The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (24 page)

He had his back to her, still dressed for dinner, as though they had had a polite evening, for God’s sake. He had a balloon-shaped glass in one slender hand, with some kind of dark liquid in it. There was something about the set of his shoulders which encouraged her to walk into the room. She pulled the dressing gown tightly around her. Not that she thought Joe would have noticed has she been naked.

‘Joe?’

When he didn’t answer she turned as if to go back into her room and he said, ‘Please don’t leave.’

When she stopped he added, ‘I’m sorry. I had no right to ask you to come here with me or to burden you with any of my stupid concerns. Will you have a drink with me?’

And since it gave him something to do and put a few seconds between them she accepted.

‘Are you going to stay here and see what happened?’

‘No.’ Joe was decisive, almost as though he had known this would be a fool’s errand before he came. ‘I knew she wasn’t here, I just needed to make sure. She went to Durham, I know she did, and I’m going to go back there and find out what happened to her. I couldn’t help thinking over and over again that maybe my father had killed her, but I just can’t see it somehow and it’s such a relief to believe it.’

Lucy thought about this for a moment. ‘If she was a north
country lass maybe she missed home,’ she said. ‘Maybe London society wasn’t for her. I don’t think I would like such a thing. We don’t all want a titled husband and to talk of vacuous things all day.’

‘Vacuous, eh?’ Joe said with a touch of humour.

That was when Lucy relaxed and she said, ‘Wasn’t your father an important man? His wife would need to be a society lady, a political hostess. And even though some women are bred for such things, they don’t always want them. Think about Florence Nightingale.’

‘I do often,’ Joe said, and his eyes twinkled just a little.

Lucy sat back. She took a sip of brandy and pulled a face.

‘This is awful,’ she said, ‘it’s like cough mixture.’

Joe laughed. He hadn’t touched his drink, though she had the feeling that left alone he might have drunk a considerable amount of it. Wasn’t that what drink was for? To blot out the things you couldn’t bear?

‘Why did my mother leave me there?’ Joe said.

This, Lucy thought, was the whole point.

‘She mustn’t have had any choice. No woman leaves her child if she can help it. You must know that.’

‘I don’t.’

‘That’s because you’re a man. A woman has to be in a very bad way before she leaves a child. Women adore their children. Look at Mrs Formby and how brave she was. Your mother left you because she felt it was better than what she could provide, but she must have grieved over you her whole life afterwards. Giving birth, excuse me for being blunt, is the biggest bond anyone can ever have – it must be, that’s how biology works. You cannot carry a child, give birth and nurture
it, and, short of your own insanity, want anything but the very best for it that you can do. She must have thought you would be better off in London with your father.’

‘Or that he prevented her from taking me,’ Joe said.

She hadn’t liked to put that into words.

‘What if I’m wrong? What if he did kill her and hid her body?’ Joe said.

‘Is your instinct telling you that?’

Joe said nothing. He looked down into his brandy.

‘Maybe he thought he could do better than she could,’ Lucy said. ‘He wanted an heir presumably – men do, I imagine – or maybe they just didn’t get on.’

Joe would have protested, but she added, ‘In his own way, did he not care for you?’

Joe smiled at the memory. ‘He took me out of school as soon as he could. He took me to France and Italy and Spain and I learned the languages. We had such wonderful times.’

‘Well then,’ Lucy said. ‘Does that sound like a man who didn’t adore his child?’

‘But they weren’t together and they were my parents.’

‘What a myth marriage can be,’ Lucy said, and it made him smile. ‘It doesn’t mean because she isn’t there beside him that he murdered her. That’s very dramatic, you know. Men don’t have to murder women to get rid of them. Perhaps he did want her there. He was a very important man. If she ran away surely his pride would ensure he did his best to pretend that she had not left him. Don’t you think?’

‘I loved him,’ Joe said. ‘He wasn’t a fiend, he wasn’t aggressive. He loved me and he talked well of her. Maybe he did make up her death.’

‘Maybe he was downhearted because she didn’t want him. Maybe she had left you with him because of that – because it was what she could give him?’

Lucy was doing all she could so that Joe wouldn’t be upset further. She didn’t like to think that his father might have killed his mother or even that their marriage had been so awful that he had hidden her death and then buried her, saying that she had been ill. How hard that would have been. Just as bad that she had left him because he treated her cruelly.

Joe didn’t say anything. Lucy felt as though she should go back to her own room, but she wasn’t happy about leaving him there.

‘It was good of you to come with me and put up with this,’ he said. He picked up her hand and kissed the back of it and that was when Lucy remembered Guy. It wasn’t the kiss, which was, she reasoned, just a gesture – Joe was so well-mannered – it was the fact of him so close. It made a dozen birds fly up into her stomach. She tried to stop the horrible images from flashing one by one across her mind, but it was too hard.

She drew back so quickly that Joe looked surprised. But he went on. ‘There was no reason for you to do so, and I’m sorry I deceived you over it, but I didn’t know how to manage on my own.’

Lucy got to her feet. She was shaking. She tried to remember to breathe, but she could taste Guy’s mouth and feel his body pressing on her and the hurt. She was back there in Newcastle, her heart thudding, and she wanted to turn and run.

‘Lucy?’

‘I … I have to go. To go back to my own room.’

‘All right. Thank you.’

She couldn’t move. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t. Joe got up as though he was coming with her and she clasped a hand to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. He was looking carefully at her now.

‘Goodnight.’

Lucy nodded and then she turned and ran. She slammed the door and stood against it, her heart knocking so hard that she thought it would burst out of her. She couldn’t stand. She slid down the door and then silenced the sobs that would have made a huge noise. The tears flooded down her face.

She sat there and waited and let the silence go on and on. She had the feeling that Joe was about to burst into her room, and she was so scared, but the minutes ticked on and on and nothing happened. After a while even the line of light around the door went out and the only lamps were from her bedroom.

When she could, she stood up and made her way over to the bed. She got into it and covered herself up and remembered how she had got herself into bed that night, the last night she had spent at home. She went over and over it, blaming herself and blaming him and blaming her family and hating and loving them and hating him so much for what he had done to them.

He had ruined their lives. He had taken not just the past but this very night and had made her afraid of a decent man like Joe. She wondered what on earth Joe thought and
then she remembered how upset he was. He had not meant anything; he was not thinking about what she did, how she reacted. He was remembering the emptiness of his mother’s grave and the confusion which followed.

Mrs Formby came to the office. Lucy had waited for this to happen; she had worried about it so often that she could hardly present a decent face.

‘I’m sorry to come bothering you here, Miss Charlton,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m that bothered about our Tilda. She’s not eating and I think she keeps reliving the night that the house went on fire. I think she feels responsible and that she should have rescued her dad and it sits on her conscience that she didn’t manage it.’

‘But he was drunk, wasn’t he? She couldn’t rouse him and you couldn’t – isn’t that what you said?’

‘We did our best, at least I think we did. I keep thinking back and wondering how hard I tried.’

‘Your house was full of smoke. Smoke kills people before fire gets to them and it doesn’t take long. You had to get your children out of there. Isn’t that so?’

‘We did that.’

‘Well then.’

‘I don’t know, Miss Charlton, I’m not happy about any of it. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but I’m not sure our Tilda will.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ Lucy said. She could hear the crisp
note in her voice and thought that just for once Mrs Formby needed somebody else to take over here. ‘You are lucky that you did not all die. You must stop thinking of yourself as less than you are. You are a fine mother to your children and you must go forward and try to come to terms with what happened. I tell you what – I will ask around and see if I can find Clay some kind of part-time work so that he can help the family income. How would that be?’

Lucy had already promised herself that she would do this so they could live a little better. She felt now that she should have acted sooner.

Mrs Formby brightened at that and soon left the office.

*

Joe woke up. He could hear something. He thought at first it was Priscilla Lee or his guilt about Angela, but then something dragged him back to consciousness. It was nothing like the lullaby which was by now familiar to him, but one of the most horrible noises he had ever heard.

He listened for just a few seconds as it went on and then he got up and ran to the front door. There was the long-haired black-and-white cat, standing still at the edge of the river on the towpath at full stretch, as though she could hear and see something he could not. She was howling in a high and ghastly way as though she were injured, but she was not. The cat’s fur stood up on end in spikes.

He followed her gaze. Further along he heard a splash and a shriek and then another and then more. When the moon came out of the high clouds, he thought he saw something moving in the water. He heard cries and struggling then. He ran along the riverbank to the nearest place he thought
the person was and plunged in. The water was so cold that his body went rigid with shock. Luckily he had not far to go.

The person couldn’t swim and must have gone under more than once. They had stopped moving or making any noise and were about to go under again. Joe had the feeling that it would be the final time, but he reached for the body and pulled the face up above the water. The water made the person light and it was a calm night, there had been no rain, so there was not much pull to the river, not enough to kick against very hard. It didn’t cause him any trouble.

Within minutes he reached the bank. He was able to push the body out of the water enough so that he could let go and climb out. It was a struggle and there was nobody about to help, but it was somebody light, a small woman he thought or a half-grown child. It was difficult to drag himself free while making sure she didn’t slip back in. Above him he was aware of the black-and-white cat, sitting forward, eyes anxious as though desperate to help.

Joe had strength. He got the person up onto dry land and it took some doing. The cat moved back and then sat by the body like a nurse, head down, eyes intent. Joe flattened his palms on the top ground beyond the river and pulled himself up and free. He was breathing hard, but he was much more concerned for the other person.

He began to shiver; he hadn’t thought it so cold. The other person moaned and that was a relief. He sat her up and she coughed and spluttered and the water came out of her mouth. When he was sure that she wasn’t going to choke or pass out he gathered her into his arms and carried her
towards the house. The little black-and-white cat followed him, as though in escort.

He put the person down on the rug in front of the fire and then saw the dark hair and young face.

‘Oh God, Tilda!’

He made certain that she was still breathing, then he ran up the two flights of stairs and shook Lucy in her bed.

‘Lucy! You have to wake up. Lucy!’

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she said hoarsely as she sat up. There was no light – Joe hadn’t stopped for that.

‘Tilda almost drowned. Come downstairs and help me.’

He went off and seconds later she followed. Joe went back up to change into dry clothes and find something to wrap the girl in, while Lucy peeled off her clothes. She wrapped Tilda up in her underwear in a huge blanket, which Joe brought down with him, and gave her a pillow. Then Lucy made up the fire, which had almost died.

He thought Tilda was going to be all right, and she seemed calm, as Lucy reassured her, but then the girl screamed and clutched at her belly. The screaming went on and on and she doubled up, holding herself close.

‘She needs to go to hospital,’ Joe said.

‘You go ahead. I’ll dress and come after you.’

Joe picked Tilda up and ran – along the towpath and up the steep steps to the end of Framwellgate Bridge and then up the cobbles of North Road. Eventually his breath gave out. He couldn’t see a cab anywhere, but he couldn’t run any further. He stopped until his breathing steadied.

In the distance he spied one of Paddy’s Cabs. He was so
pleased because he knew that the man would get him there. He beckoned and the driver saw him, and came to him.

Joe said, ‘The hospital,’ and the driver merely nodded.

In the cab, Joe gathered Tilda very close in his arms as she cried from pain. When they got as far as the County Hospital the cabbie stopped right outside the door and Joe took the girl in his arms and ran in. She was heavy, had stopped crying and he was so afraid that she would die.

*

Lucy had only just put on her clothes when she heard a banging on the front door. She ran down the stairs and hauled open the door. Mrs Formby stood there, crying.

‘My Tilda’s gone, Miss Charlton. She didn’t come home and I’m that worried for her. What if something happened? I sat there and waited and waited. I’m so frightened. Where can she be?’