Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

  When she had finished her day’s work she went in search of Emil and met him coming out of the Art School. They turned together into the garden and took the long shady walk over the top of the hill. She wanted to tell him of her regret and remorse for her part in the disaster; for she felt now that she had been wrong to laugh at him in the early stages of the scandal. The mockery of his colleagues, the sense of being friendless, had probably driven him to seek the sympathy of people like Basil Wright.

  He said abstractedly that it did not matter, and they talked for a while of Thornley and then she confessed to him that other load on her conscience: her responsibility in bringing Ianthe back to Ravonsbridge. Again he said that it did not matter.

  “Without Thornley I should do something stupid; if not this, then something else. So then it is a muddle, and the Council is blamed. Ianthe was only an occasion.”

  “Why do you think Mr. Thornley was got rid of?”

  “Because he was the only sensible person on the Council. Hayter is very clever, Lucy. He does nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody can say it is his fault. But he is now the only one who can stop them from doing stupid things. Comes a stupid thing that is convenient, and he does not stop it.”

  “But what will you do now, Emil?”

  “This evening I go back to Kidderminster, to Nancy.”

  They sat down on a bench overlooking the valley where the town ended and the fields began again. All the Ravon valley must have looked like this once, with the dotted farms and the river winding among water meadows and the blue ranks of the hills to the west. Lucy was very fond of this view, and often strolled along to it after her day’s work. But this must be very nearly the last time that she would see it. Soon they would both be gone, having lived through so much in this town, and the hills would always be there, and other people would sit on this bench and talk, but Lucy and Emil would be gone, and their memory would fade from all the circle of the hills.

  “Nancy is mad.”

  His voice was so low that she could not be sure of the words. She turned to him with startled eyes:

  “What? What did you say?”

  Emil stretched out his long, capable hands in front of him and looked at them intently.

  “They have had to take her away … to a hospital for mad people….”

  “Emil!”

  A train came puffing out of the town below. The smoke rose over the roofs. It vanished behind the gas-works, and then reappeared among the fields where the line ran beside the river down to Gloucester and the world beyond the hills.

  “I was afraid,” whispered Lucy. “I was afraid.”

  “She must be taken care of, you see.”

  “But she’ll get better, Emil. They’ll cure her. They’re so clever nowadays.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

  He was still looking at his hands as he continued:

  “Perhaps it was some disease that would have come even if I had been kind husband. That too I don’t know. I only know … that I was not kind.”

  “She always loved you. I’m sure she still does.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  Lucy watched the train puffing down the valley until tears blurred the view.

  “She’s like a little baby now,” said Emil. “Like a very little baby for whom everything must be done. She must be fed and washed and dressed, and she doesn’t speak. And all this must be done by people who don’t love her. So you see, I’d have to go in any case. I must find some home where she can be with me and where I can do all for her, like that.”

  “Oh, she’ll get better.”

  “I can work. I can keep her. And with my hands I shall do all for her. With my hands. No stranger shall touch her. Even as she is, she will know, I think. My hands won’t be strange hands….”

  He held them out and frowned at them. Lucy knew that he would do as he had said. He had failed Nancy in the commonplace demands of life, but many a better man could not have given her what he offered now.

  “Oh, she must get better!”

  He smiled at her.

  “That we must hope. If she is better I shall write that good news to you. If I don’t write, you will know it’s not good. And please tell nobody about this.”

  They walked together back to the Institute and she undertook various commissions for him, for his household effects must be packed up and sent to Kidderminster. He showed more method and practical sense in making these arrangements than she had ever discerned in him before. He left Ravonsbridge that evening. She never saw him or heard from him again.

  7

  A MONTH later she departed herself. Mr. Hayter was so very co-operative about her resignation, so ready to agree that her position was not comfortable, and so alert in getting her a glowing testimonial from the Council, that she doubted very much whether she had managed things well.

  Her relations with her colleagues, during the rest of the term, were not quite easy. Rickie and Bess tried to make her change her mind. All, save Mr. Mildmay, resented what they felt to be an implied rebuke in her decision. But memory was already beginning its beneficent work of transformation and by the end of the term most of them were able to think that she was leaving because she did not like the job. The awkward affair of Emil must find some place in the lumber room of their minds, thrust out of sight, where it need not often be scrutinised, and a dust-sheet thrown over it. To each it had been a drama in which he or she had been the central figure. That Lucy had foreseen more, had urged more effort, than anybody else, few would have allowed. On the whole, Miss Frogmore came to be remembered as poor Emil’s champion. She had called the meeting and talked more than Mr. Mildmay. But Emil had let her down.

  Lucy went on a grey and windy day, feeling almost as solitary as when she came. But a surprise awaited her at the station. Owen Rees was at the ticket-barrier and explained that he had come to see her off. She was taken aback, for she had said nothing of her departure to anyone outside the Institute, not even to Mr. Meeker.

  “How did you know I was going?”

  “Things get about.”

  “They certainly do. But how did you know what train?”

  “I rang the taxi office to find when you’d ordered a taxi. Do you always have so much luggage?”

  “Only when I’m leaving a job.”

  “Where are you going now, then? Have you another job?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t the least idea what I’ll do.”

  He helped her to pile up her luggage on the platform and then said:

  “We’re all very sorry you’re going, Lussi. It’s a wicked shame they should sack you.”

  “Sacked! I wasn’t sacked. I resigned.”

  He insisted that she had been sacked because she stood up for Angera. The whole town said so. And he looked mutinous when she begged him to contradict the story. A fine indignation over the sacking of Lucy was hard to relinquish. She realised that her departure might well be turned into another stick with which to beat the Council, and besought him so earnestly to see that the truth was known that at last he gave in.

  “O.K. I’ll tell them you couldn’t stand the place.”

  “No, no, don’t tell them that.”

  “Then why are you going?”

  “Here’s my train!”

  “Stand you back and I’ll get you a seat.”

  “Take care of that basket. It’s got my tea-set in it.”

  The train came puffing in half empty, so that he did not have to be as deedy on her behalf as he would have liked. But he stowed away her possessions for her, and then stood beneath her carriage door while she leaned out and talked to him.

  “Give my love to Aunty,” she said.

  “Come again?”

  She had to explain rather lamely that it was a joke; a parody of what people said when parting at railway stations. He looked mystified but laughed obligingly.

  “Some day,” he said, “you’ll come back.”

  “No. I don’t think
so. No. I’ll never come back.”

  As she said the words she saw Charles Millwood rush through the ticket-barrier. He scanned the train, caught sight of her, and hurried up.

  “I … I came to see you off!” he exclaimed.

  “How nice of you,” said Lucy. “I think you know Owen Rees.”

  Charles and Owen scowled at one another and muttered uncordial greetings. Owen kept his place firmly in front of the carriage door so that Charles had to talk over his shoulder, explaining that he had only learnt of her departure that morning and had hastened to Sheep Lane, to find her gone. Lucy began to enjoy herself a little. If Owen had not been there, Charles would obviously have jumped into the train and travelled to Gloucester with her. She did not want him to do so, but it was amusing to watch him deciding that he could not. Also it was amusing to be seen off by the two people who had most right to be offended with her, for she had been inexcusably rude to both.

  “You know,” she said suddenly, “you two ought to compare notes. You’d be surprised.”

  Before she could say more, the train gave a snort and moved. They stood back. Owen ran beside it, waving, until he was left behind. Charles turned away.

  The little houses slid past, and then the gas-works, and then the fields. The valley curved. Ravonsbridge vanished. But the Lump on the hill still dominated the scene. As the valley wound and the hills changed places, it kept appearing and reappearing, each time a little smaller, a little more indistinct. Lucy hung out of the window to see the last of it. The smooth hills, the woody hills, waltzed and revolved, but she could not be sure which was her final glimpse, because she was crying.

  PART VII

  THE LINCOLNSHIRE HANDICAP

  1

  Melissa to Hump

  17 High Street, Drumby, Lincs

  Sept. 14

  YOUR Club opened last night with great éclat. Much was said, much was ate, much was drank, including your health. The dancing floor is so resilient that I fear it is unsafe; one day, no doubt, we shall all fall through. But you will be in the Dandawa and will merely raise your eyebrows when you read of the disaster, in some old greasy newspaper which has lit into your hands by chance.

  The fire escape will do nicely for couples sitting out in the summer, when we mean to have a lighted barge on the canal outside, and drinks and all. This is our organiser’s idea. We decided we must have one full-time paid organiser, and do the rest of the work in volunteer shifts. We give her £5 a week, which is not much, but all that we can afford. She does the catering and gave us a magnificent supper last night and very good drinks (John got the licences through, by following your unscrupulous advice); very cheap, for what it was, and made a small profit. I enclose a list of eatables and prices, to show you the sort of thing. The vol-au-vents were miracles — every one gobbled up. Shrimp and mushroom. She made them herself in the Club kitchen before the party, being a genius at pastry. I never knew

  She is devising various agreeable entertainments, including a pantomime at Christmas and a masked ball on New Year’s Eve. And she has already sorted out all the cliques — the bridge clique, the musical clique, the charade clique, etc. and allotted them different evenings, so that no one clique can dominate the Club and make it boring for the rest. No Drumby wife could have done this without giving offence and being accused of favouring her own clique; we had to have an outsider.

  I can assure you that the Club promises to be a startling success. John still worries about having got the money for Drama, but I am sure they will all be better chemists if they enjoy themselves a little. It must have affected their work to hate Drumby so much. But he says what if some official arrives and demands evidence of Drama? Organiser says she can fix up a rehearsal at a moment’s notice — just a few of ‘the girls’ wandering about with books, and we’ll tell him it’s our forthcoming production of Love’s Labour’s Lost.

  I must tell you that John has given me a dog. I will leave you to guess (a) Name, (b) Breed. I shall not mention this animal again because people with dogs should be reticent about them.

  You ask in your last letter why I don’t ride? I do. We have found a farm near Breenho which supplies horses, but we are keeping this to ourselves. Selfish? I think not. We have done a lot for Drumby and must have some private pleasures. It’s a Lincolnshire tradition that anything done by the Beauclercs is immediately done by the whole population, and I don’t care to ride with a cavalry regiment. So we are secretive and take our riding things to Breenho in a suitcase. This has already caused speculation to Mrs. Callow, who has done everything except ask me point blank why we vanish from Drumby at intervals, for a few hours, with a large suitcase. I believe she thinks we have secretly had a baby and have put it out to nurse at a farm and take clothes to it. Because it’s so strange of us not to have one after fifteen months! What a thing!

  Hump, dear, can’t you come to see us before you go to Dandawa? Must you really be in Paris all the time till then? Surely you could fly home for a week-end? Think of all the years before we meet again! And not everything can be said in a letter.

  Could you, sometime, let me have Crabbe back? I have tendered this request before. You borrowed him in May.

  Hump to Melissa

  No date or address

  Cocker spaniel. Collins. Sorry about Crabbe. I left him in the Metro by mistake. Would you like Racine instead? A better poet. I’d come if I could, sweet Rose of May, but I’m on to something here that I really can’t leave and I’m afraid it will keep me till I sail. Why can’t you come here? Who is this Organiser? You’ve suggested a most formidable possibility. If she is who I think she is, I won’t have her in my Club. But you can’t have done this to me? Are there two girls like that?

  Melissa to Hump

  Drumby, Sept. 20

  How well you understand me in some respects! Collins is a cocker spaniel, golden. A very ordinary middle-class dog, as our mother might say. Parlons d’autre chose! In other respects you are dumb, crass, mutton-headed and an egotist. Going to Paris wouldn’t be at all the same thing as having you here; John couldn’t go. But I will, if there’s no other chance of saying goodbye to you.

  I do not want Racine. I want Crabbe. I have got Racine and I do not like him and I was made to read him at school and I can only remember one sensible line (besides the one we all know, about Venus entire) which is:

  L’Hymen n’est pas toujours entouré de flambeaux.

  Wait till you find that out for yourself! Then you’ll be sorry you wouldn’t come when your sister called. It’s so unlike you to say you can’t do anything. You always do what you like, and always have. I never heard you say can’t before.

  The Club Organiser is my friend Lucy Carmichael who came to stay with us this summer, and about whom I have ceased writing to you because you said she sounded a most unattractive girl. Drumby does not agree with you. She is a bigger success than you were, such a big success that this scheme was devised to keep her. She left Ravonsbridge in July. John loves her as he ought, though I think he was at first afraid she might be going to live with us. But we’ve got her lodgings in a cottage next door to the Club.

  Of course the job isn’t nearly good enough for her. But we hope she may marry. Drumby is well stocked with unmarried chemists, all of them very brilliant and sure of a future, and never was anybody like her seen here before, except myself, for looks, wit and chic. The competition is brisk. John and I, who have become very horsey in our conversation, call it the Lincolnshire Handicap. I prefer Mr. Birkett, the man who upset your boat, so I’m sure you’ll remember him. John favours a blackavised Scot called McIntyre, entirely devoid of charm, but much respected by all the men behind the barbed wire. Lucy, however, wastes far too much of her time with two infants called Cobb and Brett, new since your time, far too young and too poor to marry, who lark about with her and help her to wash up at the Club. I’d have told you all this long ago if you’d been nicer about her.

  Hump to Melissa

  Paris, Se
pt. 26

  I knew it was bossy Lucy! And you expect me to come to Drumby! You come on to Paris and I’ll take you to see the Morgue if you’re good.

  Birkett did not upset my boat. I upset his. He has adenoids and I hope she marries him. Why did she leave Ravonsbridge? Did they run her out of town? And what about l’affaire Angera?

  I can’t buy Crabbe in Paris. The French have never heard of him. So I’m sending Bossuet which you ought to read. He’ll come in a parcel marked Books, which you must handle reverently.

  If you should go to London you might look up Pattison who will remember perfectly who you are because I’ve been talking to him about you; he was over here last week for some medical conference. He put the eels in Millwood’s bed. Now he’s a full-fledged gynaecologist, 357 Harley Street, but has got whiskers which I think a mistake. He’d love to see you again and will take you out to dinner if you ring him up. I believe our mother keeps spies in Harley Street, so it doesn’t do to be seen ringing doorbells there.

  Personally, if I was a girl, I shouldn’t part with my money to any of them. If I was a girl I’d remember that the watched pot never boils, and put myself down to ride in a gymkhana at Easter — sort of thing it’s going to be a nuisance to have to cancel. But then I’m dumb, crass and an egotist, and don’t share our family trait of crossing rivers before I come to them.

  God bless you. Keep me posted in the racing news. What are the odds on the Lincolnshire Handicap?

  Lucy to Mrs. Carmichael

  2 Canal Cottages, Drumby, Lines, Oct. 10

  How I have neglected you! But the Club is really very strenuous. They have given me a little cripple car in which I can drive about and collect provisions. It’s always breaking down, which takes up a lot of time.

  First before I forget: can you find and send my riding breeches? I don’t know where they are but they must be somewhere. Alan (Birkett) says he can get me a horse; I don’t want to poach on the Beauclerc horses, but he has found another farm, down by the sea.