The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (23 page)

‘I didn’t know that Emily had invited Joe Hardy. I don’t want him near my sister. She can do a great deal better than him.’

Lucy was a little surprised to find that Edgar didn’t want Joe close to his sister, and she couldn’t help being pleased. She spent the rest of the morning berating herself for such feelings and trying to concentrate on work. But she was not very successful.

At the end of the day she hurried home to find if Joe was there, or if he was at the garage. She thought he might be pursuing Emily – she imagined them going out walking together – and she did not pretend to herself that Edgar’s not wanting his sister with Joe would stop Emily, and it might even encourage her. But Joe appeared to go on as normal – he came home late from the garage, he left early, he was always where he was supposed to be. Lucy didn’t understand it.

Joe was not so late that evening. The Misses Slaters had gone to some event at St Nicholas’s Church and were not due home yet. Lucy was sitting over the fire with a book she had been reading for a week. She seemed to get no further.

Joe sat down at the other side of the fire and he said, abruptly, ‘I need to go to London. Will you come with me?’

She was astonished. She thought he might have had something to say about Mr Palmer’s business or that he might have some kind of new idea, but not this.

‘London?’

‘Yes, you know, that big place at the end of the railway line. It’s something really difficult that I have to do and I rather hoped you would come with me.’

‘Is it something I can help with? A legal matter?’

‘I’ve dealt with the legal bits of it, I just need the support. It’s only overnight and one of my friends – Charles Toddington – will put us up, I’ve already asked him. So it’s perfectly respectable. I’ve been thinking a lot about Miss Lee and I think there may be a connection in London. Will you consider it?’

‘Are you sure you want me to go with you?’

Joe frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Well,’ she trembled, ‘what about Emily?’

‘Emily?’

‘Yes. I think she likes you.’

Joe’s frown deepened. ‘Emily likes me?’

‘Didn’t you think so, at the dinner the other night?’

‘Not really. Did you?’

‘She went on about you quite a bit – and you seemed to like her.’

Joe sat back in his chair.

‘You were being very charming to her,’ Lucy said.

‘I’m just the same with everybody, aren’t I?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I see. Well, firstly I don’t think she does, and secondly it wouldn’t do her good anyway because the only woman I have ever cared for is Angela Toddington, and she’s lost to me now.’

That silenced Lucy.

‘She died?’ she asked eventually.

Joe pushed his hands through his hair and sighed as though his mind weighed a ton.

‘I hope not. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. I suppose I should tell you before we go to London, if you’ll come with me. I was betrothed to a lovely young woman. I left her here when I went off to France to fight and we planned to be married. Stupidly we spent a weekend together when I was on leave. I came back and she’d disappeared.’

‘What do you mean, “disappeared”?’

Joe wasn’t looking at her now, or at anything very much.

‘She found that she was expecting a child. I had nothing
by then but a worthless title and her parents were horrified. They tried to send her away to one of those dreadful places where young women go to give up their children while their parents pretend it never happened. So she ran away.’ Joe got up. ‘So you see it isn’t very likely that I would be interested in Emily or in anyone else. I’ve made a complete mess of everything and the girl I love has gone.’

Joe walked out of the house. Lucy was so shocked that she didn’t move until the Misses Slaters came home, chatting about their evening. She put the kettle on and made tea for them. Joe didn’t come back until very late. When she heard him she got up from where she had been sitting by the fire.

She went into the kitchen and said, ‘I’ll come with you on Friday, Joe, if you still want me to.’

*

Nobody spoke before they got on the train that morning. Joe insisted on buying her lunch once they got beyond York, but he stared from the window and didn’t make conversation.

Finally Lucy’s curiosity got the better of her.

‘Are you going to tell me why we’re going to London or am I meant to guess?’ she said.

Joe went on staring out of the window, at the drops running down it, the scene beyond the window smudged with rain.

‘I’m having my mother’s body exhumed,’ Joe said.

Lucy choked over her tea and clattered her cup and saucer on the table.

‘You’re what?’

‘I’m having my mother’s coffin opened,’ Joe said. ‘Tonight.’

Lucy was so shocked that she laughed. She put her hand over her mouth to stop herself.

He finally turned and looked at her. His eyes were bleak.

‘I used to go to the graveyard and talk to her. My father is next to her and there’s room for me. It’s a sort of private graveyard, if you know what I mean, next to the house where we used to live.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I’m not convinced about what I’ve been led to believe.’

‘You think your mother isn’t there?’ Lucy was horrified.

‘I know. It sounds stupid, especially since I remember her funeral.’

Lucy thought if there was a sensible remark to be made she couldn’t think of it and sat silent for the rest of the journey.

At King’s Cross, to Lucy’s astonishment, they were met by a chauffeur who carried the bags and led them to a huge silver car which stood against the kerb. He put the luggage into the boot and opened the back door for her and then the other one for Joe. Joe stood about as though he couldn’t help it; she realized that it was only what he had been used to in the days before the war.

The house in Belgravia was the biggest house she had ever seen. It had a massive entrance hall and a staircase which swept high and disappeared around a corner. She tried not to gaze about her. There were servants, somebody to take her coat, and the luggage didn’t come anywhere near her. They were ushered into an enormous highly decorated Georgian room where a man of about Joe’s own age beamed his welcome at her.

‘Joe,’ was his acknowledgement.

‘Miss Charlton, this is Mr Toddington. Toddy, this is my friend, Lucy Charlton. I’m very grateful you’ve offered to put us up.’

‘I think you’ve lost your mind over this,’ Toddy said immediately. Lucy was inclined to think this was correct.

‘Very likely. Why would I not have?’

‘I don’t know why the authorities agreed.’

‘Because I asked them,’ Joe said and he walked around the room as if it were a garden he hadn’t seen before. It was certainly big enough, she thought.

Chairs and tables were all over the place, grouped together as though a dozen people were expected. At the windows hung huge curtains which would not only keep out the draughts but the daylight too if necessary. She tried not to stare.

‘Well of course, you being who you are, in spite of everything,’ Toddy said. ‘Your lineage is so perfect.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Joe said.

Lucy was relieved when the door opened and the tea tray was brought in, silver, china and lovely little cakes, all pink and white. Lucy couldn’t have swallowed a mouthful if she had been going to die without. She sat down and when the tea was poured she accepted a delicate cup and saucer, so thin she could see her fingers through it. Her hands shook.

When the maidservant had gone she wished more than anything she had wished in a very long time that she had not been so foolish as to agree to come here with Joe. She thought it was a kind of betrayal that he had not told her his mission, though she knew why not. Who would want to do such a thing alone? She had a horrible feeling this was
going to make things worse – if Joe’s life could be any worse than all these awful things which had happened here.

*

Lucy hadn’t realized that there would be visitors for dinner. She got halfway back down the stairs after changing into her only decent dress and paused. She could hear voices coming from some big room nearby, a woman’s voice among them. They were raised voices too; it was not a happy gathering.

She couldn’t retreat, dinner would be served soon so she breathed carefully and went on into the room. It was a big sitting room of some kind and in the early evening the doors were open to the garden. An older couple were standing before the doors with drinks in their hands and along with the two young men they made a kind of disparate circle.

They stopped talking as she entered, and Mr Toddington came to her in a kindly way. He introduced his parents to her and Joe said that she was his solicitor. She thought they were very stiff and starchy. If this was what London society was about then she was better out of it. Perhaps Joe was too since he was standing there with a gin and tonic clutched in each hand. He was white-faced and his mouth was tight. He handed her a glass.

‘I didn’t want you to know anything about this,’ he was saying to the older couple. ‘Toddy should not have told you. I can’t think why you wanted to meet me when I’m so aware of how you think of me.’

‘Your mother was my dearest friend,’ Lady Toddington said in a voice kept steady in spite of the fact that she was clearly angry and almost in tears. ‘I cannot think why you have chosen to come back here to do such a dreadful thing,
and after the appalling way that you have behaved to us and to Angela. Why couldn’t you just have stayed in whatever place you went to?’

Lucy took a good slurp of her drink, wishing she was back in Durham, anywhere but here. Mr Toddington’s parents obviously thought she was some bit of fluff that Joe had picked up in the north and were studiedly ignoring her. An unmarried woman who travelled with an unmarried man on such a mission could hardly be respectable.

*

It was a clear night with a moon, just right for lifting bodies out of graveyards. There was nobody about, though why should there be? Sensible people were at home in bed. Besides, Joe had been right, it was some kind of private place with railings about it, the family plot or whatever these people called it.

Mr Toddington had chosen to come with Lucy and Joe. There were also various other men, four to dig, who kept taking it in turns, and two others, who stood about, looking official and rather uncomfortable, she thought, from the way that they didn’t stand still but sauntered around. Joe stood over the grave and didn’t move.

Nobody said anything. What could you possibly say on such an occasion? She imagined it in a book of etiquette. Conversation for graveyards during exhumation. She felt sick. She stood between Mr Toddington and Joe because she could feel the antipathy between them.

There was very little sound, just the efforts of the men digging, sighing and groaning because it was hard work, especially at their swift pace, the spades going in and then
the soil being lifted and thrown until it began to heap up at the sides of the grave. It took a very long time.

She wanted to stand behind Joe as she finally heard the spade touch more than soil. It made a flinty sound. Lanterns caught the glimmer of brass or whatever it was, but it was only the glinting to one side. She could see that the coffin itself had disintegrated. That was a surprise; she hadn’t thought about how a coffin would not last more than so many years. But who thought of such things?

The biggest surprise of all was that she could see what had been buried inside the coffin, and it was not bones or anything which resembled the remains of a person. It was nothing but stones. She wished she could have stood there with her eyes closed, but somehow it was as if they were glued open during the whole procedure.

‘God Almighty,’ Mr Toddington said, and then, ‘Christ,’ in surprise and some exasperation.

Joe didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. The men around him mumbled and muttered to one another, but Joe was rooted. Lucy wanted to go home to Durham and get into her bed and have nothing whatsoever to do with this or with any scheme of Joe’s ever again. She began to wish they had never met.

*

Lucy went to bed and lay there for a long while, but she couldn’t rest and she got up and put on a dressing gown. There was a door between the two rooms with the key on her side. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door very softly. She could see Joe.

He was standing beyond the windows, on the balcony,
looking at home here as he had never looked in Durham. The windows were the kind that ran from floor to ceiling and opened with double doors. This room was even bigger than hers and had a quantity of furniture in it such as you would never see in a normal-sized house – chairs and tables and some kind of ornate sofa covered in silk material.