The Story of Lucy Gault

‘I wish it could always be there, stopped in time, this summer we have had. Don’t let’s be greedy now. I used to be afraid of their returning. Sometimes I used to think I didn’t want them to, for what good to them was my awful, sore regret? There was too much for them to forgive: how could I hope for forgiveness? Yet if they came now, if they were there when we climbed the cliff, if they were astonished while Bridget told them, how marvellous it would be! And you and I would not make do with memories.’

Two days later Ralph left, taken by Henry in the trap to the railway station in Enniseala. Lucy might have accompanied them, might have stood waving on the railway platform as the train took Ralph away. But she said she didn’t want that, and waved instead from the hall door, and then from the avenue.

THREE

1

Prayer continued to be the solace of the man who had become a soldier. But his expectation that the rigours and severity and the communal nature of military life would discipline his confusion had been denied. When his mother lay dying he had thought to share his trouble with her, for as things were she would have passed it on to no one. But each time he tried to he was seized by panic, fearful of eavesdroppers he knew could not be there.

He was an old hand at the Camp now, his hollow countenance and the intensity of his averted gaze familiar to all who came and went around him. Some had carried to other Camps a description of his lanky, quiet presence, had spoken of his strangeness, his regular, lone attendance before the chapel statue. He had made no friends, but in his duties was conscientious and persevering and reliable, known for such qualities to the officers who commanded him. He had dug latrines, metalled roads, adequately performed cookhouse duties, followed instructions as to the upkeep of equipment, was the first to volunteer when volunteers were called for. That he bore his torment with fortitude was known to no one.

In such a manner further years of Horahan’s life went by. When rumours of war in Europe began he was aware of anxiety and uncertainty at the Camp, but that mood did not concern him. There was talk of invasion. In preparation for what might occur in the years ahead, sandbags and other equipment of defence made their appearance. On occasion, the hours of training were longer.

Horahan fell in with this hastily arranged regimen. Hardly knowing the reason for it, he was obedient to all that was required of him, and questioned nothing. By day, instead, a funeral that was repeated in his sleep possessed him. The hearse passed through the streets of the town he knew and, when he had himself dug the grave, the clay closed in on top of him. He lay beside the coffin, but when the child called out from within it he could not reach her.

In the town he asked about the house that in his dreaming blazed and was destroyed. He was told, yet again, that it had never been set on fire, that the child who was dead in his dreams had been left solitary by her parents, the victim of an error. But still there was the funeral, the hearse drawn through familiar streets, the horse hooves echoing; still he awoke, his body wet with sweat. He rose often in the night from his narrow cot to creep through the darkness, his feet still bare. In the chapel, where he dared not light a candle, he knelt before the Virgin he could not see, begging for the gift of a sign, a whisper of assurance that he was not abandoned.

2

Captain Gault and his wife left Italy. Unreliable portents had kept them for longer than the Captain had anticipated: embracing his people with the warmth of his promises and his architecture, Benito Mussolini declared himself for peace. But when he had mulled that over he decided it would be more advantageous to declare himself for war.

They crossed the frontier into Switzerland, going back the way they had come, seventeen years ago now. They went regretfully, taking with them as many of their possessions as they could manage. They settled in the modest town of Bellinzona, where the language they had become used to was spoken.

3

We often think of you,

Mrs Ryall wrote,

and wonder how you are. How many times have I said, ‘Today I shall write to Ralph’, and yet again do not do it! But then there is always something – when the boys are here the house is upside-down, when they are not there is jam to make and something for them to take with them when they go away again. They are growing up more sensible than you’ll remember them. Quite lanky now, Kildare

is,