The Judge's Daughter (37 page)

‘I couldn’t let him win the last round, could I?’ She took a cup and drank from it. ‘Yuk,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s this rubbish?’

‘Bitter lemon.’ He took it away. ‘I did warn you – you’ve never liked bitter lemon.’

Agnes smiled at all around her. She had a son, a wonderful husband and a nurse bending over her. ‘Your dad phoned,’ said the latter.

‘I haven’t got a dad.’

‘Oh. Right.’ The young woman left the bedside.

Exhausted, Agnes leaned on her pillows. Judge Spencer had no claim on her son, no proof that he was the grandfather. If he thought he was going to get his sticky paws on David Makepeace, he had
another think coming. Helen would sort him out, she told herself. Helen had him by the scruff of the neck, didn’t she?

Denis returned. ‘I’ll come in tomorrow,’ he promised. ‘Oh – the midwife said well done, because if our lad had gone full term he would have been an
eleven-pounder.’

Agnes winced. It had been like launching a battleship, but if the pregnancy had gone full term it would have been the
Queen Mary
, plus all hands on and below decks. ‘It’s
over,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘And I’m not doing it again, so enjoy your little lad.’ She lowered her voice. ‘My father phoned.’

‘Eh?’

She nodded. ‘Tell Helen to get him to back off. And bring me a quarter of Keiller’s butterscotch and some proper lemonade.’

‘Right.’

‘I love you, Denis Makepeace. Fetch me that noisy child while I learn how to feed him.’

Denis handed over the baby, kissed his wife and left the hospital. Helen was waiting at the door. ‘Is she all right?’

‘Course she is – you know our Agnes.’

‘And the baby?’

‘Screaming fit to bust – she’s going to try feeding him. Are you giving me a lift?’

She nodded and led him to the car. On the way back to the village, Denis told her about the phone call. ‘Said he was her dad.’

Helen grimaced. He couldn’t do anything and wouldn’t do anything. The bombshell under the Midland Bank was for emergencies only, but, if necessary, Helen would use it now.
‘Don’t worry. He daren’t move a muscle without asking me first.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to be a good aunt. I shall teach him to read, take him to the zoo and to
the seaside. I could help him play the piano, get him taught to swim, buy him books.’

‘Hang on.’ Denis laughed. ‘Let’s change his nappy first, eh?’

Agnes had heard all about post-natal depression, but she didn’t agree with it. A lot of new-fangled illnesses didn’t make sense, and that was one of them. She loved
being a mother, even when it didn’t quite work. David was, she supposed, an easy baby. He took his nourishment, brought up wind and soon learned to play with anything within reach. The child
laughed a lot, and Agnes found herself wondering about the joke she had missed. Was he remembering stuff from before he was born? That was possible, because he was particularly amused by certain
words, one of them ‘nuisance’. ‘You’ve been here before,’ she told him with monotonous frequency. With pride in every step, she pushed her secondhand Silver Cross
through the village and allowed all comers to coo over him. He liked an audience; oh, God – was he going to turn out like Pop? Pop had gone all posh and was going into marketing strategies.
Marketing strategies involved a big sign in his garden –
POP’S HAPPY HOUSES
– a great deal of advertising and the employment of a small sales team. He was probably going to
be a millionaire and that would make him thoroughly rumbustious. Rumbustious – that had been one of Nan’s words. Sometimes, when she remembered Nan, Agnes cried because the old lady had
never seen her great-grandson. Perhaps that was post-natal depression? If it was, then she was in step with everyone else, so that was all right.

Denis rushed home every night from Lambert House or from Lucy and George’s barn, always ready to fight about who should bath the baby, always willing to do battle with Napisan, terry
towelling and water. They managed to buy a washing machine and Pop paid for a tumble dryer, so life was a great deal easier than it might have been.

Helen, Lucy and Mags visited. They, too, fought over the child and who should hold him. Agnes borrowed a stopwatch and turned the whole thing into a farce, but David adored it all. He was loved;
everybody wanted him, everybody sang and read to him, so he embraced his correct place as centre of the universe and thrived.

Helen borrowed David when he was six weeks old. She took him to visit Louisa while the judge was safely out of the way. Louisa broke down in tears when she saw the little boy. ‘He’s
gorgeous,’ she declared. ‘There’s the son he wanted.’ Her own baby had not moved in the womb all day, and the midwife was expected at any moment. ‘Don’t let him
get near little David, Helen.’

‘He has no chance. Come on, buck up.’

The midwife arrived and exclaimed over the thriving baby boy before listening to Louisa’s abdomen. ‘Is your case packed?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Louisa was to have her child in a private hospital at the other side of Blackburn. ‘Will you phone the Manse?’ she asked of Helen.

‘No time,’ said the midwife. ‘Townleys is nearer. I think we need to get this child out today.’

So Louisa was rushed by her stepdaughter into the hospital in which young David had been born. The surgeon was waiting, as was the anaesthetist. They asked questions about when Louisa had last
eaten, placed her on a trolley and dashed away in the direction of the theatre.

Helen paced about like an expectant father. The real father was away in some court or other, far too busy to be in attendance at the birth of his long-awaited son. When an hour had passed, the
double doors at the end of the corridor were pushed aside to reveal the surgeon. Very slowly, he walked towards Helen. She waited. The journey could have taken no more than a few seconds, yet it
seemed to continue forever.

He reached her side. ‘Are you related to Louisa Spencer?’

Helen nodded. ‘Stepdaughter.’

He took her arm. ‘I am very sorry, but she suffered a pulmonary embolism and we couldn’t save her.’

She stumbled. The man steadied her and placed her in a chair. ‘Deep breaths,’ he advised. ‘She didn’t suffer.’

Helen shook from head to toe. ‘Did she see her baby?’

‘No.’

‘Is the baby ill?’

‘She’s small, but there’s nothing wrong apart from low birth weight and the need for a little help with her lungs.’

A girl. Helen swallowed. Father’s wrong-side-of-the-blanket daughter had birthed a son, but his second wife had failed him. ‘Millicent,’ she whispered. ‘That was the name
Louisa chose. Millicent. Millie for short.’

‘Can I get anyone for you?’

Helen shook her head. Denis and Agnes would be here soon. Kate was going to mind David while they came to the hospital. ‘Can I see Louisa?’

‘Soon, yes. They are preparing her now.’

Alone in the well-scrubbed, green-and-cream-disinfected silence, Helen wept. She mourned a stepmother who had been a sister, cried for the motherless baby girl, sobbed because she knew that her
father would never accept little Millie. Agnes and Denis did what they could, but she was still weeping when they all visited Louisa in the chapel of rest.

‘God,’ whispered Agnes. It could have happened to her and little David. Fiercely, she clung to her husband’s arm.

‘She looks pretty again,’ said Helen.

‘Does your father know?’ Denis asked.

Helen shrugged listlessly. ‘It won’t matter. Meals at the table will stop, but that’s all the effect Louisa’s death will have on him.’ A light dawned in her head.
‘She’ll have to be mine,’ she murmured. ‘Millie will have to be mine.’

They said their goodbyes to the cooling corpse, then set off in the direction of Maternity. Millie was in an incubator, small hands closed like sleeping flower heads, little chest moving with
each quick breath she took.

‘She’s perfect,’ said Helen. ‘Not all creased and squashed.’

‘Caesars are pretty. They don’t have to fight to get out, you see.’ Agnes squeezed her sister’s hand. ‘We’ll help. Denis and I will do all we can, and
I’m sure Kate will, too.’

‘She’s lost her mother.’ Helen’s tone was soft. ‘She has lost a wonderful woman. And she’ll never have a father, because she’s just another bloody woman
in the making. I have to make her life special. I shall make her life an adventure.’

Agnes and Denis were in no two minds about that. Helen had suffered and she would ensure that Louisa’s baby had a childhood better than her own had been.

‘He has to be told,’ murmured Agnes.

Helen took a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell him,’ she announced. ‘It’s my place to do that, isn’t it? Then he can bury his second wife and ignore his second
daughter.’ She glanced at Agnes. ‘His third daughter, I mean.’

Agnes grasped Helen’s hand. ‘I know this is horrible, love. I can’t think of anything worse, but you have a daughter and a little sister all in the one package. If you
can’t bear to live in the house, move in with us for a while. Eva’s lovely – she’d help. And you know Kate Moores would.’

‘She doesn’t like me. I’ve heard her saying I was sly as a child.’

‘And now she knows why.’

Helen’s eyes brimmed over. ‘No, she doesn’t. No one does. Mabel Turnbull and I are the only ones who know the full truth – and she’s gone. No. Millie will live in
her own house – our house. David will be her friend. We can rear them between us.’

In that moment, the rest of Helen Spencer’s life was laid out for all to read. She would be a mother who was not a mother; she would stand between her father and Millie, would devote every
waking hour to the child. Agnes dashed from her heart a stab of fear about David – was he Judge Spencer’s only male descendant? Now was not the time for such selfish worries; now was
the time to support Helen and this newborn girl.

A nurse came and opened a small door in the side of the incubator. ‘Put your hand in,’ she told Helen.

Small fingers curled around Helen’s thumb. But the sudden, vice-like grip on her heart was an unexpected reaction. Her brain had already accepted responsibility for rearing the child, but
this was different – this was emotion. Maternal love bloomed in a soul who had never been a mother, who would probably not give birth to a child of her own. Tears stopped flowing down her
cheeks as she felt the tightening of tiny digits. Here was her goal in life, and it had nothing to do with writing books or getting the better of her father. This baby owned Helen Spencer. She
would never again be the sad and lonely spinster. All the same, she grieved for her friend and close companion. Louisa had left yet another gaping hole in the fabric of life. No amount of patchwork
or darning would close the gap.

He seethed. Helen stood at the other side of his desk. She had said all the right things, had expressed her sadness and her worry about the premature child, had told him that
she would miss her stepmother.

The judge took a mouthful of brandy. ‘Another girl, then?’

‘Yes. And your lovely wife is dead.’ He reminded her of Henry VIII, a man who had gone through many women in order to father a son. And then the sickly boy had reigned for a mere six
years before making way for his sisters: first Mary, and then Elizabeth I, a queen with the heart of a lion, had taken the reins. ‘I shall arrange the funeral,’ Helen said.

‘Good. I have a busy schedule.’

‘When will you visit the hospital?’

‘I shall leave all that to you.’

Furious, she stamped out of the room. A son would have had him resident in the hospital; a male child would have wanted for nothing. Millie, who fought for life on a daily basis, was
unimportant. ‘Be strong,’ Helen whispered. ‘Get to the right weight, then I shall bring you home. As for him – he doesn’t count.’

When the post-mortem had been completed, the body of Louisa Spencer was brought home. She lay in the hall next to Fred Grimshaw’s model of the house, her stepdaughter a constant companion,
her husband elsewhere at sessions. When the undertaker arrived to place the lid on the casket, Helen had to be led away by Agnes. ‘Why her?’ she sobbed. ‘Why not him, Agnes? It
should have been him. If you only knew . . .’

The church was packed. Zachary Spencer, who had managed at great personal cost to squeeze his wife’s funeral into a hectic list, left after throwing a few crumbs of earth into a gaping maw
in the churchyard. Mourners returned to Lambert House, where Kate Moores served sandwiches and many cups of tea and coffee.

Lucy arrived at Helen’s side. ‘If there’s anything we can do, Helen—’

‘Just keep that letter safe.’ Underneath the tear-stained skin, an expression of cold determination was fighting to reach the surface. ‘Those documents are the future for me
and Millie. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of that package.’

‘George and the bank will make sure. God love you.’ Lucy fled in tears.

Harry Timpson appointed himself guardian of his saviour. He followed her constantly, made sure that visitors did not overtire her, brought her tea, gave her several clean handkerchiefs.
Occasionally, he nodded and smiled at Mags, who was taking care of Agnes. Mags was now Mrs Timpson, though no one except their parents knew. Harry loved his Mags and worshipped Helen Spencer
– he was a lucky man.

When everyone had eaten, Helen got Harry to silence the gathering. She stood near a window and addressed them. ‘If Louisa had been here, she would have enjoyed today. That may sound silly,
but she preferred the uncomplicated life, which is why we chose to have plain fare.

‘There are some of you here who remember me as a child and who thought me unpleasant. I hope most of you realize by now that I was the product of a miserable excuse for a father and a dead
mother. I scarcely remember her, you know. But I’ll never . . . I’ll never forget my wonderful stepmother.’ She paused for a while, a cloud seeming to pass over her features.

‘When she died, Louisa had been delivered of another disappointment – a girl.’

A murmur spread across the drawing room.

‘Millie is improving. She’s still a bit small, but I shall be bringing her home soon. Many here have visited her; her father has not been near the hospital. So I stand here now, a
spinster with no experience, and I beg your help. Millie will not be sly or bitter – she will not need to lie or steal in order to compensate for lack of love. To that end, I ask all my
friends here to advise and guide me while I rear my sister.’