The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [149]
“This is Robin. I’m his nanny. Robin, this is Louise.”
Louise gave a hoot of laughter. “Heavens, for a moment I thought he was yours.”
Robin stared at her. Who was this large, loud woman? We climbed into the back of the car, leaving her alone in the front. As she drove through Aberfeldy, past the Birks, and up the hill, she told me that Veronica was spending a year in Paris. “She’s meant to be working on her French but she’s mostly studying fashion and flirtation.”
“What about your brother?” Even now I did not care to say his name.
“Don’t ask.” She gave a theatrical groan. “He’s in London, spending money like water. His big plan, you may remember, was to play football for Scotland, which he had a snowball’s chance in hell of actually doing. Now he’s an apprentice at an insurance company. Hopefully someone’s around to fix his mistakes.”
“And what about you? Are you still living at Yew House? How are your horses?”
“Gosh, I haven’t ridden in years. I’m the assistant manager at a hotel in Edinburgh. It suits me. Lots of people coming and going, always something new.”
I stared at her profile, my aunt’s plump cheeks, my uncle’s straight nose. It was easy to picture her behind the counter of a hotel, scowling at my application form.
“I’ve been coming home at weekends,” she went on, “to deal with Mummy.”
“Look,” Robin exclaimed. Two Highland cows, with their curving horns and shaggy heads, were peering over a wall.
“You can draw me a cow later,” I said. “What’s there to deal with?”
“Cancer. But I’d give ten to one she’ll see the decade out, and the next one too. Those doctors don’t know how tough Mummy is.”
Her tone was so jolly that it took me a moment to grasp that my aunt was gravely ill. Years before at Perth station I had cursed her. Now, like the rain that fell on the Welsh hills and bubbled up, eight thousand years later, in the hot springs of Sulis, my curse was finally coming true. But I felt little sense of victory.
“Will and I were always telling her not to smoke,” Louise continued, “but she wouldn’t listen. What’s so strange is that she’s had this bee in her bonnet about talking to you. She went on and on about it. I even contacted that school: Clayfield, Claymoor. When it turned out to be closed, I didn’t know what to do. I was thinking of putting an ad in the Scotsman when your letter came. It’s as if you knew we were looking for you.”
“I had no idea. I thought your mother was going to marry Mr. Carruthers.”
“Mr. Carruthers.” Louise laughed. “I’d forgotten about him. No, she’s never remarried, though not for lack of opportunity. She’d be all alone if it weren’t for me and Audrey.”
“Audrey? Audrey Marsden?” I felt Robin staring at me.
“Who else? When Veronica left last year, Mum did the sensible thing and invited her to move into the house. Now there’s a nice young couple paying rent in the cottage, and Audrey has been a godsend, driving her to doctors, taking care of things. Heaven knows how much we’d be paying for taxis and nurses without her.”
In my preoccupation with my aunt it had never occurred to me that Audrey might still be at Yew House. At the prospect of seeing the person who had first told me about the Orkneys, I was struck dumb. And surely, I thought, as we squeezed past a lorry, she would have known Mr. Sinclair.
Except for Robin’s occasional exclamations—pheasants! sheep!—we drove in silence past moors and lonely farms down into the next valley. Presently I caught sight of the circular wood above the village. A few minutes later the hill with the Roman fort came into view. Driving through the village, I glimpsed the school, and my uncle’s church. The field, where Celeste and Marie Antoinette once grazed, was filled with corn. Then we were turning through the familiar gateposts, driving up the familiar drive. As we stopped outside the house Louise said, “She looks a little different.”
But I was too overwhelmed by my first sight of Yew House to pay attention.