The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [130]
“Twenty minutes’ walk? Half an hour? It’s just across the river. You can ask Archie when he comes to supper. He knows Mrs. MacGillvary much better than I do. I’ll take some tea out to Hannah.” She got up quickly and I knew she was ducking my real questions: Did I have to take the job if I hated Mrs. MacGillvary? If I took the job, did I have to live there?
Leaving a note saying I’d gone for a walk, I headed up the hill with Emily. As soon as I closed the gate of the field she took off, zigzagging after rabbits, real and imaginary. I trudged behind her. So much for my good soup, for the shopping and cleaning I’d done that morning. And it was not just the housework. In the evenings the three of us read, or played cards, or watched television. Sometimes Pauline would play one of her records. “Listen to what happens to the violins here,” she would say, and Hannah and I would lean forward, trying to catch her meaning. My thoughts of Mr. Sinclair, of Nell, of all that I had lost, were always present, but gradually I had allowed myself to believe that I was indispensable to their household. Now I knew I was wrong.
At the top of the field I leaned on the gate to look out across the valley. There, on the far side, was the forbidding ruin of Castle Menzies and above and behind it the crags known as Weem Rock. To the east of the castle I could see the rooftops of the village; perhaps even now I was looking at the MacGillvarys’ house. I called to Emily and she bounded up, rabbitless but cheerful. We dropped down into the Birks.
That evening, over the nut loaf I had painstakingly made, Archie told us that the MacGillvarys had lived in the valley for thirty years. George was a surveyor. Marian gave piano lessons. Years ago they had adopted two children, both a disaster. The boy had been in and out of trouble with the police and had at last settled in Newcastle. As for Ginnie, the kindest thing people could say about her was that she was high-strung. Without telling her parents, she had married an Italian. Two years ago she had shown up with Robin and announced that she was moving to Rome.
“It was a lot to cope with,” Archie said, “becoming parents again at their age. Then last April George had a stroke. He used to climb a hill in the morning, translate The Odyssey in the afternoon. Now going to the bathroom is a major expedition. I told Marian you’d come round tomorrow at four to see if you suit each other.”
With each new detail my heart sank further, but Hannah and Pauline kept nodding eagerly. Only a few days ago Pauline had hugged me and said I was the little sister she’d never had. No, Hannah had said. She’s my little sister. How stupid I had been to believe them. As soon as I could I retreated to bed.
The next morning, when I took Hannah’s coffee out to the pottery, she was at her wheel, a bowl rising between her hands. “If you can’t stand Mrs. MacGillvary,” she said, not taking her eyes off the clay, “you don’t have to do this. And if it’s awful, you can come back.”
“I can?” I said, almost spilling the coffee. From one moment to the next the horror of the MacGillvarys faded. I didn’t have to go; I could stay in my blue room and look for another job. But even as I set the coffee down, I remembered Pauline’s claim that the job sounded perfect, and how pleased she and Hannah had both seemed the night before.
“Does Pauline think that too?” I said carefully. “I worry I’ve already trespassed on your hospitality long enough.”
Hannah started to laugh, and the sides of the bowl trembled. “Sometimes you can be so Scottish, Jean. Just like Archie. You aren’t a trespasser or, at this stage, even an honoured guest.”
So what am I? I wanted to say, but Hannah’s attention was once again focused on the wheel. Watching her hands shape the clay, I knew she would not give the answers I craved: a beloved family member, an almost sister, a dear friend. She was offering me a reprieve, I thought, not a home.
chapter twenty-seven
After lunch I changed into the blue cardigan and black corduroy trousers