20. THE BOY DAVID

Events and riches move on...

“David remembers you,” assured Judy, “I’ve become reunited with him. At least, he knows who I am and how I fit into his life as what they call his birth mother...”

She sighed.

It hadn’t been easy, finding him and approaching his foster parents who believed they had him for good, or at least as long as he wanted them to have him. And the relationship between the m and her son had always been good. As far as they were concerned he was a particularly good boy with few faults, and soon he’d be off to University to start his future. At eighteen he was about a year older than Chantelle, though the slight age difference hadn’t been a factor during their youthful friendship.

She had found out where he lived, with his foster parents, Mr Penn had helped there. He had arranged the transfer of some of the vast wealth she was had every right to inherit from her mother. It was still in a box in Howard’s Bank where Colette could have collected it had the note from Baxter not been so obscure, but if she didn’t locate him hw wouldn’t inherit so much as a farthing because it had to be established beyond doubt that the boy was the grandson of Baxter Spendthrift. Anyway, she could easily afford the likes of Mr Penn to perform those tasks she would have struggled to even begin, and David was located.

The hard bit had been meeting the foster parents. They knew she existed, of course they did, and they had a rough idea where she lived, in a hostel provided for the down and out to shelter in when they needed to, and she had always avoided that corner of the poorest area of Brumpton because the last thing they wanted to do was bump into her.

And in the same way Judy she avoided them, more out of shame than anything, though she did keep a distant eye on her lad when she was sober enough to do so. But the time came for her to finally pull herself together and knock their door. So she plucked up her courage, dressed as smartly as she could, and after a moment staring at the door, lifted up the knocker and rattled it.

They didn’t recognise her straight away because she was no longer the bag lady who had given up her son to their care but a smartly dressed and uncharacteristically clean woman with little evidence of the dissolute life she had spent most of her life living.

It was the woman, Mavis, who had opened the door, and she looked curiously at the strange woman standing on her doorstep, clearly lost for words.

“May I help you?” she asked.

Judy may have looked different from the bag lady she had been, but she was still the same woman with the same past experiences and established attitudes.

“I’m Judy,” was all she could say.

“Judy?” asked Mavis, frowning and trying to remember if she knew a Judy. But as she struggled to think a nugget in her memory suggested there was one woman, a lost soul who’d opened her legs for anyone with enough coppers to afford her filthy flesh, and the very thought vanished in an instant when she saw the cultured appearance of her visitor.

But it was the woman who gave her cause to pause.

“David’s birth mother,” she said, slowly and precisely.

“Oh,” stammered Mavis. She frowned, “are you sure?” she asked.

Of course she was sure! But she understood the doubt in the other woman’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “visiting you like this. I should have maybe written first. The solicitor Mr Penn suggested that I did that, but it seemed such an impersonal thing for me to do. And I would understand if you slammed the door in my face. I’ve not had the easiest life, but I may be the bearer of welcome news...”

Mavis obviously thought that it was most unlikely that she was the bearer of anything but bad news, standing there in a smart suit and, to her surprise, wearing quality and very clean shoes!

“It’s a question of inheritance,” said Judy, a trifle uncertainly, “David’s, not mine. If it is established beyond doubt that he is my son and that the bloodline of the Spendthrift dynasty flows in his veins, then he is probably the richest man in the world.”

And that had been that. She had bid an open-mouthed Mavis a warm-hearted farewell with the words “we’d best let the legal men take things from here,” and slowly walked off, with the least trace of her earlier life marking her slow progress down the road and out of sight.

“She was probably a bit shocked, the foster mother I mean, her name is Mavis,” she told Chantelle, “I doubt she was expecting a visit from me nor that I looked anything like the despicable creature she thought me to be nor that I was going to leave without seeing my boy...”

“I should think she was worried that you might want to spirit him away,” suggested Chantelle.

“Maybe,” shrugged Judy, “but that’s nowhere near being on my agenda. They’ve brought David up and I’m sure they’ve done a grand job and made him happy. They’ve given him opportunities I couldn’t even dream of and Mr Penn tells me he’s going to University next autumn. No, that’s an apple-cart I have no intention of upsetting, though I would like to get to know my boy rather than just stand in a bus shelter and watch him walk past on his way to school or to see,” here she grinned at Chantelle, “or so see his beautiful girlfriend!”

“Hey, we were friends, that’s all,” protested Chantelle, “though he did kiss me once! I’d never been kissed before that and it came as a wonderful shock, I can tell you. You see, I’ve always counted David as the best of friends and he can kiss me any time he likes!”

“You mean, as a lover?” smiled Judy, “as a very special lover, because if that’s what he is I envy you. I had loads of men who used the word lover loosely as though their relationship to me was more than a loose financial half hour, but that’s all it was. I never had a true lover…”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Chantelle, not sure how to deal with what had become an awkward conversation. “I think you must be a really nice lady,” she added.

“Oh, I’m not that yet,” laughed Judy, “but I am trying. But tell me again. What do you really think of my David?”

“I like him very much,” replied Chantelle uncertainly. “I always have. He’s really … wonderful.”

“That’s just as well,” came a new voice from a door that suddenly opened, showing other rooms beyond it, “because I’ve always thought you very special, too.”

He was taller than he’d been, but when she looked she knew it was David, and for no good reason that she could think of Chantelle started crying.

© Peter Rogerson 19.12.19