The Story of Lucy Gault

Yet Montemarmoreo was all the difference that mattered: she might have said that too. Their small appartamento above the shoemaker’s shop, their own possessions increasing, the walks that would begin again now: there was a kind of peace. That cucchiaio meant spoon, that seggiolo was chair and

finestra window, that every morning across the street the porter at the Credito Italiano unlocked the doors for the waiting clerks to pass into the bank, that the woman at the Fiori e Frutta had begun to say more than a few words to her, that she woke to the chiming of the bells at the church of Santa Cecilia, the saint whose courage in her tribulations had for centuries given heart to this town: all that was peace, as much as there could be.

The pale hands of the magician were raised again, the butterfly appeared, was banished and then returned. The details copied from the timetables at the railway station – convenient trains, a choice of cities – were perused.

‘Shall we open the wine,’ Heloise suggested then, ‘a little early tonight?’

9

The visits of Mr Sullivan continued, as he had promised they would. And Canon Crosbie came out from Enniseala, to satisfy himself that Lucy was being brought up in the Protestant faith. On Sundays when they went to Mass, Bridget and Henry took her with them to Kilauran, where she waited for half an hour for the service to begin in the green-painted corrugated-iron hut where the small Church of Ireland congregation worshipped. Although he knew she attended the Sunday services in Kilauran, since they were conducted by his curate, Canon Crosbie felt he should see how things were at Lahardane for himself.

‘And you always say your prayers, Lucy?’ As genial in old age as his innocent smile and pure white hair suggested, Canon Crosbie twinkled at her over the tea things Bridget had set out for them on the dining-room table. ‘Can you say Our Lord’s Prayer for me, Lucy?’

‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ Lucy began, and went on until the end.

‘Well, that’s grand.’ Before he left, Canon Crosbie gave her a book called The Girls of St Monica’s, reflecting privately that had things been different she would by now have been sent away to a boarding-school herself. There was no doubt in the clergyman’s mind that that would have been the intention of the family, but when later he raised the subject with Aloysius Sullivan it was pointed out to him that, as things were, the funds for anything of the kind were lacking. Until her parents’ eventual return, Lucy Gault would continue to receive her education in Mr Aylward’s small schoolroom.

By now, the lull that had followed insurrection in Ireland had given way to civil war. The new Irish Free State was bloodily torn apart by it, as towns and villages and families were. The terrible beauty of a destiny fulfilled trailed a terrible bitterness, which haunted memories long after the conflict ended in May 1923. Towards the end of that same month, Mr Sullivan received a letter from Miss Chambré to the effect that Heloise Gault’s aunt – informed, when her health was a little improved, of her niece’s departure from Ireland – had been affected by a desire for reconciliation. Learning then that Heloise’s present whereabouts were not known, she had confidently instructed Miss Chambré to place an advertisement in several English newspapers. That this had elicited no response was the cause of considerable disappointment. I myself did not expect otherwise, Miss Chambré wrote, but for the sake of an old lady’s peace of mind I feel it to be my duty to request you to inform me when you receive news of Heloise Gault. Naturally the conduct of her child is still concealed from my employer.

Mr Sullivan sighed over that. He might have pointed out, but did not do so, that Lucy Gault’s conduct had spawned its own punishment, a fact confirmed in his conversations with Bridget and in his own continuing observation. It was apparent to him also that bewilderment possessed the household at Lahardane as unproductively as did the agitation that disturbed his thoughts when he dwelt for too long on what had come about. The solicitor, who lived alone but for a housekeeper, for the most part kept the depth of his concern private, occasionally and to no avail touching upon it in the presence of his clerk.