The car purred its way into the drive and she leapt up. Father was away in London for a few days, yet Denis had been ordered to garage the vehicle after the funeral. Father did not trust the people of Noble Street to treat his precious Bentley with the reverence it warranted.
She peeped round the edge of a curtain and watched Denis. He was an excellent man, a reader, an interesting teller of tales. He was the one who had awoken her inner self, who had reminded her that she was a woman with real needs and desires. She could not have him; he belonged with another woman, but he might, perhaps, bring her out of herself and help her across stepping stones between her own silent world and normality. Denis listened. She had never been a great talker, but he encouraged her to speak out. One of Nature’s gentlemen, Denis Makepeace was Helen’s only friend.
Feeling very daring, she dabbed a small amount of perfume behind her ears before going downstairs. Apart from the ticking of clocks, the house was silent, Wagner-free and peaceful. She stepped out of a side door and made for the garage.
Denis was inspecting paintwork when she arrived. He looked up and smiled at her, trying hard to squash the small surge of panic that visited his chest. Miss Spencer was becoming dependent on him. At first, their conversations had been brief and infrequent, but lately he had come to realize that the woman waited for him. She had no life. Her father was a cold fish and her job was dull, but what was she expecting from a chauffeur-cum-handyman?
‘How did it go?’ she asked.
‘All right.’ He drew a soft cloth over the car’s bonnet. ‘Fred wrote in his memory book all through the service. Agnes cried. It’s about time she cried. She took it too well.’
He was right, of course. People should show their feelings. ‘Did her friends come?’
‘Oh, yes. She had a good natter with them afterwards and they were very kind to Fred. Most folk treat him as if he has some kind of dementia, but he hasn’t. He’s getting better. Lucy and Mags talked to him as a normal person – he responds to that. Pity more folk don’t understand that he’s not on the slippery slope.’ She was standing too near and was wearing perfume. This gauche woman had no experience with men and was behaving like a teenager. No, he was over-reacting, he reassured himself. He was just a servant and she knew he was married.
‘Do you have time to look at my car?’ she asked. ‘It may be dirty petrol – I let the tank get very low yesterday – but it’s not running smoothly.’
Would he take a look? This was happening too often – a drawer in her bedroom beginning to stick, the need for another shelf in her little dressing room, a squeaking floorboard. Helen Spencer presented as a good person, but she was isolated to the point of desperation. He feared her, feared himself, too – wasn’t pity said to be akin to love?
He fiddled with the innards of the Morris Minor, drove it round the paddock, declared it to be as fit as a flea. ‘It’s running well,’ he said after two circuits. ‘Whatever was wrong must have cleared up. I’ve cleaned the plugs just in case.’
‘Thank you.’
He closed the garage doors and declared his intention to go for the bus.
‘I’ll take you home.’
The calculated nonchalance in her tone startled him anew. Had her father been in residence, Helen Spencer would never have made such an offer. ‘I’ll be fine on the bus,’ he answered. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘No, I insist. You must be tired after such a long day.’
God, what should he do? If Miss Spencer ran him home, he would have to ask her in for a cup of tea – to expect her to leave immediately would be churlish. Lucy Walsh and Mags Bradshaw would still be there, and Helen Spencer was no good with folk – hadn’t she already confessed as much? Agnes might notice how she looked at him, how she hung on every word – he didn’t know how to reply.
‘Let me do this,’ she was saying now. ‘And I shan’t intrude, not on the day of the funeral.’
Meek as a kitten, he got into the passenger seat of the Morris. Her hands on the steering wheel were the hands of a lady – long fingers, slender wrists. She played the piano – he had heard her during her afternoons off. Helen Spencer’s music was not angry – the pieces she played sounded peaceful and melodic. He was out of his depth and he could feel the glow in his cheeks. She didn’t even know that she was sending out signals, but he recognized them plainly enough. He was sitting next to a female animal anxious to breed before its time ran out. His collar was suddenly tight and he pushed a finger between it and his throat. There had to be a way out of this situation, yet he could not reject her, since she had made no definite move in his direction. It was coming. Helen Spencer was losing her balance and he would be expected to catch her when she fell.
‘You look smart,’ she said before starting the engine. He cut a fine figure. He was nearer in age to her than he was to his young wife. Agnes was twenty, Helen thirty-two, Denis twenty-nine. Father would hate it, of course, but divorce was becoming more commonplace these days. She chided herself inwardly. An honourable woman, she would make no attempt to spoil Denis’s marriage. Would she? Her heart quickened and drummed in her ears. She was changing. The change was not connected to cosmetics or black underwear – she was losing her grip on the life she had made for herself.
She pulled onto Wigan Road and drove slowly towards one of the poorer ends of town. ‘Perhaps you should move,’ she suggested. ‘There are cottages in Skirlaugh Fall and it would be easier for you, especially in winter. You’d need no buses.’
‘We’re settled where we are, Miss Spencer.’
‘Helen. I’ve told you to call me Helen – except when Father is within earshot, of course. Wouldn’t a change of address suit your wife and Mr Grimshaw?’
‘I might think about it. Thanks.’ He needed to change his job. He needed a change because Miss Helen Spencer needed a change, and he dared not figure in her calculations. She had never walked out with a man and Denis could not afford to be a participant in her delayed adolescence.
‘Look at those girls.’ She pointed to a small group at a bus stop. ‘Father says they are asking for trouble by dressing like that. Miniskirts? I have a winter scarf broader than those. No wonder there’s an increase in attacks on young women.’
Denis found no reply.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘People should dress the way they want to dress.’
‘Does your wife wear such things?’
‘No. She covers her knees.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
Discomfort now bordered on pain, because Denis was acutely aware of Helen Spencer’s dilemma. The judge was a pain in the backside, arrogant, stubborn, selfish and domineering. He treated Denis as an article, one of life’s inanimate necessities. His daughter was guilty of not being a son, of not being bright enough for what he considered a true career. She was substandard in all departments, and he had no time to waste on her. Helen Spencer had never known love. ‘Have you ever thought of leaving home?’ Denis asked.
She turned briefly to look at him. ‘I have money enough for a small house, yes, but I have never lived alone. It’s a large step to take.’
Denis kept his thoughts to himself. Aloneness and loneliness were not the same. Living with her father, she was lonely; a person could be isolated in a city teeming with folk. She would be alone if she got out of her father’s house, but loneliness would not necessarily be the result.
‘I suppose I am afraid of change,’ she said.
‘We all are. Agnes is frightened of life without her grandma. Things alter even if you stay in one place – life happens no matter where we are.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
He knew why she stayed at Lambert House. She stayed because she would automatically inherit property, land and money once her father died. If she angered him by moving on, he might very well cut her off without a penny. But some prices were too high to pay, thought Denis as the car pulled into Noble Street. The woman should clear off and start again; ne
eded interests, hobbies and a place where she could be herself.
‘I am grateful to you,’ she said as she stopped the car. ‘No one ever spent time with me before – unless nannies and governesses count. I scarcely remember my mother, and you know how Father is.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t need the gratitude, didn’t want it. She was hungry and he dared not be the one to feed her. ‘I still think you should find a life for yourself. Your father could last for a long time yet. Start going out; join – oh, I don’t know. They have reading groups and poetry meetings at the library, don’t they? And there’s your music.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t interfere.’
She placed a hand on his arm. ‘You are a good friend. Thank you.’
He stood on the narrow pavement and watched as she drove away. It was silly, but his arm glowed from the touch of her hand. It was all nonsense. He loved Agnes, and that was all he needed to know.
The place was in chaos. Agnes, whose two friends had returned long after the main funeral party was over, was in the front room with Mags and Lucy. They were all shouting, and the reason for that was a great deal of noise coming from the back of the house.
Agnes smiled at her husband.
‘What the blinking heck’s going on?’ he asked loudly.
She shrugged. ‘Denis, Pop has started his new job.’
‘Eh?’
‘He’s manufacturing.’
‘Manufacturing? The neighbours will go crazy.’
‘You tell him that. We’ve tried while we did some washing up, but he’s got a bee in his bonnet and a hammer in his hand.’
Denis sighed and walked through to the back of the house. Fred was knocking bits of wood together. ‘Fred?’
‘Aye?’
‘What are you up to?’
Fred stopped clattering for a moment. ‘I’m going into doll’s houses,’ he pronounced.
Denis bit back a flippant remark about doll’s houses being a tight squeeze for a grown man.
‘Battery packs,’ the old man continued, ‘so there’ll be lighting in every room. I can make furniture, paper the walls and carpet floors. Bathroom fittings’ll have to be bought in from a toymaker, but I can do most of it by myself.’
Denis cast an eye over the scene. There was sawdust everywhere and tools were spread about the floor along with bits of wood, nails, screws and sandpaper. ‘Agnes won’t like it,’ he said.
‘I have to be useful. If I do more, I’ll remember more.’
‘Well, do it outside in the shed. We’ll get a light put in. You can’t mess the house up like this, Fred – we eat in here. You’ll be having splinters in your dinner.’
Fred shook his head sadly. ‘Shed’s full. This is just the prototype. At the graveside, I promised my Sadie I’d start being useful as soon as I got home. I couldn’t, because folk were brewing up and eating butties, but I started when most of them had gone. I shall be earning money.’
Denis sat at the table and scratched his head. What a day. Poor old Sadie gone to her rest, Helen Spencer clarting about like a kid, now Fred wrecking a house to make a house. Sometimes, life was a trial. ‘You’d best clean up, old son, before Agnes starts on you. You know she’s house-proud. Come on, I’ll give you a hand.’
Fred was having none of it. He was experiencing difficulty with a gable end and a window, and he would clear the stuff away when he was good and ready, not before. ‘They have to be strong,’ he insisted. ‘Little girls can be as destructive as boys. My hinges have to be childproof. And I’ve the wiring to work out.’
It was no good. Denis knew his grandfather-in-law and there was no point in pushing the old chap when he didn’t want to be moved. Also, it was good to see him having a go at something, because he’d done very little since the stroke. ‘I’ll make a cuppa,’ he said resignedly. He had no wish to enter into conversation with the mothers’ meeting – a term he used for occasions when Agnes and her two best friends came together – so he would stay here and drink tea with Fred.
Fred laid out his plans on the table, explained several designs and how they would be priced. ‘That lot up Heaton way with more money than sense will snap these up,’ he declared. ‘And I shall make some to specifications wanted by the buyer, so we’ve got to advertise.’
Denis warmed the pot. Agnes had lost her job, Judge Spencer was a skinflint and extra money was needed – but Fred? Was he up to this kind of thing? He turned and watched the old man working on his first roof. Fred was muttering about covering it with some kind of plastic with a pattern that looked like tiles. So far, so good. It had four walls, a roof and gaps for windows. Perhaps Fred was on to something? He was certainly making a mess, whatever the outcome.
‘Denis?’
‘What?’
‘I can do it, you know.’
The younger man grinned. He nursed a strong suspicion that Fred Grimshaw could and would do it. Ah, well. Time would tell.
Lucy Walsh was describing her wedding outfit. She had just declared her intention to wear a minidress with knee-high white boots, and her mother wasn’t pleased. ‘It’s my wedding,’ she said, her pretty face creased by a frown. ‘Mam says I’ll look common. But if a girl ever deserves her own way, surely her wedding’s the place to start?’
Agnes had stayed out of this discussion so far. She agreed with Lucy’s mother, but she dared not say so. Mags, too, was keeping her counsel. The only one of the three to have remained completely solo, she was chief bridesmaid and had no intention of becoming a critic.
Lucy described the cake, the flowers, the invitations. Like Agnes, she was marrying someone older than herself, a lawyer with good prospects and a very nice house. Agnes glanced at Mags, then decided to hang herself out to dry. This was the day on which she had buried her grandmother – surely she could make herself strong enough to put her foot through Lucy’s mini? ‘Lucy?’
‘What?’
‘George’s colleagues will be there.’
‘So what?’
Agnes raised her shoulders. ‘I know minis are all the rage, but I can’t see a load of crusty old lawyers approving of them.’
Lucy sighed heavily. ‘I want to be fashionable.’
Mags took a sip of cold tea. She and Agnes – who was matron of honour – were already dismayed by Lucy’s decision to dress them in watered black silk with dark red roses at the waists. But their clothes would cover their knees, at least. Lucy, always centre-stage and stunning, wanted to shock her audience. She had clearly begun to look upon her wedding as a stage production rather than a religious ceremony. The congregation would become an audience and Lucy would be the star turn on a stage rather than a bride at the altar.
Agnes took another huge stride into her friend’s limelight. ‘That Empire line dress – white watered silk – would look great with our black, wouldn’t it, Mags? It’s the same silk, but white. That’s my opinion – for what it’s worth.’
Mags nodded, though her lips remained closed.
‘Lucy, don’t wear the mini,’ Agnes begged. ‘It might look stunning, but every time you bend down some lecherous old lawyer will see your knickers. When they go home, they’ll laugh at you.’
‘If I wear any knickers.’ Lucy swallowed cold tea and a facsimile of injured pride. ‘All right,’ she said resignedly and with an air of acute injury. Then she burst out laughing. ‘Your faces!’ she howled. ‘Honestly, you looked like a couple of spectators at a public hanging. Did you really think I was going to walk up the aisle in knee-high boots and a lace mini?’
Mags, who had been swallowing her own cold tea, spluttered and coughed. Agnes hit her on the back till her airway cleared, then sat down again. ‘Lucy, you’ll be the death of us.’
The bride-to-be grinned broadly. ‘Your nan would have laughed herself sick over that, Agnes. Remember? How she used to have those giggling fits? That’s how we’ve got to think of her now. Her spirit, her silliness and how young she always was where it mattered.’ Lucy tapped her skull with a finger. ‘In he
re, Sadie never grew old.’
Agnes wiped a tear from her eye. ‘Yes, she was funny. Except for the last few months, and they weren’t amusing at all. But,’ she jerked a thumb in the direction of the next room, ‘look what she’s left us to cope with. Wherever she is, she’s smiling.’
The door burst inward to allow a red-faced Fred and a wooden item into the arena. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly. ‘I’ve done half already.’
Agnes glanced at her friends. ‘Well, half a house is better than none.’
When Pop had retreated, Agnes sat for a while and remembered her beloved grandmother. Denis looked in, saw her expression, noticed that the other two were quiet, and decided to leave well alone. Fred started to clear away his mess. Even his tidying was noisy, thought Agnes as she gazed into the near distance. But his half-house had seemed half-decent, so perhaps he was on to something profitable.
‘I’m going to miss you, Nan,’ she told the ceiling. But she had been missing Nan for months already. Only the body had been there at the end, and the body hadn’t functioned. Should she have stayed at home instead of cleaning for a few shillings a week? To that question, she was never going to find an answer.
‘You’ll not find her up yon.’ Lucy pointed to the upper half of the room. ‘She’s more likely to be making mischief with your granddad in the kitchen.’
Agnes lowered her eyes and looked at Lucy. Lucy Walsh, Mags Bradshaw and herself had been inseparable since nursery class. Mags, who had grown into a plain, quiet and dignified adult, had been a shy and frightened child. Lucy, on the other hand, remained capable of starting a riot in an empty room. She was the one who had guarded and guided Mags, and Agnes was the cement that had held the three of them together through their passage into adulthood. The vow had been that come boyfriends, husbands or children, Thursday nights would always be girls’ nights. ‘Thanks for being here,’ said Agnes softly.
The Judge's Daughter Page 4
