At last the Christmas holidays came. Very early in the morning they were on the station platform. The air was vaporous, the sky mother-of-pearl. Circlets of ice crunched and melted under their feet. Then there was the anxious thrill of climbing onto the train — was it the right one? would it stop at the right place? had she lost her suitcases? would it ever start? — and the great surge of relief as it jolted into motion, the gathering speed, the landmarks, at last the great rusty dinosaur of the Forth Bridge. Janet remembered the old railway poster “Over the Forth, To the North” and excitement rose in her, so that she could hardly breathe. On and on and over the Tay, and the first sight of the hills; tears welled in her eyes. The other girls had all gone now, some even wishing her “Super hols, Janet.” No one lived so far north as she. Hector was there to meet her at Aberdeen Station. There was a sparsely decorated Christmas tree at the end of the platform. Looking at it, Hector observed, “This will mean death to thousands of innocent birds.” Through falling snow they drove west into a hushed landscape. It was dark when they reached Auchnasaugh. The snow had stopped and the stars glittered in myriads. She had forgotten that the heavens held so many. She stood for a moment on the drive, straining after the intense silence of the hills, the damp pine-scented air. She thought, “I am alive again.” When she went to see Lila she found the room in darkness; the fire spluttered low and fitful, illuminating only the inert shape of Mouflon. She shuffled cautiously across the room, sliding her feet as though walking through deep sand, lest she kick over any of the books, cups, glasses, or ashtrays which she knew would be littered there. She reached the long table where the lamp stood. Blindly she stretched out her hands, feeling only empty air. Someone knocked on the window. Three times the knock came. “Who’s that?” she shouted. “Wait a minute, I can’t find the lamp.” No one answered. Janet stood motionless, suddenly afraid. She heard footsteps retreating, crunching across the frozen grass. Her shaking hands found an object. Slowly she moved her fingers over it. The texture was delicate, soft like vellum or the skin on a baby’s head. Her heart began to thump. She felt a broad plane, like a brow, now cheeks, smooth as her own, but cold, cold. It was a head. It was a severed head. She lurched back from it, screeching.
Lila came gliding through the door and switched on the lamp: “Janet, my dear, whatever is the matter?” On the table was that prize of prizes, a giant puffball. “I kept it specially to show you. It’s so rare to find one at this time of year.” Janet sat down abruptly; she was still shaking. “Someone was knocking on the window. They ran away when they heard my voice.” “Don’t be absurd; it would just be a branch in the wind.” “There isn’t a wind. It’s really still tonight.” “Well, I shouldn’t worry. If it doesn’t worry me, it shouldn’t worry you. Tell me about school.” Janet started to tell her. Lila poured herself a tumbler of whisky. Soon it was clear to Janet that Lila wasn’t listening; she was gazing at Mouflon and her eyes were glassy. Everyone that evening had asked her what school was like, and Janet had willingly begun on either the official Enid Blyton version (for adults) or the dismal truth (for Francis, Rhona, and Lila). In each case there was a brief show of keen interest from grown-ups: “Oh, what fun it sounds! Of course, we were sure you would love it! Things have certainly changed since my day!” (Vera); “An excellent opportunity” (Hector); “Aye, it was fair time you were awa’ frae those great gowking lads” (Nanny). There was no interest at all from her siblings: “How dreary. Tell me no more. If I were you I’d jump over the cliff” (Francis); “Oh yes, good. Have you heard about my stick insect?” (Rhona). She heard Vera telling Constance, who was staying for Christmas, how pleased she was that Janet had made friends with Cynthia: “She sounds such a sensible, wholesome sort of girl, a good influence.” “Yes,” said Constance, assuming her didactic manner, “it’s so interesting that even quite young children will choose a friend who is entirely different.” “Attraction of opposites, I believe it’s called,” said Hector helpfully. “No, Hector, that’s really rather crude. It’s something infinitely more profound, that yearning for completion which we find in Plato. The desire and pursuit of the whole.” Then, as usual, they drifted off into their own compelling lives, Constance and Vera to the nursery, where Constance liked to observe Caro (“The infant is primitive”), Hector to his motoring magazine, Rhona and Francis to their vivarium, and now Lila into her whisky and her vague, unfocused sorrow.
Janet now realised that, inconceivable as it seemed to her, life at Auchnasaugh had moved on without her. Her absence had made no difference. But without Auchnasaugh she had been maimed, deprived of her identity, living in two dimensions only.
At Christmas, Janet read, as she always did, in the village church. She read from Isaiah, “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them…” and Francis sang “O for the wings of a dove.” Every year this miracle occurred; cynical, unkind, freckled Francis stood there, his eyes piously raised to the ceiling, and, by the beauty of his voice, transported her to that shadowed chasm where the restless dove fluttered and soared, searching, driven by its tragic quest for something it would never find, something which perhaps did not exist. Even the village women were moved; with brightening eyes they leant forward for a moment, their chapped hands gripping the pew front. This year, however, as he sang “In the wilderness, build me a nest,” his voice suddenly swooped downwards as though a gramophone needle had stuck and skidded. “And remain there, forever at rest” emerged in a jolting, husky baritone. With icy self-control he sang on, and God rewarded him by restoring his soprano until the end of the service.
“Never again,” he boomed in his new voice as he and Janet trudged homeward through the snow. The others had gone ahead in the car; Rhona was excused from walking because she would be so helpful with preparations for the festive meal. “Never again. This, Janet, is the onset of manhood. I shall grow a beard and keep birds in it, like Edward Lear.” For a moment Janet felt sorry for him. But only for a moment. At the top of the drive his labrador came to meet them. She wallowed joyously in the deep drifts, tunnelled out, flicking the powdery white off her muzzle, then swaggered up, ducking and bowing. “O Celia,” said Francis. “What a seal you are!” He hugged her. Watching him, Janet felt again that odd flicker of pity. How he loved his dog! How he loved his cacti and his slow-worm! Did he love anything else? She thought not.
After Twelfth Night they took down the Christmas tree which had stood so proudly in the hall, by the foot of the stairs, its gold and blue and crimson lights vying with the great stained-glass window; the dying white cockatoo in his luminous circle of leaves seemed to hover above it like the Paraclete and at times the blood drops from his breast were scattered over the piled and gaudy presents. A bonfire was built and Nanny seized her chance to rid the nursery of the dogs’ armchairs. A couple of days later Hector and Francis had replaced them with others of almost equal dereliction; there was no shortage of such furniture at Auchnasaugh.
One afternoon Janet was returning from the stables through the trodden snow; it was twilight and the sky was the soft intense blue which occurs at the close of sunny days in the cold of winter. The stars and crescent of moon were already brilliant and in the air was a haunting sweetness, no sooner sensed than gone, a harbinger of spring, no matter how long yet the days of darkness. She saw that Lila was sitting in one of the chairs on top of the bonfire, staring at the black humps of the hills. Janet climbed up and sat beside her in the other chair. Lila did not speak; suddenly Janet realised that she was weeping. Great tears rolled down her cheeks, followed by a sooty wake of mascara. “Sorry,” she said. “Pay no attention. It’s nothing.” She took a quarter-bottle of whisky from her pocket and drank straight out of it. “Well, it’s almost nothing.” Her voice became steadier. “It’s only money. I have no money left and I need some.” Janet was astonished. Money was never mentioned; she had never thought about it. She never had any herself; Hector and Vera sometimes said mysteriously that they were going to give the older children pocket money because it would teach them about the world, but they never seemed to have any loose change on the appointed day and no one really cared. You would have had to go to the village to spend it, and the only things they ever wanted from the village were bottles of Barr’s Iron Brew and long black straps of liquorice. These were provided anyhow, in an erratic way, but often on Saturdays. Now, looking at Lila’s woebegone face and the bottle gripped in her shaking hand, she could, as so often, think of nothing to say. “Oh dear,” she mumbled, wishing that she hadn’t climbed onto the bonfire. “Oh gosh!”