The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

  As I pushed my bicycle back along the narrow, hilly road I understood that Nell was angry with me, but understanding did not stop me from getting hot and cross. By the time I reached Blackbird Hall all I wanted was to shake her and explain that I might lose my job if she didn’t do me credit. Her bicycle was in the shed, but I knocked at the door of her room in vain. Vicky, shelling peas in the kitchen, hadn’t seen her.

  With less than half an hour until my meeting with Mr. Sinclair, I gave up on Nell and set to work on my own appearance. I had taken to wearing trousers most days, except Sundays. Now I put on black tights, my blue skirt, and a white blouse. I used the mascara I had bought in Kirkwall and brushed my hair until it shone. When I examined myself in the mirror, I was surprised by how serious I looked, and how grown-up. I could easily be nineteen, I thought. Even older.

  I walked downstairs as if I were balancing a book on my head. The library door was ajar. I knocked and, when a voice called “Come in,” stepped inside. A man was standing at the bay window, gazing out at the garden.

  “The stealthy cyclist,” he said, turning to greet me. “Otherwise known as Gemma Hardy.”

  “The inept tyre changer.”

  He did not move but stood looking at me across the length of the room, and I looked back at this man who controlled my future. Vicky had said he was handsome, but to my mind his forehead was a little too low, his eyebrows a little too heavy to deserve that adjective. His hair, longer than I’d ever seen a man’s, almost touched the collar of his white shirt. He wore a blue pullover and dark corduroy trousers. His beautiful shoes were gone, replaced by soft suede ones.

  “How do you do, Mr. Sinclair?” I said, advancing with outstretched hand.

  “Forgive me,” he said, raising his bandaged fingers. “Only a sprain. The doctor claims I’ll be fine in a week or so. Meanwhile I must refrain from being polite, which isn’t usually a hardship. I thought you were bringing Nell.”

  “I’m afraid she’s done a disappearing act.” I spoke lightly, trying to suggest that this was a trivial matter. “We went to the Sands of Evie for a picnic. She took her bike and came home early.”

  “In other words you did something that made her take umbrage. Well, she’ll show up unless the mermaids steal her. She’s a mercenary brat, and she knows me as a bringer of gifts. Tell me, how are her lessons going? Is she making progress?”

  He went over to a trolley that had been empty the day before and which now held a dozen cut-glass decanters and bottles. While I registered the phrase “mercenary brat”—this was not the fond guardian of my imaginings—he poured himself a tumbler of amber-coloured liquid and sat down in the chair I had come to think of as mine.

  “On the principle that I ought not to encourage underage drinking,” he said, “I won’t offer you anything. Sit down. Talk to me.”

  I said firmly that I wasn’t underage, which was now true, and that I didn’t drink.

  “At least not often,” Mr. Sinclair amended. “Last night, when you held the torch for me, I could swear I smelled beer on your breath.”

  To hide my confusion I went over and closed the door. Then I slid shut the window where he’d been standing. “Your niece,” I said, “is an ardent eavesdropper.”

  I sat down in the opposite chair with my hands in my lap and my feet together, Claypoole fashion, and gave a brief report of how Nell had first shunned me and then capitulated. “We made a bargain. She does lessons every day and I read to her from whatever book she chooses. She’s been poorly schooled, but she’s bright. She’s beginning to read. She knows her multiplication tables through times six. And we’re studying nature and Scottish history. Until this afternoon things were going well.”

  He raised his glass and swirled the liquid, as if it were something to admire rather than drink. I saw how dark his eyelashes were and that if he grew a beard it too would be dark. His mouth was the same shape as Nell’s. “Vicky says that too,” he said, “and she says Nell likes you. But you’re wrong about one thing. She hasn’t been poorly schooled; she hasn’t been schooled at all. Her mother had some romantic notion about teaching her at home, but she didn’t have the patience.” He shook his head and, at last, drank. “Enough of Nell. She will speak for herself when she shows up. Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

  I told him I had been at Claypoole School, and answered Vicky’s advertisement. “Yes, yes,” he said, waving away my answers. “I know all that—your youth, your flimsy credentials. I was asking a more existential question, if you know what that means.”

  “Concerned with existence.” I gazed resolutely at the fireplace laid with kindling and blocks of peat. It was too warm to warrant lighting.

  “How stiffly she gives the dictionary definition. Now you’ve taken umbrage. What I’m asking is, how do you come to be wandering this part of the planet?”

  Still looking into the fireplace, I gave a clipped, three-sentence version of my life: dead parents, dead uncle, school.

  “Thank you, Miss Hardy, for that generous, voluble—”

  Before he could finish, the door was flung open and Nell hurled herself across the room. “Uncle Hugh, Uncle Hugh,” she cried. Mr. Sinclair’s drink went flying, the tumbler bouncing harmlessly on the hearthrug. He kissed her forehead, called her a ragamuffin, and set her down. Her hair was tangled, her shirt dirty, her jeans torn at one knee. She could scarcely have done me less credit.

  “So what is this I hear about you running away and tormenting Gemma?”

  “Did you remember my skates?”

  “Has no one taught you your pleases and thank-yous? If you look in the hall you’ll find a box with your name.”

  She was out of the room in a flash. “She reminds me so much of her mother,” he said with a rueful smile.

  While Nell carried in her box and knelt at her uncle’s feet to unwrap its contents, I fetched a cloth and mopped up the whisky. She did get her skates and several records and two books, which she brought to show me: an illustrated encyclopedia and an atlas.

  “These are beautiful,” I exclaimed, and then, trying to sound more teacherly, added that they would be very useful.

  “I always liked those kinds of books,” Mr. Sinclair said. “Facts and pictures.”

  Nell was threading the laces of her skates when I stood up and announced that it was time for supper. “Where are you going?” said Mr. Sinclair. “Are you slipping off for a beer in the village? Oh, I’m sorry. We will not mention that again.”

  Trying to hide my embarrassment, I said it was lucky for him I had been in the village. “You might have hurt more than your finger, wielding spanners in the dark. Nell has supper at six-thirty and I need to prepare tomorrow’s lessons.”

  “All right, all right.” He raised his hands. “I bow to the disciplinarian.”

  To my relief Nell allowed me to lead her from the room. As she ate scrambled eggs she could not stop chattering about her gifts. I had last skated in the corridors of Yew House, but I promised to give her a lesson tomorrow. Surely, like bicycling, the skill would come back. Only when she was safely in bed and I was sitting beside her, reading a bedtime story, did I remark that it had been a long walk back from the beach. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cross with me?”

  “You wouldn’t have listened.” She studied the wallpaper next to her bed. Following her gaze, I saw several neatly drawn cats stalking among the forget-me-nots and daisies.

  “You could have tried,” I said. “Like you do in arithmetic when you try three times.”

  “Arithmetic is different,” she said, still gazing at the flowers. “Six sevens are forty-two.”

  “Very good,” I said and kissed her cheek.

  In bed that night I listened not for the sea but for Mr. Sinclair’s comings and goings. Even though the guest rooms still stood empty, the house felt different: inhabited in a new way, pulsing with life.

  chapter eighteen

  As I stepped out of my room the smell of bacon greet
ed me. At the kitchen table, Nell and I begged shamelessly for extra rashers. The doorbell, which had grown rusty since my arrival, rang just as we finished eating and then every hour or two for the rest of the day. Farmers and neighbours stopped by to greet Mr. Sinclair; members of the local council wanted to discuss a right of way; the golf course committee wanted to plan the summer tournament; the church needed repairs. The kettle was always on the stove, and Vicky was always making cups of tea and arranging plates of shortbread. The cowman’s wife came over in the morning to assist her, and Nora stayed on in the evening to serve supper. Mr. Sinclair either had guests or was one. During the day, when he wasn’t otherwise occupied, he worked with Seamus. One morning, glancing out of the schoolroom window, I saw the two of them, walking across the pasture. In their dark green jackets, dark trousers, and Wellingtons I couldn’t tell them apart. Then the man on the left bent to examine something and I recognised Mr. Sinclair. Later, wandering in the field, I discovered the wild purple orchids common to the island.

  I saw him only fleetingly until Sunday, when he occupied the front pew and read the first lesson: Samuel 1:17. I had last heard the story of David and Goliath when my uncle preached on how the small and weak can triumph over the large and strong. He had described David putting aside his borrowed sword and choosing five smooth stones from the brook. Now, seated next to Nell, I recalled how I had gone down to the river that afternoon, found five stones, and made a sling. But it had proved surprisingly hard to hit even a tree, let alone my cousin Will. “Come to me,” read Mr. Sinclair, “and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.” His voice was like a river: swift, bright, confident. As he turned a page of the Bible with his bandaged fingers, I thought, I was there when that happened; no one else was.

  On Monday, when I bicycled into the village to post my letter to Miss Seftain, I heard a voice shouting, “Hello, hello.” The Gypsy boy I sometimes saw riding the pony was running across the field towards me. I paused astride my bike.

  “My mam says he’s back,” he said breathlessly. His cheeks shone like apples beneath his ginger hair.

  “If you mean Mr. Sinclair, he arrived last week.”

  “My mam needs to talk to him.”

  “Ring the doorbell, like everyone else,” I said, preparing to pedal away.

  “But what should she bring him? A fish, nice and fat, wrapped in seaweed? Or honey from the moors?”

  “Bring him a fish,” I said impulsively. “He can have it for his supper.”

  Before I could add that I was no expert on Mr. Sinclair’s tastes, he was thanking me and darting away across the field. At the post office the postmistress too asked about Mr. Sinclair. She’d heard, she said shyly, that he had a new job that involved meeting the Queen. “Has he said anything about Her Majesty?”

  “Not in my hearing.”

  “If he does, could you ask how tall she is? My sister says she’s her height and I say she’s mine.”

  I promised to ask if I had a chance. As I bicycled home, I pictured Mr. Sinclair bowing to a woman on a throne. She would confide her worries about the theft of the World Cup and the general election and he would give sage advice. But in the days that followed there was no opportunity to enquire about his relations with the monarch, or anything else. Once he emerged briefly from the library to admire Nell’s roller-skating. Another time he came to the schoolroom, but only long enough to hear her six-times table. I knew from Vicky that he might leave at any moment—“I’ll see his luggage in the hall one morning,” she had said—and I began to devise lessons that required visits to the farmyard. I had Nell draw a map of the buildings, and we wrote a story about the rooster. One afternoon when we were playing with the ginger cat’s kittens, Vicky appeared, a bottle of milk in each hand.

  “Would you like to see the latest orphans?” she said.

  She led us to a stall in the barn where two calves, both black and white, their heads much too large for their small bodies, wobbled on sticklike legs. Vicky gave Nell one bottle and then, seeing my face, offered me the other. The calf sucked intently, gazing at me with its dark eyes. When the milk was gone, it nuzzled my hand. That evening I suggested to Vicky that Nell and I take over their feeding.

  “That would be grand,” she said. “I’m so busy with all this company I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

  Nell was delighted by our new project. She named the calves Petula and Herman and drew a portrait of each of them. We measured their height at the shoulder and, with much laughter, their girth and made a chart on which to plot their growth; at first the calves had to be fed four times a day. Still I glimpsed Mr. Sinclair only occasionally, talking to Seamus, or driving away in his sleek black car.

  On Friday I bicycled to the village to see Nora. Her parents had gone to their weekly whist game, but Angus and Todd were both there, and so was Nora’s fiancé. Jock was describing how he’d shoed a pony belonging to the Gypsies. “It was a clever wee thing,” he said. “I asked how many shoes it wanted, and it tapped the ground four times.”

  Nora was still exclaiming as Todd said, “Did you ask it any other questions? How much it weighed? How often it rained this week?” His checked shirt was torn at both elbows.

  Quickly—Jock had turned away, pink and frowning—I described my encounter with the Gypsy boy. “Do you know if his mother ever showed up with the fish?” I asked Nora.

  “I don’t,” she said. “But he’d have enjoyed a nice fresh Gypsy fish.” “He” nowadays was almost always Mr. Sinclair.

  Then Angus, who seldom spoke, piped up that their father had been talking about the storm of ’52, the one that swept away the henhouses. “A fisherman got into trouble off the cliffs. The waves were tall as haystacks, but Mr. Sinclair and his brother rowed out, and helped him get safely into the cove.”

  Todd groaned. “Every village on the island has a story like that. Either a mermaid or the feudal overlord saves someone from drowning. Do you know that three-quarters of this country’s wealth is owned by less than ten percent of the population?”

  “Mr. Sinclair isn’t our feudal overlord,” said Nora, swatting at her brother. “He’s our boss, and we’re always paid on time.”

  Before Todd could say more, she proposed a game of Scrabble, and the next thing I knew, he and I were partners, squabbling over our seven letters on their little shelf. At one point when we had an x he made sex; I changed it to axe, which got us a higher score. He made later on the shelf, and looked at me. The board changed, and it was rattle that fitted. Then we had a y and I unthinkingly made yes.

  “Good one,” he said, patting my arm.

  We lost by twenty-three points and I said I’d better be going. “School tomorrow.”

  Outside I retrieved my bike from beside the garden gate. I was pedalling past the post office when Todd stepped into the road. The next thing I knew, my bike was on the ground and his face was buried in my neck. Axe, I thought.

  “Come,” he said, tugging at my wrist.

  “No. I have to go home.”

  “Please. You’re so pretty. Just for ten minutes.” He found my mouth with his.

  Was it the kiss, or the unexpected idea that I was pretty? “We have to move my bike,” I said.

  He was bending to retrieve it when we both heard the sound of an approaching engine. Headlights swept around the corner. A familiar car came to a stop a few yards away, and a familiar figure climbed out.

  “What happened? Did you have an accident, Gemma?” Then he caught sight of Todd. “Or perhaps you’re about to have one?”

  “I hit a pothole,” I said. “Todd was helping me straighten my front wheel. This is Todd McKay, Nora and Angus’s brother. Todd, this is Mr. Sinclair.”

  “And is it straight now?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll be home shortly.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want Nell’s lessons to suffer in the morning.”

  I was about to pedal off when, beside me, Todd spoke.
“This isn’t the nineteenth century,” he said. “You employ Gemma; you don’t own her. She can do whatever she likes in her time off.”

  “Todd,” I protested. At the same moment Mr. Sinclair said, “Sir Launcelot speaks. Or should I say Mr. Marx? Thank you, Todd, for enlightening me as to which century we’re in. It never occurred to me that I own Gemma, but I am responsible for my niece’s welfare. I want to be sure that the person supervising her education is a good influence, and is keeping company with people of high moral character. Might I suggest that you kindly bugger off?”

  “He was just helping me,” I said. All desire to go with Todd had left me; still I could not hear him unfairly scolded. Without waiting for either my suitor or my employer to respond, I seized my bike, swung my leg over the saddle, and pedalled away. As soon as I was outside the village I stopped at a gateway into a field and crouched there until Mr. Sinclair’s car drove slowly by. Only one road led to Blackbird Hall; he would, I thought, be wondering what had become of me. The idea was oddly pleasing.

  The next day Nell was reading—“The little bear was cross”—when there came a knock at the schoolroom door. “Uncle Hugh,” she exclaimed, dropping her book and jumping up from the table.

  “Good morning, ladies. Don’t let me disturb you.” He sat down at the far end of the table, folded his arms, and, looking first at Nell, who was dancing around, offering to show him our eggshell collection, and then at me, said, “Pray continue.”

  “Nell, you can do that later. Please come and sit down. Let your uncle hear how well you can read.” I squeezed my hands together so hard I could feel the bones bending. Had he come to tell me that I was dismissed? That I was not sufficiently upright to be Nell’s teacher?