Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

  Alone in her room upstairs she had despaired. But now, sitting with her children round the kitchen table, she recovered her fortitude. The Carmichaels were certainly for it, but Lucy’s gesture, in thus assembling them, made their misfortune bearable. The same hilarity, a tendency to giggle at nothing, rose in her that she remembered on that other dire September night.

  If Patrick were dead, thought Lucy, we couldn’t be doing this. We couldn’t laugh. Which proves … something or other. I’m too tired to puzzle it out now.

  A horsewhip, thought Stephen. But I haven’t got a horsewhip. Could I buy one? Sir! You are a coward and a cad! But Lucy says Father wouldn’t … I believe I’m drunk.

  “Not nearly so bad as Munich,” observed Mrs. Carmichael hazily.

  “What isn’t,” asked Lucy, “this?”

  “No. September nineteen-therry-nine. Nineteen-thirty-nine. Nothing has ever been so bad as Munich. We all said so, walking up and down the street.”

  “Who walked up and down the street?”

  “Your father and I and the Gunnings. Next door to us. You must remember them. They kept rabbits.”

  “Well, well,” said Lucy. “Did they have any money?”

  “I expect so. He ran away in ’forty-one with a lady warden. Why?”

  Her children sang:

  “They’ve nice habits

  They keep rabbits,

  But … they’ve got no money … at … all!”

  “Everybody had money before the war,” stated Mrs. Carmichael with tipsy solemnity.

  “Lots and lots of money,” agreed Lucy.

  “And lots and lots of rabbits,” said Stephen.

  “Even the rabbits had money,” proclaimed Lucy. “Rich people’s rabbits had lots and lots of money, hadn’t they, Mother?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Carmichael, after reflection. “No, I never heard of a rabbit having money. Don’t be silly, dear.”

  Stephen’s crowing laugh rang through the kitchen. Joan, who was peeping at them through the door, rushed up to report to her parents the meaning of this scandalous commotion:

  “They’re sitting down there in their dressing-gowns, drinking champagne out of tea-cups and laughing their heads off.”

  6

  WEDNESDAY’S newspapers informed Mrs. Hallam of the scene at the church and explained a telegram she had had from Melissa postponing her return home. There were photographs of Lucy sitting alone in the car, and paragraphs from reporters who had interviewed a great many people in order to amass a very small quantity of information. But it was clear that Patrick Reilly had vanished on his wedding day and had jilted his bride.

  On Thursday Mrs. Knight rang up with more news. Her husband, alarmed for Reilly’s reputation, had been to see Clay and learnt facts which Clay had not felt obliged to divulge at Gorling. Patrick had certainly gone off with Mrs. Lucas. The porter of the flats knew her well by sight; she had often been there. He told Clay that he saw her go up to Mr. Reilly’s flat on Monday night and had not seen her come out again until the pair of them emerged at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning and took a taxi to Euston.

  On Friday Melissa came home, pale, silent and steeled against unfriendly comments. For she had forgotten that her mother could always rise to a real occasion, and possessed a great deal of genuine feeling. It was the littleness of life which irked Mrs. Hallam and caused her to magnify minor crises, and to invent delicate situations where none existed. When tact and sympathy were really wanted she was in her element. Melissa was received with so much kindness, so few questions were asked, so much distress on Lucy’s behalf was apparent, that she soon found herself telling the whole story.

  “It’s quite clear,” she said, “that he never meant Lucy to go to the church. He thought she knew it was off. She got a letter on Wednesday which made that obvious.”

  “Oh? He did write?”

  “Yes. It was posted from Euston. She showed it to us. She … oh, Mother … she’s so gentle and sensible and considerate … it’s really worse than anything. I found myself wishing she’d be unreasonable and scream the house down. Well, he evidently thought she’d had a telephone message, early on Tuesday, putting the wedding off and saying he’d been taken to a nursing home with a bad attack of malaria. He said it was the only message he could think of at the moment, but the truth was that he realised he couldn’t live without Mrs. Lucas.”

  “Did Lucy know about Jane Lucas?”

  “Oh, yes. He’d told her. But she didn’t know Mrs. Lucas had come back to England. He didn’t apologise, which was just as well. He said Lucy was well rid of him and he hoped it wouldn’t be long before she knew it.”

  “That’s true enough,” said Mrs. Hallam, “but not the sort of consolation one can offer now.”

  “Plenty of people think they can,” said Melissa grimly. “You wouldn’t believe what tactless, insensitive … anyway, he isn’t as bad as we thought. Somebody must have bungled the message at his end, because it certainly never reached Gorling.”

  “It was that devil of a woman. She probably undertook to send it and didn’t. It would be just her idea of a joke — to let the marriage go on.”

  “But, Mother, he’ll find out.”

  “She won’t care. But how did Lucy take it? Did she realise it’s final?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so. There was a bad moment yesterday. We were in the garden and Mrs. Carmichael came out and said: There’s been a mistake. It was only about returning some wedding present, but Lucy …” Melissa’s voice shook, “… Lucy jumped up, all alive and glowing and joyful. She thought he’d come, that it was all a mistake. Oh, that was the worst moment.”

  “Oh … oh … how piteous!”

  “She is, Mother. She’s so … so bewildered and … and docile … doing whatever anybody suggests … and a little apologetic all the time, you know: as if she hated bringing so much trouble on everybody. You can’t imagine….”

  Mrs. Hallam could not. A memory flashed into her mind of Lucy as she had been three years ago when they first met. There had been a cold snap and everybody was skating when Mrs. Hallam went to Oxford for the day to see Melissa. They had gone to meet Lucy on Port Meadow, which was frozen and flooded; she had come skimming over the ice to greet them, curls and skirts blown back, her grey eyes full of guileless interest in Melissa’s mother. She had been so sure of her welcome, poor child, and obviously unconscious of any carping criticisms which might be brought against her, and her middle-class background.

  “But what is she to do now, Melissa? What are her plans?”

  “I suppose she must get a job of some sort.”

  “Yes. But she ought to get away for a time. Away from Gorling. It’s such a small place; it must be most unpleasant.”

  “Oh, it is. We went into the town yesterday and half the people we met dodged into shops, so as not to have to speak to her because they didn’t know what to say. The other half had the impertinence to come up and sympathise. A person who has been publicly humiliated is such a pariah.”

  Mrs. Hallam then suggested that Lucy should come to Campden Hill Square. She was herself going to Italy, and the two girls could have the house to themselves. She outlined this plan with great enthusiasm, unaware of the dismay with which it was received.

  For Melissa had been fortifying herself during these appalling days by visions of all the fun she would have with John as soon as her mother was despatched to Italy. That would be impossible if Lucy were in the house. It was no moment in which to confide her own engagement to her unhappy friend, and, in any case, nobody could have fun with Lucy before their eyes.

  She told herself that she had John to consider and that she had no right to spoil his happiness. For the moment she had been through enough for Lucy. She had coped with the Rawlings. She had packed up wedding presents. Was there never to be an end to it? No … she would not have Lucy.

  She gave a non-committal answer and, as soon as she was alone, rang up John to discuss festive meetings while her mother
was in Italy. But John, who had also read the newspapers, would talk of nothing but Lucy and assured her that he was expecting to see very little of her, just now, as he realised that Lucy must come first.

  “What plans you do make for me,” complained Melissa.

  “I know how fond you are of her, and I’m sure she needs you more than I do. I was wondering if she’d be coming to you when your mother goes away.”

  “Oh, you were, were you?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Fatigue. A good man’s love is so strenuous.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you cross about something?”

  “Oh, no, no, no! I’ll meet you this evening as usual.”

  “Melissa … what have I said?”

  “He for God only, she for God in him,” she snapped, and rang off.

  She repeated to herself that she would not have Lucy. John need never know that the invitation had been suggested. He need never know that she was not the angel he thought her.

  But some day he would find out. He was bound to do so unless she took upon herself the lifelong task of adopting his principles, his standards, his considerate scruples. Being herself rather selfish, she had sometimes wondered whether marriage with so unselfish a man might not ruin her character. But now she saw that the boot could be on the other leg.

  After tea she rang up Lucy and invited her to Campden Hill Square.

  7

  RICKIE HAVERSTOCK was one of the amorphous, musical young men with whom Lucy and Melissa had experimented during their first year at Oxford, while they were perfecting their technique with future Prime Ministers. They had discarded most of these callow swains, but Rickie refused to be shaken off. He escorted them to concerts, conducted them in madrigals, played his own compositions to them, and fell in love with Melissa, who never thought of him except as a joke.

  He intended to marry her as soon as he should be earning £800 a year. This would not be for some time, but he was untroubled by any fear of rivals who might forestall him, since he had no imagination whatever. He had not discussed the matter with her; he wished to marry her, so he assumed that she must wish to marry him. He sent her Christmas cards, kept her photograph beside his bed, and boasted about her to all his acquaintances. So far as he was concerned she had been put away in camphor till he was ready. But, having occasion to visit London, he naturally wished to unpack her and look at her while he was there.

  Her dismay was considerable when he rang her up and announced that he was coming to tell her all about the marvellous job that he had got. She hedged and protested, but he was so insistent that she was at last obliged to invite him to supper. Lucy, she told him, would be there and no mention must be made of Lucy’s engagement because it was off. That Lucy should be there did not surprise him. She always had been there. He hardly realised that they did not live in the same house. And her engagement made no impression on him, whether on or off, because he had never heard of it.

  A whole evening of Rickie’s exuberance and Lucy’s pallid silence was more than Melissa could face. She decided that John should make a fourth. After supper she would take him into the garden sitting-room, as soon as Rickie had got well away on the piano. Lucy could stay and listen, which would be tough, but not more tough than anything else in Lucy’s life just now. She so plainly did not care in the least what she did, or with whom she talked, that she might as well be abandoned to Rickie.

  He arrived in high feather, ten minutes too early. They heard him coming up the hill humming the Trumpet Voluntary, to which fanfare he expected, some day, to escort Melissa out of church, while executing it in person on the organ. The event was still so distant that he had not yet troubled to consider how he was to be in two places at once. Bursting into the room he told them exactly how long it was since they had seen him, accepted a glass of sherry without a word of thanks, and began to describe a concert he had attended that afternoon, carolling his favourite passages and spilling a good deal of sherry into the piano. They could only get him to stop by asking about his new job.

  “Well,” he said, settling down to it, “as you know, it’s in Ravonsbridge, in Severnshire.”

  They had not known, but he gave them no chance to say so. He rushed on. It was a marvellous job. He had got his own orchestra to conduct. He was Junior Music Director at the Ravonsbridge Arts Institute. When old Pidgeon died, Dr. Pidgeon, the composer, he would become Senior Director. As it was, he could do pretty well what he liked, because old Pidgeon lived in Severnton and hardly ever came over to Ravonsbridge. All the real work was done by Rickie. Everybody knew that. Hayter, the Executive Director, a splendid person, had said as much: ‘We all know who really does the work,’ he had said. Which was pretty good evidence that Hayter would back Rickie for the Senior post when it fell vacant. Pidgeon, of course, conducted at concerts. But Rickie rehearsed the orchestra, which was jolly good, considering, and at present he was busy on Fauré’s Requiem. Surely they must remember it? Those marvellous semitones: Ta-tum! Ta-tum! …

  At this point John was shown in, grinning broadly, for he had been warned what to expect and had heard these ta-tums as he came upstairs. Lucy was introduced and the grin was replaced by an expression of respectful concern which Melissa thought tactless. Also she could detect a trace of surprise in the occasional glances which he turned on Lucy as he drank his sherry. His thoughts were perfectly apparent. Was this the beauty — this lanky, listless creature with her sharp nose, her dull hair, and eyes fixed in the astonished stare of recent shock? He had come expecting to like her, and was repelled.

  Rickie continued to tell them about Ravonsbridge. As Melissa led the way downstairs he explained that the local millionaire, old Matthew Millwood, of Marsden Millwood Motors, had built and endowed the Institute because he wished to turn Ravonsbridge, his home town, into the ‘Athens of the West’. He described the theatre, the concert hall, the art gallery and the view over the Ravon valley.

  “And you’ll like the Staff,” he assured Melissa. “You’ll find them jolly nice to work with. They’re such a friendly lot.”

  “I?” exclaimed Melissa in astonishment.

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve come to tell you about. There’s a marvellous job going at the Institute which will suit you down to the ground. But you must hurry up and apply, because the appointment is going to be made early next week. But I must explain more about the place first, or you won’t understand….”

  “But, really, Rickie … I …”

  “Besides the Music School there’s an Art School and a Drama School, with first-rate people running all of them. Old Angera, the Art Director …”

  “Rickie! Do help yourself to chicken!”

  “Oh? Sorry! He’s so good, many people think his classes better than the Slade. And Thornley, who’ll be your boss, is a well-known playwright.”

  There was a fractional pause while Rickie put some food into his mouth, and Melissa turned to Lucy.

  “Didn’t you have a school friend who works there?”

  Lucy, after a slight hesitation, said yes. Bess Turner, who had been at Gorling High School, was now Junior Librarian at Ravonsbridge.

  “How does she like it?”

  Again there was a pause. The length of time which Lucy took to answer any question was beginning to get on Melissa’s nerves. It was as though anything said to her had to be decoded before she could reply. At last she said:

  “I think so. But she seems to stand in great awe of the Millwood family. Don’t they order everybody about rather a lot?” she asked Rickie.

  “Good old Bess,” exclaimed Rickie with his mouth full. “She sings in my choir.”

  Lucy decoded this and displayed a trace of surprise.

  “Bess sings?”

  “Rather. She has a voice like a peacock, but she’s very reliable on her leads.”

  “Are you short of singers?” asked Melissa.

  “Oh no. But it’s the thing to do. All the Staff are supposed to sing in the choi
r and all that. Take an interest in all the activities of the Institute. Why, I went on in the crowd in Thornley’s Julius Caesar, and shouted: Rhubarb! Rhubarb!”

  “You didn’t really shout rhubarb?” exclaimed Melissa. “I thought nobody actually did. But who insists on all this hearty activity? The Millwoods?”

  “It’s part of the Ravonsbridge tradition.”

  “You mean that this motor magnate …”

  “Oh, not old Matthew. He’s dead. It’s his widow that runs the place. Lady Frances, and her daughters. But they don’t really count for much. The big noise is Hayter and he’s grand. Absolutely first class. The Council just eats out of his hand. It was his idea to use the buildings for these Summer Festivals, and they’ve been an immense success. Now I happen to be on pretty good terms with Hayter, and if I drop a word to him about you, Melissa, I think he’d see you got the job.”

  “But, Rickie, I don’t want a job.”

  “Oh, you must want a job like this. The minute I heard it was going I thought: What an excuse to get Melissa here! It’s Assistant Dramatic Director, to work under Thornley. The Frog, Miss Frogmore I mean, and Miss Payne train the students. But Thornley wants a sub-scrub to look after rehearsals, while he’s off judging drama competitions. Sheila Doe, who used to do it, got married suddenly. They want a girl with a degree and some stage experience. She’s expected to take classes in English literature as well. I told everybody I knew a marvellous girl who’d be just right for it. She’s got a degree in English, I said, and she was simply marvellous in the O.U.D.S. as Maria in Twelfth Night. I told Hayter and he said it didn’t rest with him. The Council makes the appointment. But the Council is merely the Millwoods, and they do what he tells them to, and if you apply I’m sure he’ll put in a good word for you. And that,” concluded Rickie happily, “is what I came to say.”