The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

  For several days after I returned to the Elm Room I didn’t see Miriam. Then one morning in assembly I spotted her, not standing with her class but sitting on a chair beside the teachers. At lunch, when I set her plate down, I noticed her inhaler on the table. That evening in the bathroom I wrote another note.

  Dearest Miriam,

  Are you all right? Your face is the colour of paper and I can hear you breathing. Have you seen the doctor? I hope, hope, hope I can come and stay with you in the holidays. Tell your father I am a good nurse. I will read to you all day long and take good care of you. I miss you.

  Love, your best friend, Gemma

  I carried the note around in my sock, waiting for a chance to deliver it. Finally on Saturday, as Smith and I were polishing the hall outside the library, Miriam limped towards us. I dropped my mop and, bending to pick it up, slipped the note into her hand.

  That afternoon in the kitchen, Ross tugged my apron. Outside, in the flowering currant, the mother blackbird was no longer sitting on the nest. Four tiny beaks were visible above the rim of moss and twigs.

  “They hatched,” she whispered. “Just like you said.”

  I felt her arms go around me, and before I knew what was happening, she had lifted me up. I stared in wonder at the barely feathered heads with their filmy eyes and yellow beaks. Then I wriggled until she set me down.

  “We’ll have to gather worms for them. Maybe after supper this evening.”

  I nodded.

  “How long before they fly away?”

  I wasn’t sure but I held up four fingers.

  “Four days?”

  I shook my head, and moved my hands farther apart.

  “Okay. So we have four weeks to teach them to be our friends.”

  As she spoke, the mother bird appeared with a shrill cry. We stepped back and she flew down into the bush. I remembered my uncle telling me that birds fed their young with regurgitated food, which was why it was so hard to rear a fledgling. Even if we liked chewing worms, he had said, we don’t have the right saliva.

  Miriam did not reply to my note, and two mornings in a row she was missing from assembly. There were rumours that Dr. White had been called in the night, that she was worse. Chopping onions, I angled the knife into my finger. In the infirmary Matron greeted me warmly. “Oh, Hardy, how . . . ?”

  I held out my notebook with the note I had written earlier.

  “Poor Goodall.” She dabbed something stinging on my cut. “She’s very poorly.”

  I seized the notebook and wrote, PLEASE tell me more.

  She shook her head and pressed a piece of cotton wool to my finger. “The doctor thinks . . . Hospital.”

  For the rest of the day thoughts flashed through my mind like scenery rushing past the window of a train. Miriam had told me there was no cure for asthma, although a warmer, drier climate helped. That was why people used to go to the Mediterranean. “Your inhaler makes you better,” I had said. I was dusting the piano in the music room.

  “It makes me feel better,” she corrected. “The asthma stays the same. And Dr. White says I mustn’t use it too often. You need stronger and stronger doses.”

  “But people don’t die of asthma,” I had said. “Not like drowning, or the plague.”

  Standing beside me, Miriam played a scale, first with her left hand, then her right. She had promised she would teach me some songs soon. “Most people don’t die,” she agreed, “but when I can’t breathe it feels as if I’m about to. Sometimes”—she played the scale with both hands—“I even want to. The only hope is that it will get better as I get older, and my lungs grow bigger.”

  “So you have to eat lots,” I had said, “and grow quickly.” But as she limped across the hall, Miriam had seemed not bigger but smaller, only an inch or two taller than me, and as thin as my mop.

  That night I stole out of bed and down the stairs. I was tiptoeing past the bathroom when a figure in striped pyjamas loomed over me. “You’re not sneaking around, are you?” said Ross.

  I gasped and swerved into the bathroom. She stood in the doorway. “We wouldn’t want you trying to see your fancy friend.”

  I managed to pee, washed my hands, and pushed past her, up the narrow stairs. Back in bed I listened as hard as I could. Although I knew how Findlayson whimpered, doglike, in her sleep, and how Gilchrist cried out as if she were being attacked, I could not identify Ross’s night sounds. Her bed was on the far side of the room, and I was never sure if that grunting snore was hers. Or that melancholy sigh? How was it, I wondered, that night after night I sent messages to Miriam and was never sure they reached her but that Ross seemed to read my mind effortlessly? Or perhaps, I thought, she was simply paying attention. A few weeks ago, before the girls attacked me, she had remarked that Mr. Milne always parked squint after having a beer. “You’d make a good policeman,” I had said. Her face had lit up. “That would be grand,” she exclaimed. “Do you think they’d have me?” “No,” I’d said. “You have to be good at sums.”

  Now I counted a hundred sheep, then two hundred. Just as I was about to try again, someone moaned, “No. No cabbage.” Reluctantly I lay back down. I pictured the bodies piling on top of me, and Ross urging them on.

  The following afternoon I was dusting the window-sills in the front hall when the door flew open and a man in an old-fashioned brown suit strode in, bringing with him a faint, familiar smell I couldn’t name. His momentum carried him halfway across the hall before he remembered the door and turned back to close it, leaving a double trail of muddy footprints. As he retraced his steps, I recognised the tang of manure. Near the sofa he stopped to remove his hat and looked around. His hair receded in an emphatic W and his eyes were shadowed. After his noisy entrance he seemed uncertain what to do next. Then he spotted me.

  “Girl,” he boomed, “fetch Miss Bryant.”

  I dropped my duster and hurried to the corridor where Ross was wielding the floor polisher. I stood in front of her, pointing at the hall, until she turned off the machine and followed me.

  “Fetch Miss Bryant,” the man repeated. “I’m here to see my daughter.”

  Ross hurried away. While I returned to my dusting, he stationed himself in front of the empty fireplace and surveyed the room, not with the appreciative gaze of most parents but rather as if he were measuring it for a carpet. Between one flick of the duster and the next, it came to me that this was Miriam’s father: the stern man with no use for children. I longed to approach and explain that I was his daughter’s best friend. If only he’d let me come home with her I could nurse her back to health. But even as I moved towards him, the door on the stairs opened.

  “Mr. Goodall,” said Miss Bryant. “You got my message.”

  Hoping to escape attention, I ran my duster over the wainscoting.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Goodall. “I had a bull to see in Hawick. How is she?” His voice, like Mr. Waugh’s, was effortlessly loud. It was easy to imagine him calling out prices to crowds of men.

  Miss Bryant raised her voice to match. “Your daughter has never been a hypochondriac, but for the last week she’s been so breathless she can’t get out of bed. Matron and Dr. White both think she’d be better off in hospital.”

  “I don’t hold with hospitals.”

  Their footsteps moved across the hall, and whatever came next was inaudible. When I risked a glance over my shoulder, I saw that there had been another witness to the conversation. Ross had followed Miss Bryant into the hall and stood by the standard lamp, watching me. I moved on to the next stretch of wainscoting. Don’t speak, I shouted in my head. Don’t say a word. I dusted, I polished, I straightened the magazines on the table by the armchairs. At last she walked away. Only then did I feel free to send my message: Miriam, I’ll come tonight. I promise.

  In bed while I waited for everyone to fall asleep, I had the awful thought that Miriam’s grey, smelly father had already taken her away. But, however faulty my message-sending, I was convinced I would know if she w
ere gone. She was still here, but tomorrow, unless she improved dramatically, she would be sent to the hospital. Around me girls snored and sighed. Findlayson got up to use the bathroom; so did Drummond. I tried to decide if it was better to leave during one of the surges of noise that periodically passed through the room or while all was still. Suddenly I sensed someone beside my bed. I opened my eyes, ready to scream. In the gloom I made out a young man wearing a white shirt and dark trousers.

  “Miriam needs you,” he said. “Go to her now.”

  I did not hesitate. I rearranged my pillow to look like a body, placed my rolled-up cardigan where my head ought to be, and tiptoed to the door. Without stopping, I made my way to the sickroom. The bedside light was on; there was no sign of Matron. Miriam was propped up in bed, her face pale and gleaming. At the sight of me she started to smile. Suddenly her mouth wrenched open, and her eyes flared. The giant hand was holding her tight.

  I ran to the bed. “Miriam, what can I do? Do you have your inhaler?”

  She glanced down and I saw it lying beside her. “Can’t talk,” she whispered.

  “What can I do?” I repeated. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. Gently I patted it with the sleeve of my pyjamas. I remembered a scene from Anne of Green Gables when someone with croup was put in a tent of steam. I looked around the room, hoping for a kettle. Meanwhile Miriam gathered her strength to push back the hand one more time. And one more. I had never thought of breathing as something that required willpower. What would happen if she fell asleep?

  “Story,” she whispered, her voice even smaller than before.

  I began a tale about two brothers, both fishermen; the good brother likes the seals and shares his catch with them; the bad brother hates them. Suddenly I realised Miriam hadn’t taken the next breath. Her eyes were glaring, her body arching, her hand fumbling with the inhaler. Quickly I took it from her, raised it to her mouth, and pushed the button as I had seen her do. She lay back, eyes closed. “Go on,” she murmured.

  “And then the bad brother . . .”

  After only a few more sentences her breathing jammed again. I ran to the doorway of the room. “Matron,” I called. “Help. Help.”

  I had barely time to hide behind the curtains before Matron, in a dark dressing-gown, was bending over Miriam, saying, “There, there, Goodall.”

  Soon she had Miriam settled in a tent of steam just like I had read about. She left the room and I heard her dialing the phone, begging the doctor to come at once, saying “ambulance” and “hospital.” Then I heard her hurrying down the corridor and guessed she had gone to fetch Miss Bryant. I slipped out of my hiding place and knelt beside Miriam.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I said. “I tried, but Ross stopped me. Tonight the man from the library fetched me, the one you talked to about convoys and ice cream. He’s watching over you. They’ll make you better in hospital and when you come back I’ll show you the baby blackbirds.”

  Beneath the towel Miriam made a gasping sound.

  The next morning, as we washed the silverware, Smith remarked that an ambulance had come in the night and taken Goodall to the hospital in Hawick. “One of the prefects said she nearly died,” she added cheerfully.

  The handful of knives I was drying fell to the floor.

  “Dropping a knife is bad luck,” said Smith, nudging one with her foot. “You’ve enough here to last a year.”

  She can’t die, I thought. Adults were the ones who had accidents, or fell ill and died, not children. Yet even as I argued, I remembered the small graves in my uncle’s churchyard: beloved sons and daughters gone to join their Redeemer. Somehow I survived my morning classes. Serving lunch, I deliberately touched a roasting pan. “Clumsy,” said Cook and sent me to the infirmary. Once again I offered Matron my notebook: Please tell me how Goodall is.

  “She’s very . . . I’m afraid all we can . . .”

  All we can what? I wrote.

  “Pray,” Matron said, holding up her hands.

  The following morning in assembly Miss Bryant said the same thing. “Girls, today I ask you to pray for Miriam Goodall, who is very ill in Hawick Hospital.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed partly to God, partly to the young man. I promised to be good, to tidy my drawers, never to lie, not to hate anyone—even Mr. Milne, even Miss Bryant—if only they would make Miriam better. I pictured her lungs, bean-shaped like the picture I’d seen in a biology book, growing and growing.

  In class Mrs. Harris reprimanded me for not getting out my books. In the kitchen Cook chivvied me to finish the potatoes. Meanwhile the rest of the school, the rest of the world, seemed oblivious to Miriam’s fate. The weather had turned warm, and on the terraces the roses were in bloom; the regular pupils wore pretty green and white gingham dresses. My only solace was visiting the blackbirds. My guess of four weeks was proving surprisingly accurate. Even as I watched, one of the fledglings struggled to sit on the rim of the nest.

  “Little buggers are growing up fast,” said Ross. She had sneaked up behind me.

  I started back to the kitchen but she grabbed my arm.

  “I’ll bet you a shilling,” she said, “you never see her again.”

  chapter twelve

  The night was much milder than the one on which I had taken my box to Mr. Donaldson, but gone were the high white clouds that had lit my journey from Yew House to the village; instead the sky pressed down, indistinguishable from the land. At the top of the stairs I stood counting, waiting for my eyes to adjust. When, at fifty, I could still barely see the driveway I almost gave up. To walk so far, alone, in such darkness, seemed impossible. Then I remembered Ross’s taunt and set out across the grass. Hawick was only seven miles away. The Romans had marched through Britain at four miles an hour; I could be there in two hours. Perhaps even less, since running, I soon realised, was the best way to stay ahead of fear.

  I slipped on the damp grass and fell once, then again. As soon as I passed the bend and was out of sight of the school I kept to the road. In the lodge all the lights were off. Nevertheless I tiptoed by on the far side, giving a wide berth to Mr. Milne’s van. If he came after me I planned to take to the fields, where my speed was an advantage. Then I was safely past and heading downhill on a road I had not travelled since my first day at Claypoole. The animals in the fields were strangers; the trees had no names.

  At the bottom I turned left and followed the line of willows. Soon I was crossing the river and entering the village of Denholm. Only a few houses still showed lights, but someone could easily look out of an unlit house and see me. I ran from one pool of shadow to the next, dreading to hear a voice shout, “Stop,” but no one called after me; no dog barked. About half a mile beyond the village I heard my first vehicle. I climbed into the ditch and stayed there until the lorry was safely past. It left the silence even more absolute, the darkness even denser. Breathe, I kept saying over and over. I’m coming. Wait for me.

  I had given no thought as to how I would find the hospital. In my mind all I had to do was get to Hawick and there it would be. But as I got closer I began to worry that I would have to search the town, street by street. I had no map, and even if anyone were around—a milkman, say—I would not dare ask for directions. Just past the first houses, though, a sign saying HOSPITAL pointed straight ahead. A few streets later, a second sign pointed to the right. I saw a low stone building with two wings.

  Cautiously I approached the front door and, after peering through the lowest pane of glass, stepped into the empty hallway. I had been to a hospital only once before, when my aunt had had her mysterious operation, and I recognised the same mixture of smells that did not go together. Faintly, I was not sure from what direction, I heard women’s voices. At the end of the hall one arrow pointed to GERIATRIC, MATERNITY, and WOMEN, another to ORTHOPAEDIC, MEN, and CHILDREN. I headed towards CHILDREN, stopping every few yards to listen until I reached an opaque glass door. Holding my breath, I gently pushed it open.

  Fo
ur doors lined the broad hall; one, ajar, spilled a wedge of light. Beyond I glimpsed the ward, with two rows of beds stretching into darkness. I tiptoed past the lit door and approached the nearest bed; the curtains were drawn around it. When I peered between them I saw Miriam by the glow of the bedside light, propped up against several pillows. She wore a faded pink nightdress, unbuttoned at the neck; her pale face seemed even larger. At the sight of me her eyes showed pleasure but no surprise. Perhaps my messages had reached her. I stepped inside the curtains, longing to hear her exclaim over my presence. After my dangerous journey I could feel the blood running through my veins, my lungs effortlessly filling and emptying. It took me a moment to fit myself back inside my skin, to sit down calmly on the edge of the bed and reach for her hand.

  “You’re cold,” I whispered. I slipped off my shoes, and taking care not to jostle her, I climbed under the covers. My first thought was that she smelled different; her flowery fragrance had been banished by something medicinal. In a low voice I told her how worried I had been, that I had walked through the night to take care of her.

  “I saw your father yesterday,” I said. “Is the hospital making you better?”

  “They’re trying. Daddy came and yelled at them this afternoon.”

  “Ross said you were going to die.”

  Miriam sighed. “I might. My head feels very strange.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “I need you.” Even as I spoke, the awful truth came to me: everyone I had ever loved had died.

  “Well, if I can’t, I won’t,” she said. “Tell me a selkie story.”

  Whispering so quietly that it was almost like talking to myself, I began, “Once upon a time in a village by the sea a woman named Margaret lived in a house covered with shells. Her parents were dead but she loved her shells and she loved the sea. She was old enough to be married but . . .”