Authors: Margot Livesey

The Flight of Gemma Hardy (41 page)

BOOK: The Flight of Gemma Hardy

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Alone, I closed my eyes and let the roar of the plane carry me back to Helgafell. On that windswept mountain I had heard Mr. Sinclair cry out and I had answered him. Yet here he was sitting beside me, and my feelings were hidden away in a small dark room. My mother had made custard; my father had tied knots; despite their differences they had married and had a child. My uncle had married my aunt to save his brother's child. And Seamusâbut I did not know how to finish that thought.

Ast
. Love.

PerhapsâI had only just become a daughterâI was not yet ready to be a wife. Perhaps being a wife was not the only choice. Once a year, if the sky was clear on the winter solstice, the sun shone down the passageway of Maes Howe to the back wall. I opened my eyes to see an air hostess approaching.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Could we have two glasses of champagne?”

When Mr. Sinclair returned I looked at him fully for the first time since he had sat down. I saw my own tiny silhouette in each of his pupils, and the creases in his forehead that mimicked his eyebrows. I saw the hollow above his upper lip where sweat gathered when he worked in the sun. He had been my age, a little younger, when the summons came to be a Bevin Boy; now he was more than twice my age. I watched as my hand touched his cheek. He seized it and kissed my palm.

“Here you are.” Two tall slender glasses filled with golden, bubbling liquid appeared before us.

“My first champagne,” I said.

“Does this meanâ?”

“It means”âI raised my glassâ“that I'm going to make a speech. I promised that I wouldn't let anything change my feelings for you and I broke my promise. I didn't mean to. I told myself you were no longer the same person, but that was a convenient sophistry.” The last phrase gave me particular pleasure and I saw him register my pleasure. “Of course you were. My friend Miriamâ”

“The girl with asthma?”

“The girl who was my friend. She told me that I would only understand certain things when I was older. I didn't believe her until I met Nell. And even then I didn't understand that I would go on changing. That life”âI waved at the rows of seats where our fellow travellers read or sleptâ“would change me. Since we parted I've learned that I too am capable of stealing and lying. I'm sorry I was so unforgiving. Here's my toast.

“Here's to living under our rightful names.”

I drank my first fizzing mouthful and ducked his kiss. Through the window, far below, I saw several small islands in the grey Atlantic. I took a deep breath hoping, even here, to catch the scent of apple blossoms. In the seat in front of us the two brown-haired women were also leaning towards the window. “
Smavegis
,” I heard one say. “
Himnariki
.” Surely Kristjana would have told me if I too was about to fall on the rocks. I turned back to Hugh. He was still holding his glass, watching me intently.

“What I said at the registry office,” I went on, feeling my way, “is true. We can be married next week. Or next year. I don't want a promise to govern my feelings; I want my feelings to lead to a promise. And there are other things I want too.”

I began to list them: to be a student, to write cheques, to buy cakes, to make friends, to visit the hot springs, to see a lyre-birdâ

Desires were springing up on all sides when Hugh interrupted. “You want,” he said, gazing at me steadily, “to be beloved and regarded.”

“I do.” His eyes had grown lighter, or perhaps they were reflecting the sky. “You've been sitting at the adult table for twenty years. I want to sit there too, and sample a few of the courses. I want to see if I'm ready to spend ten thousand days with you, and ten thousand nights.”

“But that's only thirty years.”

He was arguing for moreâfifteen thousand, twentyâas I raised my glass and drank again. Then I leaned forward and kissed him.

Acknowledgments

I
have tried to be faithful to the geography of both Scotland and Iceland but have taken occasional liberties. Blackbird Hall does not appear on maps of the Orkneys, and the jetty where Gemma's father kept his boat may be hard to find. My thanks to the many people in both countries who stopped to answer my odd questions. I am especially grateful to the woman in the harbour shop at Stykkisholmur who talked to me about Mount Helgafell.

My main literary debt is obvious. The following books also helped to shape Gemma's story:
Tales of the Seal People
and
Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children
by Duncan Williamson;
The Mermaid Bride
, told by Tom Muir;
The Northmen Talk: A Choice of Tales from Iceland
, translated by Jacqueline Simpson;
Classics for Pleasure
by Michael Dirda;
Sagas of Warrior-Poets
, introduced by Diane Whaley;
Njal's Saga
, translated by Robert Cook.

My deep thanks to Jennifer Barth for her brilliant comments as she read and reread these pages. I also want to express my gratitude to Amy Baker, Jane Beirn, Jonathan Burnham, Jason Sack, Emily Walters, and all the people at HarperCollins who helped to make this book. Once again I am happily indebted to Amanda Urban.

My family plays a role, witting and unwitting, in all my novels. My thanks especially to Janet for driving me round the Orkneys, to Sally for revisiting the sixties, to my nieces for reminding me of what it is like to be a teenager, and to Merril for showing me Saint David's Well and teaching me the names of flowers. Eric Garnick endured many tedious dinner conversations. Susan Brison read the novel with wonderful empathy and attention to detail. Andrea Barrett read and commented and imagined and corrected Gemma's journey at every stage. Thank you seems a very small thing to say.

About the Author

MARGOT LIVESEY is the acclaimed author of the novels
The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals
, and
Homework
. Her work has appeared in
The New Yorker, Vogue
, and
The Atlantic
, and she is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
The House on Fortune Street
won the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Livesey was born in Scotland and grew up on the edge of the Highlands. She lives in the Boston area and is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.

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Also by Margot Livesey

Learning by Heart

Homework

Criminals

The Missing World

Eva Moves the Furniture

Banishing Verona

The House on Fortune Street

Credits

Cover photograph Â© Mark Owen/Arcangel Images

Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY
. Copyright Â© 2012 by Margot Livesey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 9780062064226 (hardcover)

EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062064240

12 13 14 15 16
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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