The Story of Lucy Gault

‘Tosca,’ the Captain said, but then the music from the opera stopped. The conductor waved a hand over the whole piazza, commanding silence, although mostly the piazza was empty. Il Duce’s song began.

‘Ecco!’ a slow old waiter murmured, as if from sleep. ‘Bene, bene …’ he whispered, pouring the last of the Barolo. And in the new town below, the same tune played, amplified from a record, so that everyone, everywhere, knew that II Duce was here at last.

Heloise hadn’t spoken since they had been led to their table beneath the awning, nor while the dishes of the lunch they had ordered were brought to them, nor while she had played with hers, leaving most of the food untouched. It was a bad day, the Captain said to himself. In her eyes there was the nagging of what lay at the depths of her melancholy, as always there was on a bad day. She tried to return his smile but could not and, too well, he knew she saw their child allowing the waves to have their way, without resistance because that was their child’s choice. His intuition was sharp on bad days; he always knew. His denial of her dread was in the pressure of his fingers, but there was no acknowledgement, no flutter of life in the hand he had reached out for and still held, no sign that this time he had succeeded in dispelling the worst that might have been.

A yellow dog crossed the piazza, the only creature there but for the bandsmen and the waiter and the occupants of a single pavement table. The waiter had loosened the stud beneath his black bow tie. Skinny and seeming ravenous, the dog scattered the contents of a waste-bin. No more than weekend musicians lazily playing their opera arias, the white-uniformed bandsmen had acquired a strut of arrogance in how they played now, as if already they marched through conquered lands.

‘Va’via! Va’ via!’ the old waiter shouted at the dog. ‘Caffè, signore?’

‘Si. Per favore.’

He loved her, more than he could ever have loved anyone, but today, as so often before, she made on her own the effort he could not help her with. How long would it be before Italy was no longer a country to find refuge in? Calmly she asked that.

He shook his head. Somewhere there was cheering and when it ceased a voice echoed through the loudspeakers, noisily excited, its message often punctuated by what might have been the smack of a fist on a palm. Morte! Sangue! Vittoria! Vittorioso! The same exhortations were repeated, like punctuation also. Across the piazza the yellow dog was scratching out its fleas.

‘Yes, Italy soon may not want us, either,’ he said, and thought again how much he loved her. They lay in one another’s arms, they talked, she read out to him something she liked in a book, they were companions on their journeys; and yet on days like this one, she belonged only to herself.

‘Please don’t ask me to go back,’ she whispered, her tone so soft, so much without expression, that the words were hardly there.

8

When Ralph had twice again visited Lahardane on Wednesday afternoons, when he had been shown the house, had gone from room to room, had seen the books in the several bookcases, the bagatelle in a corner of the drawing-room, the billiard table on the upper landing, Lucy said:

‘Won’t you stay a while when you finish with the boys?’

‘Stay here?’

‘It’s not as though there isn’t room.’

It was the end of the first week in September when he finished his tutoring. On the evening before the day the boys were to return to school Mr Ryall paid what was owing, then carried Ralph’s two suitcases to the car while Ralph said good-bye to Mrs Ryall and to the boys. On the way to Lahardane Mr Ryall said:

‘It’s good of you to befriend her.’

‘It isn’t befriending, really.’

‘Well …’ And at Lahardane Mr Ryall said, ‘I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl of eight or nine, Lucy.’

She smiled, but did not say if she remembered that last occasion or not, and when the car had driven off she led the way up the wide stairs to the room that was to be Ralph’s. It was square and spacious, with a mahogany wash-stand in one corner, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, a white quilt on the bed, darkly framed engravings of Glengarriff on all four walls. Its windows looked out over the fields where the cattle were, to the sea.

‘Nothing’ll happen,’ Lucy warned, ‘if you pull that bell knob.’

Bridget had brought the dining-room back into use for the visit, had aired it and polished the long dining-table, covering it with a tablecloth she had folded away years ago. There was an excitement in her hurrying about with trays and cutlery, her cheeks flushed, starched white aprons clean every day.

‘Bridget enjoys a fuss,’ Lucy said, and Ralph said he had noticed that.