The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [20]
The house that came into view around the next bend rewarded all my daydreaming. Claypoole was built of a pleasing light grey granite. The two wings of the school stood at right angles to each other and were linked by a curving balustrade supported by elegant pillars. Row after row of windows shone. Mr. Milne parked beside a flight of steps. These led down to the back door, which, he explained, I would normally use. Today, however, we would enter by the front door. He rang the bell and led me into a large oak-panelled hall. Several armchairs were grouped around the fireplace, and at the far end a beautiful, red-carpeted staircase spiralled up to a glass dome. How grand everything looked, and how comfortable. A girl, dressed in a green tunic and brown knee socks, appeared. I stared at her wonderingly while Mr. Milne asked her to tell Miss Bryant that the new working girl was here.
She hurried away through the nearest door and he pointed out the picture over the fireplace; it showed the house as it had been in 1900. “You can still see the remains of the carriage house,” he was saying when something made me turn. A tall, grey-haired woman wearing a beautiful navy suit was descending the spiral stairs. Miss Bryant, I was to discover, liked to make an entrance. I glimpsed a high, bony forehead, an elegant nose, and scarlet lips, the upper unusually thin, the lower unusually full. Later I heard one girl claim that she was fifty; another that she was barely thirty. Both seemed plausible.
“Thank you, Mr. Milne,” she said. “The suitcase goes to the Elm Room.”
Without a backward glance he disappeared. “So you are Hardy,” Miss Bryant continued. Her accent, like her age, was elusive, neither Scottish nor English but some blending of the two. “Your aunt has warned me that you are prone to lying and daydreaming. At Claypoole you will find that, between your lessons and your other duties, there is no time for either. You understand that you are here as a working pupil?”
“My aunt should have not said that.”
“Stop glaring at me, and address me as Miss Bryant. Let me ask again: Do you understand that you are a working pupil?”
“Yes, Miss Bryant. But my aunt—”
“It is up to you to prove her wrong and to prove us right in offering you a place. Your work does not begin to pay for your board, let alone tuition. Ross will show you what to do. You’ll start in Primary Seven on Monday.”
I was about to blurt out my pleasure—I must have done exceptionally well in the exams to be moved up two years—when a tall, red-cheeked girl with a chest even more formidable than Louise’s stepped into the hall.
“Ross, this is the new girl, Hardy. She will take over Montrose’s duties.”
Ross studied me, her glance shifting rapidly from my leather shoes to my pigtails. “Montrose minded the fires,” she said. “This one won’t be able to carry the scuttles.”
I stood up straight and said I was strong for my age.
Ross smiled, not pleasantly; her two front teeth were longer than the others and one was chipped. Miss Bryant’s expression did not change. “Arrange things as you see fit,” she told Ross. “Be sure she works hard.”
She departed with the same clip of heels and swish of skirts that had accompanied my aunt’s entrances and exits. A moment later the chandelier and the wall sconces went out, leaving us in gloom. Ross seized my arm. “Got any grub?”
Before I could answer she plunged her free hand into my pockets, first left, then right, and triumphantly retrieved the chocolate biscuits. “My favourites. Come on. Let’s dump your coat and you can start in the kitchen. I hope you’re not a whiner.”
“I don’t whine,” I said, trying to pull free. “Please let go of my arm.”
She only tightened