The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [144]
“You’re very punctual,” he said. “Those may not be allowed.”
“The daffodils? Why not? I brought them for Mr. Donaldson.”
“Some of the patients eat them. They’ll tell you inside if they’re okay.”
As I walked up to the black door I felt as if I were ten years old again. On a small desk in the hall were a bell and a notice saying VISITORS RING BELL. It emitted a forlorn tinkle. While I waited I studied the pictures of boats that hung around the room. I was examining a schooner when I heard footsteps and turned to see a nurse with a broad, dimpled face approaching.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Who are you here to see?”
“Henry Donaldson.”
After ascertaining that I didn’t know where the lounge was, she told me to follow her. As I did, down first one corridor, then another, I confessed that I wasn’t sure I would recognise Mr. Donaldson.
“I’ll introduce you,” she said. “Are you one of his former pupils?”
“How did you know?”
“Nurse’s intuition. When I was a girl he taught for a year at the high school. He had a reputation for being able to get anyone through their exams, until I came along. Here we are.”
The large glassed-in room, an addition to the old house, looked onto the garden. Seated singly or in small groups, a couple of dozen elderly men and women were reading, knitting, talking, dozing. The nurse led me over to a man seated alone at a small table, laying out rows of cards.
“Henry,” she said, “you have a visitor. Say hello.”
“Hello.” He did not look up from his cards.
“Good luck. Here, let me take those. Look, Henry,” she said, raising her voice. “She brought you some lovely daffs. I’ll put them in a vase in the dining-room.”
“Couldn’t they go in his room?”
She shook her head. “He’ll see them at supper.”
With a pat to my shoulder, she was gone. I was left alone with Mr. Donaldson. Still he did not raise his eyes from the cards. Watching his hands, I saw on the little finger of his left hand a gold ring. All at once I recalled how sometimes, when he was writing on the blackboard, the ring had sent a flash of light darting around the classroom.
“Mr. Donaldson,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to come and see you. I couldn’t get here before.” He put a queen of hearts on a three of clubs, then added a seven of spades. “I’m terribly sorry that I got you in trouble.”
Isobel was right. I would not have recognised him, not because he was stooped and gaunt but because his affect was so changed. Suddenly he spoke, and I saw that his yellow teeth were just the same. “Open your books to page fifty-three,” he said. “We’re going to practise long division.”
I stared at him uncertainly. He had not even glanced at me and his hands were still moving over the cards, but it was the first hint that perhaps, dimly, he recognised me. I sat down opposite him, and took out my algebra book and my notebook. I found the chapter I’d been studying and set the open book on the table beside the cards.
“The first problem is about square roots,” I said. “I don’t understand it, sir.”
His hands paused. He looked at the book, looked again, then gathered the cards into a deck and slipped them into his pocket. “Let me see.” He read over the problem silently and began to explain it, step by step. I wrote in my notebook. At last he sounded like the man I remembered. “Well done,” he said genially when we had completed the problem.
“Mr. Donaldson,” I said, “I’m Gemma Hardy. I’m the girl who got you fired.”
“Gemma Hardy.” He had said the words “square root” with more interest.
I reached out and took his hand, the one with the gold ring. Behind his smudged glasses, I glimpsed his red-rimmed eyes. “I have