The Story of Lucy Gault

On the afternoon of the day before the day of the departure Captain Gault went through his papers, feeling that it was something he should do. But the occupation was tedious and, abandoning it, he dismantled instead the rifle he had fired in the night. He cleaned its parts purposefully, as if anticipating their use in the future, although he did not intend to take the rifle with him.

‘Oh, all this will fall into place,’ he murmured more than once, confident in his reassurance to himself. Leaving, arriving, the furniture one day settled around them again: time and circumstance would arrange their lives, as in exile so many other lives had been arranged.

He returned to leafing through his papers, conscientiously doing his best with them.

*

Heloise secured the leather straps on the trunks that were ready to go, then attached the labels she had written. Wondering if she would ever see again all that had to be left behind, she distributed camphor balls in drawers and wardrobes, in sleeves and pockets.

This was the empty time of day. No matter what excitements there might earlier have been, or in what way the day so far had been different from other days, the house was quiet now. No rattle of pans disturbed the hours before evening came, no music on the gramophone in the drawing-room, no chatter of voices. Betraying nothing of the chagrin the task induced, Henry carried downstairs the trunks and suitcases that had been packed. On the kitchen table Bridget spread out on her ironing blanket the shirt collars the Captain would require on his travels. In the depths of the range the heaters for her iron had just begun to glow.

*

When Lucy passed the open door of the kitchen, Bridget did not look up. Henry was not in the yard. Only the orchard was noisy, the rooks scattering from among the apple branches when her presence disturbed them.

She went the steep way, as Paddy Lindon had advised, avoiding the easier track through the glen in case Henry was out on it. She didn’t know how long her journey to Dungarvan would take; Paddy Lindon had never been precise about that. She wouldn’t know where to look for Kitty Teresa’s house when she got there, but whoever gave her a lift would. Kitty Teresa would say she’d have to take her back, but it wouldn’t matter because everything would be different by then: all the time she’d thought about running away Lucy had known it would be. As soon as they discovered she wasn’t there, as soon as they realized what had happened, it would be different. ‘It breaks my heart, too,’ her mama had said. ‘And papa’s. Papa’s most of all.’ When Kitty Teresa brought her back they’d say they’d always known they couldn’t leave.

She passed a moss-encrusted rock that she remembered from some other time when she was here, then a fallen tree that wasn’t familiar at all, with spikes where it had cracked off that could catch you if it was dark. It wasn’t dark now, no more than gloomy, like it always was in the high woods. But darkness would come in an hour or so and she’d have to get to the road before it did, although there wouldn’t be any chance of a cart going by until the morning. She hurried and almost at once she stumbled, thrown forward, her foot caught in a hole. Pain spread from her ankle when she tried to move it. She couldn’t stand up.

*

‘Lucy!’ Captain Gault called out in the yard. ‘Lucy!’

There was no answer and in the milking parlour he shouted down the length of it to Henry.

‘Tell Lucy if you see her I’ve gone to say good-bye to the fisherman we missed the last time.’ By the avenue and the road, he said, back by the strand. ‘Say I could do with a bit of company.’

He called her name again at the front of the house before he set off on his own.

*

‘She was here earlier,’ Bridget said. ‘I saw her about.’

It wasn’t unusual; Lucy often wasn’t there. Meeting Bridget on the stairs, Heloise had made her enquiry without anxiety. It could be, Bridget supposed, that there was the dog over at the O’Reillys’ to say good-bye to.

‘You’ve been a strength to me, Bridget.’ In that quiet, untroubled moment Heloise paused before returning to the suitcases in her bedroom. ‘All these years you’ve been a strength to me.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t be going, ma’am. I wish it was different.’

‘I know. I know.’

*

On the avenue Captain Gault wondered in what circumstances he would again move through its shadows, beneath the long arch of branches that stole most of the light. On either side of him the grass, deprived, was a modest summer growth, yellow here and there with dandelions, foxgloves withering where they had thrived in the shade. He paused for a moment when he came to the gate-lodge, where life would continue when the house was abandoned. Now that an end had come, he doubted this evening that he would ever bring his family back to live at Lahardane. The prediction came from nowhere, an unwelcome repetition of what, these last few days, he had privately denied.