The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [69]
Which was what finally happened. One day the horse came home alone; Alison was found hours later. At first they had thought she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, but after nearly a year and several operations, she could walk with a stick. Without her horse, though, she couldn’t stand the island. She had moved to Glasgow and started leading a different sort of life, singing in pubs, who knew what else. After Nell was born, her parents wouldn’t speak to her.
I would have liked to ask about Nell’s father, the man who wasn’t in the picture, but Vicky was already hurrying to the end of her story, describing Alison’s death. “They said it was heart failure, that the painkillers had weakened her heart. Nell was alone with her at the time. A neighbour spotted the milk on the doorstep.”
I was still saying how awful as Vicky stood up to check on her scones. A few days later, when I asked why Alison hadn’t sent Nell to school, she said she didn’t know, and that was her answer to the next question, and the next.
On evenings when I did not sit with Vicky or plot my lessons or take refuge in the library, I sometimes cycled into the village to visit Nora. A skinny girl of eighteen, Nora had been working at Blackbird Hall for two years and still sang as she mopped the floors. She often talked proudly about her older brother Todd, who was at university in Aberdeen, but when I asked if she had any plans to leave the island, she shook her head. “Why would I want to do that? Besides,” she added, “I’m engaged.” Jock worked at the smithy and they were, Nora smiled, in no rush. Her first invitation to me was, I knew, prompted by Vicky, but soon it was understood that most Saturdays, if the weather wasn’t too ferocious, I would bicycle to the village to play cards or dominoes with her and Angus and their parents.
Still, despite my success with Nell, my small social life, the solace of being near the sea and earning money, I sometimes found myself restless. My life was infinitely happier than it had been at Claypoole, but except for the odd trip to Kirkwall, I was mostly confined to a large house and a small village. I was on an island on an island. At Claypoole I had been sustained by the hope that once I left the school and became an adult, everything would change. Now what could I hope for? I would pace up and down the corridor with its empty bedrooms and the locked door at the end and wonder if I would ever be able to take my exams and go to university. Once again I envied the birds. A shearwater, according to my bird book, could fly to Iceland and back and scarcely notice.
Easter brought a lavish chocolate egg for Nell but no sign of Mr. Sinclair. My eighteenth birthday passed unmarked, even by me; I recalled the date only the following day. Primroses and violets appeared beside the road and the lambs grew sturdier and butted heads in the fields. A few of the hens were left to sit on their eggs, and soon downy chicks darted around the farmyard. Then, in mid-May, the ferry went on strike. Seamus and Vicky complained furiously. The eggs and cheese, destined for mainland markets, piled up in the dairy. “And if the dispute isn’t settled soon,” Vicky said, “we won’t get summer visitors.” Or at least not many, she added. The planes were still flying. Playing in the garden with Nell and walking to the village, I found myself scanning the sky.
As the days lengthened, Nora organised a group of boys and girls from the village to play rounders in a field near the church. Thanks to the holidays at Claypoole, I was better than most of the girls; I couldn’t hit the ball far, but I was a fast runner and a good fielder. One evening in early June, a Tuesday, I showed up to find that Todd had arrived home from Aberdeen. The ferries were still on strike, but he had talked his way onto a