‘And if you have a girl, you’ll have to go through this again and again until he gets his boy.’
In spite of the heat, Louisa shuddered. ‘You need to apologize to him.’
‘Never.’
‘I cannot stay if you go. I’ll be homeless, with a child to rear. My first marriage left me with nothing.’ She had finally painted in her backcloth, but only for Helen. The judge knew some of it, but Helen was now in full possession of the facts. ‘You know what I went through.’
‘This time, your scars will be mental. I don’t know which is worse – physical damage or psychological destruction. He will wear you down and wear you out, Louisa. He chips away until you have no foundation, no steadiness. Come with me. I have my mother’s money. I’ll keep you safe.’
That was not the answer, either. Louisa did not feel equipped for yet another fresh start. Her first marriage had been a new beginning, as had the end of that marriage. The relief when her first husband had been carted off to prison had been boundless. Lack of money had driven her away from her secretarial job into the more lucrative area of club cabaret, but the shelf life of stage dancers was a short one, and she had become a teacher of dance. Zach was to have been the final new beginning. After marrying Zach, she should have been truly secure. She wasn’t.
‘Louisa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Imagine a life without him. I know you don’t love him. My mother probably didn’t love him, either. Even criminals often have one or two redeeming features, but my father?’ She shrugged. ‘He sits on his throne and sends men and women to jail and, because there are no feelings in him, he does it just to punish. He doesn’t believe that a thief can reform himself through education and encouragement. My father would have every prisoner in a darkened room with just a mattress, a blanket and a bucket. Those judged as completely beyond the pale he would hang.’
‘I know.’
‘Then leave.’
‘I can’t.’ An idea was forming in Louisa’s tiring brain. ‘We could compromise.’
‘How?’
‘We could stay till the baby is born, let him have the baby—’
‘If it’s a boy,’ spat Helen.
‘Yes, all right. Then, when he has what he wants, we can leave. He’s a powerful man, Helen. I probably wouldn’t get custody of the child anyway, not with the father being top of the legal tree. But don’t leave me here while I am pregnant.’
Helen frowned deeply. ‘You could give up your child?’
‘I would fight to keep it, of course. But I can’t go now. You must understand that. Oh, and there’s another thing. If you move from the Rise to the Fall, could you bear the pity and concern of your neighbours?’
‘I could bear his embarrassment very well.’
‘Helen, there would be tongues wagging from here to the courts in Manchester. Yes, he would suffer. But so would you. I believe that you have been punished enough. Stay. Eat his food, use his furniture, let him pay all the bills.’
There followed a long pause before Helen responded. ‘If he wants me not to move down the hill to sit on his doorstep like a boil on his nose, he must do one thing.’ The one thing was no longer anything to do with Glenys Timpson or the Makepeaces – she was beyond such trivia – but simply to prove her power. ‘I want a featherweight sentence for Harry Timpson.’ The Timpson man had become a loaded gun for Helen. She needed to prove that she could encroach on her father’s territory and even get her own way.
‘Then you’ll need to stay until after the trial.’
‘Yes.’
With that, Louisa was forced to be content. Unhappily, she now faced the prospect of persuading her husband to go easy on a criminal. But she would try. If it meant that Helen would stay, Louisa would attempt the apparently impossible.
It was mayhem. Agnes, standing in the middle of it all, remembered reading about people throwing up their hands in despair, but it was too hot and she couldn’t spare the energy. ‘It’s not a big house, Pop,’ she said for the third time.
‘Not a big house, love,’ echoed Eva.
‘I know it’s detached and I know there’s land, but you’d never get this lot in ten big sheds. I mean, what do you want with half a dozen paraffin heaters? Haven’t you sold them on as stock, anyway? What are you planning?’
Fred sighed. ‘The new owner of this here shop’s already minted. He won’t miss a few heaters. I’ll have to warm the shed, won’t I? I can’t risk good wood going dampish.’
Eva and Agnes stared at each other with near-despair in their eyes. Fred was in one of his squirrel moods and wanted to keep more than he could house. ‘I’m going to see Glenys,’ snapped Agnes. ‘Because if I stay here, I’ll wrap these bloody heaters round his neck.’ She left the scene. Fred was stubborn, but so was she – it was best for them to be apart for the immediate future.
Glenys opened her door. ‘Hello, love,’ she said. ‘You look like you need a wipe down with a damp cloth.’ They sat in the kitchen. ‘How’s it going?’
Agnes told her ex-neighbour about developments at Lambert House, about Helen’s continuing strangeness, about Wife the Second walking about with a face like ten wet Sundays. ‘She’s not happy.’
‘Neither am I.’
Both knew the source of Glenys’s unease, but the subject had been aired so often in recent months that it was beyond resurrection.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said Agnes.
‘I bloody well hope so.’
They sat with their cups, Agnes musing over her little job at Lambert House, Glenys praying silently for a son who probably didn’t deserve to remain free.
‘Kate Moores is good company,’ offered Agnes to break the quiet.
‘And the job gets you out. Are them two moving today?’ She jerked her head in the direction of Eva’s shop. ‘I’ve seen some comings and goings. I’ll miss them, you know.’
‘Yes, it’s today. That’s why I’m here – I’ve escaped from the shop. They’re trying to get a whale to fit into a sardine tin. The stuff for his shed’s already gone, but nobody will ever get past the vestibule in Bamber Cottage if he takes all he wants to take. I mean, who needs four clothes horses?’
‘I wouldn’t say no.’ Glenys poured more tea. ‘Have they not measured the house, then measured their furniture?’
‘Have they heck as like. He’s going off half-cocked as usual. And we can’t blame his stroke – he’s always been like this. Eva just agrees with everything he says, so she’s as daft as he is. They’ll never get up the stairs to bed tonight. Fully furnished? They’ll be bursting at the seams and Denis will have to sort it all out.’
‘I wish I could live up yon,’ ventured Glenys.
‘Stop where you are, that’s my advice. You’d end up working at Lambert House – they can’t get enough staff – and that would be a sure and certain way to insanity. I’m only there twice a week and that’s plenty.’ She replayed in her mind the slamming of doors, the grim atmosphere, the expression on Kate’s face whenever the judge came home. ‘None of them is happy. Miss Spencer has a face like a squeezed orange most days – nothing left in it, just a dry shell. Denis reckons she’s heading straight for the mental hospital. I think he’s right – she’s not the same two days running. She talks to me, then ignores me. There’s something very wrong with her.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Glenys. ‘My Harry thinks the sun shines out of her, but we’d best wait for verdict and sentence, eh?’
Agnes agreed, then left to continue in her role as ignored supervisor.
Fred glanced at her. ‘I’m taking two of them heaters.’ The tone was rebellious, putting her in mind of a young schoolboy after a telling-off. ‘You never know – we could get a bad winter,’ he added.
‘Aye, a bad winter,’ repeated Eva.
Agnes was past caring. They could leave their furniture on the front lawn if necessary, because he wouldn’t listen to reason and, as ever, he needed to learn the hard way. ‘I’m going for the
bus,’ she said, ‘because I’m doing no good here. I’ll get a bit of shopping in town, then I’ll see you up yonder later on. God help Skirlaugh Fall. You’ll be parking half your furniture with the neighbours and they won’t be best pleased.’
Gratefully, Agnes sank into a seat on the Derby Street bus. Normally, she would have walked the short distance, but heat, pregnancy and Pop were against her. His furniture was stacked against the front of the shop, and it would shortly be stacked yet again all over the garden of Bamber Cottage, but she had tried her best.
After alighting from the bus, Agnes made her way towards the main shopping centre. Rounding a corner, she came face to face with a familiar figure, and she stopped in her tracks. She had taken a job in order to meet and help this woman but had scarcely seen her in the house, and now here was Helen Spencer, out of context and turning pink. ‘It’s warm,’ Agnes said, inwardly kicking herself for stating the blatantly obvious.
‘It is.’
‘I was just going for a cup of tea,’ lied Agnes. ‘Would you like to join me?’
So Helen found herself in the company of a not-quite-rival. Already aware that she had never stood a chance with Denis, she now drank tea with his beautiful, pregnant wife.
‘You are working at the house occasionally,’ she said.
Agnes nodded. ‘Mostly sitting down jobs. It’s just to keep me occupied till Nuisance is born.’ She patted her abdomen. ‘I can’t do much, but the work gets me out of the house a couple of times a week.’
Helen asked Agnes where she had been.
When the tale had been told, both women were laughing. ‘What’s going to happen?’ Helen asked. ‘And how will they cope?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘I did my best, but my best wasn’t good enough. They’re bringing enough blankets to keep the Russian army warm and I never saw so many plates and cups.’
‘And the shed?’
‘That’s for making his doll’s houses in.’ Agnes noticed that Helen’s laughter was shrill, too loud. It came from a woman who probably cried just as easily. Did Helen Spencer live on the cusp, somewhere between hysteria and silent sadness? Did she swing from one to the other easily, because the two extremes were close neighbours? ‘I’ll have to be getting back. Somebody’s going to have to make sense of the mess.’
Helen declared that she had finished for today, as the library was closed this afternoon. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ she said.
The lift developed into more cups of tea at Agnes’s house, followed by the inevitable assault on Bamber Cottage and its soon-to-be occupants. For the first time, Helen had a glimpse of a normal family with its banter, small arguments and jokes. On her part, Agnes realized that Helen Spencer was a clever and humorous woman who was not insane. She was probably emotionally unstable, but she was not out of her mind.
By five o’clock, everyone was exhausted. Between items of furniture, a small corridor to the kitchen had been achieved, but Eva was not built for small corridors. Agnes, hands on hips, stood in the kitchen doorway. ‘You’ll have to choose,’ she advised her grandfather. ‘It’s you and Eva, or all the furniture. Get a tent. The weather’s good, so you’ll be all right in the back garden.’
Eva glanced from Fred to Agnes, then to Miss Spencer. Denis arrived, providing a fourth resting place for Eva’s eyes. ‘We don’t know what to do,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t get nowhere.’
‘House is too small,’ grumbled Fred.
‘It’s the same size as it always was.’ Denis kept an eye on Helen Spencer. He still felt uncomfortable in her presence, but Agnes had stated her intention of helping the woman, so he had to accept that decision.
At the end of more lengthy discussions, Helen provided an answer. ‘This won’t do,’ she declared unnecessarily. ‘It won’t go away, will it? There’s far too much furniture to fit into a place of this size. You need to decide quickly what stays and what goes.’
Fred didn’t want to part with anything of Eva’s, but even he was forced to see sense in the end. ‘Aye, we’ll have to do something. We’ll not fit a size nine foot into a size seven shoe.’
Agnes set the kettle to boil yet again. She felt as if she had been running a cafe all day. From the cluttered kitchen, she listened to Helen Spencer laying down the law. The woman was enjoying herself. All she wanted was to feel needed, to be part of a family, to be loved and respected. Agnes dashed a tear from her cheek; she had been lucky. Like Helen, she had lost a mother. Unlike Helen, she had been raised by grandparents in a caring environment. Money wasn’t up to much, she thought as she poured tea. Money could not buy happiness for Miss Helen Spencer.
When the great plan had been finalized, Helen and Denis left together in order to begin the first phase. In Helen’s car, they drove out to a farm and persuaded the tenant to bring horse and flat cart into the village. As they drove back to Bamber Cottage, Helen spoke. ‘I’m sorry for what I put you through, Denis. Your wife’s a lovely woman.’
‘It’s all right.’
She nodded. He had a generous nature and she was grateful for it. ‘There’s something wrong with me,’ she continued. ‘It’s not madness. Sometimes, I lose control, but there’s a reason. I have to find the reason.’
‘I see.’
She smiled. ‘No, you don’t. I have a memory that I can’t reach. It must be something that happened before I got to the age of reason. Whatever it was, it terrified me and has remained all through life. It’s not diminished by the years, yet I seem no nearer to remembering what it is. I get panic attacks. They come from nowhere, yet there’s something . . . There’s a big happening lodged somewhere in my brain and I can’t get a hold on it.’
‘Then how do you know it’s there?’
‘Because it’s bigger than me, bigger than him, bigger than Lambert House.’ She had no need to name the ‘him’. ‘Louisa has brought it back. Until Louisa, I thought I was just a quiet, uninteresting sort of person. But since she has been with us, I have come to realize that there is more to it than just that. There was a woman in my life thirty years ago.’
‘Your mother?’
Helen nodded. ‘And now, we have her replacement. She’s a trigger. And I like her. I like her very much. She may be a gold-digger, but she’s not harsh, not unkind, not completely selfish. Louisa noticed me and is pleased to have me there. My mother was probably glad to have me there. So Louisa has taken me back to a place and a time where I was safe and happy. Because of that, the memory of whatever it was is digging at me, prompting me. I thank God for Louisa.’
‘She probably reminds you of the mother you lost.’
‘It’s not so simple, but it is something like that, yes.’
With that, Denis had to be content.
They reached Bamber Cottage to find Agnes and Fred in another heated exchange. Helen looked at Denis and he looked at her. In that moment, both realized that the recent past could be laid to rest. They were good friends, and both felt comfortable about it.
Agnes was in full flood. ‘I know what you’re saying – I’m not deaf and I’m not daft. You’ve told me so often that it’s probably printed through me like a stick of Blackpool rock. Eva makes your curtains. Yes, she needs her sewing machine and no, it can’t stay down here. The spare bedroom can still be a bedroom – we can put the Singer in a corner.’
‘That means she’ll have to go upstairs to work. She can’t do stairs all the while.’
‘I can.’
Fred and Agnes turned and stared at Eva. Not since the wedding had she disagreed with her husband. She was of the generation that recognized the superiority of mankind over womankind, but she was putting her foot down with all her twenty stones behind it.
‘Put it upstairs,’ Eva said.
‘Bloody women,’ Fred cursed.
There followed an uneasy couple of hours during which Fred and Eva were separated from half their worldly goods. Although Fred fought right down to the last picture of the Sacred Heart, he was forced to see sense. When the cart
pulled away, the Grimshaws had a house in which it would be possible to live and move in a normal fashion.
Eva made the final cup of tea.
‘Are them cellars dry?’ asked Fred.
‘Very,’ replied Helen. ‘The boiler’s down there. It’s a big one, because it heats a big house. Stop worrying, please, Mr Grimshaw. If you find you need something, it will be no trouble to have the item returned to you.’
Fred gulped a mouthful of hot tea. He studied Miss Helen Spencer. ‘You’re all right, you are,’ was his stated opinion. ‘Feel free to drop in for a cuppa whenever you’ve a mind.’ He looked at Denis and Agnes. ‘See? Not all rich folk are toffee-nosed.’
Helen Spencer went home a happier woman. Knowing that Louisa, the Makepeaces and the Grimshaws were her friends, she felt almost capable of coping.
Agnes phoned her two friends from the newly installed telephone in her cottage. Only if she canvassed their opinions could she make any changes to arrangements. ‘Isn’t she crackers?’ was Lucy’s typically direct response.
‘She’s lonely.’ The line crackled while Agnes waited. ‘Are you there, Lucy?’
‘I’m here. Look, don’t tell her it’s a regular thing. If we don’t get on, we can go back to the way it was before.’
Mags too agreed to the temporary admittance of Helen Spencer to their Thursday meetings. Agnes replaced the receiver, wondering whether she had done the right thing. She, Lucy and Mags had a long history and shared common ground, but Miss Spencer was very much the outsider. Would their evenings be spoiled? ‘Somebody has to help her,’ she told herself out loud. Agnes was no psychologist and no expert in any field connected to the behaviour of her fellows, but she knew need when it hit her in the face. Helen Spencer was needful and Agnes was there to help.
When Thursday arrived, she made a few scones and cakes, found Mags’s favourite parkin at the shop, put crisps in a bowl for Lucy. Unsure of Helen’s preferences, she threw together a few thinly cut sandwiches, removed the crusts and hoped for the best.
The Judge's Daughter Page 19
