The Flight of Gemma Hardy (13 page)

“As you must have noticed,” she said, “we are not as many as we used to be. Like a number of sister and brother schools, Claypoole has been losing pupils. There are several reasons for this, too complicated to go into, but the sad truth is that you cannot run a good school without a certain number of pupils because you cannot employ sufficient excellent teachers. A letter went out to your parents yesterday informing them that, due to circumstances beyond my control, Claypoole will close its doors at the end of this term. I have already spoken to several headmistresses who are eager to offer places to Claypoole girls.”

A few girls had begun to cry; even a couple of teachers took out handkerchiefs. I gazed at the floor, trying to contain my jubilation. My life as a working girl was coming to an end. Not until lunchtime, when Cook asked what I would do in April, did I understand that within three months I would be homeless. When I said I'd no idea, her face puckered, as if the pastry she was rolling had stuck.

“Can you not go back to your old home?” she said.

“My aunt would sooner take in one of the pigs.”

“Maybe”—she pressed down on the rolling pin—“you should ask Miss Bryant to find another school for you. You're a bright little thing.”

There was no point in saying that any other boarding school would involve fees. Instead I asked about her plans.

“I'll see if there's an opening in Hawick. Sue”—she nodded towards the sister who still worked at Claypoole—“is getting married. Daft, I tell her, cooking for one ungrateful sod for free, as opposed to a hundred for good money.”

I laughed, but for the rest of the day, while I studied and served supper and did the washing-up and got the dining-room ready for breakfast, I pondered Cook's question. None of the other working girls faced my dilemma; two had homes, of a sort, to go to; the other five had already begun to talk with excitement about the jobs in hotels Miss Bryant would find for them. But I was still only five foot three (an inch taller than Yuri Gagarin, Miss Seftain reminded me); I had no money, save for what I had earned picking raspberries, and, as far as I knew, no marketable skills other than cooking and cleaning, both of which I disliked. I wanted to go to university, but how would I study for my Highers, now only a few months away, and where would I live?

The day after Miss Bryant's announcement two girls were late for class—judging by their eyes they'd been crying—and our form teacher said nothing. Later Smith didn't show up to serve lunch; again no reprimand was forthcoming. Without a word, everyone understood that the rules were changing. Even the teachers started to be late for classes, and one or two skipped assembly.

That Saturday, a cold, frosty day, I left my broom in a downstairs classroom and walked over the playing fields to knock again at Miss Seftain's door. She answered, wearing a faded pink dressing-gown. “Oh, Hardy,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Were we meeting this morning?” It was the first time I had seen her without glasses, or lipstick, and she looked oddly younger.

“No, but I need to talk to you.”

“Give me five minutes—no, ten—and I'm all yours.”

She closed the door in my face; some rules had not changed. Again I sat on the wall. This time I watched a thrush sampling the berries on a nearby holly-bush, spitting out some, eating others. My lack of a watch had turned me into a good judge of time. Just when I thought ten minutes has passed, Miss Seftain reappeared wearing, to my amazement, trousers. No teacher, to my knowledge, had ever worn them within the school grounds. She suggested we walk around the terraces. Mr. Milne still kept the lawns immaculate, but the flower-beds year by year had grown more rampant and now, in the dead of winter, were choked with stiff brown stalks. Only the snowdrops, with their tender white flowers, were in bloom. Miss Seftain nodded vaguely when I pointed them out. A tree was real when Ovid described it, not when it grew outside her window.

“So talk to me,” she said, and I needed no further invitation to pour out my fears.

When at last I stopped she said, “I'd like to help you, Hardy, but I'm in difficult waters myself. Claypoole has been my home for fifteen years, and finding a job in the middle of the school year is tricky at the best of times. It looks as if I'll be moving in with my sister and her husband, neither of whom is thrilled at the prospect. I doubt many people will leap to employ a sixty-one-year-old classics teacher with an extremely poor record of university acceptances.”

“You're a super teacher.”

She produced her lipstick and, between applying it first to her upper lip, then her lower, said that she was a good teacher for girls like me but that she had little talent for stupid girls. “It's like trying to plough very hard earth. I just can't get the information into their brains.”

Thinking of Cook's sister, I suggested she might get married.

“Married?” She threw back her head and laughed merrily. “Do you know who would marry me? Some man of eighty who had lost his wife and wanted a housekeeper. And do you know who a man my age would marry? Some woman of thirty-eight who was tired of working. Nearly fifty years after we got the vote that's still the way the world works. If anyone's going to get married it should be you.”

“Me?” It was as if the frozen grass had turned suddenly red.

She hummed a few bars of “Here Comes the Bride,” and then, seeing my face, laughed. “I'm teasing, Hardy. I hope you'll fend off suitors until after university. So do you have any idea what you might do?”

When I explained my utter lack of a plan, she asked if I liked children. “Child-care often comes with board and lodging.”

“I don't know,” I said. “I hate most of the girls here. I used to like my cousin Veronica before she became daft about fashion. Isn't there something else I could do? I want to go to university.”

“Someday,” said Miss Seftain. “Right now you need a job that will give you shelter, food, and clothing. If you don't want to work in a hotel then, I think, looking after children is your best bet. A nice, honourable family,” she mused, “could be the making of you. Of course a horrible one could make your life misery.”

“In which case I'd leave.” A jackdaw had joined us and was walking on the grass nearby, taking its own constitutional.

“May you always be so redoubtable, Hardy. Have you noticed a magazine on the table in the front hall called
The Lady
? It has advertisements for au pairs and nannies, even the odd governess, though they're out of fashion. Is that a crow?”

“No, a jackdaw. See how it's partly grey and partly black? People say they're very intelligent. You can tame them.”

“Not me,” said Miss Seftain.

As if it understood, the jackdaw took wing.

I
had never, during all my years of dusting, felt tempted to open
The Lady
—both the name and the decorous covers promised tedium—but that night instead of doing homework I went to the hall and carried off the two copies to the Primary 7 classroom. Sitting at my old desk, I turned to the advertisements. Several were for assistants to elderly people, or domestic staff. The rest, as Miss Seftain had said, were for nannies. Each threw open a door.

Nanny wanted for three well-behaved boys, 7, 9 and 13. Some housework and cooking. Self-contained flat. Central London.

My own flat in London! I saw myself walking down the streets whose names I knew from Monopoly, going to bookshops and museums. Then I imagined being alone in a house, day after day, with Will and his loutish friends. I must look for a situation with only one child, I thought, a younger, smaller child.

An advertisement for a governess for a nine-year-old girl in Geneva, Switzerland, seemed promising—I pictured Heidi and her goats—until I came to the phrase “passport essential.” Cleaning the dormitories, I had several times come across a passport and studied the little booklet with fascination.

After reading the advertisements in both issues, looking for jobs in Britain that involved one younger child and no special skills, I had circled four possibilities.

Experienced, live-in au pair sought for seven-year-old girl. Must be reliable, nonsmoker, able to assist with homework and deal with occasional tantrums. References. Suffolk.

Nanny for four-year-old boy. Mother invalid. Father travels. Capable of supervising domestic staff and making decisions. Room with basin, c.h. References. Brighton.

Widower, 42, seeks companion for eleven-year-old daughter. Cosy cottage, use of car and good salary for right person prepared to make long-term commitment. References. Cornwall.

And in the last column of the second magazine:

Nanny desperately needed in north of Scotland for eight-year-old girl. No housekeeping or cooking. Must be prepared to supervise lessons, read, play, and go for walks. References. Mainland. The Orkneys.

At the sight of the address, Mrs. Marsden's stories of soldiers and seals came flooding back. It was as if fate had tapped me on the shoulder.

I had had no occasion to write a letter since my attempt to reach Mr. Donaldson. The next day, using his stationery and borrowing fresh envelopes from Miss Seftain, I wrote to all four advertisements, saying what a good teacher I was and how fond of children. At the end of each letter I put, as Miss Seftain had instructed, “References on request.” The following afternoon I queued up behind three regular pupils outside Miss Bryant's study. No working girl, to my knowledge, had ever visited her voluntarily, but she did not seem surprised to see me walking across the blue carpet. I described my applications and asked if she would act as a reference.

“For once, Hardy, I'm glad you're showing initiative. I think I can truthfully say you are a conscientious worker and mature for your age.”

“And maybe,” I suggested, “you don't need to say exactly how old I am. I'll be eighteen in a couple of months.”

“Let's pretend”—she made a quick note on a pad of paper—“that your birthday is next week.”

A
week after I dispatched my letters a heavy cream envelope, bearing my name, lay on the hall table. The widower in Cornwall wrote that I sounded delightful and that, if I lived nearby, he would have invited me to tea. “I very much regret,” he continued, “that, while both I and my daughter would enjoy the company of a school-leaver, we really need someone older to provide stability to our household.” The fact that my letter had summoned a response, even a refusal, seemed almost miraculous. I read the half-dozen lines over and over. Miss Seftain, however, was less impressed. “ ‘Enjoy the company of a school-leaver' indeed. You're well out of that one.”

Another week passed and I began to worry that I had received my only reply. Even the desperate person on the Orkneys had found someone closer to home. A new copy of
The Lady
arrived and I sent off three more enquiries: one to Edinburgh, two to London. The next day, while I was polishing the corridor, Miss Bryant stepped out of her study to ask if I had news. I confessed my single refusal.

“Well, if you apply for more jobs, come to me. I can include a brief reference. By the way,” she added, and I guessed that this was the real reason she had emerged, “I wrote to your aunt when I wrote to the other parents. She has not replied. I've never”—her bony forehead quivered—“known a guardian to show less interest in a ward.”

She walked off down the shining corridor, leaving me to stare after her. Everyone was changing before my eyes.

That night I dreamed I was back in my room at Yew House, listening, as I had on so many evenings, to the noises from below. Then, suddenly, I was downstairs, peering around the sitting-room door. My aunt lay sprawled on the chintz-covered sofa, in the arms of Mr. Carruthers. Around them pranced Louise and Veronica, wearing party clothes. I crossed the corridor to my uncle's study. He was at his desk, writing.

“Why, Gemma”—he smiled—“you're just in time to help with my sermon.”

“But my aunt, do you know what she's doing?”

“With Mr. Carruthers? Of course. She never much cared for either of us. And it's worse now that you're growing up and I'm dead. Tell me what to say after islands and stepping-stones?”

I suggested life belts. “Yes,” he said, “we can rescue each other.” While I stood beside him, he wrote down everything I said. Then the door burst open and Will was standing over us, his neck bulging.

“You're not my father,” he shouted. “You're not my father.”

And I was shouting back, until Findlayson shook my shoulder.

T
he next day a blue envelope addressed in neat, rounded handwriting lay on the hall table. Once again ignoring my duties, I carried it over to the pigs. Even while I held it in my hand, I whispered, “Let someone want me. Let someone want me,” as if the contents could still change. At the sight of me the pigs, several generations on from the original Heidi and Thumbelina, rushed to the trough, only to fall back when they realised I had no food. I sat on the fence to read.

Blackbird Hall

Near Tingwall

The Mainland

The Orkneys

Tel. Tingwall 235

28 January 1966

Dear Miss Hardy,

Sorry for the late reply. Let me tell you the situation. We live in the northeast part of the main island (though you may not know the islands—your letter doesn't say). Besides the house and the farm we, my brother and I, have in our care an eight-year-old girl. Nell's mother died last year, and since then she's been running wild. There's no father in the picture. I don't have time to keep her company or supervise her lessons. If you are still free, I offer you a tomboy for a pupil and more weather than any person should have to deal with. This is a lonely place—except for the birds!—and whoever comes here needs to be forewarned. You are obviously very young but perhaps Nell will like that. She ran away from the nice woman we found to mind her in the autumn.