The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [146]
A woman in a uniform I hadn’t seen before stood in the doorway, her eyebrows pinched in a frown; a little gold watch was pinned to her chest. I scrambled to my feet.
“It’s my fault,” I said. “I was pestering Mr. Donaldson about an algebra problem—I have my exams next month—and he thought he had a book here that would help.”
“Oh, dear.” She made a clucking sound. “He does go off on wild-goose chases. All our books are in the library, just to the left of the lounge. That’s the place to look. But I’m not sure if Henry can be of much help these days.”
“We’ll take a look,” I said, “before I go and catch my bus.”
I led him down the corridor to the room called the library. There were three bookcases full of tattered paperbacks, a table, and a couple of chairs. Mr. Donaldson sank into one of them. He got out his pack of cards and began to lay them out in orderly lines. I sat down opposite him and, before I could forget, wrote down the contents of the box that might or might not still exist.
chapter twenty-nine
By the time the bus pulled into Aberfeldy, the evening smoke was rising from the chimneys and the streetlights were glowing. I was glad that no one knew of my return and that I could walk alone back to Weem, past the poplars, silent on this windless night, and slip into the dark house. In the kitchen I stopped to eat a slice of toast. Then, avoiding the creaking boards that Robin and I had mapped one afternoon, I climbed the stairs. In my room I went at once to the chest of drawers and the photograph of my uncle and mother. After all my failures their laughing faces were unchanged. I was staring at them, wonderingly, when the door of my room opened.
“You came back.” The legs of Robin’s favourite red pyjamas pooled around his feet.
“I told you I was only going away for a couple of days. What are you doing up?”
“Everyone says that.” He never spoke of his mother directly, but her absence, I guessed, had been presented as a matter of days and, with no explanation, commuted to years. He swung back and forth on the doorknob. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I sat down on the bed to untie my shoes. “Yes and no,” I said, tugging at the laces.
“Those are like up and down.”
“I was looking for a person and I found him, so that’s the yes.” The knot loosened. “But he was keeping some things for me and he doesn’t have them anymore.”
“So they’re lost.” He let go of the doorknob and approached. “Can we look for them?”
On the bus I had asked myself this over and over. Of course Isobel might have already destroyed the contents of the box, but it was also possible that she had not yet looked through her brother’s papers, or that if she had, she had not recognised the letters and dried flowers as mine. Why should Mr. Donaldson have anything that belonged to that wretched girl? The thought that my parents’ final words might be so close and yet out of reach was tormenting. Was there a law that could compel someone to give you back your property when they didn’t know they had it? As the bus drove over the hills and moors, I had pushed these questions round and round my brain.
Robin studied me anxiously. “Can we?” he repeated.
“I’m not sure. But I am sure that you must go back to bed. Granny will be upset if she finds you gone.”
He patted my knee, hitched up his pyjamas, and padded away.
At breakfast the next morning Marian asked if I had had a nice time with my friend in a way that made it easy to say yes and change the subject. Did we need potatoes? As for Archie, he was unusually brisk when we went over Catullus. I shouldn’t try to be too poetic, he scolded. Above all I must start timing myself. It was no good doing one brilliant translation when the exam required three. He made no mention of my trip.
The exams were now less than a month away and I had a strict timetable for studying, but whatever had begun with my visit to the minister was not answered by my meeting with Mr. Donaldson; indeed, it was growing at an alarming rate. If I couldn’t have my box back—and the more I thought about