Lucy Charlton's Christmas

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Title Page

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Chapter One

Elizabeth Gill

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Quercus

Quercus Editions Ltd
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Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Gill

The moral right of Elizabeth Gill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 84866 713 6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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It was just before Christmas when Miss Sheane called Lucy Charlton in to her study. It was a place that many of the schoolgirls dreaded, because each end of term you were called in there to explain why you had not done well in every subject but Lucy didn’t feel like that. Miss Sheane, the Irish headmistress at Lucy’s school in Newcastle upon Tyne, was an ally to those girls with ambition and Lucy had wanted to be a lawyer from since she was a small child in her father’s office. She even liked Miss Sheane, and she knew that Miss Sheane liked her, so went inside with no feeling of trepidation. She found the Headmistress smiling at her, but also half frowning as though she had a problem she could not solve and so it proved to be.

She asked Lucy to sit down, and since there was a good coal fire burning and the day had barely got light and it was now just after lunch, Lucy sat. She liked that Miss Sheane did not disappear behind her desk but sat down opposite to her. Miss Sheane gazed into the fire for a few moments and then she said,

‘Lucy, I need your help.’

They were the sweetest words in Lucy’s world. This was what she had been born for – to help people – so she smiled across as confidently as she could and said she would do her best.

‘The girl, Shamala Henderson, I’m worried about her and I can’t think what to do.’

Lucy knew the girl. She had started school that autumn. She lived with her aunt in Jesmond, but other than that all Lucy knew about her was that she had dark skin, black hair and black eyes. She rarely lifted those eyes, and didn’t talk to other girls, and, because she was different, she had been shunned from the first. She was a year younger than Lucy and it was rare to make friends with anyone younger, so Lucy had not had that much contact with her.

‘She’s failing here and her aunt – ’ Miss Sheane stopped, trying to choose her words ‘– her aunt does not seem to be able to help. She won’t come to the school and when I tried to go to their home she appeared to be out.’ What Miss Sheane meant, Lucy thought, was that Shamala’s aunt had hidden behind the sitting room curtains or if she had a maid the maid had said that she was out.

‘Shamala hasn’t made friends as I hoped she might,’ Miss Sheane continued. ‘I know she is . . . a little different, but she has intelligence and common sense. The trouble is, there are so many things lacking and everything I have tried to do has not worked. I thought somebody more her age might be able to help. I’m not holding you responsible for anything here, Lucy, and I know it’s almost the end of term but perhaps you could try in some subtle way to help her over the next day or two. After that, something tells me it may be too late.’

Lucy didn’t know what Miss Sheane meant, but she thought the Headmistress had good instincts. Lucy told her that of course she would do what she could, but privately thought that Miss Sheane was asking a lot. After all, Lucy stood out. She was a prefect and next year was almost certain that she would be Head Girl, so it could be that Shamala was already intimidated by her and wouldn’t accept Lucy’s help.

Lucy went back to the lower sixth room where her classmates were drinking coffee and sitting about as senior girls did.

The fifth formers and all the other girls were outside. Unless it was pouring with rain, in which case they would be obliged to stay in their classrooms at break and watch it pour down the windows, they were out in the garden. The girls from the lower school played games in the big patch of tarmac at the back of the school, but the older ones tended to congregate in the garden. So she put on her coat and went outside.

She had not realized it was so cold. They had hockey that afternoon and the very idea made her shiver. The school gardens had belonged to the house that the school had originally been and reached down as far as the river Tyne. There were lawns and shrubs, big trees and, as the garden descended to the river, there were little places here and there where it was bliss to play hide and seek which she had done as a younger child.

At the bottom of the path there was a big playing field for hockey, and further over were tennis and netball courts and beyond that was the river and to the side huge horse chestnut trees. When it was windy in the autumn the girls would gather beneath the trees and wait for the conkers to fall in their spiky green coats.

The younger girls were not allowed down the hill unless there was a teacher or a prefect with them, but the older ones could do as they pleased so Lucy passed small groups of them as she wound her way down the path, looking for Shamala.

She was not there. Lucy was slightly annoyed, she had not thought that finding her would be the first problem.

She didn’t like to ask any of the girls whom she passed where Shamala might be because that would arouse their curiosity, so she just went on by passing the big areas of grass,shiny with ice, and following the path to the very end where it hit the far wall. There, near the gate which led out to the river, she saw the girl standing as though she longed to escape. She was alone and looked lonely, and though her face was not turned toward Lucy, Lucy could almost smell the longing to unlatch the gate and step out into freedom. The gate of course was padlocked in case any silly junior girl escaped to the river, so Shamala stood there imprisoned. She turned as she heard Lucy, soft-footed, behind her.

She was a beautiful girl, her colouring not unusual in Newcastle particularly –people from different cultures and places had long come up the river to do business and trade, and there was a big population of dark skinned people from various countries. It was however unusual for such a person to be accepted into a private school as this one was. This was not necessarily that such parents could not afford it – though it was expensive, she knew – it was that schools tended to be for a particular religion and this school was Church of England, so girls from other cultures would not be there. Lucy had never spoken to Shamala and had no idea what to say.

‘I’m Lucy Charlton. Would you like to come inside?’

Shamala glanced briefly at her and then went back to watching the river or whatever else it was she found so fascinating beyond the gate. This was most unusual. Younger girls usually did as they were told.

‘It’s a lot warmer there.’

Shamala didn’t move.

‘I love the river,’ Lucy said. ‘Did you live by the river where you come from?’

The girl nodded. ‘I loved it too,’ she said.

‘And you miss it?’

‘Every day of my life.’

She didn’t move and Lucy decided to stay with her.

‘I just wondered if you were all right, you seem to spend a lot of time alone.’

‘My English is not good.’

This was not true, Lucy knew. She had seen Shamala pretending that she didn’t understand, but she thought the girl was bright and knew exactly what was being said, even though her accent was very strange.

‘Are you happy?’ Lucy prompted, but all she gained from this was a shrug. Shamala went on watching the river as though it was her last hope. ‘I live just along from here. My father’s a solicitor,’ Lucy offered. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Malaya.’

‘I don’t know anything about Malaya.’

A dreamy look came into the girl’s eyes and her face was full of sorrow.

‘It was my home.’

To Lucy, she sounded so sad – as though she had no home any more, any other place where she could be something she wanted to be.

‘My mother died there when I was small. My father more recently.’

‘I’m so sorry about that.’ Lucy had no idea what it felt like to have your parents die, but she couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘It must be awful for you.’

‘I don’t remember him very well. I left there when I was seven. I lived with my mother until then but she died. After that I was sent away.’

She sounded so bitter.

‘Why?’ Lucy didn’t want to ask so many questions, but she didn’t see that she could get any further.

‘It is the custom,’ she said. ‘Children come back because of disease and because their parents desire education for them.’

‘So you went to live with your aunt?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Only after my father died. He had apparently left no instructions and my aunt seemed to think I would do better here, living with her and coming to school than my previous place, Snowsfield.’

‘Your aunt lives in Jesmond?’

The girl said nothing. The bell for afternoon lessons went at that point and Shamala got up.

‘I must go. We have religion.’ Her mouth twisted slightly at the idea. Everyone else called it Scripture, and Lucy thought that Shamala’s way of describing it showed her contempt for the subject, but Shamala said no more, just walked away.

Lucy had to change and go to hockey, but her attention was with the girl. What was it like to go through so much pain, to lose both your parents and your home and be sent to somewhere that seemed so unreal, so foreign to you that you were out of place? And she had thought she could help, when she knew nothing of such things. How stupid of her, how shortsighted. Shamala probably despised her, if she thought about her at all.

*

The next day was Saturday. Nothing was planned at Lucy’s home. Her father went to the office as usual until lunchtime and her mother and sister, Gemma were planning on going shopping, so Lucy went to her father’s office when she judged that he would have finished anything important that he might be working on.

She loved his office and longed for when she might be old enough to help him there. As a child she had thought she was helping, but now she knew better. However, she
could
help him feed people in cold weather, and that was what he was doing at midday today. He had opened a soup kitchen nearby and was busy there. Nobody was turned away. No wonder her mother complained that they never had any money, her father was so concerned for others he spent everything he could and perhaps more to help. Lucy was proud of him.

She went across the road to the Church Hall where she knew she would find him, and there he was, in the main body of the hall. The women were in the kitchen, Lucy could hardly see them for steam and it was hot in there. The smells were of carrots, onions and leeks, broth and of bread just come warm from the oven.

She joined him and he smiled at her and looked over at the people congregated at the long narrow tables. Every seat was taken.

‘Are you almost finished here?’ she asked him, ‘I need to talk to you.’

He put an arm around her. She didn’t like to think she was his favoured child, but it was so. Her mother clearly preferred Gemma, and her father was there for her.

‘What is it? Have you come last in recitation?’ He was joking, of course.

‘We have this girl at school – Shamala Henderson.’

‘You mentioned her to me.’

‘Did I?’

‘When she first got there. You were concerned, she was so different.’

‘She is, and Miss Sheane is worried about her and has asked me to look after her if I can but I don’t know what to do.’

‘I think from what you said that she may have a particular problem,’ her father said, but he wasn’t looking at her so Lucy could tell nothing from his face. He let go of her and she followed him beyond the room into the hall where he took his coat, hat, scarf and gloves off the peg and donned them, then said –

‘I think your friend may be of mixed race, and almost undoubtedly her father was not married to her mother.’

This had not occurred to Lucy.

‘How did you work that out, you haven’t met her?’ she asked.

‘She would not have been treated as she has if she were respectable.’

‘She says a lot of children are treated the way she was.’

‘Yes,’ her father allowed, and then he shook his head as she had seen him do when he had some particularly difficult decision to make about a case he was working on. ‘But I think you will find that it’s so.’