The Story of Lucy Gault Page 11

  That kept things going – the convent on a hill, the Picture House, the long main street, the little lighthouse. And after that she heard that Ralph, too, was an only child. His father’s timber yards and sawmills were described, and the house his family lived in, not far from the sawmills, near a bridge.

  ‘Shall we walk down to the glen again?’ she asked when they had finished having tea. ‘Like we did the last time? Would it be a bore?’

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ And then he said, ‘Your limp’s not much to notice. It’s hardly anything.’

  ‘Will you come again next Wednesday?’

  7

  The brass band played in the wide piazza of the Città Alta, the outside tables of the piazza’s single ristorante shaded by a green and white awning. Il Duce had come, Il Duce was on the way: there was confusion before the cheering began below, in via Garibaldi and piazza della Repubblica: Il Duce had arrived.

  ‘Tosca,’ the Captain said, but then the music from the opera stopped. The conductor waved a hand over the whole piazza, commanding silence, although mostly the piazza was empty. Il Duce’s song began.

  ‘Ecco! a slow old waiter murmured, as if from sleep. ‘Bene, bene …’ he whispered, pouring the last of the Barolo. And in the new town below, the same tune played, amplified from a record, so that everyone, everywhere, knew that Il Duce was here at last.

  Heloise hadn’t spoken since they had been led to their table beneath the awning, nor while the dishes of the lunch they had ordered were brought to them, nor while she had played with hers, leaving most of the food untouched. It was a bad day, the Captain said to himself. In her eyes there was the nagging of what lay at the depths of her melancholy, as always there was on a bad day. She tried to return his smile but could not and, too well, he knew she saw their child allowing the waves to have their way, without resistance because that was their child’s choice. His intuition was sharp on bad days; he always knew. His denial of her dread was in the pressure of his fingers, but there was no acknowledgement, no flutter of life in the hand he had reached out for and still held, no sign that this time he had succeeded in dispelling the worst that might have been.

  A yellow dog crossed the piazza, the only creature there but for the bandsmen and the waiter and the occupants of a single pavement table. The waiter had loosened the stud beneath his black bow tie. Skinny and seeming ravenous, the dog scattered the contents of a waste-bin. No more than weekend musicians lazily playing their opera arias, the white-uniformed bandsmen had acquired a strut of arrogance in how they played now, as if already they marched through conquered lands.

  ‘Va’ via! Va’ via!’ the old waiter shouted at the dog. ‘Caffe, signore?’

  ‘Si. Per favore.’

  He loved her, more than he could ever have loved anyone, but today, as so often before, she made on her own the effort he could not help her with. How long would it be before Italy was no longer a country to find refuge in? Calmly she asked that.

  He shook his head. Somewhere there was cheering and when it ceased a voice echoed through the loudspeakers, noisily excited, its message often punctuated by what might have been the smack of a fist on a palm. Morte! Sangue! Vittoria! Vittorioso! The same exhortations were repeated, like punctuation also. Across the piazza the yellow dog was scratching out its fleas.

  ‘Yes, Italy soon may not want us, either,’ he said, and thought again how much he loved her. They lay in one another’s arms, they talked, she read out to him something she liked in a book, they were companions on their journeys; and yet on days like this one, she belonged only to herself.

  ‘Please don’t ask me to go back,’ she whispered, her tone so soft, so much without expression, that the words were hardly there.

  8

  When Ralph had twice again visited Lahardane on Wednesday afternoons, when he had been shown the house, had gone from room to room, had seen the books in the several bookcases, the bagatelle in a corner of the drawing-room, the billiard table on the upper landing, Lucy said:

  ‘Won’t you stay a while when you finish with the boys?’

  ‘Stay here?’

  ‘It’s not as though there isn’t room.’

  It was the end of the first week in September when he finished his tutoring. On the evening before the day the boys were to return to school Mr Ryall paid what was owing, then carried Ralph’s two suitcases to the car while Ralph said good-bye to Mrs Ryall and to the boys. On the way to Lahardane Mr Ryall said:

  ‘It’s good of you to befriend her.’

  ‘It isn’t befriending, really.’

  ‘Well …’ And at Lahardane Mr Ryall said, ‘I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl of eight or nine, Lucy.’

  She smiled, but did not say if she remembered that last occasion or not, and when the car had driven off she led the way up the wide stairs to the room that was to be Ralph’s. It was square and spacious, with a mahogany wash-stand in one corner, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, a white quilt on the bed, darkly framed engravings of Glengarriff on all four walls. Its windows looked out over the fields where the cattle were, to the sea.

  ‘Nothing’ll happen,’ Lucy warned, ‘if you pull that bell knob.’

  Bridget had brought the dining-room back into use for the visit, had aired it and polished the long dining-table, covering it with a tablecloth she had folded away years ago. There was an excitement in her hurrying about with trays and cutlery, her cheeks flushed, starched white aprons clean every day.

  ‘Bridget enjoys a fuss.’ Lucy said, and Ralph said he had noticed that.

  He loved their mealtimes. When the dining-room door closed behind Bridget he imagined it would be like this if they were married. He loved everything about Lahardane, where it was, the house itself, going to the strand in the early morning, being shown the trees on which L.G. was carved. He loved it when they lay on the grass by the stream and when they crossed it on the stepping stones. He loved what she loved, as if it would be unnatural not to.

  ‘I’ll show you something else,’ she said, and brought him to the ruined cottage high up in the glen. ‘Henry’ll tell you about Paddy Lindon.’

  Ralph knew without being told that it was the place she had hobbled to as a child and he imagined her there, terrified and hungry and alone. He wanted to ask her about that time but could not, since she had never in any way referred to it except to mention her limp. When they were on the strand she talked about the nameless dog who’d run away again in the end, but didn’t touch upon the part it had played in what had happened. When he turned the pages of the photograph album in the drawing-room he saw, through a brown mist, a couple standing by a pram among the apple trees. His scrutiny was more intent than it usually was when he paused at one of the album’s photographs, but Lucy did not comment.

  One day in the woods she suddenly said, ‘We must go back,’ as if she sensed his longing to hear what she might have said, as if she feared it. But the longing that had begun did not go away, and Ralph wondered if it would ever be more than longing, and wondered too if he would ever take her into his arms and touch with his lips her smooth, pale hair and her neck and her cheeks, her freckled arms and her forehead and closed eyes, her lips. He wondered if his wanting to would be all there ever was.

  ‘You mustn’t leave Lahardane,’ she said, ‘until you have finished Vanity Fair.’

  ‘I haven’t begun it yet.’

  ‘When you’ve finished it we must talk about it. And that will take time, too.’

  Sometimes when they walked, the backs of their hands brushed for a moment, or their palms met and were grasped as the stepping stones were crossed. There was a stone wall that was difficult and there was closeness then too.

  ‘There are six hundred and forty-two pages,’ she said.

  *

  They would not have met if he had not lost his way: Lucy tried to think of that, of their never meeting, of not knowing that Ralph existed. It seemed to her that he had come out of nowhere, and she wondered
if when he left Lahardane he would return to nowhere and not come back. She would never forget him. All her life she would remember the Wednesday afternoons there had been, and the time that was passing now. And when she was old, if she began to believe that Ralph had been a figment, and this summer too, it would not matter because time turned memories into figments anyway.

  ‘In all the world, Ralph, what would you wish for most?’

  He stooped to pick up a pebble from the sand and skim it over the water. Twice, then three times, it touched the surface and bounced on. His manner was less shy now because, she supposed, he knew her better, or imagined he did. His feeling shy and his gentleness were what she liked about him.

  ‘Oh, I suppose, you know, that every day was doing nothing.’

  ‘That is something I have.’

  ‘Then you are lucky.’

  ‘I’ll miss you when you go. I doubt you’ll ever come back.’

  ‘If I’m invited –’

  ‘You have things to do.’

  ‘What things have I to do?’

  ‘Well, everything, when you think about it.’

  They bathed, as they did twice every day, and then they walked to Kilauran. They clambered over the rocks to the pier. No one was about there or on the village street. Lucy said:

  ‘That’s where I went to school.’

  They looked through one window and then the other. The shiny maps and charts still hung on the walls, with Mr Aylward’s portraits of kings and queens, William the Conqueror, Queen Maeve, the Emperor Constantine. Let x = 6 was the writing on the blackboard.

  ‘Now I have shown you everything,’ Lucy said.

  That day Ralph kissed her. On the way back to Lahardane he reached out for her hand and clumsily drew her closer to him on the shingle at the bottom of the cliffs. They did not speak.

  Afterwards they climbed up by the familiar jagged path. The potato crop in the O’Reillys’ field had been harvested. Only the withering haulm lay about.

  ‘I love you, Lucy,’ Ralph said then. ‘I am in love with you.’

  She did not reply. She looked away, and after a moment said:

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She paused again. ‘It’s no good, loving one another.’

  ‘Why isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not someone to love.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, you are! If only you know how much you are!’

  They had not stopped and did not now. Slowly they walked on, and when Ralph again reached for her hand Lucy didn’t take it away. He said:

  ‘I have loved you since the first time I came here. I have loved you more every instant I have known you. I never loved anyone before. I shall never love anyone else. I could not.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you had finished Vanity Fair. We haven’t talked about it. We must before you go.’

  ‘I never want to go. I never want to be without you, all my life.’

  *

  Ralph knew when Lucy shook her head that it was not in denial of what he’d said, that it was not a way of doubting the passion in his tone and in his eyes. She shook her head in protestation at the folly of his unbridled hope: none of this could be, her wordless response reiterated, repeating in that manner her statement that she was not someone to love.

  ‘You’re the first friend I’ve had, Ralph. I haven’t made friends as other people do. Or as people in novels do.’

  ‘I would do anything for you.’

  ‘Tell me more about where you live, the house and everything else. So that I know, when you have gone.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, it’s just ordinary!’

  ‘Tell me all the same.’

  Confused and unhappy, Ralph did so. He described the house and, beyond the bridge he could see from the windows of his bedroom, Logan’s Bar and Stores, where hardware was sold as well as groceries. He had never assumed he would do anything other than inherit the sawmills and go on living in that two-storey roadside house, creeper-covered and compact. In a field near the bridge there was some kind of abbey, not much of it left.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Only a tower, or part of one. Hardly anything else.’

  ‘What a pity that is!’

  ‘I think there are monks’ graves as well. So people say.’

  ‘Do you go there, Ralph?’

  ‘There’s nothing much to go for.’

  ‘To look for the graves.’

  ‘No, I don’t do that.’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Lucy –’

  ‘Do they know you in Logan’s Stores?’

  ‘Know me?’

  ‘Know who you are.’

  ‘They have always seen me about.’

  ‘Tell me about your boarding-school.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy –’

  ‘Please tell me. Please, Ralph.’

  ‘There were two.’ And Ralph described the first, where he was homesick: the grey house in a Dublin square, crocodile walks through empty streets on Sundays, the cabbage soup.

  ‘It couldn’t have been cabbage soup. You can’t have cabbage soup.’

  ‘We called it that.’

  ‘And did you have it at the next school too?’

  ‘The next one was better. I didn’t mind it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Tell me everything.’

  ‘It was outside Dublin, in the mountains. We wore gowns. Scholars wore special ones, more voluminous.’

  ‘Were you a scholar?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘What were you good at?’

  ‘Nothing much. They wouldn’t remember me there now.’

  ‘Did you play games?’

  ‘We had to.’

  ‘What were you good at?’

  ‘I wasn’t bad at tennis.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t hate that school so much?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Did you mind my kissing you?’

  ‘We must go in now. No, I didn’t mind.’

  *

  The meal Henry sat down to every evening in the kitchen was similar to his breakfast and always the same: fried eggs and fried bread, a rasher of bacon. Tea accompanied it, which Henry took strong and sweet and milky.

  On the evening of the day when Ralph had confessed his love nothing was different about this meal except what was said during it. An hour ago Henry had noticed a change in Ralph’s manner, and Lucy’s too, when they passed through the yard. They’d been abashed, affected by what was clearly a privacy between them, neither saying much. Henry wondered if there had been a quarrel; but Bridget, who later caught that same mood also, had several times noticed Ralph’s glance across the table in the dining-room and had surmised the nature of his feelings: the difference now would be that he had spoken of them.

  In the kitchen Bridget passed this speculation on, at a loss when she tried to guess what would happen next. Their visitor would leave Lahardane and the autumn days would shorten as the season gave way to winter. Christmas would go by, the worst of the weather in the first months of the new year. Would he come back to Enniseala when another summer came? Would he again be here, at Lahardane? Or would time, fickle in its arrangements, slip him away from them?

  There were often moments at Lahardane when Bridget would still have comforted Lucy, as she had comforted her in her infancy, as she had in her childhood. Always so close and yet not close at all, there was the solitary figure reading by lamplight or in the apple orchard, or wandering alone in the woods of the glen and on the seashore, her friends a stout solicitor and an elderly clergyman. When a letter arrived in the house there still was expectation, still a hope, but only for the instant before the envelope was scrutinized. The envelope always told.

  ‘You’re right enough,’ Henry agreed, nodding each word into place, his hindsight stirred by Bridget’s perceptions. He finished his tea and pushed his cup away. ‘And it’s maybe not a bad thing at the heel of the hunt.’

  Clearing the table of dishes, Bridget was
not surprised to hear this: she’d known that sooner or later she would. But she did not respond to the change of sentiment in her husband, for what could be said except to repeat what already she had herself declared? What had come about this summer was where hope flickered now.

  ‘They’re lost to her,’ she said. ‘Even if they’d come back tomorrow.’

  Saving a match, Henry lit his Woodbine with a spill from the range. He did not know his feelings were that of a father, was aware only that he felt protective of the Captain’s child and, as a father might be, suspicious of a stranger’s fondness. Yet while Ralph had been staying in the house Henry had continued to like him more than he had at first. And in saying that what had happened was not a bad thing he had meant more than the assertion stated. It was not bad that the Captain’s child should be taken from this place, separated at last from the dark that clung to it.

  *

  It rained in the night and all the next day. They played bagatelle, and Lucy began the conversation she wanted to have about Vanity Fair. Then they played bagatelle again. Ralph said:

  ‘I love you, Lucy.’

  Lucy did not remind him that he had told her so already and more than once. Gently she stroked with her fingertips the back of his hand. She stroked his hair.

  ‘Dear Ralph,’ she whispered, ‘you must not love me.’

  ‘I cannot help it.’

  ‘One day, when you marry, will you write and tell me? So that I know and can imagine that too. And will you write when each child is born? And tell me your wife’s name and give some slight description of her? So that I can always see you and your wife, and children, in that house beside the sawmills. Will you promise, Ralph?’

  ‘It’s you I want to marry.’

  ‘You’ll forget me. You’ll forget this summer. It will fade and turn into shadows, and voices will be murmurs you cannot hear. Now – this present as we sit here – is a reality that will not last and is not meant to. You’ll see this room no more clearly than I see the faces described to me in novels. You’ll dream of Lahardane, Ralph, once in a while, or perhaps you never will. But if you do I’ll be a ghost by then.’