The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (33 page)

‘That’s awful,’ Lucy said, stung. ‘Don’t you know how bad that sounds?’

He looked blankly at her as though he had never thought to associate her with such people, but she felt for every woman who was outcast because of such ridiculous ideas.

‘She ought to marry. It’s what respectable middle-class women do. I don’t know what she wants, do you?’

Lucy floundered and didn’t look at him.

‘Marriage isn’t for everyone,’ was the best she could manage.

‘It is for women; it’s what God intended them for.’

Lucy eyed him. ‘Are we sinking as low as biology?’ she said.

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Yes, you do. Women’s reproductive organs are larger than their brains, is that it? And those who don’t marry are wanting in some respect. Or could it be that nobody asked them because, what is it … they were not tiny and beautiful and submissive?’

Edgar blushed dark scarlet and it was not all embarrassment. He hid his anger well she thought, but he needed to.

‘What else would they do?’ he said.

Lucy was furious.

‘If they were allowed they would do everything men do and earn income and have choices.’

‘Children cannot be a choice,’ Edgar said.

‘If men had to have children they would have adapted such things to suit them by now,’ Lucy said, ‘but they don’t want it—’

‘That isn’t true,’ he got up but then stopped and the colour faded from his face. ‘Some men want children as dearly as women do. In the end how else can we go forward but through our children?’ And he looked at her so earnestly and said, ‘I wish things were different. I wish you were still in Durham.’

Lucy was so surprised at his vehemence that she got up, took his hands in her own and smiled at him.

‘You’re a good man really,’ she said.

Edgar laughed just a little while he recovered himself.

‘Nothing of the kind,’ he said.

He walked her home and when they got to her door he kissed her, very swiftly and rather sweetly on the mouth. She was so astonished she didn’t react until it was too late. He hadn’t intended doing it, she could see.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, head down so that he wouldn’t have to look at her, ‘I thought I would get through the evening without being so obvious.’

She smiled.

‘No, it … it was me,’ she said.

*

The following day he took her out for lunch. The day was fine and they found a tiny café which had a garden. They
sat out there under the trees and drank tea, and while they watched the river go by Edgar said to her, ‘I’ve been thinking about your situation here with the business and I wondered if you would let me help.’

‘There’s no reason why you should,’ she said.

‘There are several excellent reasons,’ he said. ‘I need you in my business and I thought that if we got together businesswise you could become a solicitor. In time you would become a partner.’

Lucy stared at him. It was exactly what Joe had said to her.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that would be wonderful.’

‘Which brings me to the second part of what I want to say. Will you marry me?’

She almost let out a little cry.

‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, softly.

‘Will you?’

She wanted to say that she would, that it was what she had wanted for so long, but she couldn’t.

‘I … I will have to think about it,’ she said.

‘Well, think about it now,’ he said.

But she couldn’t. There was a part of her which panicked, that made her want to get up and run, and yet she remembered what her ambition had been. If she married Edgar she could become a solicitor, even a partner; she could have everything she had wanted since being a little girl and finally she would make her father and her family proud of her.

Then she thought of Joe and how alike they were and how much he made her laugh and that he was unconventional, but then Joe had not asked her to marry him and he would
ask no one to marry him because he was still in love with the girl who bore him a child.

Lucy thought he always would be and that eventually he would find her and they would be married. If she did not marry Edgar she would be left alone and she would struggle always, having to work for her mother and her sister and her sister’s children with no offer of marriage then, nothing to help, nobody to get her through the days or nights, and she was afraid of the abyss she looked into.

Edgar was offering her a great deal. She would never have another offer like this. If she married him she freed her family, and she wanted so much to do the right thing. If she could have considered just herself then it might have been different, but no, she decided, it would not have been. She wanted to be a solicitor and this was the only way she would manage it.

He was waiting. He sat there across the table and she urged herself on so that in the end she nodded and agreed to marry him.

‘Emily will be so pleased,’ Edgar said.

*

Lucy was not hiding in her office, at least she told herself that she was not that week. The work was beginning to come in now. She was not making a good or a reasonable living, but it was a start, what with Gemma’s wage and hers, and they could eat and keep the children warm. Her mother had stopped complaining now that Lucy was marrying Edgar. As far as her mother was concerned all their problems had been solved.

Lucy had given up taking her father to work. He no longer
spoke or recognized anybody. He slept for much of the time and she had stopped the pretence that he was useful there. She didn’t need to pretend any more, but she did feel that she still needed the man he had been – she needed his approval and the presence of him as he had been when she was young and he had loved and admired her.

The pleasure in her life included being here in the office, and she was ashamed that she only hoped she and Edgar were married before her father died. Edgar did say to her when he came to visit that it would be so much easier when she lived in Durham and they could give up her father’s practice.

Lucy thought she had misheard.

‘Give it up?’

‘Why yes, of course. We cannot run two offices unless we employ somebody else and I didn’t think that was what you wanted. Bainbridge and Featherstone won’t run to any more work and we cannot be forever going back and forth between the two. It isn’t practical.’

Lucy had not understood up to that point that it would not be Bainbridge, Featherstone and Charlton, but of course it would not be because she would have Edgar’s name.

‘And you still aren’t qualified, so when your father dies you will have to give up this practice. It isn’t legal for you to do anything else.’

‘But I’ve built up the client list again. I’ve worked so hard.’

‘I know you have and it’s laudable, but the circumstances have changed entirely. We’ll both be living in Durham.’

‘What about Gemma and the children and my mother?’

Edgar misunderstood, she could see.

‘Do you want them to come and live with us?’ he said, as though he didn’t relish the idea.

Lucy stared at him.

‘They cannot leave the Tyne,’ she said and she knew how ridiculous it sounded, as if Edgar were asking them to go to Australia, but she was determined.

‘That house has been in our family for hundreds of years. If I marry you I want to be a solicitor and run the Newcastle office myself and I want my family to be able to stay in our house because I will have to look after them financially. It couldn’t possibly be any other way.’

She looked hard at him.

‘And I want my name on the door, it’s my family name, my father and my grandfather ran their business from it, it’s very important to me, Edgar.’

He didn’t speak for a few moments, and Lucy held her breath, worrying, but then he smiled and said,

‘Very well, if that’s how it has to be,’ but she knew he wasn’t happy about it.

*

When Edgar had gone back to Durham and told his sister what he had done he was surprised at her reaction.

She had looked wearily at him and said, ‘I’m so very pleased for you – it was what you needed.’

That wasn’t what Edgar wanted her to say. He sat over the fire when it was late and drank rather a lot of port, which he didn’t usually do, as he tried to ponder over his sister. He wasn’t happy, even now.

He thought of how it would be when Lucy was mistress of the house. Everything would be so brisk – no dust, no dirt, no
late meals. All would be in order. Would he be in order? He had the feeling that he might be. But the more he thought about it the more he was happy. He would be coming home to a good dinner, in fact they both would, and if they had to stay in Newcastle some nights they could stay at a fancy hotel and drink wine and … He tried not to think any further than that.

‘When is the engagement to be?’ Emily asked, and he realized that he had not thought about it.

So that week he went back to Newcastle and told Lucy that he must buy her the most beautiful ring in the world.

He took her to an exclusive jeweller’s on the corner of Northumberland Street and there they looked at diamonds.

‘I think rubies would be better,’ he said, but when Lucy faltered he added, ‘You are so beautiful, and you may have diamonds if you choose, but any of the other stones would suit you, in particular rubies and emeralds. Choose what you most like.’

She chose an oval ruby with tiny diamonds around it and he said that it was perfect for her. They went back to her house and told her mother and Gemma and the twins that they were now formally betrothed and he would be taking the family out to eat.

They went out to tea because of the children and after that he took Lucy out by herself. He had never been so happy.

*

It was late when Lucy got home and everyone was in bed. She didn’t remember that having happened and then she saw a shadow in the corner. Her mother had waited up for her
and she suddenly felt such a warm affection for this woman who had always seemed to put Gemma first.

Her mother came to her and kissed her and said, ‘I’m so pleased that you are happy, and what a lovely man he is.’

‘Yes, he’s very nice.’

‘Nice? He’s everything that you might want. To think that your father and I thought you would never marry and here you are with your cleverness and with a man like that who wants you.’

Lucy went upstairs into the attic to bed, but she could hear soft crying from below. She worried that it might be the children at first, but it wasn’t. It was Gemma, sobbing into her pillow as though she did not want to disturb the children.

Lucy listened and waited for her sister to cry herself to sleep, but she didn’t. Even though the sobs grew very faint she knew that Gemma was awake.

She tiptoed down the stairs and hovered in the doorway of the room where she and Gemma had slept together as children. She said her sister’s name ever so softly. Gemma stilled and then said, in a throaty voice, ‘Come in.’

Lucy did so. There was a big candle still lit. She closed the door and sat down on the bed. Gemma didn’t look at her, but neither did she turn away as Lucy had thought she might.

‘I’m so sorry about what happened to Guy,’ Lucy said. ‘To have your husband die so young of such an awful thing must be really hard for you.’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘What is it then?’

Her sister swallowed the rest of the sobs and then she moved away. Lucy could see by the candlelight her sister’s
wan face and the tear streaks down it. She put her arms around herself for comfort.

‘You were right,’ she said, looking at nothing, ‘I should never have married him. Our wedding night was … I think it was just like what you experienced with him. It was so awful and I couldn’t go home and I couldn’t tell anybody. On the second night I tried to get away and he hit me, he pushed me down, and I was so sore and he didn’t care. He wouldn’t let me go out anywhere, he wouldn’t let me see my friends, he didn’t want anybody anywhere near me.

‘The house we lived in, he didn’t own it, he had lied to me. Nobody had told me and the business he said was his family’s, the glassworks, was in a very bad way. They went bankrupt.

His parents were just glad that he had married a respectable woman; they needed to get rid of him. They thought I would change him but nobody could have changed him, Lucy, and I wished I could have told you but I was so ashamed of myself. I couldn’t tell my parents that I had been wrong and after what had happened to you …’ She broke down and sobbed audibly. ‘I was glad that he was so ill. I was even glad when he died because he put me through hell. Nobody knew and I wanted to come to Durham and talk to you and tell you and say how awful I felt about what I’d done to you and how you’d suffered, but I couldn’t admit it to myself. Now I’ve got his children and nothing else.’

‘You couldn’t have known any of these things,’ Lucy said. She tried to bring logic and sense to the situation, but she couldn’t see it clearly, she was so near. She had put up with
the loss of her family because of Guy. Her sister cried and she wished she could do the same.

Gemma lay down, exhausted. ‘I think I’ve only told you now that you have Edgar and a chance to be happy,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am for you and how much I like him. He’s a sensible, decent man and God knows there can’t be many of them about.’

She went to sleep then. Lucy lay down with her and thought about how in some ways it had not altered, that they were there for one another as they had been as children, and she felt comforted.

Lucy didn’t want to go back to Durham and tell the Formbys and the Misses Slaters and Joe that she was going to get married. She didn’t know why she was finding it hard; she wanted to marry Edgar and she knew they would be glad for her, but it would alter their friendship. It had not occurred to her that she would never come back to the tower house to live and that jarred on her.

It was late one Saturday afternoon when she finally went back to Durham.

She went to the Formbys’ house first. Tilda, who was just home from the shop, hugged her shyly. Clay hung back but she thought it was probably his age. The younger children she gave sweets to and they were happy with these. Mrs Formby hugged her and kissed her, and when she announced that she and Mr Bainbridge were getting married, Mrs Formby cried and said how proud she was. Lucy and Tilda and Mrs Formby talked about what they would wear and Mrs Formby said she would make a lovely bride.