The Judge's Daughter

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Where else would we be?’ Lucy began to stack cups and saucers. ‘All for one and one for all, isn’t it?’ She moved quickly, had always been the first to dress, to clear up, to organize. Slim, dark and beautiful, she was sure of herself in mind and in body. ‘We couldn’t have let you go through it on your own,’ she said when her task was completed. ‘Anyway, your nan made the best jam cakes in the business. Didn’t she, Mags?’

  ‘She made the best of everything.’ Mags stood up and prepared to carry the dishes away. ‘Can’t have been easy when her daughter died so young. But Sadie’s generation never moaned. They just got on with what needed doing and that was that.’ She left the room.

  ‘What are we going to do about Mags?’ Lucy whispered.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean? There has to be someone who’ll see beyond her quietness.’

  ‘Some people don’t need to be married.’

  Lucy changed tactics. ‘All right, so what are we going to do about you? Will you fill that form in? Isn’t it time you pulled yourself together, Makepeace? The job in the pub was supposed to be a stop-gap – you’ve no excuse now. Your Pop will get better in time—’

  ‘And the kitchen will be in bits—’

  ‘So what? It’s only a bloody kitchen. At least he’s doing something. It’s what you’ve always wanted and now’s the time to do it.’

  Agnes thought about Pop and wondered if he would manage. The hours of work would be long and varied, there would be exams, rules, a uniform . . .

  ‘Well?’

  Agnes sighed resignedly. ‘For goodness’ sake, Lucy. We buried Nan today. Does all the clearing up have to be done now?’

  ‘You’re the fastidious one,’ replied Lucy. ‘Get it done. You’ve always wanted to be a nurse and now’s as good a time as any. You knew the mill was just for money till you got married, then the pub job came along and it fitted for a while. But are you going to be just a married woman? All that went out at the end of the war. Women work. They get decent jobs and keep house at the same time. What would your nan say?’

  ‘She’d make me go for it.’

  Lucy picked up her bag and gloves. ‘Right, madam. I want that form filled in or I wear a mini wedding dress. I mean it. George would be delighted – he says my legs go up all the way to Glasgow – so think on.’

  After her friends had left, Agnes thought on. She peered into the kitchen, saw that Denis had been dragged into the business of house-building, took the form from the front room bureau. ‘Bloody hell,’ she cursed quietly. ‘They want to know everything I’ve ever done. What have I done?’ How might she fill all the naked spaces on the application form?

  She had doffed spools at a mule, back soaked in sweat, feet aching, head banging because of noise and heat. She had cleaned lavatories, had cared for Pop and Nan, had even helped Nurse Ingram to see the old lady into the next world. Lucy and Mags, both legal secretaries, were pushing her towards a career, but what about Pops? With Nan dead, he was going to be at a loose end, and his mind was not yet fully healed.

  Agnes stared through the window, saw a car edging its way past the house. She knew little about motors, as few in these parts owned vehicles, but the driver seemed familiar. Was it Miss Spencer? Why did she suddenly speed up after gazing into the house? Even Judge Spencer’s Bentley caused discomfort to passengers when it moved at a snail’s pace over cobbles – his daughter’s smaller car might actually be shaken to bits. Oh well, it had been an odd day, an unhappy day, and Miss Helen Spencer was probably taking a short cut to somewhere or other.

  ‘Agnes?’ A hand touched her left shoulder.

  ‘Miss Spencer just drove past.’

  Denis felt the heat in his face. He coughed quietly. ‘She brought me home.’

  ‘Yes, you said. I wonder why she’s still out there?’

  He shrugged with deliberate nonchalance. ‘No idea. She did seem concerned – asked about you.’

  ‘Nothing like her dad, then.’

  ‘No.’ Helen Spencer bore not the slightest resemblance to her parent. She had a soft centre. She played Chopin and something called the Moonlight sonata – was that Beethoven? She had needs. Beautiful hands, desperate needs.

  ‘Denis?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lucy threatened to get married in a crocheted mini.’

  He relaxed. For now, the subject was changed. Yet the subject remained behind the wheel of a Morris with clean plugs and excellent timing. Denis shifted himself. There was sawdust to sweep, there were tools waiting to be tidied. ‘I love you,’ he advised his wife.

  Agnes nodded. ‘Make sure you pick up all the nails. And I pray to God that Pop hasn’t got to the painting stage.’ Doll’s houses, indeed. Whatever next?

  Imitating the process of osmosis, Helen Spencer was seeping via some invisible semi-permeable membrane right through the defences of Denis Makepeace. She booked her time off from the library, making sure that her holidays coincided with her father’s absence on circuit business. While the judge covered his territory, she set up a stall on her own tiny piece of England. The campaign of which she was scarcely aware was plotted in her dressing room and completed in her bedroom.

  She was now two people. There was the librarian – severe hair, sensible shoes, tweeds with kick-pleated skirts; there was also the strangely innocent siren. Transformation proved an interesting process. Her face was an almost blank canvas onto which she painted today’s self. Eye shadows and liners emphasized her best features, and her skin glowed with brilliance borrowed from Max Factor. As the days wore on, Helen’s confidence grew, bolstered by scaffolding acquired in department stores and chemist shops. She was finally a woman and he was watching her. When he watched, she tingled with anticipation, often blushing when suddenly aware of the full extent of her sins. She wanted him.

  Denis, plodding through chores, pretended not to watch. But he was fully conscious of the dangerous game over which he had no control. There were no rules, no linesmen, no flags raised when play got out of hand. He washed the Bentley in which he had driven his employer to Trinity Street Station, pruned hedges, mended a gate, watered lawns. From open windows in the music room floated the accompaniment to his labours, as did a pair of muslin curtains through which he caught an occasional glimpse of the entertainer. For him, she had made herself beautiful; for him, she played brilliantly, windows flung wide, heart on a platter for the taking.

  He had begun a frantic but futile search through the Bolton Evening News, eyes ripping down the jobs column in search of an occupation that might be managed by a man with a weak chest. Thus far, he had found nothing suitable and his main emotion had become that of dread. She had made up her mind. A poem about a fly invited into the parlour of a spider dashed through his head. He had to resist her because he was a decent man and he loved Agnes, yet he continued to harbour very mixed feelings. Helen Spencer needed someone and she had chosen him. ‘Because I’m here, that’s all,’ he announced softly. ‘Anybody would do for her, the state she’s in.’ And a married man should not stray, he told himself regularly. Even so, the pity he felt for the judge’s spinster daughter remained.

  He was flattered by the attentions of such a woman and that was normal – all men responded to this kind of courtship. Helen Spencer was gifted, knowledgeable, educated and, when encouraged, interesting. ‘And rich,’ he grumbled. She wasn’t ugly, wasn’t beautiful, but she certainly looked better in her new guise.

  Denis continued to rake gravel on the driveway. The judge insisted on ordered pebbles and smooth grass with stripes rolled across its surface. He was a boring old bugger, and his daughter was delivering a pretty piece of Chopin – well, Denis thought it was Chopin. The gauze-like curtains parted anew, allowing him a brief glimpse of a handsome woman in a satin gown, probably something called a peignoir. ‘Playing in her underwear now,’ he muttered. There were no jobs in the papers. He was married to Agnes. Curtains came and went while Denis listened to a grand mixture of bir
dsong and nocturne.

  She summoned him. He stood, face turned away from the house, heavy-duty rake clenched fiercely in his hands. He wanted to run, but his feet were welded to loose chippings. Ridiculous. He had to go inside, needed to tell her that he loved Agnes and only Agnes.

  ‘Denis?’

  Helen Spencer was not in her right mind just now. Running out of time, out of hope and patience, bored to death, in love, in this miserable house, she had set her sights on one of the few men within her limited orbit. What would happen when he told her he didn’t want her? Would she fall apart, and would he feel guilty? Beautiful hands. She played like an angel, chose pieces that haunted, poured all her loneliness and despair onto piano keys.

  ‘Denis?’

  With excruciating slowness, he turned to face her, saw her standing in a frame of cloudy white muslin. On leaden feet, Denis Makepeace walked towards inevitability.

  ‘Denis?’ Her tone was quieter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You enjoyed my playing?’

  His heart was fluttering like a bird in a chimney, all fear and darkness and no points of reference. ‘Yes, but I’ve a lot to do. Judge Spencer left a list and—’

  ‘Have a rest.’ She draped herself across a small sofa. Denis could imagine her practising such moves in bedroom mirrors. ‘I like you.’ Underneath the panstick, her cheeks glowed. ‘I have grown fond of you.’

  He opened his mouth, but no words emerged.

  ‘You are a fine man. Even my father says so, and he hates just about everyone, as you probably know by now.’

  Denis pulled at his collar, which was already open. ‘I’m chauffeur and handyman, Miss Spencer.’

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘I work outside except for the odd mending job in the house. The judge would go mad if he knew I was taking time off to chatter. Sorry.’ He turned to leave, but she went after him. The seconds that followed were a blur, but she managed to catch him, arms clasping tightly round his neck, tears hovering on the edges of blatantly false eyelashes. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she whispered.

  His body, suddenly detached from brain and heart, responded automatically to soft skin, heady perfume and sad eyes. But he pushed her aside. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Miss Spencer. This can’t happen. You know it and I’m sure of it. You’re a well-read woman, so you must know about infatuation. I was infatuated with Barbara Holt in my class when I was ten, but I got over it.’

  She nodded. ‘I am not ten years old.’

  ‘Yes. But infatuation’s nothing to do with age.’

  Helen began to cry. Through loud sobs, she poured out a jumble of words relating to her ugliness, her loneliness, her love for Denis.

  ‘You aren’t ugly,’ he told her. ‘But I’m married and I love my wife. You’re fishing in the wrong waters, Miss Spencer. You should be going for salmon or rainbow trout, not for plain tench.’ He strode out of the house, picked up the rake and continued to work. But unsteady hands made a poor job of straightening shingle, so he went off to mend a fence. As he drove home a nail, he wondered whether his fences could ever be truly mended after today’s tragic scene.

  Eva Hargreaves stepped tentatively into the house. Even after knocking loudly and shouting at the top of her range, she had been unable to make herself heard. Into a brief silence, she called again. ‘Agnes?’

  Fred, hair full of sawdust, hands clutching hammer and nails, appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘How do?’ he said politely, eyes blinking to rid lashes of wood shavings. ‘She’s gone into town – something to do with being a nurse.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Eva didn’t blame Agnes for absenting herself from the factory that had once been her home. ‘I’ve shut the shop.’

  ‘You what?’ The hammer landed at his feet, just half an inch away from his toes. ‘Shut the shop?’ Eva never shut her shop. She was open from seven in the morning till nine at night, no excuses, no rest, food eaten at the counter, a stool the only perch she allowed herself. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  Eva dropped into an armchair. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she answered wearily. ‘Everybody’s beck and call, firewood, paraffin, nails, buckets – I shall be kicking the bucket meself if I don’t slow down.’

  ‘Nay, lass – you’re not cut out for retirement.’ Fred made some effort to shake dust from tattered overalls before joining Eva in the front room. ‘You’d go daft in six months. And remember – I’m experienced in daft. Daft’s making bullets for a war that’s twenty years over and—’

  ‘But you’re all right now.’

  ‘Aye, happen I am, but it’s only through fettling with these doll’s houses. I might branch out into railways – stations, trees and all that – but Eva, you’ve never been idle since your husband died.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  She raised her shoulders in a gesture of near-despair. ‘Little bungalow up Harwood, read some books, get a dog and walk it.’

  ‘You’ll not cope.’

  ‘I’ll cope. Other folk cope—’

  ‘Yes, but . . . but you’re—’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’ Eva took as deep a breath as cruel corsets would allow. ‘Help me, Fred. If I get some help, I might just hang on a bit longer.’

  ‘I’ve had a stroke, lass—’

  ‘And you’re turning this place into a right pigsty, aren’t you? Yon shed’s not big enough, but my air raid shelter is. They put it there in case of a bombing with a shopload of customers, so it’s time it got used. Make you a good workshop, that would. Fred, you could serve a few customers while I rested – just a few hours a day.’

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. If Eva would pay him, he could get better wood – he might even acquire nails in her shop for no price at all. And it was true – he was spoiling Sadie’s house, making life difficult for his granddaughter. ‘Is there electric in the air raid shelter?’ he asked. ‘Only I need to see what I’m doing.’

  ‘There is now.’

  ‘Let me think on it.’

  While he was thinking, the back door opened.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Fred softly.

  Eva squashed a grin.

  ‘I’ll be left out with the bins come Thursday,’ groaned the old man. ‘The dust cart’ll take me away, just you wait and see.’

  Agnes arrived in the doorway, arms tightly folded, lips clamped together, her expression promising some very bad weather. ‘Hello, Mrs Hargreaves.’ Agnes’s eyes never left her grandfather’s face. ‘What the heck have you been doing, Pop? We can’t live like this – I’ve a meal to make and baking to do.’

  Fred scratched his head. ‘We’ve been thinking,’ he replied eventually. ‘Me and Eva, I mean. She wants help in her shop and I could do with her air raid shelter.’

  Agnes nodded. ‘Yes, you’ll need somewhere to hide if I find the place in this state again. Oh, and I could do with a kitchen table without a lathe stuck to it. Are you up to serving in a shop, though?’

  He rose to his feet. ‘Yes, I am up to serving in a shop and running me own business at the same time. There’s still a bit of life in me, you know. And I would have tidied up, but—’

  ‘But you didn’t.’ Agnes shook her head. ‘He’ll fill your shelter and spill into the house,’ she told the ironmonger. ‘He’s all talk and screwdriver when it comes to straightening up after himself. Yes, you can have him, Mrs Hargreaves.’ She grinned at her beloved Pop. ‘You’re well and that’s all that matters. I love you, you old goat.’

  An unhappy Denis had accidentally unleashed a woman of great passion and uncertain temperament. Freed from restraint, she followed him, played music for him, courted him. She would hear no argument. She wanted her way all the time and considered no one’s feelings but her own.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he told the pigswill bin as he emptied scraps into its depths. The daily, a woman from Skirlaugh Fall, was in the house and Denis was panicking. He had stepped out of his league all the way up to Lambert House, S
kirlaugh Rise, and he had almost betrayed a beloved wife. Mrs Moores, the daily, had taken to looking at him sideways and Denis was sure that the whole village knew of his supposed crimes. ‘I’m sorry, Agnes,’ he breathed, his head leaning on cool stone. What was he going to do? What on earth could anyone do?

  A light step bade him turn and he looked right into the angry eyes of his mistress.

  ‘There you are,’ snapped Helen. ‘I want you to mend my bookcase upstairs.’

  He placed the bucket on the ground. ‘This has to stop,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  Denis inhaled as deeply as he could. ‘You’re different. Everyone can see that you’re different. They’ll know. Your dad will find out, Agnes will find out.’ There was a kind of madness in her eyes, a brightness that went beyond mere happiness or excitement. She didn’t care about being discovered. ‘It has to stop,’ he said again.

  ‘You have regrets.’ Her tone was accusatory.

  ‘Of course I do. I’m married. I love my wife. Your father’s a judge with a lot of power. This should not be happening. I want things back the way they were. And that’s just the start of the list.’

  Helen Spencer nodded, turned on her heel and walked back into the house. Fury quickened her step as she ran up the stairs and into her bedroom. She dropped face down onto a chaise longue, balled fists beating pink velvet upholstery, mouth opened in a scream she managed to strangle at birth. He didn’t love her. If an odd-job man could not love her . . . What was happening to her? Why did she occasionally lose herself and where had self-control gone for a holiday?

  She had to have him, had to keep him for herself. He could get a divorce. Father would not approve, but Father seldom approved of anything. If Agnes Makepeace knew the full extent of her husband’s supposedly bad behaviour, perhaps she would leave Denis. ‘But I would be named,’ she said aloud. Did it matter? Was any price too high when it came to the love of her life? She was unbalanced, yet she retained sufficient intelligence to allow insight into her own disorder. This was a clear route to madness.

  She turned over, closed her eyes and imagined how he would be as a lover. He would treat her like precious porcelain, would be amazed and pleased by her responses. But no. He had no intention of indulging in an animal act, a business performed by any beast in field or stable yard. He was a good man in a world inhabited by the bad.