The Flight of Gemma Hardy (9 page)

M
iriam still worked in the library over the holidays and she had persuaded Mrs. Bryant to let me assist her after I finished my other tasks. We were alphabetising the history section one afternoon when she asked if I knew about Cecil.

“Who's Cecil?” I said.

“The Mintos' younger son. He died in the Second World War.” When she first arrived at Claypoole, she went on, there had been several sightings of a young man in a bloody uniform wandering the lower corridors. She herself hadn't seen him until last year, when she'd discovered him in this very room, sitting in a chair by the window, reading. She pointed to the window in the far corner. I asked if he'd said anything and she said no. “He just smiled at me, and went on reading.”

“So how did you know he was a ghost?”

“I didn't. He was wearing ordinary clothes, a white shirt and dark trousers, and I thought he was someone's brother, visiting the school. But one minute he was turning a page and the next there was just the book, lying on a chair.”

I reached for a history of the Tudors, and asked what he'd been reading, and whether she'd seen him again.

“
Kim
. It's a novel by Rudyard Kipling. Sometimes I get this feeling that he's waiting for me, and I come here and find him. But that hasn't happened in months.” She held up a biography of Oliver Cromwell with a portrait of a long-faced, unsmiling man on the cover. “This could be my father,” she said.

“He looks cross, but finish telling me about Cecil. Does he ever talk to you?”

Miriam slipped the book into place. Then she fussed with her Alice band in a way that made her hair stick out even more. “I'm worried you'll think I'm balmy,” she said.

I was about to tell her what had happened in the sewing-room, but something cautioned me not to, almost as if the figure itself had appeared to tug my sleeve. “I don't think you're balmy,” I said. “What does he say?”

“Ordinary things. Last summer we spoke about how warm it was and how nice it would be to have an ice cream. He likes strawberry; I prefer vanilla. Another time he talked about being on the convoys; how he'd seen whales and icebergs. He said when a submarine showed up on the radar everyone on the ship held their breath.”

“Didn't he die on a ship?”

“Yes.” Miriam blinked slowly. “But it seemed rude to mention he was dead. Like asking a grown-up how old they are.”

I stepped over to the fiction shelves
H
–
N
. When I pulled out
Kim
, the gold-edged pages were covered with dust. “Did you read it?”

“I tried. I waited until I thought he must be finished and then I borrowed it but I got stuck after twenty pages. Maybe you could read it and tell me the story.”

Before I could slip the book into my tunic pocket Miriam began to briskly straighten volumes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door inch open.

I
n all our conversations I never spoke of Mr. Donaldson; I could not bear to voice the enormity of what I'd done. Then, on the last day of the holidays, it was unusually warm, and Ross sent me to weed the herbaceous border on the lower terrace. Miriam came to help. A cuckoo was calling nearby, sweet and insistent. We both called back, and it fell silent. As I dug up a dandelion, I told her how the maid at Yew House had believed that dandelion milk cured warts.

“I should tell my father,” she said. “He has warts. I don't mean to be nosy, Gemma, but I can't help wondering what you did to make Miss Bryant so cross.”

I could easily have offered a small fib—I'd been cheeky, or untidy—but, to my amazement, the words I had thought myself so reluctant to utter were bubbling forth. I told her the whole story, beginning with Mr. Donaldson's visit to my aunt and his advice to me and then describing how I had found the box and taken it to him for safekeeping. When I described what had happened with the letter, Miriam exclaimed.

“Oh, Gemma, anyone could have told you that Mr. Milne is Miss Bryant's slave. Cook would have posted the letter. Miss Bryant has something on her too, I don't know what, but she enjoys having little secrets.”

I had been braced for Miriam's censure, but the news that there had been a safe way to send the letter was more than I could bear. I drove my trowel into the soil until she pointed out that I was uprooting a primula. “There must be something I can do,” I said, restoring the dishevelled plant. “Mr. Donaldson shouldn't lose his job because of me.”

“Start weeding,” said Miriam, edging away.

Suddenly Miss Bryant was standing over us. For several minutes she watched in silence from behind her large dark glasses. I crawled along the border, piling up the weeds in small heaps. Miriam tugged at a shoot of willow herb.

“Stand up, girls.”

We did, offering awkward curtsies to her black stare. Her blue dress with its white collar and belt was like one my aunt had worn the previous summer.

“I have been observing the two of you,” she said, “and I see that you've formed an unhealthy relationship. Goodall, your father is not paying for you to fraternise with working girls. Tomorrow you'll move into Form One. Miss Seftain will coach you on what you've missed. Your father will be pleased that you're catching up with your age group at last. Hardy, this border will be finished before you re-enter the school. Be sure to dig up every inch of dandelion root so they don't grow back.”

A few weeks ago I would have told her that I was due in the kitchen at four. Now I bobbed my head and resumed my digging. I did not dare to watch as she led my friend away, but I took some small satisfaction in leaving, unmolested, a piece of each dandelion. Let the plants grow back, boisterous and yellow.

chapter ten

T
he summer term began, and in the classroom, thanks to Miriam's coaching, I held my own. Mrs. Harris no longer picked on me at every opportunity. In the kitchen I had learned to be slap-dash and make mounds of carrots and potatoes disappear into saucepans. Even Mr. Waugh's sermons were less tedious, now that we no longer shivered in the pews. When he visited Primary 7 I kept my head down and hoped he wouldn't guess that I disagreed with every sentence he uttered.

As I swept the classrooms on Saturdays, I often studied the map of the British Isles that hung on the wall of each room, wondering if Mr. Donaldson had joined his sister in Oban. The town was on the west coast of Scotland, north of Glasgow, opposite the island of Mull. Then one day in geography, when we were reading about rain forests, I suddenly thought, What was to stop him from going farther afield? I pictured my precious box mouldering under a palm tree, or being eaten by kangaroos. But I had no one to whom I could confide my fears.

Since Miriam had moved to Form I, I seldom saw her, and when I did her face was pale and her leg seemed to drag more heavily. At lunch or supper we would exchange looks as I set down her plate. I miss you, I would think. Her eyes said the same thing. In one of our conversations during the holidays I had told her about my parents, gazing at the North Star and sending messages back and forth across the ocean. Maybe we could do that, she had said. In maths, you could send me the right answer. We had tried it one Sunday. During the first quarter-hour of Mr. Waugh's sermon I had thought about Sulis, the goddess of the hot springs at Bath. When the clock chimed I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself inside Miriam's head. At first there was only the fuzzy dimness of my eyelids. Then I caught a glimpse of a black and white dog: Spencer, I thought. But that evening, while the other girls played Ping-Pong, she told me she'd been remembering the afternoon we visited the pigs, and she'd pictured me thinking about Iceland. Maybe it's like tennis or poetry, she had said, we have to practise.

Now each night I fell asleep trying to send her a message: ask me home for the summer holidays. If only her father would invite me, I was sure Miss Bryant would agree. One less mouth to feed. Miriam and I would be together, and during the long hours while her father was at work, I could track down Mr. Donaldson.

One Saturday, when instead of cleaning the Form I classroom I was standing, broom in hand, before the map, a voice behind me said, “Lost your fancy friend, haven't you?”

Arms akimbo, Ross stood a few feet away, dressed in the ugly overalls we wore for cleaning. It was easy to picture her ten years from now, washing some office floor. “I was trying to find the school,” I said.

“Here, moron.” As she raised her hand, I smelled the cleaning fluid we used in the toilets. “Here's Hawick, and Denholm. Minto is too small.”

“I was looking too far west. Where did you used to live?”

She pointed to the large, dark circle of Glasgow. “When I first came here I couldn't stand the quiet. I thought some animal was going to jump out and eat me.”

“What kind of animal?”

“A fox? A wolf? Whatever lives in the woods and eats girls. So where's the cripple from?”

“The cripple?”

Even as I asked, the word twisted inside me and found its meaning, but before either of us could speak again, Mrs. Bryant stepped into the room, smiling. “Ross, you're needed in the upper corridor. Hardy, you've got five minutes to finish this room.”

T
wo days later, when I climbed into bed, my bare feet encountered something cold and feathery. As I jumped out, screaming, everyone in the room burst into gleeful shouts.

“Look what the cat's brought in,” said Findlayson.

“Cry-baby,” called Smith.

They were still laughing and shouting comments when Matron appeared. “Girls, if you . . .” The light went out.

I fetched some toilet paper, retrieved the sparrow, and threw it out of the bathroom window. Since I had shown her the magpie, Ross had several times asked me the names of birds. With the help of Miriam's book I had taught her to distinguish a swallow from a swift, a rook from a crow. Over Easter a pair of blackbirds had built a nest in a flowering currant bush near the back door, and often she followed me when I slipped out of the kitchen to check on their progress. She might have allowed this to happen, I told myself, but she was not the executioner. Findlayson, I guessed, or Drummond. As I lay under the counterpane, I thought, Invite me for the summer. Invite me for the summer.

I
t seemed the worst kind of coincidence when, in assembly the next morning, Miss Bryant summoned Goodall to the front. I had never seen a regular girl publicly scolded, but now Miriam was made to stand on the dais, as I had once been, while Miss Bryant pointed out her unbrushed hair, the stains on her tunic, her wrinkled socks and muddy shoes. “This girl,” she concluded, “is a disgrace to Claypoole.”

“I'm very sorry, Miss Bryant,” Miriam said in a low voice. “I'll try to do better.”

“You won't try. You will. For the rest of the term you'll get up fifteen minutes early to make sure that your uniform is clean.”

“Yes, Miss Bryant.” Miriam gave a small, crooked curtsey.

That evening as I peeled the interminable potatoes Ross jerked my apron strings. “Your friend got a right old ticking off. Just because her dad pays fees doesn't mean she can behave any old how.”

She was grinning so broadly I could see past her chipped tooth to her tonsils. Suddenly I knew, as clearly as if she had told me, that it was she who had drawn Miss Bryant's attention to my friendship with Miriam, and she who had put the sparrow in my bed. Quite possibly she had also engineered Miriam's current punishment; she was one of the few girls free to roam the school. As I reached for the next potato, I grinned back. “She should have minded herself,” I said.

While we peeled and halved the potatoes, I kept talking as if nothing had changed. Had she seen Miss Seftain's blouse? It looked like raspberry jelly. Did she think the lacrosse team had a chance against the visiting school? We finished the potatoes and went to check on the blackbirds' nest. The dusty brown female regarded us patiently while I explained that the eggs would hatch any day. Then both parents would feed the chicks. We could help by finding worms and leaving them nearby.

“You get the worms,” said Ross cheerfully.

She seemed to have forgiven me, but my policy of appeasement was too little, too late. The other girls sensed that she had withdrawn her protection. Someone tipped pepper on my food; someone spilled ketchup on my shirt; someone stole my Alice band so that for a whole day I was reprimanded for not wearing it. I did my best to avoid the Elm Room and to be as unobtrusive as possible. The only place I felt safe was the classroom, where Mrs. Harris, in her tyranny, tolerated no competition.

Then one night, soon after Matron turned out the light, Findlayson appeared on one side of my bed, Drummond on the other.

“Little Miss Smartie Pants.”

“Little Miss Know-it-all.”

“Thinks she's so much better than the rest of us.”

At the first touch of their hands I screamed, “Help, Matron. Help me. Someone help me.”

“Christ, what a racket,” one of the older girls said.

“Better gag her,” said another.

I screamed even louder—someone seized my ankles—and fought as hard as I could, kicking, scratching, biting, but this was not like fighting Will, a single enemy of superior strength, this was a barbarian horde: wild, lawless, pitiless. Someone dragged off my pyjama jacket. Someone forced my mouth open and stuffed in a sock. Someone tugged my hair. And the worst of it was not the pain, or even the shame, but the bodies shutting me in, holding me prisoner, smothering me. Eventually, as I had in the sewing-room, I slipped away.

W
hen I came round I was lying in bed in a small, bright room. Matron was sitting by the window, reading one of her romances, a faint smile on her lips.

“My, you gave us . . . How are . . . ?”

Her blue eyes gazed down at me and I gazed back, silently. Without calculation, I had hit upon the perfect response. Matron asked a few more of her abbreviated questions. Then she brought me a poached egg on toast, which I ate with pleasure. I could feign muteness but not loss of appetite. Afterwards I mimed that I would like to borrow a book and settled down to read about Catherine, a nurse, and Robert, the handsome laird, who seems determined to ignore her.

Later that day the doctor came from Hawick. I had heard the older girls describe Dr. White, with his intense gaze and dimpled chin, as a heartthrob. I did whatever he asked—raising my pyjama jacket for his stethoscope, sticking out my tongue—in silence. Meanwhile Matron explained, in her fragmentary fashion, that she'd found me lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

“She seems healthy,” he said, “except for the bruises. Perhaps she fell on the stairs? Or perhaps someone scared her. People sometimes become mute from shock.”

“Perhaps she saw . . .” Matron's painted eyebrows rose.

“The Claypoole ghost? Actually I was thinking of her fellow pupils. Let's keep her in the infirmary for a couple of days.”

“But she's a working girl.” His suggestion had surprised her into a complete sentence, and now it was the doctor's turn to be surprised.

“A working girl?” he said. “She's what, nine? Ten at the most. Even the Victorians didn't send children to work so young.”

Matron explained how hard it was to find working girls these days.

If you didn't talk, I began to realise, people assumed you couldn't hear.

An hour later I was deep in Catherine and Robert's adventures when I looked up to see Miss Bryant herself approaching, her eyes narrowed, her thin upper lip almost invisible.

“I don't know what's going on in your head,” she said in a soft voice, “but playing dumb isn't going to get you anywhere. You have no broken bones, no serious illness. You may have one more day in the sickroom and then it's back to work.” Before I could not answer, she turned on her heel and left the room.

That night I woke to the tick of bare feet on floorboards. I was bracing myself for a battle with Ross, or some other girl, when I caught a familiar wheeze.

“Gemma, are you all right?”

“Miriam.” I pulled her down beside me. The bed was just wide enough for the two of us. I could smell her shampoo, sweet and flowery, lingering in her thick hair. Her father, she'd told me, had said her hair was like a horse's tail, and when I stroked it, it was surprisingly coarse. “How did you know I was here?”

“I heard the girls talking. They said the working girls hit you so hard you couldn't talk.”

“I can talk, but I decided not to. There's nothing I want to say to anyone but you.”

“Did they hurt you? What happened?”

Even to Miriam I could not describe the girls' attack. To remember it was to relive it and to relive it brought me back to that excruciating edge. Instead I said she had been right about Ross. I had been stupid not to understand that, like Mr. Milne, her allegiance was to Miss Bryant.

“That makes sense,” said Miriam thoughtfully. “Even if someone is cruel to you, if they're the only person in your life, you'll love them.”

How could that be? I wondered. I had hated my aunt and now I hated my tormentors at Claypoole. “But you don't love your father,” I said indignantly.

“Maybe he's not cruel enough.”

This was so bewildering I pretended I hadn't heard. “Did you get my messages?” I asked.

“What messages? Oh, you mean telepathy. I think that only works for a very few people. Your parents may have been among them. Or maybe they were just sending the same message over and over.”

Her voice was gentle and I knew that, once again, she was remembering my age, but I didn't stop to argue. I told her my idea that her father should invite me to stay in July. We could be together, we could grow flowers and read, and I could try to find Mr. Donaldson. I had pictured her exclaiming with pleasure, saying why hadn't she thought of that, but she said nothing. I sat up, trying to make out her expression in the darkness.

“I wish it were that easy, Gemma. I can ask, but he'll probably say no. He thinks children are a bother and more children are more of a bother.”

As she spoke her breathing grew louder, her voice fainter. I had noticed before that the hand often squeezed her chest when we spoke about her father. “Do you have your inhaler?” I said.

She shook her head. One of the worst things about the asthma attacks, she had told me, was that she couldn't call for help. I jumped out of bed and pulled her to her feet. Slowly I led Miriam, limping and gasping, through the dark corridors to the Birch Room. We parted in silence. I listened to her stumble across the floor, then a soft thud: her sitting or falling on the bed.