The Miller's Daughter (4 page)

‘Have you hurt yourself?’

William grimaced. ‘Ben Popple’s shire kicked me day ’afore yesterday.’

Emma pulled a face in sympathy and said, ‘Ouch,’ as if she too could feel his pain.

William nodded and said with feeling, ‘Yeah, “ouch” indeed. I’m no good with ’osses, Em. Jamie’s got that special touch, y’know.’

Emma almost blushed and was thankful William could not read her thoughts. Swiftly, she quelled her romantic daydreams and brought her wandering mind back to William.

‘I’m better working wi’ wood,’ he nodded to his left towards the wide passageway that ran between the smithy and the wheelwright’s workshop. ‘But I’ve
had to close that for the time bein’. I just haven’t been able to cope with both businesses. There’s still one of Farmer Leighton’s wagons waiting for a broken wheel to be
repaired. But I can’t get anyone to give me a hand with the tyre. It needs both smith and wheelwright.’

She had watched Jamie and his father working in partnership to shape the huge round of the metal tyre. They heated it in a bonfire and then, lifting it with long-handled tongs, they carried it
between them, to fit it over the wooden cartwheel. Finally they poured cold water on it to cool it quickly so that the metal contracted to fit tightly on to the wheel. William was right. It was a
two man job.

He was picking up a piece of metal and examining its usefulness as a horseshoe with a half-hearted interest. ‘I’m losing business here an’ all, now. Just what Jamie’ll
say when he does get home, I daren’t think.’

As William thrust the metal into the fire, Emma wandered out of the forge and peered over the closed gate leading into the wheelwright’s yard. Broken wheels stood leaning drunkenly against
one wall. In the centre, a wagon with a broken shaft and its blue paint peeling off in flakes waited forlornly for attention. Everywhere were piles of wood waiting to be made into wagons and in one
corner a neglected heap of elm butts, still with the bark on, were already collecting mildew.

She went back and stood watching, feeling the heat from the fire, smelling the aroma of singeing hoof that clung to the walls of the smithy. William brought another shoe out of the fire to the
anvil and picked up his hammer to beat the white hot metal into shape.

William was a year younger than Emma and no taller, with light brown hair and greeny-blue eyes. He had always been thin, but now that slimness had a gauntness to it, as if the burdens he had
been obliged to shoulder alone threatened to weigh him down and break his slender frame and gentle soul.

When the noise of his hammer ceased, she said, ‘He’ll understand, William. Jamie will understand what you’ve been through, what you’ve had to cope with all on your
own.’ She did not add, though the thought was in her mind, that Jamie would not have expected his young brother to cope at all. William had been only fourteen when Jamie had gone away. It
would be how he was still picturing him – as a boy. Now Jamie was returning to find a man, but a young man who had borne the heavy weight of losing both his parents so suddenly and struggling
alone to keep the family concerns going. ‘Would you like me to come and help you?’ she asked.

He glanced up, his warm smile creasing the lines around his eyes. ‘Would you? Just to tidy the house up a bit.’ He pulled a comical face. ‘It’s as bad in there as out
here.’

She chuckled. ‘Well, I meant out here, with Farmer Leighton’s wheel, but if you’d rather . . .’

William was shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t want you to help me with that. I wouldn’t let you. It’s not the sort of work a lass ought to do.’

Now Emma threw back her head and laughed, ‘Oh, William. I love you when you get all protective. It’s me, remember, Harry Forrest’s great carthorse of a daughter.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Emma,’ he said and at the use of her full name, Emma’s laughter died.

William only ever called her ‘Emma’ when he was annoyed, which was so unusual that she could not remember the last time he had called her by her full name. Since childhood, to
William, she had always been ‘Em’.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said swiftly. ‘But I could help you out here, really I could.’

William shook his head emphatically. ‘No, Em, but I’d be really grateful for some help in the house.’ He was smiling again, his easy, good nature restored at once.

‘Right then, I’ll come Sunday afternoon complete with bucket and mop. And as for all this,’ she swept her hand in a wide arc to encompass the smithy and the neighbouring yard
too, ‘Jamie will soon be home now to help you. Why,’ she tried to smile brightly at him, to lift the young man’s spirits, ‘it’ll be just what your father always
wanted, two Metcalfe brothers running the business with Jamie as the blacksmith and you as the wheelwright. Isn’t that so?’

‘Oh, Em,’ the young man sighed. ‘What would I have done without you these last few months? You always seem to make things better.’ He glanced away, back towards the fire
and muttered gruffly, ‘I hope our Jamie knows what a lucky feller he is with a girl like you waiting for him.’

Emma laughed, the sound echoing around the walls of the smithy. ‘I hope he does too.’

‘But you’re right,’ he went on. ‘Our dad inherited the two businesses from his father and his Uncle George, who had no family, and he always planned that one day Jamie
and me would work side by side again like the old days.’ He grinned at her. ‘Lucky he had two sons, wasn’t it, and not daughters?’

The smile faded from Emma’s mouth and her glance fell away. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what my father has always said.’

The young man was at once contrite. He dropped the long tongs on the floor with a ringing clatter and came swiftly towards her. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Me an’ my
big mouth. You know I wouldn’t say anything to hurt your feelings.’

She put up her hand to him and forced a smile to her mouth. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

William was one of the most compassionate, kindly men Emma knew. Her violet eyes softened as she looked at him now. She was so glad he was going to be her brother-in-law. She couldn’t wait
for the day when she would come to live in the little cottage behind the smithy and the wheelwright’s and care for both her husband and his brother, at least until William found himself a
bride too. But it wouldn’t do to say so, not now. She bit her lip, holding back the words, not daring to tempt a Fate that had not yet brought her Jamie safely back from the war.

‘William,’ she began, deliberately changing the subject, ‘there’s something I want to ask you . . .’

‘What’s that, Em?’

‘Do you know who “the Merry Widow” is?’

‘Where’ve you been gallivanting off to when there’s work to be done?’

Harry Forrest was standing in the doorway of the mill, looking out across the yard, his thumbs hooked in his braces, his collarless shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Even in winter, he
wore only a waistcoat over his shirt, but underneath, he wore a thick woollen vest and long johns, garments that were the devil’s own job to get dry on a wet wash day, Emma thought. Corduroy
trousers, heavy boots and a cap completed the miller’s working clothes. Indeed, they were almost a uniform, for not only Luke, but all the farm workers, even William and Jamie too, wore
similar workaday attire.

Emma closed the gate and walked across the yard towards him. ‘I’ve been to take old Grannie Bartlett’s bread, Father,’ she answered, outwardly placid, but inwardly
seething. It was a truthful answer, if not the whole truth. She could have said, ‘And finding out things about you. Things I’d rather not have known.’ But she kept silent about
calling to see William Metcalfe. It did not do to arouse Harry Forrest’s wrath too often.

Her father grunted. ‘We’re not a delivery service for the locals, girl. Old Mrs Bartlett should get a neighbour to fetch ’er bread.’

Emma said nothing, knowing he was spoiling for an argument if she gave him the opportunity. ‘Anyway,’ he muttered, ‘ya took yar time, didn’t ya? I’ve been waiting
for a hand. Get up top and unhook these sacks as I send ’em up. They want to go in Ben Popple’s bin.’

Emma nodded and set down her basket on the floor. Hitching up her skirt, she began to climb the narrow ladder up to the bin floor of the mill. ‘Mind ya gets the right bin,’ came her
father’s irritable voice. ‘I don’t want Ben on me back ’cos we’ve mixed up his grain wi’ summat else. You know how fussy he is about his own special mix for his
pig feed.’

‘No, Father,’ Emma called, without pausing in her climb. She stepped on to the meal floor where the ground flour or meal came down the spouts from the millstones on the floor above
into the waiting sacks. It was where the miller stood for most of his working day. Between the fingers and thumb of one hand he felt the texture of the ground grain as it poured down the wooden
chute. With the other hand, he adjusted the tentering gear to raise or lower the stones above to produce the exact fineness of flour or meal he wanted. It was a skilled and exacting job and the
slightest change in the strength of the wind meant a tiny, precise adjustment to the gearing.

On this floor too, was the pair of auxiliary stones driven by the engine.

Out of her father’s sight, Emma gave a quick, exasperated shake of her head. She hardly needed to be given such an elementary instruction. They all knew, had known for years, that Ben
Popple liked his own grain, and no one else’s, used to make up the feed for his own animals.

‘After all the trouble I tek to produce a good crop, I dun’t want it mixed in with the likes of old man Tollison’s, full o’ weeds an’ muck,’ Ben Popple would
boom in his loud, carrying voice every time he brought grain to the mill. ‘And don’t you go letting anyone else have my special mix either, Harry Forrest.’ He would tap the side
of his nose. ‘It’s my secret how I gets my pigs fatter than anyone else’s. See to it, Harry.’

And Harry saw to it, handing out the instruction every time, even to Luke, who knew the foibles of the farmers around here as well as, if not better than, anyone. But Harry Forrest liked to let
everyone know just who was master of the mill.

Her father’s voice still floated up to her. ‘And it wouldn’t do to upset Ben Popple, now would it, me girl?’ A sly innuendo had crept into his tone.

Emma climbed on, deliberately scraping her feet on each rung as she climbed to make as much noise as possible so that she could not hear any more. She passed the stone floor where the huge cast
iron spur wheel in the ceiling drove the three smaller stone nuts, each one connected to an upright spindle in the centre of each pair of stones. Above each set of millstones, a wooden spout
brought the grain down from the bin floor above and fed it into hoppers and then, via the vibrating feed shoe, into the centre of the grinding stones.

Arriving on the next level, the bin floor, Emma sighed. Ben Popple was at least twice her age if not more; fat, pompous, with bad teeth and breath to match. He had never married, yet he acted as
if he thought himself irresistible to women.

‘Now then, Emma,’ he would greet her every time he came to the mill, hanging about the yard until she appeared. ‘My, but ya’re a bonny lass. When are you going to let me
speak to ya dad ’bout us being wed, eh? I could do with a good strong wench about me farm and to warm me bed at night.’

‘When the sun shines both sides o’ the hedge, Mester Popple,’ she would tease him.

Ben Popple would roar with laughter. ‘I like a bit of spirit in a wench, an’ all. Harry can keep his lah-di-dah fancy women but you’ll do fer me, Emma Forrest. You’ll do
fer me.’

At first she had taken his words as the kind of innocent joking between an older man and a young girl, without any offence being meant nor taken. But then one day Harry Forrest had overheard Ben
and he had chosen to view the wealthy farmer’s banter very differently. ‘You could do a lot worse, m’girl, and with your looks, probably not a lot better.’

On the bin floor she unhooked each sack from the hoist as it came rattling through the trap doors, lugged it over to the small bin in the far corner and heaved in the grain. There was scarcely
room to move between the wooden bins and soon the confined space was thick with dust. It clung to her black hair, tickled her throat and made her blink, but for Emma it was her way of life, and if
not exactly oblivious to the discomfort then she thought nothing of it. Besides, today her mind was filled with what William Metcalfe had told her.

‘The Merry Widow’ was a woman called Bridget Smith who had recently come to live in a tiny cottage on the other side of the village. But just how, Emma pondered the problem, as she
heaved and grunted and pushed another sack load into the bin, am I going to get to see her for myself?

‘That’s the lot,’ Harry’s voice drifted up from three floors below. ‘You finish off here, I’m off to the house. I shan’t be wanting any tea.’ A
pause, then he bellowed again, ‘You hear me, Emma?’

‘Oh I hear you, Harry Forrest,’ she muttered and then raised her voice to shout down, ‘Yes, Father.’

She bent and looked out of the small window overlooking the yard to see him walking towards the house. She was tempted to shout, ‘May I come with you, Father?’ The thought of doing
so made her clap her hand to her mouth as if to stop the mischievous words escaping her lips of their own accord.

Once more, she ate her tea alone and went to bed long before Harry Forrest returned home.

The following morning as Emma carried a tray of warm cottage loaves from the bakery into the shop, the door bell clanged and Emma, with a ready smile on her lips, looked up to
greet her customer. The woman standing on the other side of the polished wooden counter was a stranger to the village and immediately Emma realized who she must be and the smile on her generous
mouth faltered. But the woman was smiling and holding out her gloved hand across the counter.

‘I thought it was high time we met. My name is Bridget Smith. And you . . .’ her voice was high-pitched but pleasant and she paused as if to give emphasis to her next words,
‘must be Emma?’

Slowly Emma held out her hand and found it clasped gently in the soft fabric of the woman’s lilac coloured gloves. Emma knew she was staring at the face before her, but she could not tear
her mesmerized gaze away. This was the woman the villagers called ‘the Merry Widow’, the woman her father was keeping company with and in turn making himself at best, the idle talk of
the pub bar, at worst, a laughing stock.