The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [93]
Something touched my forehead, fleetingly. Then he lay back down beside me.
In a minute or two I heard his breathing change. I do not know how long I lay there, thinking over what he had said, before I too drifted away. When I woke, a sheep was grazing nearby. Mr. Sinclair was still asleep. As I watched him, his eyelids twitched restlessly; perhaps he was dreaming of flying. I stood up and circled the lighthouse. A few yards ahead a lapwing, with its unmistakable little crest, ran across the grass, dragging its wing. It was too late for chicks, but I followed anyway and then, remembering that birds often feigned injury to lead predators away from their nests, walked in the opposite direction. I soon found a depression in the grass. The nearby eggshell was intact save for an opening the size of a match head; the chick must have extricated itself, like Houdini. One more for my collection with Nell.
“Gemma, Gemma.”
Cradling the eggshell in my palm, I hurried back around the lighthouse. Mr. Sinclair was on his feet, holding my jacket. “Why didn’t you wake me? We’ll be caught by the tide.”
Almost running, we headed over the grass towards the ruins. The egg slipped from my grasp. Soon we had a clear view of the causeway. At either shore it was still above water, but in the middle, for a distance of about fifty feet, it was already submerged. I stopped in dismay.
“We’ll be fine,” Mr. Sinclair said. “It can’t be more than knee-deep.”
“No. Let’s wait until the tide turns. We’ve got water, food, warm clothes. Please. We’ll go and see the puffins. It’ll only be a few hours.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and bent down so that his eyes were looking directly into mine. “Last time,” he said, “the water was much higher and I was only a boy and we made it safely across. Do you think I’d suggest we do this if there were any danger?”
I wanted to say that I loved the sea but that water had taken first my father, and then my uncle. They hadn’t been able to breathe water, and Miriam hadn’t been able to breathe air. That the young man in the library had warned me against causeways. That I had heard of people falling into the sea and dying instantly of shock, even in summer. I blurted out only this last.
“You won’t even get wet,” he said. “I’ll carry you.”
He reached out his hand. Slowly I took it, surrendering to his warm grasp. No longer running, we moved through the ruins hand in hand and climbed down over the rocks to the shore and the causeway. My heart began to thrum.
“Come on,” said Mr. Sinclair.
We reached the first lapping of water, and before I knew what was happening, he bent down and picked me up. I had no choice but to put my arms around his neck, and then, not wanting to see the rising tide, I buried my face against his chest. I could feel him walking slowly and steadily. Only once did the water splash my legs.
Then he was no longer walking. Were we sinking? Drowning? His arms tightened around me, I felt his breath in my hair and, at last, his face seeking mine.
chapter twenty-two
There was no bacon the next morning, nor anything else. The house had, once again, deflated. Even before Vicky spoke, I knew that Mr. Sinclair was gone. Soon after she and Nell returned from Kirkwall someone had telephoned, asking to speak to him, and later he had spent nearly an hour on the phone. “Heaven knows how much that cost,” she remarked. She had kept his supper in the oven, and when he came to retrieve it, he had said there was no help for it: he must leave on the morning plane.
“He said to tell Nell he’ll be back for the harvest,” she said.
Under cover of pouring cornflakes, I asked if she thought he really would return.
“Who knows?” She was making her list for the greengrocer’s van and I saw her write the word lard. “Last week he said he was daft to live in London but then he goes back and forgets all about us. Maybe things will be different now Nell is older.”
“Maybe,” I said, trying to match her casual tone. I ate enough not to draw her attention and then, not waiting for