The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton (32 page)

‘I cannot work in a shop.’

‘You damned well can.’

‘I married respectably.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘The glassworks failed and it took everything with it. Guy and I moved back in with my parents when we lost our house.’

‘What about his family?’

‘They didn’t want to know. They came to his funeral though; they drank my tea and ate my cake. Most of them didn’t even speak to me, didn’t send a card or offer to help in any way.’ She sniffed hard. ‘Do I look dreadful?’

Lucy smiled just a little.

‘You always look beautiful,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ Somehow it was true. However deep her grief, her sister looked ethereal and as the sunshine poured onto the street it lit her hair as though it had taken fire. It was as if the fresh air had revived her as a drink of fresh cool water revived flowers, and Lucy could not help reflecting that Gemma had looked a lot better since her sister had come home. Lucy thought it was the relief of not having to cope alone.

Gemma wiped her face determinedly and they set off to walk into town. John Dobson’s cream stone buildings were
lovely in the light, Lucy thought, and when she and Gemma reached Northumberland Street and saw the dress shop and all the white dresses in the windows Gemma stopped.

‘I cannot go in there.’

‘I’ve made us an appointment. We are due in five minutes.’

Lucy was unsure whether it was an advantage that the woman in the shop seemed to remember her and her beautiful sister, but then she thought it was not often two red-haired women walked in like that together. She told the woman of Gemma’s fate; she thought it might help and she didn’t care that she was using the situation to her advantage. The woman smiled and told Gemma how sorry she was for her loss.

‘Do you know what I was thinking?’ Mrs Morpeth, the manageress, said. ‘That you would make a beautiful mannequin for when we have our bridal evenings.’

Gemma protested that she was too old, she had two children, but Mrs Morpeth shook her head.

‘I remember very well how you looked in a white dress, and every girl who comes into the shop will want to look like you. You’ll be such an asset, my dear.’

‘I don’t know anything about selling,’ Gemma said.

‘That can be taught. What you look like is the first thing that people will see. You will model our dresses and every girl will crave a dress from our shop.’

Lucy went off to work feeling she had accomplished something.

But when she got back late in the day and went into the kitchen her mother, stirring broth on the stove, said, ‘I never thought one of my lasses would be brought so low that she
had to go and work in a shop. How will I ever hold up my head?’

‘We’ll eat,’ Lucy said.

‘You’re a very hard woman,’ her mother said.

‘I can’t think where I learned it,’ Lucy said. She went into the other room and read stories to the children. Gemma was back upstairs.

‘I hate it,’ she said when Lucy walked in.

‘You don’t have to like it. You just have to like getting paid.’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Gemma got up from the bed and glared at her. ‘You never liked me. You were jealous. You wanted Guy and when he didn’t want you, you told lies. He told me all about it.’

‘It was nothing like that.’

‘You went outside in your nightwear and offered yourself to my fiancé the night before our wedding.’

‘I did nothing of the sort. I don’t understand how you can still believe it.’

‘Of course you did,’ Gemma said.

‘You’d better come and have something to eat. You have work to do tomorrow and your children are wondering where you are,’ was all Lucy said as she went back down the stairs.

Clay had realized that Joe and Mr Palmer worked at the garage together, and any spare half hour he had he would go over. He was a good help and always looked so dismayed when he had to leave. One Friday evening, when Mr Palmer had gone home for his tea, Joe was explaining to Clay about the car they were building and that he had contacts in London, and somebody from the motor trade had expressed interest. Clay looked shocked.

‘Does it mean you’ll be going back there?’

‘No, at least not at the moment, not as long as we can build cars here.’

Joe wasn’t sure about this at all, but there was no point in discussing it with Clay. Mr Barrington had been working on Joe’s behalf in London and seemed very excited about the whole thing. He had made contact with two top car men, one called Rogers and the other Eve, and was going to set up meetings with these people on Joe’s behalf.

Joe liked Clay. He liked the loyalty which the boy had to his family, but Clay also showed signs of becoming a useful person to have around the garage. He was deft and could piece things together, he didn’t have to be told anything
twice. He would have stayed there all night if necessary and Joe could see that Clay was going to worry now about whether he might be left alone to cope with his mother, and Tilda and the children. Also Clay’s father had been a disaster – much worse, Joe admitted to himself now, than his own father had ever been. Joe had had love and companionship, a decent upbringing and wide experience. All Clay had were memories of his father drunk and violent and treating his mother and his sister badly. He needed to see how other men went on, Joe thought.

‘Why don’t I ask Mr Palmer if you can come here and work properly, instead of at the store?’ Joe said.

Clay’s whole countenance shone like the midday sun.

‘Could I really?’ he said. ‘I want to do summat new and cars are new and I like them. Every time I see one I think it’s really exciting like, isn’t it? I don’t need much pay, honest, I just can’t stand that shop any more. I don’t want to let me mam down, after all she’s put up with, but … do you think Mr Palmer might take me on?’

‘I think he might,’ Joe said.

*

One night – it was a particularly cold Thursday and for once Joe was glad to go home from the garage and sit with Frederick by the fire – he was awoken by an idea of an intrusion of some type. He lay awake for ages and listened. He told himself to stay in bed, but since it was so unexpected he made his way softly downstairs.

There in front of him in the hall a lovely young woman was cradling a baby. The image was fully formed and he knew that it was nothing to do with the house. He had the
feeling that if it had been, Frederick and the cats would have woken up – but they didn’t. He even went into the kitchen and there they were all curled up together in front of the dead fire, breathing evenly, content, tired out from their day. Frederick’s legs shook a bit. Perhaps he thought he was chasing rabbits or just that he was out with Joe, as he was most days, walking around the river, stopping at every lovely smell, not caring what the weather was.

Joe didn’t know what to make of it. It couldn’t be anything to do with his mother and himself as he had first thought. The only other thing was that Angela was still alive and that she had their child.

Even after the image had faded he could remember the little golden-haired girl who looked just like Angela. He couldn’t be wrong, she must still be alive, he decided, and while that was wonderful it was also frustrating. Why had she not been in touch? Why at least had she not contacted her brother? What was she doing? Had the child survived? Was she poor? Joe couldn’t stop the various images from coming into his mind and yet he had no idea what to do. He opened a letter of his father’s, hoping perhaps to find some clue, or some comfort.

This made Joe feel worse. He wanted to throw it away, yet it was all he had left of his father, so he folded it up and put it back into the pile from where it had come.

Edgar told himself that he missed Lucy in the office because she had been there for some time, but he knew also that she worked well and now he had everything to do himself. Having threatened her with a partner he found himself unable to do anything of the kind. The house was as empty as the business premises and yet somehow he and Emily kept falling over each other in an awkward kind of way.

They had a new maid, Liza Goodall, Norah’s cousin; she used to help Norah so she was used to them. She cooked and cleaned and changed the beds and saw that the washing and ironing was sent out and she would leave sandwiches if he was late at the office.

Emily was becoming more and more quiet. When Edgar was at home he kept going through into the drawing room and finding her staring from the window. She got up at one point and dashed across as though she could see someone in the distance.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘Nobody,’ she said.

Day after day, no matter what time he got back, she was sitting over the fire with a book in her lap or when it was
fine she would lie in a hammock in the garden. She was always reading the same book. He suspected it was the same page.

One day when he found her asleep on a rug in the garden beneath the apple tree he sat down beside her and she opened her eyes.

‘Is this how you’re going to live the rest of your life?’

‘Do let me know if there’s something you’d like me to do,’ she said.

‘You’re thirty.’

‘One.’

‘What?’

‘I’m thirty-one. And you are almost thirty-seven. Can you see us in twenty years’ time still living like this?’

Edgar didn’t like to hear it and he squirmed a little.

‘Like those dreadful old brothers and sisters who look so alike nobody can tell which is which.’

‘Didn’t you ever think you would marry?’ Emily said.

‘Yes, once or twice, but it never came to anything.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Well, one of them was the Lord Lieutenant’s daughter and she was so far up the social ladder I didn’t even merit a glance. The other was a French girl during the war.’

‘You never told me,’ Emily sat up.

‘No, well, her husband came home.’

Emily lay down again and then she said suddenly, ‘Have you thought about Lucy?’

He laughed just a little.

‘I have. Isn’t that silly?’

‘Why is it silly?’

‘Because I think of it in practical terms.’

‘She is very practical,’ Emily said, and then she added, ‘I miss her.’

They didn’t talk about it any further, but the first day that he was free Edgar went up to Newcastle. Summer was over and a cool wind rippled the Tyne. He wanted to catch Lucy in her office before she went home. She looked up impatiently when he came in. Her father was there, but he was asleep in his wheelchair, his head having fallen to one side.

‘Are you almost finished?’ he asked her.

‘Completely finished,’ she said.

‘What about if we go back to your house and tell your mother I’m taking you out to dinner?’

Lucy looked surprised then and so relieved.

‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ she said, and that was what they did.

She pushed her father home and Edgar walked beside her. All he wanted was to have her to himself. He was taken with the house. It had not occurred to him that her home would be such a lovely place, with its curving black-and-white walls and big fires. Mrs Charlton greeted him with obvious pleasure and Lucy went up to get changed. Mrs Charlton gave Edgar tea.

Mr Charlton slobbered tea all down his front even when Mrs Charlton helped him. Edgar ignored it. The children were very boisterous and made a lot of noise. Shortly afterwards to his guilty relief they were taken to bed. He knew nothing of children and the elder daughter, Gemma, was not there; she was staying late at work. Her mother was so
proud of her for going out to work so soon after her husband had died.

She had started work for one shop, Mrs Charlton said, and now was asked for everywhere. Mrs Morpeth, the manageress, was making a lot of money because she was hiring Gemma to other shops to display the lovely dresses and she’d had to find someone new to do the selling. Gemma even showed clothes in the big shops for top customers and it paid very well.

Mrs Charlton flushed and said, ‘I know it isn’t polite to talk about money, but these things are very pressing for us at present, Mr Bainbridge. You must excuse my manners.’

Edgar said he understood completely and that she was a lucky woman to have two such daughters. She said that she had not known it until now. Lucy was doing such a good job and Edgar said that he was sure she was, she always did a good job with everything she turned her hand to. Mrs Charlton’s face glowed with pleasure.

Edgar took Lucy to a good hotel and was pleased that he had done so. Soft music was provided and the place was not so exclusive that it was dull, it was better than that – it was so expensive that it was almost relaxed.

They had gin and tonic and then they sat down at a table by the window and they had fish – fresh that morning, the waiter assured him – and then pork with juniper berries. Lucy didn’t want dessert, but they had Northumbrian cheese and small glasses of port, and afterwards they sat in the lounge and had coffee.

It was only then that he said to her, ‘Emily is unhappy. I wish I knew what was wrong. I thought that perhaps she might have confided in you.’

Lucy concentrated on her coffee and said nothing.

‘She has no ambition and although the two don’t have to be exclusive I thought marriage would be good for her. She always liked children. I cannot accept her as an old maid – that’s for women who are plain and penniless and have to go out to work.’