Free The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton by Elizabeth Gill Page B

by the library fire. He took some of the letters which he had sent to his father and scrunched them into balls in his hands. He threw them onto the back of the big grate, doing the same with the letters his father had written and when he was happy with that he made a fire. He watched it flicker into life and then sat down until it should be big enough so that he could burn away the only things which were left.
    He awoke some time later with a stiff neck. The fire had gone out. There was still a pile letters from his father. They seemed to mock him. He didn’t want to try to light the fire again, it was all too much effort. He had dreamed of being with his father in Northumberland; they had been riding into the wide open fields and it had been spring. The buttercups rose tall and bright yellow in the fields, the riverbanks were green and white with garlic, smelling like dinner, and the sky was blue with white scudding clouds, thick like fluff. He thought back to this pleasant dream.
    Joe didn’t know whether it was that which made him decide to go north, that and the idea that he would atleast be able to take a look around the old estate. There just didn’t seem to be any point in staying here longer. He put together the things he had with the remaining letters which his father had not sent him and he left the house as the morning arrived, for the last time. He didn’t look back. There was nothing to look back for.
    *
    On the train he read the first of his father’s letters. Even taking the paper from the envelope and seeing his father’s distinctive looped handwriting hurt Joe so much that he wanted to fold it back up again and throw it out of the window, but he didn’t.
    It was on thick quality cream paper and written in black ink. Joe could feel the love that his father had for him even before he read it and that made him feel just a little bit better as the train made its way northward. It was written in the first weeks after he had left home.
    My dear Joe,
    I cannot bear the idea that you will not come back to me and nightly I tell myself that you will, but at four in the morning when I awake alone I see you dead in France along with hundreds of thousands of other young men. I have seen war and I know what it is like. There is nothing glorious about it. I have seen my friends killed and my comrades badly injured, dying for lack of food, water and care. How can they send all the young men away like this and why should I give up my son for such carelessness?
    I want to understand why you went. Youth has never minded age or thought their fathers knew anything. I suppose everyonemust learn for themselves how to live, but not how to die. I don’t want you to learn about dying when you are so young.
    I wish there was something I could do to bring you home. I want to send you impassioned messages to say that I am ill. Can you be ill with loneliness? I miss the boy you were and the enjoyment we had and the time we spent together before you saw me as something in your way. I miss your growing up. You are so different now, not at all as I envisaged you would be. I want to be proud of you because you take your challenges before you, meet each one as yet another part of life, but all I see now is the soldier, my last memories of you going away and Angela going bravely to the station to see you off while I stood there at home, ashamed of myself, wishing you back with us. At the worst times I wish I didn’t love you so very much; I have everything to lose.
    Angela is my only comfort.

S EVEN
    Lucy was glad when she left the university. She was pleased that it was over. But she had nowhere to live and needed to find some kind of work; though she would not be able to pay for articles until she made a great deal of money and that was impossible to think about now. She went to shops where they had ‘Help Wanted’ in the window, but she was dismissed mostly by a shake of the head. After four such experiences she began enquiring at