The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (12 page)

Joe did love the sea; the estate in Northumberland was his favourite place. One thing now, he was not that far away. He could go there for comfort, even though it was up for sale. That might make it difficult. He didn’t know about going back. Could you ever do so and think of the future? He didn’t think so.

He didn’t know what hour it was that he became aware of a strange noise. He kept rigid, his soldier’s training still in him, but it was quite a small noise and it was not aggressive in any way. He turned over carefully in bed. The curtains were not closed and the moon cast its beams across the sky.
There on the table beside his bed, next to his glass of water, he could see a large ginger-and-white tomcat, lapping the drink from his glass. It didn’t seem at all disconcerted and was aware of him watching. It turned its green–gold eyes upon him for a brief moment and then carried on.

Joe was entranced. He watched until it had drunk its fill and then it yawned and touched a white-tipped paw upon the bedclothes and, as though it happened every night, delicately moved down towards him. The cat looked at him as though they had known one another for a very long time and then curled up beside him and began a loud purring. Seconds later its body moved up and down regularly in sleep. Joe envied that. He wished he could fall asleep so promptly.

It was warm with the cat sleeping there. Its body was like a small furnace. He watched the fire grow less and less; he listened to the sound of the cat’s rhythmic breathing and even thought he could discern the sound of the river and that it kept the same time as the cat’s breath. He was only vaguely aware of himself dropping off the face of consciousness. He had not slept as well as that in years.

*

Joe took the train to Northumberland. He somehow couldn’t rest until he saw the estate which he had loved. He didn’t think anybody would begrudge him a look round, a few enquiries. He got off the train at Alnwick and found a taxi. It wasn’t far, just a couple of minutes to the coast. He and Angela had often ridden the horses to the beach and walked them in the water.

He paid the driver at the entrance. The huge gates were closed, the gatehouse empty. So was the house. At the nearby village, which at one time had belonged to the family, there seemed to be nobody about.

He walked a little further. Memories rushed him. This had been his favourite place of all, the houses just above the beach, the little cobles in blue and white and black pulled up beyond the reach of the incoming tide, the tall spiky grass which held the sand dunes together. The tide was coming in now, its impact crashing up the sand, and it brought back a thousand happy times.

Joe banged on the door of a cottage in the middle of the village. He had tried to persuade himself that it would be all right here, but now he was afraid that his friend would not be there. He waited only moments before a man of about his own age opened the door.

‘Tam!’ Joe almost flung himself at the other man and then remembered that in the north you didn’t – well, you didn’t in most places – but he had worried that Tam was hurt, though he had heard nothing. To see him just as he had always been, tall and upright with bright ginger hair, took Joe aback.

Tam stood, transfixed for a few seconds, and then his face broke into the wide grin that Joe remembered so well.

‘Ah, lad,’ he said, ‘you made it,’ as though Joe had been away for just a few days.

He ushered Joe inside. He lived with his parents, at least he had, but the inside of the cottage seemed empty except for all the usual things which Joe remembered – the furniture and the fire and the smell of good cooking. As Joe
wandered further inside he heard a noise and a tall pretty woman came forward carefully.

‘This is my wife, Bet. Bet, this is Joe.’

Joe remembered her as a child of his age; he hadn’t known her well, but she was from the village and had always been there. He was so glad to find something as he wanted it.

‘My mam and dad gave us the cottage,’ Tam said. ‘They went off to Rothbury to live.’ He said this as though it were a thousand miles away and not still in the same county. ‘My mam was born there and my dad isn’t too fit any more so they went to stay with her family.’

‘Are you fishing?’

‘What else would I be doing? I didn’t know you were back.’ Tam hesitated. ‘We heard about your dad. Awful. And the house is up for sale.’

Joe nodded.

‘We heard about Miss Toddington too.’

Joe didn’t know what to say to that, but of course they would know everything. His father had loved this place best and it would be the biggest loss; people around would have been told what was happening. Joe wished the gossip had reached France. Somehow things never worked out.

Joe couldn’t meet their eyes. He shook his head. ‘Did you know she ran away?’

Tam didn’t answer. Joe finally lifted his gaze to discover his friend had a questioning look on his face.

‘Is that what you’re doing here? You thought she might come to us? Ah, Joe, I’m so sorry. I wish she had. The folk around here consider themselves yours.’

It was one of the sweetest things anybody had ever said to him, and Joe had to look away once again.

Bet bustled off to make tea. Joe and Tam stepped outside. Joe was still blinking hard and considering Coquet Island, which gleamed off to the left, not far out to sea, as though he were counting every seagull.

‘Stay here with us,’ Tam said.

‘After what I did?’

Tam snorted. Then he muttered something about ‘bloody Londoners’ which Joe didn’t take personally.

‘I can’t believe the place is to be sold. Probably to some bugger who knows nowt about country ways,’ Tam said. ‘Howay, man, we’d love to have you.’

There were shells at Joe’s feet. Angela had taken them home with her, to remind her, she had said, of the place she loved best. He picked up a handful and shoved them into his trouser pocket.

*

Joe went back to Durham, deciding that he would try to find out who Priscilla Lee had been. It gave him something to do; it took his mind off Angela now that he could think of nowhere she might be. Northumberland had been the last possibility.

He didn’t know whether Miss Lee had been Catholic or Church of England. There was also Presbyterian around here, the Salvation Army and at least two branches of the Methodist Church. He went to the nearest church, St Nicholas’s in the marketplace, but there were no records of her. He tried the Catholic church, St Godric’s, slightly out of town, halfway up North Road, but there was nothing there either.

Each day Joe tackled a different church. He went to St Cuthbert’s further up, in case she had preferred that one, the Methodist church in North Road and then the one in Old Elvet. He learned quite a bit about the old city and its workings as he scoured the churches and graveyards for any sign of this woman. He trod up narrow cobbled alleys leading to the cathedral or down on to the river. He walked the towpaths on either side and followed the little winding streets.

The walking itself made him feel a little better. He could concern himself in something which might have a good outcome, whereas his searchings for Angela were run through with the horrible idea that she could be dead.

He couldn’t look further for her here and, although he often awoke in the night and wanted to run back to London, when the mornings came he told himself over and over that he had searched everywhere he could. Further investigating would not help because he was blind as to where to go. At least being out of London he did not see people walking around the house where he had been born and brought up, considering whether they would buy it. He knew that if anything happened Mr Barrington would contact him; he knew where he was staying.

And so the search for Miss Lee went on, although he still hadn’t worked out what she had to do with him.

He went to the hospital in North Road and made enquiries amongst the doctors. The medical people were grudging, but Joe made himself charming and told a good story about how he thought she had been his aunt and left him such a wonderful house and he would be glad to know that she
was sleeping peacefully. While this got him entry to a good many surgeries there was no information available.

After that he tried to talk to the people who lived nearby. Across the river were the big buildings belonging to the church and the university. Behind him up the steep slope the people who lived in the houses with long gardens were not Joe’s near neighbours, but there was one terrace of poor people not far beyond his house. It was probably, Joe thought – having by now some idea of the city and where the poorest people lived – a series of terraces which went up sideways from the river bank, narrow dark alleys between the houses, the kind of thing he wouldn’t want to go near on a dark night.

The nearest terrace to him, the only one where he could call the people his neighbours, was Rachel Lane. Starting with the far end, Joe banged on each door in turn, but found little positive response. At the first two houses nobody answered even though he had waited until when people may have returned from work. At the third house the large man on the doorstep told him to ‘bugger off’ and slammed the door. Joe worked his way along. One woman listened and then closed the door. A small child answered another and didn’t understand what he was talking about. He had almost got to the end when he found a middle-aged, rather elegant lady smiling at him from beyond the step.

When he explained that he had moved into the tower house she said, ‘Yes, indeed, do come in, Mr Hardy,’ and then she called along for the other lady and Joe stepped inside.

Their dress was poor, the house itself was almost but not quite falling down and the furniture they had was very good,
solid wood, shining with polish, which kept the smell of damp at bay. The two downstairs rooms were cluttered with books and ornaments. She guided him into the sitting room and then her sister appeared. They sat down and Joe told them he was searching for the woman who had owned the tower house before him. They looked slightly puzzled and glanced at one another.

‘We haven’t been here that long,’ said Miss Slater, ‘but I do remember her quite well. She had cats. Papa didn’t care for cats, and we always had dogs, but the cats didn’t seem to leave the area of the tower house. She was a very quiet woman; shy, I think. We did call and invite her to tea and though she was very polite she never came. And after that, well, one doesn’t like to impose.’

Miss Slater went off to make tea for Joe. Miss Bethany furrowed her brow when Joe asked if they thought the woman might have gone to their church.

‘I don’t think she attended church,’ Miss Bethany said softly, for this was not respectable. ‘People did talk rather, but since nobody knew her and she went nowhere people assumed that she was not well. She looked very pale whenever she ventured out, which was not often. We didn’t go that way to town and so we didn’t bother very much, though I must say I did feel guilty. Papa always said one should care for one’s neighbours and though it isn’t always easy one must try.’

Miss Slater came back with the tea. Joe didn’t really like tea much, but since it covered a great number of social pressures he accepted the white-and-pink-flowered cup and saucer and thanked them. When the tea was drunk and he had politely
declined any more Miss Slater said she thought she should take him to see her neighbour, Mrs Formby, because Mrs Formby had lived in Durham all her life and would know if there was anything else about her.

She went next door with him and knocked. After a little while a diminutive woman came to the door. Joe had not seen real poverty close up before, but that didn’t stop him from recognizing it now. She wore clothes so old that they had no colour. She was neatly dressed in her way, but her body was fleshless and her face had fallen in from lack of good food. Her hair was iron-grey, though Joe didn’t think she could be more than forty. She didn’t ask him in, but she came outside and stood against the door as though barring it. Yet she was helpful enough and seemed impressed with Joe.

Her eyes fairly shone on him and she called him ‘bonny lad’, which Joe very much appreciated. But she didn’t know Miss Lee either, just that the woman didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t look at anyone for as long as Mrs Formby had lived here, which was several years. Before that she lived in Giles-gate, she told Joe, which was not that far away.

There were raised children’s voices in the house as though there was some dispute and Mrs Formby had to go back inside. Then Miss Slater told him that Mr Formby was not a good man and Mrs Formby was kept very short of money.

Joe thanked them and went home.

*

He tried to settle into his new house as he would in any other, but he felt so far away from everything which was familiar. He had taken to carrying some of his father’s letters around
in his pockets. He knew it was silly, but it brought him comfort. He read the first two letters often and over until he knew them almost off by heart, and he was afraid to move on to the second, afraid that his father might have learned to despise him or even hate him and that he would rant at him and destroy all that the first letter had given him. But when he sat down by the fire and opened the third it was written from the time his father had been up to the house in Northumberland. It hurt Joe in a different way to hear how things were there.