The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton

by Elizabeth Gill

Genres: Family Life; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

1920, Durham. Lucy Charlton has always dreamed of working with her father in the family solicitor's firm. But when a scandal shatters her dreams and her father disowns her, she is left to fight for a job as a legal secretary. When Joe Hardy arrives to claim his mystery inheritance, she promises to help uncover the truth behind his mystery benefactor. Before long, the past comes back to haunt them both...

Release date: June 3, 2014

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 464

Sample

Durham City, 1919

Lucy Charlton went home to Newcastle for her sister’s wedding. The preparations for the wedding were all that her mother and Gemma had talked about for months. The wedding dress was the most important thing of all. Gemma and her mother had chosen the dress in a shop in Grainger Street and Gemma wanted her sister to see it. She was going for her final fitting the first afternoon that Lucy was at home.

The inside of the shop was hushed. As they entered it a fair-haired woman came out from an inner door and ushered Gemma away. Lucy sat down on a big sofa. Another woman appeared and offered Lucy tea. After a few minutes Gemma came out of the fitting room. Lucy couldn’t help but stare.

The dress made her sister look like a doll. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright and her hair was so shiny that it looked like a wig. Her fluttering hands and the cream satin material set her beyond reality. Lucy was astonished. The dress ended just above the ankle with wide skirts, like a three-tiered cake. It didn’t suit her. In the cap with a trailing veil, Gemma looked tiny and scared, but Lucy knew what she must say – the anxious eyes of her sister told her so.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘It’s so lovely … and you look just right in it.’

‘Do I?’ Gemma said, hesitating. She needed Lucy to say more, to say that she had never seen another bride who looked better, so she did. She could hear the echo of her voice afterwards; she hoped it did not sound as hollow as she thought it did. Was that envy? She could never look that way. Gemma turned and turned like the figure in a musical jewellery box when you lifted the lid and some plaintive air came forth to jangle at your nerves.

Round and round she went and Lucy sat there, admiring and anxious, yet when Gemma had gone back in the room to change Lucy found that she was shaking, and it was not the kind of problem a cup of tea would solve.

Finally, when the seamstress was happy with the dress, they left. Lucy was glad of the air and suggested they should go to Pumphreys in the Cloth Market and have coffee. Pumphreys always smelled so good with the coffee roasting. The windows there were intricate green glass and the sofas red velvet.

They sat down at a table near the back of the room and she said to her sister, ‘Are you feeling all right?’

Gemma looked offended. ‘What do you mean?’ But Gemma didn’t let Lucy get any more words out. She looked down at the table and she said, ‘I know you don’t want me to marry. You’ve made it perfectly obvious and I wish now that I hadn’t asked you to be my bridesmaid even though you are my sister. You pretend that you like Guy but it’s so obvious that you don’t. You hardly ever come home and you never answer my letters and you don’t seem to want to be associated with us as if we are beneath you somehow now that you’re at university with all your clever friends in Durham.’

‘Gemma, that’s not true!’ Lucy exclaimed, horrified.

Gemma turned to her, eyes glassy with tears. ‘Guy is a perfectly nice man and I’m sorry that you’re jealous of him but really you know we cannot go on as we are. Don’t you understand anything?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Of course you don’t. You never think about anybody but yourself. Father isn’t well and we have no money. All I have is that I can marry a respectable man who will help us, but you … you …’ Gemma got up and ran out of the coffee house.

Lucy stared, astonished, as the customers watched; some of them had turned around, teacups or cake in hand. Then she got up and ran after her sister, but it was not easy. Gemma set a good pace and they were most of the way home when Lucy, panting, caught up with her.

Gemma had stopped, by then, out of breath.

Lucy could not help saying, ‘What happened to the money? Daddy is a wonderful lawyer. He makes lots of money.’

Gemma looked at her from pitying and rather glassy eyes. ‘He isn’t making enough any more. He gets very tired. He isn’t well and he has to pay for my wedding and for your stupid university course or whatever you call it. You were never happy with how things were, always wanting to change everything. Nothing was good enough for you and now look.’

‘What is wrong with Daddy?’

Gemma shook her head and took her handkerchief from her pocket. She spent a long time wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, turned half away from Lucy. Finally she screwed the handkerchief into a soggy ball and returned it to her pocket, her cheeks still wet with tears.

‘Nobody seems to know and you mustn’t say anything because we aren’t supposed to be aware of it. Mother kept it from me until I found Daddy wandering around the living room, confused. He doesn’t remember things as well as he did. But Mother is happy now I’m marrying Guy. She won’t have to worry about anything any more because Guy has money.’

Lucy could not imagine that her father was ill and she did not know it. She had always been closer to him than Gemma. In a way Gemma was her mother’s child and she was her father’s. Lucy had always been very much aware that her father had dearly wanted a son and she had tried to be that son. She had thought she was doing the right thing; her father was proud of her for being so academically clever and one of the first women ever to go to Durham University to study law.

Lucy had seen the light in his eyes and even though it had been very hard to leave when she wanted to be here with him, in his office and by his side, she had left because it was the only way she could study law and make him happy. Now she felt as if she had done the wrong thing.

She looked again at her sister. Gemma had always been beautiful – red-haired, creamy-skinned, eyes like emeralds – and she was a pale imitation – tall and rangy rather than neat and slim, her eyes darker, her hair not quite blonde and not quite red and frizzy. It didn’t matter what she did with it, it could not be tamed. Now Gemma was thin and pale and sad about their father and Lucy wanted to put an arm around her except that Gemma would have shrugged it off.

‘But you do want to marry Guy?’ She immediately wished she could take back the words, but they needed to be said.

Gemma’s face was flushed with tears. ‘I like him very well.’

It was a sentence that Lucy did not forget.

‘It’s easy for you,’ Gemma said and she walked away.

Lucy couldn’t imagine how her sister thought that things were easier in Durham except that she had been able to leave home other than to marry, but she knew that was not something Gemma had ever wanted. She caught up with her sister and they walked slowly home and didn’t speak at all.

*

Lucy had dreaded Gemma’s wedding day and now she knew why. Gemma was obliged to marry well and Lucy no longer wondered why she did not care for the sound of Guy’s voice in the hall. She wished he had done something which would pinpoint him as the enemy so she could say to Gemma that she must not marry him, but she could see things so much more clearly now than she ever had before. Her parents had nothing but the damp house beside the river. Her grandfather had died young and her father had had to keep his mother and his sisters and all of his family too. Their house beside the Tyne was very slowly sinking into the sand, into the silt, into the very river itself. She felt it was sinking beneath her expectations.

It was the night before the wedding and the house was full of presents. Gemma had been keen to open them and couldn’t wait for Guy to arrive. When he did, he laughed and said it would be all table napkins and that he had no interest in such things. There were velvet canteens of cutlery and tall vases in red and purple which Gemma grimaced at.

Gemma exclaimed afresh at each opened gift. Lucy had no more interest than Guy in silver and crockery, but she had to admit that the dinner service would look good upon the oak table which Guy’s parents had given them as a wedding present, along with a dozen chairs. They were buying a modest house in Jesmond, which Gemma had not offered to take her sister to visit.

Lucy’s bridesmaid dress had flounces. Guy’s sister and his three cousins were to wear the same peach-coloured outfits with little bonnets with orange ribbons tied under their chins. They would carry small baskets from which they would strew the aisle with rose petals, the last from Guy’s mother’s garden. She had kept them aside for this very occasion; they were cream and yellow and orange to suit. Lucy was silently appalled. She thought she looked like Little Bo Peep.

Lucy had become aware that her parents were paying for everything; her mother was always with lists about her – how many people were attending and what flowers would adorn the church, the pews, the altar. The reception could not be at their home, to her mother’s chagrin, as it was not big enough to accommodate all Guy’s relatives and friends. Instead it was to be at a huge hotel in Newcastle, not a usual idea, but her mother was proud that they had managed to afford it.

After Gemma had opened the presents, Guy had taken her to visit some relatives. It was usual for the groom to drink deeply on the eve of the wedding and for the bride to stay at home, but he had so much wanted Gemma to meet his mother’s family from Kent that she had gone there for the evening.

They were late. Lucy lay awake, listening for her sister coming home, thinking that Gemma would not be there again, that their childhood and her place in her sister’s life was set back and altered forever.

Lucy heard Gemma say something as they returned to the house. It was sharply uttered and Guy said something also. She heard her sister’s footsteps come up the stairs and the door was closed quietly. She thought she heard something more downstairs. She put on a robe. She almost didn’t go, but in the end she could not rest; she thought that perhaps Gemma had left her purse and Guy had discovered it in his motor, so she went down in the darkness and opened the front door. There was no light outside. She was about to go back when she saw Guy and she moved forward, beyond the house.

‘Has Gemma forgotten something?’ she said.

‘Nothing.’

Lucy was about to go back inside when he came quickly to her and put his arms around her. Lucy pushed back from him.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she said. She could smell the alcohol on him.

He gathered her against him and kissed her, and through the material of his clothes and her nightwear she felt his body, warm and urgent, and her own senses screaming at her to move away. He was drunk; young men did such things. Perhaps that was what the raised voices had been before Gemma came inside. She pushed at him with both hands, thinking this would be the last of it and they would smile at it tomorrow when he had a sore head on his wedding day, but he did not let her go. His mouth became cruel, his tongue probing her teeth. She had not reasoned that a man was so strong. She had never had to think about how strength might be used against her.

He got hold of her arms, held her hands behind her back and opened the dressing gown she wore. He slid one hand inside her nightgown and onto first one breast and then the other. Her body went into shock, she was so repulsed. She screamed but he had his mouth on hers so that she was silenced. He put his tongue deep into her mouth. Panicking, her legs working against him, Lucy fought.

Out there in the street, in the black of night, he lifted her to him. She was so slight from university food, she found herself panting with the frantic attempt to break free. He held her up, pushed his cruel fingers between her flailing legs and then he went into her. Lucy wanted to scream with pain and shock, but he placed his hard hand over her mouth so that there was no sound.

She did not know how long this invasion went on. Under the strong hand she cried and sobbed as he hurt her. The water fell from her eyes, the snot from her nose, the spit brimmed from her lips and ran down her chin. Inwardly she begged him to stop the pain, the burning, the way that he seemed to eat her body, but he kept on and on until she grew weaker and the defeat turned her body limp. Soon he was holding her to stop her from falling.

Some vile eternity later he came out of her. She moaned with pain again under his hand, his body relaxed and then he let her loose. She couldn’t stand, she was shivering, shaking and there was a disgusting sticky moisture between her legs. She was so sore that she thought it would never go away. Her body lurched and bent double and then she began to throw up.

‘That serves you right. You nasty little tease. You thought you were so clever,’ Guy said, and then he walked away.

She wanted to run after him, to strike him, but the cold air was piercing her body and she could barely stand. She drew down her nightdress and shivered. When she had finished being sick her mouth felt as vile as the rest of her and she sobbed against the wall of the house while the river flowed on regardless.

The crying went on and on until she thought it would never stop, so it was just as well that nobody else was there, that nobody but the night could hear her. She pulled the dressing gown around her. Her face was bitter and stinging with tears and the wind on the river pulled at her to come to it, to come and not to think about anything ever again. The water looked so dark and comforting; she loved the rhythm of how it moved, how it swelled and went on in its relentless quest towards the North Sea. She was sure that it would be warm once you grew used to it.

The house was behind her. When she turned, the door stood ajar, beckoning. She managed to reach the sanctuary of it. Once inside she essayed the stairs, crawling on all fours in order to get further up. She saw the entrance to her room. She made her way across the floor and went inside. She lay there until she was so chilled that she knew she must get up and when she did she reached the bed and it was all she could do. She lay down and slept, but it was not for long. The hurt between her legs brought her back to consciousness again and again.

She lit a candle by the small light that came through the window. She never drew the curtains; she didn’t like to shut out the night and the river. She poured water into a bowl and found the soft sponge she liked so much and she put it between her thighs. It came away red and she sobbed again. The water was cool rather than cold and of some comfort. She took the towel and held it there and then she went back to the bed. She was exhausted now, and so shocked that she knew she would sleep. She was grateful to reach the comfort of mattress and pillows. She pulled the blankets over her and though she cried she could feel herself heading down the long passage towards sleep.

*

She awoke in the grey light and remembered. At first she thought it had been a dream, but she was still in pain so she was obliged to dismiss this thought with huge regret. It had happened. She lay there, trying to take in the fact that Guy had forced her the day before he married her sister. It couldn’t have happened – but it had.

It must have been later than Lucy had imagined because the next moment she heard Gemma bounce into the room, talking of how pretty the day was – the sun was shining, had she seen it? That was a good omen.

She came over to the bed. Lucy couldn’t move, she ached so much. Gemma stared down at her.

‘You’re very pale. You aren’t ill? Not on my wedding day, surely.’

‘I was sick in the night,’ Lucy said. She didn’t open her eyes; she didn’t want to see her sister.

‘You look awful.’ Gemma sat down on the bed. Lucy moved as far away as she could. Her mind was racing. What could she do, what could she say, could she get somehow away from her without making obvious what had happened? She must. She could not ruin her sister’s wedding day with such stupid things. And then all the horrors of the night came back in detail and she squeezed her eyes tighter against sudden tears.

An overwhelming desire to be sick came upon Lucy at that point. When she began to heave Gemma ran for the ewer which held the water for washing. Her sister stared into it. Lucy knew that it was bloody.

‘Oh my God,’ her sister said, and then Lucy was sick on the bed, over the bedclothes and everywhere. She retched when there was nothing left to come up. Gemma looked accusingly at her.

‘How can you be ill today?’ she said.

‘It’s nothing, really,’ Lucy managed.

‘Is it your monthlies?’ Gemma said hopefully. ‘No wonder you feel bad. I’ll get Mother to make ginger tea. That always makes me feel better.’

‘I’m fine, really. I’ll get up in a minute.’

Gemma went out. For a few moments there was peace and then Lucy heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and her mother’s breathing. She came briskly into the room.

‘I’ve brought you some hot water and ginger. Sit up.’

Lucy couldn’t somehow. Her mother deposited the jug of water on the marble-topped washstand and came over, clicking her tongue at the mess on the bed.

‘You’d better get out and I’ll strip it,’ she said. ‘You can’t be comfortable like that.’ Her mother swept aside the bed-clothes, saw the towel and the blood and the sticky moisture which Lucy had thought was washed away and was silent for a few moments. She studied her daughter carefully, she looked at her for a long time, and then she said in a strange stilted tone, ‘What is this, Lucy?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing.’ Her mother sat down heavily on the bed and said, ‘Have you had a man in here? Is there some lad you haven’t told us of and you and him have been sinful together last night – is that it?’

Lucy didn’t answer. She kept her eyes closed; somehow she thought that would help.

‘Tell me,’ her mother insisted. When Lucy had said nothing for what seemed like a long time she said, ‘Do you want me to get your father up here so that you can tell him instead?’

Lucy thought of her father not being well, of how he hesitated over getting up from the table, how he could not think of what he was trying to say and how hard he laboured to appear as he should, and she couldn’t think of the words to allay her mother’s fears.

‘Who is it?’ her mother said. ‘You’ve been hiding things from us. I knew no good would come from letting you go like that to be educated beyond your expectations. Is it some shiftless lad from Durham, or some educated fool who knows no better?’

Lucy found her voice. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Then who is it?’

‘Nothing happened except what always happens.’ Lucy tried for normality in her voice but it didn’t deceive her mother.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ her mother said and for the first time that Lucy could remember her mother slapped her face. She did it in a hard determined way as though it would send the words out of her daughter. Lucy’s head swung back and her head, neck and cheek hurt. She was so shocked that she complied.

‘It was Guy,’ she said.

She heard her mother’s intake of breath. ‘What?’ she said.

Lucy didn’t think her mother wanted to hear it again. Her mother needed time and space to recover, as though anything would be the same again, or right. How could everything be fine one day and the next the whole wretched sky had fallen and everything was ruined? She couldn’t believe it, even now.

Her mother towered over her, bigger than she had been before, blotting out the sun.

‘Why would you say such a thing,’ her mother said, ‘when Gemma is all set to be happy? Do you want to ruin everything because she has landed such a man and you have not? He is a real gentleman, not some stupid student who doesn’t know his backside from his elbow. Not that you managed to find anyone who would suit; not that you ever would. It must have been some daft lad with glasses and no more sense. Who was it, Lucy? You tell me now. Who is the lad you haven’t mentioned? Somebody unsuitable? Somebody clever from a poor background? I wouldn’t put it past you.’

When Lucy didn’t respond her mother began to hit her around the head and face and neck and shoulders such as she never had before and as though she would never stop. Lucy sobbed as the blows came.

‘How could you be so disrespectful and so unloving towards your sister as to say such a thing – and now, of all days?’

‘He made me do it,’ Lucy said, ‘he forced me!’

She tried to burrow beneath the covers as her mother went on hitting her. She was not prepared for the door opening again and Gemma coming in. ‘What on earth is wrong?’ Gemma shouted. ‘Stop hitting her.’

‘She’s been with some man and she hasn’t even the decency to tell me who he was—’ Her mother stopped short and then she said in a wavering voice, ‘She says it’s Guy, that he made her do it. She is a liar – she is no daughter of mine. She let somebody have her.’

‘She what?’ Gemma said. Her mother pushed aside the bedclothes completely and most of Lucy’s ragged nightwear, and Gemma stared.

‘Mother, she’s covered in bruises—’

‘Some women like it that way. Some stupid lad from Durham University has been sinful here in our own house with her. I knew she would get things wrong. I knew we should never have let her go. It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.’

Her mother flung from the room, sobbing and wailing, crying at such a rate that Lucy was astounded. There was a lawyer part of Lucy that said her mother should not have told Gemma. It could not help now.

‘Is this true?’ Gemma said, voice quavering.

A slight hope rose in Lucy. Was Gemma ready to believe her? At last, sanity of a kind, and yet what would their future be?

‘I heard noise and I went outside—’

‘What were you doing outside when I had said goodnight?’ Gemma asked her. ‘What could you possibly be doing out there at such a time?’

‘I was just finding out what was happening—’

‘You miserable liar,’ her sister said. ‘Guy would never have done such a thing. You have made this up and there has been another man, perhaps anybody that you could find on the street – with your looks you might be that desperate – and you were so jealous that you wanted to make me unhappy. How could you do it? Didn’t you see that I had to marry, that one of us had to, and that you never would? You begrudge me a decent man because you are so skinny and plain and all you’ve got is your stupid ideas. You are jealous. You don’t want me to leave here and yet how can I stay when my parents need me to marry well because it’s all they’ll ever have.’

Gemma was crying. Lucy started to think that the river could not have so much water as had been spilt here in the past few hours.

‘Because I’m so much bonnier than you,’ her sister said.

She sat up. She must convince Gemma that she could not marry such a man.

‘You can’t do this, Gem.’ The use of the old childhood name would surely help, but it made Gemma dry-eyed and furious, Lucy could soon see. ‘He’s not who you think he is,’ she continued. ‘Not if he would do such a thing to your sister.’

‘You so obviously thought he might,’ Gemma said, with terrible calm, ‘that you went out and offered yourself to him so openly in your nightwear. But he didn’t. I know him well and, whoever you had here, you should not say such dreadful things. Don’t you see what you have done to us?’

‘Gemma—’

‘I will not listen to it a moment longer. Guy is a gentleman and he loves me, and you have no one to love you because you are a horrible person, ugly and skinny and stupid. I’m sorry that you have not the ability to bring a man to you except by disgusting means. I’m so sorry for you, I really am.’ Gemma turned and ran from the room.

Soon afterwards her father came in. He shuffled as though he didn’t want to be there and she didn’t blame him for that. She wanted to be back in Durham, or anywhere rather than here, rather than now. He coughed as he always did when he was worried, embarrassed or upset and she remembered how she had watched him struggling the previous day to appear as normal when he was not well. He appeared much older than he had looked the last time she had seen him. He had put on ten years.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ he said. ‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing. Nothing, really.’

She had to make him believe her. The tears ran freely down her face and somehow she was ashamed as though it were her fault. She had gone over and over it. Was it her fault? Had she really gone out there because she wanted him, because she was jealous he was marrying her sister? It was true that he was rich and handsome and charming and all the things that a man should be when you were marrying him, and she had envied Gemma in some ways, but it had not in a long time been something she wanted for herself. It was not her road, not her fate.

What she wanted was to be there with her father in the office and for him to admire her and for them to go forward together – so that if he really was ill then she could help, she could aid all her family and they would be proud of her and all be together as they were meant to be. When she finished in Durham she would come back in triumph as a junior solicitor and her father would introduce her to his most valued clients with pride in his voice, saying, ‘And this my daughter, Lucy, who is to become a solicitor – and it will be Charlton and Charlton.’ She dreamed of it, in gold, on the windows of the office. She had dreamed of it for so long.

His eyes were full of sorrow. She would not forget the way that he looked at her then. He did not believe her. She had never thought her father would do such a thing.

‘I did nothing.’ Her voice broke. ‘You have to believe me; it wasn’t my fault, really it wasn’t. I just—’

‘Your mother wants you gone from the house before Gemma is married. Your sister is crying and she too wishes you gone. There’s nothing more you can do, as far as I can judge. Gemma is about to be married to a fine young man and I know you must wish it were you …’

She stared at him. He wasn’t listening to her. He assumed her guilt. Why did he do that? She was his daughter; she was important to him and he loved her. Why did he imagine she had done such a thing?

‘Daddy, I didn’t—’

‘Don’t say any more. You must go.’

He wasn’t even looking at her. His figure seemed so much smaller, so much more crouched down, as if the blow was too much – and it would be were it true, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

She tried to protest, but couldn’t get the words out. She hated to disappoint her father more than anything, but it seemed that he did not believe her, that he did not even want to. Did she resent Gemma’s success in finding a young man of wealth to marry her, somebody she liked? Was that what it was? Had she imagined the hurt, the blood? Was it her fault? Perhaps it was. Guy would not have done such a thing. Why had she gone outside? It was entirely her own doing.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

Her father did not respond and she could tell that he assumed her guilt. He was not against Guy, he was not against any man, and she realized that he could not be. Guy brought with him respectability, the future, children, and in the end those things mattered most of all. He was a man her father knew, and he cared for these matters, and therefore it must have been her fault.

He shifted and then he said, ‘You must go from here. Gemma is being married in two hours. Gather your things and leave, and don’t ever come back.’

He turned. Lucy got up and ran to him.

‘Oh, please don’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I really didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t.’

She didn’t know how many times she denied it. He stopped and shook her off. She followed him across the landing, crying and pleading. And finally he turned back.

‘You have disappointed me more than you can imagine. I don’t ever want to see you again. Get out of my house. Get out and don’t come back.’

London, 1919

Joe had dreamed of going home so often, had wanted to get out of France directly the conflict was over, but he was asked to stay and he did not feel that he could refuse. So many of his men, the older ones, had wives and children to go home to, and the young ones had parents. He had a parent too, his father, and a fiancée, Angela, but it was part of his nature to offer first to do everything, to be there for everybody. He had brought his men through danger so often that he had become a bit of a legend. They would have gone anywhere with him because they felt safe.

It was an illusion, Joe thought, and then uncomfortably reminded himself how he had seen what would happen and so managed to avoid it. He had kept his men close to him, so that they joked and called him Lucky Joe. Not to his face of course, to his face they called him sir.

He allowed himself to feel that yearning for England so that he could barely wait to reach it. He wanted to run, to push the ship and then to hurry the train, and when he finally arrived in London he was so grateful he could have cried. He took a cab to his father’s house in Belgravia. He didn’t notice until he got outside into a bitter cold winter wind that the house was in darkness.

He told the cabbie to wait and rushed to hammer on the front door, but there were no lights at all. He had never seen such a thing. If his father had gone ou