The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [34]
“No, I just took the stairs too fast.” She had by now explained to me about her asthma and how, when an attack came, it felt as if a giant hand was squeezing her chest. The inhaler helped loosen the hand.
“How pretty your mother is,” she gasped. “And your uncle looks as if he’s just about to laugh. You can see they’re brother and sister, can’t you?”
I had not dared to look at the photograph since I came to Claypoole. Now, gazing over Miriam’s shoulder, I saw my uncle’s kind smile, my mother’s bright eyes, and behind them the azaleas in bloom. “Do you have a picture of your mother?” I asked.
“It’s on the wall above my bed in Galashiels. When I go there in July I’ll bring it back to show you. We’d better go downstairs and look busy.”
Despite her dreaminess Miriam was good at remembering that we had to be careful. She set off towards the library and I carried the photograph back to its hiding place. No one could ever replace my uncle, but as I slipped the suitcase under the bed I cherished the confidence with which Miriam had spoken of a shared future. That evening in the common room she handed me a small package. “Happy birthday, Gemma.”
When I removed the wrapping paper I found a pocket guide to Scottish birds.
“Sometimes you’re not quite sure what a bird is,” she said shyly. “I thought this would help and that the other girls wouldn’t try to steal it.”
“Thank you. It’s exactly what I wanted.” I told her then about my favourite book, Birds of the World, and how I had had to leave it behind at Yew House. “But this is much more useful,” I added.
Miriam still worked in the library over the holidays and she had persuaded Mrs. Bryant to let me assist her after I finished my other tasks. We were alphabetising the history section one afternoon when she asked if I knew about Cecil.
“Who’s Cecil?” I said.
“The Mintos’ younger son. He died in the Second World War.” When she first arrived at Claypoole, she went on, there had been several sightings of a young man in a bloody uniform wandering the lower corridors. She herself hadn’t seen him until last year, when she’d discovered him in this very room, sitting in a chair by the window, reading. She pointed to the window in the far corner. I asked if he’d said anything and she said no. “He just smiled at me, and went on reading.”
“So how did you know he was a ghost?”
“I didn’t. He was wearing ordinary clothes, a white shirt and dark trousers, and I thought he was someone’s brother, visiting the school. But one minute he was turning a page and the next there was just the book, lying on a chair.”
I reached for a history of the Tudors, and asked what he’d been reading, and whether she’d seen him again.
“Kim. It’s a novel by Rudyard Kipling. Sometimes I get this feeling that he’s waiting for me, and I come here and find him. But that hasn’t happened in months.” She held up a biography of Oliver Cromwell with a portrait of a long-faced, unsmiling man on the cover. “This could be my father,” she said.
“He looks cross, but finish telling me about Cecil. Does he ever talk to you?”
Miriam slipped the book into place. Then she fussed with her Alice band in a way that made her hair stick out even more. “I’m worried you’ll think I’m balmy,” she said.
I was about to tell her what had happened in the sewing-room, but something cautioned me not to, almost as if the figure itself had appeared to tug my sleeve. “I don’t think you’re balmy,” I said. “What does he say?”
“Ordinary things. Last summer we spoke about how warm it was and how nice it would be to have an ice cream. He likes strawberry; I prefer vanilla. Another time he talked about being on the