The Story of Lucy Gault

2

The morning was fine, bright March sunshine warm on Lucy’s arms and face. The bank of the stream might have been grazed by sheep, the grass was so short, but no sheep ever came here. It was a mystery that this grass, green throughout the longest heatwave, its springiness a pleasure to walk on, never seemed to grow at all. Lucy lay on it, staring up at the sky, her shoes kicked off, the book she had been reading face down beside her. She wasn’t thinking about it, neither of its people nor its cathedral places, not of Mrs Proudie or Mr Harding or the sun on the bell-tower. ‘Will you write and tell me?’ she had asked, but realized now that she had asked too much: of course Ralph hadn’t written to say what the wife he had married was like. He’d forgotten or was embarrassed; not that it mattered, and perhaps it was as well. In her reverie Lucy saw a pretty, capable face, and sensed a manner that went with it. A window of the creeper-covered house by the sawmills opened and tendrils of the creeper were cut away: tidiness was a quality too. When the saws were silent, husband and wife walked in the balmy evening air, across the bridge by Logan’s Bar and Stores. ‘How peaceful it is here!’ Ralph’s happy wife remarked.

Lucy sat up and reached for the book beside her, its red cover marked where rain had fallen on it once. Aloysius Sullivan had bought three lots of books at an auction a year ago and had brought them to Lahardane, a present, since he knew that reading novels was so much her pleasure. Alfred M. Beale was inscribed on the fly-leaf in dark ink, and Lucy made herself wonder who that had been. Monkstown Lodge, Only Canon Crosbie of all the people she had ever known would have been alive in 1858; musing through names and faces, she could think of no one else. Affectionately, she remembered the old clergyman – how concerned for her he had been, and Ralph’s saying he had been approached by him in the churchyard and how he had spoken of her. Canon Crosbie had lived into his ninetieth year.

Mr Harding had never been so hard pressed in his life. Drawn back at last to her novel, she read and was absorbed, and did not for ten minutes wonder about Ralph, his marriage or his wife.

*

A car brought him, and on the way from the railway station he said nothing to the driver. He had asked to be driven to Kilauran and would walk the distance that remained: he wanted to do that. Twice the driver spoke during the forty minutes the journey took, and then was silent.

At Kilauran the Captain remembered easily. There was a woman who used to search for shellfish in the rock water below the pier, and he wondered if the woman he saw searching there now might be her daughter. It seemed likely that she was, for in the distance there was some resemblance, or so he imagined. On the sands the fishermen had almost every day looked for the green glass floats that had slipped their nets. No fisherman was there today.

He walked by the sea. The cliff face was familiar, the jagged edge at the top, the crevices in its clay; only the clumps of growth seemed different. The smooth, damp sand became powdery when he turned to make his way to the shingle. The easy way up the cliff was as it had been.

Once or twice he had thought the house would be burnt out, that the men would have come back and this time been successful, that only the walls would be there. When the Gouvernets left Aglish they sold the house to a farmer who wanted it for the lead on the roof, who took off the slates and gouged out the fireplaces, leaving what remained to the weather. lyre Manor had been burnt to its foundations and the Swifts had stayed at Lahardane while they thought about what to do. There’d been talk of the remains at Ringville becoming a seminary.

The Captain paused, remembering a procession through the fields he had reached, his father with the tea basket held formally in front of him, his mother with rugs and a tablecloth, his sister carrying all their bathing-dresses and wraps and towels, he and his brother trusted only with their wooden spades. Then Nellie came running after them, shrill in the sunshine, her apron and the skirts of her black dress flapping, the ribbons of her cap floating out behind her.

For a moment Everard Gault thought he was a child again. He thought he saw the sunlight glinting on a pane of a window, but he knew that could not be so, because the glass was behind timber boards. Walking on, he counted the cattle he had made over to Henry, twice as many now as he had left behind. One cow was curious, lumbering close to him, head stretched in his direction, sniffing. Lazily, the others followed, shuffling along. There was a crop of mangolds in the O’Reillys’ field beyond the pasture land.

Again, the sunlight glinted on glass. Walking on, he saw a curtain fluttering. ‘You left your parasol!’ Nellie had cried that day, waving it above her head. ‘You left your parasol, ma’am!’

He had read once, in the Corriere delia Sera, of a cattle disease in Ireland, and had worried at that threat to the herd. ‘We always have our little herd at Lahardane,’ his father had said, showing off the cows to someone who’d called in. Seen closer now, not a single window was boarded.

Lost in bewilderment, he passed through the white-painted metal gate in the railing that separated the fields from the gravel in front of the house. Again he stood still, his gaze held for a moment by the deep blue of the hydrangeas. Then slowly he walked towards the open hall door.

*

In the yard Henry lifted the churns off the trailer and rolled them over the cobbles. In the dairy he ran the water, filling each churn to its brim before he hung the hose on the hooks again. He could have done it in his sleep, he used to say to Lucy when she was a child, making her laugh when she imagined that. ‘Lucy, Lucy, give me your answer, do!’ he used to sing, making her laugh then too.

Bridget called him and he called back, saying he was in the dairy. She’d have known that, seeing the pick-up and the trailer not put away yet. He wondered why she didn’t know, why she just called out.

‘Leave off,’ she shouted and from her tone he knew that something was wrong. ‘Leave off and come in.’

The sheepdogs were settling down again at the foot of the pear tree, having been roused by the rattle of the churns. Another few weeks and the daily journey to the creamery wouldn’t be necessary; the milk lorry would come to the head of the avenue. Nearly a year back he had completed the platform that was necessary.

‘Henry! Will you come on in!’ Bridget shouted again, not appearing in the back doorway.

There was a man’s voice speaking when Henry reached the dog passage, but it was so low he couldn’t hear more than a mumble of words. ‘Glory be to God!’ Bridget was whispering when he walked into the kitchen. As red in the face as she used to go when she was a girl, she was sitting at the table. The tips of her fingers kept touching her lips, drawing away, then touching them again. ‘Glory be to God!’ she kept whispering.

Henry guessed before he recognized the man, and afterwards wondered why he hadn’t been at a loss for words, why he was able to say at once:

‘Have you told him?’

‘She told me, Henry,’ the Captain said.

He’d been there a while. There was tea poured out, Bridget’s not touched, the Captain’s finished. Henry went to the range for the teapot and poured the Captain another cup.

*

Lucy came back by the strand, walking close to the sea as her father had, coming from the other direction. Her footprints, though, remained, as his had not, for the tide was going out now. She turned towards the cliffs, carrying a shoe in either hand, dawdling on the damp sand. She sat down when it became dry and softer. The great family characteristic of the Stanhopes, she read, might probably be said to be heartlessness; but this want of feeling was, in most of them, accompanied by so great an amount of good nature as to make itself but little noticeable to the world.

She could not for a moment remember much about the Stanhopes and then remembered perfectly; as foolish to forget, she told herself, that Mr Harding was the Precentor or Mr Slope chaplain to Bishop Proudie. She read again, but no sense came from the sentences of one long paragraph. ‘How lucky I am!’ Ralph’s wife remarked as they turned back on their evening stroll.

*

In each upstairs room he entered the Captain went first to a window to look out. He saw his daughter in the pasture fields and in a moment of confusion thought she was his wife.

When she was in the hall and he looked down from the turn in the stairs, he could not prevent himself from imagining so again. In her walk she had a way of hesitating almost imperceptibly and he realized that she limped. She had her mother’s features.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, her voice her mother’s also.

Unsteady on the stairs, Everard Gault reached out a hand to the banister and slowly descended. What he had learnt in the kitchen – and, so soon afterwards, this encounter with his daughter – had weakened him.

‘Don’t you know me?’

‘No.’

‘Look at me, Lucy,’ the Captain said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.

‘What do you want? Why should I know you?’

They gazed at one another. Her cheeks had gone as white as the dress she wore and he knew that she recognized him then. She did not say anything and he stood still, not going closer to her.

*

When first she had heard the Captain walking about the house Bridget had crossed herself, seeking protection from the unknown. She had done so again in the dining-room when she saw a stranger standing by the sideboard. She had done so again in the kitchen, seeking guidance.

‘I doubted it was him at first,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to skin and bone, but it wasn’t that.’

‘Oh, it’s him all right.’

‘The poor man was shocked out of his wits when I told him.’

‘She’ll be, herself

‘What’ll happen, Henry?’

Henry shook his head. He listened while it was explained why it was that the Captain was alone.

*

He wanted to embrace his daughter, yet did not do so, sensing something in her that prevented him.

‘Why now?’ It was a whisper he heard, the words not meant for him. And then, as though regretting them, Lucy called him papa.