The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (44 page)

Joe was silenced.

Lucy said, ‘She’s living at a farm just this side of Hexham. It’s called Castle Tower. Quite in keeping, don’t you think, everything considered?’

Joe stood there for a very long time.

As Lucy turned to leave the room he said softly, ‘Come with me, will you, please?’

‘I don’t—’

‘I’ve got a car outside. You so obviously know so much more than I do and you’ve tried so hard to help me. Get your coat or your wrap or whatever you have.’

She went off into the depths of the house, though was not gone long. She brought back with her a thin wrap which would not have kept a child warm. The weather had turned grim and the rain was blowing sideways.

She got into the car and pulled the black scarf from her hair. It was only then that he remembered in the full light of the day how fiery her hair was, how pale her skin, how dark her eyes, how white her knuckles, how thin her body and how she sat forward as though even now she was willing to take on what would happen and he knew how brave that was.

He drove the car as if cattle were stampeding before it. He kept at the road as it twisted and turned, beyond the
city, over the hills and into the wilds of Northumberland. He told himself that he couldn’t stand any more, that after this he would go back to London. To hell with them all. Mr Eve had said things were better in the south. It was where he belonged, he knew that now.

*

He pushed the car forward and the roads narrowed. They came to a farmhouse, a lovely stone building with other neat stone buildings around it and long, wide Northumbrian fields.

There he halted the car and they got out. There was not a person to be seen, but as they watched the people inside must have heard the car, because the front door opened, there was a happy sound and children spilled out from it. It was almost an insult, Lucy thought, for Joe.

First of all a little boy, screaming and crying and falling, almost but not quite walking. Then a little girl, with blonde curls dancing up the path and looking back at her mother and laughing. She was such a beautiful child. Lucy knew in that instant that she was Joe’s. She had his black eyes and his creamy northern skin. She would be a beautiful woman one day, as her grandmother had been.

The woman was tall and blonde and so lovely that Lucy drew in her breath. No wonder Joe had fallen in love with such a creature. She didn’t come any closer, but she beckoned.

‘Joe,’ she said finally as though they had met just a day since. ‘Would you like to come inside?’

Joe’s gaze was riveted on the little girl, but Lucy’s on the woman. She was heavily pregnant. It was so crudely cruel
to Joe that Lucy wanted to grab his arm and run away. She didn’t know how he was still breathing.

‘What is she called?’

‘This is Dinah. Dinah, this is Mr Joe Hardy.’ She looked at Lucy.

‘I’m Lucy Charlton.’

‘And Miss Charlton. Say hello.’

The girl was not shy. She gazed up at them from Joe’s almost black eyes and said, ‘How do you do?’

Joe said the same and took her hand and spoke softly to the little girl. Then another woman called from the house and the little girl ran away with the boy close behind.

Lucy and Joe followed Angela into the house and there she ushered them into a comfortable sitting room. It was the kind of room Lucy loved. It had bookshelves full of books, some of them quite old. A big log fire burned in the grate; the room was shabby, untidy, very lived-in. The armchairs were old leather and there were little side-tables. Lucy could imagine the couple sitting there when the children were gone to bed. It was a happy house. A house that had been there for a very long time, as the tower house had been, and it held memories and the warmth of people and of grief. It held them all as houses did.

‘My mother wrote to me. She told me that you, Miss Charlton, had been to see her and to expect a visit probably from both of you very soon – so I’m not surprised to see you.’ Her smile was serene. Lucy had a great desire to hit her and knock it off her face. Angela looked at Joe.

‘I’m sorry that I didn’t help you or get in touch; it was out
of respect for my husband. He took on your child. I can’t see any other man who might have done it.’

‘Is he here?’ Joe said.

‘Yes, he’s in the barn, I think, and will come inside. He knows who you are. I kept nothing from him. I have a very good life here, one I prefer to anything I found in London. What a dreadful life it was, where people cared so much for things that didn’t matter. Even my father wouldn’t forgive me. I think you might say that your mother influenced me. She was a lovely woman, Joe, and so is my mother. They did their best. They didn’t mean to deceive you, but they were afraid that people might know where I was and what had happened. It was best this way. I hope you understand.’

Joe said nothing. Lucy wanted to shout at her for what she had done to him but she couldn’t. There was too much at stake here. Angela had Joe’s child and but for her goodwill he might never see the little girl again.

At that moment the door opened and a tall dark man, much older than they were, came into the room. He came across and shook Joe’s hand and Lucy’s too. Angela introduced him as Erik Cuthbertson. It was a good northern name, Lucy thought. The man had clear eyes and a steady gaze and the lovely lilting burr of Northumberland in his voice.

‘I’m sorry it has been such a long and difficult road for you, Mr Hardy,’ he said. Lucy was amazed at his generosity and yet she hated him. ‘We were afraid to do anything at first. I was so worried that Angela’s family would find out, especially her father. I know how he treated her and you and until we were established here we didn’t want to be
found. I’m sorry it cost you so dearly. Since we heard from Angela’s mother we have sat down here …’ Mr Cuthbertson nodded towards the armchairs at either side of the fire, ‘… and talked about this and we would like you to be part of Dinah’s life. She is your child and we want her to know you. You don’t live so very far away. I don’t know if we can be friends because this is a very difficult thing to sort out but as long as you accept that Angela is my wife I daresay we could let you see Dinah often.’

Joe had gone very pale. He said nothing. What would he have said? Lucy thought.

The little girl was brought in before she went to bed and though Joe hung back she was told that Mr Hardy was special to the family. Then, from the safety of her mother’s arms, she smiled at him and Joe smiled back. They told her that she would see Joe often in the future and she went on beaming at him from her lovely, light young face.

The little girl went off and Lucy saw how Joe’s gaze followed her. She wished things had been different for him. After that there was polite talk and then they left. Neither spoke all the way back to Newcastle. Lucy got out of the car without a word and went inside.

*

Joe was confused now. He didn’t know what to do. His first instinct was to give up his dream of starting a motor factory here in Durham and leaving as soon as he could. He wanted never to see Angela again or her smug husband or her children, but his memory of the little girl kept dragging him back.

He told himself that it was of no consequence, that she would never miss him. She hadn’t known him, she wouldn’t remember him. Lots of men got by without their children, many of them ran away, so why shouldn’t he? Angela’s treatment of him made him smart; it was humiliating, as though he didn’t matter.

Somehow Erik Cuthbertson’s offer had made Joe want to punch him hard in the face. Angela was so beautiful, so fertile. Her small children and her swelling belly were like an insult to him. It made Joe want to burst with frustration that she had married a man so far beneath him, a farmer. Joe was ashamed of himself. She looked happy. He didn’t think he could stand much more of that happiness.

*

Lucy wished in some ways that she had not discovered where Angela was. It had made things worse. Joe still loved this woman. She could tell by his face that he did. It didn’t matter that she had betrayed him, cared nothing for him, made him take the blame for what had happened to them. No decent woman would do that, she thought, and yet so many of them did. They just didn’t think they were to blame for such things, whereas in fact society looked at it the other way round, as though Angela herself were to blame. Angela had so obviously not thought like this. In its way it was admirable but her treatment of Joe was not.

Lucy didn’t understand how Angela could marry a man so much older than she was. She understood why she had done it, but for Angela to look at him with love? He was a very nice man, Lucy thought, but he was not Joe. It was only at that moment that Lucy compared herself with Angela and knew
that subconsciously she had done so from the moment they had met. With a sinking heart she realized that Joe would never love a woman such as she was.

She and Angela could not have been more different. Lucy knew that she was not beautiful, though she was in many ways attractive – but somebody like Angela could carry the whole world before her. She must have had many suitors when she lived in London. Joe had been lucky to gain her and then unlucky after that. Angela was spoiled. She thought she could have anything and anybody she wanted. Then she had learned otherwise and Joe had borne the brunt of it.

Lucy had thought when she went to London that in a way she was freeing Joe, but she could see now that it was not so. He might go on loving this woman, despite what she had done to him, for the rest of his life. Sometimes people didn’t recover from such things and Joe had had so much to recover from. And the worst thing of all somehow was that Lucy knew now how much she loved him, how much she wanted to be with him and that it would not happen. She vowed never to bother him again.

*

Joe didn’t know why he had left the letter he’d found, the letter in a different hand, until now. He could have read it at any time and yet he had carried it around with him as he had carried all the letters. Each time he read one he could feel it in his pocket and think of his father and all the trials of his life. By carrying the letters around with him, his father’s unmistakable black flourishing hand stayed with him, and he remembered the content, most of it word for
word. During the day, when he wasn’t thinking of business, the words were there in his mind, in his father’s voice, his very tones. Somehow they helped.

But he knew that the final letter was not written by him and he dreaded opening it because the hand was lighter. It was plain, the envelope so long and narrow, that it scared him. His life kept breaking open again and again, like an onion shedding its skin to the slippery one beneath. This letter felt to him like the very core, the last one, and he carried it around for days because he couldn’t bear to open it.

At last, when the night was quiet and he had gone back to the tower house, as the Misses Slaters slept safely above and Frederick and the cats cuddled up by the fireside, he sat down and in the dim light he read.