The Story of Lucy Gault

by William Trevor

  ‘She wants to give him tea,’ Bridget said a few minutes later in the outhouse where Henry did his carpentry, coming there to ask him to set up the trellis table on the grass of the hydrangea lawn. A flush had come into Bridget’s cheeks, and Henry remembered that, too, from the past – excitement engendered by what Bridget called ‘society’.

  He brushed grime and cobwebs from the slats of the table, then wiped them with a rag. On the lawn he brushed the seats of two of the white iron chairs that broke at intervals the curve of the wall over which the deep blue hydrangea blooms fell. The rust on the ironwork needed to be attended to, the chairs themselves repainted. One of these days he would do it, Henry resolved, knowing he wouldn’t.

  *

  ‘It didn’t look like an avenue,’ Ralph said. ‘The gate-lodge was closed up.’

  He hadn’t noticed the faded green entrance gates, obscured by nettles and dying cow parsley. He’d driven beneath a canopy of leaves and suddenly the big stone house was there.

  ‘That’s Lahardane you visited,’ Mrs Ryall said. ‘And that was Lucy Gault.’

  The girl who’d come out of the house hadn’t said her name. The woman who spread a tablecloth on the slatted table had arranged cups and saucers on it in silence, milk jug and teapot, brown bread and butter and a honeycomb. Her big wooden tray had a raised rim running round it and white porcelain handles. When the tea had been poured the woman came back to see if everything was all right, and returned again, with soda bread that had sultanas in it.

  ‘IF 19 went well for you?’ Mr Ryall enquired, and Ralph said the car he had been lent that afternoon had given no trouble. ‘It was very kind of you,’ he repeated, having shown his gratitude in this way already.

  ‘You need a holiday from the boys.’

  Mr Ryall had advertised for someone to tutor his two sons during the summer months, since according to their preparatory-school reports they were backward in all subjects. So Ralph, at a loose end that summer, not yet settled in what he intended to do with his life, had come to the house above the offices of the Bank of Ireland, Mr Ryall being the bank’s agent in Enniseala.

  He was a small, tidily moustached man, his wife a contrast in almost every way. Carelessly running to fat, Mrs Ryall was indulgent of herself and uncritical of other people, the generosity of her disposition reflected in her plumpness and her manner. That her boys were indolent failed to worry her. Worrying was her husband’s department, she had a way of saying, vaguely implying that worrying was an enjoyment for him.

  It was half past nine, dusk gathering in the Ryalls’ well-furnished dining-room. A vast sideboard repeated the tortured curlicues of an equally grandiose tallboy. A set of dining-chairs matched the rosy Rexine finish of sofa and armchairs. Flowered wallpaper echoed damask curtains that did not draw across, drapes of net being permanently in place against the glass. Blue tasselled blinds obscured in daytime the windows’ upper panes.

  A late sustenance was laid out on a great mahogany table, for no matter what the hour Mrs Ryall wished no one to be hungry. Beneath an unlit oil lamp on a pulley, cream crackers and Galtee cheese, cake and brandy-snaps were on offer. An hour ago the boys had been packed off to bed, the dregs of their cocoa cold now in the cups that remained on the table.

  ‘I imagine you weren’t told,’ Mrs Ryall said, ‘what happened at Lahardane.’

  Fair-haired, blue-eyed, an angular quality in features that were handsome in their way, Ralph listened while the Ryalls told the story between them, Mr Ryall factual and precise, his wife supplying emotional overtones.

  ‘You’ll find it talked about in the town,’ Mr Ryall added when there was a pause in the recounting of events.

  Spreading a cream cracker, his wife confirmed that. ‘I have heard she grew up pretty,’ she said.

  When Lucy Gault smiled, a dimple came and made the smile seem mischievous. There were freckles on the bridge of her nose, her eyes were a faded azure, her hair as pale as wheat. Driving back in his employers’ motor car, Ralph had been accompanied by all that, and the image was vivid again while he listened to the continuing story.

  ‘I was approached,’ Mr Ryall said, ‘when Captain Gault and Mrs Gault could not be traced. There’d been a hope that he might be in touch, but there was no reason why he should be and of course he wasn’t. It is the saddest thing.’

  Mr Ryall lowered the lamp and took off its glass globe to light the wick. Mrs Ryall swept particles of cream cracker from her bosom and left the table to pull down the blinds.

  ‘Would you say she’s pretty?’ she enquired. ‘Or perhaps she’s beautiful? Would you say Lucy Gault’s beautiful, Ralph?’

  Ralph said he thought she was.

  *

  Lucy Gault was beautiful all that summer. She was beautiful in her plain white dress, the sunlight catching the dots of silver in the stoneless earrings she wore. They would have been her mother’s, Mrs Ryall said, probably the dress too; all left behind in a departure that had been hasty in the end.

  Beneath the wide spread of a beech tree in the garden, while his pupils managed not to listen to what Ralph tried to teach them, the girl who had come out of the house he hadn’t thought was there haunted every morning and every sleepy afternoon. Vaguely aware of Kildare’s muttered conjugations and pretending he had not noticed that Jack was drawing animals on the inside cover of his exercise book, Ralph sometimes did not trust himself to speak in case, by foolish chance, he described the solemn stare that often came before Lucy Gault’s smile, and the way she had of sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, as still as marble. In his shy recall she poured their tea and said that visitors did not often come by mistake.

  ‘There is a river, the Arar, which flows through the territories of the Aedui and the Sequani into the Rhone,’ Ralph slowly repeated in the garden of the bank. ‘Est flumen, Kildare: there is a river. Quod influit per fines: which flows through the territories. You understand, Kildare?’

  The translation came from Dr Giles’s Keys to the Classics, which Ralph had perused as he lay in bed in the early morning.

  ‘Aeduorum et Sequanorum is the Aedui and Sequani bit. You understand, Kildare?’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘Well, see if you can work out incredibili lenitate, ita ut non possit judicari oculis in utram partem fluat.’

  Jack had transformed an isosceles triangle into a tarantula. Ralph drew another triangle, marking its angles A, B and C. Both boys wore floppy white hats because the sun this morning was strong.

  ‘Now, Jack,’ Ralph said.

  Every Wednesday, half-day in Enniseala, was his half-day too. Mr Ryall continued to lend him his motor car, calculating that if the tutor he had found for his boys felt himself stifled by the limitations of small-town life he might do what the man last summer had done and take himself off. Ralph had driven to Dungarvan and had walked about it, had driven to Cappoquin and walked about it, had driven to Ballycotton and Castlemartyr and Lismore. He had not been back to the house near the cliffs. He had not been invited.

  ‘So what do we know about AB and AC, Jack?’

  ‘They’re letters in the alphabet.’

  ‘I mean the lines you’ve drawn. The sides of the triangle?’

  Jack’s toe prodded a stick one of the Ryalls’ spaniels had been chewing. He kicked it gently away, ensuring that it was still within his reach.

  ‘They’re good straight lines,’ he said.

  ‘What about the angles A, B and C, Jack?’

  ‘They’re good –’

  ‘The lines are all the same length. What does that tell us about the angles, Jack?’

  Jack pondered for a moment, then for another, and another.

  ‘Is this thing, lenitate, long?’ Kildare asked. ‘A very long river, does it mean?’

  ‘Incredibili lenitate, with incredible smoothness.’

  ‘My brain hurts,’ Jack said.

  The maid, Dympna, crossed the lawn with Ralph’s mid-morning tea and biscuits. Both boys stoo
d up as soon as they saw her.

  ‘It’s most interesting about the Aedui and the Sequani,’ Kildare politely remarked before he and his brother ran off.

  On Wednesday evenings Ralph was always asked where he’d driven that afternoon, and he sensed the disappointment when he mentioned the towns he’d walked about. It was apparent to him that the Ryalls hoped he would visit Lahardane again, even though no invitation had come. He could feel Mr Ryall thinking that this, too, could be a factor in guaranteeing the services of his boys’ tutor; and, with greater sentiment, Mrs Ryall deciding that here at last was company for a lonely girl. But how on earth could he simply drive up that avenue, how could he presume that a friendship had begun? Nothing of that kind had been said.

  One Wednesday, however, Ralph did drive back to where the avenue began, to the unoccupied gate-lodge and the entrance gates hidden in the summer undergrowth. He slowed down but did not turn in. Instead he drove on, and found eventually a way to the strand, where he swam and lay in the sun. No one else appeared on the shingle or on the smooth, washed sand which faintly bore his own bare footprints. No flutter of white disturbed his solitude, no slight figure on the far-off rocks that stretched like a pointing finger into the sea. Driving away, he found again the avenue and the gate-lodge. He waited, but no one appeared there either.

  On other days, every evening, Ralph walked up the long main street of Enniseala, pausing to gaze into the windows of the shops, passing the time with the meat that hung in MacMenamy’s, the dress dummies in Domville’s drapery, the groceries in O’Hagan’s and the Home and Colonial. Enormous glass retorts containing red and green liquid were the feature of Westbury’s Medical Hall; furniture crowded P. K. Gatchell’s auction rooms – beds and wardrobes and tables, chests of drawers, chairs and writing-desks and paintings. Scenes from films were changed three times a week in the display cases of the Picture House.

  Ralph read the Irish Times and the Cork Examiner in the bar of the Central Hotel. He walked past the squat lighthouse and the railway station, by the summer boarding-houses – the Pacific, the Atlantic, Miss Meade’s, Sans Souci. He strolled on the promenade among couples exercising their dogs, and nuns, and priests, and Christian Brothers. Convent girls chattered by the yellow and blue bandstand or swung their legs on the sea-wall.

  Sometimes he walked past the army Camp on the Cork road, and far beyond it, out into the country. Sometimes he explored the less gracious streets at the bottom of the town, where children ran barefoot and shawled women begged, where men played street-corner pitch-and-toss and the smell of poverty oozed from infested dwellings. There was the riverbank walk to the Protestant church, close to where the swans that gave the town its name nested. One evening, among the churchyard graves, Ralph met an elderly clergyman who held out a hand.

  ‘You teach the Bank of Ireland boys,’ he said as he did so. ‘I’m Canon Crosbie.’

  It surprised Ralph to be addressed in this way but he covered that up by smiling. He had listened to Canon Crosbie’s sermons, one of his duties being to accompany his charges to church on the rare occasions when neither of their parents wished to attend the Sunday-morning service.

  ‘I do my best to teach them,’ he said when he had given the clergyman his name.

  ‘Oh now, I’m sure you do very well, Ralph. And I’m right in thinking you hail from County Wexford?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I was a curate long years ago in Gorey. What an interesting county Wexford is!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Proud of its differences.’

  Ralph smiled again, not knowing what was meant by that. Canon Crosbie said:

  ‘I’m told you’ve been to Lahardane.’

  ‘I drove up by chance. Mr Ryall very kindly lets me drive his car.’

  ‘The kindest of men. And married to the kindest wife there ever was.’ Canon Crosbie paused. ‘You met Lucy Gault, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Now that’s an excellent thing, Ralph. Nothing pleased me more than to hear you had called in. Nothing pleased Mrs Crosbie more. We equally rejoiced.’

  Canon Crosbie’s twinkling manner, the hand placed friendlily on Ralph’s shoulder, the enthusiastic nodding of his head, caused Ralph to blush, and once the blush had begun it spread and deepened. There was an implication in what was being said, in the tone of voice, in an assumption that Ralph would have wished to be true but which assuredly was not.

  ‘A summer companion for Lucy Gault is a marvel to be thankful for.’

  ‘I’ve been there only once.’

  ‘And how it would delight us all to hear that you had been again! And how delighted – oh yes, I know it – Lucy would be too.’

  ‘I haven’t actually been invited to return.’

  ‘Hereabouts, Ralph, it is quite the thing to drop in, to lift a knocker when the spirit moves. I grant you, Ralph, there is more formality in County Wexford. I expect you are acquainted with the Dean of Ferns?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Well, there you are. No, we take things lightly here. It’s quite expected that we don’t much stand on ceremony. In social ways,’ the Canon added with sudden severity, ‘stand-offishness has no place among us. No place at all.’

  ‘Actually,’ Ralph began, ‘I’m not –’

  ‘My boy, of course you’re not. I feel that in all my bones. And Mrs Crosbie does. Has your path crossed that of Mr Sullivan?’

  ‘Sullivan?’

  ‘Of Sullivan and Pedlow? Solicitors, commissioners for oaths?’

  Ralph shook his head.

  ‘Mr Sullivan has searched the world for Captain Gault and his wife. And in the meantime Mr Sullivan has kept an eye on things. He has kept an eye on Lucy. In his own time, beyond all professional duties, he has been concerned – concerned, Ralph, for Lucy’s well-being and livelihood, concerned about repairs and upkeep in that barracks of a house. Not much can be done, for there is no money to be spared. A few fields and the cattle on them have for generations been the outward and visible sign of the Gaults’ ease of passage. Lahardane has struggled on, and it is Mr Sullivan who has arranged that it does so still. I have said to Mr Sullivan – I have stopped him in the street to say it – that he is a good man. The reply I drew was that he has taken many a dinner at Lahardane, that he has – in the Captain’s day and before – spent many a night when a journey home in the dark seemed arduous. He claims no more for his humanity, Ralph, than that it’s a payment for hospitality.’

  Ralph nodded. The flush of colour had gone from his cheeks. He would have liked to bring the encounter to an end, but didn’t quite know how to do so.

  ‘It has reached Mr Sullivan’s ears, as it reached my own, that you have been out to Lahardane. That has spelt delight for Mr Sullivan, Ralph, as it has for Mrs Crosbie and for myself. We have given thanks. We have given heartfelt thanks.’

  ‘I mistook the avenue that day.’

  ‘Mistake it again, Ralph. I entreat you to mistake it again. I entreat you to give a little company to a young girl who lacks the company of her own generation. I entreat you not to leave undone those things which ought to be done. I truly entreat you. Go again to that lonely house, Ralph.’

  With this wordy hyperbole, Canon Crosbie offered Ralph his hand and passed on his way.

  *

  In handwriting that seemed strangely perfect, that followed every instruction as to downstroke and loops, and flow and style, there was a note at last from Lucy Gault. That name, so secretly cherished by Ralph, was formed with the same slant that characterized the words of the letter’s content. Not all the world’s poetry could capture the potency in this confirmation of a name; about that Ralph was certain. Not all the world’s poetry could reflect an iota of his happiness as he taught his charges beneath the leafy boughs of the beech tree. ‘Oh, we’ll just read today,’ he exclaimed, smiling on the morning the letter came, then reading aloud from The Diary of a Nobody while Kildare dozed and Jack drew gargoyles.r />
  When the mid-morning tray came and the boys had run away there was the letter to peruse again with luxurious slowness, the taking of it from the pocket, the slow unfolding, the dappled shadows on white paper and blue ink. The envelope was kept separately; it, too, was examined now. The pleas of Canon Crosbie, the unspoken wishes of the Ryalls, were no longer at odds with the stubborn shyness that characterized Ralph’s nature. And it was delight enough, in these first hours of everything being different, to gaze at a few brief sentences and at how a name was written.

  Before you go away for ever come and say good-bye. Come and have tea again. If you would like to. Lucy Gault.

  There was nothing else, only the address and the date beneath it, August 5th 1936.

  5

  On the day Lucy Gault’s letter arrived in the house above the Bank of Ireland there was a new recruit at the army Camp that Ralph often passed on his evening walks. The officer in charge at the time saw a tall, hollow-faced man with an intensity in his dark eyes that was particularly noticeable. The impression received by the officer was that the man was troubled, but since he had been declared medically fit, since he had been interviewed in the usual manner and declared worthy of the uniform he was to wear, the officer stamped the papers that recorded such details as name and age and the period of service undertaken. The typewritten name was incorrectly spelt, the new recruit pointed out, and the officer drew two lines through the error. Horahan he wrote instead.