“May you always be so redoubtable, Hardy. Have you noticed a magazine on the table in the front hall called The Lady? It has advertisements for au pairs and nannies, even the odd governess, though they’re out of fashion. Is that a crow?”
“No, a jackdaw. See how it’s partly grey and partly black? People say they’re very intelligent. You can tame them.”
“Not me,” said Miss Seftain.
As if it understood, the jackdaw took wing.
I had never, during all my years of dusting, felt tempted to open The Lady—both the name and the decorous covers promised tedium—but that night instead of doing homework I went to the hall and carried off the two copies to the Primary 7 classroom. Sitting at my old desk, I turned to the advertisements. Several were for assistants to elderly people, or domestic staff. The rest, as Miss Seftain had said, were for nannies. Each threw open a door.
Nanny wanted for three well-behaved boys, 7, 9 and 13. Some housework and cooking. Self-contained flat. Central London.
My own flat in London! I saw myself walking down the streets whose names I knew from Monopoly, going to bookshops and museums. Then I imagined being alone in a house, day after day, with Will and his loutish friends. I must look for a situation with only one child, I thought, a younger, smaller child.
An advertisement for a governess for a nine-year-old girl in Geneva, Switzerland, seemed promising—I pictured Heidi and her goats—until I came to the phrase “passport essential.” Cleaning the dormitories, I had several times come across a passport and studied the little booklet with fascination.
After reading the advertisements in both issues, looking for jobs in Britain that involved one younger child and no special skills, I had circled four possibilities.
Experienced, live-in au pair sought for seven-year-old girl. Must be reliable, nonsmoker, able to assist with homework and deal with occasional tantrums. References. Suffolk.
Nanny for four-year-old boy. Mother invalid. Father travels. Capable of supervising domestic staff and making decisions. Room with basin, c.h. References. Brighton.
Widower, 42, seeks companion for eleven-year-old daughter. Cosy cottage, use of car and good salary for right person prepared to make long-term commitment. References. Cornwall.
And in the last column of the second magazine:
Nanny desperately needed in north of Scotland for eight-year-old girl. No housekeeping or cooking. Must be prepared to supervise lessons, read, play, and go for walks. References. Mainland. The Orkneys.
At the sight of the address, Mrs. Marsden’s stories of soldiers and seals came flooding back. It was as if fate had tapped me on the shoulder.
I had had no occasion to write a letter since my attempt to reach Mr. Donaldson. The next day, using his stationery and borrowing fresh envelopes from Miss Seftain, I wrote to all four advertisements, saying what a good teacher I was and how fond of children. At the end of each letter I put, as Miss Seftain had instructed, “References on request.” The following afternoon I queued up behind three regular pupils outside Miss Bryant’s study. No working girl, to my knowledge, had ever visited her voluntarily, but she did not seem surprised to see me walking across the blue carpet. I described my applications and asked if she would act as a reference.
“For once, Hardy, I’m glad you’re showing initiative. I think I can truthfully say you are a conscientious worker and mature for your age.”
“And maybe,” I suggested, “you don’t need to say exactly how old I am. I’ll be eighteen in a couple of months.”
“Let’s pretend”—she made a quick note on a pad of paper—“that your birthday is next week.”
A week after I dispatched my letters a heavy cream envelope, bearing my name, lay on the hall table. The widower in Cornwall wrote that I sounded delightful and that, if I lived nearby, he would have invited me to tea. “I very much regret,” he continued, “that, while both I and my daughter would enjoy the company of a school-leaver, we really need someone older to provide stability to our household.” The fact that my letter had summoned a response, even a refusal, seemed almost miraculous. I read the half-dozen lines over and over. Miss Seftain, however, was less impressed. “ ‘Enjoy the company of a school-leaver’ indeed. You’re well out of that one.”
Another week passed and I began to worry that I had received my only reply. Even the desperate person on the Orkneys had found someone closer to home. A new copy of The Lady arrived and I sent off three more enquiries: one to Edinburgh, two to London. The next day, while I was polishing the corridor, Miss Bryant stepped out of her study to ask if I had news. I confessed my single refusal.
“Well, if you apply for more jobs, come to me. I can include a brief reference. By the way,” she added, and I guessed that this was the real reason she had emerged, “I wrote to your aunt when I wrote to the other parents. She has not replied. I’ve never”—her bony forehead quivered—“known a guardian to show less interest in a ward.”
She walked off down the shining corridor, leaving me to stare after her. Everyone was changing before my eyes.
That night I dreamed I was back in my room at Yew House, listening, as I had on so many evenings, to the noises from below. Then, suddenly, I was downstairs, peering around the sitting-room door. My aunt lay sprawled on the chintz-covered sofa, in the arms of Mr. Carruthers. Around them pranced Louise and Veronica, wearing party clothes. I crossed the corridor to my uncle’s study. He was at his desk, writing.
“Why, Gemma”—he smiled—“you’re just in time to help with my sermon.”
“But my aunt, do you know what she’s doing?”
“With Mr. Carruthers? Of course. She never much cared for either of us. And it’s worse now that you’re growing up and I’m dead. Tell me what to say after islands and stepping-stones?”
I suggested life belts. “Yes,” he said, “we can rescue each other.” While I stood beside him, he wrote down everything I said. Then the door burst open and Will was standing over us, his neck bulging.
“You’re not my father,” he shouted. “You’re not my father.”
And I was shouting back, until Findlayson shook my shoulder.
The next day a blue envelope addressed in neat, rounded handwriting lay on the hall table. Once again ignoring my duties, I carried it over to the pigs. Even while I held it in my hand, I whispered, “Let someone want me. Let someone want me,” as if the contents could still change. At the sight of me the pigs, several generations on from the original Heidi and Thumbelina, rushed to the trough, only to fall back when they realised I had no food. I sat on the fence to read.
Blackbird Hall
Near Tingwall
The Mainland
The Orkneys
Tel. Tingwall 235
28 January 1966
Dear Miss Hardy,
Sorry for the late reply. Let me tell you the situation. We live in the northeast part of the main island (though you may not know the islands—your letter doesn’t say). Besides the house and the farm we, my brother and I, have in our care an eight-year-old girl. Nell’s mother died last year, and since then she’s been running wild. There’s no father in the picture. I don’t have time to keep her company or supervise her lessons. If you are still free, I offer you a tomboy for a pupil and more weather than any person should have to deal with. This is a lonely place—except for the birds!—and whoever comes here needs to be forewarned. You are obviously very young but perhaps Nell will like that. She ran away from the nice woman we found to mind her in the autumn.
I propose a three-month trial. If you can, please telephone to make the arrangements. Of course we will advance your fare for the train and the ferry. I am authorised to pay you five pounds a week plus board and lodging.
Kind regards,
Vicky Sinclair
Surely, I thought, it was another good omen that the house was called after one of my favourite birds. But who did the wild girl belong to, I wondered, and who had done the authorising? From behind me c
ame a grunt. I put the letter in my pocket and stood up to scratch Thumbelina the Second. “I’m going away soon,” I told her. She put her trotters on the edge of the trough and reached her wet snout towards me. If pigs could talk, I thought, we could not understand them.
No one was enthusiastic about my job. Miss Seftain called the Orkneys a godforsaken place. Matron said Nell sounded like a troubled child. Cook said, “For heaven’s sake, Hardy, why would you want to mind some brat in the back of beyond?” Dr. White still hoped I could take my Highers and apply for university. But no one could deny—I had had two more polite rejections—that I had no alternative. Miss Bryant told me to come to her study after six, when the rates went down, to telephone Miss Sinclair.
I had never made a phone call before. It was, I understood, a reliable way of doing what I had attempted with Miriam—talking to a person at a distance—but nothing had prepared me for the experience of holding a piece of black plastic to my ear and hearing a woman, nearly three hundred miles away, say in a light sing-song voice, “Good evening. Blackbird Hall.”
“This is Gemma Hardy,” I said. Across the room Miss Bryant frowned and mouthed something I couldn’t decipher. “I’d like the job, please. I’m used to loneliness and I know about birds. I can teach Nell sums and writing, and Latin when she’s older.”
“You can teach her if you can catch her,” said Miss Sinclair. “She led her last teacher a merry dance.”
She promised to mail a postal order for my fare the next day and asked if I could come the following week. If I left Hawick on Monday, she explained, I could catch the Tuesday ferry. She would book me a room at a bed-and-breakfast near the station in Thurso. “My brother will meet the ferry,” she said. “See you soon.”
I replaced the receiver and reported the conversation to Miss Bryant. She shook her head. “I hope we’ve made the right choice, Hardy,” she said. “I’ve never sent a girl so far away. I can’t help wondering why they didn’t get someone local. There are two good-sized towns on the Orkneys.”
I had not thought of this before and I did not care to think of it now; no local girl, I was sure, knew Latin as well as I did. I curtseyed and left the room. Two days later a postal order for twenty pounds arrived. As she handed me four five-pound notes Miss Bryant said she had asked Matron to help me sort out my wardrobe.
For nearly seven years I had sported more or less ill-fitting versions of the school uniform. In the holidays I had worn cast-off skirts and blouses and then, as fashions changed, pullovers and trousers. Now, with Matron’s help, I went through the overflowing lost-property box and chose various garments, which we laundered and repaired: a nice blue skirt, and a plaid one, several blouses and T-shirts, a cardigan, four pullovers, three pairs of trousers, and a blue pinafore that made me feel awkward but that she claimed was becoming. She insisted that I take the warmest coat that fitted me, an almost new anorak, and several pairs of shoes. To carry all this she presented me with a second suitcase and then, her parting gift, a green paisley dress that had belonged to one of the prefects. Matron was the only other person who was unequivocally happy about Claypoole closing. She showed me a photograph of a woman and three windswept children on a mountaintop.
“My daughter,” she said. “In the Lake District.”
When I wasn’t organising my clothes I made my modest round of farewells. Miss Seftain gave me a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and a cardigan. Dr. White shook my hand and gave me a watch. “So you’ll be able to scold your pupil when she’s late. Sister Cullen wishes you godspeed.” On Sunday Miss Bryant invited me to sit in the dining-room for my last meal, but I declined. After years of eating perched on an upturned milk crate, I had no desire to sit at a table and be ignored. That night’s pudding was the detested tapioca, but in the kitchen, Cook produced a trifle in my honour. Ignoring the washing-up, we clustered around the table to devour the sweet fruit and custard.
“So why the special pud?” said Findlayson. She and I were the last of the original working girls.
“Hardy’s leaving,” said Cook. “We’re wishing her bon voyage.”
“But not,” said Findlayson smugly, “au revoir.”
An hour later, as I was about to climb into bed, I felt her watching me from across the room. Peeling back the sheets, I found two slices of bread and jam. I set them on the floor for the mice to enjoy and resigned myself to sleeping between the blankets. But the incident had cast me into a wakeful state; my mind travelled back to my last night at Yew House. As soon as I had saved enough money, I vowed, I would search for Mr. Donaldson. Meanwhile it came to me that I wanted a souvenir of Miriam. Not caring who heard me, I got out of bed and made my way to the library. Inside the almost full moon was spilling its silvery radiance through the windows. I walked unhesitatingly to the shelves where novels were kept. I was peering at the titles when a slight noise made me turn.
The young man, wearing his white shirt and dark trousers, was sitting at the piano. He played the first notes of “Auld Lang Syne,” then swung around to face me. “I spent a year in the Orkneys,” he said, “based at Scapa Flow. When we had time off we went fishing among the shipwrecks. For some reason fish are partial to wrecks; maybe they like having a house under the water.”
“Will you visit me there?”
“I think my visiting days are over,” he said quietly, “but you never know. Be careful of the causeway.”
Before I could ask what causeway, he stood up, walked to the far door—his footsteps were as audible as his playing—and, with a brief wave, left the room. Alone I took down the slim red volume of Kim. Then I sat down at the piano and played the one tune Miriam had managed to teach me: “Auld Lang Syne.”
PART III
chapter fifteen
The next morning Miss Bryant was waiting in the hall. She was beautifully dressed—I had never seen her otherwise—but the invisible shield that had made it hard to look at her directly was gone. I saw deep shadows beneath her eyes, a soft droop of flesh beneath her chin. Her subjects were leaving, her empire was vanishing; she was unlikely to find another.
“Goodbye, Hardy,” she said. “Here is the address where I can be reached in the foreseeable future. I hope at some point—ten years from now, perhaps twenty—you will realise that you learned some valuable lessons at Claypoole.” As if we were at a school prize-giving, she handed me an envelope and shook my hand.
“Goodbye, Miss Bryant,” I said cheerfully. “Don’t let your sister-in-law clean you out of house and home.”
My new shoes squeaking with every step, I walked across the floor I had polished so often and, for the first time in seven years, used the front door. Outside the inevitable minivan was waiting, with the inevitable Mr. Milne at the wheel. But in the van, there was a surprise. In the corner, toadlike in her brown coat, squatted his wife. She did not look at me as I slid onto the other end of the seat, but she was not ignoring me, as Miss Bryant and the other girls so often had. I could feel the hatred pouring out of her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Milne,” I said.
Her eyes slid round to glare at me.
“It looks like it might be a nice day,” I responded, nodding towards the leaden clouds.
On the damp grass several blackbirds, descendants perhaps of the fledglings Ross and I had watched over, were searching for worms. At last I was the one leaving and the birds were staying. We drove through the school grounds in silence. Then, as we passed the lodge, Mrs. Milne began to speak. Her words, at first, were barely audible above the engine; yard by yard they grew clearer.
“—old geezer. Thought he could be Galahad forever. Those girls seemed to think so too. They didn’t see my nightly treat: an old man with a belly and prickly balls. No, they scampered around with their bare knees and their little—”
The hair on my arms rose. This was not like Mr. Milne’s outburst when he drove me back from Hawick, an attempt by one person to reach another. Rather Mrs. Milne was releasing the voice inside her head that most peo
ple learn, even when they’re very young, not to let out.
“My mother used to talk about working her fingers to the bone. I’d squeeze her hand, and say these aren’t bones. Now . . .”
Meanwhile her husband drove steadily, seemingly oblivious, but beneath his grey hair his ears had turned scarlet. When we pulled up in front of the station, I turned to Mrs. Milne and offered the least appropriate farewell I could think of: Veronica’s to me, years ago. “Goodbye, Mrs. Milne. I hope you have a happy life.”
On the pavement, as Mr. Milne lifted out my suitcases, I noticed that his dungarees no longer struggled to contain his belly; his flesh, along with his job, was disappearing. I was about to offer my hand—I had no wish to part enemies—when he too fired a parting shot.
“It seems right, your leaving early. You were never really a Claypoole girl, not even a Claypoole working girl. For some reason—Christ knows why—you think you’re so much better than the rest of us. After that business with the cripple, Miss Bryant tried to get rid of you, but no one else would have you. We’re all glad to see the back of you.”
While he continued to list my shortcomings, I gathered my thoughts. When at last he spluttered to a close, I drew myself up to my full height. “May no one ever give you a job,” I said. “And may you have to take care of your wife for a hundred years.”
Before he could respond I picked up the larger of the suitcases and dragged it into the station. By the time I returned for the second case, the van was gone. Standing in the queue at the ticket office, I found myself gulping cold air. My mouth burned as if each word I’d spoken had been a fiery nugget. My curse wasn’t written on a lead tablet and offered to Sulis, but I hoped it would nonetheless prove effective. When I reached the window, I asked for a second-class single to Thurso.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy Page 13
