The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [27]
“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “this girl reads like a five-year-old.”
“Yes, sir. Elocution isn’t part of the curriculum. I’ll make sure she practises.”
I was smugly registering that she had made an excuse when Mr. Waugh asked for another reader. I raised my hand.
“Sir,” said Mrs. Harris quickly, “she’s a working girl.”
“She can’t be worse than the last one. I will stop her after a verse or two if she’s hopeless. Stand up, girl.”
I stood, and in my best voice read the parable. Mr. Waugh’s buttons relaxed. When I finished he said, “Competent. Sit down,” and began to expound on the importance of servants—and weren’t all children servants?—doing what was asked of them promptly and cheerfully. I raised my hand again and, when he inclined his head, repeated the arguments I had offered my uncle about the third servant.
“Come here, working girl.”
I approached, my head almost level with the buckle of his overworked belt.
“Face your classmates.”
I did and found fourteen pairs of eyes fixed on me. No, thirteen. The girl who had watched me sympathetically when I wore the label DUNCE was studying her Bible.
“Here, girls, you see what it is like to receive no education. The mind, without guidance, cannot grasp the principles of right and wrong. This girl cannot receive the truth even when it is offered. Doubtless her parents were illiterate, perhaps even criminals, and—”
“That’s not true. My parents were both very educated and my uncle was a minister like—”
Mr. Waugh seized my shoulders and shook me until my teeth chattered. When at last he stopped, I sank to the floor. Standing over me, he proclaimed that although young and small I was already filled with sin. “Can you tell me which sin?” he said.
“Ignorance,” called out one classmate. “Pride,” called another.
“Ignorance is not a sin and can be forgiven, but pride is one of the worst. Anything else?”
“Blasphemy, sir,” said Balfour. I recognised her smarmy tone.
Mr. Waugh clapped his hands. “Exactly. When you argue with a minister, you are arguing with God’s representative. What could be more blasphemous? Jesus tells his listeners what the story means, but this girl is deaf to His explanation. Any other sins?”
While I stared at the floorboards, a few girls made suggestions, which Mr. Waugh repudiated. Then he announced, triumphantly, one final sin: lying. My uncle was not a minister, or if he was, he had never held such views. Of all sins lying was the worst, for it was the foundation of the devil’s house. The working girl was a liar. As he uttered this last sentence, something hard pressed against my ribs: the toe of his shoe.
“Mrs. Harris,” said a small, breathless voice. “I need to get my inhaler.”
“Sir, excuse me. MacIntyre, go with Goodall to make sure she’s all right.”
The girls stepped past me, and in doing so forced Mr. Waugh to step back. Perhaps it occurred to him that a large minister trampling a small girl was not a pretty spectacle. He told me to get up, and go and wash my face.
For the rest of that morning I stood at the front of the room, a sign saying LIAR around my neck. At one point my knees shook so hard that a couple of girls in the front row started to giggle, but the girl with the brown eyes came up to ask Mrs. Harris a question about the composition. As she passed me she smiled, and on the way back to her desk—“You already know that, Goodall”—she smiled again. She walked, I noticed, with a slight limp.
That night in bed I gave way to despair. After all that had happened since I left Yew House, I was still only ten years old, still less than five feet tall. My journey south had shown me how conspicuous I was as a child travelling alone. And now I was utterly friendless. Even my memories of my uncle, without the familiar landscapes to frame them, were less vivid. I recalled again that last afternoon when he had invited me to go skating. “Fancy a spin on the ice?” he had said. But I had stayed behind to build a fort with Veronica. A sob escaped me.
“Shut up,” a voice hissed.
“Stow it,” said someone else. A floorboard creaked