The Blind Miller

by Catherine Cookson

  She stood in front of him, smiling widely now. ‘I am…I’ve just finished a big deal…a shipping order.’

  ‘Yes?’ His smile too was wide as he waited.

  ‘That bairn you saw coming out. He couldn’t make up his mind how to spend a penny. He wanted jube-jubes, everlasting strips, and walnut toffee. He just couldn’t make up his mind.’

  ‘What eventually did he plunge for?’

  ‘A ha’p’orth of walnut taffy and a ha’p’orth of jube-jubes, then he went for me because I put them in the same bag.’

  Their heads back but their eyes holding, and still laughing, they turned away and walked as one, not touching, yet their bodies joined through the rhythmic swing of their limbs. But at the corner of Fowler Street, where it branched off Ocean Road, he stopped and said, ‘We’ll get the tram here.’

  She turned her head quickly towards him. They had done the journey on foot every night since they had first met. It was the only time they had together. She watched his eyes flick down towards her ankles as he said, ‘You’ve done enough standing for one day.’

  She had the desire to crouch down, covering her feet with her clothes, as she had done when a child, when they had played mothers and fathers in the backyard and she had always wanted to be the baby which had occasioned her doubling herself in two. But now she looked down at her ankles and she hated them. They were the only part of her body that she hated; in her opinion they spoilt her. For she could not help but be aware that her body earned her the northern compliment of being ‘a strapping lass’. In the morning her ankles were as thin as her wrists, but they always swelled if she stood on her feet for any length of time. With her build she supposed she should have tried for a sitting-down job. As it was, there wasn’t even a stool behind the shop counter.

  ‘They get like that with standing.’ She didn’t want him to think that they were always swollen.

  ‘I know; Dan’s swell too.’

  Dan, she had been surprised to learn, worked in a grocer’s shop in Jarrow. She imagined that he would have worked in the dock offices, seeing that David and his father did. She didn’t know where the other son worked; she supposed it was in the dock offices too.

  She said, ‘But I don’t mind walking, they don’t pain.’

  ‘Nevertheless we’re taking the tram.’ His voice sounded firm, nicely firm. ‘Here it is; come on.’ He took her arm and hurried her across the road.

  As they were going up the gangway of the tram he spoke to a workman sitting in the back, saying, ‘Hello there, Fred.’

  ‘Hello there, Mr Hetherington.’

  The distinction in the form of address pleased Sarah. She felt proud, as if she was bathing in the glorified reflection of a title; the workman had called him Mr Hetherington.

  David’s hand was on her arm now, pulling her gently back, and he ushered her into the seat in front of the man; then, twisting round, he asked him, ‘Did you get it, Fred?’

  ‘No-o.’ The word was drawn out, it was a long deep thick syllable. ‘There was about thirty waiting for it. It’s no good, man; even a bit of influence isn’t any good any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, Mr Hetherington, man. It was good of you to put me on to it.’

  David turned to give the conductor the fares, then he looked at Sarah and said under his breath, ‘It’s frightful, this business, trying to get a job.’

  Sarah didn’t catch all he said because of the rumble of the tramcar, but she gauged he was speaking sympathetically about the man. Then he turned again and, looking over his shoulder, said, ‘Try Fullers, Fred, first thing in the morning. There might be something doing, you never know. You’ll find our John somewhere in the yard.’ His voice dropped. ‘If you can get a word with him on the quiet, tell him I sent you.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Mr Hetherington. Thanks, I’ll do that. I’ll be up afore the lark. Man, this life gets you down.’

  ‘Good luck, Fred.’

  ‘Aye, good luck, that’s what we want. And good luck to you, sir.’ His eyes flicked to Sarah’s profile and back to David, and the jerk of his head was an open compliment. He rose to his feet, jabbed at the bell pull, as the conductor was upstairs, and brought the tram to a stop.

  David did not look at her as he now said, ‘It gets me down, to see them standing about, rotting away. I remember him as a big man when I first started in the dock office. Now he seems to have shrunk to half his size. It has effect on all of them in the end: it shrivels up something inside of them, I suppose.’ Sarah glanced sharply at him, her face quite grave. She had heard all he had said and somehow she didn’t like it; she didn’t like to think of him associating with workmen, talking to them as man to man. He was from a different world, from the top end. He worked in an office. She wanted to keep him, at least in her mind, secluded, away from all contact with labourers, riveters, platemen, propmen, trimmers, pitmen and the like.

  And then he said, ‘My brother’s a foreman joiner, it’s a small firm, but he’ll set him on if it’s at all possible.’

  His brother a joiner? This news came in the form of a blow, even with the title foreman before it. She hadn’t imagined one of the Hetheringtons working in the docks, actually working among the rough-and-tumble. Oh, she wasn’t an upstart, she wasn’t, and she didn’t want to be an upstart, she didn’t. Her mind reiterated the phrase as if she was answering in agitated defence some voice that was spitting scorn at her, and her environment-encumbered mind, being unable to put forward any argument to uphold her snobbishness, ended helplessly, Oh, I just want to get away from it all.

  She was looking at her hands encased in thin cotton grey gloves—an outward sign of gentility. And from her hands her gaze dropped to David’s feet. He was wearing nice brown shoes, very highly polished. He had worn black ones last night, but then he had been wearing a dark suit. Fancy having different shoes to go with different suits. She had seen him in two different suits besides grey flannels and a tweed coat.

  ‘Have you dropped something?’

  ‘No.’ She jerked her head up to him. ‘I…I was only looking at your shoes.’ She hadn’t meant to say any such thing.

  ‘Oh…the polish?’ He brought his lips tightly together and his eyes twinkled as he bounced his head before saying, ‘My mother. She polishes all our shoes. You would think she had been trained in the army.’

  She answered his smile, but weakly. It was as her mother was so fond of saying…you got everything in batches. And it was true in every aspect of life. He had talked to the workman as if he was on the same level as the man. Then he had told her his brother was a fitter, and now he had pricked the illusion of the exclusiveness of his family, by telling her his mother cleaned all their shoes. Why, even her father, as bad and as lazy as he was, cleaned his own shoes.

  The tram was rumbling its way down Stanhope Road now, and as it passed the Catholic church, the church that she had attended from when she first went to school, she bowed her head deeply in obeisance to the Sacred Heart that was ever present on the altar. It was an involuntary, almost an unconscious movement.

  That the action had not been lost on David was given to her just after they alighted at the bottom of the dock bank and had crossed the road, beginning the walk through the arches towards East Jarrow.

  ‘Are you a regular attendant at church?’ he asked, smiling quietly.

  ‘A regular attendant?’ She repeated his phrase as if muttering a foreign language, and then said hastily, ‘Yes, yes, I go every Sunday. We have to.’

  They walked on in silence for a few minutes before he said, ‘I used to go every Sunday too. To chapel, that was.’ He smiled, rather apologetically, following this statement.

  ‘Don’t you go now?’

  ‘No…no. I’ve never been since I was eighteen.’

  There came a lightness to her mind. This could make things easier, oh, so much easier. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  He moved his head slowly. ‘I just couldn’t stand
it any more. The narrowness, the idea that God belonged to the Baptists and he would shoot you down sort of business if you didn’t think along the particular lines they laid down appeared mad to me. Of course I didn’t see it all in a flash, I had a long time of troubled thinking to go through. But now I think people are quite bats, almost insane, to believe that if there is a God he’s there just for them and their particular way of thinking, while the rest of the community—and not only the community but the world—is damned if they don’t come in with them.’

  Her mind for a moment was devastated. If he thought that about the Baptists what did he think about the Catholics, for the Catholic religion was the only one true religion, and every Catholic knew this and maintained it. They might stay off mass, they might get drunk, the men might knock their wives about, but when they went to Confession and their sins were absolved, they knew that they were receiving a privilege given to no-one except a Catholic…The devastation moved its dull sickening weight to allow for a ray of brightness. Didn’t his attitude make things easier? The very fact that he was no longer a chapelite made the battle half won. But even as she thought this she said, ‘But you believe in God?’

  ‘I just don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I know positively that I don’t, at others…well, I just don’t know. I could cry for the greatness, the simplicity, the naiveness, in Jesus. I could wring his hand for his detestation of the holier-than-thous. I could walk beside him as he smiles on the publicans and whores. But I can’t see eye to eye with him when he tells me that the slow, slow force that urged a seed into a tree, then compressed it into fuel for firing for man it had not yet conceived—is my Father. But does it matter all that much? Does it matter much?’ He was walking close to her now, his face, long and serious, turned towards her, and she did not look at him as she answered quite untruthfully, ‘No, no.’

  Again they were walking in silence, and now they were on a quiet stretch of the road bordered by high stone walls that ran between Simonside Bank and the Saw Mill, and it was at a spot where no-one was in sight that he suddenly took hold of her arm and brought them both to a stop. His hand still holding her, his eyes roamed round her face, and in a way that she termed quaint he said, ‘Hello, Sarah.’ She had the desire to giggle; it was funny the way he said it, as if they had just met, and her lids began to blink as his eyes slowly picked out her features. It was as if he were detaching them from her face and examining them. When his eyes came to rest on hers again he said, ‘What about it, Sarah?’

  She didn’t know how to answer. She wetted her lips, which were trembling, and, like the fool she told herself she was, she remained dumb, and he went on speaking. ‘I’ve never spoken your name before. We’ve come up this road twenty-five times. I’ve kept count—and I’ve never called you by your name. And tonight is the first time I’ve touched you, when I helped you on to the bus. You know something, Sarah…you’re very beautiful.’

  ‘O…oh!’ It was an inarticulate sound, like a groan.

  His eyes flicked from her now up and down the road and then he said softly, ‘May I kiss you?’

  Still she could make no answering sound, but her whole body spoke for her and the next moment they were close and his lips were on hers, gently, softly, as if afraid of what they were about. It was over in an instant, and then silently again they were walking up the road, their arms rubbing every now and again. Her body felt light, there was no longer any heavy tight pressure around her ankles, she seemed to be afloat. They passed the open space of the Jarrow Slacks. The tide was high and there were children playing on the timbers. They passed the tram sheds. They passed Bogey Hill. And not until they walked up the bank that led to the plateau of the fifteen streets did he break the enchanted silence.

  ‘Will you come to Newcastle with me tomorrow night, Sarah, to a show?’

  ‘Ooh!’ It was another groan, but a different kind of groan. Go to Newcastle and do a show. That would be living indeed; hitting the high spots. Oh, if only she could say yes. She had her pay in her pocket, eighteen and six; it was good money and she could have been dressed up to the eyes if she had been able to keep at least the eight and six, but no, she had to tip up fourteen shillings each and every week. Then there was two shillings out of the remainder for her clothes club. That left half a crown and she wouldn’t have had that if she hadn’t stuck out for her bus fare each day. If only she could have managed a five-pound club she would have been able to rig herself out. Well, she would get a club. Her chest moved upwards on the decision. She would get a five-pound club and get herself a new coat and shoes…But that wouldn’t fix tomorrow. Her chest moved downwards again, and she answered, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tomorrow.’

  ‘Why? You said last week it was your early night off this Saturday…Sarah.’ Again they were standing facing each other, ‘There isn’t somebody else?’

  ‘Somebody else!’ Her voice was high, right up in her head, and she laughed as she repeated, ‘Somebody else?’ Then, putting her head on one side, she dared joke. ‘And where do you think he’s been every night for the last three weeks?’

  They laughed together, his head back in his characteristic style. And when he was looking at her again he asked, ‘Then why won’t you come?’

  Now her eyes were steady and travelling over his face. It was a good face she was looking into, a kindly, honest face, and as she stared at it, it came to her that this man had no side. The knowledge was warming. She felt wise, even superior, being able to appraise his character. She knew it was because of his lack of side that he was to the workmen one of themselves. That was why he could talk about his mother cleaning their shoes and his brother being a fitter. He had no side. Her revealed knowledge of him supplied her with the courage to touch the front of her coat, lifting it outwards, and say, ‘I haven’t any clothes.’

  ‘What!’ His eyebrows moved up in genuine surprise. Then his long face seemed to crumple into agitated concern and the end of his nose twitched with a rabbit-like movement before he went on, ‘Oh, my dear. Why, fancy you worrying about that! I’ve never even noticed what you’ve got on.’ His features spread outwards again into an amused smile. ‘Nobody will ever notice what you’re wearing, Sarah. You carry your clothes like…well, like someone who doesn’t have to have clothes to make her out. You know what I mean,’ he finished swiftly.

  Her lids were lowered. ‘It’s nice of you to put it like that, but a girl needs clothes. It does something to you to have nice clothes…new clothes.’

  ‘I tell you people will never look at what you’re…Oh, come on.’ He swung her away now, holding on to her, laughing. ‘You’re coming to Newcastle tomorrow night and the dames in their rabbit skins won’t be able to hold a candle to you.’

  Her chin was on her chest, her large body was shaking with a gurgle of intense happy laughter. Then abruptly it stopped. She was looking ahead, speaking quietly. ‘You know what?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you’re the nicest man in the world.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah!’ She was about to be pulled to a stop yet once again when she said hurriedly, ‘Eeh, no! Look, we’re nearing the streets. There’s people about.’

  She was blushing all over; she hadn’t intended to say anything like that, about him being nice. It was a bit forward at this stage, she supposed, like pushing herself, throwing herself on to his neck. But he wouldn’t take it like that, he wasn’t that kind, and she had meant it—he was the nicest man in the world. And he was a man. He looked a man, not a lad, or a chap; he was a man. She wondered how old he was, he had never said. He appeared about twenty-five or twenty-six. She seemed to have no control over her tongue tonight, for she heard herself asking quite boldly, ‘How old are you?’

  ‘What do you think?’ There was laughter in his voice again.

  She cast her eyes slantwise towards him as if taking a measure of his age, and then she said, ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘Twenty-six?’ His eyebrows went up. ‘Three years out.’

/>   ‘You’re not twenty-nine?’

  ‘No. Are you disappointed? I’m twenty-three.’

  No, she wasn’t disappointed, but he looked older. She was startled now as he said, ‘And you’re nineteen.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, I know when you left school.’

  ‘You do?’

  He leant near her and whispered menacingly, ‘I’ve had my eye on you for years, Sarah Bradley.’

  Again she was flooded with a happy gurgling feeling, an unusual carefree feeling. Fancy now, he’d had his eye on her for years…But if that was so, why hadn’t he come forward sooner? Perhaps because she had never looked at him. Now and again she had passed him on the road but had always averted her gaze, knowing he was from the top end.

  As they were passing Camelia Street two women came round the corner, and he said to them, ‘Good evening, Mrs Talbot. Good evening, Mrs Francis.’

  ‘Good evening, David,’ one of them said, while both of them nodded, with their eyes tight on Sarah.

  A coolness touched her warm body. What were they thinking? Oh, she knew what they were thinking: that he was mad. Well—she bridled inside—he wasn’t the only one that was mad, she was mad in her own way too.

  She stopped at their usual place of parting.

  ‘Why don’t you let me walk down with you?’

  She looked straight into his eyes. ‘Do I need to have to tell you?’ It was a relief to be honest. Since she had told him about her clothes she felt she could tell him anything.