The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [49]
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Mr. Goodall doesn’t want anyone from the school present. But Mr. Waugh will say something in church next Sunday. And we will all remember Miriam in our prayers.” As I headed towards the door she added, a seeming afterthought, that I might use the library when I was not working.
Two days later I was summoned to Dr. White’s weekly surgery. Beneath Matron’s absent-minded gaze our conversation lasted barely a minute. He asked if I was all right. I said I was. How was the library? Fine. Over the next several years our meetings followed this pattern except for the few occasions—measles, a sprained wrist—when I actually needed his care. I had the consoling sense that he and Sister Cullen were watching over me.
The week after Miriam died we had exams every day. The following week Miss Bryant read out the results in assembly, enunciating the names of the girls who had failed with special clarity. I came fourth or fifth in every subject except scripture, where I came last. In arithmetic, I suspected, I had done better than fourth, but it was not part of Miss Bryant’s educational experiment for a working girl to be top of her class. As for the other working girls, they were always last, until the day when the results for French were read out and Findlayson had come fourth. Later, over the washing-up, Smith told me that Findlayson believed her father was a French sailor. When she was old enough, she planned to go to France and find him.
That summer there were no regular pupils at the school and only eight working girls. I had been dreading the long, lonely days, but on the first morning of the holidays Miss Bryant announced that we would be picking raspberries for the farmer who owned the pigs. For three weeks Ross marched us along the drive, down the hill, and past the crossroads to the fields of canes. The farmer handed out stacks of punnets—several boys and girls from Denholm were also picking—and left us to get on with it. We were paid by weight, so he had no need to chivvy us.
The leafy canes were much taller than me, taller even than Ross, and stepping between them I felt as if a lyre-bird might appear at any moment; for hours I picked in solitude save for the clouds of gnats. One afternoon I came upon Ross kissing a boy, her mouth gobbling up his. The next day I almost stumbled over Drummond and the same boy, lying on the ground. Hidden in the canes, I watched the boy rocking back and forth above her, grimacing. Below him Drummond, her red hair spread on the dark soil, kept her eyes tightly closed; once again I glimpsed her bra.
At the end of the afternoon the farmer returned to weigh our fruit and note our pay for the day. Then the raspberries were tipped into a barrel of acid, which bleached them instantly. Later, at the jam factory, dye would restore the colour. On the day I saw Drummond with the boy, the farmer remarked on her picking. “Only seven pounds, lassie. Were you taking a nap?”
She said nothing; the boy snickered. He had somehow managed to pick fifteen pounds. I saw Ross watching him, her lips parted over her chipped tooth. She and Drummond were good friends, but she too, I thought, would have been happy to lie down with him. I was glad there was something she wanted and couldn’t have.
The week after Miriam’s death, she had tried, as we walked to the gym, to apologise. “I’m sorry about your pal,” she had said. “That was a shame.”
“So why did you stop me seeing her when she was ill?” I demanded. “If I’d been able to take care of her maybe she wouldn’t have