The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [16]
On Friday night I put a torch by my bed and banged my head twelve times against the pillow but there was no need. The prospect of departure kept me awake long past my usual hour. In the last few days I had visited the fort, the river, and the church. That morning at school Mr. Donaldson had announced that today was Gemma Hardy’s last day and presented me with a copy of Robinson Crusoe inscribed To Gemma, from her classmates and teacher. With all good wishes for her future. February 1959.
At the end of the afternoon he had again asked me to stay behind. He stood over my desk, waiting until the last girl had left the room. Then in a low voice, quite unlike his normal teacherly tones, he said, “As I have no choice but to wish you luck at Claypoole, let me give you some advice. Try not to be noticed. You will be one of many girls. There is no reason why you should put yourself forward. If there is anything I can do, please know that I consider myself your friend.”
He handed me a brown paper bag. My surprise at the contents—a pad of writing paper and half-a-dozen envelopes already stamped and addressed to him—must have been obvious. Hastily he explained that I didn’t need to write; he just wanted to be sure that I could. “Of course I’ll write,” I had said. “If you like,” he had said, and busied himself with his briefcase.
It was almost midnight when I crept out of bed and tiptoed downstairs. The prospect of departure filled my mind with new thoughts. For the first time I wondered what had happened to my parents’ possessions. I remembered my uncle describing how my parents’ neighbour had shown me a photograph of him and my mother. Where had it gone? My aunt always claimed that I owned nothing, but this photograph, if it still existed, was mine. Perhaps other things too? I pictured the day I arrived at Yew House. Surely my uncle had unloaded something—a trunk? a large suitcase?—from the boot of the car. And surely whatever it was must have come from my parents’ house.
I had never seen anyone but my uncle open the drawers of his desk. Now, with apologies to him, I set down the torch and slid open the top drawer; it was full of sermons. The next contained correspondence. The next, bills. At last, in the bottom right-hand drawer, was a cardboard box with my name printed on the lid. Inside, lying on top of a pile of papers, was a photograph of a man and a woman, my uncle and my mother. On the back were the words Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh. May 1941. I sat down and stared at my mother in her summer dress, my uncle in his black trousers and white shirt. They were sitting side by side on a grassy slope, laughing, with a bank of azaleas behind them. I had known my mother was dead for all of my conscious life, and in the last year I had gradually come to terms with my uncle being in the same strange state. But, looking at their bright smiles, it seemed unimaginable that they were not nearby, laughing, talking, playing backgammon.
The sound of the holly leaves scratching at the window brought me back to myself. I set the photograph beside the one of my uncle and closed the box. There was no time now to investigate the rest of its contents and no space for it in my suitcase; if I carried it openly, my aunt would accuse me of stealing. My mind skidded over the alternatives. The box was small enough to fit on the top shelf of the sewing-room or at the back of the boot cupboard, but when would I ever return to Yew House? Mrs. Marsden’s cottage was only a few hundred yards away but she was tied to my aunt in ways that made her unreliable. As for burying the box in the garden, I had no confidence that I could dig a hole deep enough, let alone ensure that the contents remained dry.
Only one solution presented itself. I tiptoed to the cloakroom, pulled on my Wellingtons and a coat of Louise’s, and let myself out of the house. I had never before been out this late and the air smelled of dampness and animals. In the cloudy sky the almost full moon looked ready, at any moment, to burst into the open; in the nearby