Vera would come and read to them when they were in bed or Hector would tell them marvellous and terrifying tales of the wartime exploits of Strongbill, a parrot secret agent. All these stories gave Janet nightmares, but she had learnt to tell herself these were only dreams and then she would wake up. They were worth it, and now she had the solace not only of the lighthouse beam and her thumb, but of a black bear dressed in a purple velvet coat. She had removed this coat from an unpleasant doll which Vera had given her at Christmas. Janet did not like dolls; they were too like babies and entirely without the charm of animals, real or toy. Once, to please Vera, she took the pink bloblike creature with its mad stare and flickering eyelids on her afternoon walk with Nanny. Halfway along the village street Nanny noticed its nude presence. “It’s home we’re going right now, and you’ll dress that doll before you take it out again. I never saw the like.” Janet stuffed the doll in the very back of the nursery cupboard and took her bear instead. She had also been given a doll’s pram which she knew she was expected to trundle about like a little mother. 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, but she found that the pram made an acceptable chariot for Dandelion so long as in transit he could gnaw at a sparrow’s wing or other pungent trophy from his lair. Eventually Dandelion moved all his treasures into the pram and each day it provided Francis and Janet with a vicarious excitement of the chase; he was a prodigious hunter. By the time that Nanny and Vera decided that since Janet never played with the pram properly it should be given to Rhona, it had become a stinking ossuary of parched bones mingled with fur, feather, and the sullen reptilian sheen of rats’ tails.
Grandpa taught Janet to read, accompanied by wild alphabetical shrieks from Polly. On the great afternoon when she found that she could master a whole page fluently, Hector went out and returned with a tissue-wrapped bundle. It was a china parrot, a wild green parrot rampant on a blossoming bough. Francis wept, claiming that he could read too, and indeed on the very next afternoon this was accomplished, and Hector was off to find another prize. Janet watched with anxiety as Francis tore the paper open, but all was well; this bird was no rival to her parrot; in fact it appeared to her to be a penguin, although the grown-ups maintained that it was a Burmese parrot. Francis was delighted. On the nursery mantelpiece their birds sat in beady-eyed accolade and Janet and Francis lay on their stomachs by the crinkled red bar of the electric fire and read to themselves at first in loud, jarring discord, but soon in a deep and satisfying silence.
Now they started to go to a little school. They walked there each morning with Nanny, over a track which crossed the fields, into the grounds of a huge house. Here, in what had once been a summer house, a tiny Hansel and Gretel cottage, ten small children learnt reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic. Janet loved it all, apart from arithmetic. At eleven o’clock they each had a short, squat bottle of milk, its cardboard lid’s inner concentric circle pierced precisely by a straw, and a dark crimson apple, polished to gleaming ruby on cardigan sleeves. Wide lawns surrounded the little house and nearby stood a ruinous hayloft with a stone staircase to a black gap high on its outer wall. It was clear that a banished witch might live up there, using the platform at the top of the stairs as a useful take-off point. Janet imagined her triangular black form sweeping across the windy sky, blotting out the sun, descending to the house in which by rights she should dwell. But inside the school such fears evaporated. Reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic were soon supplemented by Nature and stories from Scottish history, and the French verbs etre and avoir, in the present tense only. At midday Miss Mackie, rosy and rounded as a robin, would cry, “Let’s flit,” and they would push the tables and chairs to the side of the room and hurtle into singing and dancing games. Sometimes these were of a cautionary nature; there was one about brushing the Germs away, requiring vigorous elbow work, stooping, twisting, and shaking of imaginary brooms. All the children assumed that Germs was short for Germans and performed with patriotic fervour.
In spring a dazzle of crocuses, gold and white and deepest purple, gleamed in the grass. Janet stood staring at them, breathing the sudden soft air, spellbound. Her favourite boy, James, told her that he, too, liked purple best and asked her to marry him when they were grown up. Janet consented. Another boy, Bobby, also asked her to marry him; again she consented. She had no intention of marrying either, as she still wished to be a princess, but she liked the idea of their hopeless dedication and she devised quests in which they might prove their devotion. At first these were modest: James was to find a ladybird, or Bobby was to bring a pink shell from the beach; but even in the brilliant light of those May mornings the black gap of the witch’s loft stared fearfully down and soon she knew that the boys must go together up the staircase and find out whether or not the hag was there. The children were forbidden to go anywhere near the barn and so some strategy was needed.
At noon, when they were putting on their coats to go home for lunch, Janet offered to take the apple cores from the waste-bin to the pig Beatrice who lived in a pen behind the school. The children often visited Beatrice; she was a friendly black pig, a white stripe encompassed her stout middle and her eye was bright and roguish. She would come hustling out of her shed with gleeful snorts, stand motionless with a meaningful twinkle, then pick up her bucket on one deft twist of her wrinkled snout and hurl it over her shoulders to clatter down upright on her other side, and repeat the performance. Today Miss Mackie was pleased to let Janet feed her, and to let Bobby and James go with her. Janet had not told the boys about her plan; she did not want them to know about her fear of the witch in case they said they didn’t believe in witches. So when they reached Beatrice’s pen, she grabbed the bucket and flung the cores straight in. Beatrice, about to perform her trick, stared in disappointment; the twinkle faded from her eye; grumpily she rootled after the cores and subsided back into her house.
“Quick!” said Janet. “Quick! There’s a wee lost kitten crying up in the loft. It will die up there. We’ve got to get it before Miss Mackie sees.” The boys were off in a flash, racing up the path and across the grass. Janet followed more slowly, feeling a tiny twinge of compunction at their trusting rush into danger. She stationed herself behind a flowering currant bush, redolent of tomcats, and watched. Up the steps they sprang, two at a time, James just in the lead; for a second they paused at the top and looked around to wave to her; then they were gone into the black gulf. Immediately there was a rending crash and a dreadful scream, a moment’s silence, and then howls and shrieks. Janet flung herself face-down on the grass; she dug her nails into the earth and, holding on to the slippery grass, shut her eyes while the world spun and rocked about her and the screaming went on. She heard Miss Mackie hurtle past her making gasping noises; the yelling stopped, there was only Miss Mackie’s voice. She raised her head a fraction of an inch and saw them coming out of a door at the side of the barn; Miss Mackie led them by the hand. James was limping and Bobby’s face was covered in blood, blood which poured from his nose, saturating his Fair Isle jersey, splattering the white crocuses. Janet started to scream. “Come out of there at once, Janet,” yelled Miss Mackie. “I’ll deal with you later. And stop that ridiculous noise.” Janet stayed where she was, screaming and hanging on to the ground. Nanny came and walloped her and marched her into the school. Miss Mackie was sliding a great black iron key down the back of Bobby’s shirt to stop his nosebleed. Mothers and nannies stood by in pregnant silence. His nose stopped bleeding. His bloodstained jersey was removed and replaced by a spare and girlish cardigan. His face was washed. James’s knee was bandaged. Only the crocuses bore witness to the horror that had been.