The Flight of Gemma Hardy (34 page)

“Mr. Carruthers.” Louise laughed. “I'd forgotten about him. No, she's never remarried, though not for lack of opportunity. She'd be all alone if it weren't for me and Audrey.”

“Audrey? Audrey Marsden?” I felt Robin staring at me.

“Who else? When Veronica left last year, Mum did the sensible thing and invited her to move into the house. Now there's a nice young couple paying rent in the cottage, and Audrey has been a godsend, driving her to doctors, taking care of things. Heaven knows how much we'd be paying for taxis and nurses without her.”

In my preoccupation with my aunt it had never occurred to me that Audrey might still be at Yew House. At the prospect of seeing the person who had first told me about the Orkneys, I was struck dumb. And surely, I thought, as we squeezed past a lorry, she would have known Mr. Sinclair.

Except for Robin's occasional exclamations—pheasants! sheep!—we drove in silence past moors and lonely farms down into the next valley. Presently I caught sight of the circular wood above the village. A few minutes later the hill with the Roman fort came into view. Driving through the village, I glimpsed the school, and my uncle's church. The field, where Celeste and Marie Antoinette once grazed, was filled with corn. Then we were turning through the familiar gateposts, driving up the familiar drive. As we stopped outside the house Louise said, “She looks a little different.”

But I was too overwhelmed by my first sight of Yew House to pay attention. In a rush, I recognised the light over the front door, the rowan tree beside it, the antique boot scraper, the roses growing by the bay window. Whatever my attitude to the occupants of the house, these things had been my childhood friends. Louise opened the door; I crossed the threshold. The hall, which had always smelled of dogs and cigarettes and furniture polish, now smelled of nothing but cleanliness. I kept tight hold of Robin's hand.

“I'll tell her you're here,” said Louise. “What do you want to do with him?”

“Robin will come too. He knows to be quiet when grown-ups are talking.”

“As you wish.” She marched off down the corridor. Once again it was easy to imagine her cajoling a difficult guest, reprimanding a sloppy workman.

While we waited in the hall I told Robin how I used to play on the stairs with Louise. I was describing how we had dared each other who could jump farther when she reappeared, beckoning. I bent down beside Robin. “My aunt is a bit scary,” I said, “but there's nothing she can do to us.” He nodded doubtfully.

The sitting-room had been transformed. Gone were the faded blue wallpaper and the chintz sofa. Now the walls sparkled with brightly floral paper; the sofa was the colour of sand; the rest of the furniture had also been replaced. Only the picture over the mantelpiece, showing a flock of adults and children skating on a village pond, was the same. My aunt was seated in an armchair by the fire, a tartan rug spread over her knees. After Louise's warning I had been braced to find her as altered as the room, but with her golden hair piled high, she looked much as she had at Perth station.

“Hello, Aunt,” I said. “How are you? Robin, this is my aunt.”

“Isn't it obvious? Who's that?”

“This is Robin, the boy I take care of. He's going to play while we talk.” I led him over to the bay window and laid out his cars, his colouring books and crayons. “Is everything all right?” I asked.

“I'm thirsty,” he whispered.

To my surprise my aunt heard. “Louise, get the child a drink. Gemma, sit down here where I can see you. I must say you've turned out better than I feared. You were such a plain little thing.”

Now that I was seated a few feet away I could see other changes that suggested illness. Her eyes were duller and her hands, although beautifully manicured, were rivered with veins. “Do you have a copy of my birth certificate?” I said.

“Still the same bull in a china shop,” she said, shaking her head with a faint smile. She stared into the fire, and I understood that she was waiting for the threat of interruption to be past. I got out my notebook and pen, wrote the place and date at the top of a page and sat waiting. It was possible, even likely, that I would never see my aunt again. Louise returned, expertly carrying a tray with a glass of orange squash, a cup of tea, and a plate of chocolate biscuits. While I thanked her, my aunt told her to go away and close the door. Then she told me to turn on the transistor radio that sat on the nearby table and place it near the door. When the radio was burbling away and I was back in my seat, she pulled her rug closer and began.

“To my surprise,” she said, “you have recently been weighing on my conscience. It's like you to nag. You were always an annoying child.”

Her thin fingers fretted the fringe of the rug. I waited. All of this had clearly been planned in advance, and needed no urging by me.

“Your uncle,” she said at last, “had not only a sister but a younger brother.”

“That's right. There was a photograph in his study of the three of them. Then it disappeared.”

“I put it in my chest of drawers. Ian and I were courting when he died. He was driving home to Edinburgh from seeing me in North Berwick when his motorbike went off the road. I didn't hear about it until the following day. I always think I've had twenty-four hours' more happiness in my life because of that delay. People talk about premonitions, but I didn't have the slightest inkling. No cracked mirrors, no spilt salt, no voices on the wind.” She shook her head and I caught the glint of earrings.

“The last night I saw Ian,” she said, “I told him I was expecting.”

Hearing the word Vicky had used about Audrey Marsden, used in the same way, I made a little sound.

“I was sure we'd get married, else I'd never have—” She made a vague gesture. “Still I was so nervous telling him I felt like I'd swallowed a goldfish. We were at the pub, and I remember Ian burst out laughing so loudly that people turned to look at us. ‘How clever we are,' he said, ‘we've made a baby.' We agreed, then and there, to get married the next week. Who knew when the army would give him leave again? Our parents would be shocked, but we didn't care. Ian was handsome and clever and I was confident he'd flourish after the war. And my grandfather had left money in trust for me that I'd get when I turned thirty or married. I hadn't mentioned this to Ian for fear it might seem like hinting. When I told him that night he just shook his head. ‘Beauty, brains, and money,' he said. ‘How did I get so lucky?'

“We stayed until last call. Later, of course, I blamed myself for the accident. If he'd left earlier, if he hadn't had one more drink. When I heard he was dead, I fainted and was in a fever for three days. My mother insisted it was a blessing I missed the funeral, but I think it made it even harder to accept what had happened. For years afterwards, whenever I heard a motorbike, I was sure it was Ian.”

I had written: Ian, expecting, trust fund, accident. In the background the radio gave cricket scores. By the window Robin made faint “broom broom” noises as he trundled his cars back and forth. My aunt seemed unaware of any of this, or even of me, her audience. She was looking squarely into the past.

“When my fever abated,” she went on, “I assumed I'd lost the baby. Gradually it dawned on me I hadn't. My mother guessed my condition. She started making plans to send me to Ireland; the story was I would help out on a horse farm. I would have the baby there, give it up for adoption, and come home. No one would know, and some other nice boy would come along and marry me. She had the good sense to say this last part only once. I had a ticket to sail from Glasgow to Belfast the following week when Charles came to call. We had met a couple of times, and he knew how Ian felt about me. It was a dreich afternoon but I dragged him out for a walk to get away from my mother. We headed up Berwick Law. We were at the top, standing in the rain, looking down on the Firth of Forth, when the word
baby
popped out of my mouth. Charles smiled and for a moment he was the spitting image of Ian. ‘That's grand news,' he said.

“Then I blurted out everything, my last conversation with Ian, my belief that I'd caused his death, the whole Ireland plan. I remember watching a ship sail into the Forth, very, very slowly, and saying I didn't think I could bear to give him up. I was sure I was having a boy. But my parents would disown me if I didn't, and I would only get my inheritance if I married. All the way down the hill we talked about alternatives. Charles suggested I could stay in Ireland for a few years and come back with the baby, pretending to be a widow. But even two years somewhere cheap would take more money than either of us had.

“That night Charles phoned; he'd had an idea. ‘Promise you'll think about it for twenty-four hours.' When he suggested we get married, I was furious. I remember shouting, ‘Don't you have any respect for your brother's memory?' and hanging up. But after my parents left to play bridge I walked round and round the house, thinking. If I married Charles I could keep the baby. I could use my inheritance to buy us a house. Then, in a few years, we could get a divorce. I knew Charles would be a good father.

“At breakfast the next morning I told my parents. My mother asked if I was sure. My father just patted my shoulder and went off to the coal yard. We married in a registry office, and Will was born six months later. Soon afterwards Charles got this parish. We moved here and began to share a room. Louise and Veronica came along. When your uncle wanted you to live with us—he'd made a promise to his sister—I couldn't say no.”

“So,” I had to say it for myself, “Will is not my uncle's son.” As I spoke I remembered the dream I had had at Claypoole, when Will had shouted, “You're not my father.”

“You sound pleased.” My aunt's dull eyes regarded me curiously. It was the first sign she'd given of being interested in my reaction.

There was no point in explaining how this new fact changed everything for the better. Suddenly her blind partiality for Will made a sad kind of sense. As did her and my uncle's unlikely union. Living at Yew House, I had taken their marriage for granted, but since meeting Mr. Sinclair, I couldn't help wondering why my uncle had chosen someone so cruel and vain. Even as I had this thought, I realised that my dislike for her had ebbed. Now that my aunt didn't control my life I could afford to forgive her.

“Not pleased,” I said. “Relieved. And”—another idea rushed in—“that was why you had my uncle buried in Edinburgh, rather than here, in his parish.”

“Charles always said you had brains. Yes, I wanted to be able to visit Ian, and having Charles there made it easier. With him and my parents dead, no one else knew. I've thought of telling Will, but he's already furious with me for being ill.”

As if to demonstrate, she began to cough, a dry hacking that shook the rug across her knees. Robin looked up; he had abandoned his cars for his colouring book. I hovered over her, offering water. Finally she managed a few sips and the cough subsided.

“Why did you tell me?” I said.

She spread her thin hands. “The doctor claims I'll be well by midsummer, which is balderdash. It began to weigh on me that I'd kick the bucket and no one would know. With everyone else I have something to lose. But you can't possibly think worse of me than you already do.”

It did not occur to me to contradict her.

“I'm sure you don't remember when you first came here,” she went on. “I would try to read to you and play with you. But you pushed me aside and howled for your uncle. Eventually I stopped trying.”

“I was three years old,” I said. “I missed my father.”

“I know, but your crying made me feel as if you knew that I had never loved your uncle, as if you were determined to give him the love I couldn't.”

So Miriam was right; she had been jealous. “I thought you always hated me.”

“Not always,” she said judiciously. “I did try to make you welcome. Your uncle never betrayed for a second that Will wasn't his. But nothing I did made a difference, and after Charles's death, you turned into a little monster, hitting your cousins, breaking their toys.”

She yawned, as if the mere memory of my bad behaviour fatigued her. I bit back my retort. Mindful that I might not have another chance, I said I had something I wanted to tell her. Did she remember Mr. Donaldson, the schoolteacher?

“From Edinburgh?” My aunt raised her eyebrows. “Poked his nose in where he shouldn't have.”

Briefly I described my visit to Oban, what I'd learned about Mr. Donaldson's life after he left the village. “You ruined him. People believed whatever you said about him and he couldn't get a job again.”

She gave an imperious sniff. “He ruined himself. If he'd been any kind of a decent teacher he'd have found work. I couldn't have you in the house, upsetting Will, quarrelling with Louise and Veronica, making us feel like bad people. That's the thing about you, Gemma. When you came in a few minutes ago I thought you'd grown up, but you're still the same. After all these years you can't accept you might not know the whole story.”

Suddenly Robin was standing in front of my aunt, holding his colouring book. “You're calling Jean the wrong name, and your hair is funny.”

Following his gaze, I saw that my aunt's abundant golden coils were no longer her own.

“Rude child,” she said calmly and reached to straighten her wig.

She was nicer, I thought, than she used to be. I drew Robin to me and asked again about my birth certificate.

“I could have sworn Charles kept the papers to do with you in the bottom drawer of his desk, but Audrey said it was empty. When we finish talking, look for yourself. Perhaps you'll have better luck. But don't get your hopes up about anything else. After your father died, Charles tried to find out if there was any money from the house, the boat, but writing to people who barely had two words of English—well, it was hopeless. By any normal reckoning you owe me thousands of pounds for your board and keep.”