The Miller's Daughter (24 page)

‘Well,’ Leonard said with sarcastic nonchalance, moving towards the door, ‘you’ll have to make the best of it for the moment. It’s all we can afford.’

He left the room, and she heard his footsteps running lightly down the stairs. Emma sighed deeply and then becoming aware of the small, cold hand still clinging to hers, she gave Charles a tiny
shake and said, with more determination than she felt inside, ‘Come along, darling, let’s get you ready for bed. You look tired out.’

There was an old-fashioned truckle bed tucked beneath the huge double bed that dominated the corner of the large room that would be living room cum bedroom. It was all there was for the boy to
sleep on.

On the floor below, Emma stepped into the kitchen and, glancing round, her lips tightened in disgust. To her eyes, the place was filthy. A woman stood at the stove frying something in an open
pan, the fat spitting in all directions. Not for the first time, either, Emma thought, by the look of the back panel above the top of the stove. It was streaked with congealed fat and brown
splashes.

The woman turned and looked the newcomers up and down. She sniffed and turned back to her cooking without a word.

‘Good evening,’ Emma said pointedly.

‘Evenin’,’ the woman said without turning round, again sniffed loudly and wiped the back of her hand across her nose.

‘May I warm some milk for my son?’ Emma asked firmly.

‘’Elp yerself,’ the woman said but made no effort to move aside at the stove to allow Emma space at one of the gas rings.

The door across the landing from the kitchen opened and a raucous male voice made Emma jump and Charles grasp her skirt again. ‘Ain’t my tea ready yet, woman?’

The woman at the stove took no notice, made no sign of even having heard. She merely removed the pan from the heat and tipped the whole greasy concoction on to a plate on the corner of the
table. With a clatter she dropped the pan into the deep sink, already half-full of unwashed pots and pans, picked up the plate and moved towards the door. As she passed through it, she said,
‘It’s all yours.’

The woman had left the gas ring she had been using still burning so Emma tipped some milk into a small saucepan she had brought down and set it on the ring. Charles moved towards a chair at the
table as if to sit down, but Emma said, ‘We’re not stopping down here, Charles. We’ll take it back upstairs.’

Whilst they waited for the milk to heat, the boy stood uncertainly amid the squalor, his eyes large and round in his pale, tired face. What a place, Emma thought and her resentment flared
against her husband for bringing his family here.

She noticed Charles looking about him, then he went to the doorway and looked out into the passage, first one way, then the other, turning back to look at his mother.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ she asked, seeing an unspoken question in the boy’s eyes.

‘I just thought Grandpa might be here.’

Emma gasped. ‘Grandpa? But . . .’ she hesitated, then added gently, ‘Grandpa died, Charles dear. You know he did.’

The child’s lower lip trembled. ‘But Luke said he’d gone on a long journey, Mammy. And we’ve just come on a long journey, haven’t we? I thought we’d come to
find Grandpa.’

‘Oh, my darling.’ Emma squatted down and held her arms wide to envelop her small, lost boy to her. ‘It was Luke’s way of trying to tell you kindly. I’m sorry if you
didn’t understand.’

The boy’s voice was muffled against her bosom. ‘I won’t ever see Grandpa again, will I, Mammy?’

She said nothing, but hugged him tightly and he understood her answer.

The bedding on the truckle bed was lumpy and damp. ‘You’ll not sleep on that tonight, Charles. You can snuggle in beside me.’ In her thoughts she added,
‘and your father can sleep on that thing if he wants’. The double bed was little better though it did not feel damp. The sheets were grey and the mattress hard and indented by the
shapes that had slept upon it.

The exhausted little boy was asleep in moments, but Emma lay awake far into the night, staring sleeplessly into the blackness and reliving all the events in her life that had brought her to this
moment. Lying there in the grubby room in a strange house, listening to the night sounds of the city, she resolved with a determination that she had not really recognized within herself that never
again would she allow herself to be manipulated by others, certainly never again by her husband. She had always been obedient to her father’s wishes. ‘Honour thy father’ had been
so strongly instilled into her that she had never thought to question it or dreamt of rebelling against him.

Her love for Jamie Metcalfe and his rejection of her for reasons she herself could not, even yet, come to terms with, had driven her, foolishly she saw now, into marriage with a man who was
superficially good-tempered and generous. But she had married him, and her strong sense of duty, for better for worse, still ruled her thinking. She felt the small mound that was the new life
forming within her and felt a moment’s fleeting guilt that she could not anticipate the birth of her next child with the joy with which she had looked forward to Charles’ birth.

Gently she stroked the hair of the sleeping child beside her and, in the darkness, a smile touched her lips. She loved him dearly and was filled with pride for the bravery he had shown on the
night of the disaster. But it was a courage that had been short-lived and now he was once again the pale, timorous child whose nervousness seemed to irritate his father so. In the darkness, Emma
sighed. She was expecting too much of the boy, she told herself sharply. Charles was only six years old. Yet into her mind, unbidden, came the stories of old Charlie as a youngster, of his daring
escapades, of his cheeky, lovable grin that disarmed everyone. His strength of character had been evident even then.

‘Oh, Grandpa, Grandpa,’ she whispered into the lonely night. ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry.’

Only one thought burned in her mind and hardened her resolve; I’ll never part with your mill, Grandpa Charlie. Never. No one will ever make me do that. One day the young child sleeping
here beside me – the next Charles – will inherit your mill, just as you always wanted.

In the darkness she frowned. The fleeting pictures haunted her still; the elusive memory that was always just out of reach. She was in her grandfather’s arms and he was pointing towards
the mill and saying something. Then she was standing on the ground and watching him begin to climb. And, as always, there was the awful sight, so vividly imprinted in her mind, of Grandpa Charlie
lying in the yard beneath the mill.

She turned her face into her pillow and moaned. ‘Oh, Grandpa, what is it that I can’t remember?’

She awoke with a start to feel her husband pulling back the bedclothes and climbing in beside her, the smell of the drink on his breath adding to the sour odour of the room. Emma turned on her
side, away from him, protecting her young son with the curve of her body and drifted back into an uneasy sleep to dream of a dark cloud of bees swarming on the side of Forrest’s Mill.

The following morning, Emma attacked their living quarters with brooms and brushes, hot water and carbolic soap.

Today Leonard was in a good mood, kissing her forehead and promising that this accommodation was only temporary and that they would move as soon as he could find somewhere.

‘Well, it won’t be a moment too soon. In fact, you can take Charles into the town and start looking now.’ She glanced at her husband. ‘Where do you look for places to
rent?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll ask around. Come on, Charlie boy, get your coat on and I’ll take you shopping.’

As she listened to them clattering down the stairs, hearing Charles’s high-pitched voice demanding excitedly, ‘Where are we going, Father?’ Emma tugged at the huge sash window
which gave way reluctantly under her strength. Morning air blew into the room, but it was not the fresh, country air with the hint of the sea in it she knew so well. This was city air, with street
smells and fumes from a thousand chimneys. She leaned out and glanced from right to left, seeing the backs of the neighbouring houses, each with their own identical tiny square of a backyard. Some,
it seemed, still had the privy at the end of the yard. They were fortunate, she supposed, that there was a bathroom of sorts within this house. Once, it must have belonged to quite a wealthy family
before being let off in rooms. She withdrew her head and surveyed the room behind her, took a deep breath and picked up her broom.

By the time Leonard and Charles arrived back, the room was smelling strongly of carbolic and disinfectant, but it was clean. As he came in the room, Emma could see that Leonard was hiding
something behind his back. With a dramatic flourish, he produced a bouquet of flowers, expensively wrapped and tied up with blue ribbon and, for a moment, Emma was reminded of the first time he had
come to court her. Once again, he was smiling that same disarming, charming smile that had so flattered her. She swallowed her resentment and acknowledged his gesture of peacemaking. She took the
flowers and smiled, ‘Thank you, Leonard. They’re beautiful.’

Leonard wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the room and laughed. ‘At least they’ll help to disguise the smell of carbolic.’

‘Mammy, we saw all sorts of things. Swans on the river and the shops. Oh, Mammy, you should see all the toys. And look – look what Father bought for me.’ He held up a wooden
train, painted red with a blue funnel. The boy bent and put it on the floor. ‘You can pull it along and it makes a noise.’ He glanced up at her again. ‘We walked right down the
hill and through an arch and over a bridge and then, guess what, Mammy?’

Emma smiled down at the excited child. ‘No, darling, I couldn’t possibly guess. You tell me.’

‘A train. We saw a real live train. It went across the street. The big gates shut and all the horses and carts—’

‘Drays, boy. They’re called drays.’

The boy glanced at his father briefly. ‘Yes, Father,’ but he was turning back to her, anxious to tell his mother all that he had seen. ‘And the people walking too, they all had
to stop to let the train go across the street. We were that close, Mammy, right near the gates – ’ again he held his arms wide, ‘
that
close to the train. And then when
it’d gone, the man came and opened the gates and everything could go on. He’s in a sort of house at the side of the track, high up, it is, with all sorts of levers to operate the
signals. And his house is called a – a signal box.’ The boy beamed as he remembered without having to be reminded. ‘Father told me. And then . . .’ his grin was even
wider.

Emma shook her head and laughed. She could not remember seeing her son so animated. ‘Go on. What then?’

‘We had a ride on a – a tram.’ Once more Charles glanced at his father for approval. ‘It runs on rails in the street and stops every so often to let people get on and
off.’

Leonard was nodding his approval. ‘Good lad,’ he said and Emma caught his glance. ‘He’s quite a bright little chap, isn’t he?’

Emma agreed and the thought entered her mind that perhaps, after all, their coming to the city would have its compensations. If, here, Leonard was not such an absent father, he might take more
interest in his son.

The shared kitchen and bathroom were more difficult for Emma to bring up to her own standards of cleanliness. Much of the equipment belonged to the other residents and whilst
Emma always washed and cleaned up after herself, others were not so meticulous. From the first, she carried all her own pots and pans back to her room, leaving nothing in the kitchen that could be
used by anyone else. But the incessant trailing up and down the dismal flights of stairs, began to drain even Emma’s strength, and as the weeks of her pregnancy passed and the sickness showed
no signs of abating, not even after the first three months were over, she began to feel ill. At night she dreamt of the clouds scudding across a clear blue sky, of mill sails turning and of the
sound of millstones at work.

And in her dreams she saw Luke and Sarah – and William; William who had said he was her friend for ever.

‘I can’t find the silver christening mug that William gave Charles. I’ve unpacked everything now and I can’t find it anywhere. I know I brought
it.’

‘Really?’ Leonard said absently and opened his newspaper, his eyes scanning the pages.

‘Leonard, you don’t think that awful woman from downstairs can get into this room while we’re all out, do you?’

‘’Course not.’

‘I’ve a good mind to ask her, the nosey old—’

Leonard sprang to his feet with such a sudden, violent movement that the chair he was sitting on fell backwards. He crumpled the newspaper in his hands and flung it away from him in an untidy
heap on the floor. Then he leant menacingly towards Emma, ‘Now you keep your mouth shut, woman. You hear? Don’t you go upsetting her. Don’t you dare say a word about the wretched
thing, you hear me?’

Open-mouthed, Emma stared at him. She regarded him steadily, then put her head on one side. ‘Oh, and why not?’

‘Because her husband’s put me in the way of a nice little – er – deal, that’s why not. And he might be helpful again.’

There was silence as she stood watching him set the chair upright, pick up his paper, sit down and open it again, shaking it to straighten the pages.

Quietly, never taking her eyes from him, Emma said, ‘So, do you have any idea where the mug might be?’

‘If you must know,’ he growled. ‘I’ve pawned it.’

‘Pawned it!’

‘I’ll get it back, I’ll get it back,’ he raised his voice irritably. ‘Next week when I’m a bit more flush.’

There was a loud knocking on the door and Emma, dozing in a chair by the fire, roused herself stiffly. The room was shadowy as dusk had fallen outside the long window whilst
she slept. She levered herself up from her seat, the nine-month bulge slowing her movements. The banging came again, more insistent. She was alone for Leonard had taken the boy to the market and
had told her they would be late.