The Story of Lucy Gault

‘Even if they wait until the fighting’s over, that night won’t be forgotten.’

‘I’ll write to the boy’s family. Father Morrissey said to try that.’

‘We can live on what I have, you know.’

‘Let me write to the family.’

She did not protest. Nor later, when the weeks that went by drew no response to the letter; nor later still when her husband took the pony and trap into Enniseala and found the family he had offended. They offered him tea, which he accepted, thinking this to be a sign of reconciliation: he was ready to pay whatever was asked of him in settlement of the affair. They listened to this suggestion, barefoot children coming and going in the kitchen, one of them occasionally turning the wheel of the bellows, sparks rising from the turf. But no response came, apart from the immediate civilities. The son who had been wounded sat at the table, disdainful of the visit, not speaking either, his arm in a sling. In the end, Captain Gault said – and was embarrassed and felt awkward saying it – that Daniel O’Connell in his day had stayed at Lahardane. The name was legendary, the man the beloved champion of the oppressed; but time, in this small dwelling at least, had robbed the past of magic. Those three lads had been out snaring rabbits and had lost their way. They shouldn’t have been trespassing; no doubt about that, it was admitted. Captain Gault didn’t mention the petrol tins. He returned to Lahardane, to another night-time vigil.

‘You’re right,’ he admitted to his wife a few days later. ‘You have always had a way of being right, Heloise.’

‘This time I hate being right.’

Everard Gault had been missing in 1915; and waiting, not knowing, had been the loneliest time of Heloise’s life, her two-year-old baby her greatest comfort. Then a telegram had come, and soon afterwards she had closed her eyes in selfish relief when there was the news that her husband had been invalided out of the army. As long as they lived, she vowed to herself, she would never again be parted from him, her resolve an expression of her gratitude for this kind misfortune.

‘All the time I was there I could feel them thinking I had intended to kill their son. Not a word I said was believed.’

‘Everard, we have one another and we have Lucy. We can begin again, somewhere else. Anywhere we choose.’

His wife had always brought Everard Gault strength, her comforting a balm that took away the weary pain of small defeats. Now, in this greater plight, they would manage. They would live, as she had said, on what she had herself inherited; they were not poor, though they would never be as well-to-do as the Gaults had been before the land was lost. Somewhere other than Lahardane, their circumstances would not be much different from their circumstances now. The truce that had come at last in the war was hardly noticed, so little was it trusted.

In the drawing-room and in the kitchen the conversations continued, the same subject touched upon from two different points of interest. Rendered disconsolate by all she heard, the upstairs maid asked questions and was told. Lahardane was Kitty Teresa’s home too, had been for more than twenty years.

‘Oh, ma’am!’ she whispered, red in the face, her fingers twisting the hem of her apron. ‘Oh, ma’am!’

But if it was the end of things for Kitty Teresa, it was not, as they had imagined it would be, entirely so for Henry and Bridget. When plans were made, it was put to them that they might continue their occupancy of the gate-lodge as caretakers of the larger house, that for the time being at least the herd would be made over to them to give them a continuing livelihood.

‘You’ll do better with the creamery cheque,’ Heloise estimated, ‘than with what wages we could afford. We think that fair.’ Only passing time, the Captain added, could settle all this confusion.

They would be going to England, Heloise said at last to her child, after she’d promised Kitty Teresa to look out for another position for her and had given old Hannah notice.

‘For long, is it?’ Lucy asked, knowing the answer.

‘Yes, for a long time.’

‘For ever?’

‘We don’t want it to be.’

But Lucy knew it would be. It was for ever for the Morells and the Gouvernets. The Boyces had gone up to the North, Henry said, the house was under auction. She guessed what that meant from his voice, but he told her anyway.

‘I’m sorry,’ her papa said. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy.’

It was her mother’s fault, but it was his fault too. They shared the blame for old Hannah’s miserable silence and Kitty Teresa’s eyes gone red and her apron soaking with the tears that streamed on her cheeks and her neck, causing Bridget twenty times a day to tell her to give over. Henry slouched glumly about the yard.

‘Oh, who’s a fashion plate!’ her papa exclaimed, pretending in the dining-room when one morning she wore her red dress.

At the sideboard her mama poured out tea and carried the cups and saucers to the table. ‘Cheer up, darling,’ her mama said, her head on one side. ‘Cheer up,’ she begged again.