The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [37]
“I’m very sorry, Miss Bryant,” Miriam said in a low voice. “I’ll try to do better.”
“You won’t try. You will. For the rest of the term you’ll get up fifteen minutes early to make sure that your uniform is clean.”
“Yes, Miss Bryant.” Miriam gave a small, crooked curtsey.
That evening as I peeled the interminable potatoes Ross jerked my apron strings. “Your friend got a right old ticking off. Just because her dad pays fees doesn’t mean she can behave any old how.”
She was grinning so broadly I could see past her chipped tooth to her tonsils. Suddenly I knew, as clearly as if she had told me, that it was she who had drawn Miss Bryant’s attention to my friendship with Miriam, and she who had put the sparrow in my bed. Quite possibly she had also engineered Miriam’s current punishment; she was one of the few girls free to roam the school. As I reached for the next potato, I grinned back. “She should have minded herself,” I said.
While we peeled and halved the potatoes, I kept talking as if nothing had changed. Had she seen Miss Seftain’s blouse? It looked like raspberry jelly. Did she think the lacrosse team had a chance against the visiting school? We finished the potatoes and went to check on the blackbirds’ nest. The dusty brown female regarded us patiently while I explained that the eggs would hatch any day. Then both parents would feed the chicks. We could help by finding worms and leaving them nearby.
“You get the worms,” said Ross cheerfully.
She seemed to have forgiven me, but my policy of appeasement was too little, too late. The other girls sensed that she had withdrawn her protection. Someone tipped pepper on my food; someone spilled ketchup on my shirt; someone stole my Alice band so that for a whole day I was reprimanded for not wearing it. I did my best to avoid the Elm Room and to be as unobtrusive as possible. The only place I felt safe was the classroom, where Mrs. Harris, in her tyranny, tolerated no competition.
Then one night, soon after Matron turned out the light, Findlayson appeared on one side of my bed, Drummond on the other.
“Little Miss Smartie Pants.”
“Little Miss Know-it-all.”
“Thinks she’s so much better than the rest of us.”
At the first touch of their hands I screamed, “Help, Matron. Help me. Someone help me.”
“Christ, what a racket,” one of the older girls said.
“Better gag her,” said another.
I screamed even louder—someone seized my ankles—and fought as hard as I could, kicking, scratching, biting, but this was not like fighting Will, a single enemy of superior strength, this was a barbarian horde: wild, lawless, pitiless. Someone dragged off my pyjama jacket. Someone forced my mouth open and stuffed in a sock. Someone tugged my hair. And the worst of it was not the pain, or even the shame, but the bodies shutting me in, holding me prisoner, smothering me. Eventually, as I had in the sewing-room, I slipped away.
When I came round I was lying in bed in a small, bright room. Matron was sitting by the window, reading one of her romances, a faint smile on her lips.
“My, you gave us . . . How are . . . ?”
Her blue eyes gazed down at me and I gazed back, silently. Without calculation, I had hit upon the perfect response. Matron asked a few more of her abbreviated questions. Then she brought me a poached egg on toast, which I ate with pleasure. I could feign muteness but not loss of appetite. Afterwards I mimed that I would like to borrow a book and settled down to read about Catherine, a nurse, and Robert, the handsome laird, who seems determined to ignore her.
Later that day the doctor came from Hawick. I had heard the older girls describe Dr. White, with his intense gaze and dimpled