The Miller's Daughter

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘Aye, I know. At first it was only like a teasing, a friendly rivalry with the Metcalfe brothers saying they’d have old Charlie’s mill one day, and ’im saying they’d never get their hands on it, that there’d allus be a Forrest at the mill.’ The kindly woman paused, knowing she was in danger of touching on a painful subject for Emma. Sarah cleared her throat and went on. ‘But then well things got a bit more serious.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  Suddenly, Sarah was evasive. ‘I – er – I’m not sure. Some rivalry over his wife, I think.’

  Emma laughed aloud. ‘Not over Grandmother Forrest. Surely not.’ Emma had never known her grandmother. All she knew of her was the picture of the sour-faced old battleaxe adorning, if that could be the right word, the wall in the best parlour upstairs. It was a companion picture to that of her husband, Charlie Forrest, and showed a formidable woman with her hair pulled severely back from her face. She had a thin, hard mouth and piercing eyes that seemed to follow everyone around the room, as if she was still watching all that went on in the family down the generations. Emma had often marvelled that huge, laughing, jovial Grandpa Charlie could have ever married such a woman.

  ‘Eh?’ Sarah glanced at her, a puzzled expression on her face and then she said, ‘Oh no, not her. Not ya grandmother.’ She chuckled. ‘No, ya can’t imagine any young fellers fighting over that owd beezum, can ya?’

  ‘Then who? Sarah, just who are you talking about?’

  Sarah looked away, uncomfortable now, as if she was already regretting having said so much. She faced Emma and took a deep breath. ‘It was between ya dad and Josiah that things got – well – worse. Over – ya mam.’

  Emma stared at her. ‘My mother? But how, I mean, what happened?’

  But now Sarah shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘I dunno the details.’

  ‘Oh, really, Sarah, fancy telling me all that and then leaving me high and dry. Who does know? Luke?’

  Sarah whirled round, surprisingly quickly for her size. ‘Now don’t you go asking him. He’ll give me a good hiding for opening me big mouth.’

  Now Emma laughed. The very idea of Luke even raising his hand to his dear Sarah was just a joke. Sarah, reassured, turned away but Emma stared after her thoughtfully. Somehow she had to find out the truth because instinctively she felt it had something to do with Jamie and herself. Maybe this so-called family feud really might affect their future happiness together.

  That evening Emma laid the table with care. A smooth white cloth, the best dinner service and the silver cutlery that had been a wedding present to her parents from Grandpa Charlie. A small frown of concentration furrowed her forehead as she tried to drag from the recesses of her memory, the vision of her mother teaching her, a ten-year-old girl, the niceties of a formal dinner party.

  ‘Now, my darling, watch carefully. Knives, forks, dessert spoons and forks, soup spoons – just so,’ her mother’s low, cultured voice had instructed as the young Emma had watched her long slender fingers with their well-shaped and manicured nails lay out the cutlery. Now, glancing down at her hands with their short nails and skin that was chapped and calloused by work, Emma was reminded sharply of the difference between the delicate, pianist’s hands of her mother and her own.

  ‘I suppose I’ve probably inherited old Charlie’s mill-building hands,’ she murmured aloud to the empty room and sighed. But her mother had scarcely lifted a finger about the house. She had done no housework, had not even cooked or baked. Sarah, as the live-in maid, had done everything whilst the lady of the house had reclined on a sofa, cosseting herself with her current pregnancy. It had seemed to the young Emma as if her mother had always been in a ‘delicate condition’. Pampered and fussed over by her husband who talked constantly about ‘This time everything will be all right. This time we shall have a son. The next Charles Forrest.’

  But each time, often in the middle of the night, there had been the cries from her mother’s room and then the pounding feet scurrying to fetch the doctor. The long, pacing wait in the rooms downstairs and then the blood-soaked sheets bundled out to the wash-house by Sarah. Then the silence, the awful silence that had always followed, when Emma was not allowed to see her mama and wondered if indeed she were still alive. And finally, listening solemnly whilst Sarah explained gently, but with the kindly bluntness of a matter-of-fact country woman, that yet again there would be no baby.

  There followed the long, lonely days when her father was sunk into gloom. If the foetus had been recognizable as a male child, she had seen the bitter resentment in his eyes every time she was in his presence. At those times she had avoided having to be with him until her mother was well enough to emerge from her room and fill the house with laughter once more, hugging her daughter and reminding Emma that she was her own precious darling and that she must not mind Papa.

  ‘Men always want sons, my dearest girl,’ Frances Forrest had explained gently. ‘And none more so than your father. Maybe next time, we shall be blessed.’

  But there had been one ‘next time’ too many and the life of the pretty, vivacious woman had been taken too, along with the son whom she had managed, with cruel irony, to carry to seven months. Emma could never forget that the last sound she had heard her mother utter had been a piercing cry of agony. It had sent a shudder of fear through the young girl and she had known, even before anyone told her, that the worst had happened.

  Harry Forrest’s grief had been monstrous and Emma truly believed that he would never forgive her for being his only surviving child: a girl.

  From that moment, Sarah Robson had been the mainstay of Emma’s young life and had filled, as much as possible, the yawning chasm left in her life by the death of her mother and by the subsequent unforgiving attitude of her father.

  As Emma had grown and taken on the reins of mistress of the house, she had watched the growing fondness between Sarah and the older Luke Robson, who, for many years, had lived alone in the cottage just beyond the orchard. But Luke had none of Harry Forrest’s bitter rage in his heart against the blows life had inflicted upon him and now Emma could see every day the happiness in his eyes, as if he never ceased to marvel that Sarah had agreed to become his wife. So Sarah was still here, an important part of the Forrest household, even if her work was now in the bakery rather than in the house itself.

  Idly, Emma’s thoughts wandered as she laid a round spoon at the side of a knife. Maybe, she thought, Bridget Smith would be the one to put the light of love back into her father’s eyes. Then, as the spoon slipped from her fingers, a sudden thought struck her and dragged her back to the present. ‘Soup! Oh heck! I haven’t made the soup.’ She stood a moment, biting her lower lip in agitation. Then she sprang towards the door. ‘I wonder if Sarah . . .’

  Leaving by the back door, she ran towards the gap in the hedge, through the orchard and beyond to the low cottage where Luke and Sarah lived. Sarah Robson usually had a big cauldron of soup bubbling away on her range.

  ‘I haven’t, Emma lass,’ Sarah answered her urgent knocking. ‘We’ve just eaten the last drop. I’ll be making a fresh lot tomorrow, but . . .’

  Tomorrow was not tonight and not soon enough. Emma sighed. ‘Never mind, I’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘Well, give ’em Yorkshire pudding and raspberry vinegar to begin with.’

  ‘But I was doing strawberry syrup with the steamed pudding. I can’t do both.’

  ‘Well, have custard with the pudding,’ Sarah said reasonably.

  Emma looked at her doubtfully. ‘Is Yorkshire pudding quite the sort of thing for a dinner party?’

  ‘If it’s good enough for folks in our part of the world, then it’s good enough for them,’ Sarah bristled, then she laughed. ‘Don’t try to be something you’re not, lass. Let ’em see how you live. All right, go to an extra bit of trouble – ’ she shrugged her plump shoulders, ‘like we do at Christmas. But don’t try to do things and fancy dishes ya not comfortable with.’

  ‘
You’re right, of course. But – but I have this feeling that Father wants to make a good impression.’

  ‘Does he now?’ Sarah said softly.

  That evening, Emma, in her best Sunday dress, found herself opening the back door to a huge bunch of flowers. She gasped in surprise and the flowers quivered as if the person holding them was laughing. The bouquet was lowered and in the soft light thrown by the lamp in the kitchen behind her, Emma found herself looking into the laughing eyes of the soldier at the railway station. Behind him, in the dusk of early evening, Emma saw her father helping Bridget Smith down from the pony and trap which he had used to fetch his guests to the millhouse.

  Emma opened the door wider and stood back to one side, gesturing with her hand to the young man to step inside. ‘Please – please come in.’

  ‘These are for you,’ he said and held the flowers out towards her.

  She felt an unaccustomed blush creeping up her face. ‘For – me?’ she stammered and took the proffered bouquet. ‘No one has ever brought me flowers before.’ The truthful remark was innocently beguiling.

  ‘Then it’s high time someone did,’ the young man remarked and held out his hand. ‘We haven’t been introduced properly, but I have seen you before. I noticed you at the station.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really,’ he smiled, giving an exaggerated wink. ‘How could any man fail to notice you, Miss Forrest?’

  A warm glow spread through her and yet a small voice prompted her to be wary. Was he laughing at her, insinuating that, with her height, she stood head and shoulders above any other woman? She returned his gaze steadily but could detect no ridicule in the clear blue-grey eyes.

  He was still holding out his hand towards her as he said, ‘My name is Leonard Smith.’ And as she put her hand into his warm, firm clasp, he added, ‘How do you do, Emma Forrest? I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  He was no longer dressed in uniform. Tonight he wore a well-cut black suit in an expensive fabric over a stiffly starched white collared shirt and a neatly knotted, bright red, tie. Looped across his waistcoat was a watch chain, from the centre of which hung a small gold cross. His sleek, dark hair was cut short and greased to shining neatness. Although his nose was perhaps a little large, he had a firm jawline and white, even teeth.

  Leonard was lifting his nose in the air and sniffing appreciatively. ‘My word, that smells good. I can’t tell you how much a chap misses home cooking. Army rations aren’t quite the same you know.’ He gave a low chuckle and his eyes twinkled with merriment.

  ‘It’s nothing special . . .’ she began but at that moment Bridget Smith stepped into the house in a flurry of laughter.

  The evening was a great success. Emma could not remember ever having seen her father so relaxed or so jovial. Certainly not since her mother had died. He was openly flirting with Bridget Smith who, with her tinkling laughter, her bright blue eyes and the coquettish way she tossed her head, fascinated Emma. Was this, the young girl mused, the way a woman was supposed to behave to catch her man? Her mouth twitched at the corner as she wondered if this was the way she ought to behave. Would such skittish behaviour win Jamie Metcalfe?

  ‘A penny for them,’ Leonard Smith’s spoke softly at her side. She was so deep in her own thoughts that the sound of his voice startled her, making her jump. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Flustered, she began to babble, ‘I was just watching – I mean – admiring your mother. She’s very beautiful.’

  It was not quite the truth. Bridget Smith was not beautiful. She was pretty and although that word didn’t seem quite the right description for a woman of her age, but it was what she was: pretty. And vivacious, charming – oh, certainly charming – captivating and flirtatious. But to her son, Emma could only say that his mother was beautiful.

  It had been the right thing to say. ‘Yes, she is, isn’t she?’ he said, his fond glance upon his mother. ‘She’s an amazing woman.’

  Emma’s glance followed the line of his gaze. Bridget’s face in the soft light from the fire and the low lamplight, appeared younger than ever, she could be taken for only a few years older than Emma herself. She was leaning towards Harry Forrest, tapping his arm playfully with her fingers and then leaving her hand resting upon his arm. Her father, Emma noticed, had the look of a mesmerized rabbit in front of a stoat.

  She felt Leonard touch her hand and his voice came softly. ‘There’s a fair on the common at Lincoln. Would you do me the honour of spending a day with me?’

  Emma turned wide eyes towards him. ‘A fair. Oh, how lovely. No one’s ever taken me to a fair before.’

  He pretended to be scandalized at such an omission in her education. ‘Then it’s high time . . .’ he began and, laughing, Emma joined in the final words of his sentence, ‘. . . someone did.’

  Ten

  ‘Ya father’s mekin’ a right fool of himself, then?’ Jamie said bluntly as they walked down the lane from the chapel after evening service. It was the only time she saw Jamie, the only time he seemed willing to talk to her. She had gone, often, to the forge, but he always seemed so busy, cleaning the place up, flinging things about, an angry frown furrowing his brow. He worked long hours into the night trying to build the blacksmith’s business up again to what it had once been. He had no time to talk. Only William, next door in the wheelwright’s shop, stopped whatever he was doing and sat on an upturned box to talk to her. Jamie was always too busy to pay any attention to her.

  And now here he was spoiling the few precious moments they had together.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she began defensively. ‘Mrs Smith and him are just friends.’

  Jamie’s mouth twisted with sarcasm. ‘Oh, so you do know what I’m talking about.’

  Emma stopped walking and turned to face him in the middle of the road. Hotly, she said, ‘How dare you say such a thing?’

  Miss Wilhelmina Tomkinson and her sister, Miss Tilly, passed by and Emma heard their ‘Tut-tut. Such behaviour in the street!’

  ‘And just after chapel too . . .’

  She ignored the two spinsters, though normally Emma would have passed a pleasant, dutiful word or two with them.

  It was only Jamie’s deepening frown that made Emma lower her voice, lean towards him and hiss. ‘What harm can it do?’ She was about to add, ‘He’s missed my mother dreadfully all these years,’ but she bit her lip, holding back the words. The loss of Jamie’s own parents was so recent that such words must open the raw wound.

  ‘Jamie won’t even talk about them,’ William had told her. ‘He won’t listen to what I want to tell him. He doesn’t want to know what happened even. He shuts his mind to it all. I don’t think he’s even been to their graves in the churchyard since he got back.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Emma said slowly, ‘that’s the only way he can deal with it. He’s burying himself in his work, isn’t he? Maybe, in time, he’ll feel better and be able to talk about it.’

  William’s soulful face had looked doubtful. The young boy, who had been thrust so suddenly into manhood, needed to talk. He wanted to talk to his brother, but Jamie shut him out. So William talked to Emma. Emma listened and comforted. Emma – the girl who longed to become his sister-in-law – was there for him whenever he needed a friend.

  Now, she was standing in the middle of the lane, shaking her head sadly as all these thoughts flitted through her mind. ‘Oh, Jamie,’ she said softly, gently. ‘What is the matter with you?’

  He gave a snort. ‘The matter with me? There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s ya dad. And you, if it comes to that. Can’t see what’s under ya nose?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Now she really was mystified.

  He looked at her hard, and then, seeing the genuine puzzlement in her eyes, said harshly. ‘Ya being taken in by a couple of gold-diggers, that’s what. Empty promises, that’s all you’ll get from the likes of Bridget Smith – and her son.’

  She opened her mouth, but then the denial was stilled on
her lips as she realized that perhaps there was some truth in what Jamie was saying. It had been three weeks since the Smiths had been to their house for the evening meal she had taken such pains over and, despite his promises, since that time she had not seen Leonard Smith again. ‘He’s gone away on business,’ Bridget had told her, vaguely waving her hand in the air. ‘Lincoln, I think.’ Leonard had promised to take her to the fair in Lincoln, Emma thought now, but he’d gone away without another word.

  Jamie moved closer to her, looking down at her as she stared up at him, not wanting to believe his taunts, yet she could not prevent a niggling doubt from creeping into her mind. Slowly he shook his head and the habitual look of bitterness softened for a fleeting moment. Suddenly, she saw a glimpse of the old Jamie, the man she had loved and still did, if only . . .

  ‘Emma, oh, Emma. There’s no chance for us. Not now.’ He reached up and with a sudden gesture of tenderness, smoothed an escaping tendril of hair back from her forehead. She caught at his hand, holding it, pressing it to her cheek, oblivious to the fact that they were standing in the middle of the road in full view of all the worshippers still coming out of the chapel. Fear flooded through her. ‘Why? Why not? I – I love you, Jamie. I always have. You must know that. I’ve been waiting, praying, for you to come back safely from the war. There’s only ever been you. And I . . .’ she hesitated, then plunged in rashly, ‘I thought you loved me. You said I was your girl. Don’t you remember?’

  His huge hand still rested in her clinging grasp and he made no effort to free himself. ‘Oh, I remember.’ His deep voice was husky with emotion. ‘It was only the thought of you. Of coming home to you, that kept me going. In the trenches, in the night, in the cold and the wet and the mud. Oh, the mud!’ His eyes darkened as he remembered. ‘And even when the bullets were flying and my comrades were dropping dead at the side of me, even then, I thought only of you . . .’ Then he seemed to shake himself, drag himself back to the present.

  Her hold on his hand tightened. ‘Then why,’ she whispered, ‘why are you being so cold with me, so angry? What’s changed? I’m no different. I still—’