The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

  chapter ten

  The summer term began, and in the classroom, thanks to Miriam’s coaching, I held my own. Mrs. Harris no longer picked on me at every opportunity. In the kitchen I had learned to be slap-dash and make mounds of carrots and potatoes disappear into saucepans. Even Mr. Waugh’s sermons were less tedious, now that we no longer shivered in the pews. When he visited Primary 7 I kept my head down and hoped he wouldn’t guess that I disagreed with every sentence he uttered.

  As I swept the classrooms on Saturdays, I often studied the map of the British Isles that hung on the wall of each room, wondering if Mr. Donaldson had joined his sister in Oban. The town was on the west coast of Scotland, north of Glasgow, opposite the island of Mull. Then one day in geography, when we were reading about rain forests, I suddenly thought, What was to stop him from going farther afield? I pictured my precious box mouldering under a palm tree, or being eaten by kangaroos. But I had no one to whom I could confide my fears.

  Since Miriam had moved to Form I, I seldom saw her, and when I did her face was pale and her leg seemed to drag more heavily. At lunch or supper we would exchange looks as I set down her plate. I miss you, I would think. Her eyes said the same thing. In one of our conversations during the holidays I had told her about my parents, gazing at the North Star and sending messages back and forth across the ocean. Maybe we could do that, she had said. In maths, you could send me the right answer. We had tried it one Sunday. During the first quarter-hour of Mr. Waugh’s sermon I had thought about Sulis, the goddess of the hot springs at Bath. When the clock chimed I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself inside Miriam’s head. At first there was only the fuzzy dimness of my eyelids. Then I caught a glimpse of a black and white dog: Spencer, I thought. But that evening, while the other girls played Ping-Pong, she told me she’d been remembering the afternoon we visited the pigs, and she’d pictured me thinking about Iceland. Maybe it’s like tennis or poetry, she had said, we have to practise.

  Now each night I fell asleep trying to send her a message: ask me home for the summer holidays. If only her father would invite me, I was sure Miss Bryant would agree. One less mouth to feed. Miriam and I would be together, and during the long hours while her father was at work, I could track down Mr. Donaldson.

  One Saturday, when instead of cleaning the Form I classroom I was standing, broom in hand, before the map, a voice behind me said, “Lost your fancy friend, haven’t you?”

  Arms akimbo, Ross stood a few feet away, dressed in the ugly overalls we wore for cleaning. It was easy to picture her ten years from now, washing some office floor. “I was trying to find the school,” I said.

  “Here, moron.” As she raised her hand, I smelled the cleaning fluid we used in the toilets. “Here’s Hawick, and Denholm. Minto is too small.”

  “I was looking too far west. Where did you used to live?”

  She pointed to the large, dark circle of Glasgow. “When I first came here I couldn’t stand the quiet. I thought some animal was going to jump out and eat me.”

  “What kind of animal?”

  “A fox? A wolf? Whatever lives in the woods and eats girls. So where’s the cripple from?”

  “The cripple?”

  Even as I asked, the word twisted inside me and found its meaning, but before either of us could speak again, Mrs. Bryant stepped into the room, smiling. “Ross, you’re needed in the upper corridor. Hardy, you’ve got five minutes to finish this room.”

  Two days later, when I climbed into bed, my bare feet encountered something cold and feathery. As I jumped out, screaming, everyone in the room burst into gleeful shouts.

  “Look what the cat’s brought in,” said Findlayson.

  “Cry-baby,” called Smith.

  They were still laughing and shouting comments when Matron appeared. “Girls, if you . . .” The light went out.

  I fetched some toilet paper, retrieved the sparrow, and threw it out of the bathroom window. Since I had shown her the magpie, Ross had several times asked me the names of birds. With the help of Miriam’s book I had taught her to distinguish a swallow from a swift, a rook from a crow. Over Easter a pair of blackbirds had built a nest in a flowering currant bush near the back door, and often she followed me when I slipped out of the kitchen to check on their progress. She might have allowed this to happen, I told myself, but she was not the executioner. Findlayson, I guessed, or Drummond. As I lay under the counterpane, I thought, Invite me for the summer. Invite me for the summer.

  It seemed the worst kind of coincidence when, in assembly the next morning, Miss Bryant summoned Goodall to the front. I had never seen a regular girl publicly scolded, but now Miriam was made to stand on the dais, as I had once been, while Miss Bryant pointed out her unbrushed hair, the stains on her tunic, her wrinkled socks and muddy shoes. “This girl,” she concluded, “is a disgrace to Claypoole.”

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Bryant,” Miriam said in a low voice. “I’ll try to do better.”

  “You won’t try. You will. For the rest of the term you’ll get up fifteen minutes early to make sure that your uniform is clean.”

  “Yes, Miss Bryant.” Miriam gave a small, crooked curtsey.

  That evening as I peeled the interminable potatoes Ross jerked my apron strings. “Your friend got a right old ticking off. Just because her dad pays fees doesn’t mean she can behave any old how.”

  She was grinning so broadly I could see past her chipped tooth to her tonsils. Suddenly I knew, as clearly as if she had told me, that it was she who had drawn Miss Bryant’s attention to my friendship with Miriam, and she who had put the sparrow in my bed. Quite possibly she had also engineered Miriam’s current punishment; she was one of the few girls free to roam the school. As I reached for the next potato, I grinned back. “She should have minded herself,” I said.

  While we peeled and halved the potatoes, I kept talking as if nothing had changed. Had she seen Miss Seftain’s blouse? It looked like raspberry jelly. Did she think the lacrosse team had a chance against the visiting school? We finished the potatoes and went to check on the blackbirds’ nest. The dusty brown female regarded us patiently while I explained that the eggs would hatch any day. Then both parents would feed the chicks. We could help by finding worms and leaving them nearby.

  “You get the worms,” said Ross cheerfully.

  She seemed to have forgiven me, but my policy of appeasement was too little, too late. The other girls sensed that she had withdrawn her protection. Someone tipped pepper on my food; someone spilled ketchup on my shirt; someone stole my Alice band so that for a whole day I was reprimanded for not wearing it. I did my best to avoid the Elm Room and to be as unobtrusive as possible. The only place I felt safe was the classroom, where Mrs. Harris, in her tyranny, tolerated no competition.

  Then one night, soon after Matron turned out the light, Findlayson appeared on one side of my bed, Drummond on the other.

  “Little Miss Smartie Pants.”

  “Little Miss Know-it-all.”

  “Thinks she’s so much better than the rest of us.”

  At the first touch of their hands I screamed, “Help, Matron. Help me. Someone help me.”

  “Christ, what a racket,” one of the older girls said.

  “Better gag her,” said another.

  I screamed even louder—someone seized my ankles—and fought as hard as I could, kicking, scratching, biting, but this was not like fighting Will, a single enemy of superior strength, this was a barbarian horde: wild, lawless, pitiless. Someone dragged off my pyjama jacket. Someone forced my mouth open and stuffed in a sock. Someone tugged my hair. And the worst of it was not the pain, or even the shame, but the bodies shutting me in, holding me prisoner, smothering me. Eventually, as I had in the sewing-room, I slipped away.

  When I came round I was lying in bed in a small, bright room. Matron was sitting by the window, reading one of her romances, a faint smile on her lips.

  “My, you gave us . . . How are . . . ?”


  Her blue eyes gazed down at me and I gazed back, silently. Without calculation, I had hit upon the perfect response. Matron asked a few more of her abbreviated questions. Then she brought me a poached egg on toast, which I ate with pleasure. I could feign muteness but not loss of appetite. Afterwards I mimed that I would like to borrow a book and settled down to read about Catherine, a nurse, and Robert, the handsome laird, who seems determined to ignore her.

  Later that day the doctor came from Hawick. I had heard the older girls describe Dr. White, with his intense gaze and dimpled chin, as a heartthrob. I did whatever he asked—raising my pyjama jacket for his stethoscope, sticking out my tongue—in silence. Meanwhile Matron explained, in her fragmentary fashion, that she’d found me lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

  “She seems healthy,” he said, “except for the bruises. Perhaps she fell on the stairs? Or perhaps someone scared her. People sometimes become mute from shock.”

  “Perhaps she saw . . .” Matron’s painted eyebrows rose.

  “The Claypoole ghost? Actually I was thinking of her fellow pupils. Let’s keep her in the infirmary for a couple of days.”

  “But she’s a working girl.” His suggestion had surprised her into a complete sentence, and now it was the doctor’s turn to be surprised.

  “A working girl?” he said. “She’s what, nine? Ten at the most. Even the Victorians didn’t send children to work so young.”

  Matron explained how hard it was to find working girls these days.

  If you didn’t talk, I began to realise, people assumed you couldn’t hear.

  An hour later I was deep in Catherine and Robert’s adventures when I looked up to see Miss Bryant herself approaching, her eyes narrowed, her thin upper lip almost invisible.

  “I don’t know what’s going on in your head,” she said in a soft voice, “but playing dumb isn’t going to get you anywhere. You have no broken bones, no serious illness. You may have one more day in the sickroom and then it’s back to work.” Before I could not answer, she turned on her heel and left the room.

  That night I woke to the tick of bare feet on floorboards. I was bracing myself for a battle with Ross, or some other girl, when I caught a familiar wheeze.

  “Gemma, are you all right?”

  “Miriam.” I pulled her down beside me. The bed was just wide enough for the two of us. I could smell her shampoo, sweet and flowery, lingering in her thick hair. Her father, she’d told me, had said her hair was like a horse’s tail, and when I stroked it, it was surprisingly coarse. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I heard the girls talking. They said the working girls hit you so hard you couldn’t talk.”

  “I can talk, but I decided not to. There’s nothing I want to say to anyone but you.”

  “Did they hurt you? What happened?”

  Even to Miriam I could not describe the girls’ attack. To remember it was to relive it and to relive it brought me back to that excruciating edge. Instead I said she had been right about Ross. I had been stupid not to understand that, like Mr. Milne, her allegiance was to Miss Bryant.

  “That makes sense,” said Miriam thoughtfully. “Even if someone is cruel to you, if they’re the only person in your life, you’ll love them.”

  How could that be? I wondered. I had hated my aunt and now I hated my tormentors at Claypoole. “But you don’t love your father,” I said indignantly.

  “Maybe he’s not cruel enough.”

  This was so bewildering I pretended I hadn’t heard. “Did you get my messages?” I asked.

  “What messages? Oh, you mean telepathy. I think that only works for a very few people. Your parents may have been among them. Or maybe they were just sending the same message over and over.”

  Her voice was gentle and I knew that, once again, she was remembering my age, but I didn’t stop to argue. I told her my idea that her father should invite me to stay in July. We could be together, we could grow flowers and read, and I could try to find Mr. Donaldson. I had pictured her exclaiming with pleasure, saying why hadn’t she thought of that, but she said nothing. I sat up, trying to make out her expression in the darkness.

  “I wish it were that easy, Gemma. I can ask, but he’ll probably say no. He thinks children are a bother and more children are more of a bother.”

  As she spoke her breathing grew louder, her voice fainter. I had noticed before that the hand often squeezed her chest when we spoke about her father. “Do you have your inhaler?” I said.

  She shook her head. One of the worst things about the asthma attacks, she had told me, was that she couldn’t call for help. I jumped out of bed and pulled her to her feet. Slowly I led Miriam, limping and gasping, through the dark corridors to the Birch Room. We parted in silence. I listened to her stumble across the floor, then a soft thud: her sitting or falling on the bed.

  chapter eleven

  The next day Matron gave me breakfast and sent me back to Primary 7. I think she was a little sorry to lose me. She patted my shoulder, told me to come back if I felt poorly, and allowed me to borrow the book I was reading about Milly, a music teacher, and Edward, a postman. I smiled my thanks. What had I needed speech for? The first period of the day was arithmetic. When Mrs. Harris started to go round the room, asking girls for their answers, I readied myself to go to the blackboard to write mine, but she skipped over me as if my desk were empty. Miss Bryant must have warned her.

  In the Elm Room that evening the working girls pretended to ignore my return—they were playing a noisy game of snap—but as I undressed I caught Findlayson eyeing me uneasily, then Drummond, then Gilchrist.

  “You all right?” said Gilchrist.

  I went to brush my teeth. No one followed.

  For a few days the girls questioned me at odd moments, jumped out from behind doors. Once, when Findlayson sprang up beside my bed, I screamed, but otherwise I managed to remain silent. Soon they lost interest and I became what I had wanted: almost invisible. In assembly I did not pretend to sing although I silently repeated the Lord’s Prayer, which my uncle had laboured to teach me during those early months at Yew House. Only Cook was concerned. One afternoon she took me into the larder and said, “Hardy, tell me what’s wrong. Did those brats bully you? Are you hurt?”

  In the notebook I had started carrying I wrote, Thank you. I’m fine!

  That evening I hid in one of the bathrooms and wrote my long-rehearsed letter to Mr. Donaldson.

  Please tell everyone it’s all my fault and I would be happy to tell them that too. They won’t give me a letter from you but if you write to Miriam Goodall, my best friend at Claypoole, she will pass on whatever you say.

  Then I wrote, Please forward if necessary, on the envelope.

  The next afternoon, as I washed rhubarb, I kept a careful eye on Cook. Half-a-dozen times a day, when she was sure Mrs. Bryant wasn’t around, she would nip out for a cigarette. So when I saw her put down a colander and head for the door, I followed. I found her standing near the flowering currant, puffing smoke towards the nest. I held out the letter in both hands.

  For a few seconds she studied my offering with the same expression she wore when a sauce curdled. She was going to refuse me, report me. Then she smiled. “Aren’t you a sly one?” The next thing I knew she had slipped the envelope beneath her apron. “I’ll make sure this sees the inside of a pillar-box tonight.”

  I bowed my thanks. Then I pointed out the nest with the bright-eyed bird. Cook stepped forward to look more closely. “So this is what you and Ross are in such a state about. I shouldn’t be blowing smoke at the poor thing. Hard enough being a mother without that. How many blackbirds does it take to make a pie?”

  I held up my hands and flashed two tens and a four.

  Cook sighed. “I suppose you’ll talk when you’re ready. Well, back to the salt mines.”

  Publicly, like the other working girls, Ross ignored me, but when we were alone, she pelted me with uneasy questions. Did people who couldn’t talk he
ar better? Was I cross? Had something happened in the infirmary? I shook my head, or shrugged, and eventually she too was lured into speech by my silence. As we were carrying slops to the pigs she told me what had happened the night of the ambush.

  “One minute you were screaming bloody murder, then suddenly you passed out cold. Even when I pinched you, you didn’t move.”

  So that was the bruise on my forearm, I thought, stepping around a thistle.

  “I was scared you’d kicked the bucket,” she went on, swinging the actual bucket she was carrying. “In our street once a bloke fell over, digging a hole. He never got up again. So I lugged you down the stairs and fetched Matron.”

  Of course Matron wouldn’t have found me on her own; she never left her domain after lights-out. To hide my confusion—I didn’t want Ross to be my saviour—I ran ahead to the pigsty. As I tipped the scraps into the trough, Thumbelina shoved Heidi aside. If I’d been alone I would have told her to mind her manners.

  A few days later, when we were on our way to clean the gym, Ross finally revealed why Montrose, my predecessor, had had to leave. They had pretended, just for a laugh, to throw her out of the window; she had struggled so hard she’d broken her wrist. “She told Miss Bryant it was our fault. Of course she couldn’t stay after that. As soon as she was better, Miss Bryant fibbed about her age and got her a job in a hotel.”

  The afternoon was warm, and when Ross stopped to wipe her forehead her hand left a smear of grime. I took pleasure in seeing the dirt, pleasure in not telling her about it. At last she gave up waiting for me to answer and spoke again.

  “I don’t know what she’d have done if you’d tattled,” she said. “I worried you might. You’re such a Goody Two-shoes.”

  As I swept the gym, I daydreamed about a kingdom of girls, a place where there were only girls, where none of the girls were bullies or idiots, and everyone studied harmoniously. If only such a place existed, Miriam and I would go there tomorrow.