‘Aye, so have I, but that’s no excuse. Will you go travelling on yon yacht?’
‘Probably.’
Fred was quietened by that single word. ‘That’s all right, then. You’re doing summat different – sailing. If you can afford it, you do it, lad.’ Thus spoke the father of Eileen Grimshaw, mother to Agnes, victim of Judge Spencer. Having granted permission to retire, Fred went off to irritate others. Helen grinned broadly. Her father was taking advice from his chauffeur, the grandfather of an illegitimate daughter and from his one and only recognized child. At table, he often asked Helen’s opinion. It was a charade, but it would do for now, she supposed. Louisa was better, there were just a couple of months to go, and all was well thus far.
Agnes tugged at Helen’s sleeve. ‘Did you hear Pop talking to your dad?’
‘I did. Our father’s being kept in his rightful place, exactly where I can see him.’ She shook her head. ‘Agnes, stop looking at me like that. I don’t know what will happen in the future any more than you do. Leave him to me. He’ll get what’s coming to him.’
Agnes sat and gazed again at Pop’s handiwork. She wished Nan could have seen it, though she would not have denied Eva the opportunity to wear her wedding outfit for a third time. Eva was as proud as Punch of her husband. There was no one like Fred in her book. There was no one like Pop, full stop, thought Agnes.
Denis joined her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Eh?’
He pointed to the floor beneath her chair. ‘I think your waters just broke.’
‘Oh.’
Denis pushed a hand through his hair. That ‘Oh’ was typical of Agnes. She took life as it came, didn’t seem to panic, wasn’t one for the vapours. He grabbed Helen. ‘Please get your car. Agnes is going into labour and I don’t want to put a wet wife into your dad’s Bentley. We can collect her bag on the way to Townleys.’
Helen gasped. ‘It’s not due yet, is it?’
‘No, but this is Agnes we’re dealing with. She’s got a lot of her granddad in her, so she doesn’t work to any timetable. Please hurry.’
Agnes was bundled into the car and driven to the cottage to wait while Denis got her case. She sat in the back seat and sucked a mint.
‘Any pain?’ asked Helen anxiously.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. When the pain starts, you’ll be the third to know. Me first, then Denis, then you. OK?’
Helen shook her head. She wished she could boast such pragmatism, but she never would. According to Father, Helen’s mother had been difficult; Eileen Grimshaw had probably been compliant, though there was little of that quality in Agnes. Agnes just got on with life, Helen supposed, as Denis jumped back into the driving seat.
They reached the hospital within twenty minutes, Agnes complaining not of pain, but of dampness. ‘I can’t remember the last time I wet my knickers,’ she complained as she was led towards Maternity.
When Agnes had been taken away for examination, Denis and Helen sat nervously under a poster about inoculations. There was clearly a lot of complicated stuff involved in the production and rearing of a child. ‘Denis?’
‘What?’
‘Have you thought about names?’
‘Oh. Yes, we have. A boy will be David and a girl Sally.’ He drummed his fingers on a knee. ‘They’ve been a long time.’
‘They’ve been three minutes, Denis.’
‘Oh.’
Agnes returned eventually. She wore a nightdress, a dressing gown and a disappointed air. ‘Can’t go home because the waters have gone. Can’t get on with it – nothing’s happening. The baby is happy where it is and we just have to wait.’
‘You can go home,’ Denis advised Helen. ‘Tell Fred and Eva what’s happening.’
‘What’s not happening.’ Agnes’s tone was gloomy. ‘And get me some bitter lemon, please. And keep Pop away from here – he’ll be telling everybody how to do their job and I won’t cope with him.’
Helen left.
Agnes paced up and down the corridor until her husband thought her in danger of wearing out the tiles. She counted doors, posters, other pregnant walkers, teacups and saucers on a trolley. Finally, she counted her blessings. There were girls here with no company, no husband, mother or father. Denis intended to be present throughout – she was very lucky.
By evening, the corridor was packed as tightly as a children’s matinee at the Odeon. Eva had arrived in full sail – including wedding outfit, as she had not had time to change – with Fred in tow. Helen sat with Lucy and Mags; Harry Timpson came to keep Mags company. He was followed closely by Albert and Kate Moores, who wanted to know if Agnes needed anything. When George put in an appearance, Agnes had gone off the idea of a quorum. ‘Will you all beggar off home?’ she pleaded.
A midwife arrived to take Agnes’s blood pressure. ‘There’s ten of you,’ she exclaimed. Agnes, who had taken to counting anything and everything in order to relieve boredom, put the midwife right. ‘There are twelve if you include parents and lower deck passenger.’
Agnes sat while the monitor did its work, was told that the reading was acceptable, then she waded in. ‘Will you get rid of this lot? I’m beginning to feel like a spectator sport at Olympic level. There should be two of us, three if you count Nuisance – but no more. Evacuate this corridor, please, or I am going home.’
The midwife did better than that by removing the patient from the scene. ‘She’s going on a ward until labour starts,’ she explained to the audience. ‘We won’t move her to the labour room until she’s further on. Please go home – we haven’t room for a crowd.’
Agnes didn’t move further on until the next morning, when she was delivered of a healthy boy weighing almost nine pounds. When he was handed to her, she nodded and spoke to him. ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you,’ she said before giving him to his dad.
Denis wiped away a tear as he passed the child over to the team for cleaning and checking. ‘You did well,’ he told his wife. ‘No swearing, no screaming.’
‘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 . . .’
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