The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [57]
The young man, wearing his white shirt and dark trousers, was sitting at the piano. He played the first notes of “Auld Lang Syne,” then swung around to face me. “I spent a year in the Orkneys,” he said, “based at Scapa Flow. When we had time off we went fishing among the shipwrecks. For some reason fish are partial to wrecks; maybe they like having a house under the water.”
“Will you visit me there?”
“I think my visiting days are over,” he said quietly, “but you never know. Be careful of the causeway.”
Before I could ask what causeway, he stood up, walked to the far door—his footsteps were as audible as his playing—and, with a brief wave, left the room. Alone I took down the slim red volume of Kim. Then I sat down at the piano and played the one tune Miriam had managed to teach me: “Auld Lang Syne.”
PART III
chapter fifteen
The next morning Miss Bryant was waiting in the hall. She was beautifully dressed—I had never seen her otherwise—but the invisible shield that had made it hard to look at her directly was gone. I saw deep shadows beneath her eyes, a soft droop of flesh beneath her chin. Her subjects were leaving, her empire was vanishing; she was unlikely to find another.
“Goodbye, Hardy,” she said. “Here is the address where I can be reached in the foreseeable future. I hope at some point—ten years from now, perhaps twenty—you will realise that you learned some valuable lessons at Claypoole.” As if we were at a school prize-giving, she handed me an envelope and shook my hand.
“Goodbye, Miss Bryant,” I said cheerfully. “Don’t let your sister-in-law clean you out of house and home.”
My new shoes squeaking with every step, I walked across the floor I had polished so often and, for the first time in seven years, used the front door. Outside the inevitable minivan was waiting, with the inevitable Mr. Milne at the wheel. But in the van, there was a surprise. In the corner, toadlike in her brown coat, squatted his wife. She did not look at me as I slid onto the other end of the seat, but she was not ignoring me, as Miss Bryant and the other girls so often had. I could feel the hatred pouring out of her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Milne,” I said.
Her eyes slid round to glare at me.
“It looks like it might be a nice day,” I responded, nodding towards the leaden clouds.
On the damp grass several blackbirds, descendants perhaps of the fledglings Ross and I had watched over, were searching for worms. At last I was the one leaving and the birds were staying. We drove through the school grounds in silence. Then, as we passed the lodge, Mrs. Milne began to speak. Her words, at first, were barely audible above the engine; yard by yard they grew clearer.
“—old geezer. Thought he could be Galahad forever. Those girls seemed to think so too. They didn’t see my nightly treat: an old man with a belly and prickly balls. No, they scampered around with their bare knees and their little—”
The hair on my arms rose. This was not like Mr. Milne’s outburst when he drove me back from Hawick, an attempt by one person to reach another. Rather Mrs. Milne was releasing the voice inside her head that most people learn, even when they’re very young, not to let out.
“My mother used to talk about working her fingers to the bone. I’d squeeze her hand, and say these aren’t bones. Now . . .”
Meanwhile her husband drove steadily, seemingly oblivious, but beneath his grey hair his ears had turned scarlet. When we pulled up in front of the station, I turned to Mrs. Milne and offered the least appropriate farewell I could think of: Veronica’s to me, years ago. “Goodbye, Mrs. Milne. I hope you have a happy life.”
On the pavement, as Mr. Milne lifted out my suitcases, I noticed that his dungarees no longer struggled to contain his belly; his flesh,