The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [115]
Miss Seftain had not replied to my letter announcing my marriage, there had not been time, but now in her classroom, as we bent over Ovid, she said, “Would you want to marry someone twenty years younger than yourself?”
And I said, “But that’s absurd. Someone twenty years younger than me wouldn’t even be born.”
“Exactly.”
Then, in the way of dreams, I was in another classroom—this one belonged to Mr. Donaldson—staring at a map of the British Isles. Each county was a different colour and Mr. Donaldson was standing behind me, clicking his yellow teeth. “Don’t you want to know about yourself, Gemma,” he said, “before you become somebody else?” Before I could summon the answer I slipped away into a deeper sleep.
I awoke to the sound of a car in the street, the dull light of late afternoon, and in my brain not a plan but an imperative.
PART IV
chapter twenty-five
I stayed in the ladies’ toilet until I felt the ferry gather speed and knew we had passed beyond the harbour wall and that Mr. Sinclair could no longer march up the gangplank, or row furiously after us. In the lounge I found a bench in a poorly lit corner, away from the few other passengers. But he would not need informants to guess my route. On the previous day I had continued to claim a headache and remained in bed. Now I calculated that he was unlikely to knock on my door before nine. I had got up while the sky was still dark and washed, dressed, and stolen out of the hotel at top speed. Only when I reached the main street had I allowed myself one swift backwards glance and there, in the dark facade of the hotel, was a single window glowing directly above mine. I had yearned then to run back, and hurl myself into his arms. Instead I had taken a firm grip on my suitcase and made my way to the taxi rank outside the Kirkwall Hotel. The taxi driver had told me that this was the only ferry from Stromness today. “Getting an early start,” he had said, and I had nodded, speechless.
As soon as the ferry reached open water it began to pitch from side to side. I had not eaten since the day before, and now even my old friend became my enemy. I sat in the corner of the lounge, clutching my book, trying not to breathe in the smells of oil, cigarettes, wet wool, and rusty metal. Several times I almost ran back to the ladies’.
At last the noise of the engine slackened, the pitching subsided, the ferry docked. As soon as I stepped onto the pier—it was still wet from yesterday’s rain—my stomach calmed. After five minutes I was ready to take my second taxi of the day, to Thurso. I asked the driver to let me off at a café. The windows were streaming with condensation, and inside several men in overalls were clustered around a table near the door; two women and a baby were seated in a corner. The waitress told me to sit wherever I liked.
“Good crossing?” called one of the workmen.
“A bit rough.”
“Try a bacon roll,” he urged.
Cautiously I ordered a cup of tea and, when I had drunk it without ill effect, followed his advice. The waitress brought the roll on a plate, the white china webbed with grey like those I had washed so often at Claypoole. As I began to eat I was struck by the notion that this roll was the only thing that gave me a place in the world. When the plate was empty, I would, once again, be homeless. I longed to order a second roll, and a third.
The men left in a noisy bustle and the women’s conversation was suddenly audible. “A voice like a corn-crake,” the one with her back to me declared.
“Three years in a row,” said the other, “we’ve given her a retirement present and the next Sunday, there she is, back in her seat, belting out the hymns.”
“Well, we all know Jean will be singing at her own funeral.”
I looked at them, drinking their tea, complaining cheerfully while the baby dozed. Soon they would leave the café and go home to their houses with doors and beds and