The Blind Miller

by Catherine Cookson

  When she heard the knock on the front door she thought, Oh dear, somebody selling something again. But she was half through the front room when she remembered Mary Hetherington saying, ‘Your father called.’ She stopped for a moment. What if it was him?

  Her approach to the door was slow, and when she opened it her face was set, almost grim, and it didn’t change when she saw Father O’Malley standing below her on the pavement.

  ‘Good afternoon, Sarah.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Father.’ They stared at each other.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?’ This was no jocular request, it was made in the form of a command.

  Without answering, Sarah stood aside and the priest moved past her and into the passage, where he waited for her to close the door. She seemed to take some time over this, but when she at last passed him she said, ‘Will you come this way, Father. I’ll light the gas.’

  After the gas plopped and fluttered, then filled the mantle, its rays, through the pink porcelain globe, softened both their expressions. The priest was looking round the room and his gaze moved from the low-backed oak chairs to the legs of the table that had a stretcher joining them; then his hand going slowly out, he turned one of the chairs away from the table and without an invitation sat down.

  ‘You’ve got this very nice.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’ Sarah remained standing and he looked up at her, saying, ‘Sit down, sit down; we’ll talk more comfortably then.’ He was entirely in command of the situation…and her. She could have been the visitor. His features moved into what was for him a smile, but it didn’t lessen the agitation that was filling her.

  The priest began drumming his fingers in a rhythmic beat on the corner of the table, and he looked at them for a full moment before saying, ‘You are going to tell me that you are very happy?’

  Her body was stiff, yet her chin trembled as she answered, ‘I can say that, Father, and it’s true.’

  ‘The days are young yet, your life hasn’t begun. It would be disastrous at this stage if you found yourself unhappy.’ He paused. ‘The awareness of conscience is a slow process.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing on my conscience, Father.’ Her voice was trembling now, her agitation visible.

  ‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion, and time will prove which of us is right or wrong. God works in strange ways, sometimes through a series of disasters.’ The priest turned towards the fire as if he were actually seeing the events passing before his eyes. ‘Sometimes by withholding His hand until the eleventh hour. His ways are strange and it is not for us to question them…But it is our duty…’ Now his voice was stern and his eyes were riveted on her, and he repeated, ‘It is our duty not to bring His wrath upon us, not to aggravate Him too much.’

  Sarah swallowed. At least she made an effort, for she felt that she was choking. She felt as she had done when a child, that God was a man who lived up in Newcastle, a big pot of big pots. Someone who could order you, through the medium of the priest, to be condemned to hell. Hell to her then was the blast furnace, the blast furnace that illuminated the sky all over Jarrow when the residue was poured on to the slag heap. That was hell: hell was fire, and hell was in Jarrow, administered from Newcastle…such were the narrow boundaries of her world. She had been twelve before she could grope with the fact that hell was not directly connected with Newcastle, nor yet the blast furnace. But she still believed in hell, then, and now, and she still believed it was administered by God. And she still believed that people paid for their sins. But at the same time she knew that she didn’t want to believe it, and it wasn’t only since she met David that she had kicked against these beliefs. Her rebellion had begun to stir much earlier…yet not against her religion. No, it was against Father O’Malley’s delivered conception of God and of his own vindictive power that she had dared set her puny mind.

  ‘Why haven’t you been to Mass, lately?’

  ‘I have, Father.’

  The priest’s eyes narrowed. ‘I haven’t seen you, nor has Father Bailey.’

  ‘I go to Jarrow, first Mass.’

  ‘Why to Jarrow? All your life you have attended my church, so why to Jarrow?’

  She wetted her lips and cast her eyes downwards but did not lower her head because the thoughts in it tended to thrust her chin out and upwards. She didn’t go because of him. She didn’t go because they all looked at her. The girls she had gone to school with, their mothers and fathers, they all knew she had married a Protestant; and if that wasn’t bad enough, she had got married in a registry office. So to them she wasn’t married at all. That’s why she didn’t go.

  ‘It wouldn’t be because you’re ashamed of what you’ve done?’

  ‘No, I’m not ashamed.’ She was on her feet now, ‘I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Father. I’ve married a good man, a very good man.’

  The priest slowly drew himself upwards; he buttoned the top button of his black coat, took from the pocket his black gloves and put them on before saying, ‘You know as well as I do, Sarah, that in the sight of God and His Holy Church you are not married, in fact you are living in sin…Well, I’ll leave you with that thought, I’m always in the Presbytery any time you want to see me to make arrangements for the ceremony.’ He turned and walked into the dark room, and from there he said, ‘Tell your husband I’ve called.’

  She heard him fumbling at the front door, but she could not go to his assistance.

  She heard the door open and then close, and slowly she lowered herself into David’s chair. ‘I’ll see you in hell first.’ She did not recognise the sound of her own voice; it wasn’t a young girl’s voice, it was again the voice of a woman, the woman who had spoken to John on New Year’s morning. He was cruel, cruel. She was married, she was. He was a pig of a man, a swine. She shuddered at her daring, at the blasphemy of calling a priest a pig, a swine. Well, she didn’t care, she didn’t care if she was struck down dead this minute…he was. He was a priest, a Christian, and he had sat there prophesying disasters, wishing them on her; yes, wishing them on her to prove himself right…The awareness of conscience…God works slowly.

  She leaned back in the chair, feeling faint of a sudden. The fight seeped out of her. She felt funny, odd, and she asked herself was she frightened. Yes, she supposed she was. He had the name of being able to put the fear of God into anybody. Yet this was an odd feeling she had, a sickly odd feeling. She found that her stomach was acting in a strange way.

  She wished David was in, just to look at him, to feel his hands holding hers, to know that she was secure. She lay with her eyes closed and gradually the feeling passed. It was funny to feel like this, weak…she had said to David’s mother she felt as strong as a horse. Well, at this moment she felt as weak as a kitten, like a baby. The word brought her sitting straight up in the chair, a great question mark filling the room. She looked round as if for the answer. Then her eyes slowly came to rest on her stomach. She put her two hands across it and stroked it slowly, then whispered aloud. ‘Oh…oh…but I’d better be sure before I say anything…Yes. Yes. I’d better. It might only be fright through him…’

  When David came in, even before he changed his shoes or sat down and had a cup of tea, he took her in his arms. He looked at her, he kissed her. Then, holding her at arm’s length, he said, ‘Hello, Mrs Hetherington.’

  It was a game, a playful routine, but it was also something that set their marriage apart from other marriages. Marriages, everybody knew, sank into mundane ordinariness after a wedding. Life became a routine. Even a battleground of wills, of warring temperaments, of hitherto unrevealed personal habits, irritating, maddening personal habits which became obnoxious to the other party. Sarah knew all about marriage from this angle. She had witnessed the process around the doors. She had heard it discussed among women in the kitchen. She had seen it enacted between her mother and father. Their first flush of love had not reached even the pale pink tinted stage before reality had hit them. Terms such as, ‘Anybody see
n that old cow of mine?’ were thought funny and even a sign that a man loved his wife. That’s how marriage went in the bottom end. And people and attitudes weren’t all that different in the top end. Sarah was coming to this knowledge painfully. The upper stratum was only a bath-bricked step from the lower stratum. John had been right there.

  But her marriage was different. She had been married for weeks now and David seemed to get more loving and gentle every day…John had been right there too…Damn John! Damn the priest!

  ‘I said hello, Mrs Hetherington.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Hetherington.’ She rubbed her nose against his.

  ‘What’s the matter? You look peaked. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Of course, I’m all right.’

  ‘Have you been washing, doing all the lot? I told you last week that you hadn’t to do it, Mother can get Mrs Watson. She’s had her before…’

  She had her fingers over his lips. ‘You’re wasting your breath; I haven’t been washing, I’ve been sitting most of the afternoon with Dan.’

  ‘Well, that’s not good for you either. You’ve been up there too much. You’ve got no colour in your face…How is he?’

  ‘Oh, much better. He seems to have improved a ton today.’

  He turned from her now and, going to his chair and sitting down to change his shoes, he said, ‘I want to talk to you, Sarah, about Dan. You know what I told you about his friend…the woman down Westoe?’ He cast his eyes at her and she nodded. ‘Well, he hasn’t seen her for over a month, and on New Year’s Day, as bad as he was feeling, he wrote her a note, but he’s received no reply. He wrote another after he got over the crisis, and when he had no reply to that either it dawned on him that they hadn’t been posted; my mother just hadn’t posted them. Naturally he was worried. He didn’t know what she’d be thinking. From what I can gather—he did some talking to me when he wasn’t quite himself—things haven’t been running too smoothly lately in that direction. Surprisingly, he has asked her to marry him and she won’t. Anyway, to ease his mind I wrote to her and told her what’s happened. And I’ve talked the matter over with John, and he says that she should be allowed to come and see him if she wants to. It would likely get Dan on to his feet quicker than anything, for he’s very low at present and it’s not like him—he could joke with a gun at his head, could Dan.’

  Sarah, her mouth hanging slightly open, said, ‘Her come up here? Your mother would go mad.’

  ‘Yes, if she knew, but she needn’t. Dan’s likely to be confined to the house for weeks yet, so we thought that if Mother could be persuaded to go to the chapel meeting as usual on Wednesday afternoon the woman could come in here, and when mother’s gone she could slip next door for half an hour, no-one would be any the wiser.’

  ‘But, David, what if your mother didn’t go out?’

  ‘Well, that would be just too bad. But look.’ He reached out and grabbed her hand. ‘There’s no need to get worried. We’re not planning a bank robbery or anything like that.’

  ‘A bank robbery would be safer. What if she was to find out?’

  ‘But she won’t. Nothing will happen if she doesn’t go to the chapel meeting, that’s all there is about it. But don’t you see.’ He pulled her towards him. ‘It would please Dan, and I want to please Dan. He’s a good fellow is Dan. I’ve always known that, but I didn’t realise how much I’d miss him until I thought he was a goner. Come on, come on.’ He shook her hands. ‘Don’t look so frightened. If me mother found out, and she wanted to kill anyone, it would be me or John.’

  Sarah looked down at him in silence. She made a small motion with her head but she did not reply, except to herself, and she said, ‘No, no, she wouldn’t kill either of you, it would be me she would kill.’ And the knowledge brought a feeling of dread into her being.

  Five

  Sarah liked the woman from the moment she opened the door to her, but at the same time she wondered what Dan saw in her. She was quite well-dressed and she spoke nicely. Her manner was shy, quiet. She had about her a quality of refinement, but the impression she imparted to Sarah almost at once was that she looked nooled. Perhaps this was because she’d had a disastrous marriage, but still, that was over and she had Dan now and Dan wanted to marry her. And there was a timidness about her; she was like—Sarah searched in her mind to describe what the woman was like and, when the thought came to her…she looks like a superior mouse. She was pleased with herself because it was an indication that she was learning, that she was picking these things up from David.

  The woman’s name was Mrs Mount, Eva Mount. Sarah addressed her as Mrs Mount. She offered her tea and biscuits and tried to make conversation, but it was hard going.

  ‘Are you sure it’s convenient?’ the woman asked for at least the third time since her arrival, and Sarah assured her that it was, or it would be. ‘My husband did explain to you about his mother?’ She said this gently.

  ‘Yes, she did.’ Mrs Mount’s voice was small, high. She spoke in monosyllables most of the time. Only once more did she break away from yes, and no, to ask, ‘Dan has told you about me?’ And Sarah answered, ‘Yes.’ And added, ‘Dan’s nice.’

  Following this there was another silence, and Sarah, glancing at the clock, said, ‘It’s half past two. She’s likely gone now, I’ll go in and see.’

  Mary Hetherington had gone. John was in charge in the bedroom, and when she entered he looked quickly towards her and said, ‘All set?’

  She nodded, but towards Dan, an older-looking, much thinner Dan now, and he smiled at her and said, ‘You’re like a lot of conspirators. By! If this was to come out it would be the end of the world.’

  ‘I’ll go and get her.’ As she turned away John said, ‘I’ll make myself scarce an’ all. I’ll go over home for an hour. I’ll be back.’ He punched the air in the direction of Dan, and for answer Dan smiled weakly, saying, ‘Thanks for everything. If ever a war comes they’ll make you a general.’

  ‘Roll on a war.’ John was coming down the stairs behind Sarah now, and he added, ‘That’s what we want, a war.’

  Sarah wanted to say, ‘Don’t be silly.’ But, as always, she prevented herself from making any retort to John’s provocative remarks. She didn’t want to get him going in any way, she told herself. Like a dangerous dog, he was better left sleeping.

  They were in the living room now, alone, and as she went to pass him she looked at him because he willed that she should. She was an arm’s length from him and for a second or so they stared at each other until he asked quietly, ‘Not mad at me any more, Sarah?’

  And just as quietly, even gently, she replied, ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He turned abruptly and preceded her into the scullery, and as he opened the door to let her pass he said. ‘You’d better tell her to keep it to half an hour, just in case.’ And as he closed the door on them he said under his breath, with a laugh that was both sad and bitter, ‘The things we do for love.’

  Then they went down the yard and parted in the back lane without looking at each other again, but she was trembling. He could always make her tremble.

  Almost moving on tiptoe, Sarah led the woman from her house and in to Mary Hetherington’s. She never thought of her mother-in-law as ‘Mam’ although she now called her by this name; she thought of her as ‘she’, or ‘David’s mother’.

  As she opened the kitchen door the very house itself seemed aghast at the act she was perpetrating. She said hastily to the woman, ‘Give me your coat and hat. You’ll need them when you go out, it’s so cold.’

  But the woman said, ‘I’ll keep them on, if you don’t mind.’

  Without further ado Sarah led the way out of the room and up the stairs. Then, tapping gently on Dan’s door, she went in. She smiled at him, let the woman pass her, then went quickly out and down the stairs again.

  As she stood in the living room looking at the clock her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. Just supposing what would happen, just supposing sh
e walked in that door at this minute. Just supposing!…She gave a violent shake of her head. Why was she so frightened of her mother-in-law? John was right: she shouldn’t be frightened of anybody. She was big and strong enough to face ten Mary Hetheringtons, yet…She looked at the clock. Only five minutes gone. She wished, oh, she wished somebody would come. Oh, she’d better be careful and state her wishes precisely, else who knew but his mother herself might walk in the door. She wished John would come back. She didn’t feel half so afraid when he was about; not of other people anyway, only of him, but that was a different kind of fear.

  She filled the kettle and set Dan’s tea tray. She took the chenille cloth off the dining table and put on the lace-edged one, the second best, and set the table for two.

  She looked at the clock again. The woman had been up there twenty minutes. Oh, she wished she had said a quarter of an hour instead of half an hour.

  There were two pairs of shoes by the door with mud on them; she cleaned them. The woman had been upstairs now twenty-seven minutes. She gazed up towards the ceiling, and as if her anxiety had prised through the floor she heard footsteps walking towards the bedroom door. She heard it open and close, then she herself moved towards the living room door. She was two steps from it when the key turned in the front door and she let out an agonised exclamation that was also a prayer. ‘Oh God in Heaven!’ she groaned.