The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [150]
“I’ll tell her you’re here,” said Louise. “What do you want to do with him?”
“Robin will come too. He knows to be quiet when grown-ups are talking.”
“As you wish.” She marched off down the corridor. Once again it was easy to imagine her cajoling a difficult guest, reprimanding a sloppy workman.
While we waited in the hall I told Robin how I used to play on the stairs with Louise. I was describing how we had dared each other who could jump farther when she reappeared, beckoning. I bent down beside Robin. “My aunt is a bit scary,” I said, “but there’s nothing she can do to us.” He nodded doubtfully.
The sitting-room had been transformed. Gone were the faded blue wallpaper and the chintz sofa. Now the walls sparkled with brightly floral paper; the sofa was the colour of sand; the rest of the furniture had also been replaced. Only the picture over the mantelpiece, showing a flock of adults and children skating on a village pond, was the same. My aunt was seated in an armchair by the fire, a tartan rug spread over her knees. After Louise’s warning I had been braced to find her as altered as the room, but with her golden hair piled high, she looked much as she had at Perth station.
“Hello, Aunt,” I said. “How are you? Robin, this is my aunt.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Who’s that?”
“This is Robin, the boy I take care of. He’s going to play while we talk.” I led him over to the bay window and laid out his cars, his colouring books and crayons. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I’m thirsty,” he whispered.
To my surprise my aunt heard. “Louise, get the child a drink. Gemma, sit down here where I can see you. I must say you’ve turned out better than I feared. You were such a plain little thing.”
Now that I was seated a few feet away I could see other changes that suggested illness. Her eyes were duller and her hands, although beautifully manicured, were rivered with veins. “Do you have a copy of my birth certificate?” I said.
“Still the same bull in a china shop,” she said, shaking her head with a faint smile. She stared into the fire, and I understood that she was waiting for the threat of interruption to be past. I got out my notebook and pen, wrote the place and date at the top of a page and sat waiting. It was possible, even likely, that I would never see my aunt again. Louise returned, expertly carrying a tray with a glass of orange squash, a cup of tea, and a plate of chocolate biscuits. While I thanked her, my aunt told her to go away and close the door. Then she told me to turn on the transistor radio that sat on the nearby table and place it near the door. When the radio was burbling away and I was back in my seat, she pulled her rug closer and began.
“To my surprise,” she said, “you have recently been weighing on my conscience. It’s like you to nag. You were always an annoying child.”
Her thin fingers fretted the fringe of the rug. I waited. All of this had clearly been planned in advance, and needed no urging by me.
“Your uncle,” she said at last, “had not only a sister but a younger brother.”
“That’s right. There was a photograph in his study of the three of them. Then it disappeared.”
“I put it in my chest of drawers. Ian and I were courting when he died. He was driving home to Edinburgh from seeing me in North Berwick when his motorbike went off the road. I didn’t hear about it until the following day. I always think I’ve had twenty-four hours’ more happiness in my life because of that delay. People talk about premonitions, but I didn’t have the slightest inkling. No cracked mirrors, no spilt salt, no voices on the wind.” She shook her head and I caught the glint of earrings.