The Miller's Daughter (8 page)

‘I suppose,’ William went on, thinking aloud. ‘Like he ses, he carried the picture of us all still here, the home as he had always known it, the forge, everything. Imagining it
all to be still just as he’d left it. It was what kept him going. I mean—’ He lifted his face to look at Emma. Though his eyes were in shadow and she could not read the sorrow in
their depths, she knew it was there; she could hear it in his voice. ‘I mean, there have been some dreadful tales about what it was like out there, in the trenches. He must have been through
an awful lot, you know. Mebbe all the while, he was carrying this mental picture of his home with him, clinging to it. It must be a dreadful shock for him to come back and find –
this.’

She was quiet too for a moment, staring into the flickering flames. Slowly, she said, ‘Maybe you’re right.’ Then she was scrambling up. ‘I’m going to find him.
I’ll talk to him.’

‘Oh no, Em, don’t. I don’t think it will do any good.’

But Emma, intent on putting matters right, was not listening to William’s words of caution and did not see, as she hurried from the room, his gentle, troubled gaze following her.

Outside, she stood listening. Through the deepening dusk of the winter’s evening, she could hear sounds coming from the forge. Pulling her coat closely round her, she bent her head against
the wind, thinking briefly that at least her father would still be in the mill, and made her way into the blacksmith’s yard.

Jamie was standing in the middle of the cluttered yard, picking up pieces of metal, bits of wood and hurling them with frustrated anger into the farthest corner.

‘It’s like a rubbish tip,’ she heard him mutter. ‘Gone to wrack and ruin.’

‘Jamie.’

Startled, he swung round.

‘What are you doing? Creeping about like that?’

Stung, she retorted heatedly, ‘I’m not “creeping about”.’ She moved closer and asked more gently, ‘Jamie, what is it? What’s the matter?’

‘The matter? You ask what’s the matter? This – ’ he flung his left arm in a wide arc to encompass the littered yard, ‘
this
is the matter. Three years in the
trenches with thick slimy mud as my bed and rats as sleeping companions, to come back to
this
.’

‘William’s done his best, Jamie. It hasn’t been easy for him either. He’s only young. He was only a boy when you left and he’s had to cope with – with losing
both your parents and trying, single-handed, to keep everything going. Don’t be so hard on him.’

‘William, William,
William
. That’s all I seem to hear from you.’ He came and stood close to her, glaring down at her through the dusk, his eyes dark pools of accusation.
His strong, blacksmith’s hands grasped her shoulders with the grip of a vice, ‘What about me? Does no one think of me?’ He pulled her to him roughly, crushing her against him. He
bent his head and pressed his mouth hard against hers, so hard that she felt his teeth grinding against hers. There was no love in the embrace, not even a passion arising out of desire. It was a
brutal, bitter attack. His fingers grasped roughly at the high neck of her blouse and tore at the fabric. She felt the neckline strain against the back of her neck and then a tearing sound and the
cotton tore, the top button flying off. His hand was groping inside the top of her blouse, seeking . . .

‘No, Jamie, no! Please . . .’ She was shocked and repulsed by his violence. This was not the Jamie Metcalfe she had known, not the man she had loved.

‘Ya still a child,’ he said scornfully. ‘Ya not woman enough to understand a man’s needs.’ He gave her a violent push as if to hurl her away from him as, minutes
before, he had been throwing the rubbish about the yard. Had she not been so robust and strong, Emma would have fallen to the ground. Physically, she was unharmed, but emotionally she was heartsore
and wounded.

Through the gloom she stared at him, trying desperately to understand him. He was like a wild man. With a woman’s intuition, Emma knew he had to be tamed. Somehow the young man Jamie had
once been had to be reached. And she was the only one who could do it.

‘We’ve company coming tonight. Mind you mek a nice meal, girl.’

Emma continued kneading the dough without looking up, her mind on Jamie.

‘Yes, Father,’ she replied automatically. Then, as the meaning of his words penetrated her wandering mind, she lifted her head and stared at him. He was turning away, opening the
door of the bakehouse to go across the yard to the mill. The winter sky was lightening in the east and the black shape of the mill and its sails rose majestically against the pale light, but dawn
had not yet come into the enclosed yard below. Outside the back door, the miller lifted his face and sniffed the clean air of a new day. A light breeze ruffled his wispy hair as he pulled on his
cap, hunched his shoulders and made to pull the door closed behind him.

‘Who, Father?’ Emma’s voice stilled his action. ‘Who’s coming?’

He paused and looked at her, his hand resting on the door knob. ‘Bridget and her boy.’

Then, with a slam of the door, he was gone, his footsteps echoing in the sharp early morning air, leaving his daughter staring with wide eyes at the woodwork of the door between them.

‘He’s invited Mrs Smith and her son to come to supper tonight,’ she told Sarah later that morning.

‘Has he now?’ Sarah nodded knowingly.

‘Whatever am I to make for them? I can’t do the fancy dishes they’ll be used to.’

Sarah laughed. ‘A nice bit of home-cured ham, Emma, and your plum bread and a bit o’ cheese for afters. I bet that young feller won’t have tasted grub like that for a
while.’

Emma smiled and the worried frown cleared a little from her smooth forehead. ‘Perhaps you’re right. What about a pudding? Do you think it’s too late for that? What do the
gentry eat for supper?’

Sarah laughed out loud now. As a young girl, she had been in service for a year at a big house on the outskirts of Marsh Thorpe, but she had never risen above a kitchen maid and when
Emma’s mother had asked her to come to the mill to help her in the house, Sarah had been thankful to give in her notice and move into the tiny attic room above the bakehouse.

‘The gentry, as you call ’em,’ she said, teasing Emma gently, ‘have dinner in the evening with four, mebbe five or more, courses.’

‘Oh, heck,’ Emma said with such a flustered expression on her face that Sarah chuckled afresh.

‘The Smiths won’t be expecting owt like that, I can promise you.’

‘But Father said “a nice meal”. I think he’s expecting me to take a bit more trouble than just a bit of ham and bread and cheese.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Aye well, mebbe so. We’d best get our thinking caps on then. How about vegetable soup to start with, a nice cut of pork and all the trimmings as the main course,
followed by a nice pudding? What about a steamed ginger or current sponge? You could still finish the meal off with plum bread an’ cheese if anyone’s got a corner left to fill after all
that.’

‘Are you sure?’ Emma still looked doubtful but when Sarah reassured her firmly, ‘It’s better than that flashy piece deserves,’ Emma giggled and said,
‘Don’t say things like that, Sarah. And besides, I rather like her, though I do wish . . .’ There was silence between them as they worked, lifting the bread from the oven with the
peel, their faces red from the heat of the long brick oven.

‘What do you wish?’ Sarah prompted.

‘That it was Jamie and William he’d invited to supper.’

Sarah glanced at her and gave a snort of laughter. ‘That’ll never happen. A Metcalfe and a Forrest sitting down to eat at the same table? Never, lass, never. You should know that,
Emma.’

Emma stopped what she was doing, resting the long-handled peel on the edge of the oven and staring at Sarah, but the older woman merely said, ‘Come on, get this bread out else it’ll
burn.’

Automatically, Emma obeyed, but her mind was in turmoil. ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said as, together, they set the loaves out on cooling trays. ‘I could hardly fail to know that
Father’s always been at loggerheads with old Mr Metcalfe – Jamie’s father – but what I don’t know,’ a slight note of resentment crept into her tone, ‘what
I’ve
never
been told, presumably because I’ve been thought too young, is exactly what this silly feud is all about and why he’s carrying it on to the next generation, to
Jamie and William. I mean, he used to let us play together when we were little, so why—?’

‘That was when ya grandpa Charlie was alive,’ Sarah put in, as if that explained everything. Yet, for Emma, it did not.

‘Do you know what it’s all about, Sarah?’

‘Oh, it goes back a long way. I don’t know the truth of it all mesen.’

Emma was getting a little annoyed now by all the mystery. Over the years she’d heard village gossip, yet no one had ever really explained it all to her. ‘What goes way back,
Sarah?’

The woman glanced at her and then looked away. ‘The reason for this ’ere feud. It’s not the sort of thing to be talked about in front of a child. And ya dad’s not exactly
a one for a lot of chitchat’

That was true, Emma thought wryly. Harry Forrest was no conversationalist, at least, not with his daughter. The only time he spoke to her seemed to be to issue orders. ‘Get up, go to bed,
get my tea,’ or, more often, ‘Come on, there’s work to be done.’

‘I don’t know the whole story,’ Sarah was saying, ‘only that it started between your grandfather, old Charlie Forrest, and Josiah Metcalfe’s father and
brother.’

‘You mean the two who started the blacksmith’s and wheelwright’s? But that’s years ago.’

‘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
grand
mother.’ 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.