The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (3 page)

His eyes were full of sorrow. She would not forget the way that he looked at her then. He did not believe her. She had never thought her father would do such a thing.

‘I did nothing.’ Her voice broke. ‘You have to believe me; it wasn’t my fault, really it wasn’t. I just—’

‘Your mother wants you gone from the house before Gemma is married. Your sister is crying and she too wishes you gone. There’s nothing more you can do, as far as I can judge. Gemma is about to be married to a fine young man and I know you must wish it were you …’

She stared at him. He wasn’t listening to her. He assumed her guilt. Why did he do that? She was his daughter; she was important to him and he loved her. Why did he imagine she had done such a thing?

‘Daddy, I didn’t—’

‘Don’t say any more. You must go.’

He wasn’t even looking at her. His figure seemed so much smaller, so much more crouched down, as if the blow was too much – and it would be were it true, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

She tried to protest, but couldn’t get the words out. She hated to disappoint her father more than anything, but it seemed that he did not believe her, that he did not even want to.
Did
she resent Gemma’s success in finding a young man of wealth to marry her, somebody she liked? Was that what it was? Had she imagined the hurt, the blood? Was it her fault? Perhaps it was. Guy would not have done such a thing. Why had she gone outside? It was entirely her own doing.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

Her father did not respond and she could tell that he assumed her guilt. He was not against Guy, he was not against any man, and she realized that he could not be. Guy brought with him respectability, the future, children, and in the end those things mattered most of all. He was a man her father knew, and he cared for these matters, and therefore it must have been her fault.

He shifted and then he said, ‘You must go from here. Gemma is being married in two hours. Gather your things and leave, and don’t ever come back.’

He turned. Lucy got up and ran to him.

‘Oh, please don’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I really didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t.’

She didn’t know how many times she denied it. He stopped and shook her off. She followed him across the landing, crying and pleading. And finally he turned back.

‘You have disappointed me more than you can imagine. I don’t ever want to see you again. Get out of my house. Get out and don’t come back.’

London, 1919

Joe had dreamed of going home so often, had wanted to get out of France directly the conflict was over, but he was asked to stay and he did not feel that he could refuse. So many of his men, the older ones, had wives and children to go home to, and the young ones had parents. He had a parent too, his father, and a fiancée, Angela, but it was part of his nature to offer first to do everything, to be there for everybody. He had brought his men through danger so often that he had become a bit of a legend. They would have gone anywhere with him because they felt safe.

It was an illusion, Joe thought, and then uncomfortably reminded himself how he had seen what would happen and so managed to avoid it. He had kept his men close to him, so that they joked and called him Lucky Joe. Not to his face of course, to his face they called him sir.

He allowed himself to feel that yearning for England so that he could barely wait to reach it. He wanted to run, to push the ship and then to hurry the train, and when he finally arrived in London he was so grateful he could have
cried. He took a cab to his father’s house in Belgravia. He didn’t notice until he got outside into a bitter cold winter wind that the house was in darkness.

He told the cabbie to wait and rushed to hammer on the front door, but there were no lights at all. He had never seen such a thing. If his father had gone out for the evening there were always servants at home, always somebody waiting. He felt frustrated. He had written and said that he was coming home; he had expected not quite a party but certainly something of a reception. He was anxious to see Angela, but his father was on his mind first of all.

He stood about. He couldn’t stay here, he decided, so he told the cabbie to take him the few streets to Wilton Crescent where one of his dearest friends lived. Toddy would know what was going on, and Joe cheered himself with this and climbed back into the cab, but he was unable to ignore the instinct which told him this was going to be nothing like the homecoming he’d expected. By the time he reached Wilton Crescent he was feeling very low.

The cabbie took down his luggage, and Joe paid him. Here at least lights winked out from heavily curtained windows and Joe found admittance when he banged on the door.

The man who greeted him was not the same one who had been with the family before the war, Joe realized sadly. Everything was changed.

However, it seemed there was a party going on. It lifted his spirits immediately. He was left standing in the hall, listening to merriment from somewhere beyond. He waited impatiently; whatever was Toddy doing to make him keep his friend standing about like this? After some minutes he
was ushered into the library. A fire blazed in the enormous grate, but even so the room was cool, as though not often used, and he could hear nothing through the closed double oak doors.

And then his friend appeared between them. Joe was about to greet him lightly and eagerly, but he didn’t. Even before Toddy came into the room Joe felt himself step back. He watched Toddy hesitate in the hall, as though he were taking several deep breaths before he made himself come in. Joe had been right; Toddy was not about to greet him with joy.

They had not seen one another since Toddy had come back from France a year ago. Now as he entered the room there was not even a smile on his young face. He was wearing evening dress, the day being well advanced by now and darkness having fallen hours since. Joe managed to greet him affably.

‘Toddy,’ he said, coming forward with his hand outstretched to shake. ‘Sorry to call at this time. I’m sure you’re about to eat but I thought you might know what is going on.’

He half expected Toddy’s smile to widen and that he would know everything that Joe needed to, that he might ask him to dinner and even to stay, but all Toddy did was to stare at him for longer in society than would have been deemed polite. Toddy had still not said anything and his face had gone pale as though he were suffering from a bad shock, his features drawn, spaced. He looked to Joe as though he would gladly have run from the room.

‘The house is all locked up,’ Joe said. ‘Has my father gone
to the country? Nobody there at all, you see. I don’t understand it. Thought you might be able to enlighten me since you’re so obviously still in London.’ Joe could hear himself talking on and on because he had the feeling that once he stopped the world would crash and he was not certain he could bear any more conflict. ‘Has my father buggered off to Northumberland for Christmas? It seems unlikely – the damned place is always bloody freezing at this time of year.’

Joe thought with slight hope that perhaps his father had planned a surprise there, that friends had gathered for his return, but if he had then what was Toddy doing here and anyhow, it was a stupid idea: why would his father plan a homecoming two hundred and seventy miles away?

Toddy looked down as though something interesting had just landed at his feet and Joe began to wish that he hadn’t come here. There were other friends he could have gone to, it was just that Toddy and Sarah were close to him. Angela, Toddy’s sister, was the love of Joe’s life. He longed to see her. He had thought of her each day, dreamed of her nightly, of how lovely she was, his blonde, beautiful, clever girl; they would be married now that he was at home, and everything would be fine. He hadn’t heard from her for several months since he went back to France. There was nothing in that; letters were unreliable and he was moving around a great deal, but the ache to see her, to hold her, to spend the rest of his life, to be happy now – he could hardly contain it. They must be married as soon as possible. He didn’t see how he could stand another day without her. Home for good. He was home for good after five impossible years. What had kept him going in that time had been falling in love with
her and how she had waited, been there for him, met him at the station, seen him off from there so many times.

‘Is everything all right?’ Joe said, beginning to wonder and then forcing himself to shut up to give Toddy the space to say something. Anything would do but this lengthening silence.

Toddy glanced with a desperate look at the closed doors, as though he wanted to escape.

‘I didn’t realize you were back,’ he said.

‘I have just got here,’ Joe said, indicating his uniform.

Joe waited again.

‘You didn’t get my letter?’ Toddy said.

‘Obviously not.’ Joe was becoming impatient now and a little angry. ‘The house is locked up, the lights are out; something is going on. Do you know what it is? Where my father has gone?’

After a huge breath Toddy said very quickly, ‘Your father’s dead. I assumed you knew,’ and then he looked away as though there were something shameful about the whole thing. His head went down until Joe could not see his face.

‘Dead?’ Joe, although having gone through five years of killing, didn’t understand the word at all.

Toddy let go of his breath and a little colour returned to his face. He even glanced at Joe before moving his gaze again.

‘I thought you would have been told. Other people knew.’

‘Apparently they thought as you did – that somebody else would tell me. What happened?’

‘He killed himself.’

Joe wanted to laugh. Was Toddy having some horrible
game with him? Were his family about to break in and greet him, his father with them? Joe’s father had always been a hopeless shot. It was a joke between them. He couldn’t hit a house end, never mind a pheasant that was flying towards him. It did happen of course, more often people shot other people, but his father had always impressed upon him that you did not move with an unbroken gun, that was what the crook of your arm was for.

‘On a shoot?’

Toddy didn’t say anything for a few moments, pursed his lips together and then shook his head.

‘It was deliberate,’ he said.

Joe stared into Toddy’s pale face. Every nerve of him was denying it. His father could not have done such a thing, he was a strong-willed, strong-minded man – some people might have thought too much so.

‘He had lost everything,’ Toddy said.

Joe was getting tired of surprises. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘My mother knows more about it than I do.’

‘Really?’ Joe said.

‘She’s … she’s in Norfolk.’

‘Oh right,’ Joe said, dazed at the irrelevance of this.

‘Visiting friends,’ Toddy said, as though it mattered.

Joe was looking so hard at Toddy that his friend moved nervously. The whole thing was perfectly ridiculous; it could not be true.

‘He hated being without you, that was what she said.’

‘So he killed himself when I was due back?’

‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

‘I wish to God you would say something you do mean, instead of standing there like a tailor’s dummy.’

‘You’ve been away for a very long time and your father hid how things were, that’s what my mother says. He was drinking a great deal and playing cards.’

Joe knew this. He had been worried too, but he had had other things to think about and had dismissed it time and again from his mind. He knew that his father hated being alone. His mother had died when he was a small boy and he was the only child of the marriage. Right from the beginning his father had begged him not to go to war, so unlike other men who wanted to be proud of their sons and sent them off to war with barely a thought.

His father had wanted him at home, had begged him to try to find a job here in London. Joe had explained over and over that it was not possible. His father would never see him to the station or even say goodbye and things had gone further downhill, Joe remembered – many paintings were sold to meet his father’s debts and had left smudged oblong shadows on the walls. His father had sold off the Yorkshire estate and spent his summers in Northumberland, where most of the servants had long since gone to the war and some of the buildings were falling down.

Toddy seemed to have found his voice.

‘He lost everything that was meant to be yours and afterwards put a pistol to his head.’

The last time that Joe had been home the house in London was so bare; his father drank or slept or went out and barely seemed to notice his presence. If he was able to be truthful to himself, Joe thought now, he had not wanted to come
home because he knew that things were sliding away so very fast. He had told himself that everything would be different when he came home for good. He would take care of it all, look after his father.

‘His friends were worried about him and he worried about you. He thought you would be killed. My mother says that after your mother died your father was heartbroken, that you were all he had left.’

Joe wished he could go back a couple of hours, when the world had been a better place for him. But then he thought the world didn’t treat anybody decently, so why should it start with him?

‘Yes, well, I can’t say anything about my mother – she died when I was small. I don’t remember anything about her.’

This was not true. He remembered her funeral, his father had insisted on taking him, and he had not forgotten watching his mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. It had been one of those grim wet winter days which never got light, the fog thicker than shadows.

His whole body had tightened up by now, the way it did when confronted by any crisis. He had grown used to it, it would first do that and then he would go cold and see the situation with such precision and foresight that he could have led his men anywhere and they would have followed him.

‘My mother always says your mother’s death was quite sudden, your father wouldn’t talk about it, he was devastated. He had lots of friends and they tried to help him many times over the years but he didn’t listen. He just went on grieving. There’s nothing left, don’t you see, because of the
way that he behaved. Is that clear enough for you?’ Toddy coughed and stuttered and said, ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that, Joe. I don’t know how else to put it, I’m sorry. I was dreading you coming home even though I thought you would have known long since. After all, France isn’t so very far away.’