The Story of Lucy Gault

The remaining boards had been taken down from the windows at Lahardane in order to dispel the gloom they induced and to bring air into the house again. Repeatedly, Mr Sullivan had tea in the drawing-room, repeatingly bringing with him no news. But only when that autumn had passed, and most of the winter that followed, while the nervous pause in Ireland’s troubles was constantly threatened, did he suggest that the future at Lahardane must be considered.

‘Respecting the law,’ he stated suddenly one afternoon, ‘I have no position in what should next be done, Bridget. My part was to end when you closed the house. “The acreage and the cattle should keep things going,” Captain Gault reiterated when last he came in to see me a day or two before their departure. Even in his great distress he did not forget that Henry and yourself should be decently provided for. But the sum he lodged with me – to cover the final expenses as regards the house – I have been obliged, with the change of circumstances, to make use of otherwise and have in fact exhausted it. So respecting the law, Bridget, that is the end of it. It is as your employers’ friend – and yours, I trust – that I may in future be of assistance. I am arranging, from my own resources, to meet the expenses of the child’s upkeep. On his return there is no doubt that Captain Gault will settle the debt.’

‘You’re good to think of us, sir.’

‘You manage, Bridget?’

‘Ah, we do, we do.’

Mr Sullivan shook Bridget’s hand, something he had never done before and, in fact, never did again. He wouldn’t desert them, he promised. He would continue to visit the house until a day of great rejoicing made that no longer necessary. He was as certain as ever he had been, he vigorously reiterated, that such a day would come.

In all this, Mr Sullivan did not touch upon his own frustrations: since he spoke no foreign languages, his enquiries in likely countries had had to be channelled through official sources in Dublin, but the confused political hiatus before, and following, an unsatisfactory Treaty made communication far from easy. A transference of power, of order and responsibility, took place at its own slow progression; chaos prevailed while it did so. Receiving no reply to his letters, Mr Sullivan had twice forwarded copies to offices that subsequently appeared to be unstaffed. And when, much later, he supposed it was understandable that a small local crisis should fail to be of import in the greater crisis of a country in upheaval, he blamed himself as much as the circumstances of which he was a victim; for the urgency he sought to convey in what he had written had clearly not registered. Nor did he trust the assurances he eventually received, but instead read into them an empty promise that was designed to soothe. Some garbled version of his pleas might one day be disseminated, stale by then and carelessly strung together, the poignancy of a family’s agony reduced to nothing much. He imagined such a document filed away, in irritation or bewilderment, by foreign officials who had better things to do.

He would not cease to nag, but his helplessness, he knew, would continue to infect his solicitor’s authority. His shame in this respect drew him closer to what had happened, as guilt had drawn Bridget and Henry closer when they had suspected Lucy of bathing but hadn’t said.

‘We must hope,’ he urged again that afternoon, although he did not now believe in hope. He wished Bridget good-bye and walked to his car beneath a rain-filled sky.

*

In the kitchen, where the range was always lit first thing, the ceiling and walls were white, the woodwork green. A heavy deal table, so scrubbed that ridges stood up in the grain, had drawers with brass handles. Between the windows there was a green dresser crowded with plates and saucers and cups. Cupboards were let into the wall on either side of the doorway.

At one end of the table Lucy watched the yolk spreading out of Henry’s fried egg. She liked the yellow herself but not the white, unless it was mashed up. She watched Henry putting salt on the yolk, which he smeared into his fried bread.

‘Henry gets lonely,’ Bridget said. ‘You go with Henry, dotey.’ Every morning when it was fine Bridget said Henry would be lonely, going by himself with the creamery churns. Lucy knew he wouldn’t be. She knew it was only a pretence to get her to go with him, since there wasn’t much for her to do when there were holidays from school. ‘Ah, Lucy! Come in, come in,’ Mr Aylward had exclaimed the morning she walked into school again, and she’d thought he would put his arms around her, but Mr Aylward didn’t do things like that. ‘They’ll get used to it,’ he promised her when the handful of other children didn’t want to play with her, when they eyed her and stared at her, or glanced and nudged one another, not giggling because what she had done was too bad for giggling. The nameless dog who had once run away also was her companion on the strand.