The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Author:Margot Livesey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2012-02-01T10:00:00+00:00

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 Nell, went out to the farmyard. How could he have left? I demanded as I fetched the bucket for gathering the eggs. How could he have left without a message? So much—I ignored two Plymouth Rocks clucking for food—for his hand holding mine, his lips finding mine. And now all Vicky could say was “who knows,” as if his return were a matter of no more importance than whether she should buy flour this week or next. I swiftly filled one bucket with eggs, then a second. The hens sensed my turmoil. Two of them pecked at me; several squawked.

I was still in a state of furious confusion when I reached the schoolroom. The sight of a single silver grey feather lying on the table stopped me. I picked it up, wonderingly; the barbs and barbules were perfectly aligned, as if the seagull had dropped it there five minutes before. Surely it was a message, but what did it mean—I have flown? I will return? My soul is here?

I was still holding it when Nell pranced in, wearing her new green pullover. “Pretty,” she said. “Where did you get it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the fairies brought it?”

“Can I keep it?”

“Let’s put it in our collection,” I said and placed it with the various shells and rocks we’d gathered on the mantelpiece. As we settled to copying sentences I found myself thinking again of all the stories about women turning into trees, gods into swans. Perhaps the Brough of Birsay had transformed Mr. Sinclair and me not into, say, a skua and a kittiwake, but into two people who could embrace each other. Now, back on the mainland, we had resumed our habitual forms: employer and au pair.

In the days that followed I kept diligently to my tasks and my teaching but the hours limped by, especially after Nell had gone to bed. I often stayed up late, reading in the library.

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