The Miller's Daughter

by Margaret Dickinson

  Emma smiled and stepped forward to reach up to kiss his cheek. ‘It’s all water under the bridge now, Jamie. Let’s start anew. Today’s the day for new beginnings. The past is dead and – and buried.’ She faltered a little over the words, for fleetingly, the vision of her son, Charles, came into her mind. Her dear boy was buried somewhere in France, and she knew not where; perhaps she would never know exactly where. But she smiled tremulously through unshed tears. Deep in many hearts today, there was an ache for loved ones who would never return, yet life had to go on and today the whole village was trying to put the bleak, dark days of war behind them and look to the future.

  Emma’s future clutched at skirts. She swept the child up into her arms. ‘And this sticky little urchin, is Lottie. Say “hello” to your uncle Jamie, Lottie.’

  The child, her face smeared with red jam, regarded Jamie solemnly, her clear blue eyes seeming to assess him. Then her mouth curved and two dimples appeared in the round cheeks. She reached out her chubby arms to be held and as Emma passed her into his arms, both she and William chuckled at the look of consternation that appeared on Jamie’s face.

  It had been a good day, a happy day. As they walked home in the dusk, Lottie walked between them, but her little feet dragged with tiredness.

  ‘It’s a lick and a promise for you tonight, little one,’ Emma murmured, ‘and into your bed.’ But she paused in the yard and looked up at the mill, Lottie leaning against her knee. ‘Oh, William, I don’t know when I ever felt so happy. But I feel guilty at feeling it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, Charles and – and Leonard too,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t wish him dead, you know.’

  William’s arm tightened about her. ‘Of course you didn’t. And stop feeling guilty. Charles wouldn’t want you to grieve for ever. He’d want you to be happy. And Leonard too. For all his faults, I believe he cared for you in his own way.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Dear William. You’re such a kind, understanding man. I’m so lucky, so very lucky.’

  As she stood there in the yard, looking up at the mill now restored by William’s clever, loving hands to its former glory, Emma was filled with a tumult of emotions, of memories flitting through her mind. She remembered the night the mill sails had blown down, of little Charles’s bravery. Further back, she remembered Luke and his constant concern for her, a girl, having to work as hard as she did. And she remembered her father, his bitterness at not having a son, and then his joy when she gave him a grandson. And now that grandson was gone too.

  She felt her daughter pull at her skirt and she lifted the child into her arms and as she did so, it was like a locked door in her memory being released and suddenly opened. Clearly, almost as if he were standing beside her, she heard her grandpa Charlie’s deep, gravelly voice.

  ‘You’re a miller’s daughter, Emma Forrest, never forget that. There are no sons to carry on the name, but that’s no matter. You carry Forrest blood in your veins, that’s what counts, and one day, all this will be yours.’

  At last, she had recalled the memory that had lain buried in her mind, blotted out by the dreadful event which had happened only moments after he had said those words to her. Now, she remembered it all so clearly, so vividly that the returning memory almost robbed her of her breath. Her grandfather had been holding her in his arms, had lifted her up and pointed to the mill and said the words; ‘You are a miller’s daughter, Emma Forrest.’ Then he had set her on the ground, walked towards the mill and begun to climb up and up and up . . . Moments later he was lying, smashed and bleeding on the ground beneath the mill’s sails.

  The child in her arms, wriggled and whimpered. ‘Mum, you’re squeezing Lottie.’

  Emma felt the world reel and the feel of William’s arm about her and his concerned voice saying, ‘Are you all right, Em?’ brought her crashing back to the present.

  She passed the back of her hand across her forehead and smiled tremulously at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am now. Now – everything’s all right.’

  With, their arms about each other, they turned to go into the house; Emma felt as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Grandpa Charlie hadn’t minded at all that she, Emma, had been a girl. And now, in her arms, she carried her only hope for the future, another miller’s daughter.

  From the shadows across the street, a man stood watching the tender scene; a man with bitterness in his heart.

  ‘One day,’ he vowed, ‘I’ll have what rightly belongs to me, Emma Forrest – Smith – Metcalfe – or whatever you call yourself now. If it takes a lifetime, I’ll have what’s mine. You see if I don’t.’

  Part Three

  Forty-Two

  ‘Mum, there’s this new boy at school. He started a few months back when he came to live with his grandmother in Thirsby. He’s dishy.’

  Thirsby was a small hamlet about three miles from Marsh Thorpe but still within the catchment area for the Grammar School Lottie attended in Calceworth.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Emma said, absently, starting to add a column of figures for the third time.

  Lottie bent and kissed the frown of concentration on her mother’s forehead. ‘Like me to do that for you, Mum? Maths never was your strong subject, was it?’

  ‘Oh, please. I get a different answer every time.’ Thankfully, Emma pushed the sheaf of papers towards her daughter and watched in admiration as the girl picked up the pen and ran her glance down the column adding up the figures in her head. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘He’s dishy. I could really go for someone like him.’

  Emma smiled fondly at the short, blonde curls bent over the figures. Small and slender with blue eyes and a clear, smooth porcelain skin, Lottie was like a precious china doll. And William, bless him, treated their daughter as if that was exactly what she was.

  ‘However a great carthorse like me produced such a daughter, I’ll never know,’ Emma would laugh. Now, with the passage of time and secure in William’s never-failing love, Emma could joke about herself.

  ‘To me,’ he would say, cupping her face in his hands and stroking the now short, pure white hair, ‘you were beautiful and you always will be.’ Then he would put his arm about her thickening waist and his gaze would go towards their daughter and Emma would see adoration in his face. It brought her joy every time she saw a father’s love for his daughter.

  ‘She’s like my mother,’ she would say softly. ‘Sarah always says so. I can’t remember her very clearly, but I have fleeting memories of a sweet face and a sunny nature.’

  She heard William’s deep chuckle. ‘Well, that’s Lottie to a point, but the sun goes in and the storm clouds gather now and then when she can’t get her own way.’

  Emma laughed. ‘She can be a stubborn little madam, when she wants to be.’

  ‘Aye, and then we’re all running for shelter. Still, even if I’d been given the choice, I wouldn’t change a hair of her lovely head. Would you?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said slowly, biting her lip.

  ‘Do I hear a “but” in there somewhere?’ There was surprise in William’s voice.

  ‘It’s just that I worry about her, now she’s older. I mean, I know she’s still at school but she almost seventeen. She’s a young woman.’

  ‘Well, all parents worry about their daughters. About their children whatever their sex, if it comes to that.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘It’s more than just that with you, though, isn’t it, Em? Come on, tell me, love.’

  ‘Sarah’s right. Lottie is like my mother. Very like her. And I worry that – that if she gets married and – and has children . . . Well, you know what happened to my mother?’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ William’s reassuring arms came around her now. ‘Things are very different nowadays for women in childbirth. For a start, they’re not left at home with little or no proper medical attention.’ He touched her cheek and said, teasingly, ‘It’s nearly sixty years ago, my old dear, since you were born and your poor mam was losing all h
er other babies. You’ve no need to fear for Lottie, not now, I’m sure.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Emma murmured. ‘Oh, I do hope you’re right.’

  Now, deliberately casual, she asked Lottie, ‘What’s his name, this – er – dish?’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Micky.’

  ‘And what’s he like?’

  Lottie looked up and smiled, her delicate pink cheeks dimpling. ‘Oh Mum, come on. I’m not getting the third degree, am I? You’ll be asking next what his father does and are his intentions towards me “honourable”?’

  Emma laughed. ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant – well – is he good-looking?’

  ‘Would I go for anything less?’ Lottie countered saucily. ‘Well, now, let me see. He’s tall.’ She giggled. ‘I only come up to his shoulder. He’s got sort of bluey-grey eyes and dark hair and, yes, he’s vey good-looking.’ She sighed ecstatically. ‘And he’s a right charmer. All the girls are after him. I shouldn’t think I’ll even get a look-in.’

  Thoughtfully, Emma watched the bowed head. That she did not believe, not for one minute.

  ‘And you say he’s come to live in Thirsby with his grandmother?’

  ‘Thirty-six, forty, fifty-seven,’ Lottie murmured, her pen still running up the columns. ‘Yes.’

  For some unaccountable reason, before she even voiced the question, Emma knew the answer, ‘What – what’s his surname?’

  ‘Smith,’ Lottie said absently, her concentration still on the figures.

  A cold hand clutched at Emma’s heart. ‘Smith?’ she squeaked. Oh, it couldn’t be, could it? Smith was a common name and yet . . . Emma swallowed painfully, remembering suddenly that Bridget Smith lived at Thirsby. And Lottie had said he had come to live with his grandmother. Emma stared at Lottie’s bent head and her tone, when she spoke, was sharper than she intended. ‘Well, you’re too young to start thinking about boyfriends yet anyway. You’ve your O levels in two months’ time. I don’t want any silly nonsense over boys ruining your chances.’

  She saw the pen stop, her daughter’s head come up slowly, saw Lottie’s blue eyes widen and her pretty mouth open in a gasp of surprise. ‘Mum . . .?’

  But Emma turned and hurried out of the kitchen and into the shop at the front of the house. Thankfully it was empty and she leant against the counter and closed her eyes. Suddenly Emma felt dizzy with fear. Oh no, she prayed fervently. Not that, please not that.

  ‘It can’t be anyone related to Leonard, can it?’ she asked William, following him from the granary across the yard to the mill and back again, taking anxious little running steps at his side.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, love,’ William said, calm and matter-of-fact as ever. ‘Did Leonard have any brothers or sisters?’

  Emma stood, perplexed, fingering the hem of her apron. ‘No, oh no. Bridget said – I mean – she told me once that she hadn’t really wanted Leonard . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘So, you’re saying Micky is Leonard’s son, are you?’

  ‘I – I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ve just got this awful feeling.’

  William picked up another sack and heaved it on to his shoulder. From his semi-stooping position, he grinned up at her. ‘Why don’t you go and ask the bees, love? They’ll know for sure.’

  ‘William! Don’t you dare laugh at me.’ To her chagrin, tears sprang into her eyes. Seeing them, William at once dropped the sack to the ground and reached out to her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were so serious. Whatever are you getting yourself so worked up about? Leonard was killed in the war.’

  There was a silence between them, the only sound the rhythmic rattle of the rotating sails above them.

  Emma met William’s steady gaze. ‘So we’ve been led to believe, but even though the court granted us that – that Presumption of Death Order so that we could marry, we can’t ever be really sure, can we?’

  William sighed. ‘Does Lottie know anything?’

  ‘She knows I was married to someone else and that he was killed in the war, because she knows Billy and she’s heard about – about Charles.’ Even now the loss of her firstborn still hurt Emma. Billy Smith had made a career in the Merchant Navy after the war, but some years ago now he had gone to live in Australia and had married out there. He wrote regularly and sent photographs of his wife and family, but Emma doubted she would ever see her younger son again.

  ‘Does she know what your married name was?’

  Emma wrinkled her forehead and sighed. ‘I really don’t know. Probably not. Billy’s just – well – just “Billy” to her. What she certainly does not know,’ Emma went on slowly, ‘is that we were not married at the time she was born.’

  ‘Well, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t told her already. You know what this place is like for gossip. It’s a wonder if some kid hasn’t teased her about it at school if nothing else.’

  Emma shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Once they’d accepted it, I’ve always thought the villagers have been very loyal to us. Besides, we did all the right things and were married as soon as we—’ Her eyes widened and her mouth rounded in an ‘oh’.

  William nodded grimly. ‘Exactly. If Leonard is still alive, we may not be married at all.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Look,’ William said reasonably, ‘we might be worrying for nothing. We don’t even know if this lad is anything to do with Bridget. The best thing we can do is to let things take their natural course. Make the boy welcome if she wants to bring him home. Just like you would any of her friends, just like you always have and,’ he added pointedly, ‘just like you would any other lad.’

  ‘But what if . . .?’

  ‘Wait and see, Emma,’ William said firmly. ‘Just wait and see.’

  She knew he was right, but it didn’t make it any easier, the ‘waiting to see’, as he put it. Worry kept her awake at night, staring into the darkness seeing all that they had built up in the past seventeen years crumbling before her eyes. They had worked hard, the two of them, with the ever faithful Sarah and Mr Rabinski – for some reason they could never come to call him Ezra – alongside them. The mill and the bakery had prospered in a modest way.

  Now, Mr Rabinski was too old and frail to work the long hours in the bakehouse and Emma and William employed a young lad from the village to do most of the heavy work, though still under the direction of the old master baker. The shop itself had changed too. Although they still sold their own bread, it had become something of a general store now and for the past five years had also been the village post office. The work of the mill was changing. They ground a small quantity of wheat for their own bakehouse, but the bulk of their work now was producing animal feedstuffs. But at least they had enough work coming in to keep the sails turning.

  Jamie’s work too had diminished and changed over the years with little for the smithy and even less for the wheelwright side of the business. Now he fashioned fancy wrought iron gates and fences.

  ‘What would our father have said?’ Jamie would moan. ‘All the old crafts are dying out, all the old ways.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ William would say, ‘it’s what they call progress.’

  And Jamie would give a disgruntled, ‘Huh. That’s what you call it, is it? But you’re all right, aren’t you?’ he’d say nodding towards the shop. ‘Little gold mine you’ve got there with all the passing trade you’re picking up.’ And he would gesture towards the road where traffic now buzzed through the village on its way to the coast.

  ‘You have to move with the times,’ William would answer and then he would bite back the next few words that always sprang to his mind, ‘and not stay buried in the past.’

  Poor Jamie. They felt sorry for the embittered man, now in his mid-sixties, who had spent his life working so hard and yet seemed to have nothing to show for all his labour.

  ‘He’d have been so different if he’d married you,’ William would say softly, tracing his fin
ger round the line of her face. ‘But what would I have done then if I’d had to spend my life as your brother-in-law?’

  A lot of things would have been different, Emma thought wryly, if I’d married Jamie Metcalfe. Though she no longer regretted the fact that she had not, she could not prevent the thought from slipping into her mind that if she had spent her life as Jamie’s wife, she would not at this moment be worrying herself sick over a boy called Micky Smith.

  Forty-Three

  ‘Mum, you didn’t really mean what you said, did you?’

  Pretending ignorance, Emma said, ‘What about, love?’ But her heart was pounding inside her breast. She knew only too well what Lottie meant.

  ‘About me and – boyfriends?’ The girl gave a nervous laugh and touched her hair in an affected gesture that was totally unlike her. ‘I mean, it’s not that I want to get serious with anyone. But, well . . .’ The words came out in a rush. ‘All our class are going to a dance in the Castle Gardens in Calceworth. You know, that place on the seafront? And, well, this lad’s asked me to go with him.’

  Emma swallowed and tried to keep her voice steady, ‘And which lad might that be?’

  ‘Micky. Micky Smith.’

  Emma let out the breath she had been holding, wishing vehemently that William was here with her. He would handle it so much better than she could. But William had taken Mr Rabinski to Lincoln on a business matter. The old man was too frail to go alone and William would have to spend the whole day with him. But Emma seemed to hear her husband’s gentle voice inside her head, ‘Let it take its course, Em.’

  With a valiant effort, Emma plastered a smile on her face and turned to face her daughter. ‘Of course you can go to the dance, love. But your dad will want to fetch you home?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a bus being organized to drop all of us off at our doors. Honestly, Mum, it’s being done properly. And besides, Micky will see me home safely.’

  That is exactly what I’m afraid of, Emma thought, but she managed to hold back the words and say instead, ‘We’ll see what your dad says.’