The Story of Lucy Gault

5

‘A ruin?’ Aloysius Sullivan said. ‘A ruin?’

Bridget explained. She mentioned what was taken away in the fish-baskets, and the unripe apples. Mr Sullivan briefly closed his eyes.

‘She was cross, the way things were. She had it in mind to run off so’s they’d maybe take notice of her.’ And Bridget told what she had further conjectured, and the few facts she had learnt – about the spiky branches that were a hindrance in the gloom of the woods, the added burden of the coat brought for warmth when night would come, the fallen branches stumbled over. ‘She had blood oozing out from the scratches on her face. She could taste it and it frightened her. Poor scrap, she dragged herself on with everything she was carrying until by chance she came to Paddy Lindon’s place for shelter. In the daylight again she tried to come back to the house here but the way the foot had swollen up she couldn’t get more than a few steps. She was afraid for it when she went out after the berries. She was afraid again when the food ran down. Someone’d come was what she always thought. When no one did, what she thought was she’d die.’

Aloysius Sullivan wasn’t impressed. ‘The garment found on the strand was placed there in order to mislead? An act of guile, of calculated deception, we have to say?’

‘Ah no, Mr Sullivan, no.’

‘What then? Some pleasantry?’

Bridget had not been told – and never was – about the part played by the dog, and suggested that what had been found in the shingle had been left behind by mistake.

‘What it is, sir, we were misled when it never entered our heads she’d run off. Not mine nor Henry’s, nor the master’s nor the mistress’s, sir.’

‘I didn’t imagine it would have,’ the solicitor drily responded.

They were in the drawing-room, the furniture still covered. Two lamps were burning. In the house the window boards were still mostly in place.

‘It was the feeling there was with us, sir – that a thing happened the way it looked like it did, the way what was found –’

‘I understand, Bridget, I understand.’

‘What sense would it make to us, sir, that she’d set off for Dungarvan and night coming down, that she’d gone up through the woods to get on to the road and it miles off? It wouldn’t have made sense, sir, any more than it does to herself now.’

‘I am thankful to say, Bridget, I am not familiar with the sense or otherwise of the very young, although I grant you that in my daily work I frequently encounter limitations of sense in the mature. Where is the child now?’

‘In the yard. With Henry.’

‘And her condition?’

‘Still quiet, sir.’ Bridget lifted a sheet from one of the armchairs. ‘Sit down, sir.’

Aloysius Sullivan was a big man, and welcomed the offer. The calves of his legs were aching, even though he had driven to Lahardane in his car. Some instinct told him that the aching was caused by the weight of responsibility that these new circumstances unfairly placed upon him. Ever since he had received Everard Gault’s few lines from France he had been aware of nervousness of one kind or another in his body, manifesting itself in the form of a rash beneath his collar, and now making its presence felt as an ache in his calves. When, a week ago, he had learnt that the assumptions made as to the child’s fate were incorrect, he had experienced the onset of a neuralgic affliction that had been quiet for years.

‘My mother used to say, Bridget, you could find the Devil in a child.’

‘Ah no, sir, no. She was upset in herself by what was happening. Like all of us was, sir. There was never ease in this house after the men came to murder us in our beds. If there’s blame to be given out, sir, we can look for it there.’

The solicitor sighed. He understood, he said, but all the same he had to remember what Everard Gault had himself passed on: how he and his wife had gone down to the strand time and time again, how they had suffered the torments of hell by day and by night, and now, apparently, were travelling purposelessly. While all the time their wayward child had been feeding herself on sugar sandwiches.

‘Sit down yourself, Bridget,’ he said.

But Bridget did not sit down. She had never sat down in this room and even allowing for what had happened she could not do so now. It had put the heart across her, she said, when Henry walked in with the child in his arms. It was a terrible thing that had happened, a terrible thing the child had done: she wouldn’t deny it for a minute. She’d never seen the like of the poor creature when Henry brought her in, death’s door you’d have said.

‘Would we send another wire, sir, in case that one would have gone astray?’

‘It didn’t go astray, Bridget.’

Bridget heard about the letter that had come from France. It was not her place to frown but she failed to resist the impulse; and as if he recognized that she needed a moment to herself, Mr Sullivan paused. When he continued he explained that in the communication he had received there was a reference to the furniture and belongings that were still at Lahardane. His assumption had been that removal vans would eventually arrive for them. In the letter it was stated that what had been left behind was to remain where it was.

‘Your wire was received, Bridget, at the address you sent it to. Captain Gault’s wire of cancellation was received there. I’ve naturally been in touch. Sooner or later, of course, we’ll have news of Captain and Mrs Gault’s settled whereabouts. It is unfortunate that we are without it at the moment.’

Lending emphasis to the inconvenience of this predicament, Mr Sullivan’s oiled head moved slowly from side to side, his slate-coloured eyes morose. His sigh, coming next, was a long intake of breath, held for a moment and then exhaled.

‘They said nothing to you before they left, I suppose, about the possibility of a change of heart? About what they intended?’

Anxiety flickered through Bridget’s features with even less consideration for her wishes than the frown of a moment ago. Had something been mentioned? Had she not listened properly in the upset that was all around them? She thought for a moment longer, then shook her head.

‘They only left the address, sir.’

Mr Sullivan’s two plump hands lay lightly on the blue pin-striping that stretched over his knees. ‘Would there be papers here we could look through, Bridget? In case there’s anything that’s a help to us?’

Bridget lifted off further dust sheets. But in the writing-desk drawers, and in the drawers of the sideboard in the dining-room, there was nothing that was relevant to the difficulty that confronted them. Nor was there anything in the dressing-table drawers when they carried the lamps upstairs.

‘There’s nothing only receipts here,’ Bridget reported when she searched the shelves of a corner cupboard on the first-floor landing while Mr Sullivan held the lamp. Elsewhere, among other correspondence, there was a single picture postcard from the Captain’s brother, with a regimental address in India and dated nearly three years ago. More recently, a note of querulous recrimination was struck in the few letters that were from Heloise Gault’s aunt in Wiltshire.

‘The arrangements the Captain left behind as regards the house and yourselves haven’t been disturbed,’ Mr Sullivan said. ‘What has happened makes no difference to that.’

Expenses in the future had been provided for, emergencies anticipated. The Gaults had been meticulous, even if their departure had been more ragged than it might have been. His hope, the solicitor confessed, had been the house – some hint somewhere in it of the change that had later been effected in their plans.

‘I’ve asked round about,’ he said when they returned to the drawing-room. ‘I’ve asked everyone I could think of. I thought word might have reached the Mount Bellew cousins but it seems they, too, left Ireland a while back. Were they much in touch, do you know?’

Bridget didn’t. Once they’d been, she remembered, but she hadn’t heard them mentioned since they’d gone to England. No letters from them were discovered when the downstairs drawers were searched again; but the Mount Bellew cousins were there in a photograph album, picnicking on the grass at Lahardane ten years ago.

‘If I’m not wrong about it, one of those boys went down at Passchendaele,’ the solicitor recalled. ‘The same regiment as the Captain’s.’

‘I didn’t ever hear that.’

‘You’re worried, Bridget. It’s a shock, what I’ve brought you. But contact will be made, there’s no doubt about that. We have the regiment in India in case the Captain gets in touch with his brother and if it’s no longer in the same place any communication from me would be forwarded. The army takes a pride in that type of thing.’

‘It’s only the child, sir.’

‘Dr Carney’s account will be sent to me, Bridget. We’ve spoken about that.’ Mr Sullivan paused. ‘Would it be too much to ask you to continue for a while with things as they are now? For the time being, Bridget?’

‘With things as they are, sir?’

‘Only for the time being.’

‘Is it Henry and myself staying on in the rooms above? You’re saying that, sir?’

‘I’m saying that as matters stand, now that she’s back here, it might be better to let the child stop in the house. If you wouldn’t mind, on balance I’d say it would be better than taking her up to the gate-lodge.’

With no prediction of how long the time being he had spoken of would last, Mr Sullivan conjectured that moving out of the house and passing so often its boarded windows and locked doors would be more upsetting for the child who’d caused all the trouble than remaining in her familiar surroundings. He was aware of his own presumption that the men who had once come in the night would have by now lost interest in what they had intended. He drew attention to this in case he was imposing a degree of disquiet without wishing to.

‘They’ll leave us in peace is what Henry says, sir, on account of they’ve driven the master and mistress out. There’s enough in that, Henry says.’

Mr Sullivan agreed, but did not comment. Henry had heard something, he deduced; and if he hadn’t, his instinct could be trusted. Despite the wounding of the youth, the trail of events since the night of the incident might indeed be regarded as vengeance enough.

‘We have the gate-lodge locked up at the minute, sir. We’ll leave it till they come back so.’

‘And what does our friend make of that particular eventuality?’

‘Which friend’s that, Mr Sullivan?’

‘I mean the child. How does she view the return of her father and her mother? And will she go quietly with them this time?’

‘Mightn’t they decide to stop on though, once they’re back? The way she was so upset in herself, mightn’t they?’

‘It would be my hope too, Bridget.’

‘Isn’t the fighting done with by what you’d hear?’

‘We can have hope in that direction also. At least we can have hope.’ Mr Sullivan stood up. ‘I should see the child.’

‘You’ll notice she’s docile, sir.’

Mr Sullivan sighed, keeping to himself the observation that in the circumstances docility was not out of place.

‘There’s a thing you mightn’t know, sir. The way the bone came together while she lay there it will leave her with the limp she has.’

‘I do know, Bridget. Dr Carney came in to break that to me.’

He rose as he spoke, and made his way through the darkened house to the yard. The child they’d spoken of was sitting on the step of an outhouse that over the years had become Henry’s own. Across the yard, beneath the pear tree on the wall, two young sheepdogs were stretched out in the sun. They raised their heads when the solicitor appeared, their hackles stiffening. One growled, but neither moved. They settled down again, with their noses flat on the cobbles.

Through the open doorway of Henry’s workshed Mr Sullivan could see a bench with vices, beneath rows of carpenter’s tools – hammers, chisels, planes, mallet, spokeshave, pliers, spirit-levels, screwdrivers, wrenches. Two tea-chests were crammed with short pieces of timber of different widths and lengths. Saws and coils of wire, a much-used ball of string, and a sickle, hung on hooks.

Seated on the step beside the child, Henry was painting a wooden aeroplane white. About a foot in length, with a double set of wings but no propeller yet, it was balanced on a jampot. Matchsticks joined the wings, their positioning and angles copied from a torn-out newspaper photograph that was on the step also.

‘Lucy,’ Mr Sullivan said.

She did not respond. Henry did not say anything either. The paintbrush – too big and too unwieldy for the task – continued to cover the rough wood with what seemed to the solicitor to be whitewash.

‘Well now, Lucy,’ he said.

‘That’s a great day, Mr Sullivan,’ Henry remarked when there was still no reply.

‘It is, Henry. It is. Now, Lucy, I want to ask you a question or two.’

Had she ever heard her parents speak of travels they would like to go on? Had she heard them talking about cities they would like to visit? Was there a particular country they spoke of?

In mute denial, the child shook her head, acknowledging each question with a motion a little more vehement than the last, her fair hair thrown about. The features Mr Sullivan looked down on were almost her mother’s, the eyes, the nose, the firm outline of the lips. One day there would be beauty there too; and he wondered if that, at last, would be a compensation for time as it was passing now.

‘You’ll tell Bridget or Henry if anything comes back to you, Lucy? You’ll do that for me?’

There was a plea in his voice that he knew was not related to the request he made but begged the child to smile as he remembered her smiling in the past. ‘Oh, Lucy, Lucy,’ he murmured on his way back to the drawing-room.

Tea was laid out for him, the lamps still burning. He drank two cups and spread honey on a scone. His reflections were painful. Now that he was in the house, the calamity that had brought him here seemed even more extraordinary in the manner of its occurrence than when he had learnt that the child was alive. What fluke had caused Everard Gault not to walk by a scrap of clothing hardly visible on the strand? What perversity had been at play when no one had thought of a friendly upstairs maid with whom a distraught child might find a haven?

No answers came. Standing up, Aloysius Sullivan wiped a smear of butter from his lips with the napkin that had been brought to him with his tea. He shook the crumbs from his knees and straightened his waistcoat. In the hall he called for Bridget and when she came they walked together to his car.

‘You’ll bring them back, sir?’

The engine was cranked, and spluttered into life. Yes, he would bring them back, Mr Sullivan promised with as much assurance as he could muster. He would leave no stone unturned. It would be all right.

Bridget watched the car disappear on the avenue, the smoke of its exhaust lingering a little longer. She prayed that the solicitor would be successful, and in the kitchen she did so again, pleading only for that favour, since nothing else mattered.

*

‘The paint’ll be dry tomorrow,’ Henry said. ‘We’ll leave it out, will we?’

‘He doesn’t like me.’

‘Arrah, of course he does. Sure, everyone likes you, why wouldn’t they?’

He propped the aeroplane up on the step, using bits of wood left over from its construction. He said not to touch the paint until the morning.

‘Of course he likes you,’ he said again.

*

Aloysius Sullivan made enquiries all over again in Enniseala and Kilauran. He wrote to the known friends of Captain Gault, and to those English friends of his wife with whom she appeared to be in touch. He established the whereabouts, in England, of the Mount Bellew Gaults, and of distant Gault relatives in County Roscommon. No suggestion as to a place of exile rewarded his efforts – only surprise and concern that his enquiries should be necessary. The letter he had himself received from Everard Gault had been sent from the French town of Belfort, its brief contents beneath the address of the Hôtel du Parc, boulevard Louis XI. From the hotel’s proprietor Aloysius Sullivan received, after a delay, information to the effect that the guests about whom the enquiry was made had stayed for a single night in Chambre Trois. Their destination after Belfort was not known.

The manager of Heloise Gault’s bank, in Warminster, Wiltshire, was at first reluctant to release details of certain instructions he had received, but in the end disclosed that Mrs Gault had written to him from Switzerland to close her account. The balance of its funds had been forwarded to a bank in Basel, and he had reason to believe that her Rio Verde Railway holdings had been disposed of there. This particular trail ending with that, Mr Sullivan wrote to a firm of investigators, Messrs Timms and Wheldon of High Holborn, London.

It may be that my clients have taken up residence in that city, or that some indication of their present whereabouts may be discovered there.

Please forward to me an estimated total of your fees should I agree to retain your services in this regard.

Eventually, a Mr Blenkin of Timms and Wheldon was dispatched to Switzerland. He remained for four days in Basel, establishing nothing of greater value than confirmation of the shares’ sale. No new investments had immediately been made; his quarries’ stay in the city had been short, at a small hotel in Schützengraben; their present whereabouts were unknown. Pursuing an idea of his own, Mr Blenkin set off for Germany and spent a fruitless week in Hanover and other cities, after which he made enquiries in Austria, Luxembourg and Provence. Then, in response to his telegraphing for further instructions, and following consultation between Messrs Timms and Wheldon and Mr Sullivan, Mr Blenkin was recalled to High Holborn.