The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (15 page)

Mr Firbank’s eyes were so wide with fear now that they might have stotted from his head like billiard balls.

Joe held his gaze and Lucy suddenly felt very uncomfortable. She had the feeling that the man couldn’t move under Joe’s eyes, that he was stuck there like a statue until Joe released him, which was nonsense, she knew. Was this
soldiering? The man’s face had gone so pale that she thought he might faint. He licked his lips and eventually he said, ‘The place is in Gateshead, down by the river. By St Leonard’s church.’

‘There isn’t a church down by the river called St Leonard’s,’ Joe said.

‘It’s something like that.’ The man was nervous now.

‘St Mary’s perhaps?’ Joe said softly.

‘Who are you?’

They left. Lucy’s first reaction was that she didn’t want to go anywhere near Newcastle, but she could hardly say so. She reassured herself that Gateshead was across the river, that they were not going anywhere close to her family, but she worried that she would see her home yet would not be able to go there. She wasn’t sure that she could stand it.

Joe didn’t talk to her and she couldn’t help saying, ‘How did you know the name of the church?’

‘I think it’s St Mary Magdalene,’ he said.

‘You frightened that man,’ Lucy said.

There was something else which worried her. The way that Joe had taken complete possession of the room.

They went through the middle of Gateshead, at least she thought it was, with shops selling shoes and pipes, and ironmongers and brush manufacturers. There was a splendid, grand-looking building, the Metropole Hotel. There were trams and a big shop called Snowball’s, which was a drapers and house furnishers, it claimed.

If Lucy had lifted her eyes after they reached the riverside she would have seen the house where she had spent a happy childhood. Even so, she was in so much mental anguish that
Joe seemed to sense it and looked at her, enquiring whether she was unwell.

She shook her head.

‘You can stay in the car if you want to,’ he said.

She went with him, but averted her eyes to begin with. However, when it came to looking or not looking she chose to look, imagined Guy, Gemma and her parents in the garden, the day being bright. They would all be sitting down to eat and her name would never be mentioned. She didn’t exist there any more.

That was strange to her. She had thought that somehow her life would always remain in Newcastle or that there would always be a part of her, like how buildings remained, but perhaps she had blown away, like the dandelion clock with a wind keening ever so gently and warmly that it did not know it was losing its life. And when the wonderful stems with their lovely heads were bare there was nothing left.

Gateshead was both beautiful and ugly. It was like a poor relation of Newcastle with narrow terraces running down to the river and big buildings erected from industry’s past. Joe took her unerringly to the place he had spoken of and banged on the door. After a short time a woman answered it. She was a nun, wearing a black habit and a white whimple; when he explained his business she smiled slightly and allowed them in.

‘Mr Firbank doesn’t often have visitors. He will be pleased to see you,’ she said.

It was nothing like Lucy had imagined places for mad people. The sun shone through the windows. It was quiet.
The nun led them through big doors and into the garden. There, under a tree and not far from the river, a man sat in a wheelchair. Joe spoke softly to him.

He looked up and smiled, but his eyes were vacant. ‘Angus?’ he said hopefully.

‘No, it’s Joe,’ he said, putting warm fingers into the old man’s hands.

Mr Firbank smiled from eyes that couldn’t see much and then said, ‘Do I know you?’

‘I don’t think we’ve ever met, but I have a house in Durham which I inherited from Miss Lee. I wanted to find out about her and so I found you. How are you?’

‘I like being here. I like the river.’

‘Yes, I like it too,’ Joe said as Lucy sat down where a seat ran around the tree trunk most obligingly. ‘I live on the river in Durham, in the house where Miss Lee lived.’

There was no response.

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Cissie was a bonnie bairn, the bonniest bairn in the world. And she could see.’

‘What could she see?’ Joe said, but the old man just looked at the river. ‘Did she live on the Wear in Durham for a long time?’

The old man said nothing.

‘Mr Firbank, I need to know about her. I don’t know who she is yet she has left me the summer tower house. I’m confused. Please help me.’

Mr Firbank gazed out cross the Tyne. He sat for a long time like that and Joe waited, sitting himself beside Lucy.

Then he moved impatiently. ‘Mr Firbank, I need to know. Mr Firbank …’

The old man still did not respond. Lucy thought he turned just a little further away as though Joe were a particularly tiresome wasp. She put a hand on Joe’s arm. He glanced at her and didn’t say anything. They waited and as they did so the old man fell asleep. Joe got up and walked away.

He stood with his head down. She went to him and again put a hand on his arm. Joe shrugged it off and made as if to go back. She spoke sharply.

‘I think you should leave him alone,’ she said.

Joe glared at her. ‘I have come all this way. I want some answers.’

‘Not from him,’ she said, holding his gaze.

Joe stood still.

‘He’s old and tired and he can’t answer your questions,’ she said. ‘Don’t treat him like this.’

Joe hesitated and then let go of his breath in a sigh.

‘You’re right,’ he said, and went back and sat down just as the old man jolted himself awake. Joe talked to him about the tower house and the river and the old man said that Cissie had been in Durham, that she had come home to the tower house where perhaps people always came when their lives were too much and they could stand no more.

Joe didn’t ask him a single question. He talked about the flowers and herbs in the garden, how the cathedral looked at different times of the day and how he could hear the bells ringing for evensong in the middle of Sunday afternoons. He even conjured people coming from all parts of the town in winter. When it was Christmas they would gather for the
carol services, and from across the river he could hear the sound of the organ playing late in the afternoons. It was so weighty, so majestic; Bach usually, mighty and wonderful.

Joe told him how when he was in France the German and British soldiers sang ‘Silent Night’ on Christmas Eve. He talked of how people went home to their houses in the dark days before Christmas after evensong at the cathedral, how they climbed the seven hills of Durham and made their way homeward in the failing light, and then they toasted crumpets over the fire and smothered them with good rich yellow butter and strawberry jam. He talked about how hot and sweet the tea was and the firelight reflecting round the room in shadows.

When Mr Firbank fell asleep again Joe and Lucy stole away. When they got back to the car she said, ‘If you were never in Gateshead how did you know the name of the church? How did you know how to get there?’

He shrugged. ‘I must have heard it somewhere.’

‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m trying to decide whether she went mad like he did.’

‘And?’

‘That if I’m related to them somehow I’m going to go the same way too. I must be related or she wouldn’t have left it to me.’

‘There are other explanations. She could have been a friend of somebody you knew in the north, not necessarily here. Someone who had nobody to leave it to. Sometimes people do such things because of their memories.’

He looked at her. ‘Do you think so? I see things, I hear things that other people don’t.’

‘We’re all different. Mr Firbank is old now, he has forgotten many things. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with it. He didn’t seem mad to me.’

Joe hesitated and then said, ‘In the house sometimes I see a woman with a small child. I hear music and she sings lullabies.’

‘And who do you think it is?’

He hesitated again.

‘Maybe it’s me and my mother.’

‘But you’d never before been there.’

‘Perhaps it’s what I want. Some place to belong, some family to belong to.’

*

It was almost six o’clock when Joe delivered the car back to Mr Palmer’s Hire Cars. Mr Palmer was in the big building doing something similar to whatever he had been doing when Joe picked up the car.

‘Nicely on time, lad,’ he said.

‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Oh, give it to us next time.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Won’t you want it again?’

‘I probably will.’

‘Well then,’ Mr Palmer said.

‘I’d rather pay you now.’

‘Do you know,’ Mr Palmer said, smiling just a little, ‘you are the first bloke I ever met who wanted to pay before he was asked. What were you during the war?’

‘All kinds,’ Joe said. ‘What about you?’

‘Organizing and digging tunnels,’ Mr Palmer said. ‘I was a
pitman first and we understood such things. Not much different than being down the pit really. But when I came back I thought I had learned a lot in France about vehicles and I was always interested in that kind of thing. So I thought I might start up a business. It doesn’t make a lot of money, but I like doing it. Besides, I have no bairns and my missus doesn’t care. Her mam left us the house and a bit of money, and I have this.’

‘Have you got other cars?’ Joe said.

‘Bits of them,’ Mr Palmer said with another smile.

There were all kinds of cars in pieces around the side and to the back and Mr Palmer talked to him about engines and bodies. Joe felt quite at home there. They went back to the office in the end and there it was a mess. Beyond it were all sorts of spare parts, most of which Joe recognized and the rest he thought he would if he got a chance to study them.

He was emboldened to say to Mr Palmer, ‘You don’t need any help, do you?’

Mr Palmer considered. ‘I might do, but you’ve made me late for me dinner, you know.’

‘I don’t need much,’ Joe said. ‘I just want to learn about such things. I can drive anything. After the war I helped with tanks and different vehicles and learned about how they were put together and pulled apart because they kept breaking down. I know quite a bit about engines too. I’m interested in it; I have thought sometimes that I’d like to build a car.’

‘I like putting them together and taking them apart and so on,’ Mr Palmer said. ‘I have ideas about what goes where.’

‘And perhaps when it doesn’t,’ Joe said.

‘Exactly,’ Mr Palmer said, slapping his knee in his enthusiasm. ‘Summat new would be good, summat ordinary folk – well, some of them – could have. Summat to take them wherever they wanted any time. They could go to the seaside on a whim or to see friends, or if they wanted to work in other places. They could do owt they chose – wouldn’t that be grand?’ Mr Palmer’s face was lit like Oxford Street at Christmas. His vision was so real.

Joe felt a rush of dizzy excitement. In the end he went home with Mr Palmer and met his wife who sat down to tea with them. He and Mr Palmer talked until very late, even when Mrs Palmer gave up and went to bed.

Joe returned the following morning to help Mr Palmer with a number of vehicles he had in the garage and was mending, but they talked more about the ideas they had had themselves. Mr Palmer offered Joe work so that he could have an assistant and they could try to build something new.

Lucy was dreaming of home when she heard a noise. It was a lovely dream. She dreamed of home often, of her father tired and keeping out of the way in his study, of her mother shouting at her in the kitchen and of Gemma crying. But this was a comforting dream, they were all together, happy, and then she heard something. She examined it in her head, hoping that it might be part of what was going on there, but it wasn’t. With a great reluctance she gave in to reality and allowed herself to wake fully in the little back room in the Misses Slaters’ house.

The noise grew louder, people shrieking next door. Her first thought was that Mr Formby was wrecking his family life but no, it was much too late for that, she knew. As the noise went on she heard other sounds in the bedroom next to hers and then Miss Slater’s voice joined by Miss Bethany’s. She came out onto the landing, wearing what had been the sisters’ mother’s best thick dressing gown, and they too emerged with a lamp.

That was when Lucy smelled smoke. Miss Slater guided them downstairs and lit another lamp while Lucy took from her the first one. She went outside onto the towpath and
saw the house next to them burning. She hadn’t seen such a thing before; the smoke was thick and black.