The Judge's Daughter (3 page)

The familiar scent of human excrement insinuated its way into the pub. Almost automatically, Agnes took a small amount of cotton wool from her apron pocket and stuffed half into each nostril.
The men’s lavs were bad enough, but this smell was unbearable. Ramsden, fearful that the brewery might close him down, was trying with little success to keep the men’s facilities in
working condition, but he was losing the battle.

Voices floated through the open door. ‘At it again, Ernie?’ ‘Somebody been passing bricks down yer lav?’ ‘Let us know when you strike gold, eh? Carry on this road
and you’ll hit Australia.’

She sat down for a few minutes. Even the mills were better than this, but she couldn’t abandon the people who had reared her, could she? Agnes’s mother had died two hours after
giving birth to her only child, while the father was listed as unknown. Sadie and Fred Grimshaw, having cared for their own daughter, had been presented with her newborn baby girl and had simply
continued with life. They had been firm, but kind, and Agnes owed her life to them.

A red-faced Ernie entered the arena. ‘I reckon yon drain’s collapsed,’ he announced.

‘Then you’ll have to close down and tell the brewery,’ she replied. She and Denis would struggle to manage. Pop could do a lot of damage in three hours, so Agnes needed to bite
the bullet and quit. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be faced; she would soon need to stay at home all the time. Even five minutes was time enough for Pop to create disaster, and
Nan was becoming too ill to be left to the poor old chap’s mercies.

Ernie poured himself a double Irish. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted gloomily. ‘End of the road, Agnes.’ He drained the glass. ‘What’ll you do? Mind,
I’ll take you on again like a shot if the brewery lets me carry on. You’re the best cleaner I’ve ever had.’

She bit her lip and pondered. It seemed as if every other building on Derby Street was a pub. The Dog and Ferret, never truly popular, had lost more customers because of the drains, and its
owners could well close it down or renovate it before putting someone younger in charge. There were too many pubs, and she disliked them, hated the smells, was afraid of what drinking did to
people. She had taken enough. ‘Nan’s dying,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I was meaning to give notice soon, because she needs nursing round the clock. I won’t have
her spending her last days in hospital. I promised her she’d stop at home no matter what.’

‘And is the owld chap still a bit daft?’

Everyone knew Fred, though few remembered the dedicated worker who had toiled for forty-odd years in the town’s foundry. He had been a big man, but age had withered him and he was shorter,
thinner and extremely frail. No, she told herself firmly – Pop was getting better. ‘He’s old,’ she snapped. ‘He’s had a bit of a stroke – that’s his
only sin. None of us can fight the years – he’s been a hard worker in his time.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend,’ he said.

Agnes placed her box of tools on a table. ‘I’m going.’ She straightened and took one last look around her place of work. She would miss the thinking time more than anything,
this island of relative solitude alongside which she had been allowed to moor herself for a few hours each day. At home, she had to face the reality that was Nan, the burden that was Pop, the same
four walls day in and day out. If only that judge fellow weren’t so selfish, Denis would be working regular hours for decent pay, but the judge represented rules in more ways than one. He
interpreted the law of the land during working hours, then set regulations to suit himself and only himself when he got home. Judge Spencer was a tyrant, she supposed.

‘I’ll miss you, lass.’ Ernie’s expression said it all. He would probably lose his livelihood within days.

‘They’ll find you another pub,’ she told him.

‘I’m no spring chicken.’ He left her and returned to his living quarters.

Agnes put on her coat and stepped outside. She removed the cotton wool from her nostrils and crossed the road, anxious to be away from the stench of human waste. Managing on Denis’s income
was not going to be easy. It would mean less meat, more vegetables and no new clothes for some time. She was twenty years old and she owned nothing, no record player, no transistor radio, no decent
shoes. Denis, her husband of twelve months, was in possession of a weak chest and was unfit for anything approaching hard labour. Nan was dying; Pop . . . Pop was walking down Noble Street with a
package in his hands. ‘Pop?’ she cried. Oh, no. What had he done this time and who would be knocking at the door?

He turned, frowned because she had grown again. No, she hadn’t. It would go in the notebook – Agnes was a woman and no longer went to school. Denis was her husband – that, too,
would be recorded. Denis Makepeace, bad chest, huge heart.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

He had been sorting out his life, but the details were vague. ‘Coloured pencils,’ he told her. ‘And a little book to help me remember.’

She grinned, recalled him swinging her in the air, running round the duck pond with her, laughing at Laurel and Hardy at the local cinema. The Grimshaws had been good parents and Agnes had
lacked for nothing during childhood. They could have abandoned her to an orphanage or to adoption, but they had given her a happy life and now she had to care for them. ‘Oh, Pop.’ She
smiled. ‘I hope you’ve been up to no mischief.’

‘Me?’ He was a picture of innocence. ‘I can’t remember,’ he admitted eventually, ‘but I think I went to work again. I’m worse in a morning, you know. By
afternoon, I can nearly remember my own name.’

‘The year’s on the mantelpiece.’

‘Aye.’

‘I put it there for a reason.’

‘Aye.’

‘And if you say aye again, I’ll clout you.’

‘Aye.’

They walked down Noble Street until they reached Glenys Timpson’s house. She was out in an instant, seeming to propel herself with the speed of a bullet from a gun. Thin arms folded
themselves against a flat bosom. ‘He’s been thieving again.’ Triumph shone in her eyes as she nodded in Fred’s direction. ‘Not fit to be out.’

Agnes stared at the irate creature. ‘Mrs Timpson,’ she began after an uncomfortable pause. ‘Your sons, Harry, Bert and Jack – have I got their names right?’

The woman jerked her head in agreement.

‘You’d best keep them in, missus.’ Agnes moved closer to her adversary. ‘I’ve heard talk. They’ll have to start watching their step.’

‘Eh?’ Like many of her generation, Glenys wore a scarf turban-fashion, curlers peeping out from the edges. She raised her eyebrows until they all but disappeared under pink and blue
plastic rollers. ‘You what? What are you incinerating?’ She frowned, knowing that the word she had delivered was slightly inappropriate.

The younger woman lowered her voice until it became almost a whisper. ‘Selling jewellery round the pubs. Probably from that safe job in Manchester. Remember? Wasn’t your Harry in the
army during his service? Perhaps he learned about explosives and a safe might be easy for him. He hangs around in the wrong company.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying keep your mouth shut about Pop, or I’ll open mine about a few cheap brooches and bracelets. I’m saying mind your own business. Pop forgets things. Your sons
are just plain bad.’

Glenys fell against the front door, a hand over her heart.

‘Don’t forget – my husband works for a High Court judge.’ Noting that the street’s biggest gossip had gone into shock, Agnes took Pop’s arm and marched him
homeward. As she walked, she shook from head to foot, but she remained as straight as she could manage, because she didn’t want Glenys Timpson to see how scared she was. At twenty, Agnes was
female head of a household and it wasn’t easy, especially with a man like Pop causing bother from time to time.

Gratefully, she closed her front door.

‘Were that true?’ Pop asked. ‘Have her sons been stealing?’

Agnes studied her grandfather. ‘You remembered that all right. Yes, it’s true. She’s so busy watching other folks’ comings and goings that she misses what’s under
her nose. They’ve been chucked out of the Dog and Ferret twice for trying to sell things. I’ve heard they’re not welcome in the Lion and all. Now, I’ll go and look at
Nan.’

Sadie Grimshaw was curled into a position that was almost foetal. Her granddaughter cleaned bed and body, listened to shallow breathing and found herself praying for the poor woman to be
released. This wasn’t Nan, hadn’t been Nan for weeks. It was a skeleton with yellowing flesh barely managing to cover bones, a curled-up creature with no life in it. Life had dealt some
cruel blows to Sadie, who had suffered many miscarriages, whose only surviving child had died after Agnes’s birth, who had raised Agnes and worked hard all her life.

Pop came in. ‘She’s in a terrible state,’ he whispered.

‘She needs to be in hospital – they could control the pain better.’ The old lady was now too weak to groan or cry.

‘They’d finish her off and she wants to be at home. We promised her, pet. Even if she doesn’t talk, I reckon she knows where she is.’

Not for the first time today, Agnes realized that her old Pop was on his way back. Since the stroke, he had acted in a way Nan might have described as ‘yon-derly’, a term invented to
describe someone who was present in body, but not in mind. ‘Would it be a bad thing if the hospital gave her a helping hand?’ whispered Agnes.

He shrugged and asked if she knew where his baccy and pipe were. So his thoughts were still skipping slightly, though he seemed capable of concentrating for several seconds, at least. And he had
remembered Glenys Timpson’s sons for about two minutes, so that was a good sign. ‘Behind the clock,’ she answered.

Fred disappeared, came back almost immediately with the postcard that marked the year. ‘What’s this?’

‘The year. Your pipe’s behind the clock.’

‘Right.’ Off he went once more.

Agnes held a withered claw that had once been a hand, a hand that had fed and clothed her, a hand belonging to the only mother she had ever known. ‘Please, please go,’ she wept.

The front door opened and Nurse Ingram stepped into the room. She studied the scene for a few seconds, then stood behind Agnes, squeezing the young woman’s shoulder in a way that was meant
to be supportive and encouraging. ‘Let me get the ambulance, love,’ she begged.

‘I promised she’d die here.’ The words were fractured by sobs.

‘I know that. But we want what’s best for her, don’t we?’

Agnes nodded.

After a pause of several seconds, the nurse spoke again. ‘Get me a bowl of water while I wash her face.’

‘I just did that.’

The nurse walked a few paces and stood eye to eye with Agnes. ‘Get me a bowl of water and a towel. Go on. It’s what I need.’

Agnes looked into the sorrow-filled eyes of a person she had come to know and trust in recent weeks. Although no words were spoken, she heard what the woman was not permitted to say. Unsteadily,
she rose to her feet and dried her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘She’ll be all right,’ said the nurse. ‘Just let me see to her.’

Agnes filled the bowl and ordered Pop to follow her. They re-entered the front room just as the nurse stamped a heavy foot onto a phial.

‘I get clumsier all the time. Second piece of equipment I’ve lost today,’ announced Alice Ingram, her eyes fixed on Agnes’s face. ‘She’s going now. Stay with
her.’

‘Where’s she going?’ asked Fred.

‘To Jesus,’ Agnes replied.

So it came about that Sadie Grimshaw left her body and went to meet her Maker. The only evidence that she had been awarded an assisted passage was ground into a pegged rug beside the bed. With
Fred on one side and her granddaughter on the other, Sadie breathed her last. Free from pain and all other earthly shackles, she floated away on a cloud of morphine, her ravaged features relaxed
for the first time in months.

Nurse Alice Ingram wiped the patient’s face. ‘I’ll get the doctor to sign the certificate,’ she said, her voice shaky. She had done the right thing. Sadie would not have
survived the journey to the infirmary, she told herself repeatedly. ‘I’ll lay her out myself.’

Fred looked at Agnes. ‘Is that it? Has she gone?’

Agnes nodded.

His chin dropped and he stared at his dead wife. ‘I’ll have to pull myself together now, Sadie,’ he said. ‘I’m all our Agnes has left, aren’t I?’

He left the room.

‘How can I thank you?’ Agnes asked.

‘By saying nowt. I’ve done wrong, but it was right in my book.’

‘And in mine. I know you’re not supposed to . . . But sometimes, it can be a kindness.’

In the back living room, Pop was weeping quietly in the fireside rocker. Agnes squatted down and took his hand. ‘It was time. Every day was worse than the one before. That wasn’t Nan
any more. She needed to go.’

He smiled through his grief. ‘Your mam wasn’t a bad girl, you know. And when she died, me and Sadie got you. Eeh, you were lovely. You kept us going, gave us something to fight for.
Losing our Eileen were the worst thing that ever happened to me and my Sadie. But she wasn’t bad, your mam. She didn’t mess with all kinds of men.’

Agnes patted his hand. He could go back twenty years, but he struggled to remember yesterday. ‘Is Sadie all right now?’ he asked.

She swallowed hard. ‘Nan died a few minutes ago.’ This had been a long day. Nan was gone, the job was gone and Pop was on his way back.

He stared hard into the blue depths of his beloved little girl’s eyes. ‘I’m not that daft, lass. I know she’s dead. I were there when she went. Nay, that’ll
stick.’ Red-letter day. Why had this been a red-letter day? It was black now, dark, clouded over, miserable. He had pencils and a notebook; he had returned the polish; his wife was dead. This
had become a black-letter day and he had to keep going for Agnes. It had always been for Agnes, because Agnes deserved the best. ‘I wish we could have got you educated, love. You’re
cleverer than your friends, but you work in a mill.’

‘No, I left the mill and went to clean the pub, but the pub’s closing.’