The Flight of Gemma Hardy (5 page)

PART II

chapter six

T
he sky was still dark when my aunt's sharp knock hurled me into the new day. Downstairs, to my surprise, Veronica was seated at the kitchen table. We ate porridge and toast and talked as we had used to do, about teachers and girls at school and whether a ponytail was better than pigtails. With no one to braid my hair I had been forced to adopt the former, which, Veronica claimed, didn't suit me. She produced a brush and comb and, as a parting gift, made me two neat braids. She was lecturing me about my eyelashes—“They're so pale”—when my aunt called from the hall that it was time to leave.

“Goodbye, Gemma,” she said, flinging her arms around my neck. “I hope you have a happy life.”

“I hope you do too,” I said, and kissed her cheek.

Pretending to fetch my scarf, I went upstairs one last time, and slipped the photographs into the old handbag of Louise's I had been given for the journey. In the hall Mrs. Marsden was waiting with a paper bag. “You'll need some lunch,” she said, and, before I could thank her or hug her, retreated to the kitchen. Betty had already put my suitcase in the boot of the car and, liking the idea of departing in state, I climbed into the front seat only to have my aunt order me into the back. As we headed down the drive, she explained that I would change trains in Edinburgh and be met in Hawick by the school van. The sky was lightening and in the frosty field I could make out Celeste and Marie Antoinette huddled near the gate. I pressed my face to the window and waved.

In the village we stopped beside the post office and Mr. Carruthers, his cap pulled low, his scarf pulled high, got into the front seat. For a moment I wondered if he could have been the man who accosted me, but when he greeted me—“So, Gemma, you're off to see the wide world”—I knew that, whatever his crimes, he had not tried to drag me into a smoky car. For the remainder of the journey I caught only stray phrases of his and my aunt's conversation as we headed past the fort, past the curling pond, past the boundaries of my familiar world.

At Perth station I ran ahead of my aunt to the ticket office, and stood waiting as she asked for one child to Hawick.

“One way, or return? First or second class?”

“One way, second class,” she said, sounding pleased about both choices.

The train was already at the platform and while Mr. Carruthers carried my suitcase to the guard's van, she stared down at me. Against her blue coat her golden hair shone; dark crumbs of make-up dotted the creases around her eyes. Perhaps Veronica had lectured her too about her eyelashes.

“Well, Gemma, we've reached the parting of the ways. You're an ugly child—my poor sister-in-law was a plain Jane—but I hope you'll study hard at Claypoole and be a credit to me. You must—”

“I'll always try to be a credit to my uncle,” I broke in, “but you've treated me like a leper. If I win every prize in the school it won't be because of you.”

Without waiting for an answer, I turned and marched towards the train. Behind me I heard Mr. Carruthers cry, “The ungrateful brat,” and his footsteps in pursuit. Then came my aunt's voice and two sets of steps walking away.

I chose the first empty compartment I came to. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, I knelt on the bristly seat, switched on the little lights on either side of the mirror, and studied my reflection. With my hair pulled into braids, my face had a naked, startled look. My eyelashes were pale, Veronica was right, but my eyes were the same shade of grey as the feathers of the geese that flew over the fort, and my nose was small and straight. I might be plain but I did not think I was ugly. I would make friends at the school. I would try not to show off, or be a copycat. I would learn French and hockey and take piano lessons. I sat down in a corner seat and, lulled by the sight of the wintry fields and the sound of the wheels—one way, second class, one way, second class—fell asleep.

I woke to the wheels making a different sound and the dull red struts of the Forth Rail Bridge flashing by. In one of his sermons my uncle had compared living a good life to the endless task of painting the bridge. As soon as the painters got all the way across, he explained, they had to begin again. Far below I glimpsed the choppy waters of the Firth of Forth flowing into the North Sea.

In Edinburgh the guard carried my suitcase to a platform at the far end of the station and installed me on a bench. My train to Hawick left in an hour. “You're a wee lassie,” he remarked, “to be travelling alone.”

“I have my book and I have my lunch.” I held up each in turn, smiling, but the guard's ruddy face did not smile back.

“My youngest daughter can give you three inches,” he said, “and I wouldn't let her loiter about the station. Stay here and don't speak to anyone not in uniform.”

My aunt's briskness and a sense of adventure had carried me through the last few hours. Now I was alone on the windy platform, and the thought came to me that no one within fifty miles knew my name, or my whereabouts. I too could disappear, blown away like the dry leaves I saw skimming down the tracks. Perhaps other people had had the same feeling. The bench was covered with initials. Among several hearts I made out the command
FLY AWAY
. If I had had my penknife to hand, rather than rolled into a pair of socks in my suitcase, I would have carved
YES
below. I stamped my feet for warmth and even that sound disappeared into the emptiness.

But in a few hours everything would be different. And for now I opened the paper bag to discover my favourite egg and cress sandwiches, a bottle of Ribena, an apple, and two chocolate biscuits. I put these last in my pocket for later, and set to work on the sandwiches. I was dropping the crusts into the bag when I saw a note.

Dear Gemma,

The best of luck at your new school. Be good!

I hope our paths cross again one day.

Kind regards,

Audrey Marsden

Reading the words—she had printed them as if I couldn't read cursive—I was doubly glad I had not gone to her the night before. She had been kind to me when no one else had, but a small part of me counted her a coward. I tore the note into pieces, stepped to the edge of the platform, and released them into the wind.

I was eating the apple in neat bites when a train steamed up to the platform and, with one last exuberant shriek, came to a halt. No one in uniform was nearby, so I asked a tall man in a smart green coat if this was the train to Hawick. “Indeed it is,” he said. Claiming a mysterious slipped disc, he commandeered a boy of about Will's age to carry my suitcase. Once we were settled in a compartment and the train was under way, the three of us exchanged destinations. The man was going to Carlisle. The boy was going only one stop. He had come into the city to apply for a job at a fishmonger's but they had said he didn't have enough experience.

“That's ridiculous,” said the man. “A lad your age, they should train you.”

I regarded the boy with new interest. In profile his upper lip jutted over his lower, like the trout my uncle had occasionally caught. I asked if he liked fishing.

“Not really,” he said. “Too much hanging around, but I like cleaning my dad's fish. Everything's very organised—bones, guts.” He wriggled his fingers. “Do you like fish?”

“Yes.” Over the years I had grown accustomed to my landlocked life but suddenly I longed for the sea. Why hadn't I asked Dr. Shearer or Mr. Donaldson if there was a school on the coast? Then the man asked where I was going and I explained about Claypoole.

“Isn't this the middle of term?” he said, his voice lifting in surprise.

“They're short-handed, and I did well on the exams.” My boasting made it sound as if I would be helping in the classroom, not the kitchen, but kindly he did not press me. He said he'd left school at fourteen and always wanted to travel; so far the only place he'd gone was Africa during the war. “I'm always suggesting to the wife that we go to Madagascar or New Zealand.”

“Would you like to go to Iceland?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Bit chilly for me.”

“I wouldn't mind it,” volunteered the boy. “I like the idea of dogs and sledges.”

“I think that's Lapland,” I said, “though they do have lots of snow.”

After the boy got off, the man remarked, like the guard, that I was young to be travelling alone. “Couldn't your mum come with you?”

Living in the village, I had seldom had to deal with such questions. Now I said cheerfully that my parents were dead and I was an orphan. The man's eyes widened, and he began to stammer out apologies. Quickly I reassured him that this had happened a long time ago. For the rest of the journey we played I-spy and I could see him pretending not to know the answers. We stopped at a town called Galashiels. Twenty minutes later we pulled into Hawick. Cautiously the man lowered my suitcase onto the platform and wished me luck. I waved as the train pulled away but he did not wave back.

When the train was out of sight I left my case and made my way to the front of the station. A maroon van was waiting. As I approached, a door opened. “You must be Hardy,” said the man who climbed out. “I'm Mr. Milne.”

“Gemma Hardy,” I corrected, studying this first ambassador of the school. Mr. Milne was only a few inches taller than me and, with his large head of grey hair and his round belly, he resembled nothing so much as a garden gnome. His dungarees had many intriguing pockets and were very clean.

“Is this all you have?” he said when he saw my case. “Some girls bring everything but the kitchen sink.”

Like my aunt, he made me sit in the back; unlike her, he talked to me. The town of Hawick, he said, was famous for its woolen mills. His wife worked at one that produced lovely cardigans; they cost a pretty penny. Then he told me how to get to the school and, thinking I would need to reverse this journey someday, I paid close attention. First we drove five miles to the village of Denholm. There we crossed the river Teviot and drove two more miles to the village of Minto. Claypoole had been the ancestral home of Lord and Lady Minto until both their sons died in the war, the older in North Africa, the younger on an Atlantic convoy. They had sold the estate in 1946 and moved to Edinburgh. The school was owned by Miss Bryant, the headmistress—Mr. Milne's voice underlined the name—and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Bryant, who'd been widowed a few years ago. “I've never known a woman,” he said, “who can make a shilling go further.”

When I left Yew House that morning there had been snow on the stony hills and frost whitening the fields. Here the hills were green and softly rounded, and the fields were surrounded by hedges rather than stone walls. Even the sheep were larger and cleaner. In Denholm crocuses and snowdrops bloomed in the gardens of the whitewashed cottages. On the far side of the Teviot a line of willows led to a crossroads; we turned right up a hill. Almost at the top we swerved into a driveway, past a little gingerbread house. “That's where we live,” said Mr. Milne. “In the lodge.”

The house that came into view around the next bend rewarded all my daydreaming. Claypoole was built of a pleasing light grey granite. The two wings of the school stood at right angles to each other and were linked by a curving balustrade supported by elegant pillars. Row after row of windows shone. Mr. Milne parked beside a flight of steps. These led down to the back door, which, he explained, I would normally use. Today, however, we would enter by the front door. He rang the bell and led me into a large oak-panelled hall. Several armchairs were grouped around the fireplace, and at the far end a beautiful, red-carpeted staircase spiralled up to a glass dome. How grand everything looked, and how comfortable. A girl, dressed in a green tunic and brown knee socks, appeared. I stared at her wonderingly while Mr. Milne asked her to tell Miss Bryant that the new working girl was here.

She hurried away through the nearest door and he pointed out the picture over the fireplace; it showed the house as it had been in 1900. “You can still see the remains of the carriage house,” he was saying when something made me turn. A tall, grey-haired woman wearing a beautiful navy suit was descending the spiral stairs. Miss Bryant, I was to discover, liked to make an entrance. I glimpsed a high, bony forehead, an elegant nose, and scarlet lips, the upper unusually thin, the lower unusually full. Later I heard one girl claim that she was fifty; another that she was barely thirty. Both seemed plausible.

“Thank you, Mr. Milne,” she said. “The suitcase goes to the Elm Room.”

Without a backward glance he disappeared. “So you are Hardy,” Miss Bryant continued. Her accent, like her age, was elusive, neither Scottish nor English but some blending of the two. “Your aunt has warned me that you are prone to lying and daydreaming. At Claypoole you will find that, between your lessons and your other duties, there is no time for either. You understand that you are here as a working pupil?”

“My aunt should have not said that.”

“Stop glaring at me, and address me as Miss Bryant. Let me ask again: Do you understand that you are a working pupil?”

“Yes, Miss Bryant. But my aunt—”

“It is up to you to prove her wrong and to prove us right in offering you a place. Your work does not begin to pay for your board, let alone tuition. Ross will show you what to do. You'll start in Primary Seven on Monday.”

I was about to blurt out my pleasure—I must have done exceptionally well in the exams to be moved up two years—when a tall, red-cheeked girl with a chest even more formidable than Louise's stepped into the hall.

“Ross, this is the new girl, Hardy. She will take over Montrose's duties.”

Ross studied me, her glance shifting rapidly from my leather shoes to my pigtails. “Montrose minded the fires,” she said. “This one won't be able to carry the scuttles.”