The Miller's Daughter (2 page)

‘Oh, Luke,’ she said softly and touched his gnarled hand. ‘There’s nothing dainty and pretty about me, now is there?’ For once there was a wistfulness in her tone.
‘I was born and bred for work.’

‘Ya shouldn’t put yarsen down so.’ He wagged his finger in her face in mock admonishment. ‘Ya’re a bonnie lass. Dun’t you ever let anyone tell ya
different.’

Emma smiled and said once more, ‘Oh, Luke!’ An impish grin drove away some of the longing from her voice as she added, ‘I’m a fine strapping lass. Isn’t that what
they say about me in the village? That I’ll be a good catch for some lucky feller, eh?’ Now she could not prevent the bitterness creeping back into her tone. ‘Me
and
my
father’s mill!’

Knowingly, old Luke shook his head. ‘So, he’s been on about that again, has he? And I’ve no doubt young Jamie Metcalfe’s name just happened to crop up in the
conversation, eh?’

Emma bit her lip and turned away, but her silence gave Luke his answer. ‘Aye, I thought as much,’ Emma heard him mutter.

Not much gets past Luke Robson, Emma thought, but then he had been at Forrest’s mill all his working life.

‘He was a grand old man, ya grandpa,’ Luke never tired of telling Emma. ‘A real character, old Charlie Forrest was. Eh, I could tell you some tales, lass. That I could. Me
an’ ya dad started working at the mill about the same time and I’ll give ya grandpa his due, he nivver showed his own son any favours over me.’ At this point in his well-worn
tale, the faded blue eyes would twinkle. ‘We had some high old times together, me an’ ya dad, when we was young ’uns.’ His eyes would mist over as if he were seeing back
down the years. Then he would turn away abruptly, murmuring, ‘Shame things turned out the way they did . . .’

She was walking away now, trundling the sack barrow before her, calling back cheerfully over her shoulder. ‘We’d best get this grain up top for ’im, else we’ll both be in
trouble.’

Behind her she heard Luke’s wheezing laughter. ‘If I know ’im,’ he jerked his thumb towards the floors above, ‘he’ll have t’other pair of stones working
’afore the day’s out, if this weather holds. And he’ll not handle all
three
pairs on his own. So, what would Harry Forrest do without either of us two, lass? Ask yarsen
that!’

As she heaved the next sack of barley on to the barrow and turned once more towards the mill, Emma thought to herself, what indeed?

She drew the back of her hand across her smooth, tanned brow that shone with sweat even in the cold wind of a winter’s day.

As she came close again, Luke said, ‘You going to Bilsford market with him next week, then?’

Her violet eyes were full of mischief as she glanced at him. ‘I shouldn’t think I’ll be let loose there again for a while yet, Luke. Not after last time!’

The old man snorted. ‘Huh, such a lot of fuss over a bit of frippery. Why shouldn’t you have a pretty new bonnet, lass? I ask you?’

Yes, Emma thought, as the smile faded from her mouth. Why indeed had it been such a sin for her to buy the straw hat decorated with pink ribbons that had caught her eye on a market stall? The
way her father had ranted all the way home in the pony and trap, she might have broken one of the ten commandments. Luke was still muttering. ‘I could’ve understood it if ya mam had
been, well, a plain sort o’ woman. But she weren’t. She were the prettiest little thing you ever did see. Allus dressed up, she were, never a curl out o’ place. Ya dad bought
plenty of hats for
her
.’

‘Maybe that’s just it, Luke,’ Emma murmured, longing for her mother sweeping through her afresh.

‘Eh?’ She felt his glance as her words interrupted his line of thought. ‘What d’ya mean?’

Hesitantly, with a trace of the wistfulness once more in her tone, she said quietly, ‘I’m nothing like my mother, am I? If only I was, then perhaps . . .’

The words lay unspoken between them and she lifted her violet eyes to meet his gaze, the hurt showing plainly in their depths.

His wrinkled hand reached out to her. ‘Aw lass, don’t tek on so. Ya not like ya mam, no. Ya like – ya like – ’ he hesitated as if unwilling to speak the words but
he had gone too far to draw back now. ‘Ya like old Charlie Forrest – the female version, o’ course,’ he added swiftly, conscious that perhaps he was adding to Emma’s
already injured pride.

She thought of the portrait of Charles Forrest that hung above the mantel in the best parlour upstairs. The subject had adopted a stiff-backed, formidable pose with a stern frown drawing his
bushy eyebrows together. Yet on close inspection, the artist had captured a spark of mischief in the dark blue eyes; eyes that were all-seeing, all-knowing, staring straight out into the room as if
still watching the goings-on in his mill. The man in the painting had a broad forehead, a straight nose and high cheekbones and beneath the moustache was a full and generous mouth with the tiniest
hint of a puckish smile twitching at the corner.

‘Ya could do a lot worse than be like ya grandpa, Emma. He was an old rogue, but a lovable old rogue, if you know what I mean.’

Emma laughed, a low infectious sound. ‘Oh, Luke, you say the nicest things to a girl. If only you were twenty years younger.’

The old man grinned, showing black gaps between his yellowing teeth. ‘More like forty, lass.’ Then he winked broadly. ‘I were a bit of a lad in me time, an’ all. Me
an’ ya dad got into a few scrapes together as young uns.’

‘Oh do tell, Luke,’ she teased him, knowing that not for one moment would he let out the secrets of their youth.

He shook his head. ‘Nay, lass, ’tis more ’n me job’s worth.’

Emma wagged her finger at him playfully. ‘Don’t you worry, Luke Robson. I’ll ask your Sarah next time I see her.’

‘Ya can ask, but she’ll not tell you, ’cos she don’t know.’

‘Oh,
you
.’ In mock anger, Emma shook her fist at him as he turned away to heave the sack of grain up the steps and into the mill. He was still chuckling to himself, safe in
the belief that Emma could not learn anything about his youth, or about her father’s early years, save what he, Luke Robson, chose to tell her.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning,’ she called.

‘Aye, bright and early, lass.’

She stood watching him for a moment as he disappeared into the mill and she heard the jingle of the sack hoist chain as he hauled the last sack up to the bin floor. Then he would climb the three
flights of narrow ladders to unload and tip the sack into its right container. Her gaze wandered lovingly over the black tapering shape towering above her. She listened to the gentle rattle of the
revolving sails. To Emma, the sound was the heartbeat of the working mill. She lifted her head and felt the wind on her face. She loved it when it was good milling weather, even if it did mean her
working day was even longer. To her it was an affront when her father was forced to start the engine in the nearby building and run the long, wide belt across the space between the shed and the
mill. With the belt looped around the pulley wheel on the outside of the mill, the engine drove the pair of auxiliary stones. It was the only way they could keep the mill working when there was no
wind strong enough to turn the sails, yet Emma hated it. But there was no need for it on a day like this when the wind blustered from the sea and sent the sails spinning sails faster and
faster.

Her work here done for the moment, Emma walked across the yard away from the mill. To her right was the granary and on her left, the tip of its roof only just beneath the sweep of the sails, was
the engine house. Behind it and through a gap in the hedge was their orchard and beyond that, a small cottage belonging to Harry Forrest but occupied by Luke and Sarah Robson who both worked for
him. Before her was their own house. On the ground floor was the bakery at the front, facing onto the village street. At the back was the bakehouse and in between the two was their kitchen, with
bedrooms and the best parlour on the first floor.

Three generations of Forrests had lived here in this house. The first Forrest, old Charlie, had seen his two sons, Charles and Harry, born in the front bedroom above the shop and had rejoiced in
the knowledge that he had heirs to follow him. To old Charlie’s disappointment, his eldest son had no interest in the mill and had run away to sea at the age of thirteen or so. The ebullient
man had shrugged his huge shoulders and forgiven his wayward offspring, for there was still Harry to give him grandsons.

But that had not happened, for the only child to survive had been a girl, and now Emma Forrest was the only heir to old Charlie’s mill.

It was the time of day she loved the best. Very early on a winter’s morning with the yard outside still in darkness, it was warm and cosy in the bakehouse. With her
father across at the mill, and before Sarah came to open the shop, there was just Luke lighting and stoking the fire in the firebox at the side of the brick oven and Emma mixing the first batch of
dough for fifty farmhouse loaves.

‘Tell me again,’ she coaxed. ‘Tell me about Grandpa Charlie?’

And Luke needed no more persuasion.

‘Eighteen-fifty-two, your grandpa built this mill, Emma. With his own bare hands.’ Luke would spread his own hands, pitted with the long years of work. ‘He’d been
apprenticed as a boy to a millwright and by the time he was in his twenties, what Charlie Forrest didn’t know about mills and milling weren’t worth knowing. It was his dream to have his
own mill. Aye, and everybody laughed at him, an’ all.’

‘Why? Why did they laugh at him?’

‘Because they said it’d not catch the wind where he was building it, here, under the lee of the hill. It’s even lower than the church up yonder.’ Luke jerked his thumb
over his shoulder in the direction of the church towering on the highest point in the village that clustered on a gently sloping hill which the history books said had been constructed by the Romans
as a lookout across the North Sea. ‘They told him he should have built it on top of the rise, but Ben Morgan had already built his mill there years before.’ Luke laughed again.
‘And old Ben wasn’t too pleased about this young feller and his plans for another mill in the village, so they say.’

‘Or out on the marsh,’ Emma murmured, joining in the tale she knew by heart.

‘Aye,’ Luke agreed, ‘it’d have caught the wind out there all right.’

Beyond Marsh Thorpe the flat, fertile land stretched right to the sea.

‘So why . . .?’

Luke tapped the side of his nose knowingly. ‘Ya grandpa might have been young, lass, but he was as sharp as a cartload o’ monkeys. He bought this bit of waste ground here for a
song,’ Luke pointed down to the ground. ‘Nearly an acre, there is, but he knew what he could do with it
and
with the derelict house on it.’ The old man’s smile
widened. ‘And isn’t that what we’re standing in right now, Emma? Oh, Charlie Forrest knew what he was doing, all right. He knew it’d make not only a home, but a bakehouse
and bakery too.’

‘And so, he built his mill,’ Emma said, plunging her hands into the flour.

‘Brick by brick, timber by timber, it rose towards the sky.’ Luke raised his arms, becoming quite poetic as he warmed to his theme. ‘He put all the heavy machinery in on each
floor as he went and he even built the sails himself. Fancy that, Emma. I remember me dad telling me that the whole village turned out to watch the day the sails were hoisted.’

‘But why,’ Emma asked, knowing the answer full well, but humouring Luke in his enjoyment of telling her the story yet again, ‘did the villagers call it “Forrest’s
Folly”?’

‘Because he was a young feller, only in his twenties, reckoning he could build and run a mill all on his own, and because of where he was building it.’ Luke adjusted the damper at
the side of the oven and laughed wheezily. ‘Allus an awk’ard old beggar, ya grandpa were. Liked to do what people least expected him to do.’ Luke’s eyes would mist over.
‘But he were a grand chap. He knew what he were doin’ all right and there weren’t a finer craftsman for miles around. “This mill will last generations,” he used to
say. “It’ll pass to my son and my son’s son and on and on down the generations. There’ll always be a Forrest at Forrest’s Mill.”’ Here Luke would stop
suddenly, realizing he had got carried away in his tale-telling and was touching on a subject that was like an open wound in the present generation of the Forrest family.

‘It’s all right,’ Emma smiled gently and touched the old man’s arm. ‘Even Grandpa Charlie couldn’t play God.’

‘And when he’d finished building his mill, do you know what they say old Charlie did, Emma? He climbed up on to the gallery – there was one in them days, running all the way
round the outside of the mill just above the windows of the meal floor – and he caught hold of the end of one of the sails and he went full circle round on the end of it.’ Luke swept
his arm in a wide arc to demonstrate. ‘By, he were a daredevil, was old Charlie.’ He gave a rasping bark of laughter. ‘He tried to get me an’ ya dad to do the same thing
when we finished our apprenticeship, but we weren’t ’aving none of it. I’ve never ’ad much of a head for heights. But old Charlie . . .’ Luke was shaking his head
again.

Emma frowned. ‘You know I can vaguely remember there being a gallery.’ Her memories were hazy, clouded by that awful day when she had seen her grandpa fall from the mill. Even when
she deliberately tried to recall it, there was always something just out of reach of her consciousness.

‘Oh aye, it was taken down after your grandpa got killed. That’s how he got on to the sails, y’know? Off the gallery. That’s what it was there for, for doing repairs to
the sails an’ that, but afterwards, well, ya dad had it removed.’

‘Why – why was Grandpa up there that day? At his age?’ Her eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean he was trying to go round on the end of a sail
then
?’

‘No, no. He’d gone up to do some repairs,’ Luke said quickly. ‘Old Charlie never did accept that he was getting on a bit. Silly old fool thought he could carry on just
like when he was young.’

Emma shuddered, trying to blot out the dreadful pictures in her mind, but they persisted. Her grandfather had his arm about her and was saying something to her, pointing up towards the mill.
Then he had moved away from her. The picture blurred and her next memory was of him climbing up one of the sails. He had turned to look down at her standing in the yard, far below him and then . .
. Emma swept her hand across her eyes trying to erase the terrible sight of old Charlie Forrest falling, arms flailing the air, down, down to the yard below. Still she could hear the awful thud as
his body hit the ground. Then she could remember no more.