The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [136]
“Jean,” he said. He stopped a few yards away and stubbed out his cigarette. “Did the hail get you?”
It was not his fault, I thought, that he didn’t know my name. “I sheltered under a tree. One minute the sun was shining; the next I couldn’t see across the field.”
“Hill weather. You never know what it will do. Did you hear me shouting to Thor? Urging him on.” He waved his crook with mock ferocity.
“I thought I heard something. There’s a ruined house back there.”
“It belonged to the Menzies family. The story goes that they built it for one of their daughters, who went mad. She lived up here with her minder. It was a nice house, quite civilised except for the bars at the windows.”
“Did they visit her?”
“What would be the point of putting her halfway up a hill if they were going to visit? No, I think it was a case of out of sight out of mind. That was how they dealt with undesirable relatives in those days.”
“Why did she go mad?”
He cocked his head. “She’s caught your interest, has she, the mad-woman on the hillside? I’m afraid we know almost nothing more about her. This was well before the First World War. George claimed her fiancé jilted her at the altar, but that’s just local gossip.”
He began to ask about my Latin homework, but all I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts. “I have to go,” I said. As I stepped forward, Archie’s eyebrows rose. Did he think I was about to hit him? Embrace him? At the last moment he stepped aside and I hurried past.
The trees were still dripping from the hailstorm, and several times on the muddy path I almost fell. If anyone had done the jilting it was I. But Mr. Sinclair would not go mad. He had discovered, long ago, what would topple his sturdy mind. Not a woman but a small, dark space. From under my feet a pheasant started up with a whir of wings, barely clearing the bracken. Unlike Helga, I thought, I did have a choice. I could try to find Mr. Sinclair, and unless he had radically altered his life, that would not be hard. Or I could stop looking for him in phone calls and hailstorms. Why had I left if I was going to carry him with me every step of the way? When I reached St. David’s Well again I knelt down and put my right hand in the water. Silently I vowed to forget him. And then, to make the oath more binding, I said the words aloud.
“By this sacred place I vow to forget Mr. Sinclair.”
For Christmas, Archie gave me a history of the Vikings and at midnight on New Year’s Eve he kissed my cheek and announced that he really was giving up smoking. A few days later I was playing cards with Hannah and Pauline after our weekly supper when Pauline remarked that Archie seemed to spend all his time at the MacGillvarys’ nowadays.
“And we know why,” said Hannah with a nod in my direction.
“We’re reading about Iceland,” I protested. “And he helps with my Latin. It has nothing to do with me.”
Hannah made a shushing motion and put down a jack and a queen. “We’d be glad if it did. I don’t like to see Archie turning into a crusty old bachelor.”
“Isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black?” I said. “You’re always complaining about people who think a woman can’t manage without a man. Why should it be different the other way round?”
“Quite right,” said Pauline. “Of course it isn’t different, but the people we love are different. Archie is Hannah’s beloved brother. We want him to have companionship.”
I discarded a nine and ten of clubs. “Archie ought to have been a skald,” I said lightly. “An Icelandic poet, travelling the world and making poems.”
“It’s funny the two of you being so interested in Iceland,” said Hannah. “If I were going to study another country I’d want to go south, to the Mediterranean. Sunshine.”
“And olives,” added Pauline.
“In Iceland,” I said, “the sun hardly sets in summer, and there are