The Story of Lucy Gault

by William Trevor

  He tried to make sense of it, and when a kind of sense came he didn’t want to go closer. One of the sheepdogs whined and he told it to shut up. He didn’t want to lift the coat to look, but in the end he did.

  *

  In the yard one of the dogs gave a single bark, and Bridget knew that Henry had returned. That dog always barked once when it came back to the yard, a habit Henry was trying to break it of. At the range she pushed the saucepan of potatoes on to the heat and poured boiling water over the cabbage she had cut up. She laid out knives and forks on the table and then heard Henry’s footsteps in the passage. When she looked round from the range he was standing in the doorway. He had a bundle in his arms.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said, and he didn’t make any kind of reply, only came on into the kitchen.

  *

  All the way down through the woods he had hurried, anxious to relinquish the effort of understanding, on his own, what still didn’t make sense enough. Surely the stillness in what he carried was the stillness of the dead? Again and again he laid it down to see, and even reached out to close the eyes that stared at him, for how in that dank place after so long could there still be life?

  In the kitchen the smell of bacon boiling crept through his confusion, as reality settles the fragments of a dream. The clock ticked brightly on the dresser, steam rattled a saucepan lid.

  ‘Mother of God!’ Bridget cried. ‘Oh, Mother of God!’

  *

  The child’s lips were stained with blackberry juice. There was a sick look about her, her cheeks fallen in, dark hollows beneath her eyes, her hair as ragged as a tinker’s. In Henry’s arms she was covered with an old coat of her mother’s. Filthy it was.

  Henry spoke at last. He said he’d gone for the stones to Paddy Lindon’s cottage. As often it was, his face was empty of expression even while he spoke. ‘More happens in a ham’ Bridget’s father had once said about Henry’s face.

  ‘Sweet Mother!’ Bridget whispered, crossing herself. ‘Sweet Lady of Mercy!’

  Henry slowly made his way to a chair. The child was starved, so weak you’d say she couldn’t live: unspoken, these comments tumbled about in Bridget’s thoughts, as earlier they had in Henry’s, bringing with them the same confusion. How could she have come in from the sea? How could she be here at all? Bridget sat down, to steady the weakness in her knees. She tried to count the days, but they kept slipping about. Ages it felt like since the night on the strand, ages before the Gaults had gone.

  ‘There’s food she took from the house,’ Henry said. ‘Sugar sandwiches she maybe lived on. And thank God for it, there’s water in that place.’

  ‘She was never in the woods, Henry?’

  Every morning Bridget carried her rosary from the gate-lodge to the kitchen and placed it on the shelf above the range. She pushed herself up from the table to find it now, gathering it between her fingers, not telling the beads but finding solace in their touch.

  ‘She ran off,’ Henry said.

  ‘Oh, child, child …’

  ‘She’s frightened by what she done.’

  ‘Why d’you do a thing like that, Lucy?’

  Her own voice sounded foolish, Bridget thought, and hearing it she experienced the guilt of foolishness. Wasn’t she to blame for not mentioning the bathing? Wasn’t the child forever playing her games in the glen and above it in the woods – why wouldn’t she have reminded them of that? Why wouldn’t she have said it was all fancy, what the fishermen believed?

  ‘What possessed you, Lucy?’

  One of her ankles was in a bad way, Henry said. When they came into the yard she’d wanted to be on her feet but he hadn’t let her down. You wouldn’t know when it was the ankle got like it was. It was maybe smashed up, you couldn’t tell. He said he’d go over for Dr Carney.

  ‘Will I carry her above first?’

  He wouldn’t say more, Bridget said to herself, until the bedraggled child was upstairs. Nothing would be passed on before that and then he’d say how he happened on her, what she’d said to him if she’d said anything at all. The child was so silent now she might never open her mouth again.

  ‘Wait till I fill a couple of jars for the bed.’

  Bridget returned her rosary to the mantel-shelf and pulled the kettle that had boiled back on to the heat of the range. The water steamed and spluttered almost at once. The Captain, the mistress, Henry going up and down the strand, poking at the shingle: the Devil’s fools, as she’d been herself, making everything worse. In a glare of light, Bridget saw them now, absurdly there.

  ‘Are you hungry, Lucy? Are you starved?’

  Lucy shook her head. Henry had sat down too, his brown hat cocked forward a bit, as if it had been knocked on the way through the woods and he hadn’t remembered to set it right when he put his burden down on the chair.

  ‘The dear help her,’ Bridget whispered, and felt tears warm on her cheeks before she knew she was crying, before she knew that foolishness was neither here nor there. ‘Thanks be to God,’ she whispered, her arms suddenly around Lucy’s thin shoulders. ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘You’re all right now, Lucy,’ Henry said.

  Bridget filled two hot-water jars. There was a kind of exhaustion in the child’s eyes. An agony it seemed like, dully there.

  ‘Are you sick, Lucy? Is there pain in your leg?’

  The eyes registered for an instant what might have been a denial, but still there was no response, nothing said, no movement. Henry got to his feet, to take the unresisting body into his arms again. Upstairs, while Bridget held the two lamps she’d lit, he laid it down on the bed from which the sheets and blankets had been taken away a week ago.

  ‘Wait there till you’ll see Dr Carney himself,’ Bridget instructed. ‘Get him back here quickly. Take the trap, don’t walk. I’ll manage now.’

  She rummaged through the bedclothes she had folded away in the landing hot-press and found a nightdress.

  ‘What we’ll have is a bath,’ she said when she had made the bed as best she could without disturbing the limp form that lay there. But the bath would have to wait until the doctor had been, and she ran hot water into a basin in the bathroom and carried it back. She could hear a clattering outside and guessed that Henry had put a ladder up and was removing the window boards from Lucy’s bedroom before he went for Dr Carney. You’d think he’d know better than to waste time over that. Her crossness came as a relief.

  ‘Would I boil you an egg when we have you washed? Egg in a cup, Lucy?’

  Again Lucy shook her head. The ankle could have a bone broken the way it looked, black more than blue, swollen up like a big ball. The whole leg had gone useless, trailing like something dead.

  ‘Wait till I take your temperature,’ Bridget said. There was a thermometer somewhere, but she couldn’t think where and wondered if, anyway, it had gone from the house. They’d have to leave it to Dr Carney. ‘We’ll get you nice and clean for him.’

  The child was dirty all over, her feet, her hands, her hair tangled, scratches on her arms and face. Her ribs stood out, the flesh of her stomach loose beneath them. A boiled egg mashed up with toast in a cup was what she always loved. ‘Maybe the appetite’ll come back when Dr Carney’s been.’

  The water in the basin went grey at once. Bridget poured it away in the bathroom and filled the basin again. What had he meant, sugar sandwiches? That cottage had fallen down. Had the child been in it ever since? Was it some childish thing, wanting to stay there for ever because she didn’t want to go away? Was it only that that had caused this terrible commotion, and grief like you wouldn’t witness in a lifetime? She should have told him to send a wire to the address they’d left. Then again he’d have to call in at the gate-lodge for the bit of paper and she hoped he wouldn’t think of it himself, because of the delay.

  ‘Mama and Papa have gone away,’ Bridget said. ‘But they’ll comeback now.’

  She put one jar halfway down to warm the cold sheets, the other at the bottom. She
undid the window catch and pulled the top window down a little. Henry had wrenched off several of the boards, but some remained.

  ‘Dr Carney won’t be long,’ she said, not knowing what else to say.

  *

  ‘Sure, it’s all there.’ In the hall Henry gestured with his head, vaguely indicating the bedroom he had taken the window boards from. ‘There’s nothing else only what she’ll tell you.’

  ‘Nothing else? And she after walking back from the dead!’

  She couldn’t have walked an inch, Henry said. She’d have walked too much as it was, getting to where he found her. He wouldn’t have found her at all if he hadn’t been thinking to fix the place where the sheep were getting in again.

  ‘What’s that about sugar sandwiches?’

  There were pats of butter in a bit of newspaper, and grains of sugar left. There were apples she’d have taken off the trees, not ripe yet but she’d eaten them, because the cores were thrown down. She’d managed rightly, Henry said.

  ‘Is the child away in the head, Henry?’

  ‘Arrah, not at all.’

  ‘Did she know what she was doing when she went off?’

  ‘She did of course.’

  ‘We need get word to Mr Sullivan. And word sent to England.’

  ‘I was thinking that.’

  The doctor diagnosed a broken bone that would have to be investigated further, and damage to the surrounding ligaments, internal bleeding, fever, a high temperature, lack of nourishment. He advocated beef-tea or hot milk, no more than a slice of thin toast to begin with. Henry returned with him to Kilauran, to send the necessary telegram. In the kitchen Bridget toasted a single slice of bread at the bars of the range.

  They’d have to sleep in the house tonight. Henry reached that conclusion on the way back to Lahardane; it occurred to Bridget while she carried the tray upstairs. They couldn’t leave the child on her own, not the way things were, never mind another attempt to set the place on fire. Until whatever arrangements could be made, until the Captain and Mrs Gault returned, they’d have to be there.

  ‘What did you say in the wire?’ Bridget enquired when Henry returned.

  Lucy found alive in the woods, the message had gone to England.

  4

  They stayed in Basel, calculating there the kind of life Heloise’s legacy would support. There was some anxiety at first in case she had been more optimistic than the facts allowed when she’d anticipated there would be money enough; in fact there was. The Captain’s only assets, being the house and land they had left behind, would remain untouched unless some unforeseen circumstance dictated otherwise. Employment in a shipping office or something similar would not be easy to find abroad; fortunately it would not be necessary.

  It was while discussing all this that the Captain realized they now saw the future differently, that although they shared so much in what had befallen them they were less at one than they’d seemed to be when he had called it that. In the brief time that had elapsed since their departure he had begun to sense that he’d been wrong to imagine he would not ever wish to return to the house they had abandoned. But he sensed as well that Heloise’s contrary feelings had strengthened with every mile they had covered. Exile was what she longed for, where all her faith was, and her hope. He did not intend to cajole her out of that; looking after her was more his task. She was still a shadow of the woman she had not long ago been.

  They moved on when the business they had chosen to do in Basel was complete. ‘They went south, to Lugano, and stayed for a few days by its peaceful lake. On a cloudless autumn afternoon they crossed the border to Italy and then, again, went slowly on.

  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?’