The Flight of Gemma Hardy (12 page)

We drove on in silence, but it was the silence of truce, not of battle. As we slowed down to pass the lodge, I saw a woman in the garden. Grey-haired and almost as stout as her husband, Mrs. Milne looked up from a row of peas. I felt a beam of unmistakable hatred streaming towards me.

The bell for morning break was ringing as I stepped through the back door. I went directly to the classroom and sat down at my desk, waiting for Mrs. Harris and the next lesson. Alone in the room where Miriam had first smiled at me, the realisation that she was never, ever, coming back rolled over me. I stood up and approached the map of Scotland. The word
Galashiels
was just as sturdy as the last time I looked. I pressed my finger to the black circle of the town.

chapter fourteen

T
he day after I returned to Claypoole Miss Bryant called out my name in assembly. “You're in for it,” Balfour whispered, and I thought so too, but for once I didn't care. I knocked on the white door and made my way across the blue carpet. Performing her usual trick of looking and not looking at me, Miss Bryant said how sorry she was about Goodall. She did not want to know any details of what had happened—perhaps my visit to the hospital was connected to the sleepwalking that had led to my stay in the infirmary?—but she hoped I would settle down into being a diligent working girl.

“I fear we're stuck with each other, Hardy,” she said, unwittingly echoing Sister Cullen. “Let us do our best to achieve a modus vivendi. Do you know what that means?”

“Way of life.”

“Or way of living. There's a story you'll learn in Latin next year, a fable about the Republic of Rome. Picture the Republic as a large, able-bodied man. One day the limbs get exasperated with constantly feeding the stomach. They decide they won't bother to gather food; they'll just enjoy themselves. But quite soon they begin to feel dizzy and can no longer take pleasure in anything. ‘See,' said the stomach, ‘we are all related. If you don't feed me, you suffer too.' Claypoole is the same. All the parts of the school are related, and all the parts need to work together.”

“Yes, Miss Bryant.” I already knew the story. My uncle had used it in one of his sermons and afterwards, at lunch, we had joked that my aunt was the stomach and the rest of us were the limbs, busy serving her. My aunt had laughed and said that in that case she was going to have a second helping of roast beef. Now I wanted to tell Miss Bryant that the story didn't apply to Claypoole. If I stopped work no one would get dizzy, and when she had stopped feeding me, only Cook had cared. Instead I asked if I could go to Miriam's funeral.

“I'm afraid not,” she said. “Mr. Goodall doesn't want anyone from the school present. But Mr. Waugh will say something in church next Sunday. And we will all remember Miriam in our prayers.” As I headed towards the door she added, a seeming afterthought, that I might use the library when I was not working.

Two days later I was summoned to Dr. White's weekly surgery. Beneath Matron's absent-minded gaze our conversation lasted barely a minute. He asked if I was all right. I said I was. How was the library? Fine. Over the next several years our meetings followed this pattern except for the few occasions—measles, a sprained wrist—when I actually needed his care. I had the consoling sense that he and Sister Cullen were watching over me.

The week after Miriam died we had exams every day. The following week Miss Bryant read out the results in assembly, enunciating the names of the girls who had failed with special clarity. I came fourth or fifth in every subject except scripture, where I came last. In arithmetic, I suspected, I had done better than fourth, but it was not part of Miss Bryant's educational experiment for a working girl to be top of her class. As for the other working girls, they were always last, until the day when the results for French were read out and Findlayson had come fourth. Later, over the washing-up, Smith told me that Findlayson believed her father was a French sailor. When she was old enough, she planned to go to France and find him.

That summer there were no regular pupils at the school and only eight working girls. I had been dreading the long, lonely days, but on the first morning of the holidays Miss Bryant announced that we would be picking raspberries for the farmer who owned the pigs. For three weeks Ross marched us along the drive, down the hill, and past the crossroads to the fields of canes. The farmer handed out stacks of punnets—several boys and girls from Denholm were also picking—and left us to get on with it. We were paid by weight, so he had no need to chivvy us.

The leafy canes were much taller than me, taller even than Ross, and stepping between them I felt as if a lyre-bird might appear at any moment; for hours I picked in solitude save for the clouds of gnats. One afternoon I came upon Ross kissing a boy, her mouth gobbling up his. The next day I almost stumbled over Drummond and the same boy, lying on the ground. Hidden in the canes, I watched the boy rocking back and forth above her, grimacing. Below him Drummond, her red hair spread on the dark soil, kept her eyes tightly closed; once again I glimpsed her bra.

At the end of the afternoon the farmer returned to weigh our fruit and note our pay for the day. Then the raspberries were tipped into a barrel of acid, which bleached them instantly. Later, at the jam factory, dye would restore the colour. On the day I saw Drummond with the boy, the farmer remarked on her picking. “Only seven pounds, lassie. Were you taking a nap?”

She said nothing; the boy snickered. He had somehow managed to pick fifteen pounds. I saw Ross watching him, her lips parted over her chipped tooth. She and Drummond were good friends, but she too, I thought, would have been happy to lie down with him. I was glad there was something she wanted and couldn't have.

The week after Miriam's death, she had tried, as we walked to the gym, to apologise. “I'm sorry about your pal,” she had said. “That was a shame.”

“So why did you stop me seeing her when she was ill?” I demanded. “If I'd been able to take care of her maybe she wouldn't have died.”

“I'm sorry,” she said again. “Miss Bryant comes down on me hard when things go wrong.”

For her these unadorned sentences were the height of eloquence, but like Mr. Waugh's insipid remarks in church—our dearly beloved pupil is at peace—and Miss Bryant's prayers, they made me furious. “You're a coward,” I had said. “All you want to do is bully other people.” Since then she had ignored me, except to give orders.

On Friday afternoon the farmer brought his cash-box and we lined up to be paid; as usual I was last. “Not bad for a wee 'un,” he said, handing me two pound notes and two half-crowns.

I clutched the notes in wonder. It was the first time I'd touched money, almost the first time I'd seen it since I left Yew House, and I'd forgotten how a bank-note was different from other kinds of paper, and the feeling of possibility that went with it. Then I remembered my circumstances. “Can you keep it for me?” I said.

The farmer's face twisted in bewilderment. “Would you not like to buy yourself some sweeties? Or one of those new comics? My daughter is always after the comics.”

With a wary glance over my shoulder—the other girls were collecting their jackets and bags—I said I had no purse.

“Och, I see,” he said, following my gaze. “The next rainy day, when I give you girls a lift to the school, I'll bring what I owe you. You can be thinking of a safe place to keep your loot.”

As we walked back up the hill, I braced myself for an attack, but the other girls were discussing a programme they'd heard on Matron's wireless; gradually I forgot my fears. I was daydreaming about what to buy with my money—a skipping rope, a bag of gobstoppers—when Ross and Drummond appeared beside me. We were just inside the school gates. Silently they plunged their hands into my pockets and then ordered me to take off my shoes and socks.

“I ate my pay,” I said as I sat by the side of the drive, pulling off first one empty sock and then the other. “The half-crowns were delicious. The farmer's keeping my money. He thinks I'm too young to be trusted.”

“Stupid moron,” said Ross, but she seemed to believe me. While Drummond went to join the other girls she sat down on the grass beside me. “It's a pity you're not older,” she went on. “I asked Miss Bryant if I could take my O-levels again next year. If I had someone to help me, like you and Goodall, I'm sure I could pass.”

As I pulled on my shoes, I watched her fingers, pink with raspberry juice, pluck the petals of a daisy. Was she asking about love, I wondered, or something else? Gemma will help me. Gemma won't. For a moment I longed to say I would. Even though I was only eleven, I could still drill her in subjects, teach her grammar and reading, help her get into the police. Then I remembered how she had stopped me, over and over, from going to Miriam. I tied my laces, jumped to my feet, and stalked off.

On the next rainy day the farmer was as good as his word. As I climbed out of the Land Rover, he slipped me an envelope with my money. I had racked my brains as to a hiding place. The Elm Room was out of the question; so was my desk. An obscure volume in the library seemed like a good idea, but what if a teacher made a surprising choice? Finally, remembering the story of the third servant, I stole a polythene bag from the kitchen and, borrowing a trowel, dug a hole near a corner of the pigsty. By the end of the raspberry season, I had buried nearly nine pounds.

I
n August I moved up to Miss Seftain's class. I immediately liked two things about her: her excitement about Latin—she would pace the classroom, arms widespread as she described some neat construction—and her enthusiasm for space travel. She read us a poem she'd written in Latin about Laika, the mongrel stray who died travelling to the stars. A year later, when Strelka and Belka survived eighteen orbits and re-entry, we all wrote them letters. And when Yuri Gagarin made his famous orbit she led the entire school outside after supper to toast the night sky. Coincidentally her nickname was Birdy, after her crestlike hair and beaky nose, and at moments of passion it did seem as if she too might take flight.

From my first day of conjugating
amare—amo
,
amas
,
amat
—I loved Latin. When I told her that I had been a friend of Miriam's—
sum amica
Miriam—she persuaded Miss Bryant what a good advertisement for the school it would be if a working girl went to university: a triumph for her philanthropic experiment. Our tutorials became the high point of my week. We had been meeting for nearly two months when I confided what had happened with Mr. Donaldson.

“Poor man,” said Miss Seftain. “Teachers are so vulnerable to rumours.”

She wrote to various friends, asking if anyone knew his present whereabouts. No one did, but an Edinburgh friend revealed what had brought him to the village in the first place. He had been teaching at a famous boys' school, and one night had taken two of his pupils to a pub and then on a joyride around Arthur's Seat. It seemed unlikely that he was still teaching. “Although,” Miss Seftain added, “there are places, like Claypoole, that are off the radar.”

But despite my tutorials I was still a working girl, and my days were still ruled by Ross. She made no more overtures. I saw her laughing with Findlayson, playing cards with Gilchrist, but her muddy brown eyes ignored me as she told me to wash a floor, or hurry up with the carrots. To my surprise I missed our odd moments of friendliness. Perhaps during the holidays, I thought, I could find a way to make amends. Then one evening in early December I came into the Elm Room to discover her and Drummond packing. They were going to be chambermaids at a hotel in Kelso. When I went over to say goodbye Ross picked me up and swung me round. “Live up to your name, Hardy,” she said, and planted a smacking kiss on my cheek. The next day she and Drummond were gone. Gilchrist became head of the working girls, and I began to understand that Ross had been a skillful manager. She knew how to divide the tasks so that everyone pulled her weight. Now, even with Mrs. Bryant's vigilance, the school grew dirtier; crises in the kitchen were more frequent. The next summer one of Cook's sisters left and was not replaced.

As for me, I was marking time in Form I. Miss Seftain kept me back for one year, and then a second. “You're not Mozart, Hardy,” she said. “You need to be in a class with girls your own age. You'll just be miserable if you try to go to university at fifteen, and I doubt you'd get a place.” Grateful for her protection, knowing I had no choice, I relinquished the superiority of always being the youngest in the class.

By the time I at last moved up to Form II, there were only eight working girls, and the number of regular pupils was also dwindling. At assembly the library was no longer filled; one table in the dining-room stood empty; a year later another was only half full. The gym teacher left to get married, and Mrs. Bryant took over the gym classes. The following year Mrs. Harris left to nurse her mother, and Primary 6 and 7 were combined under Miss Grey.

In Form IV, thanks to Miss Seftain, I sat eight O-level exams. The exams were set and marked by a national board, and I threw myself into preparation, knowing that, for once, I would not be judged as a working girl. The gym became an examination hall, and I loved the ritual of everyone filling pens and sharpening pencils, turning over the questions at the same moment, the teacher walking up and down between the rows of desks, calling out the time.

In August Miss Seftain invited me to celebrate my seven As and one B (scripture). She lived in a flat in the converted stables, and I hoped, at last, to be invited inside, but she answered my knock by saying she'd be out in five minutes. I perched on the wall, watching a yellow snail nudge along. Whenever I offered it a piece of grass it drew in its horns, only to unfurl them again a few seconds later. Like Miss Seftain, I thought, it was being cautious. However much she wanted to help me, she was determined not to follow in Mr. Donaldson's footsteps. She appeared, carrying a tea tray, and joined me on the wall.

“Well done, Hardy,” she said, raising her cup to my lemonade. “I can see the headlines already:
WORKING GIRL GOES TO UNIVERSITY
.”

We discussed the next set of exams, called Highers, which I would sit next year, and possible universities. I liked the idea of Edinburgh, but Miss Seftain urged me to consider Scotland's newest university: Strathclyde. “You want to be in the vanguard, Hardy,” she said, “like Marcus Aurelius.”

For all her talk of the vanguard, however, Miss Seftain too was slow to realise that Claypoole was changing. The regular girls now had a record player on which, after homework, they played catchy songs; on weekends, they wore pleated skirts and turtlenecks, or pinafore dresses. The Labour Party had been elected. Fewer parents worked abroad and more wanted their children to live at home. In the working girls' bathroom there were enough basins to go round. As the days grew shorter and colder the school seemed larger and emptier. One January morning, only a week after the start of the new term, Miss Bryant looked out at us from the dais and asked us to sit down in our rows. With some scuffling, we knelt, or sat cross-legged, on the parquet floor.