The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [101]
“And no more lies,” he agreed. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
As I made my way down the corridor I saw a light on in the downstairs hall. From the kitchen came the faint clink of metal and china. Some other nocturnal wanderer—Vicky? Seamus?—was making a cup of tea.
chapter twenty-three
The next morning the calves ate and stood without trembling. We had lessons as usual, and again I carried our lunch to the schoolroom; Seamus needed not to see me for a few days. After we ate, I was reading to Nell from Anne of Green Gables when Mr. Sinclair put his head round the door. Might he have the honour of our company? We could go to Stromness to explore the harbour and find a tearoom.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Nell.
“Does that suit you, Miss Hardy?” He made a little bow.
“I’d be delighted, Mr. Sinclair.” I bowed in turn. “And if I could steal ten minutes to do some shopping that would be super.”
And that was the pattern of the days that followed. Mr. Sinclair did whatever he did in the morning, the afternoons were devoted to Nell, and in the evenings, after dinner, we went for a walk or I tiptoed down the corridor to his sitting-room. Several times I caught Vicky looking at me askance, and I longed to explain, but I had no words for what was happening, for those long nightly conversations in which I told him about my aunt and Miriam and life at Claypoole and he told me about studying at Oxford; the three years he had worked in Paris; his life in London. Our conversations included many other topics, momentous and trivial: Were those stout leather buttons on men’s cardigans attractive? Did animals have souls? What was the perfect picnic? Were men and women essentially different? Who invented the fork? Which was better: a reef knot or a bowline? I told him about Miss Seftain’s interest in space travel and the names and fates of the various dogs, mostly mongrels, who had orbited the earth: Belka, the squirrel, Strelka, the arrow. He told me about diving among the wrecks at Scapa Flow and seeing the stateroom of one of the German ships. We talked, it seemed, about everything. And night after night these conversations ended in passionate kisses from which, eventually, we separated. Then one evening as Vicky left for her choir practise she announced that Mr. Sinclair had spent most of the day on the phone.
“He’ll be off again soon,” she said. “Mark my words.”
That night when I knocked on the door to his rooms there was no answer. He was not in the library, nor the billiard room, nor his study, nor the garden. I had never known him to go to the farm so late. And surely, I thought, he would not have gone down to the sea without me. At last I returned to his door and knocked again, a brisk, bold rap that belied my feelings. As I stood staring at the swirling grain of the wood, I remembered standing outside Miss Bryant’s study, watching my tiny self in the brass doorknob, waiting to cross the blue carpet and be chastised. Then the door opened and Mr. Sinclair was looking down at me, his eyebrows drawn, his forehead furrowed. Behind him, from his sitting-room, came a burst of furious music.
“Gemma, what’s the matter?”
“Where were you? You disappeared.”
“No, I didn’t. Here I am.” He drew me inside. In the sitting-room, he turned down the record player and poured me a glass of red wine. First a drink, he said. Then I must tell him what was wrong. I had only tried wine a few times and did not care for the taste. Now I drank it as if it were medicine and blurted out Vicky’s claim.
Mr. Sinclair nodded. “She’s right,” he said, his voice as calm as if we were discussing his choice of shirt. “I can’t do all my work by mail and phone.”
“But”—I stared at the beautiful red and blue rug, trying to keep the fleur-de-lys pattern in focus—“what about me?” If I was about to lose everything, then what did I have to lose by asking the ultimate question?
“Gemma, I need to earn a living. I can’t stay here and I can’t take you to London as things are now.”
“So what can we do? Is there