The Story of Lucy Gault

The solicitor sighed. He understood, he said, but all the same he had to remember what Everard Gault had himself passed on: how he and his wife had gone down to the strand time and time again, how they had suffered the torments of hell by day and by night, and now, apparently, were travelling purposelessly. While all the time their wayward child had been feeding herself on sugar sandwiches.

‘Sit down yourself, Bridget,’ he said.

But Bridget did not sit down. She had never sat down in this room and even allowing for what had happened she could not do so now. It had put the heart across her, she said, when Henry walked in with the child in his arms. It was a terrible thing that had happened, a terrible thing the child had done: she wouldn’t deny it for a minute. She’d never seen the like of the poor creature when Henry brought her in, death’s door you’d have said.

‘Would we send another wire, sir, in case that one would have gone astray?’

‘It didn’t go astray, Bridget.’

Bridget heard about the letter that had come from France. It was not her place to frown but she failed to resist the impulse; and as if he recognized that she needed a moment to herself, Mr Sullivan paused. When he continued he explained that in the communication he had received there was a reference to the furniture and belongings that were still at Lahardane. His assumption had been that removal vans would eventually arrive for them. In the letter it was stated that what had been left behind was to remain where it was.

‘Your wire was received, Bridget, at the address you sent it to. Captain Gault’s wire of cancellation was received there. I’ve naturally been in touch. Sooner or later, of course, we’ll have news of Captain and Mrs Gault’s settled whereabouts. It is unfortunate that we are without it at the moment.’

Lending emphasis to the inconvenience of this predicament, Mr Sullivan’s oiled head moved slowly from side to side, his slate-coloured eyes morose. His sigh, coming next, was a long intake of breath, held for a moment and then exhaled.

‘They said nothing to you before they left, I suppose, about the possibility of a change of heart? About what they intended?’

Anxiety flickered through Bridget’s features with even less consideration for her wishes than the frown of a moment ago. Had something been mentioned? Had she not listened properly in the upset that was all around them? She thought for a moment longer, then shook her head.

‘They only left the address, sir.’

Mr Sullivan’s two plump hands lay lightly on the blue pin-striping that stretched over his knees. ‘Would there be papers here we could look through, Bridget? In case there’s anything that’s a help to us?’

Bridget lifted off further dust sheets. But in the writing-desk drawers, and in the drawers of the sideboard in the dining-room, there was nothing that was relevant to the difficulty that confronted them. Nor was there anything in the dressing-table drawers when they carried the lamps upstairs.

‘There’s nothing only receipts here,’ Bridget reported when she searched the shelves of a corner cupboard on the first-floor landing while Mr Sullivan held the lamp. Elsewhere, among other correspondence, there was a single picture postcard from the Captain’s brother, with a regimental address in India and dated nearly three years ago. More recently, a note of querulous recrimination was struck in the few letters that were from Heloise Gault’s aunt in Wiltshire.

‘The arrangements the Captain left behind as regards the house and yourselves haven’t been disturbed,’ Mr Sullivan said. ‘What has happened makes no difference to that.’

Expenses in the future had been provided for, emergencies anticipated. The Gaults had been meticulous, even if their departure had been more ragged than it might have been. His hope, the solicitor confessed, had been the house – some hint somewhere in it of the change that had later been effected in their plans.

‘I’ve asked round about,’ he said when they returned to the drawing-room. ‘I’ve asked everyone I could think of. I thought word might have reached the Mount Bellew cousins but it seems they, too, left Ireland a while back. Were they much in touch, do you know?’

Bridget didn’t. Once they’d been, she remembered, but she hadn’t heard them mentioned since they’d gone to England. No letters from them were discovered when the downstairs drawers were searched again; but the Mount Bellew cousins were there in a photograph album, picnicking on the grass at Lahardane ten years ago.

‘If I’m not wrong about it, one of those boys went down at Passchendaele,’ the solicitor recalled. ‘The same regiment as the Captain’s.’

‘I didn’t ever hear that.’

‘You’re worried, Bridget. It’s a shock, what I’ve brought you. But contact will be made, there’s no doubt about that. We have the regiment in India in case the Captain gets in touch with his brother and if it’s no longer in the same place any communication from me would be forwarded. The army takes a pride in that type of thing.’