Free The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey Page A

front row.
    â€œTurn to page twenty-seven of your English books.”
    I raised my hand again. “I don’t have a book.”
    â€œWhat a nuisance you are, working girl. Share with Balfour for this period. At break she’ll take you to fetch your books.”
    Reluctantly the girl at the next desk slid over. Mrs. Harris stood at the blackboard parsing sentences, asking questions round the room. At last her head swiveled towards me. “Give the rules for using a semicolon.”
    I knew a semicolon was a combination of a comma and a full stop, but I had no idea when to use one. “My old school hadn’t got to that yet,” I said.
    â€œFirst late, now a dunce.”
    â€œIt’s not my fault we did things differently.”
    Suddenly Mrs. Harris was standing over me. She bent down so that her large face was inches from mine. Except for a single crease beneath each small dark eye, her skin was very smooth. “What did I say?”
    â€œFirst late, now a dunce?”
    â€œNo.” Her eyes grew still smaller. “When you first arrived what did I tell you?”
    â€œYou’re not interested in excuses.”
    â€œExactly. No one cares about where you went to school before today. You must catch up as quickly as possible. You’re a working girl, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, Mrs. Harris.”
    Her chin sank into her gown and emerged again like that of a tortoise. “Girls, we’ve never had a working girl in Primary Seven before. We must do our best to educate her. Andrews, you know which card to get. Balfour, the rules for using a semicolon, please.”
    Balfour reeled them off, or so I gathered from Mrs. Harris’s approving nod. Standing once again at the front of the room, this time with the card DUNCE around my neck, I was too miserable to listen. Most of the girls—I counted fourteen—ignored me, but one girl in the third row gazed at me steadily. Her brown hair stuck out untidily beneath her Alice band and her velvety eyes reminded me of Celeste’s.
    Another bell rang, and Balfour led the way down the corridor at breakneck speed. Later I discovered she was a vigilante on the hockey pitch.
    â€œWhy is everyone’s hair the same?” I asked as I trotted behind her.
    â€œIt’s a school rule, ever since a girl set fire to her hair with a Bunsen burner.”
    â€œIs Balfour your Christian name?”
    â€œIdiot. Miss Bryant thinks that calling us by our surnames is better for discipline. Like in boys’ schools.”
    I could have happily spent the day in the book room, with its brimming shelves, but Balfour led me to the section marked PRIMARY 7 and started handing me books pell-mell: English, grammar, scripture, geography, history, arithmetic, nature, writing. Several of the books were tattered; one fell into two parts. As Balfour reached for another copy, the bell rang. “Hurry,” she said. “If we’re late Mrs. Harris will kill us.”
    We ran down the corridor, each clutching an armful of books and reached the classroom just as our teacher turned the corner. Everyone stood as she came into the room. The next subject was geography, and to my relief the topic was fiords, which I had studied last year, but the lesson had barely begun when there was a knock at the door and Ross appeared.
    A s I soon learned, working girls were the lowest form of life at Claypoole. We were constantly being taken out of lessons to prepare meals and then being punished for being late for class, or for not finishing our homework. Mrs. Harris seldom called on me and barely heard when I gave the correct answer. I knew the other working girls experienced the same treatment but, it seemed to me, with greater cause. Several of them could barely read the hymns we sang each morning in assembly.
    The regular fee-paying pupils were mostly from middle-class families; many had parents who worked abroad in Hong Kong or Nigeria or Kenya.