The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (7 page)

‘Is that the best you can do?’ Joe said.

Toddy tried to maintain his pose and failed. His body slouched.

‘We don’t want you here, Joe. You must know that people who regarded you and your father as good honourable people don’t any more.’

‘You lied to me,’ Joe accused him.

Toddy looked back and the anger was there again. ‘I did nothing of the kind.’

‘Yes, you did – you and Sarah here and everybody else. Angela didn’t leave here because she didn’t care about me, or she cared that my … what, that my title was worthless without money and estates. All right, some stupid bitches might think so—’ He heard Sarah draw in her breath at his language, but he didn’t care. ‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You goddamned bloody liar. You know exactly where she is.’

‘I don’t,’ Toddy said. Now his eyes were clear, but he turned
them swiftly to his wife; her face was so pale Joe thought she might pass out.

‘Sarah?’ Joe prompted her. He thought it was the first time he’d seen hate on a woman’s face.

‘You did it,’ she said.

‘Don’t,’ Toddy said.

She glared at him. ‘Why shouldn’t he hear it? Our friends know what kind of man he is, what happened to Angela.’

‘Tell me,’ Joe insisted.

He looked at her, trying to soften his insistence with his eyes.

She looked suddenly sorrowful and the words were almost whispered.

‘She was expecting a child.’

What was left of Joe’s world crashed down around him.

‘Have you any idea what that’s like in our society? A young girl of high birth who has been … been so stupid as to give herself to a man like you? By then your father had shown how low he was – he tried to take money from his friends, he stole, he begged, he went to people’s houses drunk and spoiled their family times and he lay on the streets and was sick in the gutters—’

‘Sarah, stop it—’ Toddy said.

‘Let him hear it. He wanted to know. Your father was horrified by what you had done and her father was so ashamed that he tried to make her go to some dreadful place where stupid girls go when they have disgraced themselves – but she wouldn’t. He told her—’ Sarah stopped and swallowed hard and then she went on. ‘He told her that you were dead.’

Joe thought he would never be able to take his eyes off her
white narrow face and gleaming dark eyes. She was crying now; the tears rushed her face as though they had been held back for a very long time and it was only now that she was grieving.

‘The day before she was to be sent to such a place she … she ran away.’

Joe stood. It was all he could do. He had been so busy sorting things out in France, envisaging how they would be together, and all that time she was going through something which a single woman should never have to.

‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that that might happen?’ she asked, her eyes like hard jewels.

She held his gaze while Joe fought to comprehend the gravity of what he had done, the results of his folly.

‘It was one weekend,’ he said finally as the waves of horror threw themselves over him.

She was glaring at him now. Joe felt smaller, as if he had shrivelled. He found his breathing all over the place. The room was turning black around him. He fought it, won, and the room slowly righted itself.

‘Why don’t you get out?’ she said.

‘But where is she? Where would she go?’

‘None of us knows. What Toddy told you was a fabrication. She ran. We have done everything we could to find her; we were so concerned, so worried about her. She thought you were dead and then she disappeared. She couldn’t stand the idea that you cared more for indulging yourself in her body than you cared for her reputation, her happiness or her well-being. Toddy went to all our friends and relatives but nobody has seen or heard anything of her and now we don’t
even know if she is alive. You caused this. So now you know what it has been like for all of us and most especially for her – having a child in some awful kind of poverty because you risked everything, and for what? Perhaps she’s even dying. Is that love?’

At that moment – it couldn’t have been worse timed, Joe thought – the doors opened and Toddy’s parents were ushered into the room. They had obviously been alerted that he was here. sir Felix Toddington glared at Joe. He was a big man; when they had been children Toddy and Angela had both been afraid of him. Joe’s father had put up with him because their families were friends. Lady Toddington was tall and stately and always reminded Joe of a ship in full sail. She adored her children and now when she saw Joe her blue eyes were the brighter for the tears in them.

‘So she ran away from you?’ Joe accused sir Felix.

‘It was your doing,’ the man roared back, his thin face mottled.

‘Couldn’t you have helped her?’

‘We did everything we could. We wanted to do the right thing but she wouldn’t have it. You had poisoned her mind against her family.’

Joe shook his head. ‘The right thing? To send her to such a place where they would make her give up our baby? Couldn’t you have forgiven us and looked after her? You knew I was coming home.’

‘Thousands of better men than you died in France. We didn’t know that you would come back.’

‘The war was over,’ Joe said, and his voice broke. ‘Couldn’t you have written to me, couldn’t you have helped?’

‘I didn’t want my daughter married to you after you treated her so badly and after the way your father was behaving,’ her father said. ‘I would rather she had died than marry into such a family.’

There wasn’t a lot left to say after that, Joe thought. Lady Toddington stood as if she were stuffed. She didn’t cry or turn away or say anything which might have helped, and Joe was a little surprised at that. She had always liked him, had supported them, had been glad that they were engaged. She had even liked Joe’s father, had tried to help him during the years after Joe’s mother had died. He could remember her very often being there for him, but she offered him nothing now and he understood. She blamed him for everything; they all did.

Joe felt scorched, worthless and, even worse than that, he imagined Angela lost and alone and in despair. Perhaps like his father, she had even taken her own life because she could bear no more. Did she hate him now? If she didn’t then she would surely have followed him to France, found him there – but then she was bearing a child.

He somehow got himself out of the house and back to where his chair waited. There was nothing else.

Lucy came to, out of the arms of wonderful sleep. She tried to get back to where she had been, to some pleasant dream which included her parents and Gemma, but she couldn’t. She had awoken in the dim light and remembered where she was. It took several moments to focus and even that was difficult because the room was in darkness, though fingers of light were trying to reach around the curtains. Then she realized that someone was knocking hesitantly on her door and from out there came the sound of a worried voice speaking her name. She lay for a few moments longer until the voice saying her name for the third time became recognizable. It was Gemma.

She had been forgiven. Gemma had not married Guy, for she knew now that her sister had been right. Her father and mother saw that she had been speaking the truth. All her best dreams had come true – she was going home. She almost fell out of bed, stumbled the short distance to the door, unlocked it, hauled it open and there stood her sister.

‘Gemma!’ she exclaimed and threw herself into her sister’s arms, rapturous with relief.

Only she didn’t. There were a few moments before she
could make herself believe that no one stood outside her door. There was nothing but empty air. She had wanted it so badly that she had imagined it.

She thought she had grown used to the sickening feeling, that what had happened could not be put aside as some kind of nightmare. The nightmare was real and went on and on. She tried to breathe and not to cry as disappointment swept over her, overwhelming her with desire to go back into the room, to close and lock the door and get thankfully into bed, staying there forever in the darkness.

She turned over but already couldn’t recall more than the shadows of her dream. The family drifted further and further away the more she tried to bring them back until she could barely remember what they looked like.

Thankfully, once again, sleep took over. The next time she awoke it was dark and she was thirsty. She waited until her eyes adjusted themselves, until she could make out the jug on the dressing table which would still have water in it. She got carefully out of bed, went over and put the jug to her lips. The water tasted slightly stale, but there was enough to quench her thirst. She went back to bed. Then she needed the lavatory. By the time she had returned she was wide awake and so afraid.

The cathedral clock was striking eleven. She lay there for hours, shutting her eyes and wishing for oblivion. But she had slept enough; her body was demanding food. She hadn’t eaten in days and every time she thought of normal things it brought back being at home. She wished now that she had told her mother she had slept with a college boy. She should have done that. Even though they would have been
ashamed of her they would have accepted it and she would not be here like this. She would have been at Gemma and Guy’s wedding. The idea of seeing him ever again made her change her mind abruptly.

She thought of Gemma marrying that man and she knew that she had been right to tell them, even though they had not believed her. Even though they had taken no notice no matter what she said, she had still been right. She would have blamed herself when anything had gone wrong in Gemma’s marriage if she had kept silent. It was a gamble of course, like most important things were. There was no reason that she knew of why a man who did such a thing would not make as good as husband as any other man, though to her it didn’t seem sensible.

Even though it had cost her so very much she could not have done that to her sister. She questioned her own motives. Part of her was still a woman and tried to blame her for what had happened. But it didn’t matter how often she went through the scene again – and she made herself do it, thinking that perhaps she had gone outside on purpose to bring him to her – no, she had not. She went over and over it, though it wounded her every time. The lingering physical pain reminded her of another problem. What if she were to have a child?

The panic was enough to send her back under the covers, to exhaust her so that she went to sleep again. She thought if she could just do this every time she woke up then everything would be all right.

*

She didn’t know how many days it was before her body
demanded food again and when it wasn’t supplied she began to feel sick until she was sick every time she drank water. It was strange to discover that she didn’t want to die after all. If she lay there much longer, she reasoned, she would be too weak to get up and move.

She felt herself going into some deep black place which made her try to claw her way free. If she did not get out of bed now, something told her, she never would – and although she had thought that was what she wanted, it turned out that it wasn’t. There was some force which would not let her lie there and then she felt the blood between her legs. At least she was not pregnant. How strange when it was something to be glad of; she had always thought that when it happened she would be married to a decent man and that somehow she would have fitted into her father’s business. It made her laugh now to have had such innocent dreams.

She managed to stand up and found the clothes which she had left on the floor for however many days it had been since she had shut herself in here as though it were a tomb. She found her purse. There wasn’t much in it, but it wasn’t empty. She took up the key and unlocked the door. The corridor beyond would not stay still; it seemed endless. Other people flitted in and out and some of them spoke.

One girl even said, ‘Are you all right, Miss Charlton?’

Lucy almost remembered her name and smiled and said that she had had the flu but was much better. But the girl did not seem to care because she did not enquire any further. The corridor disappeared into the distance and Lucy followed it, trying to make sense of the place.

Eventually she came outside. There was sunshine. How
odd. She screwed up her eyes against it. She moved into the shadows and from there walked around Palace Green and down into Saddler Street. She stepped back out into the sunshine in the marketplace, walking further over the cobbles of Silver Street until she reached the café from which wafted the smell of bacon.

She sat down at the nearest table inside and ordered a pot of tea and a bacon sandwich. She ate swiftly because she was so hungry, drank all the tea, paid and got herself outside again. She staggered back to her room. She had not thought about how she felt until now, but she felt worse, hot and cold. Luckily she did not throw up the bacon sandwich and tea as she had begun to think she might. She managed to get the key into the lock and herself back into the room, falling thankfully on to the bed. After that she was oblivious to everything.

Again her sleep was happy, full of dreams of being at home when everything was well. Her stomach was satisfied, and it was strange that something so basic could lift her mood. She had not known the difference it would make. She slept as she had done as a child, which made it all the more difficult when she awoke – because this time she wanted to get up.

The room had become her cell; she felt like a nun or a monk. It was home to her now. She only went back to sleep after promising herself that the following day she would find some work. Her sensible side said that if she didn’t have work she would never graduate, that she would not go on to be a solicitor. Considering everything which had happened to her she had to manage that. The money which she had left from her post office savings account must last; she must eke it out until she graduated and then she must find better work.

Joe didn’t have visitors. He only went out for food and into the yard at the back of the house – where the carriage houses and stables were – to replenish the fire. So he was astonished one day in February to hear a banging on the front door. He had fallen asleep some time in the middle of the night in his father’s chair. He almost didn’t answer it but then he thought of Angela – it could be news from some unexpected source – so as the banging went on he trod through the freezing hall and jerked open the door.