The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (11 page)

‘I have come to pick up some keys,’ Joe told him when they got to that stage. ‘For Tower House, I think it’s called.’

The man shuffled away behind the desks and filing cabinets and opened various drawers. After he had gone through what seemed to be everything that might possibly hold a set of keys he disappeared into the back.

Joe could hear him say, ‘Miss Charlton, I can’t find the keys for Tower House and the owner’s just turned up.’

There was a short wait and then a tall skinny young woman with outrageous hair – the nearest colour he had
ever seen to carrots, and completely out of control, although she had obviously tried hard to contain it with grips and pins which were clearly visible, holding it forcibly away from the cream complexion of her freckled face – came to him, smiling from generous lips.

In an educated and understandable though northern-toned voice she said, ‘I’m so sorry, we can only find one key. Perhaps it will do for now and I will make sure that you have the others within days. Will that be all right, sir?’

She was somehow not what he had been expecting and it made him want to attempt frivolous conversation for the first time in years. He didn’t know what to say to her. He had never seen eyes that looked like that. They were so dark green that they were almost black. He had heard that the best emeralds were the same.

He never looked at young women. Angela had been his only love and for him other women did not exist, but there was something special about this girl. She looked so frankly, so openly at him that they might have met before, but they hadn’t – he would have remembered.

It was as though the moment he met her some kind of door opened and let daylight inside and it turned her hair to fire. He knew it was stupid, but that was how it felt, as though the corners of his mind were being gently touched, eased away from the old hurts. It was a very odd feeling. He felt also as though he were betraying Angela, even thinking that some other woman was interesting, though he knew now how stupid that was. Angela was the love of his life and no other woman would ever compete.

He smiled and was polite, taking the key which was large and old and hung on a big rusted ring, like something from
a fairy story. He turned away and then back to her, remembering that he had not asked for directions.

‘Do you know where this is?’

‘If you go down to Framwellgate Bridge—’

‘Which one is that?’ Joe said.

‘You go back across this bridge which is Elvet and up into the marketplace, down Silver Street on the left and across the next bridge. At the end of it you go left down the steps onto the towpath and take the left and it’s along there, just before you get as far as where the cathedral stands on the opposite side. There is another way but I don’t wish to confuse you.’

Joe thanked her and left. It was sleeting. Joe wished that it would stop because it was getting harder and harder to see anything. The towpath led off into the greyness of the day and even though the buildings across the river stood way up into the sky he could barely make them out. Various buildings at this side of the river were set back, almost into the town, but they had gardens which led down steeply to the river, as far as he could tell.

There was not another building anywhere near the place that he had inherited. He wasn’t sure he liked that. The building itself was tall and square and so much bigger than he had imagined it might be. He had lived in huge houses all his life and this one should have seemed tiny to him but they had not the downright gravity of this. It scared him. It sat there as if it were trying to be an insult to the other houses or buildings within the city. It was tall enough to fill the sky and angular enough to make you feel dizzy and wide enough so that you couldn’t see what might be behind it. Its stones were huge – some amazingly clever mason must
have chipped at them until they were an exact fit.

It seemed to him to lean at all sides, though it didn’t. It dominated its area, held the very air around it. The river itself might even have hesitated as it made its way to the sea. Such a strange building it was, tall and slim, as if it were reaching for the sky and yet would hold off any opponents that were necessary, he thought. It was proud.

There were stairs up the outside to the first storey and then a stout wooden door and huge shutters which would have locked over the windows. At the top were turrets and, he discovered later, a ladder going up to a trapdoor which opened to the sky, giving you a view from all sides if you needed to see the enemy coming.

The path wound up to the huge arched front door. The sleet was beginning to clear and a pale lemon sun lit the edges of the scene. The key turned and he took hold of the loop of iron which opened the door and went inside.

There was a kind of yell and something shot past his arm and disappeared into the distance. It took him a few moments to recover. It was only a cat.

He closed the door. It was the oddest building that he could recall having been in. It reminded him rather of a lighthouse in the way that it disappeared as it went up, except that there were several rooms leading off the hallway and the winding stairs showed more doors, all closed. God might have known where the cat had been, but he did not. There was no stink of urine, no furballs, no obvious bed on the chairs.

They were in fairly good order, no rips in the velvet, raspberry-coloured fabric to indicate mice – but then with
a cat around there wouldn’t have been. They were big chairs but it was a big room, with a stone fireplace that came to a large V at the top. The walls were partly plastered and partly not, and he couldn’t decide why he liked the contrast of the white walls and the grey stone.

He went into the nearest room and it was furnished, though not well. The furniture was old and though some of it had been good it was suffering from cold and damp. There were books on the shelves, as if someone had just stepped out, but many of them were mildewed, which he thought was a shame.

Joe was beginning to wish that he had asked more about the house, but he had not been curious. Now he was. In that room there was also a bureau that was locked, but he saw a tiny key in a niche just behind it – no doubt that would open it. He went back into the hall and to the room opposite – a dining room. The table showed large white patches on its top and there was only one chair tucked under, although another way back against the wall, as though unused.

This room had glass doors to the outside, the like of which Joe had not often seen except in big houses with conservatories, with some stained glass in triangles and slender oblongs which Joe thought would make coloured lights upon the floor should the sun ever shine there. As he went across the room he could see the cathedral over the river.

It stood there, grey and so imposing that Joe didn’t feel inclined to look at it. First there was the weir and on it stood birds, black with outstretched wings, and herons, grey and white, almost like statues. The river somehow gave off the impression of being wide, a mill on the other side and to the
left the castle, with straight walls, and the cathedral –one of the most impressive buildings in the world, he felt sure, to be raised to God’s glory.

Between the house and the river lay a large front garden with a stone wall around it and a gate. There were trees around the sides of the house with various bushes and grass and flowers – small clusters of red and purple and blue. He went back into the hall, and entered the next room, a sitting room. Rather disappointingly it had no furniture, but it had the same kind of glass doors. This time they led out to the side of the premises, the view angled back towards the bridge. If anyone had wanted to get inside the house it would have been simple to break the glass with a decent-sized stone, but nothing showed that any tramp or thief had been near.

There was also a kitchen at the back, stretched right across the building, a huge vegetable garden behind it and beyond greenhouses and an orchard. He could imagine it thick with pink and white blossom in the spring and covered with pears and apples in the early autumn.

What a pleasure it would be to live here when nature had given up all her fruits, the sweet autumn breezes coming off the river and the leaves floating away downstream like tiny boats towards the sea. Joe had to stop himself; he was not usually given to flights of fancy like that. It was stupid, he thought.

The stairs to the upper storey were dark and went off at an angle, as though drunk, so that he thought the house must be lopsided in some way.

A hall met him and four doors. There were beds in every room, but they were bare, not a mattress or a pillow left to
carry vermin, nothing but the sturdiness of bedframes and then some wardrobes, empty. There were also chairs and a dressing table in one room, but the drawers were empty, including the middle drawer which had a lock but was not locked and revealed no contents.

Above was a third storey with another four rooms, all completely empty. The views on every side stretched far away beyond the small city, here and there showing a light at some remote house or tiny farm.

He went back downstairs after that, and outside. At the far end of the garden was a building containing coal and sticks stacked almost to the ceiling. A goodly amount of logs revealed itself outside under a huge tarpaulin. He picked up a log; it was light and dry, and smelled sweet, like apples or pears. The wood must have been there for years.

Later that day Joe went shopping. He ordered a large mattress, and pillows, sheets, pillowcases, blankets and a quilt of duck feathers. And towels, when he remembered these.

Joe told the shop exactly how to deliver, that they could get close to Prebends Bridge which he had discovered was the nearest to the house. They agreed that they would carry what he wanted from there to the house. Once he paid he then bought foodstuffs, carrying those himself, just enough for a day or two – it was not so far that he could not go into town the next day, and he thought it was all so much easier than France had been, and somehow a relief from London as he had found it. He was still not sure he wanted to be there, but he told himself if he didn’t want to stay he didn’t have to. He could go back to London and continue the search for
Angela. This was just a distraction for the time being and probably meant very little.

He unlocked the door. There was the squeal again as a cat shot past him, a different cat this time, Joe thought, a tabby or a tortoiseshell.

Joe knew nothing of cats, beautiful or otherwise, and he certainly didn’t want them anywhere near the house. As far as he knew cats always lived in stables, where they disposed of mice and whatever else came their way. Though he had found no evidence of cats living inside the house, no food, no leavings – nothing to suggest that a cat had been there. He couldn’t understand it.

He brought in sticks and wood from the outbuilding and quite enjoyed laying the fire. When he put a match to it Joe felt more at home than he had done in years.

He sat over the kitchen fire for a few minutes, watching it, and when the cart came with the ordered goods he carried it all himself because they wouldn’t help despite their promises. He made up the bed and carried wood and sticks and coal up to the bedroom, though at first he didn’t think he would light the fire there tonight. But the sun set so soon he found himself putting a match to it, thinking for the first time how far north he was.

He went back outside in the complete darkness of the late afternoon, standing and looking at how huge the cathedral was. It scared him.

It had been there for seven hundred years. He thought about how even when men and women and children had lived in hovels the cathedral had been built here. He knew from the northern soldiers he had met in France that here
the men and their families had suffered from poverty and neglect. They had coughed up blood from their lungs from bringing coal, silver and lead out of the earth for other men’s gain and other women’s jewels, and they had died and their women had suffered and their children had gone hungry while the church had been rich and had supported slavery and stripped the lead mines of their silver for its own gain.

Joe wanted to fire things at the huge building then, but he didn’t have any objects to hand and he could not have reached nearly that far. He hated the worship of fear which had inspired it and the idea of deifying anybody or anything as the Church had done. He hated the way that men bowed down to something they did not understand. He hated it all. Millions had died of war and flu and still the cathedral stood.

As he watched, the sky cleared and the stars came out and that was something he recognized. In France the stars had seemed so much nearer to the ground than they did here and now they gathered around the cathedral like worshippers. He half expected them to shoot off in every direction in order to give the cathedral more majesty than it had – although Joe wasn’t sure that would be possible.

He locked the door and went upstairs. The fire was still on in his room. He read the second letter from his father, by lamplight.