The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [79]
On the stairs that evening a woman and a man, wearing matching white Aertex shirts, each gave me a hearty handshake and introduced themselves as Rosie and Dale Miller. The island was so peaceful after Edinburgh, they exclaimed. The other guests, two sisters and a colleague of Mr. Sinclair’s, I did not see until church the following day. They arrived just as the bell fell silent. First came Jill, dark-haired and sturdy and wearing a pretty blue frock, then Coco, rearranging her blond hair even as she strolled down the aisle. Neither wore hats or gloves. As for the colleague, Colin, he was a pleasant-looking man in a suit. Rosie and Dale followed. Mr. Sinclair brought up the rear, frowning, irked, I thought, by their tardiness.
For the next few days the house was even busier than usual. The six of them explored the neighbouring islands and visited various golf courses. Coco, I gathered, was a keen golfer, and so were Rosie and Dale. Closer to home they played croquet and billiards. In the evenings the sounds of conversation and laughter rose from the library and the dining-room. Nell begged to sit on the stairs, just to listen to the merriment. I sat with her, gazing absently at a book, wishing I didn’t feel like a servant, wondering why I minded.
Then Vicky announced that tomorrow, if the weather was fine, Mr. Sinclair planned an expedition to Skara Brae, the Stone Age village. Nell and I were to go too, and he had asked me to make sure that she understood what she was seeing. I had been in the library only twice since his return. Now, while the guests were out, I searched the shelves and found an island history. As Mr. Johnson had told me on the ferry, the village had been buried for thousands of years, only re-emerging in 1850 when a great storm blew the sand away.
On Thursday the skies were clear and the temperature so warm that both Nell and I wore summer blouses. After chores and an hour of lessons, we helped Vicky carry the food out to the car. I sat in the back, making sure the baskets of provisions didn’t slide around. While she drove, Vicky reminisced about the time she had visited Skara Brae on a school trip with the history teacher.
“He kept calling it a village, so I expected a main street and houses, but there’s just six or seven wee dwellings, half underground, with pathways between them. I remember thinking it would be a cosy place to spend the winter if everyone you liked was nearby. A boy called Tom and I sneaked off to one of the houses and pretended we were making supper. The teacher gave us an awful scolding.”
“Why?” said Nell.
At Claypoole I had been surrounded by women who had no use for men, and I had assumed Vicky to be a member of that tribe. Now, as she winked at me in the rear-view mirror and explained the teacher’s reaction—we were there to study, not play—it occurred to me that she too would rather be beloved than regarded.
The other cars were already parked. While Nell scampered over to join her uncle and his friends, I helped Vicky spread the rugs on a grassy knoll beside the village and set up a folding table for the food. She had made quiches and salads, sliced a ham, baked bread, and brought homemade cheese and butter. When everything was laid out to her satisfaction she dispatched me to tell Mr. Sinclair. He was standing looking down into one of the houses, pointing out the details to Coco.
“Those slabs on either side of the door were the beds,” he said, “and the rectangle in the middle was the hearth. When I was a boy you could still find crofts on the island, with the fireplace in the centre of the room.”
“But the bed is so small,” Coco exclaimed. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt and a lavender-coloured skirt that fluttered around her bare legs. The heels of her white sandals kept sinking into the turf.
“People were smaller then, smaller even than Gemma. Picture