The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (22 page)

Frederick, being a springer spaniel, didn’t care about what the weather held or the time of day or night. Walking was joy to him, and while he sniffed at every bush and tree Joe had the time and space to think. Joe would sometimes solve a problem even before he and Frederick made their way back to the tower house, hoping that Lucy was at home. Otherwise it would be the inevitable ham sanwiches.

Emily Bainbridge, Edgar’s sister, invited Lucy and Joe to dinner. Lucy didn’t understand why. But Emily came to the office to ask.

‘We rarely have dinner parties somehow,’ Emily said, sitting down across the desk from her. ‘Edgar is socially stupid – he talks about his work all the time.’

That made Lucy smile.

‘No, he is,’ Emily said. ‘He works and he comes home. He doesn’t think about me, stuck all day with nothing to do but help Norah or to read and sit by the fire or do horrid things like afternoon calls as though I were ninety. And now …’ her voice dropped just a bit and wavered a little, but Lucy had grown used to listening for such things and heard it, ‘… Norah is going to get married and we have to find somebody new and … it’s all very hard,’ she threw a smile, rather forced, across the desk, ‘so you must come to dinner. I understand from gossip that you know a very interesting young man, Mr Joseph Hardy, and I wondered if you would like me to invite him.’

Lucy was about to disclaim and then thought that would look really bad since they lived in the same house, so she
merely said, ‘That would be nice. I don’t think Joe is invited anywhere.’

‘I don’t know anything about him,’ Emily said, ‘except that from gossip I understand he’s tall, rather handsome and an aristocrat.’

There again Lucy was about to protest and didn’t. She didn’t want Joe to think she was talking about him.

‘He’s very kind,’ she said, and left it at that.

Lucy wasn’t sure that she wanted to go to a dinner party at Edgar’s home. Would there be other people? Would she be obliged to make conversation she wasn’t used to? She had nothing to wear and could not afford a new dress. Somehow it seemed important not to be shabby, but all her money had gone to the Formbys.

That evening she looked through her meagre wardrobe and wished she had not said that she would go. While she was there Miss Bethany came in, and she said, guardedly, ‘We thought you would perhaps care to have this?’ She showed Lucy a dress, dark and formal.

It was red, almost violet, in crushed velvet, quite ornate and possibly not of this time.

‘It was our mother’s,’ Miss Bethany said, as Lucy looked at it, ‘so not what you would want perhaps,’ but Lucy assured her that it was very fine.

‘Our mother was tall like you and very slender, but you mustn’t wear it if you think it inappropriate,’ Miss Bethany said. She left the dress with Lucy.

Lucy put it on. It was the right fit and she thought it rather pretty. It clashed so beautifully with her hair that it made her look just a trifle wild. She wasn’t sure that it would be
right for a dinner party, but if she felt foolish, how would she cope? She could have done with a nice string of pearls and then laughed at herself. She had no jewellery.

She didn’t want to go, she felt so inadequate. She remembered those nights when she had stood at the back of the hotel or place of the dinner dance or ball and how she had never danced.

She duly dressed up and walked downstairs. There stood Joe in evening dress, looking so different and so elegant that she couldn’t speak.

‘You look lovely,’ he said.

She disregarded this and said to him, ‘Where did you get that suit?

‘It’s rather old, I know,’ he said, ‘but I brought it with me from London.’

Lucy wanted to laugh – as though people in Durham were abreast of such things and as though men’s fashions changed so fast. The suit was perfectly tailored and must have cost a fortune. It made him look – she didn’t like to think – like a box of very expensive chocolates.

She recovered and said, ‘As you would, knowing that you would need such things in Durham.’

Joe looked at himself as though surprised. He had suggested they call a cab, but it was a fine night and Lucy thought of the expense. Besides, it was not that far, just down the towpath to the bridge and up the other side. The house stood apart and down a drive, alone. The weeping willows that lined the driveway were wet and dragged at the ground. Lights at the front door led her and Joe to find it, and they knocked on the door and were shown into the hall.

Several people were gathered. The men wore evening dress, though they didn’t look as good as Joe, Lucy thought, and then she realized how stupid that was. Did it matter? The women wore gorgeous dresses and she felt drab and old-fashioned and tall – all the things that she had felt every time she had gone out with her parents and Gemma in Newcastle. She wished very much that she had stayed at home.

Emily came and introduced them to various people who were so obviously not interested in her but only in him, talking to him and smiling at him. She tried to see him as they would. Joe in evening dress, clean-shaven, tall and spare, with perfect hair that shimmered black and silver under the glow of the lamps, lovely dark eyes and lean face. He stood out.

A snobbish person would have said that he was the only gentleman in the room with his sweet southern voice, softly modulated, and that there was something clean and cultured about the way that he moved – she didn’t know what it was, maybe it was that ghastly thing called ‘breeding’, as if Joe were a racehorse.

Lucy hadn’t realized before now that Joe didn’t have an accent. His present company was well beneath his touch, but like a real gentleman he spoke to everyone. He shook hands and held their eyes and he made every woman in the room watch him, though he was quite unaware of this.

His slender fingers were holding a glass of sherry, and Lucy noticed with some affection that his hands were no longer those of a gentleman. Joe’s work at Mr Palmer’s seemed to consist of both of them spending a lot of time leaning over engines, heads under car bonnets, underneath cars
themselves and turning engines on and off. They fitted bits and took them off again and put in new bits and took those out again, arguing and discussing and then getting no further, so Joe’s hands, unlike the rest of the men in the room, showed the kind of work he did. He had banged his fingers on something a couple of days ago and there was a bruise on the back of his hand, and there was something else on the little bit of his right wrist where she thought he said he had burned himself on an engine block.

And as she stood there watching him she thought that those four years of war had broken something about him. It wasn’t obvious to everyone, but she knew him well by now and he hid his problems beneath a layer of dry wit and cool manners. He was so elegant, so tall, as if evening dress were his natural skin. The women tried not to stare, suddenly talking as though anything that was being said might be of vital importance.

Joe was caught up by Edgar and introduced to other men.

One of the women of about her own age looked at Lucy and said, ‘My dear, that dress. What an amazing colour and how brave of you to wear purple with your hair. I remember my grandmother wearing something similar, though it was dark and rather more subtle, and she had hair as black as a raven’s wing.’

Edgar introduced Lucy as ‘the lady who helps in my office’, which Lucy thought made her sound as if she went in to wash the floors.

‘I’m learning to be a solicitor,’ she said, ‘and in time I hope to practise.’

They stared at her as though she had said something rude. The women glanced at one another and pulled faces.

Lucy was so cross that she said, ‘Is there something wrong with that?’

It was directed at the two women across from her and they looked startled. One of them said, ‘An unusual ambition for a woman.’

‘Really?’ Lucy said. ‘And how do you suppose women will ever have justice if it is left to men?’

‘Miss Charlton,’ Edgar prompted her, ‘we do care for the women whom we know. We protect them as much as we do men from wrongdoing.’

‘Care? Protect? Should we not be in a position where we can care for ourselves? We are, after all, not children. Care is not enough; it never has been and never will be. We need laws which enable us to live our lives independently – we need to have our own ambitions and our own money so that we do not marry because we have to.’

There was a huge silence and then Joe emerged from the mass of people before her. He smiled and stood by her. She had to stop herself from putting her hand through his arm possessively, which she had no right to do, but she badly wanted to claim him for hers when the women had been so hostile to her. They moved into the sitting room and were offered more sweet sherry before dinner. Lucy didn’t like it, but it seemed rude to refuse.

‘Don’t you like that?’ Joe said, and then in a quiet voice to Norah, ‘Is there a chance of two gin and tonics, please?’

Norah smiled at him and nodded. She came back with bigger glasses which sparkled.

‘Try that,’ Joe said.

Lucy gazed at it.

‘Go on. See if you like it. If you don’t, leave it on the side.’

It was heaven. It was the kind of drink which would lull you into sleep on a quiet summer’s afternoon in a garden which smelled sweetly of thyme.

‘What’s it like?’ he said.

Lucy laughed. ‘I could see myself by the river with this on a lovely day.’

As she was going in they got separated and Emily came to her.

‘I think your London friend is absolutely gorgeous. He has fabulous eyes, almost black, and he is so tall and aristocratic,’ she said softly.

Joe was sitting next to Emily and as far away as possible from Lucy. Since the table was long she had no chance to talk to him.

The woman across the table from her was the one who had made the remark about her dress and the men on either side of her were older than Lucy and ignored her. Worse still, Joe was his usual self and made Emily laugh a great deal over dinner. It came to Lucy that she had been invited there only because of him. She could hear Edgar’s voice as he talked about his work. Did the man never think about anything else?

She could hear Emily talking to Joe about art, at least she thought it was, and she wished that somebody would entertain her. She ached to hear what they were saying. At her side of the table the men talked business and the women talked of house furnishings. One woman asked another about her children and after that they bored on.

Another looked across the table, caught Joe’s attention and asked him which school he had attended. Joe’s eyes didn’t even register what a rude personal remark it was.

‘I only ask because we are unsure whether to put our dear Clive’s name down for a school in the south.’

Joe evaded the issue beautifully, Lucy thought.

‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ he said, ‘they all equip one similarly for the kind of society that we have.’

Lucy understood, but she was the only person in the room who did – anybody would hate such a system which divorced its children from their parents at such a young age. It was diabolical. Why would you have children and then send them away from you for most of their young lives? Joe offered no further advice and luckily the dessert was brought in and nothing more was said.

Emily told them all how good Norah was, and that she had done all the cooking, as well as the waiting on, along with her younger cousin. Lucy was not surprised that they wished Norah was not leaving to get married. They would find it difficult to replace her.

The ladies left the gentlemen to their port.

*

Joe refused the port and asked if he might have some brandy. Edgar came and sat next to Joe and said, ‘I understand that Miss Charlton is living at your house.’

‘Yes,’ Joe said ruefully, ‘along with her two old ladies and an extremely smelly spaniel. I can’t think how I was talked into it. Washing day is the worst. Miss Slater made me put up a line in the back garden so that it makes a triangle, and
she sings hymns while she hangs out the washing. You can’t imagine how awful that is first thing on Monday mornings – “Onward Christian soldiers,”.’

*

Lucy was so bored that she couldn’t wait for the tea to be brought in and for the gentlemen to appear. They brought a general smell of cigars and warmth. Joe came to her.

‘How was the port?’ she asked.

‘I never drink port,’ he said, as though the very idea were offensive.

‘Why not?’

He leaned nearer as though he were telling her a secret and gazed into her eyes. His eyes were lit with fun.

‘My dear girl – brandy, yes; port, no.’

The way that he said it made her want to giggle.

‘You could have been kind to that woman and told her that you went to school in the country.’

‘But I didn’t,’ Joe said.

‘I thought you rarely saw your father.’

‘It wasn’t a geographical distance, he just didn’t care for Slough,’ Joe said.

*

She and Joe walked back together, just as she thought they would, but she was uneasy. She could not help saying to him, ‘Don’t you think Emily Bainbridge is beautiful?’

‘Ravishing,’ Joe said, which didn’t help.

‘And did you like her?’

‘Very much.’

Lucy wasn’t happy about this, though by the morning she felt much more sensible and upbraided herself for having
felt such negative things, despite not being able to put from her mind Joe and Emily with their heads close together.

Lucy had been jealous of Guy before because of how close he was to her sister, but she had never felt like this for a man, and it made her want to scrub herself raw in a deep bath. She didn’t want Joe, but apparently she didn’t want anybody else to have him either. There was nothing wrong with Emily Bainbridge. She was not a woman Lucy could make a friend of, and that too she felt was a loss, but Emily and Joe together was not a concept she could keep positively in her head. She went off to work and felt like slamming doors all the way along the streets.

She had manners enough to compliment Edgar about the dinner, only to discover that he too had not enjoyed his evening.