The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [111]
At the end of weddings in my uncle’s church the organist had played “Here Comes the Bride,” and the church bells had pealed joyfully. Now from a nearby church came a single melancholy stroke. Mr. Sinclair kept tight hold of my hand.
Seamus closed his eyes. “I was waiting outside her flat,” he said. “We’d quarrelled the night before, and I was hoping she’d step out to buy wine, or cigarettes. You know what she was like when she argued; she’d hurl any stone that came to hand. I’d hurled a few myself.” He opened his eyes but not to look at us. “I was going to tell her I was ready to give up the farm, and move to Glasgow. I could work as a builder, or a joiner. The streetlights had just come on when at last she appeared, in her red jacket, and turned towards the river. We’d often walked that way together.”
And now he turned to Mr. Sinclair, his gaze no longer fierce but stricken. “I’ve thought ten thousand times about what happened next. We were passing a pub and I stopped for a quick dram. I hoped the whisky would help me mind my tongue. I was less than five minutes, I swear, but by the time I reached the river she was already rolling down her sleeve—”
I pulled free of Mr. Sinclair, reached for Nell’s hand and, before she could hear more about her mother, led her out into the rain. Neither of us had an umbrella, but at least she still had her coat. In an instant my new dress and shoes were soaked.
“Where are we going?” said Nell. “It’s pouring.”
I spotted a newsagent across the road and we ran towards it. Inside, the small shop smelled of paraffin. I bought us each a Mars bar and asked the woman behind the counter if we could wait there for the rain to pass.
“You’ll be here all day,” she said, “but be my guests.”
“I didn’t see you get married,” Nell said.
“We decided to wait for a few days. Did you understand what Seamus was saying about your mum?”
She took a bite of her Mars bar and looked up at me with her small brown eyes. “Sort of.”
“Your mother made a mistake—she took too much medicine—but she never meant to leave you.”
Nell took another bite. In my haste that morning I had braided her hair too loosely; already one plait was unravelling. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You can’t even get married.”
Her fist landed in my stomach with surprising force. I was doubled over when the shop bell clanged behind her.
By the time I had straightened up, retrieved her Mars bar from the floor, and told the shopkeeper I was fine, Nell had found Vicky on the other side of the road. From the doorway I watched the two of them hurrying along beneath a black umbrella.
Mr. Sinclair’s car was still outside the registry office. I walked over, not bothering to hurry, opened the door, and got in. I sat Claypoole fashion with my hands folded in my lap, my feet, icy in my wet shoes, neatly together. Not everyone who was fond of me died, but everyone came to harm. The door opened. He handed me my coat, then he walked around the car, got in, and closed the door. Awkwardly, in the confined space, I pulled on the coat. We sat not talking, not looking at each other, while the windows misted up around us. I had no idea what he was thinking, or even what I was.
Finally he let out a deep sigh. “I want to show you something,” he said. “Then we’ll talk. Will you do this for me, Gemma?”
I must have said yes.
We drove north, the way we had come, and then turned onto the road to Stromness. Cursed, cursed, said the windscreen wipers. In the middle of nowhere, he pulled into a lay-by and turned off the engine. The rain pinged on the roof. He came around to my door with the umbrella. We followed a path across a field to a large grassy mound. He had brought me to Maes Howe, the chambered tomb that Mr. Johnson had mentioned on the ferry and that the island history described as a major Neolithic monument. A pathway led between the remains of the ramparts. At the foot of the mound a stone doorway, maybe four feet high, opened into a stone passage.
“Why are we here?” I said.
“To show you something.”
“I don’t like