The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [155]
In the car Robin slumped against me, asleep before we reached the end of the drive. Louise remarked that Mummy was marvellous. Except for the occasional cough, you would never know she was ill, would you. No, I said, and then, it seemed a natural question, I asked if she remembered her father.
“Of course. It was awful when he died. One minute he was telling me to do my homework, the next he was gone. No one could believe it—a grown man going through the ice.” She braked for a crow in the road. “Most of my memories are from when I was small. He would carry me on his shoulders, make up songs and stories. Then you came, and Mummy started teaching me to ride.”
I was still thinking about this last sentence, and how it echoed my aunt’s claim that my arrival had changed the household, as she began to talk about her wedding. “Veronica wants to design the dresses, make everything French, but I wrote to her last week that we might do things sooner. Just in case Mummy’s cough gets worse. I don’t need a French dress.”
We had passed no houses for miles, but now on the left was a whitewashed inn with a sign: TRAVELLERS WELCOME. Louise asked if I remembered going there for lunch. “It was the day we went to the fish-ladder in Pitlochry. You had a ginger beer and Will made you laugh so hard it came out of your nose.”
A moment ago I would have sworn that I had never set foot in the inn. Now I recalled the five of us sitting around a table, Veronica and me perched on the edge of our chairs. We had eaten sandwiches and bags of crisps, each with a little screw of blue paper containing salt. My aunt was right, I thought; I did know only part of the story.
chapter thirty
As we walked up the lane, Robin kept stopping to pick the daisies that grew on the grassy verges. I was happy to wait for him. Watching him bend over the flowers, I wondered if he would remember any part of this outing in a few months, any part of me a year hence. Probably not. From his point of view the visit had been dull, save for my aunt’s wig slipping and the cake, and although he was fond of me, someone else could easily take my place. Someone else would. Smoke was rising from our neighbours’ chimneys and I heard the sound of the radio in Mrs. Lewis’s kitchen. If Marian hadn’t cooked, I would offer to make scrambled eggs and baked beans for supper. That had been Nell’s favourite meal. What was she doing on this April evening? It was quite possible that I would never see her again either.
“For Granny,” Robin said, brandishing a dishevelled posy, and began to run towards the house. Suddenly I remembered George. “Robin,” I called, “wait.” But after his long afternoon of being good, he kept running, impatient to see his beloved grandmother. The gate stood open and he trotted down the garden path. After a brief struggle with the doorknob, he was inside.
“Granny,” I heard him call, “we’re back.”
I followed, picking up first one fallen daisy, then another. Perhaps after supper, I thought, I would do something outrageous, like go to the local pub and treat myself to a shandy. I was at the kitchen door when Robin started to scream. A few seconds later he barrelled into me, his cheeks scarlet. In one flailing hand he held a sheet of paper.
“I can’t read,” he cried.
I knelt to put my arms around him. “Robin, the note is for me. Let me read it.” Finally—he hated to surrender any vestige of his grandmother—I pried the paper from his small fingers.
Saturday, 3:30
Jean,
Dr. Young thinks George needs emergency surgery. Gone to Perth Infirmary. Can you take care of Robin? I’ll phone.
Marian
Robin cried for almost an hour. Marian, like his mother, was gone forever, and trying to persuade him to the contrary was like throwing a glass of water onto a burning building. Only when I had shown him her piano and her bed and her wardrobe full of clothes and her Wellington boots did he calm down enough to help me make supper. I opened a tin of baked beans; together we broke eggs into a bowl. I was fishing out fragments