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. She saw how it diminished people as they walked along the shore; they lost their identity, were no more than pebbles, part of the sea’s scheme. Once there had been a great forest below the cliffs; there the hairy mammoth had browsed and raised his trunk and trumpeted. There had been mountain crags and deep, sweet valleys of gentle herbivores. The sea had come and taken them. Later it had taken churches too, and on wild nights you could listen for their bells. The air was loud enough with bells already; Janet preferred to listen for the hairy mammoth.
On Sunday in church she sang with fervour,
The minister often chose a maritime text: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord,” or “Many waters cannot quench love.” The wonderful words were almost enough to make Janet believe in God. At Christmas, too, the starry sky and the beauty of language and music caused a great surge of mystic yearning in her; then Mr. McConochie would harangue them, remind them of their unworthiness and guilt, the innocent babe born to die on their behalf. “Sighing, crying, / Bleeding, dying, / Shut in the stone cold tomb,” they sang, and the glory faded to heartbreak and desolation, the bleak light of afternoon.
She thought now of something which had happened the previous summer. Early one morning four students from Edinburgh University had stolen a fishing boat from the harbour and merrily set course for deep waters. The sun, an enormous orange disc, cleared the misty horizon, the air was still, the sea sparkled. They dived from the high bow and swam and frolicked. Then they realised that they had forgotten to put a ladder down; there was nothing, no rope, no lifebelt, only the steep black sides of the boat, slippery and glistening in the cold sunbeams and a great stretch of empty sea. They all perished; the paintwork was scored and runnelled by their fingernails. “Many waters cannot quench love.” That could be so; the sea nevertheless had taken them and there had been no help from God. Some of course said that it was a judgement; they should not have taken the boat. Mr. McConochie was of this opinion; he had discussed the incident with her parents outside his church one Sunday morning: “Aye, well, they kent the rules fine and they broke them. The commandment is there to be obeyed, whether ye be a floozy wee student or the Lord High Advocate. Ye’ll recall the words of Knox: ‘And if thou wilt not, flatter not thyself; the same justice remaineth in God to punish thee, Scotland, and thee, Edinburgh, in especial, that before punished the land of Judah and the city of Jerusalem.’ ”
It did not seem to Janet that this was justice; it was a most cruel quenching of merriment, and there was little enough of gaiety or recklessness around those rocky shores. She thought of that moment when Lorna Doone’s father, riding ahead of the family carriage up a mountain road in Italy, turns in his saddle, doffs his plumy hat, and bows, laughing; then he spurs his horse into a gallop; around the bend they vanish, to plummet over a precipice. There seemed no place for gallantry or romance among Calvinists. They would say that he should have looked where he was going. Clearly he had not been one of the Elect, who were distinguished by perseverance or grim stoicism, and were offered secret divine assistance. But another memory came to her. At the top of a great flight of rickety steps two small boys had paused; the sun shone down on them; they looked back at her and waved and then they vanished into a black void. She had felt no pity for them then, did not feel any now.
Two by two in their prickly tweed coats and their damp felt hats the girls of St. Uncumba’s marched in crocodile through empty streets back to their boarding houses. Bells were clamorous. Cynthia ogled the occasional male passer-by and sang a revolting song about babies,
Janet was able to ignore her because she had discovered a beautiful new word in her Latin dictionary—stillicidium, the dripping of rain water from roofs and gables. It had stopped raining now, and the gaunt, steeply pitched stone houses offered satisfying illustrations of the word’s unique fitness for its purpose. How she wished she could share her pleasure with Cynthia; as it was, she dared not even whisper the word aloud.
As they approached the War Memorial, Cynthia’s pace slackened. “Hang back,” she hissed at Janet. There was a small sweet shop open on Sundays and Cynthia planned to break the law. She would go in and she would buy a slab of Highland toffee. Janet was to keep watch; it would be worth it. The rest of the crocodile swung around the corner onto the cliff road. Cynthia sidled through the shop doorway. Janet stood with thumping heart, trying to look casual, certain that every distant figure was an oncoming member of staff. The penalties for breaking a school rule were severe; for going into a shop they could be suspended for weeks. They might be picking up germs which would spread through the school like wildfire. Most important, they might be picking up the polio germ and bringing death and disablement. Besides, men went into shops, and they must never, ever speak to men. The girls were given to understand that all men seethed with uncontrollable desire for them and the smallest encouragement would lead to murder. Or worse. Only their fathers might enter the sacred precincts of St. Uncumba’s. Uncles were out of the question. Janet wished Cynthia would hurry up. A group of people had gathered around the War Memorial. She watched them uneasily. They paid no attention to her; they were looking at something on the pavement. Janet edged nearer. They were laughing. A pigeon was walking in slow circles on the shining cobbles; it wore a little paper hat. How strange, thought Janet; perhaps it was a circus bird, a lawless Sunday entertainer. Then she saw that blood was dripping from its beak; its eye was dull, its gait unsteady. The top of its head had gone and what she had taken for a paper hat was the membrane which covered its brain. Someone picked up a stick and prodded it. It flounced sideways, toppled, and regained its balance. Janet looked at the grinning faces; she looked at the bird, so meek and dignified, accepting its ruined life without complaint, silent and harmless.
“Get out of my way,” she yelled. Panting, she shoved her way through the throng and grabbed the bird. It settled passively in her cupped hands. She ran back to the shop. Cynthia appeared. “Throw it away, Janet. It’s going to die anyway.” “There’s a vet around the corner, we can take it there; we can’t just leave it. Those people are hurting it.” “Look, it’s only a pigeon.” “Shut up, shut up,” shrieked Janet; tears of outrage blurred her eyes. “I’m going to the vet. Are you coming or not?” “Oh, for heaven’s sake, all right, then. But there’s no point.”
Janet rang the vet’s shiny brass doorbell. No one came. She beat on the door with the shiny brass knocker. She shouted through the letterbox, “Hurry up, please, please hurry up.”
Suddenly the door was whisked open. A woman stood there glaring at them. “How dare you make a racket like that. On a Sunday too. What do you want?’ Janet held out the pigeon. “You’ve not made an appointment. You can’t see the vet. In any case he’s not here. You’d best give that thing a knock on the head. Now be off with you and stop wasting my time.” She slammed the door. The pigeon was soft and warm, nestled in Janet’s hands, but blood flowed more freely now from its beak and it had begun to tremble. She could feel its tiny heart flickering. “Well,” said Cynthia, “either we chuck it over the cliff or we bash it on the head; it’s worse for it to go on suffering.” “Yes,” said Janet. “Yes.” She looked at the bird and knew that she could not end its life, no matter how right, how necessary this was. She tried to imagine swinging it against a wall or smashing its brain with a stone and she felt all strength ebb from her limbs. She leant against the vet’s railings, gasping. “Oh God,” she wailed. “Right, that’s it. Give it to me,” commanded Cynthia. She took the bird and walked quickly behind the house. In a moment she was back. “It didn’t feel a thing, honestly.” “But we must bury it,” sobbed Janet. “Look, I’ve buried it; I put some earth over it. And we’re going to be late back if we don’t rush.” A bell tolled a single solemn note, a death knell. “My God, it’s one o’clock. Come on.” Janet did not believe that Cynthia had buried the pigeon but she was finished, without resource. Obediently she followed her. Cynthia explained their lateness by saying that Janet had felt faint and ill. “I was really quite worried, Miss Smith. You can see how she’s shaking now. Oh, she had a nose bleed too. Her coat’s in a bit of a state.” “Well done, Cynthia.”