The Story of Lucy Gault

quite the young man! Jack wants to be a horticulturist, though I believe myself it is just the word he likes! Both of them speak of you often, and we are grateful for the months you spent here. Lucy Gault, whom you’ll remember, I’m sure,

is

still at Lahardane. There has been no change there. All of us here are well.

*

It was nice of you to write,

Ralph replied,

and I am glad to hear the boys are settling down. I do not forget your kindness to me and often think about those long warm mornings in the garden. Do please remember me to

Mr

Ryall, and to the boys when next they’re home. Perhaps one day our paths will somehow cross again. It’s good to hear that all of you are well.

He could not imagine the Ryalls otherwise. He could not imagine them unhappy or dispirited. They would have known, of course, that he had not been back to Lahardane.

*

I have found another book,

Lucy wrote.

‘Florence Macarthy’ by Lady Morgan. I didn’t think it would be good. But it is far better than I could have guessed.

Yesterday there were cormorants on the rocks. I thought of you particularly then because – do you remember? – we watched them one afternoon. How long ago it seems, our summer, and in another moment seems hardly any time at all!

And often Lucy read, for yet another time, the first of all Ralph’s letters since he had gone.

… I

add up figures and lose my way in them. I look down through the paned glass of an office to the hubbub of activity below and in my melancholy feel its mockery. What does it matter if the machinery rattles on or stops? What does it matter if the elm is only fit for coffins or that the oak has warped while seasoning? The belts are tightened on their wheels, the cogs connect. I watch a tree trunk carried into place, planks lifted away when they are sawn. Sunlight catches the dust in the air, the men are silenced by the engines’ clatter. You stand in white in the wide doorway. You wave and I wave back. But how little comfort there is in the ghosts of daydreams!

Always she touched that letter with her lips before she tied it away with the others that had come. It was not difficult to see the scene described, to hear the machinery’s noise, to smell the freshly sawn wood. I have been a nuisance to you, she read as well. I have disturbed the vigil you keep. I blame myself for hours on end and then do not blame myself at all. Do you know how much I love you, Lucy? Can you possibly guess?

One day they would not write, Lucy supposed, for all of it was repetition now. Ralph, you must live your life, she wrote herself.

*

In wrenching off the worn sole of a boot, Henry found it did not come cleanly, held by a few remaining brads, which he loosened with pliers. Some time in the past, well before his own time at Lahardane, a Gault had gone in for shoe-making. All the tools, the knives and the last, were still in the outhouse that even then had been a workshop. Leathers still hung there, and on a shelf beside them were tins of brads, metal half-heels, cobbler’s thread.