The Blind Miller

by Catherine Cookson

  Phyllis, sitting straight on the iron frame, eased her hip to one side before she said, ‘She wants us to go, an’ as soon as possible. There’ll be no peace until we get out.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘No, no, of course she didn’t, but she could manage him if we were out of the way.’ Phyllis sighed now, and tossing her head back and her long fair hair from her shoulders, she supported herself with her hands, gripping the iron frame of the mesh base as she looked up to the ceiling, and said dreamingly, ‘I wish I had a bust like yours.’

  This remark brought from Sarah a quick downward jerk of the head. The movement showed impatience and an effort to crush down laughter. She got up from the bed, and with her back against the narrow window sill she looked down on Phyllis, and once again tried to understand this mercurial sister, who could change not only a conversation but her manner so quickly as to leave you bewildered. She said, ‘You can have it, and welcome.’

  ‘That’s what they go for, a bust.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty, our Phyllis, I’ve told you.’ In embarrassment Sarah gathered the frayed end of the lace curtain in her hand and laid it in a bunch on the sill.

  ‘I’m not. I tell you I’ve watched you going past the bottom corner. An’ I’ve seen the men. Some of them look at your legs sometimes, an’ others at your face, but their eyes nearly always finish up on your bust.’

  ‘Our Phyllis!’ Sarah was now kneeling on the bed with one knee; pinning her sister down by the shoulders with her hands as she hissed, ‘Stop it! Stop such talk! And you only seventeen. You’re as bad as the women up the street standing round their doors.’

  The bed began to shake and once more they were enfolded together, their arms tight round each other, rocking from side to side, the springs making a zing-zing sound as they moved, until Sarah choked, ‘Stop it! You’ll have me mother up.’

  ‘I can’t help me bust.’ They were lying quiet now, their faces wet with their laughing.

  ‘Don’t try, you’ve got something there.’

  Again their arms were round each other, again the springs were zing-zinging.

  ‘Do you know you’ll have to go to Confession?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, talking about such things.’

  ‘Oh, our Sarah! You know you are a bairn in some ways. Do you mean to tell me you’d tell Father Bailey about your bust?’

  Sarah pulled herself off the bed; a battle was now going on inside her. This too was an old battle. She wanted to laugh loudly at Phyllis’ suggestion, but she knew that it was no laughing matter, for if she had been guilty of bringing up the conversation about her bust she would definitely have had to confess to bad thoughts.

  As she stood up there came from below the sound of a door banging, and the sound brought Phyllis from the bed too.

  ‘Better get in.’ They were whispering.

  Quickly they began to undress, standing where they were in the two-foot space between the wall and the iron bed. As they bent down to pick up their clothes their buttocks bumped and this brought a suppressed giggle from Phyllis, but Sarah, swiftly hanging her things on a hook behind the door, motioned her to silence. Then almost simultaneously they knelt down side by side and, crossing themselves, said their prayers.

  Sarah, holding the spring taut with gripped pressure from her hands, waited for Phyllis to crawl cautiously to the far side of the bed, and not until her sister was settled did she take her hands away. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed, she slowly allowed her large frame to sink towards her sister; and when they were close once again Phyllis whispered, ‘He’ll be disappointed that we’re in; he’ll have to find something else to yell about.’

  Sarah nodded, then whispered, ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Phyllis.

  They both turned slowly on to their backs and lay looking up at the flaking ceiling, fading now in the light of a summer evening.

  It was ten o’clock on this Sunday evening. It was warm and nice outside; couples would be strolling up in the country still, yet here they were packed off to bed as if they were still bairns. Well, Sarah supposed Phyllis wasn’t much more being just seventeen. But she herself was nineteen, nearly twenty. It couldn’t go on; it mustn’t go on. She thrust her long legs down the bed, and when her toes caught against the iron rail she bit tight on her lower lip and screwed up her eyes and in the bright sparked-off pain patterns in the depth of blackness in front of her lids she saw pictured in vivid detail the tea table in the Hetheringtons’ house. And once again she was overwhelmed with shame about the fork business, until the shame was suddenly flicked away and her eyes sprung wide with the thought, It’ll come to nothing, them being chapel.

  All along she had known it would come to nothing—what hope was there for a Catholic and a chapelite? It was a greater barrier than a social one. The Hetheringtons might live in the fifteen streets, but the gap between her family and them was as wide as between a prop man in the docks and one of the managers living in his big house down Westoe end in Shields. The fact that the four Hetherington men all went to work in collars and ties and that three of the men living in one house were actually in work, whereas her own father—as her mother had insisted she call him—hadn’t done a batt for the past seven years, and would have fought shy of it now if he had the chance of it, even this barrier, the difference which meant living with bugs behind the wallpaper or without them, could, with a miracle, have been surmounted, but not even time or death could alter the religious difference. And yet here she was, yarping on to herself about making a mess of using a fruit fork. That’s what she did, she told herself heatedly: she never faced up to things, always started worrying about some little thing that didn’t matter a damn, trying to cover up the bigger issues, like trying to cover the sky with a blade of grass. If you held the grass or anything else close enough to your eyes you could blot out what was behind it. At least for a time, then your arm got tired, so to speak. She had to face up to things in the end, but it was always in the night that they caught up with her, which was why she was so tired in the morning.

  Well, she had known who he was from the word go, hadn’t she? When he had stood outside the shop waiting for her she had known he was from the posh house at the end of Camelia Street. Everybody knew the big house at the end of Camelia Street because it wasn’t divided into two. It had seven rooms and a brass knocker on the door, and the curtains were always beautifully white.

  He had said to her ‘Hello’ and she had answered ‘Hello’ while sweat had suddenly burst into her oxters and the palms of her hands.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ He had stopped, as embarrassed as she was, and then she had answered, ‘No, no, not at all’, in the swanky tone she tried to adopt at times. She had got it from the people who came into the sweet shop—some talked swanky. But they didn’t get many like that, although it was a good-class shop.

  He said, ‘Can I walk home with you?’

  The shop was in Ocean Road in Shields and she always took the tram from the market place to Tyne Dock and there changed to the Jarrow tram. In the mornings she usually walked part of the distance to save the fare, but at night, her feet were nearly always swollen with so much standing, and her heavy build didn’t make them any better, so she was glad to sit down in the tram. But this first night they walked all the way from Ocean Road to Tyne Dock, then up through the arches, past Simonside Bank, which led up into the country, past the respectable New Buildings flanking the Jarrow Slacks, past the dark jumble of houses built on a rise and called Bogey Hill, and on to the fifteen streets. It was a long walk and she really only came to herself as they neared his street, Camelia Street, and she stopped as if she had been pulled to a halt with a rope and said, primly, ‘Thank you, but I can see me own way now.’ It was such a silly thing to say and she blushed with the stupidity of it, but he smiled and said, ‘Can I see you tomorrow night?’

  To this she merely nodded shyly.

  ‘The same time?�
� he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She was on the point of moving away when again she was halted, by the fascinating sight of a man raising his hat to her, a trilby hat.

  She had tried to walk straight because she knew he was still standing watching her, but her legs were tired, and they felt wonky, just as if she was slightly tipsy.

  There were men grouped at the bottom of all the streets past Dudley Street—Dudley Street was the sixth street from the top end. The men looked at her, they always did, but none of them spoke until she came to the corner of their own street. There were about a dozen men here; some were on their hunkers, some leaning against the wall, all with their coats and caps and mufflers on, although the night was stifling. The older ones hailed her, while the younger ones just spoke with their eyes.

  ‘Brought any bullets with you the night, Sarah?’

  She smiled, and with a feeling of gaiety answered them, saying, ‘There was only a box of chocolates over, and I knew you wouldn’t like them so I gave them away to the bairns.’

  ‘Oh, aye!’

  ‘Well, Aa never liked chocolates,’ said another; ‘acid drops is more in me line.’

  ‘Sherbet dips for me.’

  ‘I like suckers, oh! I’m very fond of a sucker.’ She was well past them when this remark was made; it came from a man who lived three doors down from her, a nasty man. She heard one of the older men saying, ‘That’s enough, shut tha’ gob.’

  The man who had spoken in the pitmatic was Mr Ferris and lived opposite to them. He had often slipped her a ha’penny when she was a bairn. They had no children of their own. She liked Mr Ferris…

  So that had been the beginning, only three weeks ago, and every night at half-past eight he had been waiting for her when the shop closed and he had walked her home. He had wanted to take her to the pictures, but she had refused. When at the end of the second week he had again asked her to go to the pictures and she again refused he had seemed puzzled. How could she tell him it was because she felt shabby and hadn’t any Sunday things. It was different being met coming from work, you weren’t expected to be dressed up then. Then last Saturday night he had asked her if she would come to tea on the Sunday, and she had stayed up late washing and ironing her skirt and blouse.

  The odd thing about all this was her father had never mentioned the matter. If he had known that she was seeing a lad of any kind the place would have been raised; he simply went mad if he saw her talking to a lad. He had belted her when she was sixteen because he had seen her coming up the road three nights running with the same lad. None of the lads around the Buildings made up to her—perhaps because she kept herself aloof, but she also knew that they were slightly afraid of Pat Bradley. This had puzzled her in her early years because her stepfather was an undersized, insignificant-looking man, but lately she had come to understand people’s fear of him, for there was an innate vicious strength about him that had nothing to do with his stature.

  Of one thing she was sure: if he had known about her meeting with David Hetherington she would have heard about it. There were a number of people who had seen her with David, Mrs Ratcliffe next door for one, yet none of them had split on her. She felt a warm feeling towards the whole population of the fifteen streets. But the warm feeling fled with the thought, Perhaps the longer he’s in the dark the bigger the bust-up there’ll be, and that’s what they’re waiting for. Her father was known as a know-all, and likely a lot of the men were laughing up their sleeves at the way she was hoodwinking him. They would think of it as hoodwinking although she had done nothing on the sly.

  Her mother had said last night, ‘There’ll be murder when he finds out; I would drop it if I were you.’

  And to this she had answered, ‘I will after tomorrow night. He’s asked me to tea, I’ll tell him then.’ Her mother’s answer had been, ‘My God! And them chapel!’

  She turned on her side now and began to pray:

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen. What am I going to do? Make him turn…don’t let him be bigoted, Holy Mother. Oh, Queen of Heaven, the ocean star, guide of the wanderer here below.’ Her praying trailed away and slowly she turned her face into the straw pillow and pressed her nose until it was pushed to one side and her mouth bit on the rough ticking. Was she mad altogether? She had only known him three weeks and here she was thinking he would ask her to marry him. Yet why had he asked her home? Why was he meeting her every day if there wasn’t something in his mind? You didn’t ask a girl home unless it meant something. Yet he knew where she came from, he knew she came from the bottom end; in fact the bottom, bottom end, for they lived in the last street, the last habitable street. Beyond, the houses were so dilapidated, so overrun with bugs, that they were only inhabited now and again by flitters, and there was talk of them being pulled down any time. Yes, he knew where she lived, and his mother must know too. She had been afraid of meeting his mother; she hadn’t been afraid of meeting his father, or his brother, or his uncle. She wasn’t afraid of men as she was of women; not really, except perhaps her father. But his mother had turned out to be…well, all right in a way. Cautious; oh yes, very cautious. Scrutinising, looking her over from the side, and quizzing in her talk. How long had she worked at Bentons?

  Since she was fourteen, she had said; it was her first job.

  How long had her father been out of work? What was he when he was in work?

  He had been a platelayer, but that was before the war, and then he had been in the army, but could only get odd jobs since he came out. Work was very scarce. She had said this as if they didn’t know, and found the eyes of the three men on her—the father, the uncle, and David. The other son wasn’t there. He was married and lived in the next street.

  Where did her sister work?

  She worked in a cafe in Shields.

  She was glad they didn’t ask where the cafe was.

  David sat opposite her through the tea, and every time she became slightly overawed or embarrassed she would look at him. His eyes were always waiting for her. She thought he had the kindest eyes she had ever seen in a man. They were clear grey. They were his best feature, although he had a nice mouth too. All his features were nice, yet they didn’t make him good looking. She supposed that was because of his skin. It was rough, with red veins high on the cheeks, like a man who had worked in the blast furnaces all his life. His face was more suited to what she classed a working man than a man who worked in the dock offices. But his voice was not that of a working man. He had a lovely voice; soft, warm, kindly. She liked his voice and his eyes; she liked him altogether.

  His father must have looked pretty much the same at David’s age, but now his hair, instead of being brown, was wispy grey and he had a twitch in one eye. But he, too, was nice. Then there was the uncle. She had laughed when she was introduced to the uncle. David hadn’t called him uncle but Dan. ‘This is Dan,’ he said. ‘He’s really my uncle, but he’s only six years older than me so why should I call him uncle? And he’s a rogue, so you look out for him.’

  She had been at home with Dan right away, more than with any of them, even David. Dan wasn’t as tall as David, who was close on six feet, but he was broader, much broader, with a big square face. You could call Dan good looking. And from the start she had seen that Dan was what was known as a joker. He could keep the conversation going and make you laugh. And yet there was something about Dan that she couldn’t fathom; it was linked up in some way with his sister’s attitude towards him, the sister being David’s mother. She had noticed right away that Mrs Hetherington’s manner towards her brother was different altogether from the manner she used to either her husband or her son. Either she ignored him, or when she was forced to speak, as when she thanked him for passing something across the table to her, she did not look at him and her voice took on a prim sound as if she was displeased, like a teacher’s attitude towards an erring pupil. Sarah hadn’t realised this fully until now, when she was going over the whole sce
ne in her mind.

  But there was one thing she was sure of: all the Hetheringtons were wonderful; and if only David would ask her she would die of happiness.

  And so with another prayer to Our Lady to get him to turn, she dropped into fitful, dream-threaded sleep.

  Two

  The last customer was a boy about seven years old. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted jube-jubes, everlasting strips, or walnut-tray toffee. Sarah said as gently as she could, ‘We’re closing, hinny; come on, make up your mind.’

  The child thought a little longer, then, looking up, he asked, ‘Can I have a ha’p’orth of each of two of them?’

  Sarah sighed, ‘Which two?’

  Again there was some consideration and Sarah raised her eyes from the top of the boy’s head to the glass door and to the figure walking slowly past.

  As the boy’s mouth opened on his decision a voice from the back of the shop called quietly, ‘It’s time, Sarah.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Benton.’

  She flung the sweets into a bag, then pushed them at the boy; who had the temerity to say, with no small indignation, ‘Why, you’ve put them in the same bag! The jube-jubes’ll stick to the taffy.’

  ‘Go on,’ she hissed at him now.

  Having pushed him out of the door, she stooped quickly and shot the bolt in while keeping her eyes averted from the street beyond.

  She was getting into her coat as she said, ‘I’m all locked up, Mrs Benton. I’ll away then.’

  The elderly woman smiled quietly. ‘Yes, get yourself away…I wouldn’t like to have to pay for his shoe leather.’

  The colour flooded up into Sarah’s face. She hadn’t imagined that Mrs Benton had noticed David.

  ‘Is he a nice boy?’

  ‘Yes, very nice, Mrs Benton.’

  ‘Be a good girl.’

  Sarah said nothing to this, only her eyes widened a little as she turned away with her head bent. She felt she should laugh, but she couldn’t, for she was slightly annoyed. The admonition hadn’t been spoken in a jocular way, as one of their neighbours might have said it, but more broadly, more casually. ‘Divn’t dee what I wouldn’t dee unless ya want the priest after ya.’ No, Mrs Benton’s words had sounded like a warning and they made her feel hot. And so, when she came out of the side passage and he was standing there facing the alleyway, his first words were, ‘You look warm.’