The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (26 page)

Joe stared at her for a few moments.

‘Oh, I see,’ he said.

She stared back at him.

‘I needn’t have come here. You didn’t realize.’

‘I didn’t look.’

‘You still won’t tell?’

He merely shook his head and smiled.

‘Oh, Joe,’ she said, getting up, coming over and kissing him right in the middle of his forehead. She wafted expensive perfume at him. ‘You are such a gentleman.’

‘You must be able to make the kind of life you want somehow.’

Her eyes glazed with tears.

‘The trouble is that Norah is getting married. She can’t possibly not, you see. She could never tell her family and she is so good and loyal that she would never see me afterwards. So now is all we have.’

She got up as if to go, waving her hand in confusion.

‘Stay, if you have time,’ Joe offered.

‘I have nothing but time. Do you have any whisky?’

‘Just the bottom third of a bottle I’ve had this age.’

‘God bless you.’

The afternoon turned into evening.

‘Do you really think I might do something, Joe?’

‘Why not?’

‘When Norah marries I ought to leave. Otherwise I shall spend my life looking for her on the street, seeing her putting her hand through her husband’s arm, walking out with her children. Do you know what the worst thing is? I really like children, I wish that somehow I could have some. Why does everything have to be so difficult? I know you could say that I might make sacrifices and marry and then I can have children, but to be at some man’s mercy all of the time, well, I don’t think I would manage that, to say nothing of marital relations. If you think about it, it all seems faintly ridiculous, doesn’t it? We are all so stupid and petty.’

‘Why don’t you run away together?’

‘I have suggested it, but she can’t do that to her family. We could never come back, you see, and while I think I could manage, she never could. Why should we give up everything?’

They were sitting on the floor, leaning back against the armchairs. She moved over and put her face against his shoulder. Joe put an arm around her and she moved closer and they sat there, watching the fire and drinking whisky.

Later, when the Misses Slaters came back, Joe walked her home.

*

Edgar was standing in the hall.

‘Was that Joe Hardy I saw you with?’

Emily cast her eyes heavenward.

‘He’s just a friend,’ she said.

‘You asked him to the dinner party without consulting me, you talked almost exclusively to him the entire evening and now you meet up with him—’

‘You wanted Lucy at the dinner party. She could hardly come by herself and seeing as they live in the same house I couldn’t not ask him, it would have been rude. As for the rest, it was a coincidence.’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ Edgar said. ‘I don’t believe in coincidence.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me what you believe,’ she said.

‘The war broke Joe Hardy, you just have to glance at him to see it. His family were weak stupid people and I would rather you respected my wishes and didn’t see him.’

Emily said nothing.

‘What do you find attractive about him?’

‘He’s just a very nice person.’

Edgar almost snarled. ‘Why do women say that of him when he’s pathetic and worse?’ He left the room.

Joe was by now going to Gateshead twice a week to see Mr Firbank. The old gentleman was going downhill fast and was no longer very coherent, but Joe felt the pull to see him as much as possible. It didn’t have to be conversation, it was just sitting with him sometimes, even just watching him sleep. Joe didn’t often stay long, but he always went. The nuns fussed over him politely and made tea, and Joe was told more than once that he was the only visitor Mr Firbank ever had. It made him want to be there more and more. He didn’t know why it comforted him, but it did.

It made the Tyne almost as important to Joe as the Wear, or even the Thames which he had loved as a child.

The weather was almost always cool. Joe thought he would never get used to how it rained incessantly in the north. There were no seasons, every day it changed, but he had come to regard the weather as insignificant and was happy to sit there with Mr Firbank and tell him about what he was doing. He talked mostly about the venture with the cars because that made Mr Firbank’s eyes light up.

Joe had no doubt the old gentleman slept when he had gone and perhaps he had sweeter dreams than he might
otherwise have had. He had taken to patting Joe’s hand when Joe left and thanking him somewhat incoherently for having been there.

‘I’ll be back in a day or two,’ Joe would say, and he would watch Mr Firbank’s eyes close as he left the room.

One Sunday that autumn he asked Lucy if she would go with him, though he knew she had sufficient to cope with keeping the two old ladies happy, as well as going back and forth to the Formby house to help with general problems. She enjoyed it, he knew, but they had not spent much time together lately. He thought they could go and see the old gentleman and go out to tea later.

She brightened at the idea and off they went, only to be met at the door by a sad-looking nun who told them that Mr Firbank had died.

‘Peacefully in the night,’ she said.

Joe didn’t know what to do then, or where he wanted to be. No – he knew. He wanted to be sitting by the window where he had last left Mr Firbank and be talking of anything he could think of, while the old man listened to his voice, almost happy.

Joe hovered. The nun, having obviously dealt with things like this before, offered them tea, and Lucy accepted. They sat down in another room, thankfully different from the one that Joe was used to. But Joe couldn’t rest. He didn’t want tea; he wanted to go to Allendale and speak to Mr Firbank’s son.

‘You can’t just barge in on his grief,’ Lucy said.

‘He didn’t care,’ Joe said savagely.

‘You don’t know that. He was Mr Firbank’s son and just because you don’t like him that doesn’t make it right.’

‘He never once came to see him.’

‘Well perhaps he couldn’t cope any more. People can’t always, you’ve probably noticed by now.’

Joe was silenced by her, but only for a few seconds and then he got up and left the room. He went to ask about the funeral arrangements, but all the nun could tell him was that the undertaker had come from across country and taken Mr Firbank’s body away once the doctor had certified him dead. Joe went back and told Lucy this.

‘You see,’ Lucy said. ‘He has to do this and it’s nothing to do with you. For goodness’ sake, leave the man alone for a few days. All that really matters is that you were here for Mr Firbank and that he liked having you here and you were a friend to him. You got a lot from it and so did he, but now he’s dead you can’t do anything else.’

She poured out some more tea because it had gone cold, but Joe went into the room where he and Mr Firbank had spent so much time over the past months. He sank down in the chair where he used to sit, and looked out at the river. He hoped the old gentleman had gone straight to heaven, wherever that might be. He would miss him, this man who was his only link to Priscilla Lee. Now he was gone. Joe felt weary with loss. Was he never to have anyone he loved for any length of time?

The old gentleman had provided Joe with cover from the rest of his life; it was the only safe place he had away from the world where he was forever dodging bullets in one sense or another. Joe wanted to sit and weep from the frustration that he had not seen Mr Firbank when he was dying, that he had not been there to say something of comfort, that they
had not taken leave of one another. He hated saying goodbye, but not saying it was so much worse. He felt as if there were a huge yawning chasm where the old man had been. Nothing would fill it. And, even worse somehow, he felt it would have been so lovely had they known one another for all of his life. It was not just the present and the future which were missing, but the past. Mr Firbank and Joe’s mother were big empty blanks, gaping chasms that made Joe want to go around smashing things. He was shaking.

Joe was rather astonished to get the note that asked him to go to Edgar’s office. It wasn’t so much an invitation as a command and so he obeyed it round about midday on the Monday when he took a break from the garage. He didn’t see any reason not to, and he was curious. He duly turned up and found that Edgar’s face was stern.

‘I understand you walked my sister home the other evening, Mr Hardy.’

Joe was not invited to sit down and stood there, looking across the room. He understood.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you think I have evil intentions.’

‘No, I think you’re just like every other fellow in Durham, and Emily is lovely.’

‘Edgar—’

‘Don’t use my first name. Don’t pretend we are friends and don’t see her again.’

All Joe said, to Edgar’s surprise was, ‘What is it you want her to do?’

It clearly seemed ridiculous to Edgar.

‘I want her to marry well, to have a good life with a decent man and not some … some person like you.’

‘Why must she marry well?’ Joe could not help saying.

Edgar looked at him with hostile eyes. ‘She deserves to be looked after – she is a lovely woman and I care for her. I want to give her to someone else who will feel the same and more so that she can have children and a future – so she can have some happiness.’

Joe nodded slowly. ‘You want to give her to somebody. What is she, a Christmas present? You don’t have to worry, Edgar.’ He pronounced Edgar’s name with a smile and emphasis. ‘I have not been leading your sister up the garden path, as I think it’s called. She would never marry me – she has more sense and I would never ask her. We are friends, just as I thought you and I were also. But it’s your choice.’ Joe got up and left the office.

*

Edgar half believed Joe. Over the next few days he watched Emily as she went about her daily life and discovered that she was unhappy. When he was with her, and she was among other young men at church or in the town, she was amiable to all of them, just as she had been with Joe. She smiled and talked of things they wished to talk of and most of them looked lasciviously at her in a way that made him want to push their faces into the trifle. He knew that many a man thought no one good enough for their sisters, he just didn’t like the way that they surveyed her. He was honest with himself then and knew that Joe had not looked at Emily like that.

She wore her pretty clothes and sparkled for everyone, so that in the end Edgar became very confused. He asked her to
come and see him in his office; he felt somehow as though he could not talk to her at home.

*

Lucy was sitting in her little office when she heard footsteps on the stairs and a tentative knocking on the door. Emily Bainbridge stood there.

‘Do you mind? Only my brother is still in court and he asked me to come and see him. You don’t know what it’s about, do you?’

‘I don’t,’ she said.

‘Why couldn’t he talk to me at home? After all we both live there.’ She paused in the doorway, looked carefully at Lucy and said, ‘Am I intruding?’

‘Not at all. Come in and have a seat.’

‘You don’t have a cigarette? Edgar would be horrified if he knew that I smoked and I get so desperate.’

‘Mr Clarence might have one.’

Emily wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d better not ask him,’ she said. ‘How are things going for you? It’s high time women got into these professions if you ask me. I think you’ll be very good at it. I wish I wanted something like that.’

Lucy was just about to ask her what she did want when Mr Clarence called up the stairs. Emily said good morning and went down to greet her brother.

*

Emily sat down.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what are you doing today?’

‘You didn’t really ask me here for that? I usually get to tell you over supper.’

He sighed. ‘I’m worried about you,’ he said.

Emily gazed at him in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know exactly – all I know is that you aren’t happy and I’m not helping you. I don’t mean to go on at you, Em, but I worry about you.’

‘Don’t you have work to do?’

Edgar squirmed a little in his seat and said, ‘I felt awful.’

‘Well, don’t. There’s nothing the matter with me.’

‘You don’t seem to like anybody. You don’t even seem to like me, though you used to. I’m older than you and I try to do the best I can, but it’s as if you’re acting out a role.’

‘Aren’t we all doing that?’

‘Not to the extent that you are.’

She was looking at him as though she hadn’t seen him in a long time and when she spoke to him again her voice was softer.

‘What made you think about this?’

‘Joe Hardy.’

‘For goodness’ sake. I have no interest in Mr Hardy except that I find him easy to talk to. I have no intention of running away with him even though I am inclined since you dislike him so intensely.’

‘You could have any man you want. You have had half a dozen offers, two of them brilliant, from men who are wealthy and well born and have old names. Do you feel nothing for any of them?’

She didn’t speak. She shook her head.

‘Is there something you would rather do?’ Edgar said. ‘You don’t have to get married if the whole thing makes you queasy. Would you like to run a dress shop or … or something like that? I would help you as much as I could.’

Emily heard the despair in his voice and she loved him so much that she couldn’t say anything. If she told him what she felt he would never look at her that way again, as men did when their sisters were beautiful and difficult – how he admired her, how he would have done almost anything for her.

She could tell Joe how she really felt, but she couldn’t hurt Edgar. She said nothing.

‘Emily, if you don’t tell me, there’s nothing I can do.’

She lifted drenched eyes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but I can’t marry any man.’

‘Why not?’

She shook her head and pulled a face at him.

‘I’m going to be a nun,’ she said, though even then he didn’t laugh.