The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [88]
“And what about Gemma?” said Nell, tugging playfully at the ravelled edge of my pullover. “She needs clothes too.”
It was true—our expeditions and games had taken their toll—but I blushed to hear her draw attention to my shabby wardrobe. Happily Mr. Sinclair seemed not to notice; he and I, he explained, were going to plan her studies for the autumn. This seemed to satisfy Nell, but I could not help suspecting that something less pleasant was afoot. As I went to feed the hens and calves, a flock of speculations assailed me: Did he need to sell the house? Had he decided to send Nell to school? Was he going to hire a new au pair? The three-months trial had come and gone, unacknowledged, with no talk about the subsequent terms of my employment.
Back at the house I retreated to the schoolroom. Disconsolately I laid out books and began to make a list. Until I heard otherwise I would go through the motions. We needed a new copying book, and a geography book, and surely there must be a collection of poems and stories for a girl Nell’s age, though what did any of it matter if I was being sent away? I was listlessly turning the pages of the arithmetic book—if Janet has two apples and Richard has three—when there was a knock at the door.
“Very diligent.” He hadn’t visited the schoolroom since the day I was stung. Now he glanced around the room, taking in Nell’s drawings. “She has a good eye,” he remarked, studying her picture of Petula and Herman. “I need you to advise me about lunch.”
“Lunch for whom?” I said, closing the book.
“You and me. We’re going on an outing.”
I did not give him the satisfaction of asking where.
In the kitchen, while he made ham and cheese sandwiches, I gathered apples and chocolate biscuits and a bottle of lemonade. Twenty minutes later we were in his car, driving along the track. As we drew up to the gate I readied myself to climb out, but Mr. Sinclair was already walking towards it. What time had he returned last night? I wondered. If I had kept my vigil a little longer would we have met?
“I can close it,” I said when he returned.
“Indeed you can,” he said, driving through the gate, and nimbly climbing out again.
When we were once more bumping along, I said I wanted to ask about piano lessons for Nell. “She keeps trying to play. I’m sure she’d study hard.”
“Maybe I should sell that piano. Look, there’s Seamus’s bull.”
Black and massive, the bull was standing beside the gate of a field. As we slowed down, he raised his head and gave a sonorous bellow.
“He’s calling to his concubines,” said Mr. Sinclair. “What I don’t understand is why he doesn’t just charge the gate and hunt them down. You only have to look at him to know he easily could.”
“He’s domesticated,” I said. “He’s been taught not to charge gates.”
“Is that what domesticated means? Knowing what you should and shouldn’t do?”
“Not just knowing. Doing it. See, even the goldfinch isn’t afraid of him.” I pointed to the bird perched on the wall not far from the gate.
The bull let loose another bellow. Something about the mixture of desire and helplessness made me uneasy, and I was glad when Mr. Sinclair put the car in gear and drove on. As the bellowing faded he asked how I knew so much about birds.
“My uncle. He loved Roman remains and bird-watching.”
“Digging and flying. And whereabouts did he do these things?”
Question by question he whittled away my determination not to talk about the past. I told him about my parents and Iceland, my uncle’s untimely death, my aunt and Claypoole. He asked if I remembered my parents, and I said no but that I thought about my uncle almost every day.
“So,” he declared, “you’re an orphan twice over. Like Nell.”
“Yes,” I said. “What happened to her mother?”
“I’m still not sure I know.” His knuckles