Judith Read online

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  Noel Streatfeild

  JUDITH

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  Contents

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

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  Also by Noel Streatfeild

  and available from Bello

  The Whicharts

  Parson’s Nine

  A Shepherdess of Sheep

  It Pays to be Good

  Caroline England

  Luke

  The Winter is Past

  I Ordered a Table for Six

  Myra Carrol

  Grass in Piccadilly

  Mothering Sunday

  Aunt Clara

  Judith

  The Silent Speaker

  PART ONE

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  IT WAS for Judith as if the world stopped turning when Mother said:

  “Your Father wants to see you. He’s coming over for his sister Charlotte’s wedding. You will be a bridesmaid.”

  Mother hated a lot of questions, she liked to be obeyed quickly, then to be left alone to get on with her writing. As casually as she could, Judith said, “Yes, Mother,” closed the door, then flew to her governess, Miss Simpson.

  Judith lived a wandering life. Mother hated many things, amongst them cold weather, seeing the same dreary faces too often, publishers’ cocktail parties, and “your Father’s family.” To avoid these they moved about. There was not a great deal of money, for Mother’s novels were of the type that receive rave notices from the critics, but do not appeal in a big way to those who read or borrow novels. There was as well a tiny private income and an allowance for Judith from her Father; Mother would not take an allowance, in fact she spoke of Judith’s as though it smelt. “We can buy that out of your Father’s pittance.”

  Moving about is an expensive business, there is always someone to tip, something to be repaired in the apartment left, something bought for the apartment newly rented. When Mother made her startling pronouncement they were living in Nice. Not on the Promenade des Anglais, where in February it was often sunny and warm, but high up on the Boulevard de Cimiez where, if the wind blew off the Alps, they got the full blast of it, and any walk meant stiff climbing going or coming. The apartment had, as had all their winter apartments, a room which caught what sun there was, in which Mother worked, and a salle à manger which, besides being eaten in, was the schoolroom. At the dining-room table, pretending to be preparing the day’s lessons, but actually listening for Judith’s returning feet, sat Miss Simpson.

  Agnes Simpson came of a family who did odd jobs abroad. Her father had been something to do with Cook’s, and had worked for that firm in almost every country except England. One brother had followed in father’s footsteps, and joined Cook’s, the other had settled in Java, her only sister owned a small tea-shop in Rome. Mother felt that Judith would never learn anything if she went to a different school in each place she settled, so a governess was the answer. They were in Rome when she came to this decision. Judith had then been five, and out-growing a nurse. Agnes was poised between two jobs; she had just finished polishing the English of two Spanish girls, and was about to join the teaching staff of a Swiss school. An acquaintance who knew the sister’s tea-shop heard of Agnes, and brought her and Mother together. It was not a case of love at first sight, but a case of both sides knowing at first sight they were getting what they wanted. Agnes was then thirty-five and looking older, and had long accepted she was unlikely to marry. This had not worried her, for she enjoyed her life, but the death of first her father, and then her mother, had slapped into her that she was now very much alone. Of course Mary, the sister with the tea shop, was pleased to see her now and again, especially at Easter, and other times when she was busy. The brothers, both married, would make her welcome for short visits, but now between jobs she was homeless. Oddly enough, seeing they had scarcely put a foot in England, her parents on retirement had bought a little house at Sidmouth, and so Sidmouth had, though she had never considered it that way, been Agnes’s home. Now where was home? Only where her luggage rested. A dismal thought, especially as the Swiss school, like other schools, would have holidays, and where would she go then?

  What Agnes wanted was something permanent, and to feel she was needed. Mother made it perfectly clear that what she was looking for was someone to take Judith off her hands.

  “Not too many lessons at first, but her languages must be first-class. She will want taking out, and feeding, and I believe she still needs washing. I will give you what help I can, but I do not like being disturbed when I am working.”

  Mother never pressed anyone to work for her, pressing made them tiresome and feel indispensable, so she did not press Agnes, she merely stated her needs, and hoped the creature would wish to work for her. Nobody could have been more what she had in mind for Judith than Agnes. She had been convent educated, and though she had no degree, she had countless references which made it clear that she was more than qualified to educate a child of Judith’s age, in fact would probably do until she sent her to a boarding-school. Since Judith was to spend most of her time with a governess, someone utterly trustworthy and respectable was needed. No one could look more respectable than Agnes. She bought clothes that would not crease when travelling or when packed, and would not show dust. Her face was pale, her hair vaguely ginger, she looked, Mother thought, as if she had a daily sponge with holy water. Even without the mass of enthusiastic grateful references, it was clear Miss Simpson was suitable in every way. “Almost,” thought Mother, “the creature smells suitable.”

  The Miss Simpson Judith knew was a Miss Simpson Mother never saw. A loving Miss Simpson who considered Judith her family, and the place where she lived the equivalent of Sidmouth.

  Judith’s approach to Miss Simpson was slower. She needed no additional family, for she had Mother. Passionately, as other children collect shells, stamps or bus tickets, Judith collected kind words and kind looks dropped by Mother. As she grew older she exaggerated these looks and words and on them built day-dreams. She would be found dying. Mother would be kneeling beside her, washing her with tears, covering her with kisses, saying brokenly: “Don’t die, Judith. You are all I have, I couldn’t live without you.” Or she and Mother were in a car when the brakes broke, and she jumped out and lay under the wheels, and as Mother picked up her crippled body she cried out: “It will be like having a baby again. I shall do everything for you, Judith, always.” Or, and this was Judith’s favourite day-dream, she and Mother were washed up on a desert island. Everything Mother needed she found for her, everything she ate she cooked; they were never rescued and they lived alone on the island for ever. Day-dreams, however entrancing, cannot fill a child’s life, and that was how Miss Simpson found her place in Judith’s heart. Judith’s background was her Mother. Agnes Simpson did not consider her a satisfactory background, but since she was all there was, and a child must feel secure, she was willing to do what she could to help build up the fiction Mother the child believed in. Mother, though she left Judith to Miss Simpson, was an interferer. It was impossible for her, seeing Judith, not to feel she would be better doing something she was not doing. When, having finished work and eaten something off a tray, she found Miss Simpson and Judith happily amusing themselves indoors because the day was cold and inclined to rain, a wave of irritation would sweep over her, and force her to say: “What are you stuffing indoors for? Out you go, both of you.” Or when on a fine day she would pass them gazing at some flower, for Miss Simpson was a great botanist, the same irritation would explode out of her with: “When you walk, why don’t you walk? What you need, Judith, is a brisk two miles each day.” It was after words such as
these that Miss Simpson was such a collaborator. She knew that at the sound of Mother’s footstep Judith had held her breath, and perhaps prayed, for she always hoped Mother might say: “Come and talk to me, darling.” Or “I’ll take Judith with me to-day, Miss Simpson.” So insulated from hurt was Judith by her day-dreams that words spoken in Mother’s cold detached voice, however harsh, lost some of their sting before they reached her, but the rest of the sting was sucked out by Miss Simpson.

  “You know why we’re being sent out? Your Mother hopes you are going to grow up as delightful to look at as she is, and you don’t get a lovely complexion by sitting indoors.”

  “How right your Mother is, look at her figure. She often talks to me about you. She’s ambitious for you, dear, and determined you shall have a lovely figure too.”

  Subconsciously Judith knew Mother and Miss Simpson seldom talked about her, and when they did it was about her work and not her appearance. She half knew that after she was in bed Mother went out with friends, and Miss Simpson did petit point in the schoolroom, in fact they did not meet when she was not there. All the same she partly believed, because she so wanted to, that when she was asleep Mother and Miss Simpson sat together and talked of the most important person in their lives, herself.

  The great bond outside affection that tied Judith and Miss Simpson together was their terror of the Uncles. Mother had three brothers: one worked in the Foreign Office, and the other two were directors of the family publishing business. All three were intellectuals, who sneered at those who were not. As well there were Grandmamma and Grandpapa. They were even more frightening than the Uncles, but they had only appeared on two visits. Grandpapa was even more an intellectual snob than the Uncles; Grandmamma wrote poetry and essays, and was, Miss Simpson said, internationally famous. On the occasions when Judith had met them they had frightened her so much that just remembering them made her feel vaguely sick. Daily they had ordered Miss Simpson to bring her to their hotel, where Grandmamma had introduced her to what seemed to be everybody else staying there.

  “This is my grandchild, Judith Winster. No, not a bit like her mother, is she? Takes after the father. The Winsters? Oh dear no! A day’s fishing is their idea of intellectual amusement.”

  Grandpapa’s close-lipped speech would break in.

  “The fellow was crazy on horses. Yes, married again. An American. Never understood what Avis saw in the man.”

  Then would come the worst part. Grandmamma would hold out a hand, and Judith would have to go to her. A bony arm gripping her, Grandmamma would say:

  “How are the languages, Judith?” Then, speaking to everyone else: “Wonderful opportunity the child has, of course. It is so much better to learn languages in the country to which they belong, than over the schoolroom table. Judith has spent half her life in Italy and France. Will you recite, dear?”

  It was true Judith had lived in France and Italy, but only in stretches of about two months, in between they would go to some place where Arabic was spoken, or perhaps to Ceylon where she talked English. When they were in Italy or France Miss Simpson tried to arrange for Judith to speak to the natives as much as possible, but usually the only natives they knew were the cook, the maid, the postman and perhaps a few shopkeepers.

  “It is sad,” Miss Simpson said, “but in spite of our travels you might just as well be living in one country, Judith, for all the languages you know you learn from me. Then too, we have to accept, dear, that though you try very hard, you are not what is called a born linguist.”

  Judith knew this to be true, and a very shameful truth it was. Mother and all her family spoke three languages fluently, and one or two others reasonably well. In secret when Mother, who scorned nicknames, was not about Miss Simpson became Simpsy.

  “Isn’t it awful, Simpsy, to take after somebody you hate to take after? But I’m afraid I’ve got to face the miserable truth, over languages I take after my Father.”

  When Grandmamma and Grandpapa had last seen Judith she had been ten, and at ten it was still possible, though unpopular, to pretend to be shy when ordered to recite in Italian or French. Now that she was twelve and it would be less easy to refuse, she and Miss Simpson were united in hoping the Grandparents would never turn up again, to learn the shocking truth that neither French nor Italian sprang naturally from her tongue.

  “I say in my prayers: ‘Please God look after Grandmamma and Grandpapa,’ but I add, ‘please don’t send them here.’ I think that’s all right, don’t you, Simpsy?”

  Miss Simpson, in spite of her convent upbringing, had remained a Protestant, but a Protestant with a hopeful eye on the saints.

  “I am sure God will understand, dear,” Miss Simpson would agree. But she did not rely on Judith’s prayers. When the opportunity arose she would slip into a Catholic church and light a candle. The candle, no matter before whom it burned, was intended for St. Jude, for she believed him to be the most successful whisperer in the divine ear.

  “Please, if it be at all possible, reveal to Judith’s Grandparents some other place than here that they would enjoy.”

  Judith’s prayers and Miss Simpson’s candles might keep the Grandparents away, but no candles nor prayers availed where the Uncles were concerned.

  Ambrose, Herbert, Angus and Mother were noticeably of the same breed. They all had sharp-edged voices, they knew they were brilliant, and had cultivated tastes, and therefore spoke authoritatively on any question that needed brains or artistic acumen. They mentioned Judith as if she was a picture or piece of furniture of which they were fond.

  “The child improves, I think. She has nothing of us in her, alas, but she is faintly Greuze, which can be pleasant.”

  The Uncles were devoted to Mother, and she to them. Whenever one of them was in the house it was as if, for Mother, everything took on richer colouring. Work hours were relaxed, conversation went on all day, and in all places. Her brothers could do things that Miss Simpson and Judith would not dream of doing, even in an emergency. They would stand outside the door while Mother was in her bath, and read reviews of books or of a picture show to her, or tell her the plot of a play. They seemed to laugh a great deal though neither Judith nor Miss Simpson could make out at what.

  “It’s nothing we should understand, dear,” Miss Simpson would say, “but one thing we can be sure of, though it may sound a little bit unkind to us, it certainly cannot be, or your Mother would not laugh.”

  It was during the Uncles’ visits that Judith got her clearest mental pictures of her Father and his family. Nothing definite, just hints dropped like paper at a paper-chase. Father—Charles, as Mother and the Uncles called him—was a dull stupid person; it had been a lucky day for Mother when he had gone to America, and married someone else. Father’s family were a joke. Sometimes, never in front of her, Judith overheard Mother or one of the Uncles speaking in the special voice she had come to know was a Winster voice. What was said in that voice was usually something so obvious or incredibly stupid it made them rock with laughter. They called what they said in that sort of voice “Winsterisms”. From the hints dropped, Judith knew that her Father had treated Mother abominably. That it had been a gaffe marrying him. That expecting Mother to bother with his deadly family had been an act of cruelty, for naturally a person of her talent and sensibility could not endure their abysmal stupidity. She knew that being a Winster was something of which to be ashamed, and being a Stratford-Derickson, which Mother and the Uncles were, was something of which not only to be proud, but was a sort of magic name which made people who heard it look respectful. In her day-dreams Judith sometimes drowned or burned all the Winster relations, and heard her Mother say: “As there are none of your Father’s family left, darling, we will change your name. You will be Judith Stratford-Derickson now.”

  Miss Simpson was not able to make Judith proud of her Father’s family. She tried not to draw an unfair picture of them from the hints drop
ped, for, after all, as she reminded herself, she was only hearing one side of the story. But facts were facts, and the fact she knew was that Judith’s father had been divorced, and had left his child fatherless. Divorce was wrong, it was regrettable that Judith’s Mother had agreed to a divorce, but she probably thought it wiser to be entirely free of the man. One thing was certain: Mrs. Winster was, according to her lights, being a good Mother, while Mr. Winster was not only not being a good Father, he was not being a Father at all, for he had chosen to live in America, where he could not even see his daughter. Worst of all, he had been so shameless as to marry again.

  The Uncles understood that Mother naturally dreaded the thought of running into the Winsters, and so never came to England, but they thought she was making a mistake. Constantly Judith heard them pleading with her.

  “It’s so dreary for you trailing round with your suitcases. The unmentionables would never mix in your world. You are wasting yourself. Come back and give London a trial.”

  Judith was always frightened by that sort of talk. The little world of Mother, Miss Simpson and herself was all she wanted. Supposing one day Mother weakened, and they did go back to that London where, according to the Uncles, thousands of people wanted Mother. What of Mother would be hers if that happened?

  Mother, in her cool crisp don’t-be-foolish voice, would say: “Heaven spare me from publishers’ parties,” or “You know I can’t write where it’s cold and grey,” but she never said: “I’m quite happy where I am, thank you,” or “All I want is Judith and Miss Simpson,” so Judith never felt absolutely sure that one day she might not give in to the Uncles.

  Of all the things that could be said, what Mother had said was the most surprising. Judith was a fair child, and usually had a pretty colour. She returned to the schoolroom, her cheeks drained and her eyes wide and full of fright.