The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [121]
But at the police station a man in uniform said that no one had handed in a purse. He leaned over the counter, frowning, and asked the same awkward questions—name, age, address—until I thought he was going to produce a pair of handcuffs. I said I would check back later and hurried away.
For the rest of the day, as I went from shop to shop asking for work, the word no rang in my ears. I even approached people in the street: I asked a woman struggling with a pram if she needed a babysitter, a man with a border terrier if he needed someone to walk his dog, a window washer if he needed an assistant. But the answer was the same. At some point I went back to the co-op, where earlier a pleasant woman had said she’d hire me like a shot if it were up to her, and bought the biggest, cheapest loaf of bread, which left me with two shillings and threepence. Back at the church I counted the slices. Eighteen. If I had three now and three before bed it would last me until the day after tomorrow. I ate as slowly as possible.
I was finishing the third slice when the clock chimed; unthinkingly I checked my watch. Several times that day I had passed the jeweller’s shop on the main street. Some of the watches in the window cost ten pounds, a few as much as twenty. Surely mine, which was almost new, would fetch five. That would be more than enough, I thought, to get to Oban if I hitchhiked and slept in churches. The shop was already closed for the day, but cheered by my plan, I decided to visit the fish-ladder. I had seen a sign for it beside the war memorial.
A ten-minute walk took me across the main road, past a park and a row of houses, to Loch Faskally. I had no memory of the placid loch nor of the massive dam, but as soon as I went down into the fish-ladder I recognised the series of ascending windows that lined one side, the water lit up behind them. A slim, freckled fish appeared in the lowest window, was swept back, and, a few minutes later, reappeared. Pressing my face to the glass, I said, “Swim harder.”
My uncle had used the salmon in a sermon. Being a good Christian, he had said, often feels like swimming against the current. Sometimes it seems we are all alone, that no one cares what we do, but we aren’t alone. God cares. That I could remember his words was a consolation, but the words themselves were not. The salmon swam upstream because it had no choice. Virtue was its own reward. As the fish reached the next window, a rustling sound made me look down. A rat was nosing along the floor. Quickly I ran for the stairs.
Despite cold, hunger, and the chiming of the church clock, I slept a little better on my second night. In the morning I went through my suitcase and chose a different blouse, a blue cardigan, and my black corduroy trousers. Thinking to lighten my load, I took my two precious photographs out of the frames I had bought for them in Kirkwall, and slipped them into my guide to Scottish birds. I set the frames on a shelf beside the hymnals, hoping someone else could use them. As for the meteorite, wrapped in a sock, I pretended that it did not exist. I stowed the suitcase under the pew. Then I took off my watch and polished it with the edge of my cardigan.
At the jewellery shop a girl stopped pushing a carpet sweeper. “Good morning,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Her smile was so eager that I longed to pretend to be a normal customer, to look at half-a-dozen watches and say that I needed to think about it. But such play-acting would not fill my purse. I asked if I might speak to the manager.
“Owner,” she said. “Mr. White’s in the back. Let me fetch him.”
Surely, I thought, it was a good omen that the jeweller had the same name as the giver of the watch. One wall of the shop was covered with clocks, and as I listened to the soft cacophony of their ticking, I remembered the gleaming cogs and levers of the clock in St. Magnus Cathedral. How rapt the three of us had been when it struck the hour. A man appeared from a doorway behind the counter. At the sight of Mr. White’s narrow, dark face,