Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

  They sat in silence, each musing on this suspension of their intimacy and its causes, until Lucy said, in a gentler voice:

  “But what ties do you mean then?”

  “Oh, Lucy, friends. You made friends in Ravonsbridge. Why not here? Everybody likes you, but you don’t seem to care for anyone as you did for the people in Ravonsbridge.”

  Friends are not made on purpose, thought Lucy, nor is affection mixed like a rum cocktail.

  “Give me time,” she said with a sigh. “Perhaps there will come to be people here I care for as I did for Lady-Frances and Owen and Rickie.”

  “Owen and Rickie! I never supposed you gave two thoughts to Owen and Rickie!”

  “Nor did I, till I got letters from them and realised what idiots they are and how nice. But I’m happier about Lady Frances since Charles wrote. She had all her grandchildren for Christmas.”

  Melissa sat up. Charles wrote? This was the first she had heard of it. She had given up all hope of Charles.

  “I didn’t know he’d written,” she murmured.

  “Oh, yes. I sent them a Christmas card which turns out to be more classy than I knew. I picked it out as the prettiest in the tray, but it’s a Simone Martine, my dear, and the best thing they’ve got in the Uffizi.”

  “Oh, the Annunciation?”

  “Yes, it was an Annunciation. How cultured you all are! I thought the Botticellis were in the Uffizi. Surely they’re better?”

  “So he wrote to thank for the card?”

  Lucy pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked suspiciously at Melissa. Then she grinned.

  “Yes, my dotey dear, he wrote to thank for the card. Now we must get along to the Club or we’ll never be ready.”

  She jumped up and ran out into the wind, laughing at Melissa’s look of horror. For Melissa had believed that her sentimental maunderings to Collins were never overheard.

  “The wind is dropping,” said Melissa, as she climbed into the cripple car again. “John says if it drops there’ll be a thaw.”

  “Oh, plague, I hope not,” said Lucy. “We’re going to take the train to Brattle tomorrow and skate the whole way back to Drumby on the canal, with the wind behind us.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Me and Cobb and Brett.”

  “Not Quinn, I hope?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. He’s not to be told anything about it. He’d be a terrible bore on an expedition like that. ‘Och! just let you catch hould of me hand, acushla! It’s after getting tired ye’ll be.’”

  “Oh, Lucy! How can you like him?”

  “I don’t like him. I’ve said so.”

  They parked in front of the Club. Lucy unlocked the door, which she left ajar for Cobb and Brett, who were arriving later with more drinks. Having carried in the kippers, eggs, beer and oysters, they went to the upper floor to finish the decorations. Lucy had painted beech branches white and stuck on cellophane leaves. Melissa exclaimed in admiration.

  “Do you really think they’re nice?” asked Lucy. “I want the room to look like a glass forest; it costs nothing and looks festive, but I was afraid you’d think it rather Woolworth.”

  “I think it’s most effective.”

  “If you’ll finish putting them up, I’ll put the Panto props away. I ought to have done that on Boxing Day but I only washed up and got so cold I went home. You really don’t think it’s tawdry? You stand them in these jam-pots filled with sand.”

  Lucy picked up the property horse and the fairy queen’s wings and took them down to the lower floor. Melissa, working with the branches, could hear her moving from the kitchen to the buffet, as she prepared for the evening’s supper. Outside the window there were shouts from children sliding on the canal. The wind was undoubtedly dropping.

  Presently footsteps came along Canal Lane. There was a knock at the door, and Lucy called from the kitchen:

  “Come in!”

  They came in, a little uncertainly. Cobb or Brett? thought Melissa, as she stuck a branch in a jam-pot. Then she heard Lucy come out of the kitchen, and a gasping cry:

  “Charles!”

  Charles? thought Melissa. What Charles? Can it … it can’t be!

  “Oh, I am so glad to see you!”

  What a thing to say to a man, reflected Melissa crossly. Lucy will never get married unless she can manage to learn a little duplicity.

  She made a move to go downstairs but was checked by Lucy’s muffled voice:

  “Hi … no … Charles … please … I only meant I was very glad to see you…. How is your mother?”

  Melissa, trapped in the upper room and unable to help hearing every word, began to walk about the floor very heavily. She commended Charles for explaining himself in a mutter which was far more difficult to catch than Lucy’s bell-like exclamations. But they did not seem to notice her footsteps and presently Lucy was audible again, more clearly than ever, as if disentangled from the muffling obstacle.

  “But I’ve nothing to forgive!”

  Mutter, mutter, mutter.

  This is impossible, thought Melissa, and went across to the radiogram.

  “But it’s odious of me to have been in the right,” wailed Lucy, “and very generous and noble of you not to mind it.”

  Melissa switched on the radiogram to its loudest volume. A stentorian voice boomed through the Club:

  “… MANY MANY MILLIONS OF YEARRRS AGO. AS THE GAHSES CONDENSED AND THE SAIRRRFACE OF THE AIRRRTH HARRRDENED …”

  This really did startle the couple below. The muttering ceased. Lucy’s excited face appeared up the well of the ladder stairs and Melissa switched off the radiogram.

  “Charles Millwood is here!” announced Lucy.

  “How nice!” commented Melissa. “Is he staying long?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, and called down the stairs to ask Charles if he was staying long.

  Charles, below, was heard to say that he did not know either.

  Melissa suggested that Lucy should take him to Canal Cottages for tea. She could herself, she declared, finish the preparations for the party, especially if Cobb and Brett were coming to help her. And she went down to shake hands with the blushing Charles who had now realised how much she must have overheard. Very sweetly she reminded him that they had met once in Severnton and she found his hat for him, which had rolled under the buffet table, probably when Lucy hurled herself into his arms.

  “When Cobb and Brett come,” said Lucy, “make them get the clinkers out of the stoves and fill up all the anthracite buckets. The eggs must be boiled hard and all the anchovy stuffing is on a plate in the pantry.”

  She went off with Charles. Melissa began to lay the buffet table, distracted by a variety of emotions. On the whole, relief predominated. She need not have tormented herself over Lucy’s future. It was apparently settled. And how nobly settled! Cyre Abbey and the Marsden-Millwood millions! Drumby had nothing to offer which could compare with that. This obsession with Ravonsbridge had turned out well; Lucy could go back there in triumph, and how she would boss them all about, to be sure, as soon as she had got used to being rich!

  But there was another voice in Melissa’s heart which refused to be silent, though she tried not to listen to it. She did not really like Charles Millwood, though she had toyed with the idea of this marriage for two years, ever since his name appeared in Lucy’s letters. She had wanted the triumph and security of it for her friend, if only he had been a different young man. But, if Lucy loved him, she told herself, that did not signify, and there was no reason for supposing that Lucy did not love him. She would not marry him unless she did.

  But not as I love John, whispered that uncompromising voice, and not as she could love, if she met the right man. She’s lonely and she doesn’t know what to do with her life, and I daresay she’s fond of him, and he is very much in love with her. And isn’t that better than knocking about with Quinn? But not as good as she ought to have. She ought to love him as I love John. She will never know … never know
… what happiness, what bliss …

  Brisk steps rang on the road outside and the odious Quinn himself appeared in the open doorway. He saluted Melissa gallantly and she gave him an icy smile.

  To ask one pretty girl where another might be was not good technique. He adopted a roundabout method:

  “All alone? Couldn’t I help ye now?”

  “Yes,” said Melissa, “you could.”

  He advanced, ready to have some fun over laying the buffet table, but she explained that he must rake the clinkers out of the stoves and fill the anthracite buckets. A little crestfallen he complied, while she thought of several more things which he might do, all of them arduous and unpleasant. She kept him very hard at work for more than an hour, allowing him to suppose that Lucy might be arriving at any moment, and evading his questions about tomorrow’s skating party. He seemed to have got wind of the scheme and to be nettled at being left out of it. Melissa hoped that tomorrow might see him entirely off the course.

  *

  Lucy and Charles sat over the fire, in her small sitting-room, and tried simultaneously to explain themselves. Charles wanted to tell her why he had come and she kept interrupting to beg that her ardent greeting might not be misunderstood. She had been very pleased to see him. She was very fond of him. She had been so much delighted to see somebody from Ravonsbridge that her feelings had run away with her. But he must not suppose that she had changed her mind. She was not going to marry him.

  “I haven’t asked you yet,” said Charles at last.

  “No. But you’re going to.”

  “Er … yes. But I want to explain what led up to it.”

  “Charles, dear, that won’t make any difference.”

  “It might. And in any case you’ll be very pleased, I think, with some of my news. I got your address from Owen Rees.”

  “Did you? Oh, Charles! Have you been comparing notes?”

  “Yes. We have. We’ve had a long talk. After which I decided to come here. Do you mind if I go back a bit?”

  “No. Have some blackberry jelly.”

  Charles explained that he had taken a long time to forgive her for being right. The sudden news of her departure had shaken him, and he had rushed off to the station that morning on an impulse, not knowing what he meant to say when he got there, but meditating some kind of apology. The intrusion of Owen, however, had made him angry and he had gone home, vowing to put her out of his mind.

  “So you should,” said Lucy. “Though I’d rather you didn’t forget me in anger. But we’re not …”

  “I’ve talked it all over with my mother….”

  “Oh? She knows you’ve come?”

  “Yes. I’ve told her everything. She sends you her love. She hopes I’m going to bring you back with me.”

  He broke off to look at Lucy’s eyes, which were so beautiful when she was thinking of anyone whom she loved.

  “Oh, Charles, now you’re here you can tell me; was it Ephesians iv she was reading in bed, that night after the meeting? I did so want to know.”

  “I really couldn’t say,” said Charles in some surprise. “I think it was an Epistle. Why?”

  “I’m sure it was. They had it at the opening ceremony, you know, and at your father’s funeral. I think it entirely explains everything … why she made that speech.”

  Lucy jumped up and snatched a Bible from her bookshelf. She found the passage, while Charles stared at her as though she were a spring in the desert.

  “‘That we henceforth be no more children,’” she read, “‘tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.’”

  She looked up to see if he understood and met an adoring but uncomprehending gaze.

  “It’s the only thing to do against cunning craftiness,” she said. “Speaking the truth in love. But did she say anything more to you about it, when you went up to see her that night?”

  “She did a little. She talked about it very calmly and judicially. She said she was beginning to see that she had been to blame and had made great mistakes, but that she meant not to try to think it all over until the first shock had worn off. She quoted some Canon or other who prepared her for Confirmation, to the effect that self-blame can be as egotistical as self-praise. She said that any work worth doing is greater than we are, and that we must not overrate our importance to it, either for good or ill.”

  “That’s true,” said Lucy. “And we are sure to praise or blame ourselves for the wrong things, anyway. Mr. Mildmay says your mother’s last speech was the best thing she has ever done for Ravonsbridge. But I’m sure she doesn’t know that. She probably thinks she looked after the soap and towels in the cloakrooms very well. What else did she say?”

  “I can’t remember. Oh, yes … she said that if we are doing God’s work badly it is taken away from us, which I thought very pathetic. She quite clearly believes that the Institute is God’s work and that He takes a personal interest in it. Her religion is a great support to her, of course, but it’s completely childish. She has exactly the same ideas, I imagine, that she had when she was confirmed at fifteen. I refrained from saying that it was rather odd of the Almighty to hand His work over to Hayter.”

  “Oh, but He didn’t,” said Lucy. “I don’t know about God’s work. But the Institute could have been a … a vehicle for that impulse there is in people to get together and work for a better life. It failed to be, so Hayter has got it. But the impulse is still there, it’s always there, and it will break out in some other form….”

  She stopped, realising that he was not attending to her.

  “But what about Owen?” she asked.

  Owen Rees had turned up at Cyre Abbey on Boxing Day, demanding to see Charles, in a very mysterious and conspiratorial manner. It was impossible, apparently, that he could ever be seen speaking to a Millwood at the Works. He was in a state of furious indignation, for he had approached the Institute in the hope of getting the theatre for his Operetta and had been quoted terms which were far beyond anything which his little company could afford.

  “I told him,” said Charles, “that I couldn’t intervene. If he’s dissatisfied with the Council he must go with his friends to vote them off at the next general meeting.”

  “He’ll never get that into his head,” said Lucy. “Of course he ought to be on the Council himself. But he thinks everything should be looked after for him by some people he calls ‘them’.”

  “I think he’s waking up to it a little,” said Charles. “He told me what you’d said, and how right you were. And then … well, then we began to compare notes.”

  “Oh, Charles! You told him about me and the toffees?”

  “What toffees?”

  “I spilt toffees all over your carpet.”

  “Did you? I’d forgotten.”

  “Thank goodness! I never shall. What did you tell him then?”

  “What you’d said and how right you were. After which we became much more friendly — more at our ease. In fact I’ve never been able to talk so freely to anybody of … anybody like Rees, before. We owed it to you that we could, I think.”

  “You mean you began to like each other?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose it was that, in a way. He has the darkest suspicions of some of the Council — so dark I’d think he was exaggerating if I didn’t remember what has happened already. He thinks they mean to turn the Institute simply into a money-making affair. There is already talk of hiring out the buildings for all sorts of rallies and conferences. The Art School has been closed. I daresay the Music and Drama Schools will go too. They’ll never do more than cover their own expenses. It’s the buildings which would bring in money, if ably exploited. And then Rees thinks they mean to get up a citizens’ petition to change the Constitution by Act of Parliament and divert this money to purposes outside the Institute. Of co
urse, the line would be to use it for all sorts of amenities in the town, but the greater part of it would go into private pockets.”

  “But everybody who wants to oppose that idea must get together now!” exclaimed Lucy.

  “That’s what we think,” said Charles, “and what we mean to try to do. It’s not easy for us to work together, situated as we are. But we’re going to keep in touch with one another and do our best. The first step we took was to consult another crony of yours — old Mr. Meeker. I said I’d like to talk it over with him sometime, and Rees, who is a headlong fellow, insisted on doing it at once. So I drove over to Ravonsbridge and called on the old man and invited him out for a drive. I took him to Cyre Abbey where he and Rees and I had a long discussion.”

  Lucy bounced on her chair with delight, and then sighed to think of the time wasted. If only these three had got together two years ago so much more might have been saved.

  “Meeker’s advice,” continued Charles, “wasn’t very palatable to either of us. He said we ought to do our best to support his daughter-in-law, who is on the Council now, you know. He says she’s an awful fool but an honest woman, and that these sharks will use her, hoodwink her, and throw her out when it suits them. He also says that Mrs. Strong is a very decent sort of woman, and Finch quite harmless. The sharks are Hayter, Spedding and Harris. Carruthers is a nonentity out for an O.B.E. Wright they believe to be a Communist. About Davis they were cautious; I’m his employer and I suppose they didn’t want to commit themselves. Meeker says we must mobilise public opinion in support of the more honest members of the Council, or we shall see them thrown out and replaced by sharks. Rees thought that fearfully tame; he’s all for cloak-and-sword drama. And I must say that close co-operation with Mrs. Meeker doesn’t much appeal to me. But my mother has paved the way. She went, you know, to the Christmas party, and she said that Mrs. Meeker really did seem to be making efforts to be civil and that Mrs. Strong was very nice indeed.”