The Flight of Gemma Hardy (27 page)

“So you were both Bevin Boys?” Beneath my coat, in my wet dress, I shivered.

“No. Seamus was accepted by the RAF. I persuaded him to swap. What he said at the registry office was true. For nearly two years, everywhere but here, I was Seamus Sinclair and he was Hugh Sinclair.”

While he explained how they had managed the exchange—letters, documents, blurred photographs—I stared down the passageway to where the rain was splashing on the grass. Behind his locked door he had been hiding not someone, or something, but himself. But how could he hide? I remembered all the friends and neighbours who had come to the house to greet his return. “I don't understand,” I said. “When the war finished, weren't you always meeting people who knew you as Seamus?”

“Not often, and when I did I said I'd decided to go by my first name of Hugh.”

“So how”—I pictured Seamus's steely gaze—“did you persuade him?”

“I offered him his heart's desire.”

“Alison.”

“Alison,” he agreed.

“But,” I burst out, “she wasn't yours to offer.”

“That was the problem. I promised that if he took my place in the mines, I would do everything I could to persuade Alison to marry him, and to ensure that our father gave permission. And I gave him three thousand pounds I'd inherited from an uncle. I had no choice, Gemma. I knew if I was sent underground I would go stark, raving mad. When I was Nell's age there was a woman who used to push a wheelbarrow around the village, talking to herself. Once our football hit her house and she ran out screaming that a bomb had fallen. My mother said she'd been the best dancer on the island until her husband drowned.”

My teeth were chattering so hard I cupped my cheeks to quiet them.

“And Alison,” he continued, “liked Seamus. When you asked if they were friends I should have said they were more than friends. She was always following him around, trying to join in our games. I thought they'd be happy together. In '45, I came back, not covered with glory but free of shame, and Seamus came back, the farm-boy who had dug his way through the war. But he wasn't bitter; he was hopeful. He started working for my father, and in the holidays, when Alison was home from school, they were inseparable. I was off at university but whenever I wrote to her, I sang Seamus's praises, and I told my father, without explanation, that I owed him my life.”

I did not look at Mr. Sinclair, I did not need to, but in my mind's eye he was changing, falling from that pedestal where, heedless of his warnings, I had placed him. “Is Seamus Nell's father?” I said.

“I wondered that—they were lovers on and off for years—but Alison was blue-eyed, like Seamus. As long as she was riding, she didn't want to marry him, or anyone. And he seemed happy to work on the farm and act as her groom. After her accident, though, he became a reminder of what she loved and couldn't have.”

“Did Vicky know?”

Once again his coat rustled. “She knew Seamus was wild about Alison; everyone did. As for the rest, I think she guessed there was something amiss, but Seamus kept his word, until today. After you left he said he couldn't forgive himself for not taking Alison to the hospital that night. Of course he had no idea it was different from all the other times. Poor Seamus.”

Gazing up at the dark ceiling, I remembered the evening I'd seen him leaning against his mantelpiece, shaking with grief. He too blamed himself for the loss of the person he most loved. “So he warned you yesterday, didn't he?” I said. “That was what he was telling you at the hay barn.”

“I thought it was just drunken ranting. That he'd sleep it off and we'd be on the plane to Edinburgh by the time he woke up. I was an idiot.”

I knew he was asking for forgiveness, but I was too busy redrawing my map of the last few months, marking the new shoreline. “Have you ever told anyone else about you and Seamus?”

“You're determined, aren't you, to get to the bottom of my box. I told Caroline, the woman I was engaged to.”

“And she broke it off?”

“No.” He gave a bitter laugh. “She could hardly wait for me to finish the story, to get back to talking about her wedding dress and where to have the reception. I was the one who couldn't stand it.”

“So why didn't you tell me? You promised you wouldn't lie to me, but all you've done is tell me lies.”

“Gemma, Gemma, you have everything back to front. It's because I admire you—your honesty, your boldness—that I couldn't bear to tell you. I did try to let you know that there were things in my past I wasn't proud of, but it was more than twenty years ago. I am still the same person who carried you over the causeway, who loves you, who wants to marry you. You swore nothing would change your feelings.”

Mr. Sinclair kept talking, apologising, explaining. I stared down the passageway to where the rain fell on the grass.

“I'm freezing,” I said.

At once he was standing over me, his hand outstretched. It was his hand I had seen first, before his face, as he struggled to change the tyre, and now, in the dim light, I saw his pale palm reaching towards me. I had only to put my hand there, surrender myself to his warm grasp, and everything would follow—a home, a family, university—but for how long? I recalled how easily my aunt had demoted me from beloved cousin to impoverished outsider. I stepped over to the passage and, lowering my head, walked towards the rainy light.

Mr. Sinclair stumbled behind me. As I crossed the field, he held the umbrella over me at an awkward angle. In the car he started the engine, the windscreen wipers, the heater. “Which way should we go?” he said in a low voice. “We can't go back to Blackbird Hall, and we've missed the plane. Besides, you need dry clothes.”

“I have them in my suitcase. I want a room at the Kirkwall Hotel, where you stayed with Coco.”

“Not with Coco,” he corrected. “No, that would be horribly awkward.”

“Somewhere else, then.”

As we drove back to Kirkwall, I pulled my coat closer and tried to make a plan, but my brain, like my body, was frozen. The only future I could conjure involved immediate necessities: a hot bath, dry clothes, a bowl of soup. The rain was slackening, and in the fields the sheep and cows had begun to scatter. Periodically Mr. Sinclair said something. We would catch the plane tomorrow; we would be married in London. I did not bother to reply.

He stopped outside a small hotel on a side street near the harbour. I waited in the car. Presently he came out to report that he had got us two rooms, unfortunately on different floors. In the doorway of my room, he set down my suitcase and put his hands on my shoulders. “Please, Gemma,” he said. “It's not as if I have another wife, or a mistress, or a child. I did something wrong when I was eighteen.”

“And when you were forty-one. I need to take a bath.”

“You poor darling, you mustn't catch cold. Take a bath, then come downstairs and we'll have lunch.”

I hung up my limp dress, put on my dressing-gown and slippers and, locking the door behind me, went down the corridor to the bathroom. I ran the bath hot and, once I was in, made it still hotter until my skin flushed. I was almost sorry when the shivering stopped; it had been a distraction. Back in my room a sheet of paper lay beneath the door:

G, I'll be waiting downstairs in the bar. H.

As I dressed in trousers and a sweater, I saw that it was nearly two o'clock. I had expected by now to be married for three hours, to be on a plane approaching Edinburgh and a hotel room with a large, snowy bed. This room, with its single bed and single-bar electric fire, was barely larger than my attic room at Yew House. The only window overlooked a drab side street.

From our first meeting, when I had glimpsed his gorgeous shoes, I had known that Mr. Sinclair and I were unequal in the world's eyes, but I had allowed myself to believe that he regarded me as an equal. And the foundation of that belief was that he would never lie to me. Coco was prettier, more accomplished, wealthier, but he had lied to her; to me he told the truth. Truth beareth away the victory. In the street an old car clattered by. He had sworn to me on the northern star and at the same time he had told me that the stars were falling.

I went to my suitcase and took out the photograph of my uncle. He had helped me before in times of trouble, guiding my behaviour with Nell, soothing my anger. Silently I asked him what I should do. He eyed me steadily, kindly, unhelpfully. I wrote a note—
Mr. S., headache, taking a nap. G
—and slid it under the door into the hallway. Fully dressed, still holding the photograph, I climbed into bed. Nora had said our marriage was like something out of a fairy tale—a scullery maid marrying a prince—but now it was my feelings that seemed like a fairy tale.

I slept, or at least I left one level of consciousness, and returned not to Blackbird Hall but to the rooms and corridors of Claypoole. I had not been happy there. I had worked endlessly and led a severely restricted life, but I had had my alliances, I had grown, and, especially in the last years, I had been able to study. Now in my dream state I was, once again, bending over the polishing machine in the corridor outside Miss Seftain's classroom. Soon I would leave the sharp orange smell of the polish and go inside, and we would continue translating
The Metamorphoses
. Daphne would change into a laurel, Leda into a swan. Mr. Sinclair had changed from an eagle to a mole. Even in sleep I was aware of his knock at the door, his voice calling my name.

Miss Seftain had not replied to my letter announcing my marriage, there had not been time, but now in her classroom, as we bent over Ovid, she said, “Would you want to marry someone twenty years younger than yourself?”

And I said, “But that's absurd. Someone twenty years younger than me wouldn't even be born.”

“Exactly.”

Then, in the way of dreams, I was in another classroom—this one belonged to Mr. Donaldson—staring at a map of the British Isles. Each county was a different colour and Mr. Donaldson was standing behind me, clicking his yellow teeth. “Don't you want to know about yourself, Gemma,” he said, “before you become somebody else?” Before I could summon the answer I slipped away into a deeper sleep.

I awoke to the sound of a car in the street, the dull light of late afternoon, and in my brain not a plan but an imperative.

PART IV

chapter twenty-five

I
stayed in the ladies' toilet until I felt the ferry gather speed and knew we had passed beyond the harbour wall and that Mr. Sinclair could no longer march up the gangplank, or row furiously after us. In the lounge I found a bench in a poorly lit corner, away from the few other passengers. But he would not need informants to guess my route. On the previous day I had continued to claim a headache and remained in bed. Now I calculated that he was unlikely to knock on my door before nine. I had got up while the sky was still dark and washed, dressed, and stolen out of the hotel at top speed. Only when I reached the main street had I allowed myself one swift backwards glance and there, in the dark facade of the hotel, was a single window glowing directly above mine. I had yearned then to run back, and hurl myself into his arms. Instead I had taken a firm grip on my suitcase and made my way to the taxi rank outside the Kirkwall Hotel. The taxi driver had told me that this was the only ferry from Stromness today. “Getting an early start,” he had said, and I had nodded, speechless.

As soon as the ferry reached open water it began to pitch from side to side. I had not eaten since the day before, and now even my old friend became my enemy. I sat in the corner of the lounge, clutching my book, trying not to breathe in the smells of oil, cigarettes, wet wool, and rusty metal. Several times I almost ran back to the ladies'.

At last the noise of the engine slackened, the pitching subsided, the ferry docked. As soon as I stepped onto the pier—it was still wet from yesterday's rain—my stomach calmed. After five minutes I was ready to take my second taxi of the day, to Thurso. I asked the driver to let me off at a café. The windows were streaming with condensation, and inside several men in overalls were clustered around a table near the door; two women and a baby were seated in a corner. The waitress told me to sit wherever I liked.

“Good crossing?” called one of the workmen.

“A bit rough.”

“Try a bacon roll,” he urged.

Cautiously I ordered a cup of tea and, when I had drunk it without ill effect, followed his advice. The waitress brought the roll on a plate, the white china webbed with grey like those I had washed so often at Claypoole. As I began to eat I was struck by the notion that this roll was the only thing that gave me a place in the world. When the plate was empty, I would, once again, be homeless. I longed to order a second roll, and a third.

The men left in a noisy bustle and the women's conversation was suddenly audible. “A voice like a corn-crake,” the one with her back to me declared.

“Three years in a row,” said the other, “we've given her a retirement present and the next Sunday, there she is, back in her seat, belting out the hymns.”

“Well, we all know Jean will be singing at her own funeral.”

I looked at them, drinking their tea, complaining cheerfully while the baby dozed. Soon they would leave the café and go home to their houses with doors and beds and cookers. What would they say if I went over and said I was running away from my fiancé, and homeless? Did either of them need a maid? Or a nanny? I would work for bacon rolls and a place to lay my head. I pictured their smiles turning upside down, their nervous glances at their handbags, the baby.

When the waitress brought my bill I asked if there was a bus station in Thurso; buses, I'd heard, were cheaper than trains. “Indeed there is,” she said. As she drew a map on a paper bag, she remarked that they didn't get many visitors this late in the year. Quickly I invented a fictitious cousin, a walking holiday in Inverness. “I hope it stays fine for you,” she said. I thanked her and, with my handbag over my shoulder, my suitcase in hand, stepped into the street.

The bus station turned out to be nothing more than a large garage presently occupied by a man meticulously sweeping around the oil stains on the floor. He looked up long enough to tell me that the bus to Inverness left in an hour. I bought a newspaper and perched on the wall of a nearby house. After the ferry and two taxis, I had thirty-six pounds in my purse, a fortune to me, but until I found a job, I would need to pay for every night of sleep, every mouthful of food.

Holding the newspaper as a shield, I searched my life as if it were one of Nell's puzzles where the aim was to find the six parrots hidden in a tree. Was there someone I had overlooked who would take me in? To my surprise the first person that came into view was Miss Bryant. I pictured myself knocking on her door, then I pictured her dismay at the sight of me, followed by—and this was oddly distressing to contemplate—her helplessness. She no longer had jobs at her command, hotels asking for working girls. She would have no choice but to take me in herself, or send me away.

Who else? I thought. Dr. White had always been kind, but I was not sure he would smile if I appeared, unexpectedly, at his surgery. With Ross I had long lost contact. Matron, in the Lake District, was too far away. As for Miss Seftain, with her sister in Dunblane, she herself was a guest on sufferance. Besides, how could I explain, after my last letter, why I was fleeing my marriage? The secret was not mine to tell.

And even if I could, in veiled terms, hint at my reasons, I had only to remember Mr. Sinclair's voice as he talked on and on outside my door the night before—love, a mistake, years ago—to know that she would never understand. There was no obstacle to the marriage that had not, unbeknownst to me, been there all along.

“That's mine.”

Two boys were playing hopscotch on the pavement. The lanky, dark-haired one reminded me of Nell. If she was following the timetable I had left she would—I checked my watch—be sitting at the kitchen table reading while Vicky made lunch. I had given her a story for each day we were apart. Today's was about a goat who lies to his master and gets his sons into trouble; I imagined Nell giggling at the goat's bad behaviour. Then I recalled our parting of the day before. I could not afford to think of Nell any more than of Mr. Sinclair. Quickly I returned to the newspaper. A blurry photograph of the Thurso school football team stared out at me. As I read down the list of matches—Inverness, Aberdeen, Wick, Ullapool—I remembered my dream of the previous afternoon. Mr. Donaldson, he was the hidden parrot. Years too late I could apologise for the wrong I had done him, and retrieve my box. At long last I could read the papers my parents had left me.

Other passengers began to seat themselves on the wall; the bus arrived. The conductor helped me lift my suitcase onto the rack behind the driver. As we drove out of town, I thought, just for a moment, of crying, “Stop! Stop!” I could still get off and go and wait by the ferry until Mr. Sinclair arrived the next day. But no, a man who would sell his sister, who would ask another man to go down a mine for him, who would lie and take advantage of his wealth—that was not the man I wanted to marry.

The bus was draughty and the seats hard, but in Inverness, I got out reluctantly; it too had become my home. The bus station was larger than the one in Thurso, with several buses lined up and groups of travellers waiting. Two men, their clothes ragged, their faces seamed with dirt, occupied a bench. I glimpsed sheets of newspaper sticking out between the buttons of the younger man's coat. “Want a seat?” he called. “Plenty of room for a bonnie lass.” Hastily I turned away.

I had thought I might stay in Inverness, but now I decided to press on. There was still one bus going south that day, to Pitlochry. Hearing the woman in the ticket office say the name, I suddenly remembered I had been there once with my uncle and cousins to see the hydroelectric dam. We had visited the fish-ladder and watched the salmon swimming upstream to lay their eggs.

I bought a ham-and-cheese roll, a Kit Kat, and a bottle of Lucozade, and boarded another bus. It was almost full but I had two seats to myself. I set my bag beside me, drew my coat close, and, lulled by the motion and the bare moors of the Cairngorms, soon fell asleep. I woke when the bus stopped at a small village and a man smelling of onions stepped into the seat beside me. Silently he waited for me to move my handbag and sat down. In sidelong glances I saw that beneath his cap his glasses had been mended with black tape and his jacket was worn and patched. I fell back into an uneven doze.

I could not have said how many miles or minutes passed before I became aware that my new companion was leaning against me more than the lurching of the bus warranted. Something warm rested on my thigh. Opening my eyes, I discovered the man's threadbare cuff resting on the edge of my coat; his hand had slipped beneath. Meanwhile he was looking straight ahead, as if the hand and whatever it was doing had nothing to do with him.

“Excuse me,” I said loudly, scrambling to my feet, “I think I'm going to be sick.”

He had no choice but to let me step into the aisle. I moved forward to the only remaining empty seat, right behind the driver, where a chill draught kept me alert for the remainder of the journey. Dusk was falling as we entered Pitlochry, but I spotted bed-and-breakfast signs outside several houses. Surely one of them would have room for me. I would leave my suitcase, find something to eat, wash off the grime of the bus and the man's hand, sleep, and have a good breakfast. Then I could plan my journey to Oban. Perhaps the landlady would have an atlas.

The bus turned off the main road and pulled up beside the railway station. I climbed down and, not looking to see where the man went, I headed back to the main road towards the bed-and-breakfasts. I was walking past a row of shops when I caught, at first faintly, and within a few steps overwhelmingly, the smell of fish and chips. Suddenly I was so hungry that even a few minutes' delay seemed intolerable.

The man behind the counter wore a blue-and-white-striped apron; a white hat rested, comically, on his large ears. “What can I do for you?” he said. I asked for a large chips. Deftly he filled a grease-proof paper bag, wrapped the whole in newspaper leaving the top open, and held it towards me. “Salt and vinegar are on the counter. You're welcome to eat here.” He was still speaking as I seized a chip. “You're hungry, aren't you?” he said approvingly.

“Starving. This is the best chip I've ever eaten.”

“Och, it's not every day a customer says that. That'll be ninepence, please.”

Still chewing, I reached into my handbag. My fingers found the newspaper I had bought in Inverness, a handkerchief, a brush and comb, a compact, a notebook and pen, the Kit Kat wrapper. Carefully I carried my bag over to the counter, and took out each article. My purse was here; it was just hiding, lost at the bottom. I had opened it half-a-dozen times that day as I paid for taxis, bought tickets and food. When the handbag was empty I shook it over the counter. A single hair clip fell out.

“Ninepence,” the man repeated, his jolliness fading.

“I'm sorry. I can't find my purse.”

“That's handy.”

“I must have left it on the bus. I'll go and get it right now.”

Leaving the chips, seizing my suitcase, I hurried back the way I had come. The bus was approaching and I stepped into the headlights, waving my free hand. It stopped. Beyond the glare of the lights, the driver pointed to the
NOT IN SERVICE
sign. I set down my case and put my hands together. Reluctantly he opened the door. “I'm going to the garage. There are no more buses tonight.”

“Please,” I said. “I lost my purse.”

At once he pulled over and beckoned me aboard. I searched beneath what I thought was the seat where I had first sat. I searched behind and in front of the seat I had occupied for the rest of the journey. The driver fetched a torch and shone it back and forth over the dirty floor.

“It must be here,” I kept saying as the beam caught matchsticks, sweet wrappers, a cigarette end, a pink comb.

He picked up the last. “Are you sure this is where you lost it?”

“I had it when I got on. I paid for my ticket. Then I got off, and it was gone.”

But even as I spoke, I understood what must have happened. The man who had put his hand on my leg had put his hand somewhere else. Or perhaps the purse had fallen out when I jumped up, pretending to feel sick, and he had pocketed it. All day I had been careless about closing my handbag, behaving as if I were still on the Orkneys.

“Maybe you dropped it and someone picked it up?” the driver persisted. “You were the first one off. If you're lucky, they'll take it to the police station in the morning. Is there anything in it to prove it's yours?”

“The bus tickets,” I said faintly.

“Well, off you go home now. Call at the station in the morning.” He switched off the torch and returned to his seat.

At Claypoole I had seldom seen money, and at Blackbird Hall weeks had passed without my needing more than sixpence for the church collection. Now I was in the world where I was going to need money every day and I had none. I picked up my suitcase and climbed down into the street. The bus, my last link with my old life, drove away, and I forced myself to walk back to the fish-and-chips shop. There were still no other customers. The man was listening to the radio; I recognised one of Vicky's favourite programmes.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I lost my purse on the bus. I don't have any money.”

His lips tightened and I braced myself for an outburst. Then he seemed to take in my raincoat, my suitcase, my bedraggled hair. He added a couple of chips to the bag and held it out. “Come back and pay when you can.”

“I will,” I promised fervently.

For a few minutes sitting at the counter, eating the chips one by one, I almost forgot my troubles but soon the bag was empty. I waved my thanks to the man, now occupied with other customers, and once more picked up my suitcase. At the street corner I set it down and stopped to think. It was nearly nine o'clock, dark and chilly. Where could I sleep? Recalling the men in Inverness, I thought I could look for a bench at the railway station, but that seemed too public; besides, there were laws against loitering. A park would be safer. I was wondering how to find one when, nearby, a bell chimed the hour. At once that seemed like the answer. My uncle had always left the door of his church open. In the sixteenth century, he'd told me, a person could seek sanctuary for thirty-seven days.