The Story of Lucy Gault

It was while discussing all this that the Captain realized they now saw the future differently, that although they shared so much in what had befallen them they were less at one than they’d seemed to be when he had called it that. In the brief time that had elapsed since their departure he had begun to sense that he’d been wrong to imagine he would not ever wish to return to the house they had abandoned. But he sensed as well that Heloise’s contrary feelings had strengthened with every mile they had covered. Exile was what she longed for, where all her faith was, and her hope. He did not intend to cajole her out of that; looking after her was more his task. She was still a shadow of the woman she had not long ago been.

They moved on when the business they had chosen to do in Basel was complete. They went south, to Lugano, and stayed for a few days by its peaceful lake. On a cloudless autumn afternoon they crossed the border to Italy and then, again, went slowly on.

5

‘A ruin?’ Aloysius Sullivan said. ‘A ruin?’

Bridget explained. She mentioned what was taken away in the fish-baskets, and the unripe apples. Mr Sullivan briefly closed his eyes.

‘She was cross, the way things were. She had it in mind to run off so’s they’d maybe take notice of her.’ And Bridget told what she had further conjectured, and the few facts she had learnt – about the spiky branches that were a hindrance in the gloom of the woods, the added burden of the coat brought for warmth when night would come, the fallen branches stumbled over. ‘She had blood oozing out from the scratches on her face. She could taste it and it frightened her. Poor scrap, she dragged herself on with everything she was carrying until by chance she came to Paddy Lindon’s place for shelter. In the daylight again she tried to come back to the house here but the way the foot had swollen up she couldn’t get more than a few steps. She was afraid for it when she went out after the berries. She was afraid again when the food ran down. Someone’d come was what she always thought. When no one did, what she thought was she’d die.’

Aloysius Sullivan wasn’t impressed. ‘The garment found on the strand was placed there in order to mislead? An act of guile, of calculated deception, we have to say?’

‘Ah no, Mr Sullivan, no.’

‘What then? Some pleasantry?’

Bridget had not been told – and never was – about the part played by the dog, and suggested that what had been found in the shingle had been left behind by mistake.

‘What it is, sir, we were misled when it never entered our heads she’d run off. Not mine nor Henry’s, nor the master’s nor the mistress’s, sir.’

‘I didn’t imagine it would have,’ the solicitor drily responded.

They were in the drawing-room, the furniture still covered. Two lamps were burning. In the house the window boards were still mostly in place.

‘It was the feeling there was with us, sir – that a thing happened the way it looked like it did, the way what was found –’

‘I understand, Bridget, I understand.’

‘What sense would it make to us, sir, that she’d set off for Dungarvan and night coming down, that she’d gone up through the woods to get on to the road and it miles off? It wouldn’t have made sense, sir, any more than it does to herself now.’

‘I am thankful to say, Bridget, I am not familiar with the sense or otherwise of the very young, although I grant you that in my daily work I frequently encounter limitations of sense in the mature. Where is the child now?’

‘In the yard. With Henry.’

‘And her condition?’

‘Still quiet, sir.’ Bridget lifted a sheet from one of the armchairs. ‘Sit down, sir.’

Aloysius Sullivan was a big man, and welcomed the offer. The calves of his legs were aching, even though he had driven to Lahardane in his car. Some instinct told him that the aching was caused by the weight of responsibility that these new circumstances unfairly placed upon him. Ever since he had received Everard Gault’s few lines from France he had been aware of nervousness of one kind or another in his body, manifesting itself in the form of a rash beneath his collar, and now making its presence felt as an ache in his calves. When, a week ago, he had learnt that the assumptions made as to the child’s fate were incorrect, he had experienced the onset of a neuralgic affliction that had been quiet for years.

‘My mother used to say, Bridget, you could find the Devil in a child.’

‘Ah no, sir, no. She was upset in herself by what was happening. Like all of us was, sir. There was never ease in this house after the men came to murder us in our beds. If there’s blame to be given out, sir, we can look for it there.’