The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (17 page)

Lucy apologized to Edgar later, but he only said, ‘You judged it well. You and Mrs Formby had the tone just right, even though it shouldn’t have come to that.’

Lucy and Edgar spent most of the rest of the day at the police station, while Mr Palmer was asked to come and identify the woman he had sold the petrol to. The police brought several shabbily dressed women in from the street for a lineup.

Lucy was worried, even though to her the women all looked exactly alike – Edgar was right, they were poor and shabby and Lucy was ashamed that she lived in such a place. Somewhere apparently rich from its empire but let its people remain so poor that they lived these desperate lives.

Mr Palmer, when he saw the line-up, shook his head and
said it could have been any of them, that he hadn’t taken much notice. One of the policeman said sarcastically that it couldn’t be something that happened every day, selling a can of petrol to any woman, never mind one as poor as this. Mr Palmer said he wasn’t given to asking people what they wanted a can of petrol for and that he had never said who the woman was, he had never seen her before in his life, he didn’t know what she looked like and he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, bringing him here like this.

The policeman asked Mr Palmer what on earth he thought the woman wanted the petrol for, but Mr Palmer had clearly had enough by then, saying his wife had had his dinner ready for the past two hours. He didn’t go asking questions of people as long as they paid for the petrol, he considered it was none of his damned business. The policeman said there was no need for him to swear, they were just doing their duty, and that was when Edgar said in a very loud but polite voice that he thought they had no need to keep Mrs Formby now, for they had no evidence to link her with the burning down of the house.

They were able to take Mrs Formby home – well, next door – and the children clustered around her, all but Tilda. When they had settled down Mrs Formby went outside and cried in the cold rain. Lucy went after her and took the woman into her arms.

‘They thought I could do such a thing, even though he was such a bugger! I’m sorry to swear,’ she said and then broke away. ‘Thank you, Miss Charlton, I won’t forget what you did.’

‘They had no case against you. They’re just not very clever and they don’t understand.’ She wanted to say that they didn’t care about women and that thousands of wives suffered at their husbands’ hands every day, but she couldn’t. ‘They had to find somebody who’d done it after they discovered the petrol can.’

‘What if somebody does it again?’

‘They won’t,’ Lucy said, much more confidently than she felt. ‘Your husband must have been the target, it couldn’t have been you. Maybe he had behaved badly to someone else – one of his friends at the pub or such.’

‘I never wished him dead, you know, Miss Charlton, but I did sometimes think that if he’d just gone away that would have done. Maybe me wishing him away like that caused it.’

‘It couldn’t have,’ Lucy said flatly. ‘Don’t you ever feel guilty. You did nothing wrong, you tried to do everything you could; you worked hard, gave him children, looked after him and them and you didn’t blame him, not once. Don’t spoil the rest of your life with it.’

Joe wrote to Toddy. He didn’t want to, but he knew it was the right thing to do. He apologized for his behaviour. He didn’t feel sorry for what he had done, but Toddy would never help him unless they came to some reasonable kind of understanding. Joe became more and more convinced that Angela would go back there, Toddy being in London, and he needed Toddy on his side when she came home.

Where else would she go? She didn’t know where he was, she could not come looking for him, and in spite of the fact that she knew her father did not want her there, if she was alive, with or without the baby, then she would go home. If not, she would at least contact Toddy if she needed money – which surely she must.

He put inside the letter to Toddy an envelope containing a letter to Angela, one he’d spent a good deal of time composing late at night. He felt nearer to her then, as though they were speaking to one another. He told her how sorry he was and how much he loved and missed her. He told her about the tower house in an almost humorous way. He told her about the cats, for Angela loved cats. Once he had started writing to her he couldn’t stop. He told her all the day-to-day
things, about how he had started work, about the search he was going to continue for Priscilla Lee and how he would do anything to have her back, he’d go anywhere. He missed her, needed her, wanted her, loved her more than ever.

Joe only sent the one letter inside Toddy’s envelope. He didn’t think Toddy would open a letter which was not addressed to him – Toddy was too much the gentleman for that –but there was no point in sending all the letters to Angela Joe wrote night after night when he couldn’t sleep.

He kept them and reread them and imagined Angela sending letters back to him, but most of all he thought of her coming home and being forgiven by her family. For then Toddy would let her know where he was and they would be reunited.

He half expected that Toddy would not reply and indeed nothing happened for about three weeks. Then he got a letter.

Joe was glad to be forgiven, he needed Toddy there. He wanted to go haring back to London, but there didn’t seem to be any point. Toddy was well known and liked, and his circle of friends and acquaintances was huge. Joe knew that he could not have asked anyone better, Toddy having always loved his sister, to help him now.

Toddy also told Joe that he and Sarah were expecting their first child. Joe was jealous – they were respectable, they were married, they could enjoy the idea and then hopefully the child.

Joe didn’t tell Lucy when he went back to Gateshead to see Mr Firbank. He began to motor up there every few days and
after the first time Mr Firbank recognized him and was glad. Knowing that no one ever went to see him Joe felt the responsibility for the old man. If it was fine they would sit outside and if it was not they would sit by the window and watch the swiftly moving water that was the Tyne. Mr Firbank had lucid times and as he became comfortable with Joe’s presence began to talk to him about Cissie.

‘I lodged with them when I was nobbut a lad, I was sixteen then and they weren’t much more themselves. They wanted to go places and do things. He was never there, he always had these schemes, and he would go off and leave us a lot and never send her any money. I would keep us instead. I didn’t have much of a job those days, but Susie didn’t care for such things. And when she had the little ’un it was such joy. I didn’t know much about bairns before that, but right from the start the little lass was precious to me. When she was about four or so he started to make money and by then I’d long since left the house; he’d thrown me out. So I didn’t get to see Cissie as much as I wanted though sometimes her mam would bring her to me. He was clever, like a chemist, you know, and he got silver out of the mines in a way in which made it easy. He made enough money in the end to go south and pretend he was a gentleman. He was no gentleman. He would do a man down for a ha’penny and he didn’t look after her or the bairn. He wanted to be summat he wasn’t.’

Shortly after this Mr Firbank fell asleep.

The following day Joe made his way back up to Allendale and went to the church and the vicarage. He talked to people, but it was a long time ago, and many had left the area for
all sorts of reasons, mostly because the lead had long since become uneconomical to bring out of the ground. Joe wondered if Mr Firbank had got things wrong. Nobody called Lee had gone off to London with a fortune in silver. The whole thing sounded so unlikely to Joe that he felt he had come to a dead end.

Mrs Formby needed a new house. Lucy tried to talk to Edgar about her not wanting to go far. He looked frustrated.

‘But it’s an awful place,’ he said.

‘Well, it might be to you, but to some of us it’s home, I mean, yes, the houses are falling down and the landlord doesn’t seem to care too much, but surely he has another house the Formbys could live in, somewhere not too far away from the rest of us.’

Luckily it was a Saturday when the landlord came to see the state that the house was in, bringing with him another man who looked to Lucy like a builder. She was able to go out and to talk to them.

The landlord, Mr Manson, told her that he was going to rebuild the house immediately because it would affect those on either side. Lucy asked if he had another house for the Formbys, and said that they would prefer a better house, one which was not damp. She went on to tell him that her house, number three, was also damp – which was when Mr Manson decided that he had other things to do. He walked rapidly away, but Lucy ran after him and pulled at his arm.

When he turned around to object she said, ‘You have a duty of care to the people you house, not to leave them in such places.’

He looked at her and smiled. It was a horrid smile, Lucy decided, superior and slimy.

‘I have no other house to offer them.’

‘You cannot leave them on the street.’

‘They can stay with the Misses Slaters.’

‘They cannot, it isn’t big enough, and you know very well it isn’t. You must find them somewhere else.’

He didn’t answer. He strode up the street at such a pace that Lucy was obliged to watch him and to tell herself that he would do no more. She walked back. The builder had gone too, clearly also unwilling to take the responsibility.

She found out where the landlord lived, so angry when she heard it was one of the pretty houses up at the top of Claypath. That evening, when she reasoned it was late enough for him to be home, she took the hill quickly with rapid strides and rang the bell so loudly that it sounded inside.

A youngish woman, she guessed Mrs Manson, answered the door – though Lucy reasoned they could easily have afforded help. The woman was very formally dressed for an evening as though she might be going somewhere.

‘My name is Lucy Charlton. I would like to see Mr Manson please.’

‘We’re about to have our tea.’

‘It will only take a minute,’ Lucy said. As she stepped forward the woman automatically stepped back and suddenly she was inside.

Everything was new in there, sparkly as though Mr Manson were still proving to the world who he was. The woman went off into one of the big side rooms and Lucy could hear murmurs. Mr Manson came into the hall, frowning. In the smaller space of the hall he looked bigger than he had done in Rachel Lane.

‘What do you want?’ he said.

‘I want you to find a decent house for Mrs Formby and her children. You cannot put them out onto the street. Presumably the house was insured, you will have money—’

‘Young woman, this has nothing to do with you—’

‘Indeed it has,’ Lucy said. ‘I live next door with the Misses Slaters. We have two small bedrooms. We cannot look after another five people—’

‘Then you will have to make some other arrangement.’

‘You will have to make some other arrangement,’ Lucy said. ‘They were your tenants, they paid their rent. You can’t just put them on the street.’

‘I am doing what I can.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ Lucy said, holding the man’s angry gaze with her own. ‘Don’t you care about the people in your houses? Doesn’t it matter that many of those houses are badly maintained, that they are damp and insanitary and that they will fall down and when they do it will cost you a great deal more money than putting them right now would? You must have other houses, don’t you?’