The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [24]
At last the teacher raised her head. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gemma Hardy.”
“And what class do you think you’re in?”
“Primary Seven.”
“Two doors down,” she said, and returned to her writing.
Closing the door I saw the label, PRIMARY 6, and understood, yet again, that I must be on my guard at all times. At my knock the door of Primary 7 flew open. Beside the blackboard stood a woman wearing a black gown, holding a pointer. Like Mr. Milne, Mrs. Harris had neither neck nor waist; a small sphere, her head, was balanced on a larger sphere, her body. She asked the same question as the last teacher; once again I introduced myself.
“Hardy, you’re five minutes late.” Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched.
“I went to the wrong classroom.”
“I am not interested in excuses. Bring the late sign, Andrews.”
A girl rose from the front row, went to a box in the corner, and returned carrying a piece of cardboard emblazoned with the word LATE. She slipped the string over my head and I was made to stand at the front of the room for the first period: arithmetic. My cheeks were burning but I did my best to focus on the sums Mrs. Harris was writing on the board. Several times I raised my hand to answer a question; she never looked in my direction. The bell rang for second period and she gestured to an empty desk in the front row.
“Turn to page twenty-seven of your English books.”
I raised my hand again. “I don’t have a book.”
“What a nuisance you are, working girl. Share with Balfour for this period. At break she’ll take you to fetch your books.”
Reluctantly the girl at the next desk slid over. Mrs. Harris stood at the blackboard parsing sentences, asking questions round the room. At last her head swiveled towards me. “Give the rules for using a semicolon.”
I knew a semicolon was a combination of a comma and a full stop, but I had no idea when to use one. “My old school hadn’t got to that yet,” I said.
“First late, now a dunce.”
“It’s not my fault we did things differently.”
Suddenly Mrs. Harris was standing over me. She bent down so that her large face was inches from mine. Except for a single crease beneath each small dark eye, her skin was very smooth. “What did I say?”
“First late, now a dunce?”
“No.” Her eyes grew still smaller. “When you first arrived what did I tell you?”
“You’re not interested in excuses.”
“Exactly. No one cares about where you went to school before today. You must catch up as quickly as possible. You’re a working girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Harris.”
Her chin sank into her gown and emerged again like that of a tortoise. “Girls, we’ve never had a working girl in Primary Seven before. We must do our best to educate her. Andrews, you know which card to get. Balfour, the rules for using a semicolon, please.”
Balfour reeled them off, or so I gathered from Mrs. Harris’s approving nod. Standing once again at the front of the room, this time with the card DUNCE around my neck, I was too miserable to listen. Most of the girls—I counted fourteen—ignored me, but one girl in the third row gazed at me steadily. Her brown hair stuck out untidily beneath her Alice band and her velvety eyes reminded me of Celeste’s.
Another bell rang, and Balfour led the way down the corridor at breakneck speed. Later I discovered she was a vigilante on the hockey pitch.
“Why is everyone’s hair the same?” I asked as I trotted behind her.
“It’s a school rule, ever since a girl set fire to her hair with a Bunsen burner.”
“Is Balfour your Christian name?”
“Idiot. Miss Bryant thinks that calling us by our surnames is better for discipline. Like in boys’ schools.”
I could have happily spent the day in the book room, with its brimming shelves, but Balfour led me to the section marked PRIMARY 7 and started handing me books pell-mell: