18. JUDY’S STORY

Judy tells Chantelle some news that surprises her

Chantelle was in a daze as she slowly walked down the road on which she lived and away from the small house she’d called home for all of her now seventeen years of life. That road shrivelled at its ending until it became the familiar and almost overgrown Durnley Bottoms where she had loved to walk unhindered by the problems that life from time to time slings the way of every teenage girl.

It was the spring time of the next year and everything had been sorted out by Mr Penn. The contents of the bank security box had been turned into An unbelievably huge amount of cash. Legal affairs were all seen to, every t crossed and every i dotted. One year had drawn to its ending as all this happened, and another year begun.

This might be the last time she walked down here. She had a fortune in the bank and she knew that her parents would dearly have loved to move to a better area and a larger house. And she could afford those things. The contents of one safety deposit box made sure of that!

Her father had been one of two boys brought up as well as she could by a widowed mother with never enough money to quite make ends meet, and her mother was the product of an alcoholic mother and a drug-doused father, and had been taken by the local authorities to prevent any harm behind done to her by her actual parents and had placed in the hands of an older woman who had abused her.

Her introduction to the world of grown up humans had been frightening, but the lad she eventually married had saved her. She met him when she was crying after a bout of harsh discipline from her foster mother and he both comforted her and showed her there was a better way to live than that which was being imposed on her. In the loving arms of a caring boy she learned how to love, and did she love! She worshipped him, did anything for him just as he did anything for her. As far as she was concerned he was both the father she had never known and the lover she had always wanted.

Chantelle’s parents had married the moment her mother fell pregnant, and Chantelle was the product of a truly loving liaison, and nothing could have been better for the child. Few girls were happier or better balanced than Chantelle. She even had Durnley Bottoms to escape to should problems come her way as problems inevitably do from time to time.

She had walked past the bungalow where Baxter lived a hundred times or more without giving it a moment’s thought, and this time, in the knowledge that the old man was dead and she puzzling over where her life might go now that she had inherited an awesome fortune, she saw the woman she knew as Baxter’s daughter standing at the orchard gate.

“I was waiting for you, Chantelle,” she said.

If this was the Judy who had only spoken roughly, harshly, even crudely, the change in her astounded the girl. She was smartly dressed, even fashionably, and her hair looked cared for, her skin cleansed, and when she opened her mouth to speak even her teeth looked white. But it was still Judy.

They hadn’t met again since before Baxter had passed away, that one meeting being quite enough for Chantelle. But Judy, it seemed, now lived in Baxter’s home and was even making some changes to it. The orchard was there still, as fragrant as ever, but the huge porch had been opened up until it was more like a conservatory than a porch. There was a brand new lawn growing with where last time she’d been there had been what had looked like a barely used vegetable patch. And above all, window frames and doors had been brightened up so that the whole place looked more cheery.

“How did you know I’d be here?” asked Chantelle, pausing in her walk.

“I’ve waited almost every day since dad died,” confessed Judy. “I wanted to thank you.”

“Me? What have I done?” asked Chantelle, confused.

“My father never knew me,” sighed Judy, “he was so obsessed by inheritance going down the male line he never considered that there might be a female one too. I suppose he was trapped in time, his thoughts moulded by the way people thought in past ages. Will you come in and let me explain to you what I want you to know and understand.”

“I suppose I can, for a short while,” nodded Chantelle.

They went into the bungalow and from what she could see it was obvious that Judy had made a real effort to change it from a home that for generations had been in the hands of old men, first Baxter’s father and then Baxter himself.

“Coffee?” she asked.

Chantelle nodded.

“Before all this came along it would have been gin for me, even in the morning,” Judy told her, “but with a change of fortune has come a change of taste. I no longer fancy getting brain dead every morning!”

Chantelle could think of nothing to say to that, so she remained silent.

“It’s about property, and dad had a huge fortune stashed away, more than I’ll ever know I guess because I never recovered all the keys that I buried in an old hollow tree in a different life. How stupid I was! I knew they were important, but look where I put them!”

“But I found them,” smiled Chantelle.

“And if you hadn’t more would most likely have gone astray. They say there’s a magpie’s nest lined with shiny keys somewhere in the woods down Durnley way!”

“I hope it hasn’t left you short,” murmured Chantelle, who could tell that Judy had far from been left short.

“No chance of that! I never knew it until he was dead, but I found out that dad was probably the richest man in the world! But instead oif flaunting it he squirrelled it away as had his father and grandfather before him, in bank vaults all round the world, with only the keys to show for all that wealth, and hardly anyone guessed he was more than any moderately wealthy old man.”

“And all because he wanted a son to inherit it,” murmured Chantelle.

“Yes. His will specifies that it must only pass to the future via the male line,” explained Judy, “and when that line peters out the huge fortune must be divided between a list he provided, charities many of which no longer exist! There was one for the preservation of those stove-pipe hats men used to wear! And another to establish a school for the offspring of wild cats in Derbyshire!”

“And that’s what’s going to happen?” asked Chantelle, shocked.

“They thought so, the money men, and they were rubbing their hands in anticipation of all the interesting little problems they might encounter when dealing with his will, but they forgot one thing...”

“They did?” asked Chantelle.

“Of course. The male line isn’t defunct! Far from it! I’ve got a son, product of an unfortunate liaison I had in the bad old days when I hardly knew myself but made money the hard way, by selling my body. And I have proof that he’s Baxter’s grandson. DNA doesn’t lie no matter which side of the sheets a body’s conceived in!”

“Oh,” murmured Chantelle, “that’s good, then.”

“It’s even better than good,” grinned Judy, “he was adopted by some folks round here when I was in a bad way and he knows you. He says he knows you very well. You may recall him. Hisis name is David...”

© Peter Rogerson 17.12.19