Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  “Of course the other villagers found her very strange, she was an enigma you see. I think they were wary of her even before her father saw fit to mash her brain up. She didn’t behave like other people and I think she must have been incredibly lonely.”

  He stopped speaking for a while and in the silence that followed I tried to make sense of everything. Was it possible that Lacey had been so isolated, so alone that she had invented a man to love, a child to cherish. It seemed implausible to me and I said as much to Father Thomas. He shook his head.

  “Oh but she didn’t, the man was real, this Charlie fellow, though few people knew about their relationship. I’m not really sure about how they met, her being indoors most of the time. But Jim Daniels, who used to farm the land at the top end of your lane, he was telling me once of an occasion when he nearly saw a girl killed.

  “It turned out it was Lacey he was talking about. Her father had caught her and the young man lying down together in an old stable. Jim heard the yelling, saw the young man fly backwards as he was shoved out of the way before he went running off. By the time Jim had got to the doorway, Lacey was lying unconscious and covered in blood on the floor. He had to pull the doctor off her, and when he had calmed down he asked Jim to help take her home. He said it haunted him for years, that he was so afraid of causing insult to the doctor that he carried her home and then just left her there with him.”

  My mind was reeling. When Lacey had told me the story of her and Charlie it didn’t end like this, he had asked her to marry him, presented her with the grass ring; they had made love and then gone their separate ways. I already knew that at least part of the story wasn’t true and she had told me that her father had beaten her but that was when he had discovered her supposed pregnancy. The more I thought about it the more confused I became.

  “She told me that her young man, Charlie, had died in the blitz in Exeter.”

  “He did, but obviously that was after they had been caught together. He was well thought of in the village because he was so willing to help everyone out and Father Alan held a memorial for him. He told me about it because he was horrified by the hypocrisy of Doctor Carmichael who had turned up at the memorial with his wife and daughter, despite what he had done to Lacey as a result of her relationship with the young man. I might not be remembering this very well but I think it was soon after that when Lacey was sent away for a while, supposedly to care for an elderly Aunt or cousin or something but I don’t know how valid that is and if I’m honest, I could be remembering the story totally out of synch because according to some of the other villagers, there was a time when Lacey wasn’t seen for quite a while, a year or more. But that was later after her mother died, probably when she was recovering from the lobotomy. I’m not sure, sorry that’s not much help is it?”

  I shook my head trying to put my thoughts into some kind of order and Father Thomas took my hand and smiled.

  “I don’t know how much you know about Electric Shock Treatment or lobotomy, but I can tell you this, they can have a devastating impact on both short and long-term memory. Perhaps that is why Lacey can’t remember things the way they actually were. Maybe it isn’t that at all. Perhaps her life was so cruel and terrible that she invented another one that seemed so real to her that she could no longer tell it as fiction.

  “I think that you may have to accept that you will never know the truth behind it all, but one thing I will tell you is this; of all the villagers, Lacey is one of my favourites. She is probably more genuine, more straightforward than anyone I know.” He smiled again. “Please try not to judge her too harshly.”

  “I just feel like such a fool. I trusted her.”

  “As far as I can see you have every reason to. In all the time since I met her, I have never once known her to deliberately deceive anyone. I have never seen her act with malice or anger of any kind. Quite the opposite in fact, she is a genuinely sweet and gentle soul. I can’t imagine that she deliberately set out to fool you. It is much more likely that what she told you is a result of her own confusion.

  “There have been so many times where I have sat with her over tea and watched her grow vague and distant. It’s like she goes somewhere else just for a little while and her blackouts seem to be when she struggles to get back. Sometimes I would see her walking up the road oblivious to everyone. She would sing nursery rhymes to herself or talk to someone that wasn’t there, and if I said hello she wouldn’t even register my presence. It was all just part of who she was and very few people could accept that.”

  “Do you think she believed what she told me?”

  “Either that or she desperately wanted to believe it. She has lived such a lonely, lonely life. A father who dominated her every waking hour, a mother who was a victim of domestic violence herself and never stood up for her only child, a loved one who died in the war before he could provide her any form of escape, no friends, no hobbies outside of her home, a village full of people who looked at her with suspicion and judgement. I can’t even begin to imagine how one would go about filling so many empty hours. Perhaps I would have filled them with daydreams and fantasies of a life I could have had if circumstances had been different?”

  I cried again and he sat beside me silently. I found it comforting that he was there, feeling less alone. Putting my head in my hands I prayed for her, that she would be okay one way or another. I prayed for a miracle, that I would be able to go to the hospital, take her home and look after her. I felt a vast silence around us as I asked for Lacey’s life. And as I did so an image came to me. It was the image of a little dark haired scrap of a girl sitting alone on a windowsill high up in the eaves. A little girl who wove dreams of a mother who didn’t exist, a mother who would turn up sometime soon to rescue her, to take her home and finally I thought that I understood. Perhaps sometimes it is easier to imagine a life without flaws, without difficulty than to accept a desperate reality you are powerless to change.

  I wiped my eyes and stood up, turning to Father Thomas. “I’d better get back to the hospital then.”

  He nodded and smiled as he stood and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, “I’ll pray for you both. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “You can thank me by turning up on a Sunday once in a while,” he turned away from me before pausing and turning back, looking down at the hard wooden pews, “and bring a cushion.” He walked away as I turned to head back into the still, dark morning.

  Chapter 68

  I returned to the hospital and sat and waited. I kept her company, talked to her and I wondered if perhaps she was sparing me the sudden grief of her leaving. I wondered if she held on until I had shaped my thoughts into some form of acceptance that she wouldn’t make it.

  I allowed silence into the room and stopped feeling as if I had to fill every moment with sound, as if that would hold her here with the living. I thought about knowing her, I realised how much of a catalyst she had been for me, how she had helped me to move forward, to let go. When I thought of the lies she had told I turned away from them, there was so much more to her than that. As her body slowed and prepared to shut down, all I could feel was immense gratitude that I had known her.

  And so she died on that cold February morning and I wasn’t there. I had gone home at eleven the previous night, exhausted from my constant vigil. The nurses had told me I should go have a bath and get some sleep; they would call me if there was any change. By the time my phone rang three hours later it was too late, she was gone. The voice at the end of the phone told me not to feel bad, it often happened that way, they often went when they were alone. Still, I rushed back to the hospital as if there was something I could do to change things, as if my haste would make a difference.

  She lay on the bed where I had left her, the same position, the same blank still expression but her chest no longer rose and fell, her heart didn’t beat, and when I touched her skin it already felt different, cooler, le
ss pliant. I pulled the chair as close to the bed as I could and rested my head on her chest and felt her absence.

  As I sat there I felt a chilly draught brush across my ankles and realised that the window was open an inch or two. I hadn’t noticed the nurse come in, she was moving quietly in the background. I asked her if it was she who had opened the window and she smiled gently and told me that she had, that it was something she always did in a room where someone had died, to let the spirit out and set them free.

  I walked over to the window and looked out across the roofs of the buildings. I imagined her flying out across the city, through the clouds and onwards to the horizon where she hovered in the sky like a distant star before floating beyond the veil where I could not follow.

  Chapter 69

  Lacey was cremated according to her wishes. There were not many there to say goodbye. Jane came down from Birmingham and held my hand throughout the service; I had never leaned on her more than I did that day. A man I hadn’t seen before was pointed out to me by Father Thomas as Adam, the head teacher at the local school that Lacey had spoken of. He looked at me with kind eyes and a gentle smile. John, the shopkeeper was there with his family and as the service was about to start I was surprised to see Martha come in, shepherding her family ahead of her. She caught my eye and nodded slowly before taking her seat. There were a few others that I didn’t know but that was all, just a handful of us.

  Father Thomas conducted the ceremony and he spoke about Lacey’s eccentricity, her humour, her big heart. I think she would have been pleased with the things he said and I recognised the truth of her in all of them. I wondered how many of the others who sat with heads bowed and sombre expressions saw her for the first time through his words. It made me miss her even more. Father Thomas had asked me if I wanted to speak but I declined. I thought of all the hours I spent in her hospital room where I had filled the silence. I had said all that I needed to say then. My words, my thoughts were just between Lacey and me, no-one else needed to hear them. When it was all over we went back to Dove Cottage and talked a little about Lacey and about life in the village. It was a simple day.

  A short time after, when the days had once more become routine and I felt the emptiness of the cottage over the hedge, I set off very early in the morning. I went alone, with only Lacey and the pilot for company, the way it was supposed to be. As I stepped into the basket of the balloon and we began to climb, I fixed my eyes on the pink-tinged dawn and hoped that she was there in spirit, if such a thing were possible.

  The landscape spread out below us, the features changing, becoming harder to recognise. The wind blew us towards Dartmoor and the undulating moorland stretched out below us like a beautiful emerald sea. The farms dotted here and there looked like building blocks. I thought about her reaction to seeing a balloon in the sky and how much she would have loved this.

  Aside from several small bequests to the local church and the school, Lacey had left her estate to me; it included her house and a significant sum of money that I didn’t know even existed. The day that I had taken her into Exeter to visit the solicitor, she had been changing her will to include me. I had no idea. There were, however, two codicils, one was that I looked after Peachy and the chickens and the other was that I use some of the money she had left me to hire a private investigator to find out if I had any remaining family. Both of which I would honour. It was the least I could do.

  I had begun the process of changing the name of End Cottage to Lacey’s House. It felt like the right thing to do and seemed a fitting memorial for someone who always had been and now always would be a part of the village. I hope she would have approved.

  I felt a light touch on my arm and turned towards the balloon pilot.

  “It’s time now, while we are still climbing,” he said, and I bent to pick up the urn. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, seeing again the childlike warmth of her smile. As I slowly tipped her ashes from the basket they fell and drifted into a beautiful trail behind us where they floated for several minutes. They twisted and danced, creating ethereal shapes that reflected the brilliant light of the newly risen sun. I watched them move gently in the air until slowly they began to disperse and she faded away into the clear morning sky.

  Epilogue

  Somehow it felt different stepping into Lacey’s house, knowing that it was now mine and that she would never again walk through the corridors. There was a reverent quiet about the rooms as if the house itself missed her, grieved for her in some intangible way. Perhaps not, perhaps the grief was mine and I simply felt it surround me, an external thing that filled the air and spoke of loss and sorrow, showing me how much she meant, how much I missed her.

  I thought of her will, of her desire that I try to discover some family of my own. It told me so much about her life that added deeper layers to my sadness. She wanted me to avoid the life she had lived in the house she had left me; she didn’t want me to be alone within its walls as she had.

  I had a feeling that no matter what happened or how I changed things, in my mind the house would always be Lacey’s. I felt strange going through her things, as though I were trespassing and so I left most of it untouched for the time being. But I knew that soon I would have to make the final move. Martha had been in touch and told me that her family intended to move back into Dove Cottage as soon as I was ready. She seemed lighter, gentler somehow. I saw it in her easy smile, a softer air that flowed around her as though she had finally let go of the memory of her father’s death and allowed herself to think only of the man he had been.

  I went into Lacey’s bedroom, feeling closer to her in this room than any other. I could smell her in the air, sense her in the fabrics that hung at the windows and draped across the bed. I told her that I would set a date to move in and stick to it, a line in the sand. I wondered if I would always come here to the bedroom to talk to her, if I would always sense her here.

  I turned to the bedside table and opened the drawer, pulling out the book I had found there. It was an old ledger, delicate and fragile and I carefully flicked through the yellowing pages, curious about its contents yet feeling as though I was reading someone’s diary and could get caught at any moment. I looked around me and breathed in the smell of lavender and clean linen and thought that I couldn’t read this now, that it felt wrong, intrusive.

  I moved to close the book and saw a thin, folded piece of cloth fall from the back of it and onto the floor. Laying the ledger to one side I bent and touched the tiny square lightly with my finger tips, tracing the darker circle I could see in its folds. I gently lifted the linen and slowly peeled back the edges. The old grass ring sat against the thin white cloth, its woven strands greying with age and its edges crumbling away to dust.

  Joanne Graham is the winner of the 2012 Luke Bitmead Bursary Award for her debut novel, Lacey’s House. Founded in 2006, shortly after Luke’s tragic death at the age of 34, the Bursary aims to encourage and support the work of struggling talented writers, whose work is yet to be published.

  Luke’s book White Summer was the first novel to be published by Legend Press and he was one of the UK’s most talented up-and-coming writers. Legend Press are delighted to be working with Luke’s family to ensure Luke’s name and memory lives on.

  Previous winners of the award are:

  Andrew Blackman in 2008 for On the Holloway Road

  Ruth Dugdall in 2009 for The Woman Before Me

  Sophie Duffy in 2010 for The Generation Game

  J.R. Crook in 2011 for Sleeping Patterns

  For more information on the Bursary, visit www.legendpress.co.uk

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