Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one." So opens Trevor's latest novel, with an act of political violence: the setting is rural Ireland, the Captain's wife is English, and three youths have come, under cover of darkness, to set fire to the family house. The wounding is, as it happens, an accident -- the shot had been intended merely as a warning -- but it quickly becomes clear to the Gaults that they must leave their beloved home. Eight-year-old Lucy, however, has other ideas, and her rebellion has devastating consequences. How should the loyalties to past and future, family and country, be measured? The tragedies that befall the Gaults are difficult to bear, because no one is clearly accountable. As the author delicately probes the nature of personal and political responsibility, the reader squirms with discomfort, longing for a scapegoat and yet aware of the implications of that longing.
The Story of Lucy Gault
Narrated by Terry Donnelly
William TrevorUnabridged — 8 hours, 34 minutes
The Story of Lucy Gault
Narrated by Terry Donnelly
William TrevorUnabridged — 8 hours, 34 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Trevor (Death in Summer) is one of the finest prose stylists writing today; his delicately shaded novels and stories often have a Chekhovian sense of loss and longing. This novel, with its elegiac tale of a quiet, sad life lived in the shadow of a wrecked childhood, could well have been penned by the Russian master. Lucy is nine years old when her father, a wealthy Irish army captain married to an Englishwoman, shoots at and wounds one of a trio of locals trying to set his Irish country house, Lahardane, afire in the 1920s. Captain Gault and his wife, Heloise, decide they must leave for England and safety, but Lucy, who has known no other home but Lahardane, flees into the woods on the eve of their departure and cannot be found. Eventually convinced she has drowned at a nearby beach, her parents leave for a life of wandering and grieving exile in Europe, utterly out of touch with their old life. Lucy, however, is discovered, starved but alive, days later by two faithful retainers, who with the aid of a family lawyer keep the house open as Lucy grows into womanhood. The possibility of love enters her life, but her passionate attachment to the remote place repels her potential suitor and she lives on alone. Eventually, after the death of her mother, her father returns to live with her for a while. She even gets to know the wounded youth who once tried to burn down the house, now an elderly man in a mental institution. Lucy ends her days at Lahardane, out of touch with the modern world, but still in thrall to the past. Trevor's deeply poetic sense of the Irish character and countryside, his magical evocation of the passing of time, have never been more eloquent. This is a book to be quietly cherished. (Sept. 30) Forecast: Admirers of the author will need no urging to seek this out, and widespread and positive review attention should help win new ones. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
In his latest novel, Trevor continues to build upon his reputation as Ireland's answer to Chekhov. He addresses the profoundest of questions-why do we exist?-and supplies a small piece of the answer. Lucy Gault grows up a Protestant in a Catholic part of Ireland in the 1920s. An only child, she enjoys an intimate relationship with her parents and is wedded to her family's lavish country home, the nearby beach and woods, and the house staff. When Lucy's parents decide to flee the persecution of arsonists and move to England, her life takes an unforeseen turn. Tragedy and heartbreak will haunt the Gault family, and their lives do not proceed as expected. As in his earlier works, such as Felicia's Journey and Miss Gomez and the Brethren, Trevor's smooth, spare prose captures the quirky workings of the heart, and compassion for the human condition mitigates the harsh blows that fate often deals his characters. Recommended for all fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/02.]-Diana McRae, Alameda Cty. Lib., San Lorenzo, CA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Beautiful and devastating.... Trevor once again captured the terrible beauty of Ireland's fate, and the fate of us all—at the mercy of history, circumstance, and the vicissitudes of time. —Alice McDermott
A moving tale of history gone wrong and tragedy redeemed, by renowned Irish novelist Trevor (The Hill Bachelors, 2000, etc.). The Gaults have lived in Ireland a long time-since the 16th century, at least, although they didn't develop their estate at Lahardane until the 1700s. But the Irish have long memories, and the fact that the Gaults originally came to the island as adventurers in the service of the British Crown set them apart from the natives well into the 20th century. During the uprisings that raged throughout the countryside in the years immediately following WWI, the Gaults (like most Protestant landlords) found themselves in real peril of their lives. After a group of insurrectionists attempted to set fire to their house one night, Captain and Mrs. Gault decided that enough was enough and made hasty plans to leave Ireland. Their nine-year-old daughter Lucy, however, refused to go, running away the night before they were scheduled to depart. Unfortunately, the Gaults concluded that she was dead rather than missing, and they became all the more determined to put Ireland behind them forever. By the time the girl was discovered alive (by the household staff), Lucy's parents were gone for parts unknown, and all attempts to track them down failed. So Lucy grew up alone at Lahardane, looked after by the kindly caretaker couple and provided for by the family solicitor. During these years, one of the young men who tried to torch the house at Lahardane becomes increasingly guilt-ridden over his actions, eventually deciding that he has to confront the people he attempted to kill. Captain Gault comes home after many years to an Ireland (and a daughter) changed beyond recognition. And acareful, difficult, strange, and beautiful reconciliation is worked out at Lahardane. Trevor's thirthieth-and one of his best. Though faintly mannered and stiff in the telling, it's a beautiful story of history, grief, and forgiveness.
"One of Trevor's finest works . . . Few living writers are capable of such mournful depth as William Trevor, and here he has given us an evensong to time itself."
—The Boston Globe
"Trevor was and remains an author against whom other talents are measured. His work earns its place in the canon that 'time’s esteem' will keep alive.”
—The Economist
"Mr. Trevor's pure observation and transparent prose should shame other writers."
—New York Sun
"Beautifully drawn and revelatory. Beautifully drawn and revelatory."
—Harper's Magazine
"Beautiful and devastating . . . Trevor has once again captured the terrible beauty of Ireland's fate, and the fate of us all-at the mercy of history, circumstance, and the vicissitudes of time."
—Alice McDermott, The Atlantic Monthly
"From the award-winning author of Felicia's Journey and My House in Umbria, a new novel that may well be his masterpiece."
—Philadelphia Inquirer
When 9-year-old Lucy hears that her parents plan to move from Ireland, and the home that she loves, to England, far away from everything that is familiar to her, she runs away. As Terry Donnelly reads this haunting novel, the sounds of Ireland’s summers and its sea and the voices of every childhood memory come forth. And it is Terry Donnelly's rendering of the plot that make the story stay in one's mind. William Trevor paints his backgrounds dark, but Donnelly pulls each character out of the darkness and makes us accept the vagaries of Lucy's life. J.P. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170964741 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 03/05/2010 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, 1921. 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 turnaround 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 that family, 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.
Captain Gault had been wounded himself. For six years, since he had come back an invalid from the trenches, he had carried fragments of shrapnel in his body, and they would always be there now. His injury at that time had brought his military career to an end: he would remain forever a captain, which was intensely a disappointment, since he had always imagined achieving much higher rank. But he was not, in other ways, a disappointed man. There was the great solace of his happy marriage, of the child his wife, Heloise, had borne him, of his house. There was no other place he might more happily have lived than beneath the slated roof of its three grey storeys, the stone softened by the white woodwork of the windows and the delicate fanlight above a white hall door. Flanking it on its right was the wide high archway of a cobbled yard, with cobbled passageways leading to an apple orchard and a garden. One half of the circle onto which the front rooms looked out was the gravel sweep; the other was a raised lawn that was separated from steeply rising woods by a curve of blue hydrangeas. The upstairs rooms at the back had a view of the sea as far as the sea's horizon.
The origins of the Gaults in Ireland had centuries ago misted over. Previously of Norfolk-so it was believed within the family, although without much certainty-they had settled first of all in the far western reaches of County Cork. A soldier of fortune had established their modest dynasty, lying low there for reasons that were not known. Some time in the early eighteenth century the family had moved east, respectable and well-to-do by then, one son or another of each generation continuing the family's army connection. The land at Lahardane was purchased; the building of the house began. The long, straight avenue was made, lines of chestnut trees planted along it on either side, the woodlands of the glen laid out. Later generations planted the orchard, with stock from County Armagh; the garden, kept small, was created bit by bit. In 1769 Lord Townshend, the Lord Lieutenant, stayed at Lahardane; in 1809 Daniel O'Connell did when there wasn't a bedroom unoccupied at the Stuarts' Dromana. History touched the place in that way; but as well-remembered, as often talked about, were births and marriages and deaths, domestic incidents, changes and additions to this room or that, occasions of anger or reconciliation. Suffering a stroke, a Gault in 1847 lay afflicted for three years yet not insensible. There was a disastrous six months of card playing in 1872 during which field after field was lost to the neighbouring O'Reillys. There was the diphtheria outbreak that spread so rapidly and so tragically in 1901, sparing only the present Everard Gault and his brother in a family of five. Above the writing desk in the drawing room there was a portrait of a distant ancestor whose identity had been unknown for as long as anyone of the present could remember: a spare, solemn countenance where it was not whiskered, blue unemphatic eyes. It was the only portrait in the house, although since photography had begun there were albums that included the images of relatives and friends as well as those of the Gaults of Lahardane.
All this-the house and the remnants of the pasture land, the seashore below the pale clay cliffs, the walk along it to the fishing village of Kilauran, the avenue over which the high branches of the chestnut trees now met-was as much part of Everard Gault as the features of his face were, the family traits that quite resembled a few of those in the drawing-room portrait, the smooth dark hair. Tall and straight-backed, a man who hid nothing of himself, slight in his ambitions now, he had long ago accepted that his destiny was to keep in good heart what had been his inheritance, to attract bees to his hives, to root up his failing apple trees and replace them. He swept the chimneys of his house himself, could repoint its mortar and replace its window glass. Creeping about on its roof, he repaired in the lead the small perforations that occurred from time to time, the Seccotine he squeezed into them effective for a while.
In many of these tasks he was assisted by Henry, a slow-moving, heavily made man who rarely, in daytime, removed the hat from his head. Years ago Henry had married into the gate-lodge, of which he and Bridget were now the sole occupants, since no children had been born to them and Bridget's parents were no longer alive. Her father, with two men under him, had looked after the horses and seen to all that Henry on his own now saw to in the yard and the fields. Her mother had worked in the house, her grandmother before that. Bridget was as thickset as her husband, with strong wide shoulders and a capable manner: the kitchen was wholly in her charge. The bedroom maid, Kitty Teresa, assisted Heloise Gault in what had once been the duties of several indoor servants; old Hannah walked over from Kilauran once a week to wash the clothes and sheets and tablecloths, and to scrub the tiles of the hall and the stone floors at the back. The style of the past was no longer possible at Lahardane. The long avenue passed through the land that had become the O'Reillys' at the card table, when the Gaults of that time had been left with pasture enough only to support a modest herd of Friesians.
Three days after the shooting in the night Heloise Gault read the letter that had come from Father Morrissey, then turned it over and read it again. She was a slender, slightly built woman in her late thirties, her long fair hair arranged in a style that complemented her features, imbuing a demure beauty with a hint of severity that was constantly contradicted by her smile. But her smile had not been much in evidence since the night she had been woken by a shot.
Even though in the ordinary run of things she was not pusillanimous, Heloise Gault felt frightened. She, too, came of an army family and had taken it in her stride when, a few years before her marriage, she was left almost alone in the world on the death of her mother, who had been widowed during the war with the Boers. Courage came naturally to her in times of upheaval or grief, but was not as generously there as she imagined it would be when she reflected upon the attempt to burn down the house she and her child and her maid had been asleep in. There'd been, as well, the poisoning of the dogs and the unanswered message to the young man's family, the blood on the pebbles. "I'm frightened, Everard," she confessed at last, no longer keeping her feelings private.
They knew each other well, the Captain and his wife. They had in common a certain way of life, an order of priorities and concerns. Their shared experience of death when they were young had drawn them close and in their marriage had made precious for them the sense of family that the birth of a child allowed. Heloise had once assumed that other children would be born to her, and still had not abandoned hope that one more at least might be. But in the meanwhile she was so convincingly persuaded by her husband that the lack of a son to inherit Lahardane was not a failure on her part that she experienced-and more and more as her only child grew up-gratitude for the solitary birth and for a trinity sustained by affection.
"It's not like you to be frightened, Heloise."
"All this has happened because I'm here. Because I am an English wife at Lahardane."
She it was, Heloise insisted, who drew attention to the house, but her husband doubted it. He reminded her that what had been attempted at Lahardane was part of a pattern that was repeated all over Ireland. The nature of the house, the possession of land even though it had dwindled, the family's army connection, would have been enough to bring that trouble in the night. And he had to admit that the urge to cause destruction, whatever its origin, could not be assumed to have been stifled by the stand he'd taken. For some time afterwards Everard Gault slept in the afternoon and watched by night; and although no one disturbed his vigil, this concern with protection, and his wife's apprehension, created in the household further depths of disquiet, a nerviness that affected everyone, including in the end the household's child.
—from The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor, Copyright © September 2002, Viking Press, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.
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