The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [35]
“Didn’t he die on a ship?”
“Yes.” Miriam blinked slowly. “But it seemed rude to mention he was dead. Like asking a grown-up how old they are.”
I stepped over to the fiction shelves H–N. When I pulled out Kim, the gold-edged pages were covered with dust. “Did you read it?”
“I tried. I waited until I thought he must be finished and then I borrowed it but I got stuck after twenty pages. Maybe you could read it and tell me the story.”
Before I could slip the book into my tunic pocket Miriam began to briskly straighten volumes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door inch open.
In all our conversations I never spoke of Mr. Donaldson; I could not bear to voice the enormity of what I’d done. Then, on the last day of the holidays, it was unusually warm, and Ross sent me to weed the herbaceous border on the lower terrace. Miriam came to help. A cuckoo was calling nearby, sweet and insistent. We both called back, and it fell silent. As I dug up a dandelion, I told her how the maid at Yew House had believed that dandelion milk cured warts.
“I should tell my father,” she said. “He has warts. I don’t mean to be nosy, Gemma, but I can’t help wondering what you did to make Miss Bryant so cross.”
I could easily have offered a small fib—I’d been cheeky, or untidy—but, to my amazement, the words I had thought myself so reluctant to utter were bubbling forth. I told her the whole story, beginning with Mr. Donaldson’s visit to my aunt and his advice to me and then describing how I had found the box and taken it to him for safekeeping. When I described what had happened with the letter, Miriam exclaimed.
“Oh, Gemma, anyone could have told you that Mr. Milne is Miss Bryant’s slave. Cook would have posted the letter. Miss Bryant has something on her too, I don’t know what, but she enjoys having little secrets.”
I had been braced for Miriam’s censure, but the news that there had been a safe way to send the letter was more than I could bear. I drove my trowel into the soil until she pointed out that I was uprooting a primula. “There must be something I can do,” I said, restoring the dishevelled plant. “Mr. Donaldson shouldn’t lose his job because of me.”
“Start weeding,” said Miriam, edging away.
Suddenly Miss Bryant was standing over us. For several minutes she watched in silence from behind her large dark glasses. I crawled along the border, piling up the weeds in small heaps. Miriam tugged at a shoot of willow herb.
“Stand up, girls.”
We did, offering awkward curtsies to her black stare. Her blue dress with its white collar and belt was like one my aunt had worn the previous summer.
“I have been observing the two of you,” she said, “and I see that you’ve formed an unhealthy relationship. Goodall, your father is not paying for you to fraternise with working girls. Tomorrow you’ll move into Form One. Miss Seftain will coach you on what you’ve missed. Your father will be pleased that you’re catching up with your age group at last. Hardy, this border will be finished before you re-enter the school. Be sure to dig up every inch of dandelion root so they don’t grow back.”
A few weeks ago I would have told her that I was due in the kitchen at four. Now I bobbed my head and resumed my digging. I did not dare to watch as she led my friend away, but I took some small satisfaction in leaving, unmolested, a piece of each dandelion. Let the plants grow back, boisterous and yellow.
chapter ten
The summer term began, and in the classroom, thanks to Miriam’s coaching, I held my own. Mrs. Harris no longer picked on me at every opportunity. In the kitchen I had learned to be slap-dash and make mounds of carrots and potatoes disappear into saucepans. Even Mr. Waugh’s sermons were less tedious, now that we no longer shivered in the pews. When he visited Primary 7 I kept my head down and hoped he wouldn’t guess that I disagreed with every sentence he uttered.
As I swept the classrooms on Saturdays, I often