The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [40]
A few days later, when we were on our way to clean the gym, Ross finally revealed why Montrose, my predecessor, had had to leave. They had pretended, just for a laugh, to throw her out of the window; she had struggled so hard she’d broken her wrist. “She told Miss Bryant it was our fault. Of course she couldn’t stay after that. As soon as she was better, Miss Bryant fibbed about her age and got her a job in a hotel.”
The afternoon was warm, and when Ross stopped to wipe her forehead her hand left a smear of grime. I took pleasure in seeing the dirt, pleasure in not telling her about it. At last she gave up waiting for me to answer and spoke again.
“I don’t know what she’d have done if you’d tattled,” she said. “I worried you might. You’re such a Goody Two-shoes.”
As I swept the gym, I daydreamed about a kingdom of girls, a place where there were only girls, where none of the girls were bullies or idiots, and everyone studied harmoniously. If only such a place existed, Miriam and I would go there tomorrow.
For several days after I returned to the Elm Room I didn’t see Miriam. Then one morning in assembly I spotted her, not standing with her class but sitting on a chair beside the teachers. At lunch, when I set her plate down, I noticed her inhaler on the table. That evening in the bathroom I wrote another note.
Dearest Miriam,
Are you all right? Your face is the colour of paper and I can hear you breathing. Have you seen the doctor? I hope, hope, hope I can come and stay with you in the holidays. Tell your father I am a good nurse. I will read to you all day long and take good care of you. I miss you.
Love, your best friend, Gemma
I carried the note around in my sock, waiting for a chance to deliver it. Finally on Saturday, as Smith and I were polishing the hall outside the library, Miriam limped towards us. I dropped my mop and, bending to pick it up, slipped the note into her hand.
That afternoon in the kitchen, Ross tugged my apron. Outside, in the flowering currant, the mother blackbird was no longer sitting on the nest. Four tiny beaks were visible above the rim of moss and twigs.
“They hatched,” she whispered. “Just like you said.”
I felt her arms go around me, and before I knew what was happening, she had lifted me up. I stared in wonder at the barely feathered heads with their filmy eyes and yellow beaks. Then I wriggled until she set me down.
“We’ll have to gather worms for them. Maybe after supper this evening.”
I nodded.
“How long before they fly away?”
I wasn’t sure but I held up four fingers.
“Four days?”
I shook my head, and moved my hands farther apart.
“Okay. So we have four weeks to teach them to be our friends.”
As she spoke, the mother bird appeared with a shrill cry. We stepped back and she flew down into the bush. I remembered my uncle telling me that birds fed their young with regurgitated food, which was why it was so hard to rear a fledgling. Even if we liked chewing worms, he had said, we don’t have the right saliva.
Miriam did not reply to my note, and two mornings in a row she was missing from assembly. There were rumours that Dr. White had been called in the night, that she was worse. Chopping onions, I angled the knife into my finger. In the infirmary Matron greeted me warmly. “Oh, Hardy, how . . . ?”
I held out my notebook with the note I had written earlier.
“Poor Goodall.” She dabbed something stinging on my cut. “She’s very poorly.”
I seized the notebook and wrote, PLEASE tell me more.
She shook her head and pressed a piece of cotton wool to my finger. “The doctor thinks . . . Hospital.”
For the rest of the day thoughts flashed through my mind like scenery rushing past the window of a train. Miriam had told me there was no cure for asthma, although a warmer, drier climate helped. That was why people used to go to the