The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

  I went at once to make up the bottles. Outside I discovered a fine drizzle was still falling. Following the beam of my torch, I made my way to the farmyard. A hen clucked as I passed the henhouse. In the barn something rustled: probably a rat, probably two rats. I pointed the torch straight ahead until I reached the stall by the door. That morning the calves had been asleep in the straw, but now, wherever I shone the light, the stall was empty. Furious, I strode from the barn across the farmyard. Once again Petula and Herman struggled through the mud towards me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Clumsily, leaning over the gate, I managed to give each a bottle.

  I was in the cloakroom, levering off my Wellingtons, when Nell bounded in, nose pink with excitement, ears askew. While I was gone, she told me, a Gypsy woman had knocked at the door of the hall. She had walked over from the encampment by the village and offered to read the ladies’ hands. Only the ladies, she insisted. She had set herself up in the alcove off the hall. Mrs. Laidlaw had stoutly refused to consult her, and Rosie had said that, as a married woman, she already knew her fortune, but a woman named Frances had gone, and then Coco urged Jill to go and, when her sister returned flushed and smiling, went herself. The girls at Claypoole had sometimes asked Cook to read the tea-leaves, and, before crucial hockey matches, they had plucked the petals off daisies. Neither strategy had struck me as remotely reliable, but a real fortune-teller might be different. That night I would happily have given someone sixpence, even a shilling, to tell me what the next year would bring. “Is she still here?” I said.

  “No, she’s very cross,” Nell said, and I realised she was talking about Coco. When she rejoined the party, she had asked the musicians for an eightsome reel. Then, despite the rain, she had vanished into the garden.

  “And where is your uncle?”

  “He disappeared,” she said, which I took to mean he had followed Coco.

  Please don’t, I thought again. “How about we go to bed,” I suggested. “It’s nearly midnight.”

  Nell swished her tail at me. “Don’t you be cross too. I asked Todd to play a special song. We have to listen. Put your ears on.”

  The library was lit now only by candles and a standard lamp beside the musicians. They were playing a song I had heard on Vicky’s radio and sometimes coming from Nell’s room: “Dedicated to the One I Love.” Many of the guests had left after the buffet and there were only half-a-dozen couples. In the dim light I made out Jill and Colin wrapped in each other’s arms. Rosie and Dale were waltzing stylishly, the Laidlaws awkwardly. Mr. Sinclair and Coco were still missing. I took Nell’s hands and we began to circle the room. As we came near the musicians I felt Todd—almost handsome in his white shirt and kilt—watching me. I blew him a kiss.

  “Look,” said Nell, “there’s Vicky.”

  And indeed Vicky was waltzing with a man. One of the guests, I thought, until they turned and I recognised Seamus. His hair had been trimmed, and his face, freshly shaved, shone. Brother and sister, they made a striking couple: tall and strong and matching each other step for step. Also striking was the expression on Seamus’s face, some combination of melancholy and joy I had never seen before. I steered Nell away. We were at the far end of the room when the overhead lights went on.

  “Stop, stop,” Coco shouted. Both her hair and her turquoise gown were darkened by rain, and her fins hung limply by her sides.

  First one couple, then another halted uncertainly. So did the musicians.

  “Don’t you know you’re dancing on board the Titanic? Everything you see here belongs to the bank. You’ll get a bill in the morning for your food.” She wheeled around to address the musicians. “When you get paid—if you get paid—hold the notes up to the light.”

  I searched the room for Jill, but she and Colin must have slipped away during the song. Mr. Sinclair appeared beside me. He had been standing, unobserved, in the shadow of the curtains. “Take Nell to bed,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t need to see this.”

  But Nell had let go of my hand and was walking the length of the room, a small black figure. She stopped in front of Coco, a cat confronting a mermaid.

  “You should take two aspirin,” she said, “drink a big glass of water, and go to bed.”

  “Who the hell do you—”

  I did not hear the rest of her sentence. All I saw was Coco’s raised hand. Then I was running. Mr. Sinclair and I reached them at the same time. While he restrained Coco, I put my arms around Nell.

  “Time to read Horace Goes Hunting,” I said. “After midnight cats turn into little girls.” For once she followed without argument.

  In bed Nell fell asleep almost instantly, but my mind was racing. Might Blackbird Hall, like Claypoole, be about to go bankrupt? Everything seemed safe and prosperous—we had meat for lunch six days a week; the peat fires were stoked high—but then that had been true at the school too. Except for the dwindling number of pupils everything had seemed the same. Perhaps Mr. Sinclair had confided in Coco, or perhaps the mysterious fortune-teller had told her something. What was it she had said in the garden the other night? Something about how he had muddled an investment? Nell sighed and shifted in her sleep. What would become of her, and of me, if we had to leave the island? From the corridor came a wild cry, followed by footsteps. A few minutes later a car drove away, and a few minutes after that the same car, or a different one, returned.

  The next morning I came downstairs to find Nora and Vicky mopping the library floor. No one else was around. Mr. Sinclair had driven Colin, Jill, and Coco to the airport. The Laidlaws had gone home, taking Rosie and Dale, whom they knew from Edinburgh, with them. “The house is so quiet,” Nell said, and I agreed. I forced myself to go through our timetable: reading, spelling, copying, sums, nature. Nell drew portraits of various guests, and we labelled them and put them up around the schoolroom. But all the time I was listening for a car, a footstep, a voice that didn’t come. What if he had decided to take a plane too and was already gone? But why should that matter when in a few days, a few weeks at most, he would be anyway? He had never, as an adult, lived at Blackbird Hall. I had pretended to be a good teacher, entirely dedicated to my pupil; now I would have every opportunity to make real on the pretence.

  chapter twenty-one

  All day the silence persisted. Only Seamus’s Land Rover and the greengrocer’s van used the track. Even the sheep and cows seemed subdued, and the swallows, nesting under the eaves, twittered faintly as they came and went. At last, when I could no longer stand it, I went to the kitchen on the pretext of making Nell a bedtime treat of hot chocolate. Vicky was at the table, sorting eggs. Now that the ferry strike had ended we were again sending them to the mainland twice a week. As I set a saucepan of milk on the stove, I said that Nell had been asking after her uncle’s whereabouts.

  “I’ve not an inkling,” said Vicky. “He drove off this morning without a word.”

  “Did he take his things?” I had turned from the stove to watch her, as if her face might tell me what her words wouldn’t.

  “No. With the girls’ suitcases there wasn’t an inch of space.”

  “So he’ll be back,” I said. “I can tell Nell she’ll see him again.”

  “Maybe.” Vicky held up two eggs, one brown, one white, and put both in the carton to her right. “Last August he left almost everything. I packed his case and sent it to London.”

  “He’d leave without saying goodbye to his only relative?”

  “I couldn’t rightly—the milk.”

  Before I could seize the pan, milk gushed over the sides; the kitchen filled with a burning smell. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Not to worry,” said Vicky. “There’s plenty more in the larder. Mr. Sinclair’s business is Mr. Sinclair’s business. He pays you and me to be companions to Nell so he won’t have to think about her.”

  She was warning me, I knew, from further questions, but as I poured fresh milk, I could not help asking, “Is it true he might
go bankrupt?”

  A little cracking sound meant one less egg to market. “Heavens,” said Vicky, setting the broken egg aside. “I hope not. I do know that the farm doesn’t make a penny, even though the cattle bring a good price. But it didn’t under old Mr. Sinclair either, and he knew the land like his own garden. Tell Nell she’ll hear from her uncle soon. She can always talk to him on the phone.”

  “Of course,” I said. “She’ll like that.”

  Later, long after Nell and Vicky were both in bed, I walked down the track to the gate. In the west the sky was still light and the bats were out, uttering their high-pitched cries. From the fields came the lonely, fluting call of the curlews. The beauty of the evening only made me lonelier. And what was I lonely for? I asked as I climbed on the gate and gazed down the road along which any car must come. I was used to being alone and I had more friends here than I had had at any time since my uncle died. But I remembered how Mr. Sinclair had talked to me when the bee stung my hand, and how later he had asked my views about God, as if my answer mattered. In those moments I had felt seen by him, and I wanted, I thought as a bat swooped by, to go on being seen.

  The next morning, when I stepped out of my room, the familiar fragrance of bacon greeted me. Not daring to think what it might portend, I hurried down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, was Mr. Sinclair at the stove, wearing one of Vicky’s flowery aprons.

  “You’re just in time,” he declared. “What will it be? The full British breakfast? The more ladylike Orcadian?”

  “What’s the full British?”

  “Bacon, eggs, mushrooms, toast. Oh, and fried tomatoes.”

  “Yes, please. Shall I make the toast? And one for Nell too.”

  “Two full British coming up.” He waved the spatula for emphasis. “How would you feel about cancelling lessons today?”

  “I’d want a good reason,” I said, sawing at the loaf. “We already missed a day going to Skara Brae.”

  “What a Tartar you are. As your employer”—he began to crack eggs, one-handed, into the frying pan—“I am proposing that Vicky take Nell to Kirkwall to buy some clothes.”

  I said, truthfully, that I’d been meaning to ask about Nell’s wardrobe. She’d grown in the last few months and almost everything she owned was too small. Then I remembered Coco’s claim. If he was on the edge of financial ruin he shouldn’t be squandering money on clothes, but it was not my place to say so. Instead I said that sometimes Nell and Vicky quarrelled. Maybe I should go along to arbitrate.

  “No.” He sliced a tomato and put the two halves facedown in the pan. “I have other plans for you. We’ll explain to Nell.”

  At the sound of her name Nell appeared and was delighted at the unexpected treats of a cooked breakfast and her uncle’s company. Watching her skipping around as she set the table, I scarcely recognised the cross, pinch-faced girl who, only a few months ago, had thrown the jigsaw puzzle to the floor. Her cheeks held some colour; her hair was neatly brushed. Even her eyes seemed larger and brighter. I buttered the toast and we sat down to eat. According to Mr. Sinclair, the eggs were a little overcooked, but Nell said they were perfect and I thought, but didn’t say, that it was the best breakfast I’d eaten since the day of Miriam’s death. We were mopping our plates when Vicky appeared, wearing one of her Sunday skirts. “Heavens,” she said. “Look at my kitchen.”

  Mr. Sinclair told her to leave things be. “I don’t promise to do the washing-up,” he said, “but everything will be assembled in an orderly fashion.” He handed her a sheaf of bank-notes and instructed her to buy Nell whatever clothes she needed and have a nice lunch. I detected no signs of anxiety as he put his wallet away.

  “And what about Gemma?” said Nell, tugging playfully at the ravelled edge of my pullover. “She needs clothes too.”

  It was true—our expeditions and games had taken their toll—but I blushed to hear her draw attention to my shabby wardrobe. Happily Mr. Sinclair seemed not to notice; he and I, he explained, were going to plan her studies for the autumn. This seemed to satisfy Nell, but I could not help suspecting that something less pleasant was afoot. As I went to feed the hens and calves, a flock of speculations assailed me: Did he need to sell the house? Had he decided to send Nell to school? Was he going to hire a new au pair? The three-months trial had come and gone, unacknowledged, with no talk about the subsequent terms of my employment.

  Back at the house I retreated to the schoolroom. Disconsolately I laid out books and began to make a list. Until I heard otherwise I would go through the motions. We needed a new copying book, and a geography book, and surely there must be a collection of poems and stories for a girl Nell’s age, though what did any of it matter if I was being sent away? I was listlessly turning the pages of the arithmetic book—if Janet has two apples and Richard has three—when there was a knock at the door.

  “Very diligent.” He hadn’t visited the schoolroom since the day I was stung. Now he glanced around the room, taking in Nell’s drawings. “She has a good eye,” he remarked, studying her picture of Petula and Herman. “I need you to advise me about lunch.”

  “Lunch for whom?” I said, closing the book.

  “You and me. We’re going on an outing.”

  I did not give him the satisfaction of asking where.

  In the kitchen, while he made ham and cheese sandwiches, I gathered apples and chocolate biscuits and a bottle of lemonade. Twenty minutes later we were in his car, driving along the track. As we drew up to the gate I readied myself to climb out, but Mr. Sinclair was already walking towards it. What time had he returned last night? I wondered. If I had kept my vigil a little longer would we have met?

  “I can close it,” I said when he returned.

  “Indeed you can,” he said, driving through the gate, and nimbly climbing out again.

  When we were once more bumping along, I said I wanted to ask about piano lessons for Nell. “She keeps trying to play. I’m sure she’d study hard.”

  “Maybe I should sell that piano. Look, there’s Seamus’s bull.”

  Black and massive, the bull was standing beside the gate of a field. As we slowed down, he raised his head and gave a sonorous bellow.

  “He’s calling to his concubines,” said Mr. Sinclair. “What I don’t understand is why he doesn’t just charge the gate and hunt them down. You only have to look at him to know he easily could.”

  “He’s domesticated,” I said. “He’s been taught not to charge gates.”

  “Is that what domesticated means? Knowing what you should and shouldn’t do?”

  “Not just knowing. Doing it. See, even the goldfinch isn’t afraid of him.” I pointed to the bird perched on the wall not far from the gate.

  The bull let loose another bellow. Something about the mixture of desire and helplessness made me uneasy, and I was glad when Mr. Sinclair put the car in gear and drove on. As the bellowing faded he asked how I knew so much about birds.

  “My uncle. He loved Roman remains and bird-watching.”

  “Digging and flying. And whereabouts did he do these things?”

  Question by question he whittled away my determination not to talk about the past. I told him about my parents and Iceland, my uncle’s untimely death, my aunt and Claypoole. He asked if I remembered my parents, and I said no but that I thought about my uncle almost every day.

  “So,” he declared, “you’re an orphan twice over. Like Nell.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What happened to her mother?”

  “I’m still not sure I know.” His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel; suddenly the fields were flying by. “At eighteen my sister seemed destined to lead a charmed life. She was clever, pretty, a wonderful horsewoman, and she had a lovely singing voice. But all she really cared about was riding, and the accident took that away.”

  His voice faltered as he described how determined his sister had been after her fall. “She learned to walk, to drive, to climb stairs. My father kept saying she had the Sinclai
r backbone. What we didn’t realise was that all her efforts were aimed at riding again. She insisted they keep her horse. Seamus rode him for her, and she’d have him trot by the house so that she could watch. Then, when I was visiting at Easter, she asked me to saddle Mercury. We had a furious row.”

  He braked and I glimpsed the white flick of a rabbit’s tail as it dashed across the road.

  “The next day I happened to look out of the window, and there she was on Mercury. Seamus was holding the reins. Even from a distance I could see they were arguing. Suddenly Alison broke free and started cantering across the field. I dashed downstairs. By the time I got there Seamus was carrying her back to the house. A month later she moved to Glasgow.”

  He fell silent. When it seemed that he was not going to speak again, I reported what Vicky had said: Alison’s heart had failed.

  Mr. Sinclair let out a soft sigh. “My father had some old friends in Glasgow. The coroner was kind. She became addicted to painkillers, then to other things as well. A pretty girl with money, she could get whatever she wanted.” He waved, as if the walls that lined the road were stocked with mysterious substances. “My disapproval just made her secretive. Nell was alone with her when she died. We don’t really know what happened.”

  “What about Nell’s father?”

  “The birth certificate says father unknown. I suspect that was true, even for Alison.”

  “So you’re Nell’s only relative?”

  “Yes, we’re the last of the Sinclairs, though if you go back far enough Vicky and Seamus are distant cousins. Now perhaps you can understand why I’m not keen on piano lessons. I didn’t care for Alison’s musician friends, drinking too much and hoping to get lucky.”