The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [51]
From my first day of conjugating amare—amo, amas, amat—I loved Latin. When I told her that I had been a friend of Miriam’s—sum amica Miriam—she persuaded Miss Bryant what a good advertisement for the school it would be if a working girl went to university: a triumph for her philanthropic experiment. Our tutorials became the high point of my week. We had been meeting for nearly two months when I confided what had happened with Mr. Donaldson.
“Poor man,” said Miss Seftain. “Teachers are so vulnerable to rumours.”
She wrote to various friends, asking if anyone knew his present whereabouts. No one did, but an Edinburgh friend revealed what had brought him to the village in the first place. He had been teaching at a famous boys’ school, and one night had taken two of his pupils to a pub and then on a joyride around Arthur’s Seat. It seemed unlikely that he was still teaching. “Although,” Miss Seftain added, “there are places, like Claypoole, that are off the radar.”
But despite my tutorials I was still a working girl, and my days were still ruled by Ross. She made no more overtures. I saw her laughing with Findlayson, playing cards with Gilchrist, but her muddy brown eyes ignored me as she told me to wash a floor, or hurry up with the carrots. To my surprise I missed our odd moments of friendliness. Perhaps during the holidays, I thought, I could find a way to make amends. Then one evening in early December I came into the Elm Room to discover her and Drummond packing. They were going to be chambermaids at a hotel in Kelso. When I went over to say goodbye Ross picked me up and swung me round. “Live up to your name, Hardy,” she said, and planted a smacking kiss on my cheek. The next day she and Drummond were gone. Gilchrist became head of the working girls, and I began to understand that Ross had been a skillful manager. She knew how to divide the tasks so that everyone pulled her weight. Now, even with Mrs. Bryant’s vigilance, the school grew dirtier; crises in the kitchen were more frequent. The next summer one of Cook’s sisters left and was not replaced.
As for me, I was marking time in Form I. Miss Seftain kept me back for one year, and then a second. “You’re not Mozart, Hardy,” she said. “You need to be in a class with girls your own age. You’ll just be miserable if you try to go to university at fifteen, and I doubt you’d get a place.” Grateful for her protection, knowing I had no choice, I relinquished the superiority of always being the youngest in the class.
By the time I at last moved up to Form II, there were only eight working girls, and the number of regular pupils was also dwindling. At assembly the library was no longer filled; one table in the dining-room stood empty; a year later another was only half full. The gym teacher left to get married, and Mrs. Bryant took over the gym classes. The following year Mrs. Harris left to nurse her mother, and Primary 6 and 7 were combined under Miss Grey.
In Form IV, thanks to Miss Seftain, I sat eight O-level exams. The exams were set and marked by a national board, and I threw myself into preparation, knowing that, for once, I would not be judged as a working girl. The gym became an examination hall, and I loved the ritual of everyone filling pens and sharpening pencils, turning over the questions at the same moment, the teacher walking up and down between the rows of desks, calling out the time.
In August Miss Seftain invited me to celebrate my seven As and one B (scripture). She lived in a flat in the converted stables, and I hoped, at last, to be invited inside, but she answered my knock by saying she’d be out in five minutes. I perched on the wall, watching a yellow snail nudge along. Whenever I offered it a piece of grass it drew in its horns, only to unfurl them again a few seconds later. Like Miss Seftain, I thought, it was being cautious. However much she wanted to help me, she was determined not to follow in Mr. Donaldson’s footsteps. She appeared, carrying a tea tray, and joined me on