The Story of Lucy Gault

‘I would try everything. I would try for the stage. I would try marrying into riches. What are they called, the boys you teach?

‘Kildare and Jack.’

‘How odd Kildare is! How odd a name!’

‘It’s in the family, I believe.’

‘Earls of Kildare there were. And there’s the county.’

‘A town as well.’

‘I have an Uncle Jack in India. My father’s brother. I don’t remember him. D’you know how many books there are at Lahardane?’

‘No.’

‘There are four thousand and twenty-seven. So old, some of them, they’re falling to bits. Others have never been opened. Do you know how many I’ve read? Can you guess?’

Ralph shook his head.

‘Five hundred and twelve. Last night, for the second time, I finished Vanity Fair.’

‘I haven’t read it even once.’

‘It’s very good.’

‘I’ll read it one of these days.’

‘It has taken me years to read all those books. I began when I left school.’

‘I’ve read hardly anything compared with that.’

‘Sometimes there are jellyfish washed up here. Poor little creatures, but they sting if you pick them up.’

They walked among the pools in the rocks where anemones and shrimps were. The sheepdog that had followed them prodded the clumps of seaweed with a paw.

‘Do you think it strange that I counted the books?’

‘No, not at all.’

He imagined her counting, a finger passing from spine to spine along a bookshelf, and then beginning again on the shelf below. When he’d come the last time he hadn’t been invited into the house. He wondered if today he’d see the rooms, and hoped he would.

‘I don’t know why I counted them,’ she said, and added when a silence lengthened, ‘I think we have to go back now. Shall we walk somewhere else after tea?’

*

She wished she hadn’t said about the books. She hadn’t meant to. She had meant only to mention Vanity Fair, perhaps even to draw attention to William Makepeace Thackeray as a name because Makepeace was as unusual as Kildare and she liked the rhythm of it. It sounded peculiar, counting four thousand and twenty-seven books. And yet he’d shaken his head decisively when she’d asked if it seemed strange.

She cut the sponge cake Bridget had made and wondered if she should have bought a Scribbins’ Swiss roll, which you could sometimes get in Kilauran. The sponge cake felt clammy, the knife not slipping through as effortlessly as it might. Bridget’s hand was heavy with cakes, though never with bread.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the slice she had cut.

‘It may not be very nice.’

‘It’s delicious.’

She poured his tea and added milk, then poured her own. What should she say when they went quiet? This morning she had thought of questions to ask, but had already asked the ones she could remember.

‘Are you glad you came to Enniseala, Ralph?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Are you really not much of a teacher?’

‘Well, I haven’t taught the Ryall boys much.’

‘Perhaps they don’t want to learn much.’

‘No, they don’t. Not in the least.’

‘Then it’s not your fault.’

‘I have a conscience.’

‘So have I.’

She hadn’t meant to say that, either. She was determined not to talk about her conscience. It wasn’t interesting to a stranger, and she would say too much.

‘I could not teach boys,’ she said.

‘Probably you could. As well as I can.’

‘I remember Mr Ryall. With a moustache.’

‘The Ryalls have been nice to me.’

‘There’s a man in Domville’s I remember. A stringy man, very tall, his tie tied tightly in his collar. I knew his name but I can’t remember it now.’

‘I’ve never been in Domville’s.’

‘There’s a little railway above your head and wooden balls that bring your change. Do you wonder why I wear white dresses?’ ‘Well–’

‘It’s my favourite colour. It was my mother’s too.’

‘White your favourite colour?’

‘Yes, it is.’ She offered the sponge cake again but he shook his head. She would have cut the Scribbins’ roll into slices and arranged them herself, a chocolate roll with vanilla filling, or just jam if that was all there was. ‘Tell me what Enniseala is like,’ she said.

That kept things going – the convent on a hill, the Picture House, the long main street, the little lighthouse. And after that she heard that Ralph, too, was an only child. His father’s timber yards and sawmills were described, and the house his family lived in, not far from the sawmills, near a bridge.

‘Shall we walk down to the glen again?’ she asked when they had finished having tea. ‘Like we did the last time? Would it be a bore?’

‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ And then he said, ‘Your limp’s not much to notice. It’s hardly anything.’

‘Will you come again next Wednesday?’

7

The brass band played in the wide piazza of the Citta Alta, the outside tables of the piazza’s single ristorante shaded by a green and white awning. Il Duce had come, Il Duce was on the way: there was confusion before the cheering began below, in via Garibaldi and piazza della Repubblica: Il Duce had arrived.