The Flight of Gemma Hardy (3 page)

chapter three

W
hen I opened my eyes I was looking not at the sewing-machine and the shelves of linen but at the sloping ceiling of my attic room with its mossy paint. I was still blinking cautiously as Mrs. Marsden appeared at the foot of my bed.

“You're awake,” she said. “What a fright you gave us. Dr. Shearer was here and he thinks you had some kind of fit. You kept talking to him in some strange language and trying to put on your shoes.”

The notion of my doing and saying things of which I had no memory made me dizzy all over again. “I don't remember any fit,” I said. “I just remember my aunt telling me to be quiet and being left alone in the cold and dark. She knows I hate being shut in. How could she be so cruel?”

“Cruel,” exclaimed Mrs. Marsden. She had turned on the light and it shone on her fair hair, which was as usual pulled into a tight bun. “What nonsense. Your aunt gives you a home, food, and clothes. Without her you would be in an orphanage.”

“At least there would be no one to say I'm worse than a dog. All the other children would be orphans too, and when people were stupid or unkind, they'd be punished.”

Mrs. Marsden shook her head. “You don't know what you're talking about. Orphanages are dreadful places. The children have no toys or books or drawing things. They work all day and are scolded for the smallest fault. You know how clumsy you are and how you take half an hour to lay a fire because you're daydreaming. You would always be in trouble. Now lie still and don't talk while I go and tell your aunt that you're awake.”

Who would I talk to? I wanted to say, but even this brief conversation had exhausted me. I was happy to lie back and close my eyes. Mrs. Marsden was right—I didn't know the first thing about orphanages—but I couldn't go back to being the docile girl who had allowed Will and Louise to bully her. As I drifted towards sleep I vowed I would no longer let myself be treated like an unpaid servant.

W
hen I awoke again a man with cavernous nostrils and gold-rimmed glasses was bending over me, one hand wrapped around my wrist. “Well, young lady,” said Dr. Shearer, “how are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You didn't seem fine last night.” He held up his hand and made me count fingers. Then he asked the names of the queen—Elizabeth II—and the prime minister—Harold Macmillan—and where I lived. I answered quietly, not quarrelling with the simple questions; Dr. Shearer had been a friend of my uncle's and, on his rare visits to the house, always greeted me kindly. Once in the autumn when I was walking home from school he had stopped in his red sports car to give me a lift. “Hold on,” he had said, and then we were flying down the road, past the fields of startled cows and sheep. When we skidded to a halt in front of Yew House, he had said I was the perfect passenger.

“Can you sit up?” he asked now.

I tried, but little dots appeared before my eyes. Gently he told me to lie down again. Could I tell him what had happened? I described my encounter with Will, how he had attacked me, how my aunt had taken his side and locked me in the sewing-room. “It was freezing and she wouldn't even turn on the light.”

“Heavens, Doctor,” said my aunt from the doorway. “You'd think I was an ogre. She flew at Will like a wildcat only because he reminded her of how much she owes our family. I would be failing in my duty if I didn't make sure that Gemma understands that she won't have the same advantages as her cousins. She will have to work for her living as soon as she's able.”

She came into the room and stationed herself at the foot of the bed. It was as if a peacock had invaded the nest of a sparrow. Everything about her—her hair, her pullover, her lipstick—was too large and vivid.

“She might go to university,” ventured the doctor. “She might marry.”

My uncle had always spoken as if all four of us would go to university. Now my aunt acknowledged, grudgingly, that this was possible. “But she's a plain little thing, and bad tempered to boot. Even if she finds a husband, she'll have to work, like Betty.”

“Oh, come now,” said Dr. Shearer. “Betty has a good head on her shoulders. If she hadn't left school at fourteen, she'd have made a capable nurse. Many women make their own way in the world nowadays: teaching, working in offices. Gemma will have the advantages of your example, and a thorough education.”

He stepped over to the window, barely more than a single stride for him, to check the latch. Turning back to my aunt, he remarked that the room was chilly. If my condition turned into flu or pneumonia, who knew how long I might be in bed. My aunt said she'd always understood that the dry heat of an electric fire was the worst thing for an invalid, but if the doctor insisted, she would send one up. She had something to ask him, she added.

“Give me five minutes with Gemma,” said Dr. Shearer.

She glanced at her watch and folded her arms.

“I meant,” he said, “five minutes alone.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don't want her telling you stories. Charles used to say she had a vivid imagination, but sometimes I think she doesn't know the difference between truth and falsehood.”

I struggled to sit up, but the doctor's hand on my shoulder restrained me. “Please, Edna,” he said, “trust me to know my business. No one likes to answer questions about their digestion in public.”

This was not, in fact, the case at Yew House. Until a couple of years ago my cousins had reported daily on whether they'd done number one or number two; the latter earned a sweet. But my aunt seemed reassured and left the room. As soon as the door closed, Dr. Shearer pulled over the chair.

“I was a great friend of your uncle's,” he said, “and I've seen some of what's happened to you since his death. Tell me, are you happy here?”

“How can I be happy when I'm treated as if I'm stupid and a burden? No one here cares whether I live or die.”

The doctor did not contradict me. “Would you like to go away to school if such a thing were possible?”

Remembering my conversation with Mrs. Marsden, I said yes, I'd even go to an orphanage. “At least I'd have orphan friends who wouldn't despise me.”

Dr. Shearer smiled. “I don't think that will be necessary. There are boarding schools where they have scholarships for girls like you who are bright but have no money. I happen to know of one, and I'll ask your aunt if you can apply.”

He took off his glasses and polished the lenses, first one, then the other, with a handkerchief before returning them to his nose. “Mrs. Marsden told me that when they found you in the sewing-room you were lying on the floor saying, ‘Please don't touch me. Please don't hurt me.' Did you see something? A mouse? A rat?”

“There was a figure,” I said slowly. “Like a person, but very tall. I couldn't see its face.”

“The sewing-room is small.” The doctor's hairy nostrils quivered. “Whoever it was must have been almost as close to you as I am now. How is it that you couldn't see its face? And surely you must know whether it was a man or a woman?”

His question brought back a story, a story I still remembered even though the teller, surely my father, had long vanished. “In Iceland,” I said, “a person made of snow visits houses when something bad is going to happen. Sometimes it appears as a man, sometimes as a woman. Whoever was in the sewing-room didn't want to be seen clearly.”

“Did it speak?”

His newly polished glasses reflected my own pale face. The figure had spoken; it had used my name—not Gemma, but the name my father and mother had called me, which no one ever used anymore—and it had told me to be careful. I stared at my miniature self in the shining lenses behind which lay the doctor's kind eyes. If my uncle had been there I would have told him everything, but if my uncle had been there the figure would never have come. He had kept certain things away, just as the rowan tree beside the front door of Yew House kept witches at bay. And the doctor, however kind, was not my uncle.

“No,” I said. “It didn't speak.”

“Did it threaten you?”

“I was frightened but it didn't do anything frightening.” I closed my eyes, hoping for another glimpse of the figure, another phrase, but all I could see were the shelves of linen rising into the darkness. The doctor was still watching me when I looked up again.

“Perhaps,” I suggested hesitantly, “it was trying to take care of me.”

chapter four

I
stayed in bed for several days, enjoying my solitude. I was not, by nature, someone who liked being alone—after even an hour or two I yearned for company—but I wanted to hold on to whatever had happened in the sewing-room. So I read and dozed and ate the soups and milk puddings that Mrs. Marsden carried up to me. When she wasn't too busy she would perch on the edge of the bed and tell me an Orkney story: one day she described a woman who married a seal; another, the big storm that blew all the henhouses off the island.

When at last, on a bright, mild afternoon, I dressed and came downstairs I felt as if I had been away for months; I was surprised to find the lower floors of Yew House, and their inhabitants, unchanged. Louise was out riding; Veronica was sitting by the fire, studying one of her mother's magazines; Will, recovered from his cold, was trying to teach the dogs a trick that involved their pretending to be dead; my aunt was on the sofa, drinking a cup of tea and writing in the notebook where she kept her lists.

“Oh, Gemma,” she said vaguely, “I hope you turned off the fire. God knows what the electricity bill will be this quarter.”

“Yes, Aunt.” The word slipped out before I could stop it.

My impertinence made her look up from the notebook, but her eyes did not reach my face. “Why are you wearing Louise's pullover?”

Mrs. Marsden had come into my room the day before and set a pile of neatly folded clothes on the chest of drawers. I had given no thought to the slight oddity of her returning my washing until I discovered that the pile included several garments that Louise had recently outgrown. I said the pullover was in my room.

“And how did it get there? Elves?”

“With my clean clothes.” I hoped to implicate Betty, who did the laundry.

“Go and take it off at once and bring it to me. Louise's clothes belong to her and to Veronica. They are not for the taking.”

“So what do you expect me to wear?” I demanded. “At the Sunday school party Mrs. Lunn said I looked positively Dickensian.”

Before my aunt could answer I left the room. Usually I climbed the stairs two at a time but today I mounted them slowly, carrying my defiance like a banner. I had liked the blue pullover, but its loss was nothing compared with the knowledge that I had an ally. When I returned downstairs, wearing a grey cardigan that had belonged first to Louise, then to Veronica, and that even on my small frame barely buttoned, I headed to the kitchen. “Can I help with supper?” I asked.

As she handed me an apron Mrs. Marsden looked askance at the ragged cardigan. “Is that all you could find to wear?”

I described my arrival in the sitting-room.

“Oh, for heaven's sake.” She shook her tidy head. While I scrubbed the potatoes, she told me the story of the film she'd seen the night before at Perth Odeon. “And then the hero— Mind you take out all the eyes.”

“Oh, Mrs. Marsden,” said my aunt from the doorway. “I was just wondering what time we're having supper. I've invited Mr. Carruthers and his wife for sherry.”

Bob Carruthers, the new master of foxhounds, was a frequent and popular guest at Yew House. He arm-wrestled Will, talked to Louise about riding, admired Veronica's outfits, and flattered my aunt absurdly, calling her Diana, mistress of the hunt. As for me, he always asked how the hockey was going. “I don't play,” I would remind him. I much preferred his wife, who was expecting a baby in March and shared my passion for
Anne of Green Gables
.

“Seven-thirty,” said Mrs. Marsden, briskly stirring the white sauce.

My aunt picked up the pepper grinder and studied the base, as if she had never seen such intricate workmanship. I knew she was hoping that Mrs. Marsden would ask if the Carruthers were staying to dinner and that Mrs. Marsden was determined not to make the invitation easier. Presently she set down the grinder and left the room.

Mrs. Marsden turned to me. “Do four more potatoes. Better now than at seven.”

D
efiance was appealing, but it did not warm my cold room, it did not clothe me, it did not fill the long hours after school and chores. On Saturday I walked to the edge of Strathmuir and turned in the direction of Perth. A mile to the west a small hill rose beside the road. On the summit, my uncle had explained, were the remains of a Roman fort. The Romans had made several attempts to subdue this part of Scotland but had never succeeded, any more than the Vikings or, more recently, the Germans. As part of their campaign, however, they had built a number of outlying forts. “Imagine making this with a pick and a shovel,” my uncle had said. With several parishioners he had excavated a small area and found some fire-stones and a few fragments of pottery; he dreamed of a huge project: scores of people digging under the supervision of a real archaeologist.

On one of our walks to the fort he had described the town of Bath, and how it had been built around the hot springs where the goddess Sulis lived. Sulis's followers, my uncle said, used to throw lead tablets into the water inscribed with requests for children or good harvests, or sometimes curses.

“What sort of curses?” I had asked. We had reached the foot of the fort.

“Fierce ones,” said my uncle cheerfully, “and very specific. Cursed be he who stole my gloves. May his corn fail for five years. May he who lamed my horse have only feeble girl children.” He laughed and lifted me over the wall. “It's not very Christian, but who doesn't wish they had a god on their side, ready to smite their enemies?”

The idea that just by saying certain words you could harm someone fascinated me. I had asked if the curses worked; my uncle had said he didn't know.

Now I stood looking at the rough mound, covered with heather and bracken, and tried to picture the soldiers who had lived here. “They were a tough lot,” my uncle had told me. “Down south on Hadrian's Wall, the soldiers slept on sacks of wool and practised their archery, but up here there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and yet they couldn't be off guard for a minute. They'd be eating their porridge or milking their goats and suddenly these half-naked people would appear over the nearest hill and rush towards the fort, shooting arrows tipped with poison or flame. At night they'd see fires out in the heather, hear strange music and wild cries.”

Girls did not play much part in these stories. When I asked if there were any women warriors, my uncle described Joan of Arc, a poor shepherdess, not much older than I was, who had persuaded people to follow her into battle and save France from the English. After that I had pictured myself wearing armour and carrying a shield, successfully holding at bay marauding hordes.

I scrambled up the slippery hill. At the top the wind stung my eyes and blew my hair straight back. The blue and white bus was winding its way along the road to Perth. To the north the hills were white with snow. However hard I looked I could not see the sea.

Standing there, watching the bus grow larger, then smaller, I thought about running away. I could take the bus, or walk, it was only ten miles to Perth, but what would I do when I got there? No one would ever mistake me, as they might Louise, for a grown-up and give me a job in a shop. I pictured myself standing in a doorway asking for money, as I had seen the Gypsy women do. But what would I eat? Where would I sleep? My room was cold but outside was colder. And what would I do when my shabby clothes wore out? If the police caught me they would take me back to Yew House and things would be even worse. I must bide my time, I thought, until I was seventeen. I must endure.

A mournful chorus roused me. A V of geese was heading towards the fort, flying so low that I could hear the whistle of their wings. I waved but they gave no sign of seeing me. Perhaps, I thought, they were going to Iceland.

I was walking down the hill, barely keeping my balance on the loose stones, when a figure sprang out from behind a rock and, at the same moment, someone shoved my shoulder; I was sprawling in a clump of heather and then, on the grass, sliding fast. As the sky tumbled and rocks grazed my arms and legs, I saw four figures leaping around me, whooping, brandishing sticks and fists. For a moment I thought the Picts had got me; my uncle had taught me to identify with the cultured invaders rather than the barbarian Scots. Then one of them hastened my descent with a helpful kick, and I recognised my cousin.

T
he Monday after my visit to the fort I came home from school to find an envelope bearing my name on the hall table. I stared in wonder at the words: Miss Gemma Hardy, Yew House. I could count on one hand the number of letters I had received. As suddenly as the boys had ambushed me, the idea leapt out from some crevice in my brain that the writer was a friend of my mother's, a person who loved me even without knowing me, who had been searching for me for years and had at last tracked me down. I was still scrutinising the illegible postmark when my aunt appeared.

“Oh, Gemma. Those must be the forms from the school Dr. Shearer recommended. If you do well in the exams they'll give you a scholarship. They even have provision for girls to stay during the holidays. Will and Louise can help you study.”

The loving friend vanished. Instead I was torn between delight about the school and irritation at the notion that my doltish cousins could teach me anything. But both these feelings also fled when something almost as unusual as the arrival of a letter occurred: my aunt put her arm around me. Unthinkingly I curved my shoulders to fit her embrace. It was so long since anyone had touched me with even a semblance of affection.

M
y teacher that year was Mr. Donaldson. He had moved to the village only last August and was still a figure of mystery. A tall, saturnine man, some days he arrived in the classroom just as the bell rang and gazed out of the window, scarcely seeming to remember whether we were studying geography or arithmetic. Other days he was rapping his ruler on the desk as soon as assembly was over. “Page sixty-two. Who can describe the events leading up to the invasion of the Spanish Armada?” Behind his back the older girls sang, “Donald, where's yer troosers?” but we were all a little afraid of him. He wore a fat gold ring on his little finger, which Isobel, the brainiest girl in our class, said was a sign that he belonged to a secret society. He was one of the few bachelors in the village whom my aunt never invited to dinner.

The day after the letter arrived I stayed at my desk when the final bell rang. I was waiting for Mr. Donaldson to notice me, but he was having one of his vague days, staring out of the window at the slate roofs and the lemon-coloured sky. That morning during history—we were studying the quarrel between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I—he'd announced that in Switzerland women still didn't have the vote. Now, in the silence following the other girls' departure, I could hear him humming faintly through his yellow teeth.

Finally I approached his desk. “Mr. Donaldson,” I said, offering the envelope. At last his eyes left the window and took in my presence. Silently he reached for the letter. I stood watching as he read, confident that he would know what needed to be done.

“Whose idea was this?” he said.

“Dr. Shearer's. My aunt thinks it's a good plan. She wants me to be independent as soon as possible.”

“But you're only nine.”

“Ten. I need someone to watch me take the exams else I won't get a scholarship.”

Mr. Donaldson was pushing back his chair. “I'd like a word with her.”

He fetched his raincoat and briefcase from the staff room and I collected my coat, the last one hanging in the cloakroom. I had inherited it from Veronica, and it was already worn down to the nap at the elbows and cuffs. As we crossed the playground, I saw that Mr. Donaldson's coat was almost as shabby; a button dangled from one sleeve. He led the way through the village, his long legs scissoring. I trotted beside him.

“Remind me, Gemma,” he said, “how did you end up with your aunt?”

Breathlessly I explained about the deaths of first my mother and then my father and how my uncle had brought me to Yew House.

“He sounds like a remarkable man,” said Mr. Donaldson.

“He was,” I said, pleased as always when anyone praised my uncle.

His pace did not slow when we reached the outskirts of the village and we hurried past the cows. My favourites, Marie Antoinette and Celeste, were near the fence. Silently I promised them extra handfuls of grass tomorrow.

“Do you always walk home by yourself?” said Mr. Donaldson.

“Yes. My cousins go to the school in Perth.” I did not add that my aunt drove them to the bus stop in the village and that they often passed me with a jaunty wave.

As we turned through the gateway, I saw Mr. Donaldson glance at the lion on each gatepost. At the top of the drive we both paused. “Very posh,” he said, staring at the clean, curtained windows of Yew House. I had agreed to his request to talk to my aunt unthinkingly—obeying teachers was second nature—but now I worried he might spoil my plans. As I led the way to the back door, I tried to warn him.

“Mr. Donaldson, I hope you won't upset my aunt. She doesn't care for me, but it's not her fault. She never cared for my mother either.”

He looked down at me, his yellow teeth glinting. “I'm not good at being tactful,” he said, “but I hope your aunt will be upset by what I am about to tell her.”

In the kitchen Mrs. Marsden was rolling out pastry. “You're late,” she said. “Did you get kept in after school?” And then, catching sight of my companion, “Henry.”

“Good afternoon.” He doffed his cap. “I'm here to see the dragon.”

“Lucky you,” said Mrs. Marsden, and I understood that they knew each other in some unexpected way. “She's in the sitting-room. Let me tell her you're here.”

As Mrs. Marsden left the room, Mr. Donaldson turned to me. “This concerns you, Gemma, but I think it would be best if you weren't present.”