The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

  The following Thursday I found myself, as I hardly ever did, having lunch alone with Pauline. She had come home unexpectedly, and Hannah had stayed out in the pottery to work on a set of bowls. After praising the Scotch broth, Pauline said that Archie had stopped in at the chemist’s that morning. He’d heard of a job that might suit me. I sat up straight, ignoring my soup, while she explained that a woman who lived in the village of Weem needed help with her grandson.

  “It sounds perfect,” Pauline said. “Archie says she’ll pay you twenty pounds a month and board and lodging.”

  But I don’t need lodging, I wanted to say. “How far away is Weem?” I asked. “Do you know her?”

  “Twenty minutes’ walk? Half an hour? It’s just across the river. You can ask Archie when he comes to supper. He knows Mrs. MacGillvary much better than I do. I’ll take some tea out to Hannah.” She got up quickly and I knew she was ducking my real questions: Did I have to take the job if I hated Mrs. MacGillvary? If I took the job, did I have to live there?

  Leaving a note saying I’d gone for a walk, I headed up the hill with Emily. As soon as I closed the gate of the field she took off, zigzagging after rabbits, real and imaginary. I trudged behind her. So much for my good soup, for the shopping and cleaning I’d done that morning. And it was not just the housework. In the evenings the three of us read, or played cards, or watched television. Sometimes Pauline would play one of her records. “Listen to what happens to the violins here,” she would say, and Hannah and I would lean forward, trying to catch her meaning. My thoughts of Mr. Sinclair, of Nell, of all that I had lost, were always present, but gradually I had allowed myself to believe that I was indispensable to their household. Now I knew I was wrong.

  At the top of the field I leaned on the gate to look out across the valley. There, on the far side, was the forbidding ruin of Castle Menzies and above and behind it the crags known as Weem Rock. To the east of the castle I could see the rooftops of the village; perhaps even now I was looking at the MacGillvarys’ house. I called to Emily and she bounded up, rabbitless but cheerful. We dropped down into the Birks.

  That evening, over the nut loaf I had painstakingly made, Archie told us that the MacGillvarys had lived in the valley for thirty years. George was a surveyor. Marian gave piano lessons. Years ago they had adopted two children, both a disaster. The boy had been in and out of trouble with the police and had at last settled in Newcastle. As for Ginnie, the kindest thing people could say about her was that she was high-strung. Without telling her parents, she had married an Italian. Two years ago she had shown up with Robin and announced that she was moving to Rome.

  “It was a lot to cope with,” Archie said, “becoming parents again at their age. Then last April George had a stroke. He used to climb a hill in the morning, translate The Odyssey in the afternoon. Now going to the bathroom is a major expedition. I told Marian you’d come round tomorrow at four to see if you suit each other.”

  With each new detail my heart sank further, but Hannah and Pauline kept nodding eagerly. Only a few days ago Pauline had hugged me and said I was the little sister she’d never had. No, Hannah had said. She’s my little sister. How stupid I had been to believe them. As soon as I could I retreated to bed.

  The next morning, when I took Hannah’s coffee out to the pottery, she was at her wheel, a bowl rising between her hands. “If you can’t stand Mrs. MacGillvary,” she said, not taking her eyes off the clay, “you don’t have to do this. And if it’s awful, you can come back.”

  “I can?” I said, almost spilling the coffee. From one moment to the next the horror of the MacGillvarys faded. I didn’t have to go; I could stay in my blue room and look for another job. But even as I set the coffee down, I remembered Pauline’s claim that the job sounded perfect, and how pleased she and Hannah had both seemed the night before.

  “Does Pauline think that too?” I said carefully. “I worry I’ve already trespassed on your hospitality long enough.”

  Hannah started to laugh, and the sides of the bowl trembled. “Sometimes you can be so Scottish, Jean. Just like Archie. You aren’t a trespasser or, at this stage, even an honoured guest.”

  So what am I? I wanted to say, but Hannah’s attention was once again focused on the wheel. Watching her hands shape the clay, I knew she would not give the answers I craved: a beloved family member, an almost sister, a dear friend. She was offering me a reprieve, I thought, not a home.

  chapter twenty-seven

  After lunch I changed into the blue cardigan and black corduroy trousers I had worn to visit the jeweller’s shop. I wanted Mrs. MacGillvary to be talking to Gemma Hardy as well as Jean Harvey. As I crossed Wade’s Bridge and walked along the road lined with poplars that led to the far side of the valley, I pictured the household: a drooling, walleyed child, a hatchet-faced woman who had driven both of her adopted children away, and, somewhere out of sight, a furious, motionless man. The house would be sepulchral and reek of cabbage and medicine. Archie had drawn me a map marking the two churches in Weem and the MacGillvarys’ house behind them. It had, he explained, no name. “I used to tell George he didn’t deserve to get his mail. He always said they’d managed fine without a name for a hundred and fifty years.”

  But when I turned up the track between the churches, the house looked neither gloomy nor nameless. The windows shone, and in the garden chrysanthemums and dahlias bloomed. My knock was answered by a woman with pale yellow hair and a gentle smile, so different from the woman of my imaginings that I asked for Mrs. MacGillvary.

  “You must be Jean.” She smiled again and held out her hand. “I’m Marian.”

  She ushered me into a sitting-room. “Robin just woke up,” she said. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  At one end of the room, near the French windows, stood a grand piano, the gleaming lid ajar. I played middle C and then, as the note hung in the air, wondered if I should have asked permission. Quickly I moved over to the bookcase. I recognised a collected works of Shakespeare that had been in the library at Claypoole. Then my eyes fell on a novel titled He Knew He Was Right; I was examining the frontispiece when the door opened. Marian reappeared with a small boy in her arms, his face hidden in the crook of her neck.

  “He’ll be raring to go in a minute,” she said. “Do you have much experience with children, Jean?”

  I had been so busy with my gothic imaginings that I had failed to consider what questions Marian might ask. Now, with no time to invent, I said that my last position had been as an au pair to an eight-year-old girl. I could teach reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, Latin . . .

  “Wonderful,” said Marian. “You’ll appreciate George’s books. But Robin is not quite at that stage. What he needs is someone who’ll play with him and teach him his letters and numbers. I want him to be ready for school next year. You’ll find”—she smoothed his hair—“that he’s very sensitive. He gets upset when he feels rushed, or when someone is cross.”

  She was assuming, I realised, that the job was mine. To my surprise, I felt a gust of relief at the prospect of clear duties, and a bed that depended on work, not favour. As Marian spoke, Robin at last raised his head. His eyes were as round and blue as one of Hannah’s bowls.

  “Hello, Robin,” I said. “I’m Jean.” I lifted my hand in a little wave. After a moment he waved back.

  The following morning, when Hannah dropped me and my borrowed suitcase off, there was a note on the door: Gone shopping. Make yourself at home. On the kitchen table was a cup, a box of tea-bags, and a plate of biscuits. Why would anyone run away from a mother like this? I wondered. But Marian was not my mother, and as I sat at the table, surveying the geraniums on the window-sill, the cheerful plates on the settle, I could not help wondering what I was doing here, babysitting a little boy, with no chance to find Mr. Donaldson, or to study for university. My life had not merely come to a standstill; it was in reverse.

  A dull thud interrupted my thoughts. I had f
orgotten about Mr. MacGillvary. Worried that he would suddenly lurch into the kitchen, I jumped to my feet. A second thud drove me out to the garden. Wanting to appear busy, I began to deadhead the roses. I was on the second flower-bed when a car drew up. Robin waved from the passenger seat, and Marian, as soon as she got out, apologised for not being home to welcome me. Together we carried in the groceries. She settled Robin with his toy cars on the kitchen floor and said she would show me around.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard,” she said as she led the way upstairs, “that George has been poorly. He’s still convalescing.”

  “Archie told me.”

  I was bracing myself to confront a nightmare, but the man I saw when she opened the door might have been on his way to an office. He was seated in an upright armchair, dressed in a three-piece suit, a handkerchief folded in his breast pocket, his tie neatly knotted, his shoes polished. Only as I came closer did I take in his drooping mouth, his unfocused eyes. On the floor beside his chair lay two books: a paperback and a hardcover. The thuds.

  “Dear, this is Archie’s friend, Jean Harvey. She’s going to help with Robin.”

  “Hello, Mr. MacGillvary. I’m looking forward to teaching your grandson.”

  He swayed slightly. Perhaps he was nodding.

  In the hall Marian pointed out her bedroom. Robin had a little bed at the foot of hers. Then she showed me the bathroom and led me down the hall to her daughter’s old room. She hadn’t had time to get it ready, but she thought it would give me the most privacy. At first sight the clutter of boxes and furniture only compounded my despair, but by the time Marian called me to lunch a vase of late roses stood on the chest of drawers, the bed was made, the carpet clean, the bookshelves orderly. I had even dragged in a small desk and appropriated a couple of lamps. The result was not as pretty as my blue room, but as long as I took good care of Robin, it was mine.

  Marian and I had agreed that I would mind Robin every morning except Sunday, and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when she gave piano lessons. “Be sure to tell me if you need more time off,” she had said. “I don’t want to wear you out.” On my first Thursday Robin and I were in the kitchen when Archie showed up to read to George; Robin scurried under the table with his colouring book.

  “Hello, Jean. Hello, Robin,” Archie said and set to making tea. He was as at home here as at his sister’s. “How are things going?”

  “Fine.” Eager to change the subject, I asked if he and George discussed their reading.

  “No, he won’t talk to me, or to anyone but Marian. I think he’s afraid of slurring his words. I’m not always sure how much he listens either.”

  “So why do you keep coming? If he doesn’t speak or listen.”

  Kettle in one hand, teapot in the other, Archie said simply, “For Marian. I hope it’s a small comfort that someone is still paying attention to the person named George. But these days I read whatever I want.”

  Before I could ask what that was, Robin emerged from beneath the table and flung his arms around my knees. “Garden,” he implored.

  The next day Marian returned from the shops pale and distraught. While Robin played with his cars, she confided that something awful had happened in Wales that morning: in a town called Aberfan a colliery tip had slid into a primary school. More than a hundred children had been buried alive. “It’s just unbearable, Jean,” she said. “Please try to make sure Robin doesn’t hear about it.”

  “How dreadful,” I said. In all my worst imaginings of prisons and tunnels I had never pictured the earth itself engulfing me.

  Even as I tried not to think about children like Nell and Robin buried alive, a small part of me registered that Marian was treating me as an adult. But that night, after Robin was in bed, when I wanted to talk to her about the disaster, she was sequestered with George. And that was how it was night after night. When I wasn’t looking after Robin I found myself lonely in a way that I had not been since Claypoole. I read, I went for walks, I made lists of birds. I tried not to complain on my visits to Honeysuckle Cottage, but those evenings were the only times I forgot my unhappiness. If I had had enough money I would have left for Oban immediately. One morning Robin kept asking to change his clothes. Finally—he was on his third sweater—I led him over to the mirror.

  “What’s wrong with what you’re wearing?” I asked.

  He pointed not at his reflection but at mine. “You look sad,” he said.

  He was changing his clothes, I understood, in the hope of changing my mood. I knelt down and explained that I was sad but it wasn’t because of his sweater. “You can help me by eating porridge and playing with your letters.”

  “What’s your favourite letter?”

  “G.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the first letter of the name of a little clam called a Gemma gemma. And it’s a letter in your surname. And it’s the first letter of garage.”

  “Gemma gemma,” said Robin.

  I was so pleased to hear my name that I picked him up and twirled him around.

  That afternoon, when Archie arrived, Robin and I were kneeling beside the stove, playing tiddlywinks. For once Robin didn’t retreat but kept playing while Archie put on the kettle. Was there cake?

  “I made gingerbread yesterday. Can you play by yourself for five minutes?”

  “Yes,” said Robin, “but I’ll probably win.” He flipped a counter into the cup.

  “Of course you should win if you play by yourself,” said Archie. Usually he continued upstairs as soon as his tea was made, but today he set his books on the table and sat down. He was still wearing the dark trousers of his postman’s uniform but had changed his jacket for a grey pullover.

  “Who’s that torturing the piano?” he said.

  “Marian’s bête noire, Frances Hunter. She never practises.” I cut a generous slice of gingerbread for Archie, smaller ones for Robin and myself. “What are you reading today?”

  “A history of Iceland. And maybe some pages from one of the sagas too.”

  “Iceland!”

  Robin raised his head anxiously. I gave him a reassuring smile.

  “Good gingerbread,” said Archie. “It’s an island, roughly the size of England, in the north Atlantic. It was first discovered by Irish monks in the eighth century and became an outpost of the Viking Empire.”

  “I know where it is,” I said. “I was just wondering, why Iceland? I thought you were interested in Scottish history.”

  “I am. Iceland has a long connection with Scotland.”

  I handed him a second slice of cake and reached for one of the books. It opened to a map. While I stared at the jagged outline of the island, Archie said that the early settlers had had a law that a man could claim as much land as he could light bonfires around in a day. A woman could have as much land as a heifer could walk around in a day. I asked which was more, and he said he didn’t know, but if I was interested he could loan me the books. “It would be grand,” he said, “to have someone to discuss my reading with again.”

  That night I began to read about my native land, a country of hot springs, volcanoes, and earthquakes, where in summer the sun shone almost all night long and in winter the endless dark was lit by the aurora borealis shimmering across the sky.

  On Friday Hannah asked if I could come and help her wrap her latest batch of tableware. I arrived at the pottery to find her standing at her work-table, clipboard in hand, counting off the rows of plates, bowls, mugs, egg-cups, and candlesticks. “Look at you, Jean,” she said, “your cheeks all rosy from walking. No one would recognise the half-dead girl Archie dragged home. I just finished checking the inventory. I’m hoping you’ll help me to pack the boxes. We have to be sure not to make them too heavy.”

  As I reached for a sheet of newspaper and a plate, she said this was her last delivery of the year. “Pauline has agreed I can take three months to work on my sculpture. How are things at the MacGillvarys’?”

  “Marian has two ne
w pupils. And Robin drew a picture of a bird and wrote Robin underneath, though the b and the n were backwards. What do you mean, Pauline agreed? Don’t you make what you want?”

  Hannah set a bowl in the middle of the paper. “I have to pay my share of expenses. The plates and bowls bring in money—people will pay a little extra for something pretty, but no one wants the sculptures. At least not yet,” she added, gesturing to a tall column in the corner. The Tower of Babel was covered with indentations modelled, she’d told me, on the ancient cup and ring marks found throughout Scotland.

  It had never occurred to me that Hannah might need money, but of course houses came with bills and insurance. Pauline, despite her university degree, probably earned little more than a shop girl. Not knowing how to apologise for my myopia, I held up the bowl I was about to wrap—a lapis lazuli blue with golden leaves around the rim—and said, “This is so pretty.”

  “Thank you. I came across the leaves pressed between the pages of my dictionary and decided to use them as a mould. Next spring I want to do the same with flowers: daisies, daffodils, columbines. Archie said you’re keeping him company in his reading.” She looked up from her wrapping. “He was wondering why you aren’t at university.”

  Before I could stop myself, I burst out that I was dying to go to university. I wanted to study mathematics, or classics. “I like both, but people say in pure maths you reach a point where you can’t understand what the numbers are doing. Classics seem safer.”

  “Why should you suddenly not understand numbers? That sounds like something male teachers say to girls. But if you do decide on classics, I’m sure Archie would tutor you. Have you done your exams?”

  “No. My school closed down before I could take them.”

  In all the weeks I’d known Hannah this was the most I’d told her about my past. I could see, by the way she carefully stopped watching me, that she had registered the fact. “Closed down?” she said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. You can still do the exams.”