The Judge's Daughter Page 2

  But what had Fred eaten for breakfast? Did it matter? Was breakfast important enough to be remembered? Yes, he would write everything in a notebook. Eva sold notebooks and pencils, didn’t she? It was the only way to learn. He could copy the date from the newspaper at the top of a page. He would make a note of every damned thing he did, ate and said. Sadie needed him. She didn’t talk, but he felt sure she knew when he was there. He must spend more time with his wife and less time wandering about in pyjamas. There was probably a law about pyjamas in the street. Blessed government – they all wanted shooting.

  Glenys Timpson was cleaning her windows again. Oh, he remembered her all right. She stoned her steps and cleaned her outside paintwork several times a week, because she couldn’t bear to miss anything. She was a curtain-twitcher and a gossip. That hatchet face was not something that could be forgotten.

  ‘Fred Grimshaw?’ There was an edge of flint to her tone.

  He stopped, but offered no greeting.

  ‘You pinched a tin of polish from Eva’s shop before. I were there. I watched you pocket it and run.’

  ‘And I’m going back to pay for it.’ He was glad she had reminded him, as he still needed to acquire his memory notebook and the polish was not at the front of his mind any more.

  ‘You should stop in the house,’ she snapped.

  He took a step closer to the woman. ‘So should you. That scraggy neck’s grown inches with you poking your head into everybody’s doings. Mind your own business.’ Another dim memory resurrected itself. ‘You could try keeping your lads sober for a kick-off.’ He marched away, head held high, the mantra ‘Pay for polish’ repeating in his head. But there was triumph in his heart, because he had remembered that nosy neighbour. One of these days, she’d end up flat on her face and with no one to help her up.

  Glenys Timpson, who declared under her breath that she had never been so insulted in all her born days, retreated into her domain. Eva was right – the old man was getting better. Or worse, she mused, depending on a person’s point of view. Some folk thought they were a cut above their neighbours and that there Agnes Makepeace was one of that breed. Aye, well – pride came before every fall.

  Her lads weren’t drunkards. They liked a drink – especially Harry, who was an amateur boxer – but they didn’t go overboard unless it was a special occasion. Perhaps special occasions were becoming more frequent, but she wasn’t having her lads tainted with the reputation of drunkards. She set the table angrily, throwing cutlery into place. Some folk didn’t know when to keep their mouths shut. Some folk wanted teaching a lesson. It was time to have a word with Mrs Agnes Makepeace.

  Fred entered the shop.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Eva began. She liked the man, had always had time for him and his loudly expressed opinions on most subjects. She could tell from his expression that he knew he had done something wrong and was struggling to remember the sin.

  He held up a hand. ‘I need help,’ he said bluntly. ‘Seems some of my memory got muddled while I was in the infirmary. I could do with a notebook and a pencil to help me make lists of stuff. My brain’s got more holes than the cabbage strainer.’

  Eva nodded. ‘I’ve some coloured pencils. You could write about different things in separate colours. You could use both ends of the book as well – important business at the front and details at the back.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘And you can take pay for that tin of polish.’ He had remembered the polish. This was a red-letter day, and he would mark it on the page in scarlet. ‘Funny how you remember things,’ he said. ‘It’s not the things themselves that come back right away – it’s a smell or a sound or some bit of detail. Like Jimmy Macker’s smile. I’ll never forget his smile.’

  Eva took money from his hand, counted it out, placed it in the till. ‘Fred?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you use that polish at all?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do you know whether your Agnes needs polish?’

  He had no idea.

  She looked at the tin. ‘Tell you what – seeing as it’s you, I’ll take it back. That’ll save you money and it’ll save your Agnes worrying over where her new tin of Barker’s came from. And you’ll get your book and pencils for the same price as the polish.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ With his coloured pencils and his stiff-backed notebook, Fred went home. He intended to sit next to his dying wife and write the date in red at the top of the first page. Nothing was impossible. For the sake of his Sadie and his beloved granddaughter, Fred Grimshaw would carry on. There was life in the old dog yet.

  The drain was blocked again.

  Agnes, who had come to the end of her shortened tether, flung mop and bucket across the floor. Ernie Ramsden, nicknamed Ramrod by his staff, was too stingy to send for a plumber, so he would deal with this himself. He would uncover the outside drain, piece his rods together and riddle about until he had shifted the offending item. Derby Street was about to smell like a sewage works again, and the problem would return within days, but why should she worry? It was his pub, his stink, so he could get on with it, while she would clean elsewhere in the building.

  In the bar, she picked up polish and duster and began to work on the tables. Ramsden came in. ‘Have you done the men’s already?’ he asked.

  ‘Blocked,’ she answered tersely. If he wanted to go poking about in ancient drains, that was his privilege.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Agnes shrugged. ‘There’s stuff all over the floor and nothing goes down. When I flushed, the place flooded. The women’s isn’t much better. So yes, it’s happened again. You need a plumber.’

  ‘Brewery wouldn’t stand for that,’ replied the landlord.

  ‘And if something isn’t done, your customers won’t stand for it, either. They won’t be able to stand, because they’ll be overcome by fumes. Every time you lift the pavement cover, folk start crossing over to the other side of the road. You’re becoming a health hazard. Will the corporation not help with this mess before people start ending up in hospital?’

  Ernie Ramsden shook his head. ‘Nay. Trouble is, the blockage is here, under the pub. Not the town’s property.’

  Agnes stopped polishing. Several months, she’d worked here. It was part time and it was driving her part mad. But there was little she could do about it, because the hours suited her. Looking after aged grandparents meant that she couldn’t take a full time job, so she came here every day and, at least once a week, needed her wellington boots so that she could wade through excrement and lavatory paper. ‘Up to you,’ she said before resuming her attack on a circular table. ‘I can’t do any more.’

  Ernie stood for a few moments and watched Agnes at work. She was a corker, all right. Denis Makepeace was a lucky fellow, because his wife was built like a perfect sculpture – rounded, ripe and strong. She was a good worker, too. She did her job, invited and offered few confidences, then rushed home to see to her elders. ‘How’s the family?’ he asked.

  ‘All right,’ came the dismissive response.

  The landlord sighed before retreating to his living quarters.

  They were a long way from all right, mused Agnes as she placed a pile of ashtrays on the counter. Nan was dying of cancer, while Pop, who had been the old lady’s chief carer, was fighting for the right to return from a world all his own. Only last week, he had been marched home by a bus conductor, a female whose vehicle had remained stationary for at least ten minutes at the top of Noble Street. Agnes could still hear the woman’s shrill voice. ‘Can you not keep him in? He’s no right to be on a public vehicle in his dressing gown and carpet slippers. Said he were on his way to catch the train to Southport – and his train ticket were nobbut a label off a condensed milk tin. I can’t be leaving the bus to bring him home all the while.’

  Agnes swallowed hard while she wondered what Pop had got up to today. She’d locked the front door, but he needed to get out into the yard for the lavator
y, so the back door was on the latch. Into the open drain beneath the tippler, he had thrown his lower denture, a week’s worth of newspapers, one brown shoe and, she suspected, an antimacassar taken from the front room. It was probably Pop’s fault that the area’s drains were getting blocked. No, it couldn’t be him. The stoppage was the sole property of Ernie Ramsden and the Dog and Ferret.

  ‘I’ll just have a go meself,’ muttered Ernie as he struggled past with his rods. He was always having a go himself and he knew that the problem was way beyond the reach of his rods.

  Agnes prayed that she had left no matches in the house. Pop needed to be separated from anything combustible or sharp. Knives were wrapped in sacking on the top shelf of her wardrobe. What a way to live. If she’d been one for visitors, she would have needed to excuse herself in order to fetch an implement with which to cut cake. But few people came to the Makepeace house. Denis’s work took him away from home for many hours – and who wanted to sit with a poor old woman and a mad old man?

  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 a
nd 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.