The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [139]
“Just right. At school yesterday a couple of girls were talking about them.”
Archie held his mug chest-high between both hands and regarded me steadily. “There’s a story,” he said, “about Queen Victoria that won’t be on your exams. Her ministers wanted to make homosexuality illegal for both men and women, but no one knew how to explain to the queen that some women liked each other, and so the law was passed only against men. Most of our neighbours are probably like Queen Victoria. That doesn’t stop them from being fond of Hannah and Pauline.”
“But—” I stopped, not knowing what I wanted to say.
Archie raised his chin. “You’re not going to tell me that, after all they’ve done for you, you disapprove of my sister and her beloved?”
“No. Of course not. I just feel so stupid. There I was, living in their house, trying to be the ideal guest, with no notion that they shared a room.”
“Well, it’s not my job to speak for two eloquent women. Three,” he added with a nod at me. “But they had long debates. Hannah wanted to tell you. Pauline worried it would put you in a difficult situation.”
“Did you ask Marian to give me a job?”
He inclined his head. “You were working so hard to make a home for yourself, and they didn’t know how to tell you that they needed their privacy. Then you spoke to me in the square, and the next day, when I came to read to George, Robin was hiding under the table.”
“So you saved my life twice.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Hannah will tell you I’m thick as a brick when it comes to humans. But that first day when I carried you to the van you kept begging me not to go to the police.” He gestured around the room. “This seemed better.”
“This is better.” I looked at him in his armchair, his long legs stretched out before him, his long narrow feet in their thick green socks. “Do you think,” I said, “one can ever know another person?”
I meant the question in a very particular sense, but Archie wriggled his toes at the opportunity to wax philosophical. “For the most part,” he said, “I’m not bothered about whether I know other people. What worries me is do I know myself?” Two philosophers, he went on, one French, one Scottish, had pursued this question. René Descartes claimed that a person was a res cogitans, a thing that thinks. David Hume had a different view. When he went looking for a self he found nothing there, just a mass of sense impressions.
Finally I interrupted. “Please,” I said, “don’t tell Hannah and Pauline about the girls at the school. Can we say that I guessed and asked you?”
“We can,” said Archie.
It seemed oddly fitting that, as he left, the first snow was falling. In the morning I woke to find the muddy fields and leafless trees white and pristine. Robin and I made a snowman in the garden with a carrot for a nose and currants for eyes. Later we went tobogganing by the river, and he proved surprisingly fearless. “Another turn, another turn,” he kept saying. That evening, I made my way to Honeysuckle Cottage. As soon as the three of us sat down to supper, I said, looking from Pauline to Hannah, that I owed them an apology. “I’m sorry you felt you had to keep a secret in your own home.”
“Thank you,” said Pauline, bobbing her head.
“We appreciate your saying that, Jean,” said Hannah.
I had thought they might talk about when they understood their feelings for each other, what it was like to live in a town with few hiding places. Instead Pauline launched into a story about a salesman who’d come into the chemist’s that day, then Hannah commented on the kale we were eating; our conversation followed its usual orbits. But when Hannah got up to fetch dessert she placed her hand on Pauline’s shoulder, a gesture I had seen her make dozens of times, and smiled at me.
The snow stayed for a week and melted the day the preliminary exams began. Marian had rearranged her pupils so that I had the necessary mornings and afternoons free, and she and Robin helped with last-minute studying. When the results came, and I turned out to have