The Flight of Gemma Hardy (14 page)

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 came 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.

N
o 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

T
he 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 people 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.

“Second class, single, child,” corrected the clerk.

“No, adult. I'm eighteen. I could get married.”

“You could indeed, ducky”—the clerk's bald head bobbed in the overhead light—“but why not save yourself six pounds? You can still get married at sixteen or seventeen.”

Reluctantly I agreed to be a child one last time.

I had been looking forward to the journey north: the prospect of new landscapes, and new people. What I had not anticipated was the sense, even as I headed into the future, of revisiting my life so far. The first station we came to was Galashiels, and I studied the sullen, grey houses. Perhaps one of them had sheltered Miriam. Our friendship was still the only evidence I had, since my uncle died, that I could be loved. And what about Mr. Goodall? Was he still living there, even greyer and grubbier? Beyond Galashiels the countryside grew desolate, populated only by scruffy sheep and dark twisted trees. I thought of Ross's story of running away, and sleeping in a sheepfold. How lonely she must have been. Then houses began to appear, at first singly, soon in streets; the train slowed. We had reached Edinburgh. One by one I lifted down my suitcases. As I stood waiting for the crowd to disperse, I saw that the platform where I had embarked, years ago, was just across the forecourt. I dragged my suitcases over. Two boys in jeans and jackets were sitting on the bench, sharing a cigarette.

“Would you mind standing up for a moment?” I asked.

“What's this?” said the nearest boy. “Station inspection?” He leaned back, blowing smoke in my direction.

“Please,” I said. “Just for a second.”

“Come on, Brian,” said the other, getting to his feet. “Do what she says.”

As he spoke, his lips stretched over slightly prominent teeth; I had a flash of recognition. “Did you once want to work in a fish shop?”

“I don't know if I wanted to, but I do, down in Leith. How did you guess?” He cocked his head. “Do I look like a fish?”

“Not really. Seven years ago on this platform you carried my suitcase.”

“It's possible,” he said. “I get this train most days.”

He tugged the other boy to his feet, and there, I pointed them out, were the words—
FLY AWAY
—carved into the wood. The boys peered, nonplussed. I thanked them and started to walk away, dragging my cases.

“If I used to carry your luggage,” said the fish boy, coming up beside me, “I'd better not stop now.” He took the cases out of my hands and asked where I was going. When I told him, he remarked that he had never been that far north. “You'll have to come back in seven years and tell me what it's like.”

“I will.”

“Okay. Same place, same time.” He smiled down at me and then, as a train whistled nearby, turned and loped away.

But not everything had remained the same. The train to Thurso was a modern one with seats in rows instead of compartments, and when we reached the Forth Rail Bridge I saw that, after seventy years of solitude, it had a companion: not far away a slender suspension bridge now carried cars high above the water. Once we were back on land, passing fields and farms, I reached for my book and came upon Miss Bryant's envelope. Inside, folded in a sheet of paper, was a ten-pound note. I must have made some sound because the woman across the aisle looked over. “Someone's fond of you,” she said.

“Actually I think someone's glad to see the back of me.”

“Well, with enemies like that who needs friends?”

While she returned to her magazine, I examined the sheet of paper, wondering if it contained a final blessing, or curse, but there was only an address in Coldstream with a phone number. Once again I glimpsed the way in which departure ripped the veil from ordinary life, revealing things that were normally kept hidden. Why else had the young man appeared last night, and Mrs. Milne this morning? We passed through Perth, and a few minutes later I saw the familiar line of hills and the circular wood above the village. For a moment I longed to be back at Yew House, climbing the fort with my uncle, walking by the river. Then the hills were gone and I was travelling, untrammelled, towards the future. I opened my book.

B
y the time we reached Thurso, it was past seven in the evening and the train was almost empty. One of the few remaining passengers, a bearlike man who worked for the forestry commission, helped me carry my suitcases to the bed-and-breakfast. An unsmiling landlady showed me to a surprisingly cosy room and said she had my supper waiting. I had had grand thoughts of how I would spend my first night of freedom—a pub, a conversation with a tall, dark stranger—but after a watery steak and kidney pie, bed seemed the only possibility. I fell asleep amazed at how silent the night was without my fellow working girls.

In the morning I explored the town, stopping often to gaze in the shop windows that lined the main street. After my years of privation the most ordinary goods—a rake, a tea-cup, a pork chop—were like the relics of a lost civilisation. At noon I retrieved my luggage and took a taxi to the ferry terminal. The
St. Ola
was waiting; the man who sold the tickets carried my suitcases up the gangway. I joined the other passengers on deck to watch the cars being winched aboard one by one; they looked oddly small and helpless, dangling above the water. Then the foghorn sounded, and in a swirl of engine fumes, beneath windy skies, we pulled away from the dock. The other passengers retired below; I clung to my place at the rail. Never again, I vowed, would I live in a place where I couldn't see the sea. Or at least bicycle to it. As we rounded the harbour wall a shaft of light broke through the clouds, pointing the way to my destination.

I have no idea how long I stood there before a voice said, “So what brings you to the Orkneys?”

I turned to discover a man in a duffle coat, leaning against the rail a few yards away. “How do you know I don't live there?” I said.

“I've lived in Kirkwall all my life. No native would stand out here, getting blown to bits, when they could be downstairs having a nice cup of tea.”

“You are.”

“Och, well”—his eyebrows disappeared beneath his woolen hat—“I'm a freak. I lost my boat last year. I miss the water.”

His slight build gave him a boyish look, but from the dark shadow on his jaw and the lines around his mouth, I guessed him to be thirty at least, perhaps even forty. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck and a small, clear drip from the end of his nose. “How?” I said. “Were you shipwrecked?”

“No, God forbid. It's a long story. The short version is money and sibling rivalry.”

“Like Cain and Abel?”

“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “It's a wee while since I was in the Sunday school.” He buried his face, briefly, in a capacious white handkerchief and then said it was my turn to answer his questions. I told him I was going to Blackbird Hall.

“Ah, you're looking after Mr. Sinclair's niece.” His face brightened as he understood how I fitted into his world. “She's a little rascal, by all accounts.”

“Who's Mr. Sinclair? The woman I spoke to, Vicky Sinclair, didn't use the word ‘niece.' ”

“Mr. Sinclair is the owner of Blackbird Hall. Nowadays he mostly lives in London, making money hand over fist. Vicky is his housekeeper. They're distant cousins.”

So this was who had done the authorising, I thought. “Does he ever come here?”

“In the summer. You'll like Vicky. She's a grand lass. Did she mention her brother?”

“Just that they work on the farm together.”

My companion's eyes darkened. “He's good with the cattle, Seamus, I'll grant him that, but hard as a horseshoe. I ran into him last month, walking around the Stones. He couldn't even be bothered to raise his hat. They say he never got over being a Bevin Boy, but plenty of people were in the war and didn't lose their manners.”

What were the Stones, I wondered, and what was a Bevin Boy? I asked about the former, and the man said could he buy me a cup of tea. I told him I'd prefer ginger beer and followed him into the cabin. When we were settled with our drinks by the window, he said that the main island of the Orkneys had several remarkable Stone Age sites, including a chambered tomb and a ring of standing stones. There was even a Stone Age village, which had been buried for centuries and emerged after a tremendous storm.

“Like Pompeii.” I had loved translating Pliny's account of the eruption.

Again he seemed doubtful. “But I'm forgetting my manners,” he said. “I'm Alec Johnson.”

I gave my name and asked if I could borrow his binoculars. At first, as I fiddled with the focus, I saw only a blur of water. Then a cormorant flew by and I could count each dull brown feather. As dusk came on, Mr. Johnson drank his tea and read the newspaper; I alternated between gazing directly at the sea and gazing through the lenses. Almost too soon the lights of Stromness appeared, stretching along the harbour and up the hill.

“You must come back in daylight to see the town,” said Mr. Johnson. “It's a pretty place. People here aren't fussy about appearances,” he added, “but I'm going to run a comb through my hair. Good luck, Miss Hardy.”

You're wearing a hat, I wanted to say. Then I understood that I was the one who needed to use a comb. I had left my Alice band at Claypoole, and the mirror in the ladies' room showed my hair wild as a scarecrow's. By the time I emerged and manoeuvred my suitcases down the gangway, the last car was being winched ashore and most of the other passengers had disappeared. No one stepped forward to greet me, and surveying the poorly lit harbour, I saw no one waiting. I had not thought to ask Miss Sinclair what I should do if her brother wasn't there. I set my luggage beside a stack of lobster traps and circled the nearest streetlight, trying to keep warm, trying not to worry that I had misunderstood the arrangements. Opposite the harbour I spotted a hotel. I was about to start lugging my suitcases over—surely it would have a telephone—when I saw headlights approaching. The vehicle, a Land Rover, came to an abrupt halt; a man climbed out. Even in the darkness his scowl was unmistakable.