.’
‘Well! What have you got to say for her, yourself, Mrs. Thane?’
The Head Trustee’s breeziness drew Janie into their circle again.
‘She’s honest,’ Mrs. Thane agreed. ‘She’s very good with the younger ones. She’s got a nice nature, she never sulks. She’s an excellent milker. She can turn out a room well. Indeed, Janie can do anything well when she likes. But she doesn’t always . . . like!’
‘We’re all inclined to be a bit like that, sometimes,’ the Minister confessed. ‘It’s a very human failing.’
‘What about an under-housemaid’s job for her, Mrs. Thane.’ The small Trustee was struck with the idea and urged it lovingly.
‘In some good household you know. Where they’ll take an interest in her.’
‘I’m no’ so sure about that,’ the Mannie intervened for the first time.
‘Good, Mr. Thane.’ The small Trustee sounded as if he were aware of the Mannie for the first time, and was anxious to make up for it. ‘It’s excellent to have the practical opinion of a plain man. What would you suggest?’
‘If Janie has to go into service at all,’ the Mannie spoke unperturbed by Mrs. Thane’s alert attitude, ‘I suggest that she works at a local farmhouse. She likes outside work. And she’s good at it. She’ll know where she is, and the folk that she’s amongst. At least till she gets another year over her head.’
‘What do you think, yourself, Janie?’ The small Trustee put the question.
Don’t fly up. Mrs. Thane’s eyes pleaded. Don’t fly up just now. I tried to prepare you for this.
Janie found the small Trustee’s face.
‘I don’t want to dust and polish,’ she told it. ‘And I don’t want to work on a farm. I want to write poetry. Great poetry. As great as Shakespeare.’
Janie dismissed herself from the room. Surprise rooted Mrs. Thane from preventing her. Her last Trustees’ Day was over.
There had been no haste about that night’s delivery of the milk. No haste at all. It was the last time. And, last times, Janie was gradually beginning to discover, gave you a large sense of freedom. The largeness of the freedom that was over her had diminished the approaching village. World enough until then, Skeyne seemed to have shrunk small and down into the foothills of the Cairngorms. Even the Cairngorms themselves had lost their terrifying immensity.
‘I’ll be beyond them next week,’ Janie had thought contemptuously. ‘I’ll know at last what lies beyond the Cairngorms.’
The outlying cottages of Skeyne had stood rooted in tansies, sloping forward as if they had grown up out of the earth itself and were moulded in its slant forever. Women lounged outside their doorways in untidy ease, conscious that the night had a lot of wear in it yet.
‘It’s yoursel’ then, is it, Janie?’ Kirsty Withan had peered round her bourtree bush. The fine autumn night had resurrected her.
‘For I thought she died long ago.’ Janie had felt resentful somewhere.
‘My faith ye! But ye’ve shot up, Quean! Ye was just a bairn the other day, when I set eyes on ye! Just a bairn.’ Kirsty’s voice had gabbled urgently. As if it hadn’t uttered for years and was desperately making up for lost time. ‘And how are all the folk up-bye at the Orphanage? Old Thane is still to the fore they tell me. Deed aye! Me and Thane will stick them all out yet. We’ll see them all in the Kirk yard down-bye.’ She had chuckled as if this triumph was her own and secret. Janie had been glad to escape the old woman’s eyes, detaining her with their dumb pleading. . . . Speak to me, speak to me, they had urged. I only know that I am truly alive when other folk think it. . . . Had been glad to strike down through Carron wood to the Orphanage again.
The threshing mill had flung its gaunt grotesque shadow across the corn yard. The mill men had hovered round it like ghosts. Their voices drifting upwards, a dirge in the dusk.
‘Roon. Roon. Roon.’
‘Roon wi’ her.’
‘Roon yet.’
‘Roon. Roon. Roon.’
The younger children, condemned to play outwith the radius of the dangerous mill’s shadow, had leapt defiantly in the light. Outcrying the mill men’s dirge. Dusk and distance distorting them into little demons, and the words of their familiar game into some weird incantation:
Queen. Queen
In paraffin
Was seventeen
Caroline.
Losing their otherness only when she had come within hailing distance of them.
‘It’s Janie! Come on! We can go inside now. We can all go in with Janie. She’s big!’
The kitchen at a loss, with the harvest workers huddling inside it. The straws off their boots wisping forlornly across the highly polished floor. The smoke from their pipes curling guiltily upwards. Their great feet scraping in incoherent embarrassment for the coarse, sharny smell of themselves that tussled with the refined but persistent smell of beeswax. Janie, sniffing an aura of battle, had smelt danger. Mrs. Thane struck the first blow, opening all the windows with a snap that sent Claystone’s voice rushing in to cover the sudden, humble silence.
‘Mind you! We’ve had weeter harvests! A damned sight weeter! Ye mind on that, Kinmyles? Surely to’ God ye mind on that? Yon year we were gatherin’ in Burnie Boozle’s corn. By God we were weet! We were baith weet then. Weet up till our verra . . .’
‘So you got back at last, Janie!’ Mrs. Thane’s voice had cut into Claystone’s recollections with a lash. He had sighed his story back into a silence broken by Kinmyles venturing tentatively:
‘I hear that Janie’s to be lowsin the sheaves for us, on top o’ the mill, the morn.’
‘Aye. Deed aye!’ The Mannie, grateful for some safe and ‘proper’ topic of conversation, had become voluble. ‘Her first time abune the mill. And her last,’ he explained. ‘Janie’s going to Kingorm. They’ve decided to mak’ a scholar oot o’ her. They have that!’
‘Aye, then, Janie?’ Kinmyles had said. ‘So ye’ll no’ be kennin’ ony o’ us in a year or twa. They’ll be makin’ a Kingorm lady o’ ye!’
‘They’ll have no need!’ Mrs. Thane had snapped, straightening up from picking the straws off the floor. ‘She thinks she’s that, already. Kingorm. Kingorm. There�
��s been nothing else in her head or on her tongue but Kingorm, this past week!’
‘It’s an odd thing about youngsters hereaboots and nooadays,’ Kinmyles had begun pondering diplomatically, ‘they all seem to think that the world begins and ends at Kingorm. Though, God knows, I never needed to go further than Skeyne for everything and onything that life has to offer at Kingorm.’
‘Aye. God knows!’ Claystone had agreed banteringly, suddenly forgetful of his austere surroundings. ‘God knows, Kinmyles! Ye’ve experienced twa three things that life has to offer at Skeyne. God aye, Man! Ye could just tell a gay story, if aince ye get crackin’.’
‘Cry the mill men in for their supper, Janie!’ Mrs. Thane’s command had prevented such an exciting possibility. ‘Run on, now! You’ll get yours when they’re finished.’
‘So the brose is up, then, isn’t, Janie?’ The mill men had emerged in a cloud of dust from the dark mysterious caverns of the mill. Shaking themselves and straightening up into livingness.
‘You’re to be lowsin’ the sheaves till’s the morn, Quean?’
‘Keep an eye on auld Hughie here, then! He’s an auld man, Janie! But he’s no’ short o’ young ideas. He’ll hae ye coupit down in the mill, head first!’
Their words had struck and faded.
‘She’ll be a fine change fae auld Maggie Hooch!’
‘Nothing the maitter wi’ auld Maggie Hooch!’
‘Damn all the maitter wi’ her, Dod. Except auld age.’
‘An ill enough thing, auld age!’
‘It’s fairly that! It’s a thing ye can do nothing wi’!’
‘Such as, Dod? Come on now, Man! Dinna be shy. Out with it!’
Their laughter had belched upwards. The dusk had questioned it quiveringly, then dismissed it. But Janie had stood holding on to it. Holding on to her awareness of the possession of her body. She had been aware of it before, had glimpsed it in the smirks of the boys at school, had overheard it in their whispers. A mild awareness. But grown men were beginning to acknowledge it now. There was something cruel and fierce in their knowing.
The White Bird Passes Page 11