The Miller's Daughter

by Margaret Dickinson

  Billy repeated his question and added, ‘That’s where I’m off then. The sea. That’d be great!’ He went towards the back door and was through it and gone before the word, ‘Billy!’ had escaped Emma’s lips.

  The two women listened as they heard the two back gates, first one and then the other, crash open and shut.

  ‘He’ll have gone to find our Joey,’ Mary said flatly and her eyes filled with tears. ‘He has to go on Sunday. It’s – it’s not long, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said quietly. ‘No, it isn’t. That’s when Charles goes too.’

  ‘You don’t get much a week with rations for only two, do yer?’ Mary commented mournfully, holding open the two ration books for herself and Alf with the tiny squares with different letters and numbers on each page.

  ‘No,’ Emma sighed.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ Mary said slowly, her head on one side, ‘your Billy knows how to get hold of a bit extra, does he?’

  Emma snorted. ‘I don’t doubt he would know, Mary, but I’ve no intention of asking him. He runs enough risks without me encouraging him and I’d be glad if you’d say nothing to him about it, either.’

  ‘’Course I won’t,’ the woman bristled a little and then realizing it was she who had been in the wrong even to suggest it, said swiftly, ‘I’m sorry, Emma. I wasn’t thinking. It’s just that I get so fed up having to queue even for things that aren’t on ration. D’you know, I waited nearly an hour at the greengrocers yesterday and when I gets me turn, all the decent stuff had been picked over?’

  ‘Don’t you go to Mr Keenes?’

  ‘The corner shop where we first met, you mean? Oh aye, I go, but his stuff’s gone before ten every morning. Mind you,’ she laughed, ‘there’s one person we can rely on to put a bit under the counter for us . . .’

  They chorused his name together. ‘Mr Rabinski!’

  Mary was sighing again. ‘It almost makes me wish I lived in the country. I don’t expect they feel the rationing there quite so bad as us.’

  ‘We-ell,’ Emma said slowly. ‘We could go, you know. It’d be safer.’

  ‘Oh no, Emma,’ Mary Porter was suddenly adamant. ‘I was only joking. Alf’d never agree to go and I couldn’t think of leaving Alf.’

  Emma was silent. She had never told Mary much about her life before coming to the city and so her friend was quite ignorant of the fact that, if she wanted, Emma had a home in the country still waiting for her.

  But the more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed to be. She and Billy would go back to Marsh Thorpe. She didn’t like the thought of leaving Mary, but she would offer for her and Alf to go too and, if they refused, well then, it was hardly her fault, she argued with herself.

  Emma began to make plans, began to feel excited at the thought of going home. She would be back at the mill. She would be with Sarah. Maybe she could even open up the shop again. A recent letter from Sarah had prompted this idea.

  . . . I’ve had to let the orchard be dug up, Emma, I hope you don’t mind. The trees are still there, of course, but the whole village has got caught up in digging every bit of grassland to grow potatoes and other vegetables. William came with a machine to dig it the first time for me and now I can manage. He helped me work out a plan so that in my own bit of garden, and now with the orchard too, I’ll be able to grow vegetables nearly all the year round. It seemed such a shame not to let the orchard be used, specially as the bees are no longer there.

  Emma could sense Sarah’s sadness at the loss of her beloved bees, yet now she seemed to have found a new outlet for her energies in the garden. And if I was there to help her, Emma mused . . .

  ‘I aren’t going.’

  ‘Oh yes you are.’

  ‘I aren’t going to live in the country. I don’t care about the bombs. I’m staying here. Besides, none of me mates are going. We’re getting kids from Leeds and Coventry come here,’ Billy argued fiercely. ‘So you’re not packing me off anywhere.’

  He was right, of course, about children being evacuated to Lincoln, rather than from it. She’d seen the lines of youngsters arriving at the station, clutching their small suitcases and bags, each with the box containing a gas mask around their shoulders and a label around their necks. They’d had one boy from Leeds billeted with them soon after the war had begun, and Emma had been glad of the extra ten shillings and sixpence a week, but by June 1940 several children had returned home again and their evacuee had been among that number.

  ‘Oh yes, you are going,’ Emma argued. ‘We’re both going back home to Marsh Thorpe.’

  But the boy was gone, his boots pounding down the passageway, the back gate still shuddering on its hinges. He did not return home until the following day.

  Billy was adamant and each time Emma packed their suitcases, tied his gas mask around his shoulders and marched him to the railway station, at the last moment, he gave her the slip and darted off through the city’s back streets until the train was long departed and it was safe to return home. Once she even got him aboard the train, but he got off at the next station and hitched a lift on an army lorry back to Lincoln and she had to alight at the next station and wait two hours for a train to take her back to Lincoln. That escapade had earned him a sharp clip around the ear, but Billy only grinned.

  ‘Oh, I give up,’ she said at last in exasperation. ‘But you can help me put this wretched Morrison shelter up in the front room then and you’re to promise me faithfully, Billy, that every time there’s an air-raid you’ll take cover. And if you’re out, you’re to go to a public shelter.’

  ‘’Course I will, Mam.’ The cheeky grin and the charm of his willingness to agree now that he had got his own way, were pure Leonard.

  Emma wrote to Sarah.

  I’ve tried everything, but I can’t get him to come and, of course, I can’t possibly come without him. He just won’t leave the city. He’s a real streetwise kid and no mistake. I never thought I’d say it, not about one of my own, but I can’t control him. All he can think about now is going to sea. Joey Porter, Mary’s son, came home on leave last week and when Billy saw him in his uniform, well, that was it. I’ve heard about nothing else since . . .

  Emma’s pen paused over the page and she lifted her head to look out of the window into the backyard and, beyond to the backs and roofs of the terraced houses in the next street. There were no flowers, no trees, not even many birds save the occasional pigeon that landed on her wash-house roof. Suddenly she had an overwhelming longing for flat fields of waving corn as far as the eye could see and whirling mill sails against white scudding clouds in a clear blue sky.

  Emma awoke in the night with a start and sat up suddenly, her heart pounding. The bedroom was lit by the soft light from the street lamp outside. Throwing back the covers, she swung her legs out of bed, her feet touching the icy linoleum. Opening the bedroom door, she again heard the noise that had woken her; a bump downstairs, this time swiftly followed by a muttered oath.

  ‘Billy? Billy, is that you?’

  But from beyond his bedroom door she heard her son’s gentle snoring. Then who, Emma thought wildly, was creeping about downstairs in the dead of night? She swallowed her fear and was about to start down the stairs, one hand gripping the rail, the other splayed against the wall to give her support. The door at the bottom of the stairs leading into the kitchen opened and a figure began to mount the stairs.

  A scream escaped her lips before she could stop it and the figure stopped.

  ‘Don’t come any further,’ she began. ‘I—’

  ‘Emma, Emma, it’s me. Don’t wake the whole street, for Heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Leonard!’

  As he reached her, she flung her arms about him, almost knocking him back down the stairs.

  ‘Hey, steady on, old girl! I didn’t expect a welcome like this.’ With surprising ease, for Emma was no lightweight, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him.

  It was not u
ntil the following morning when she awoke and saw his discarded clothes strewn across the chair in the bedroom, where he had flung them in his haste the previous night, that Emma realized her husband was in uniform.

  Beside her, Leonard stretched and grinned.

  ‘You’ve joined up,’ she said, rather unnecessarily.

  ‘Yup. I reckoned it was the best idea. I’ve joined my old army regiment and guess what?’ His grin widened. ‘They’ve given me the rank of major.’

  Emma smiled, then the smile became a chuckle until she was lying back against the pillows, tears of laughter rolling down her face. ‘Oh, Leonard, if that don’t beat all. And I thought the British Army knew what it was doing.’

  He was laughing with her, then he said, ‘Best years of my life, they were, in the last lot.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Emma snorted wryly, wiping her eyes. ‘There’s plenty of card-playing goes on, I don’t doubt.’

  Leonard threw back his head and guffawed. ‘By God! You’re not the little innocent I thought you were, are you?’

  ‘Not after living with you for over twenty years, I’m not,’ she retaliated, and then as he leant over her and began to unfasten the buttons on her nightdress, she chuckled and added, ‘But just mind how you go, Leonard Smith, ’cos I’m not quite sure just who’s going to be in the biggest danger from you. The enemy – or our own side!’

  Leonard laughed again and pulled her to him.

  Alf Porter found that his job came under the category of a reserved occupation. He would not have to go into the armed forces because the factory where he worked now made war machinery and his job was every bit as important as the soldiers who manned them at the Front.

  ‘Well, you’ve still got your Billy and I’ve got my Alf,’ Mary said, trying to be brave, but Emma could see the ill-concealed terror in the other woman’s eyes for her youngest son; a terror that would never go away for as long as the nightmare lasted.

  Aloud, Emma said, ‘Well, yes, but if our Billy had his way, he’d be off too. Did you hear about him trying to join the Merchant Navy? Told ’em he was seventeen.’

  ‘He didn’t! The young tyke! He’s not fourteen yet, is he?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Emma shook her head in despair of her younger son. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen to him, I’m sure.’

  Mary said nothing. Over the years, her response about young Billy’s madcap ways had always been, ‘He’ll come to a bad end, that one,’ but now the words, so often said in fun, seemed all too terribly real.

  ‘What about your older boys?’ Emma asked. Although they had never met she knew a lot about them for Mary never tired of talking about her family.

  ‘One’s in a reserved occupation like his dad, but our Tommy might well have to go. He might go in the army like your Leonard.’ Emma felt her friend’s glance and now there was laughter in Mary’s voice as she added pointedly. ‘Maybe he could be a major too.’

  Emma stared at her as realization began to filter through. ‘Oh – I get it. You mean, Leonard’s having me on?’

  Now Mary spluttered with laughter. ‘My Alf ses that if Leonard Smith’s a major, then our Joey’ll be a ruddy admiral.’

  They wiped tears of merriment from their eyes as Emma said, ‘Oh, it’s good to have something to laugh about for once, Mary, even if it is Leonard up to his tricks.’

  ‘Well, m’duck, we might be doing him an injustice, y’know. He was in the last lot when all’s done and said.’ She lifted her shoulders in a gesture of doubt. ‘Maybe they have given him a rank of some sort. But a Major? I ask you!’

  They laughed again and then Mary nodded knowingly, ‘Still, you’ll see what you get when they start sending you part of his army pay.’

  Emma’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, do I get his pay? He won’t like that.’

  ‘I’m not really sure how it works exactly, but you’ll get some sort of marriage allowance. I think he has to agree to send you part of his pay.’

  Emma sat down on a kitchen chair and held her side, now aching with laughter. ‘Oh, that’s priceless.’ She shook her head. ‘To think that the army is actually going to get money out of Leonard Smith – for me!’

  ‘It might not be much, Emma, so don’t get too hopeful.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t, Mary, believe me, I wouldn’t.’ She paused, then added, ‘Tell you what, though, we ought to do some kind of war work. You and me. It’ll take our minds off things.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Mary sounded doubtful.

  The previous day Emma had seen a poster showing a woman with her arms spread out wide, and behind her the buildings of a factory with tall, smoking chimneys. Emerging from the factory and flying into the sky above her was a long line of aircraft. The caption read, ‘Women of Britain – Come into the Factories’.

  Telling Mary about it now, she added, ‘You have to go to the employment exchange for details. Shall we go?’

  ‘Might as well,’ Mary said dully. ‘I’m not sitting about me house waiting for bad news, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Emma said. ‘We’ll go tomorrow.’ She giggled. ‘We’ll “join up” an’ all, Mary.’

  They found work in a factory making diesel engines that were shipped all over the world to provide power in all sorts of military establishments. The two friends felt they were doing something useful and despite the hardships of rationing, the blackout and the constant nagging fear of bad news, there were compensations.

  ‘They’re a good bunch, aren’t they?’ Mary often said, and Emma was relieved to see that some of the anxiety left her friend’s face when they were working alongside their cheerful, if rather raucous, workmates. They all joined in singing along in loud tuneless voices to the music programmes blaring out over a tannoy system from the wireless. Everyone was dressed alike in overalls and trousers, their hair tied up in scarves.

  ‘Can’t have that lovely hair of yours getting caught in a machine, Mrs Smith,’ the foreman told her. ‘Mind you keep it well tied up.’

  Emma smiled but said nothing. Her lovely hair, as he called it, was not the shining colour of jet it had once been. With all the worry, she was sure she could see a new white hair appearing every day amongst the black.

  ‘It seems an awful thing to say, Emma, seeing as what’s brought it about,’ Mary said as the women workers flooded out into the streets at the end of a shift, laughing and calling to each other, ‘but I really enjoy working here. They’re such a friendly lot.’

  ‘We’re all in the same boat, Mary. We’ve all got husbands, sons or even fathers out there.’ As she saw the worry crease back into Mary’s face, Emma could have bitten off her thoughtless tongue. ‘Well, you know what I mean. We all try to jolly each other along.’

  ‘Have you had any news from Charles, Emma?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No, you know I’d tell you if I had.’

  Mary’s shoulders sagged. ‘I know, I’m sorry. But it seems such an age between each letter. What about Leonard? Does he write?’

  Emma glanced at her friend and shook her head. Good friends though they were, even Mary Porter did not know the whole truth about Emma’s marriage. But her friend was not about to let the matter drop. ‘What?’ she asked, scandalized. ‘Not at all? Not since he went? It’s all of three months.’

  Emma shrugged her shoulders and forced a laugh. ‘Oh, you know Leonard. He’s no letter writer. He’ll turn up on leave without warning, just like a bad penny. You’ll see.’

  But as the weeks turned into months and the months into a whole year of war, apart from the regular arrival of a portion of his army pay, there was no word from Leonard Smith himself.

  Thirty-Five

  Emma wrote frequently to Sarah, thirsting for news of home.

  Have many of the young men gone from the village? Oh, Sarah, isn’t it awful? Doesn’t it make you think of last time?

  She paused, remembering how she had watched with such pride, with such stupid, blind pride, as he
r young sweetheart marched off to the war. ‘I’ll wait for you, Jamie,’, she had whispered to herself. ‘I’ll wait for you forever.’

  Emma sighed and tried to banish her melancholy thoughts of a past that was long gone, but the memories evoked made the pen move once more across the page.

  Has Jamie Metcalfe volunteered again? And have you seen William recently?

  Sarah’s reply was reassuring on one point.

  Jamie says he had enough in the last lot. Can’t say I blame him, can you?

  No, Emma thought as she read the letter, no I certainly don’t blame him.

  As for William, no one round here has heard a word of him recently and the last time I saw him was when he came to dig up the orchard for me. He hasn’t been since – not even to see to the mill . . .

  ‘Oh no,’ Emma groaned aloud, praying that her childhood friend had not been foolish enough to volunteer just because he had been too young for the last lot and had felt a failure. ‘Oh, William, no!’

  There were of course lighter moments amidst all the worry and the bad news that crackled out of the Porters’ wireless set, legitimately purchased with Alf Porter’s hard earned cash. Emma could not bear to have one of her own, even if she could have scraped the money together to rent or buy one, though when she heard the music and the laughter issuing from the Porters’ front room and heard Mary singing along to Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields, she was sorely tempted.

  ‘I’ll get you one, Mam,’ Billy offered and earned himself a light cuff on the side of the head.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, Billy Smith.’ Her eyes narrowed as she added, deviously, ‘The Navy won’t take anyone who’s been in trouble with the law, y’know.’

  Emma wasn’t sure whether what she was saying was strictly true, especially in wartime, but she was relying on the fact that Billy would not know either. The young eyes regarded her calculatingly. She could see he was assessing whether she was being truthful or just saying it to make him mend his ways.