The Blind Miller

by Catherine Cookson

  Oh, NO! NO! NO!

  But yes, she was. Her mind, rocking from the impact of this knowledge, steadied itself and spoke to her with frightening calm reasoning. He’ll never be unhappy through you now, it said. It couldn’t have gone on; look at last night. There was a rift opening between him and John and because of you. He knew how John felt about you; he never said anything, but he knew. What he didn’t know was how you felt. He died thinking you perfect; be glad of that.

  Yes, she was glad of that. He had gone on loving her wholeheartedly to his last breath, and that was what she had prayed for, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t have gone on much longer, not if John had remained in England, and had kept getting leaves. She thought at times lately that she must tell David, she just must tell him why her father came so often when he got no welcome, when she even showed her hate of him. David had known that she gave him money, but he took it for granted that it was to help her mother, and she had not disabused him of this idea.

  But now it was all over, the fear and the worry…and the love. She would never be loved again as David had loved her, never. Nor would she ever love again as she had loved David…She would never love again, except Kathleen. But that was a different kind of love. In a way she was free. Her mother was dead, her husband was dead…and her father was dead.

  There came a gentle tapping on the bedroom door. She made no movement or sound, but she knew it was May who had entered the room.

  ‘It’s Mam, she’s coming up.’

  When Mary Hetherington entered the bedroom her eyes went straight to the figure lying on the bed and she moved slowly towards it; she did not look at Sarah or say any word to her.

  On the older woman’s approach Sarah had moved back from the bed, and now she stood looking towards her mother-in-law. She hadn’t looked at her for years, not in the face. Mary Hetherington did not seem much older than on the day they had faced each other across the table in the living room; the only difference about her was that her face looked sharper and harder. But this woman was David’s mother, she would be sorrowing too. She was his mother and had loved him the best—more, oh, much more, than she had loved John, or even her husband, for that matter. She must remember that; she must remember that she was suffering at this moment.

  When Mary Hetherington turned from the bed without having touched the figure that lay there, Sarah, making a valiant effort through compassion towards reconciliation, whispered brokenly, ‘Will you help me to see to him?’

  Mary Hetherington paused and she brought her eyes from space to look at her daughter-in-law, and she kept them on her for a full minute while Sarah waited for her to speak. Then she turned her gaze away and with it her body. She did it with a measured timing that was an insult in itself, and with this timing in her step she went out of the room.

  Sarah’s lower jaw was trembling. When she tried to control it by clenching her teeth their chattering became loud in her head. It wasn’t possible that anyone could keep up hate like that, and particularly at a time like this, but she had, David’s mother had. Her face had been full of it. She had looked the picture of fury, as a female god might have looked, a jealous god…

  ‘I’ll give you a hand, Sarah.’ May’s voice was gentle, and Sarah, her throat swelled to bursting, murmured, ‘Thank you, but if you don’t mind, I’d…I’d rather see to him myself.’

  ‘Very well.’ May inclined her head, then went out, closing the bedroom door quietly after her, and Sarah set about the task of doing the last service she would ever do for David.

  Two hours later Sarah sat in the kitchen; she felt drained and empty, yet filled with grief and still that strange, unwelcome sense of relief. Kathleen was standing on one side of her and Paul on the other. Kathleen was crying and Paul was not far from it. Sarah had hold of Kathleen’s hand, and when Paul muttered, ‘Oh, Auntie Sarah’, she took his also.

  The boy bent his willowy length towards her. He looked older than sixteen, he could have been eighteen, even nineteen, and he spoke like a man now as he said under his breath, ‘Don’t worry, Aunt Sarah, don’t worry about anything. I’ll see to you, I’ll always see to you and Kathleen.’ He flicked his eyes to the tear-drenched face of the girl who had always been his playmate. ‘You’ll neither of you want for anything, I’ll see to that, I will.’

  Sarah looked at the boy. He was a nice lad, a fine lad. Yes, she could imagine him meaning what he said, at least about Kathleen, because he was more than fond of Kathleen. He had never attempted to hide his feelings in that direction. But youth changed, all that was in the future. She could think of the future at this moment, at least for them, but there was no future for herself, she could see only a wilderness, a vast wilderness, in which she would walk until one day she met up with David again. It was funny how the habit of religion caught up with you when you were amidst death. She realised that the latter thought in her head could have been David speaking. He had said wise things had David.

  Oh, David, David. How was she going to bear being alone, for from now on she would be entirely alone. Oh yes, there were the others. John. She shuddered on the name. If only it had been he who had died. And then there was Dan. There would always be Dan. Dan was good and thoughtful and kind. He was like David was Dan, only different, more carefree, more careless, at least about things in general, but so good, oh, so good. Yes, there would always be Dan. And in the background, her father-in-law. But close, close to her there was Kathleen and Paul. Yes, Paul was close to her, closer to her than he was to his own mother. But why was her mind thinking like this, for it didn’t matter who she had when she hadn’t David.

  She heard May’s voice now coming from the room. It was low and murmuring. She was talking to Dan and John about something, likely the preparation for the funeral.

  There came a knock on the back door and Paul said, ‘I’ll see who it is.’ He hurried away through the scullery and she heard the murmur of voices. Then filling the doorway and pushing into the room were three figures. Two of the men she had not seen before, but the man they were supporting between them was her father, and the sight of him changed her world yet again. As she looked at the dirty, bedraggled, undersized man her body became charged with a force that brought her to her feet and sent the chair spinning backwards across the room. She felt her body and her head swelling into gigantic proportions; she had the idea that her expanding flesh would push the walls apart.

  One of the men, looking at her across the kitchen, said, ‘They thought he was in the rubble but he just got the blast. He’s been wandering about. He says you’re his daughter, so we brought…’

  ‘Get him out!’

  ‘But, missis.’

  ‘Get him out!’

  ‘But he’s got no place to go…’

  ‘What is it?’ She heard Dan’s voice behind her, then she heard John’s voice saying, ‘My God!’ She saw him move forward to her father. ‘Well, you were lucky,’ he said quietly.

  Sarah glared at them, the big figure of John, the small wizened figure of her father. Because of these two men she was thankful, unnaturally thankful that her man was dead. Her body was swelling, swelling; her lungs were pushing her ribs out, there was pain all over her. She screamed again, ‘Get him out, I tell you!’

  All the faces were turned towards her, and when no-one moved, her hand darted with the swiftness of a panther’s paw, grabbed the teapot from the table, and, lifting it high, went to hurl it at the man who had seemingly come back from the dead.

  In a flash, almost as swift as that which had enabled her to grab up the teapot, John reached her. With his body pressed against hers, his arms stretched wide, muscle to muscle, they stood outlined like a crooked cross for a second; then, as the teapot crashed to the floor, she heaved the gigantic structure that her body seemed to have become, and, like a wrestler throwing off an opponent, she hurled him from her. This was the second time she had been prevented from hitting her father with a teapot.

  She could see the room once more. The two strang
ers had gone, her father with them. Dan, too, had gone. She could hear his voice from the yard exclaiming angrily, ‘You’ll just have to find some place but not here. Can’t you see?’

  There were only May and John left in the kitchen, and Kathleen. Kathleen was crouched in the far corner of the room, fear written all over her. It was the sight of her daughter’s fear that seemed to pierce the swelling in her body. She felt herself running down like a deflated balloon as it were, and when she was her normal size again she looked from one to the other, from Kathleen to May, and then to John, and for the first time in her life she hated him, hated him at this moment almost as much as his mother hated her. Groping her way to David’s chair, she dropped on to it, and, turning her face into the corner, she began to cry, tearing, agonised crying that knew no end.

  PART FIVE

  One

  They left the tennis hut, their shoes and rackets swinging from their hands. They walked down by the wall of the workhouse, down Talbot Road and into Stanhope Road, and they never stopped talking, first one and then the other.

  Paul at nineteen was half a head taller than Kathleen. His hair was dark and his eyes brown and his overall expression intense, yet attractive. His body had remained thin; unlike his father, he had no bulk.

  Kathleen, on the other hand, had bulk; her body was just a younger edition of her mother’s. She was not quite as pretty perhaps as Sarah had been at her age, but happier looking, freer.

  Kathleen turned her bright gaze up to Paul now as she said, ‘Don’t you feel furious about having to do your National Service first? Why don’t you go and tell them that you’ll do it after you finish at Oxford? Some people do. Renée Patten said her cousin did it.’

  ‘Don’t talk dizzy. Renée Patten!’ Paul gave an exaggerated sigh, and, turning a solemn countenance towards her, raised his free hand, and in a voice of a bishop intoning a blessing, began, ‘My dear child, I do not intend to try to penetrate your dim wits again. After attempting, and having failed on several occasions, to get the facts through your thick skull that my future hangs on a small matter of a small amount of money, small being a comparative word, I am dismayed…indeed I am dismayed, dear child…’

  As she hit out at him with her racket he skipped aside into the road; then they came together again and went on down the street laughing.

  ‘I know you’ve got to have money,’ Kathleen began once more, stressing each word with deliberation. ‘But I meant that if you were to put it to them they would give you the money to go up first and then you could do your National Service after.’

  Again Paul sighed, another deep exaggerated sigh, and staring ahead, he said, as if reading from a letter now, ‘My dear His Majesty’s Forces. You know that I intend to serve you with all my brain and brawn for two years, and in return—I hope—you are going to feed me and fend for me during my stay in a certain celestial city. But would it be too much to ask if you would reverse the process and put off my sojourn with you until I have my fling in the said celestial city, while probing, of course, during the said fling, deeper into English Literature, so that after three years, when I gladly join you, a cross between a neologist and a palaeographer—trusting by that time to have achieved this distinction—you will understand how much more valuable I will be to my brothers in the barracks should they ever be lost for words…’

  Again Kathleen’s racket swung out. ‘You think you’re clever, don’t you? You’re swanking all the time. Neologist! Palaeographer! I hope when you get to the British Museum they’ll stuff you.’

  Paul threw his head back and laughed, and in this action he took on a semblance of John.

  ‘Yes, you can laugh, but listen; it’s funny, isn’t it, about you going in for words all because of Dad.’ Her face had a thoughtful look now.

  ‘Yes, it is funny when you come to think about it. And funny isn’t the correct word but we’ll skip it on this occasion.’ He glanced teasingly towards her. But his flippancy didn’t bring her to attack him with her tongue or racket, and picking up her mood, he went on. ‘No, I don’t suppose I’d ever have thought about words if it hadn’t been for Uncle. I remember the first time he told me all words were straight lines. I didn’t believe him. Even when he showed me, I didn’t believe him, I wanted to argue with him. I suppose it was this feeling that years later made me get that book on Chinese writing. I remember thrusting it under his nose with a triumphant feeling and saying, “Straighten those out, Uncle David.” He did laugh.’

  ‘It’s three years ago,’ said Kathleen softly, ‘and I still miss him. He was lovely was me Dad.’

  They were walking down the bank now towards the church, quiet for the first time since they had left the tennis court, and when they came to the foot of the steps Kathleen stopped and said, ‘I’m going to pay a visit.’

  ‘OK.’ He turned with her and walked up the steps.

  At the church door Kathleen stopped again and, looking at him, said, ‘Do you think you’d better? Me Aunt May will go for you.’

  ‘She’s not to know.’

  ‘Well, it’s odd but she has ways of finding out. You remember what she said a while ago: she said she could smell the incense off you.’

  ‘That was sheer imagination. Anyway, I’ve always come in with you and I’m not going to stop now. Come on.’ He pushed her forward into the dim porch.

  The church was cool after the reflected heat of the pavements. Kathleen led the way down the side aisle to the front pew opposite the Lady altar. This was the pew her mother had always sat in when she came to church as a young girl. She prayed daily that she would one day return to it. She genuflected deeply before she entered the pew, then knelt down and, bowing her head, covered her face unselfconsciously with both hands.

  Paul had not genuflected; nor did he kneel down, he just sat back on the seat and looked quietly about him. He had told himself a number of times that he didn’t quite know what the attraction was about this place. It certainly wasn’t the beautiful structure of the church, nor yet its interior decoration, for the stencils, to his mind, were horrible. Kathleen said the lads from the club usually did most of the decoration and everybody thought it was lovely; well, it certainly was a matter of opinion. Nor was he attracted by the statues, for they appeared crude to him, glaringly crude except perhaps the face of the Virgin, whose expression, he had the idea, seemed to change from time to time. No, he couldn’t quite lay his finger on what drew him to this church. Was it because Kathleen loved it? Perhaps. He glanced towards her, her face still buried in her hands, and a feeling of exquisite tenderness flowed through him. She was lovely was Kathleen; everything about her was lovely, her face, her figure, her simplicity. She tried to be clever—he smiled inwardly—oh, she tried hard, but he hoped she would never be clever because it was that inbred simplicity and her uncluttered way of looking at things that he loved. She was like her mother in that way. His Aunt Sarah had the same qualities, an uncluttered way of thinking. But his Aunt Sarah never tried to be clever. She was one of those women who didn’t need to be. He remembered his father saying that. He loved his Aunt Sarah, that’s why he loved Kathleen, he supposed, because they were one. He would soon have to speak to his mother about Kathleen, and it wasn’t going to be easy. She didn’t like Kathleen, nor his Aunt Sarah. Why, he didn’t really know. But then she liked so few people, so he supposed it wasn’t so strange. But his father would welcome the idea of Kathleen as a daughter, for he thought the world of her. His mother had taunted him once by saying that his father thought more of Kathleen than he did of him, but it didn’t matter; he was glad his father loved Kathleen…Yet he was getting away from the question uppermost in his mind, his attraction towards this church. Mr Rogers, his sixth-form master, had had a pet theory. ‘If you cannot control your thinking before you are twenty, then you’ll never control it or anything else.’

  He looked towards the High Altar. He liked the High Altar. Perhaps this was the main attraction, the High Altar, where, Kathleen had told him a
long, long time ago, the priest brought Christ alive every day. He had laughed his head off about that at the time and teased the life out of her, and yet now, when he knew so much more, when for years he had been delving back into the strange history of language, where myths and magic were realities, he laughed no longer. But still he couldn’t understand why, with his extended knowledge, the idea of a daily resurrection had become more credible to him. ‘As the hart pants after the foundations of water so does my soul pant after thee.’ He had read these words in Kathleen’s Prayer Book, and as they came to his mind now he felt strangely disturbed, as if he was being hurt by beauty.

  Kathleen raised her head, blessed herself, then turned her face towards him and smiled. He rose to his feet and went out of the pew, and she followed him. He paused for a moment as she dipped her fingers into the holy water in the little font, then, watching her bless herself and genuflect again towards the main altar, he pushed open the door and let her pass out.

  ‘Oh, wasn’t it cool in there!’ She drew in a deep breath, took a flying leap down the first flight of stairs, laughing over her shoulder at him as she cried, ‘Oh, I always feel wonderful after I’ve been into church.’

  He took the steps two at a time and caught up with her as she stepped on to the pavement, and they both bumped into Father Bailey.

  ‘There you go, dunching into everybody.’ The priest was steadying her, laughing down into her face.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry…I’m sorry, Father.’

  ‘And so you should be, knocking poor old men over, going round wrecking joints.’ He now stooped and stroked his knee.

  ‘Wrecking joints?’ They repeated the priest’s slanging quip on high laughter.

  ‘It’s nothing to laugh about.’ He wagged his finger at them. ‘It’s another joint I’m referring to…the tennis hut. Who broke the seat, eh? Who broke the back off the garden seat?’