The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [137]
“You’ll have to go there one of these days,” said Hannah.
Fumbling my cards, I said I couldn’t play.
The moon was out and I insisted that I did not need a lift back to Weem. I had made the journey so many times that often I scarcely noticed the landmarks, but tonight my footsteps echoed in the empty streets, and as I approached Wade’s Bridge the river glinted in the moonlight. I had not thought of Archie, with his bachelor routines, as being susceptible to female company, and even if I had, I would not have thought of myself as that company. All those feelings had come to an end as I sat in the gloom of Maes Howe listening to Mr. Sinclair. Every month I was surprised when my body declared its secret life. And there was no evidence that Archie found me attractive. His kiss on New Year’s Eve had been less warm than Hannah’s, and when we talked it was mostly about our reading. I knew what passion was, and this was not passion. If he was interested in me it was only because he had confused my enthusiasm for Iceland with something else.
Beside the road the stiff-branched poplars stirred in the breeze. Avoiding Archie was not, given my friendship with Hannah and Pauline, and his with George, an option. What I must do, I thought, was tell the truth: that I needed to study for my exams. We would translate Latin in a businesslike way, but there would be no more lively discussions of romantic sagas.
I let myself into the house and climbed the stairs. In the upstairs hall a low murmur of voices stopped me. Perhaps Marian and Robin were discussing a dream. No, the voices came from George’s room. He had never spoken to me or, as far as I knew, to Robin, but now, alongside Marian’s light musical tones, I heard a darker, deeper voice.
chapter twenty-eight
Robin’s birthday was the last Saturday in January. Together we iced the cake I had baked and wrote Happy Birthday Robin on top. Cautiously he pushed five red candles into the icing. Marian had invited the neighbours with children close to his age, and while the grown-ups chatted, I organised Robin and his guests to play hunt the thimble and pin the tail on the donkey. The first he enjoyed, but at the sight of the blindfold for the second he fled under the nearest table and had to be coaxed out again. We had just sung “Happy Birthday” when Archie arrived. He apologised for being late and, with a small bow, handed Robin a package. Robin carried it over to where I sat near the window.
Nell had opened presents gleefully, flinging paper into the air, but Robin insisted that we peel back each piece of Sellotape and carefully unfold the brown paper. Inside was a slender, homemade book, the pages sewn together. On the cover was a drawing of Wade’s Bridge with a boy standing on the parapet and the words Robin’s History of Aberfeldy and Weem. Archie was talking to Marian, but I saw him glance over, waiting for Robin’s reaction, and for mine.
“Archie made a book for you,” I said. “Look. It’s all about your home.”
Inside the book each double page had a picture on one side—the Black Watch Memorial, the town square, the Birks, the inn where Bonnie Prince Charlie might have stayed—and on the other a little story. “Pretty,” said Robin, pointing to the picture of the Birks. Robert Burns sat beneath the trees, pen poised over a notebook.
“It is pretty,” I said. “I’ll read it to you before bed.”
The other adults insisted on seeing, and the booklet was passed around, to much admiration. Archie explained that Hannah had helped him with the pictures. “That’s you,” he said to Robin, pointing to the boy on the bridge, “though of course you must never climb up on the parapet.”
“I won’t,” Robin promised fervently.
Later, after the guests had gone and we were washing up, Marian remarked that the book must have taken Archie weeks. “Such a formal man,” she added, “but he has a warm heart.” I wondered if she too thought that Archie had