The Story of Lucy Gault

by William Trevor

  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.

  6

  In the town of Montemarmoreo, in via Cittadella, they had taken rooms above the premises of a shoemaker. ‘What shall we do today?’ the Captain would ask, always knowing what the response would be. Well, walk a little, Heloise would suggest, and they would walk in the hills where sour black cherries grew near marble quarries now exhausted. In fits and starts the conversation would drift about – never to Lahardane or to Ireland, but back to Heloise’s childhood, to memories of her father, and of her mother before she became a widow, to places and people of that safe time. The Captain encouraged with patient questions and patient listening; Heloise was talkative, for such recollections dispelled the nag of melancholy. Her beauty and Everard Gault’s straight back, his soldier’s stride, picked them out in Montemarmoreo, a couple who were mysterious at first and then not so at all.

  Another child, so long denied them, might one day be born in Italy: for his wife’s sake that was Captain Gault’s hope; for his sake, it was hers. But they were wary of expectation, drew back from it as they did from what must not be spoken of. Expert now at altering sentences already begun, or allowing them to wither or smiling them away, they gave themselves to the unfamiliarity of the place they had arrived in as invalids of distress, to its rocky hills and narrow streets, to a language they learnt as children do, to the simplicities of where they dwelt. In the ways they had devised they used the hours up, of one day and of another and another, until the moment came to open the first bottle of Amarone. They were a nuisance to no one in Montemarmoreo.

  7

  I respond regretfully, Aloysius Sullivan was informed from the southernmost part of Bengal, being greatly affected by what you report. Everard and I have corresponded but infrequently over the years. I last visited Lahardane a year or so after the birth of his daughter, when my brother had written to inform me of that fact. Ireland, in my own poor view, has always been the distressful country of its renown. That my brother and others have been obliged to leave it, as once the Wild Geese did, is the saddest news I have heard for many a long day. Should I hear from Everard, I will most certainly inform him of what has come about. But I believe it more likely that you, or those remaining at Lahardane, will hear sooner than I.

  The firm of Goodbody and Tallis, solicitors of Warminster, Wiltshire, requested Mr Sullivan to clarify his letter of the fourteenth inst. addressed to their client, now an invalid, the aunt of the aforesaid Heloise Gault referred to. Replying, Mr Sullivan revealed the circumstances in which two servants and a child found themselves, and explained how these circumstances had come about. The reply he received – from a Miss Chambré, companion to the lady who was an invalid – expressed horror, and distaste for what had occurred. There had been no recent communication from Heloise Gault, Miss Chambré stated, nor could any of what was presently communicated be retailed to her employer, whose delicate heart might easily not sustain the strain of learning of such appalling thoughtlessness in a child.

  Since my employer has never been offered the courtesy of acquaintanceship with this child, Miss Chambré continued, and has herself been long neglected by her niece – for many years receiving no more than a card at Christmas – I believe the withholding of this most shocking news from an invalid is doubly justified. I would suggest the child be placed in a home of correction until such time as the parents return from their travels. Not that they themselves, from what you have imparted, are without blame in this unfortunate matter.

  *

  The remaining boards had been taken down from the windows at Lahardane in order to dispel the gloom they induced and to bring air into the house again. Repeatedly, Mr Sullivan had tea in the drawing-room, repeatingly bringing with him no news. But only when that autumn had passed, and most of the winter that followed, while the nervous pause in Ireland’s troubles was constantly threatened, did he suggest that the future at Lahardane must be considered.

  ‘Respecting the law,’ he stated suddenly one afternoon, ‘I have no position in what should next be done, Bridget. My part was to end when you closed the house. “The acreage and the cattle should keep things going,” Captain Gault reiterated when last he came in to see me a day or two before their departure. Even in his great distress he did not forget that Henry and yourself should be decently provided for. But the sum he lodged with me – to cover the final expenses as regards the house – I have been obliged, with the change of circumstances, to make use of otherwise and have in fact exhausted it. So respecting the law, Bridget, that is the end of it. It is as your employers’ friend – and yours, I trust – that I may in future be of assistance. I am arranging, from my own resources, to meet the expenses of t
he child’s upkeep. On his return there is no doubt that Captain Gault will settle the debt.’

  ‘You’re good to think of us, sir.’

  ‘You manage, Bridget?’

  ‘Ah, we do, we do.’

  Mr Sullivan shook Bridget’s hand, something he had never done before and, in fact, never did again. He wouldn’t desert them, he promised. He would continue to visit the house until a day of great rejoicing made that no longer necessary. He was as certain as ever he had been, he vigorously reiterated, that such a day would come.

  In all this, Mr Sullivan did not touch upon his own frustrations: since he spoke no foreign languages, his enquiries in likely countries had had to be channelled through official sources in Dublin, but the confused political hiatus before, and following, an unsatisfactory Treaty made communication far from easy. A transference of power, of order and responsibility, took place at its own slow progression; chaos prevailed while it did so. Receiving no reply to his letters, Mr Sullivan had twice forwarded copies to offices that subsequently appeared to be unstaffed. And when, much later, he supposed it was understandable that a small local crisis should fail to be of import in the greater crisis of a country in upheaval, he blamed himself as much as the circumstances of which he was a victim; for the urgency he sought to convey in what he had written had clearly not registered. Nor did he trust the assurances he eventually received, but instead read into them an empty promise that was designed to soothe. Some garbled version of his pleas might one day be disseminated, stale by then and carelessly strung together, the poignancy of a family’s agony reduced to nothing much. He imagined such a document filed away, in irritation or bewilderment, by foreign officials who had better things to do.

  He would not cease to nag, but his helplessness, he knew, would continue to infect his solicitor’s authority. His shame in this respect drew him closer to what had happened, as guilt had drawn Bridget and Henry closer when they had suspected Lucy of bathing but hadn’t said.