Praise for William Trevor
“Often spoken of in the same breath as Joyce and Chekov, Trevor shares both writers’ subtlety and, like them, is able to create distinct and mysterious worlds.”
—National Post
“One of the greatest writers alive.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)
“The greatest living writer in English is an Anglo-Irishman named William Trevor.… It might seem presumptuous to speak about Trevor in Shakespearean terms, but he is among the few contemporary writers who warrant the comparison.… [He is] the reigning lion of fiction in English.”
—The Globe and Mail
“An extraordinary mellifluous writer, seemingly incapable of composing an ungraceful sentence.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“One of the pre-eminent writers of his generation. He is arguably the finest story writer from the era that may have seen the form reach its apex.… Trevor’s stories always seem effortless … but their easy grace belies an incredible amount of writerly craft.”
—Toronto Star
“[Trevor] is more worth reading than practically any other novelist now writing in English.”
—The Guardian (U.K.)
“One of the very best writers of our era.”
—The Washington Post Book World
By the Same Author
NOVELS
The Old Boys
The Boarding-House
The Love Department
Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neills Hotel
Miss Gomez and the Brethren
Elizabeth Alone
The Children of Dynmouth
Other People’s Worlds
Fools of Fortune
The Silence in the Garden
Felicia’s Journey
Death in Summer
NOVELLAS
Nights at the Alexandra
Two Lives
SHORT STORIES
The Day We Got Drunk on Cake
The Ballroom of Romance
Angels at the Ritz
Lovers of Their Time
Beyond the Pale
The News from Ireland
Family Sins
The Collected Stories
After Rain
The Hill Bachelors
PLAY
Scenes from an Album
NON-FICTION
A Writer’s Ireland
Excursions in the Real World
FOR CHILDREN
Juliet’s Story
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2003
Copyright © 2002 William Trevor
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States of America by Viking books, New York. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House of Canada Limited.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Trevor, William, 1928–
The story of Lucy Gault / William Trevor.
eISBN: 978-0-307-36604-7
I. Title.
PR6070.R4S76 2003A 823.′914 C2003-902241-2
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
For Jane
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Part 1 - ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part 2 - TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 3 - THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part 4 - FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 5 - FIVE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part 6 - SIX
ONE
1
Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one. Aiming above the trespassers’ heads in the darkness, he fired the single shot from an upstairs window and then watched the three figures scuttling off, the wounded one assisted by his companions.
They had come to fire the house, their visit expected because they had been before. On that occasion they had come later, in the early morning, just after one. The sheepdogs had seen them off, but within a week the dogs lay poisoned in the yard and Captain Gault knew that the intruders would be back. ‘We’re stretched at the barracks, sir,’ Sergeant Talty had said when he came out from Enniseala. ‘Oh, stretched shocking, Captain.’ Lahardane wasn’t the only house under threat; every week somewhere went up, no matter how the constabulary were spread. ‘Please God, there’ll be an end to it,’ Sergeant Talty said, and went away. Martial law prevailed, since the country was in a state of unrest, one that amounted to war. No action was taken about the poisoning of the dogs.
When daylight came on the morning after the shooting, blood could be seen on the sea pebbles of the turn-around in front of the house. Two petrol tins were found behind a tree. The pebbles were raked, a couple of bucketfuls that had been discoloured in the accident taken away.
Captain Gault thought it would be all right then: a lesson had been learnt. He wrote to Father Morrissey in Enniseala, asking him to pass on his sympathy and his regret if the priest happened to hear who it was who’d been wounded. He had not sought to inflict an injury, only to make it known that a watch was being kept. Father Morrissey wrote back. He was always the wild one in thatfamily, he concluded his comments on the event, but there was an awkwardness about his letter, about the choice of phrases and of words, as if he found it difficult to comment on what had occurred, as if he didn’t understand that neither death nor injury had been intended. He had passed the message on, he wrote, but no acknowledgement had come back from the family he referred to.