The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (31 page)

He would have it repaired, he thought, and then he would make it available for people who wanted to be there, in the high hills in Weardale. It could be a stopping-over place for people, a rest for when they were weary. He could make it sound and put in order some kind of reception so that they could have a bed and facilities for making food. He imagined them sitting out on the hillside when the weather was fine or inside and snug amidst lots of blankets when it was bad. Then if people wanted to venture that high on foot they were welcome to stay, like the Young Men’s Christian Association. He liked the idea. He thought his mother would have liked it too.

Gemma looked smaller each day. She had shrunk. She had never been tall, but now she was thin and white and so bowed that she looked like a much older person. She seemed to forget who Lucy was and she cried and told her what a good man Guy had been, how precious he was, how he had fathered her children and how she adored him. What would she do without him?

Lucy held her and comforted her and said nothing as she felt sure thousands of women had done before. The man that Gemma knew was nothing like the man Lucy knew and there was no point in making things worse. Her sister was grieving, she was losing the man she had made her life with.

They took turns in sitting with him. The doctor did not want to give him too much painkiller because he was not sure how much more Guy would need.

Then the day came when Guy’s pain overcame the drugs and he cried out.

Lucy begged the doctor for more. Stupidly she could not bear to see her enemy in pain. It was not how she had ever wanted to win. Doctor Mackie looked confused and defensive, and shot her a straight glance.

‘I can’t do any more,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You must be able to.’

‘I will not take responsibility for killing him.’

‘He’s dying, for God’s sake.’

‘That is not the point. I am doing what I can.’

‘Well then, can we have more of the pills you are giving him?’

‘You cannot,’ he said, and left.

Guy stirred, called out. She went back to the bed. He looked at her from pain-filled eyes.

‘Gemma?’

‘No, it’s Lucy. Gemma is resting.’

He stared at her and then he closed his eyes. It hurt so much, she thought. His lips twisted, his face contorted and he lay back and squirmed against the bed. His head turned here and there upon the pillow.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘I live here, you know I do.’

‘No, I mean what are you doing by my bed?’

‘The family is asleep. You have worn them out with your failure as a man, as a husband and as a father. There is nothing left, Guy, and a great deal of that is because of you.’

He closed his eyes for a few seconds; she wasn’t sure whether that was because of the pain or while he considered what she had said.

‘I thought I was marrying into money.’

Lucy gave a short laugh. ‘That just shows how stupid you were.’

He managed a ghastly smile.

‘Doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘I never loved her – my parents made me do it.’

‘What an excuse!’

‘No, they did,’ he said, then stopped as his face contorted again. ‘I wanted to marry the vicar’s daughter, but her father wouldn’t have it and neither would mine. Isn’t that pathetic? She was tall and skinny and plain like you. I loved her.’

‘My heart is breaking for you,’ Lucy said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘No, you aren’t.’

‘No,’ Guy said, ‘I didn’t like you or your sister. I thought you were a couple of jumped-up little bitches.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t speak, and she wanted to shake him, but the sweat stood out on his face. While she watched in the lamplight it grew slicker and slicker as he fought the pain. Lucy had always thought she would want to watch him terrorised like this, for he had done something indescribably awful to her, but she wished she could have helped. Despite the doctor saying he could have no more painkillers, she went and got water and shook out twice as many tablets as was his dose. He was so hot, so uncomfortable, and gritting his teeth, as men did.

Finally she said to him, ‘Oh, go on, yell – let it out if it helps,’ but he didn’t. The tears spilled down his face and the time ran on and on until she heard the nearest church clock striking the quarter, the half-hour, the three-quarters. He writhed and moaned softly and she wished she could give him more painkillers, but in that time what she had given him eventually took hold. He lay back on the pillows
and she could see that the pain had eased. She had never thought she would be glad to see him out of pain, but she was.

If she had been his wife she would have given him every pill there was, she thought, even if it killed him; she couldn’t watch anybody in such agony. In the end he went quiet and he slept and then she began to cry. She kept her hands up to her face so that no one would hear the noise. It was not for him that she cried, it was for everyone who died in such a way. Nobody deserved such a death, no matter what he had done. Where was God when people were in indescribable pain?

She cried herself to sleep. She was sitting on the floor by the bed, leaning forward, the blankets of some comfort to her face and arms. She dreamed that she was back in Durham with Joe and the Misses Slaters and she and Joe were walking Frederick by the river and everything was all right. And then she came to consciousness and her back was aching and her neck too because she had been in that leaning position for some time.

She pushed back and sat up. Light was filtering through the curtains and she couldn’t move too far because Guy had hold of her hand. She hadn’t known that, she thought – she would never have given him her hand to hold – but there it was, his fingers entwined with hers. They had slept like that. She should have been repulsed, but she remembered within seconds that he was not the man he had been, he was a creature in pain, and she had done what she could to help him.

His hand was cold and rigid somehow, and she moved
away carefully. He was so still. It was early morning. She heard the church clock striking five. The house was silent, nothing moved; her sister must be sleeping peacefully for once after all these weeks. Even the children who usually awoke around this time did not, so Lucy listened to the house and to her parents who made no noise. She sat back in her chair, closed her eyes and, since he was still sleeping because of all the drugs she had given him, she allowed herself to doze.

It was another hour before she realized that Guy was dead.

‘When are you coming back to Durham?’

Edgar and Emily had turned up for Guy’s funeral. So had Joe and the Misses Slaters and Mrs Formby. The Misses Slaters seemed to know so many people, but of course the church was like that. They introduced people to Joe and Mrs Formby, and though Lucy wanted to have her turn to talk to them, she didn’t seem able to get that far.

‘I don’t know.’ Lucy had been hoping he would not ask, but she knew that it was fair. She had been gone for almost three months. But she did not see how she could leave, and though she wanted to go back to Durham she saw her mother comforting Gemma at the graveside and her father wrapped in blankets a little way off, bowed in his wheelchair. He had slept through most of the funeral service. Privately Lucy did not think that he would live much longer; after that she didn’t know what she would do.

‘I can’t leave here, Edgar. Look at how it is – who could go away and leave this?’

Edgar said nothing for a short while, and they stood about in the cemetery while the rain dripped through the dark trees.

‘I haven’t taken on anybody but a secretary, I really have to find somebody to help me. A partner, I think, somebody to buy his way in, to put money into the business.’

Lucy couldn’t speak: it had been the only thing she wanted, to become a solicitor to help people.

‘I’m sorry, Lucy. I wish I could keep things as they were, but the work has become too much and I can see how much you are needed here. The trouble is that when your father can no longer go to the office you won’t be able to keep his practice open. It isn’t legal. What will you do then?’

‘He’s not that bad.’ She had lain awake the last two nights worrying about the future, about herself and her sister and her mother and the two children. She didn’t know what would happen.

Edgar looked narrowly at her.

‘The only thing to do is to come back to Durham and work. Then you will manage to make enough money to send to your family.’

‘You’re missing the point,’ she said, ‘they need me here.’

‘You can’t be in two places at once, and the way that you are trying to run your father’s practice is ethically unsound, and you know it. It’s no way for a junior solicitor to behave.’

Lucy pressed her lips together so that she would not argue with him.

‘You can have a career that way and that way only,’ he continued. ‘You must come back and very soon. You aren’t helping you, your family or my practice, and it can’t go on. You’re putting everything in jeopardy because you want to play nursemaid here, or sister and daughter. It isn’t like that, and they should be aware of it as well as you.’

She knew that Edgar was right and she should be in Durham. Otherwise what future would any of them have? She could go back to the tower house and spend time with Joe. She wanted to be there in Durham so very much, but she doubted her mother could cope with her father, Gemma and the two children – and she should not have to at her age. There was also the knowledge that her father did know her for just a little time each day. Sometimes he said Lucy’s name, occasionally he reached for her hand. She could not leave him now. How could she live with herself if he died and she was not there? And what about her mother and Gemma when that happened, for it could not be far off?

*

For the first few days after they buried Guy, Gemma would not come downstairs. Hour after hour she sat in his room; she didn’t eat, she didn’t want to see her children, she didn’t want to move from there. Lucy stood it for two weeks, though she couldn’t work the long hours that she intended because she could not leave her mother to do everything else.

The truth was that people were beginning to come back to the practice. She knew that her father made a very good smokescreen, he had been so much admired, and there was a trickle of work. If she could be there most of the time she could make things much better, though she was reminded every day that Edgar had said it was unethical. She knew that. She just hoped other people didn’t or wouldn’t think so. They assumed that she was qualified and she had to let them go on thinking it so that she could earn some money, even though it was not enough to keep them.

That evening she went upstairs to her sister.

‘You’re going to have to go out and get a job,’ Lucy said.

Gemma was lying on the bed, and she sat up and looked at her sister as if she were somebody from another planet.

‘I have two small children, a sick father, my husband has just died—’

‘Yes, well, you aren’t being any help and I can’t manage. If you don’t go out and get a job we can’t afford to eat properly any more. It can’t go on. They are looking for an assistant in the dress shop where you bought your wedding dress. I suggest you get washed, dressed and sorted out in the morning because if you don’t your children will soon be living on bread and jam.’

Gemma stared at her. The tears were heavy in her eyes.

‘Why don’t you just leave me alone?’ she said.

‘Why don’t you take your responsibilities?’ Lucy slammed out of the room, though she called herself names for being so harsh with her sister.

Gemma stayed upstairs. Lucy didn’t sleep. Half a dozen times she wanted to go to her sister, imagining that even from the attic she could hear Gemma pacing the floor.

Lucy was only glad when daylight finally broke. It had been such a long night. She had always imagined that as you got older and understood more, as life speeded up, you would get used to the darkness and it would seem less. Somehow it never did.

She was first downstairs for once and she lit the stove and set the kettle to boil and put out the butter and jam and bread. Then her mother appeared, bleary-eyed, as though she’d had no sleep either. The children tumbled after her.
Lucy made tea for her mother and saw to the children and asked after her father.

‘He’s still asleep, thank God,’ her mother said.

Gemma did not appear, and Lucy, not wanting to seem impatient, washed and dressed the children and then she went upstairs. Her father had his own room now and he was awake. The room smelled of old age and worse.

She took hot water and soap and towels and she washed him from head to foot. He didn’t object, he didn’t even seem aware of Lucy but stared past her as though he could see a better land in the distance. She dressed him and then she helped him downstairs. Her mother flashed her a look of gratitude and fed him small sips of tea, and bread and jam cut into small squares such as you would for a child.

Lucy had made sure that her appointments did not start until mid-morning so she could see Gemma up and dressed. She even picked the dress for her – simple and old but expensive – and she put up her sister’s hair.

Gemma went downstairs for the first time in two weeks. The children fell on her, crying, but Lucy made them be quiet with a few harsh words while she put toast and tea in front of her sister.

‘Eat it,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you passing out on me.’

‘You bitch,’ her sister said, regardless of the children. Before her mother objected, Lucy put up one hand and there was silence.

Gemma crammed the toast into her mouth, had two slurps of tea and then Lucy got her coat.

‘It isn’t black.’

It certainly wasn’t, it was mid-blue, the first one Lucy had
come to. Gemma objected, but she put it on and it made her look almost human, Lucy thought.

She walked her outside into the clean air and Gemma stood still for a few moments as though she had forgotten what being outside was like. Then she began to sob. Lucy gave her a handkerchief.