The Flight of Gemma Hardy (19 page)

“Roy Albert Sinclair, beloved son of Hamish and Elspeth. His Redeemer calleth. 1923–1953.”

Next to him were their parents. Hamish had died in 1960, Elspeth less than two years ago, in August 1964. My torch caught a flash of scarlet. A vase of dahlias—the same colour as those blooming in the border at Blackbird Hall—stood beside the stone. I kept searching up and down the rows. No grave bore Alison's name.

Back at the hall the lights were still on downstairs. I put my bike in the shed and began to walk around the house, thinking to slip in through the back door. I had just turned the corner when the sound of voices stopped me.

“Can we go sailing tomorrow?” Coco said.

“If the wind drops, if the tide is right, and if Mr. Pirie will lend me his boat.”

They were sitting on the bench beneath the beech trees; I could make out the glimmer of Coco's blouse and of Mr. Sinclair's white shirt. Grateful for my dark clothes, I edged closer to the fountain.

“Why don't you get your own boat? You could call it HMS
Coco
.”

“Because it would pain my thrifty Scottish soul to spend money on something I used only two or three times a year. As a boy I had to gather driftwood and dig potatoes to earn my pocket money. My parents saved string and pieces of soap and the sticky edges of sheets of stamps. Buying a boat would be like burning money on their graves.”

Rather than giving them red dahlias, I thought.

“So tell me, Madame Coco,” he went on, “why did Giles decline my invitation to come here so vehemently? One week the two of you seemed to be heading to the altar. The next you'd prefer to be at opposite ends of the country.”

“I don't want to talk about Giles. He's a philanderer.” She said the word so lazily that at first I thought she was referring to some kind of shrub, a cousin of the rhododendron. She slipped off the bench and, stepping away from the trees, sat and then lay back on the grass.

“You have good stars here,” she said. “My first boyfriend had a telescope. He taught me how to find the rings of Saturn, but we never had stars like this near Brighton.”

“Giles might use an even harder word about you. Just when he lost his job you couldn't give him the time of day.”

“Don't let's talk about Giles,” Coco repeated. “Here we are in your Scottish stronghold. Colin told me today that there's a legend about your family: that only second sons will inherit. The oldest son is always doomed. So that means you have to have at least two sons.”

But Mr. Sinclair was not to be deterred. He began to give Giles's version of the break-up. He had uttered only a few sentences when Coco sat up.

“Do you know what Giles says about you? That you ruined the Mercer deal.” I couldn't follow the story she poured out: something about one chain of shops buying another, and about how Mr. Sinclair, at the crucial moment, had revealed something that jeopardised the sale.

“You shouldn't believe everything Giles says,” Mr. Sinclair said. He spoke softly, but I knew he was angry.

“I don't, and nor should you.”

“Touché.” He bent towards her.

Don't, I thought. Please don't.

I had never been able to send a message to anyone, not even Miriam, so surely it was only coincidence that at that moment Jill appeared in the doorway, calling her sister's name.

chapter twenty

T
he next day was a proper island day, the wind coming straight from the northeast, buffeting the rain against the windows. I was on my way to feed the calves when Jill appeared in the cloakroom to ask if she could accompany me; Nell had told her about our pets. They were old enough now to require feeding only twice a day, and we had moved them from the barn to the nearest field. As Jill and I trudged through the mud of the farmyard, I caught sight of Seamus coming out of the granary, a sack over his shoulder; since the arrival of the guests, he had been even more absent than usual. Now, without seeming to notice us, he headed towards the byre.

Petula and Herman were huddled in a corner of the field next to the drinking trough. At the sound of their names they began to struggle towards the gate, their slender legs sinking into the mud with each step.

“This is ridiculous,” Jill said as we watched Herman pull a hind leg free. “They should be in the barn until the storm passes.”

“Seamus won't like it.” I wiped the rain from my face. “He already thinks I mollycoddle them.”

“No farmer wants to lose his livestock. Besides, this isn't mollycoddling. Calves survive bad weather because they have their mothers to shelter them. Come on. You take one. I'll take the other.”

In a moment she had opened the gate, ploughed through the mud, and looped her tartan scarf around Herman's neck. I managed to loop my own scarf around Petula. Together we led them back across the farmyard. Inside the barn Jill called out for Seamus and, when there was no answer, chose the nearest empty stall. We fed the calves and I asked if I should fetch a towel to dry them.

“They'll be fine,” said Jill. “Just get them a bucket of water. What you need to watch out for in calves this age is scouring. If you see excrement on their hindquarters, call a vet at once.”

She bent to stroke them one last time and joined me in the doorway. We both hesitated, daunted by the rain overhead and the puddles underfoot.

“Good grief,” she said. “And this is July. I wouldn't like to be here in winter.”

“I only arrived in February,” I offered. “Vicky says in December it's dark by three.”

“I'd hate that. At Skara Brae yesterday I kept thinking about the families who lived there—how bleak it must have been during a storm, the waves pounding on the shore.”

“But the sea was their main source of food,” I said, quoting the island history book. “And maybe people then were more like bears and could hibernate.”

“Bears hibernate because there's nothing to eat,” Jill said thoughtfully. “Perhaps there did used to be a human equivalent, a way to slow down the body. Forgive my asking, but why aren't you at university? You seem very bright.”

Briefly, trying to conceal my pleasure, I explained about Claypoole closing and how I had needed a job. I hoped to take my exams next year, I added.

“I'm glad to hear that,” Jill said with an energetic nod. “You should be studying alongside Nell. Come on, let's make a dash for it.”

Holding on to our hats, we waded out into the rain.

While Nell and I did lessons, the guests lounged away the morning: reading, chatting, playing billiards. The sounds of their conversation made Nell fidgety, and she kept making excuses—a glass of water, the bathroom, a cardigan—to leave the schoolroom. She returned from the last errand, skipping gleefully. We were giving a party tomorrow, she announced, and despite the short notice people were saying yes. When I went to fetch elevenses, Vicky confirmed the plan and told me that Coco was insisting on fancy dress. In the wardrobe of her room she had discovered several evening dresses that had belonged to Mrs. Sinclair. “She went right ahead and tried them on,” Vicky said, shaking her head at the impertinence. Mr. Sinclair had agreed to say that fancy dress was encouraged.

Even the promise of future excitement, however, did not placate Coco. At lunch she announced she was bored, bored, bored. She had come to the Orkneys to play golf, and if there was to be no golf today, then she wanted to go to Kirkwall. The six of them could have dinner and stay in a hotel. “I'm fed up with all these fields,” she said.

“Ridiculous,” fumed Vicky as she carried the plates into the kitchen. “They'll spend a fortune to eat fish and chips and sleep in the Kirkwall Hotel. She just wants to show everyone that she's got Mr. Sinclair eating out of her hand.”

But in preparing for the party she recovered her good spirits. The prospect of the house filled with people appealed to her sociable instincts. She asked apologetically if I would mind sharing Nell's room. Some old family friends, the Laidlaws, were coming from the south island and needed a bed for the night. She made a long list of groceries, enlisted the help of Nora and another girl, and organised music. Todd would bring his accordion, and a couple of lads from the village were grand fiddlers. I had been fantasising dancing a reel or two with some unknown guest, but now, remembering the evening when Todd and Mr. Sinclair had met, I resolved to watch the festivities from a quiet corner.

The next day the wind was even stronger, the rain heavier. Whatever time I had free from kitchen duties I used to help Nell fashion her costume. After wavering between a cat and a witch, she had chosen the former. We found a pair of black trousers in her wardrobe. A black cardigan of mine, with some pinning, made a top. We cut ears out of cardboard, painted them, and attached them to an Alice band. A black sock served as the tail. I practised drawing whiskers on her cheeks with eyeliner until she was satisfied.

“What about your costume?” she said.

“I'm helping Vicky with the food. I'll be dressed as a waitress.”

I was joking, but Nell pouted until I promised that, once the food was served, I would come down in my own pair of ears. Far preferable, I thought, to be a second cat than to look as if I had tried to compete.

The guests returned that afternoon. Coco and Jill ran back and forth, asking for thread and safety pins, and Jill asked if they could set up the ironing board in the corridor outside their rooms. As I helped Vicky in the kitchen, I recalled the last Christmas at Yew House, when I had been left to peel the chestnuts with Mrs. Marsden. But this was different, I told myself; I was being paid for my labour. I pictured Coco, the belle of the ball in some elegant gown, and Jill, more sedately dressed, happy with Colin. As for Mr. Sinclair, I imagined him in his old RAF uniform, his goggles on his forehead, a silk scarf around his neck.

The candles were lit; the party guests began to arrive. Syd, the cowman, organised the cars, Nora took the coats, and the musicians struck up. Nell ran in and out of the kitchen, flicking her tail and reporting on what was happening. Mr. Laidlaw was dressed as a raven, she said, and had pretended to be frightened when she meowed. Someone else was Robin Hood. The musicians, even Todd, were wearing kilts. During “The Grand Old Duke of York” I accompanied her into the library and stood near the door, watching. Coco wore a backless turquoise gown with silver fins attached on each side and a streamer of seaweed pinned, fetchingly, to the bodice. Jill was dressed in a pretty flowered frock with a cap and an apron. Colin had put together a sailor's uniform. As for Mr. Sinclair, he was resplendent in a dinner jacket and cummerbund, which, either by chance or by design, matched Coco's dress.

I had not seen dancing since I left Yew House. Now I watched with pleasure the way the men and women swung unerringly from partner to partner and how the music made possible a kind of order absent from everyday life. One day, I thought, I would go to a party like this and dance the night away with people who treated me like an equal. I would be beloved and regarded. At eleven o'clock the buffet was served, and I ran in and out, carrying cups of tea. Suddenly—I was refilling a milk jug—I realised I had forgotten the calves.

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.