The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (2 page)

He got hold of her arms, held her hands behind her back and opened the dressing gown she wore. He slid one hand inside her nightgown and onto first one breast and then the other. Her body went into shock, she was so repulsed. She screamed but he had his mouth on hers so that she was silenced. He put his tongue deep into her mouth. Panicking, her legs working against him, Lucy fought.

Out there in the street, in the black of night, he lifted her to him. She was so slight from university food, she found herself panting with the frantic attempt to break free. He held her up, pushed his cruel fingers between her flailing legs and then he went into her. Lucy wanted to scream with pain and shock, but he placed his hard hand over her mouth so that there was no sound.

She did not know how long this invasion went on. Under the strong hand she cried and sobbed as he hurt her. The water fell from her eyes, the snot from her nose, the spit brimmed from her lips and ran down her chin. Inwardly she begged him to stop the pain, the burning, the way that
he seemed to eat her body, but he kept on and on until she grew weaker and the defeat turned her body limp. Soon he was holding her to stop her from falling.

Some vile eternity later he came out of her. She moaned with pain again under his hand, his body relaxed and then he let her loose. She couldn’t stand, she was shivering, shaking and there was a disgusting sticky moisture between her legs. She was so sore that she thought it would never go away. Her body lurched and bent double and then she began to throw up.

‘That serves you right. You nasty little tease. You thought you were so clever,’ Guy said, and then he walked away.

She wanted to run after him, to strike him, but the cold air was piercing her body and she could barely stand. She drew down her nightdress and shivered. When she had finished being sick her mouth felt as vile as the rest of her and she sobbed against the wall of the house while the river flowed on regardless.

The crying went on and on until she thought it would never stop, so it was just as well that nobody else was there, that nobody but the night could hear her. She pulled the dressing gown around her. Her face was bitter and stinging with tears and the wind on the river pulled at her to come to it, to come and not to think about anything ever again. The water looked so dark and comforting; she loved the rhythm of how it moved, how it swelled and went on in its relentless quest towards the North Sea. She was sure that it would be warm once you grew used to it.

The house was behind her. When she turned, the door stood ajar, beckoning. She managed to reach the sanctuary
of it. Once inside she essayed the stairs, crawling on all fours in order to get further up. She saw the entrance to her room. She made her way across the floor and went inside. She lay there until she was so chilled that she knew she must get up and when she did she reached the bed and it was all she could do. She lay down and slept, but it was not for long. The hurt between her legs brought her back to consciousness again and again.

She lit a candle by the small light that came through the window. She never drew the curtains; she didn’t like to shut out the night and the river. She poured water into a bowl and found the soft sponge she liked so much and she put it between her thighs. It came away red and she sobbed again. The water was cool rather than cold and of some comfort. She took the towel and held it there and then she went back to the bed. She was exhausted now, and so shocked that she knew she would sleep. She was grateful to reach the comfort of mattress and pillows. She pulled the blankets over her and though she cried she could feel herself heading down the long passage towards sleep.

*

She awoke in the grey light and remembered. At first she thought it had been a dream, but she was still in pain so she was obliged to dismiss this thought with huge regret. It had happened. She lay there, trying to take in the fact that Guy had forced her the day before he married her sister. It couldn’t have happened – but it had.

It must have been later than Lucy had imagined because the next moment she heard Gemma bounce into the room, talking of how pretty the day was – the sun was shining, had she seen it? That was a good omen.

She came over to the bed. Lucy couldn’t move, she ached so much. Gemma stared down at her.

‘You’re very pale. You aren’t ill? Not on my wedding day, surely.’

‘I was sick in the night,’ Lucy said. She didn’t open her eyes; she didn’t want to see her sister.

‘You look awful.’ Gemma sat down on the bed. Lucy moved as far away as she could. Her mind was racing. What could she do, what could she say, could she get somehow away from her without making obvious what had happened? She must. She could not ruin her sister’s wedding day with such stupid things. And then all the horrors of the night came back in detail and she squeezed her eyes tighter against sudden tears.

An overwhelming desire to be sick came upon Lucy at that point. When she began to heave Gemma ran for the ewer which held the water for washing. Her sister stared into it. Lucy knew that it was bloody.

‘Oh my God,’ her sister said, and then Lucy was sick on the bed, over the bedclothes and everywhere. She retched when there was nothing left to come up. Gemma looked accusingly at her.

‘How can you be ill today?’ she said.

‘It’s nothing, really,’ Lucy managed.

‘Is it your monthlies?’ Gemma said hopefully. ‘No wonder you feel bad. I’ll get Mother to make ginger tea. That always makes me feel better.’

‘I’m fine, really. I’ll get up in a minute.’

Gemma went out. For a few moments there was peace and then Lucy heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and her mother’s breathing. She came briskly into the room.

‘I’ve brought you some hot water and ginger. Sit up.’

Lucy couldn’t somehow. Her mother deposited the jug of water on the marble-topped washstand and came over, clicking her tongue at the mess on the bed.

‘You’d better get out and I’ll strip it,’ she said. ‘You can’t be comfortable like that.’ Her mother swept aside the bed-clothes, saw the towel and the blood and the sticky moisture which Lucy had thought was washed away and was silent for a few moments. She studied her daughter carefully, she looked at her for a long time, and then she said in a strange stilted tone, ‘What is this, Lucy?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing.’ Her mother sat down heavily on the bed and said, ‘Have you had a man in here? Is there some lad you haven’t told us of and you and him have been sinful together last night – is that it?’

Lucy didn’t answer. She kept her eyes closed; somehow she thought that would help.

‘Tell me,’ her mother insisted. When Lucy had said nothing for what seemed like a long time she said, ‘Do you want me to get your father up here so that you can tell him instead?’

Lucy thought of her father not being well, of how he hesitated over getting up from the table, how he could not think of what he was trying to say and how hard he laboured to appear as he should, and she couldn’t think of the words to allay her mother’s fears.

‘Who is it?’ her mother said. ‘You’ve been hiding things from us. I knew no good would come from letting you go like that to be educated beyond your expectations. Is it some
shiftless lad from Durham, or some educated fool who knows no better?’

Lucy found her voice. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Then who is it?’

‘Nothing happened except what always happens.’ Lucy tried for normality in her voice but it didn’t deceive her mother.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ her mother said and for the first time that Lucy could remember her mother slapped her face. She did it in a hard determined way as though it would send the words out of her daughter. Lucy’s head swung back and her head, neck and cheek hurt. She was so shocked that she complied.

‘It was Guy,’ she said.

She heard her mother’s intake of breath. ‘What?’ she said.

Lucy didn’t think her mother wanted to hear it again. Her mother needed time and space to recover, as though anything would be the same again, or right. How could everything be fine one day and the next the whole wretched sky had fallen and everything was ruined? She couldn’t believe it, even now.

Her mother towered over her, bigger than she had been before, blotting out the sun.

‘Why would you say such a thing,’ her mother said, ‘when Gemma is all set to be happy? Do you want to ruin everything because she has landed such a man and you have not? He is a real gentleman, not some stupid student who doesn’t know his backside from his elbow. Not that you managed to find anyone who would suit; not that you ever would. It must have been some daft lad with glasses and no
more sense. Who was it, Lucy? You tell me now. Who is the lad you haven’t mentioned? Somebody unsuitable? Somebody clever from a poor background? I wouldn’t put it past you.’

When Lucy didn’t respond her mother began to hit her around the head and face and neck and shoulders such as she never had before and as though she would never stop. Lucy sobbed as the blows came.

‘How could you be so disrespectful and so unloving towards your sister as to say such a thing – and now, of all days?’

‘He made me do it,’ Lucy said, ‘he forced me!’

She tried to burrow beneath the covers as her mother went on hitting her. She was not prepared for the door opening again and Gemma coming in. ‘What on earth is wrong?’ Gemma shouted. ‘Stop hitting her.’

‘She’s been with some man and she hasn’t even the decency to tell me who he was—’ Her mother stopped short and then she said in a wavering voice, ‘She says it’s Guy, that he made her do it. She is a liar – she is no daughter of mine. She let somebody have her.’

‘She what?’ Gemma said. Her mother pushed aside the bedclothes completely and most of Lucy’s ragged nightwear, and Gemma stared.

‘Mother, she’s covered in bruises—’

‘Some women like it that way. Some stupid lad from Durham University has been sinful here in our own house with her. I knew she would get things wrong. I knew we should never have let her go. It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.’

Her mother flung from the room, sobbing and wailing, crying at such a rate that Lucy was astounded. There was a lawyer part of Lucy that said her mother should not have told Gemma. It could not help now.

‘Is this true?’ Gemma said, voice quavering.

A slight hope rose in Lucy. Was Gemma ready to believe her? At last, sanity of a kind, and yet what would their future be?

‘I heard noise and I went outside—’

‘What were you doing outside when I had said goodnight?’ Gemma asked her. ‘What could you possibly be doing out there at such a time?’

‘I was just finding out what was happening—’

‘You miserable liar,’ her sister said. ‘Guy would never have done such a thing. You have made this up and there has been another man, perhaps anybody that you could find on the street – with your looks you might be that desperate – and you were so jealous that you wanted to make me unhappy. How could you do it? Didn’t you see that I had to marry, that one of us had to, and that you never would? You begrudge me a decent man because you are so skinny and plain and all you’ve got is your stupid ideas. You are jealous. You don’t want me to leave here and yet how can I stay when my parents need me to marry well because it’s all they’ll ever have.’

Gemma was crying. Lucy started to think that the river could not have so much water as had been spilt here in the past few hours.

‘Because I’m so much bonnier than you,’ her sister said.

She sat up. She must convince Gemma that she could not marry such a man.

‘You can’t do this, Gem.’ The use of the old childhood name would surely help, but it made Gemma dry-eyed and furious, Lucy could soon see. ‘He’s not who you think he is,’ she continued. ‘Not if he would do such a thing to your sister.’

‘You so obviously thought he might,’ Gemma said, with terrible calm, ‘that you went out and offered yourself to him so openly in your nightwear. But he didn’t. I know him well and, whoever you had here, you should not say such dreadful things. Don’t you see what you have done to us?’

‘Gemma—’

‘I will not listen to it a moment longer. Guy is a gentleman and he loves me, and you have no one to love you because you are a horrible person, ugly and skinny and stupid. I’m sorry that you have not the ability to bring a man to you except by disgusting means. I’m so sorry for you, I really am.’ Gemma turned and ran from the room.

Soon afterwards her father came in. He shuffled as though he didn’t want to be there and she didn’t blame him for that. She wanted to be back in Durham, or anywhere rather than here, rather than now. He coughed as he always did when he was worried, embarrassed or upset and she remembered how she had watched him struggling the previous day to appear as normal when he was not well. He appeared much older than he had looked the last time she had seen him. He had put on ten years.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ he said. ‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing. Nothing, really.’

She had to make him believe her. The tears ran freely down her face and somehow she was ashamed as though
it were her fault. She had gone over and over it. Was it her fault? Had she really gone out there because she wanted him, because she was jealous he was marrying her sister? It was true that he was rich and handsome and charming and all the things that a man should be when you were marrying him, and she had envied Gemma in some ways, but it had not in a long time been something she wanted for herself. It was not her road, not her fate.

What she wanted was to be there with her father in the office and for him to admire her and for them to go forward together – so that if he really was ill then she could help, she could aid all her family and they would be proud of her and all be together as they were meant to be. When she finished in Durham she would come back in triumph as a junior solicitor and her father would introduce her to his most valued clients with pride in his voice, saying, ‘And this my daughter, Lucy, who is to become a solicitor – and it will be Charlton and Charlton.’ She dreamed of it, in gold, on the windows of the office. She had dreamed of it for so long.