The Blind Miller

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No, not yet.’ She smiled towards Kathleen.

  ‘We’ll make one in a jiffy,’ he said and went into the scullery.

  Yes, Michael was nice. As Dan said, Kathleen could have done a lot worse. But Michael wasn’t Paul…Oh, Paul…Paul. But she mustn’t think of Paul…One thing at a time.

  ‘How’s the baby?’ she said looking up at Kathleen. ‘Oh, she’s fine, she’s asleep.’ She made for the door again. ‘I’ll bring her down.’

  ‘Kathleen.’ Sarah’s voice halted her. ‘Don’t…don’t disturb her, there’ll be plenty of time.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ After a pause Kathleen came back towards the table, and, standing before her mother, she said, ‘Take your hat off…take your things off.’

  Sarah reached up and slowly she removed her hat. Then, standing up, she took off her coat. As she put her hand up to smooth back her hair in which there was still not a thread of grey Michael entered the kitchen. He had a tray in his hand and he stopped dead for a moment and looked at Sarah. He saw a woman so like his wife that the resemblance startled him. When she’d had her coat and hat on he hadn’t seen it so clearly, but now he was seeing them together. It was a strange experience. The only difference was that the older woman had a better figure and a softer face. Yes…yes, he had to admit that to himself. Even after all she had gone through, and she must have had a packet, she didn’t look hard or bitter. Not that Kathleen looked hard or bitter; but there was a set look about her face that didn’t show in her mother’s. He sighed and smiled. Things wouldn’t be too bad. Better than he’d thought. Now that her mother was out Kathleen might forget about the past. He hoped to God she would, anyway. ‘There you are.’ He placed the tray on the table. ‘Nothing like a cup of char.’ As he poured out the tea he looked at Sarah and said, ‘We’ll have to get your room ready, but that won’t take long, it only needs the bed putting up. We can take the cot out any time.’

  ‘But’—Sarah shook her head—‘the little boxroom will do me. Don’t move anything.’

  ‘There isn’t a boxroom any more.’ Kathleen was looking at the fire. ‘Michael made it into a bathroom.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sarah glanced at Michael. ‘That’s nice. Oh, it’s nice to have a bathroom.’

  They were sitting, the three of them, drinking their tea when silence attacked them, the awkward horrible silence that yells aloud, and Sarah was just about to break it, she was just about to say, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t be in your way. I’ll get a job and then perhaps I’ll find a little place of my own.’ That is what she was going to say when the back door opened and Kathleen jerked out of her chair as if she had been shot.

  There was the sound of steps in the scullery. The kitchen door opened and Mary Hetherington entered the room, and perhaps for the first time in years she was caught off her guard, and it registered on her face which showed utter and blank surprise. Sarah’s heart was beating wildly. This was the moment she had dreaded more so than entering her old home again and the meeting with Kathleen. Yet she had never imagined herself being actually confronted by her mother-in-law. Being passed by her in the street, yes; ignored, yes. At the same time being made vitally aware of her hate and loathing, but she had never imagined her walking into the kitchen like this. She had come in as if she were used to coming in…Yes, undoubtedly she was used to coming in.

  Michael, trying to smooth over the tense moment, said, ‘Come and sit down, Gran. I’ve just made some tea. Have a…’

  Mary Hetherington, indicating with a swift movement of her arm towards him that she wished him to be quiet, he became quiet. His voice trailed away and he looked sharply at his wife, but Kathleen was looking at no-one. She had her head down. It looked as if she were rejecting something, something shameful.

  ‘So you’ve come!’ Mary Hetherington’s voice was thick, like someone who was gone in drink. ‘How soon are you going?’

  Sarah did not rise to her feet nor did she make any retort, but she sat, her stomach sick, looking up at this old woman, and she saw that she was old, and her hate was old, but strong still, stronger if anything. Sarah could see it all clearly. This hate-filled woman had taken Kathleen under her wing, not with the desire of protecting her, but of separating her from herself, from contamination with herself. That’s how she would think of it.

  ‘Look, Gran.’ Michael was tentatively appealing again, and again he was silenced by a more violent wave of the hand now as Mary Hetherington repeated, ‘When are you going? I asked you a question.’

  Sarah had got out of the habit of talking. You didn’t talk in there, you listened, and you only spoke when you were asked a question. She had been asked a question and now she forced herself to answer it. She said softly, ‘I’ve come home…’

  Before Sarah’s lips settled on the last word Mary Hetherington charged in, crying, ‘Home! This is no longer your home. You gave up this home ten years ago.’

  Sarah, her voice still level, her words still spoken in that peculiar undertone, said, ‘The rent book’s still in my name. Dan said…’

  ‘Dan said! Dan said!’ There was scorn in Mary Hetherington’s voice. ‘I know what Dan said. What he doesn’t know is that Michael had it transferred to his name two years ago. And look round you. Is there a stick of yours here? No, not so much as would fill a matchbox. Your home! Now again I say to you…When are you going?’

  ‘Gran…Gran, stop it. I tell you, stop it! Leave her alone; it’s my affair, our affair.’ Kathleen was confronting her grandmother now, swallowing between each word, daring to oppose this woman who had imposed her rule on her.

  ‘You leave this to me, Kathleen. Unless you want your life ruined and Michael in trouble…because let me tell you—’ The old woman leant towards Kathleen and wagged her finger at her. ‘As sure as God’s in heaven she’ll have Michael. She’ll have your husband; no man is safe within a mile of her. They’re never too old, they’re never too young. I’m speaking from experience.’

  Sarah rose to her feet, not hastily; she just rose from the chair, as if she were being pulled up by a mechanical device. She was trembling all over. She had a desire to cry, but she could neither cry nor speak; she could just stand, her hands on the table looking towards this hate-corroded being.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ Mary Hetherington lifted her eyes from Kathleen and brought them to Michael. ‘I’ll bet all I own this moment that within a few weeks, yes, within a few weeks she’ll have set her cap at you and you won’t know where you are.’

  ‘Now look, Gran, stop talking like that. Let up. There’s a limit.’ Michael was obviously embarrassed and he wagged his head, his gaze directed towards the floor.

  ‘You want proof…I’ll give it to you.’ The old woman swung round and, snatching at the curtain, lifted it into a loop, and as she did so Kathleen cried, ‘No, no, Gran…don’t bring Aunt May over…please!’ She went to pull the curtain from her grandmother, but the old woman pushed her aside.

  ‘Far better bring May across than have your home broken up. Leave it alone, I want May here. This woman took your Aunt May’s man…my son, when she was only married a few weeks to my other son. She takes everything…everything with trousers on.’

  Years ago Sarah would have thought, She’s talking like one of the women at the bottom end; now she could only think, I’ll have to go…I’ll have to go…I can’t bear it. Something will happen if I don’t get out. Oh, my God!

  She turned her head wildly now in the direction of the couch where lay her hat, coat and bag, and then her head was jerked back with startling suddenness to her mother-in-law again. Mary Hetherington was glaring at Kathleen and saying, ‘She deprived my son, my David, of fatherhood. I’ve told you what she did, but you only half believed me. But let May confront her with it; yes, let May con…’

  ‘Be quiet! You evil creature…be quiet!’

  They were all looking at Sarah now. A different Sarah. Not the Sarah that Mary Hetherington remembered, nor the Sarah that Kathleen remembered as her
mother, nor yet was there any connection with the Sarah who had sat so timidly before them only a few minutes earlier. The tall, pale, wide-eyed woman before them had a majestic bearing, a towering majestic bearing; there was no aggressiveness in her attitude, yet it held them all still. She stared at her mother-in-law for a full minute in silence before she began to speak again.

  Her voice too was different now, the tone strong, the words crisp, yet quiet. ‘I’m not going to let you get away with this. Oh, no, not with this. From the day we met you’ve hated me; you’ve sent your venom and your spleen through that wall there at me’—she pointed—‘until the very bricks were tense with the atmosphere you created. You hated me because David loved me; you hated the idea that I could make him happy. Me!’ She pressed her finger gently into her breast. ‘The scum from the bottom end. That’s how you thought of me, wasn’t it? And you couldn’t bear the thought that I’d brought your favourite son alive; you couldn’t bear the thought that in my kitchen your menfolk found peace from your nagging. That’s all they came in here for, just to get away from your nagging. They were sick of listening to the gaffer of God.’ She did not fire a barbed shaft here by adding, ‘That was David’s name for you’—but went on, ‘From the moment I came into your life, you have tried to ruin me; every bit as much as my father did, you tried…’

  ‘How…how can you stand there and speak the name of your…’

  Sarah cut Mary Hetherington’s words off with an uplifting movement of her head: ‘I dare speak his name. I have paid for what I did…I’m free…and I dare speak his name. He doesn’t trouble my conscience, he never has. Let that horrify you.’ She paused for a second before going on. ‘But that’s beside the point…As I said, there’s one thing you’re not going to do. You’re not going to burn that last lie into my daughter’s mind.’ Sarah now switched her eyes to Kathleen, and her voice had a ring of command in it. ‘Kathleen,’ she said, ‘listen to me…listen closely to me. I never once went with your Uncle John…you understand? Never once. Not once…Your Uncle John loved me. Once he kissed me, once on New Year’s morning, 1930, near the bottom end. I’d been to first-foot my mother. He came over with me because everybody else was joining in the jollification, and he kissed me and we talked. That was all. And my father heard what we talked about. Well, you know all about that part of it. The next time was the morning he marched to London with the hunger marchers. Neither his wife nor his mother would go to see him off; he asked me if I would, and that morning I kissed him…on the cheek. That, Kathleen, is the story of the vileness between your Uncle John and me. And that, when you sum it all up, is what I’ve done time for.’

  Kathleen was looking at Sarah, staring up into her face. As they once used to look at each other and laugh, now they were looking at each other, but there was no laughter between them. As Sarah stared into the sad pleading countenance of her daughter she knew that she had to do something to give the seal of truth to her words. Her eyes flicked from Kathleen’s face to the wall. There, hanging on it was a modern version of the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Like everything else, it was new.

  It was the only holy picture in the room; likely it was Michael’s choice, for he was a strong Catholic. She had never hung holy pictures in the house during her married life, but she remembered a similar one to this hanging in the kitchen when she was a child. The picture, although in a plain modern frame, held the same face of Christ, the same head and shoulders with the hand across the chest, palm up holding on it his bleeding heart, the blood dripping down through his fingers. She no longer believed in God or Jesus, or in any other symbol of the Catholic Church, but Kathleen did, and always would. With a swift movement she stepped to the wall and, lifting the picture by its string, brought it to Kathleen, and, laying it flat on one hand, she put the fingers of her other hand at the centre of the heart. But before she spoke she turned her eyes from Kathleen and fixed them on Mary Hetherington, and it was to her she said, ‘I swear by the Sacred Heart of Jesus that what I have said is true.’ Then, looking at Kathleen again, she said, ‘David was your father, Kathleen.’

  Sarah imagined she saw a cloud lift from Kathleen’s face, leaving it a shade lighter. She turned from her now and hung the picture back on the wall. Then once again she looked at her mother-in-law. It was evident that Mary Hetherington had received a setback, but it was also evident that she wasn’t beaten, and she showed this by renewing her attack almost immediately. With a deriding mirthless laugh, and addressing no-one in particular, she cried, ‘Well! You can take that bit of acting for what it’s worth, and from where it comes. The Sacred Heart of Jesus…Huh! But the Lord isn’t mocked…Let me tell you, the mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceeding small.’

  ‘The mills of God!’ Sarah repeated, shaking her head slowly as she looked now almost pityingly at the old woman. ‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.’ Sarah sensed immediately that her mother-in-law had never heard the second line of the quotation, and in this moment she felt a strange feeling of superiority over her…Prison life had done something for her after all. It had introduced her to the library, from where she had gathered a small amount of knowledge, small because her need in this direction was small, for she had never aspired to education—not for herself; all she had aspired to was to talk properly, as she put it to her herself, to be able to pass herself. She had always had this desire. Hadn’t she longed for a dictionary when she was a girl just so that she could pass herself in conversation?

  Her voice held an authoritative note as she repeated now, ‘With exactness grinds he all. But not all…oh no, because you know what? He’s blind, your miller, blind and vindictive. Indiscriminately doling out pain and agony, that’s your God. Well, all I hope is that His groping hands don’t find you, for even now I don’t wish you your just deserts. I just pity you. I always have, you know…So there you have it.’

  With her bearing upright and dignified, she turned from the bitter face to the couch, and, picking up her coat, she put it on. And as she did so, Kathleen cried, ‘Where you going? Oh, Mam, where you going?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled a sad faint smile at her daughter. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said again. She put on her hat and picked up her bag. Then once again she turned, and, looking her mother-in-law straight in her eyes, she held her gaze for a moment before leaving the room. But she had just reached the in-between door when Mary Hetherington’s voice sent its last bolt at her: ‘And leave our Dan alone,’ she cried, ‘Him and May’s going to be married. He spent enough years looking after you and yours, so let him do what he likes with the remainder of his life. Do that one decent thing at least.’

  Her words halted Sarah, but only for a second. She went on through the front room into the passage. But when she reached the door Kathleen was behind her, and her hands on her mother’s shoulders, she turned her round and looked into her face for a moment before enfolding her in her arms, crying through her tears, ‘Oh, Mam…Mam.’

  ‘There, there. Don’t upset yourself.’

  ‘I believe you. I want you to know I believe you.’ Sarah remained quiet, and they clung together for a moment longer.

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Down to Phyllis’.’

  ‘Look.’ Kathleen was whispering now, her face close to Sarah’s. ‘We want to get a house away from here. We’ll get fixed up, and you can come with us then. I would like it. Oh, I would, I would.’

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see. Don’t worry.’ Sarah opened the door, and Kathleen stood on the top step clinging on to her hand, saying, ‘Oh, Mam. Oh, Mam.’

  When there came to them from the kitchen the sound of raised voices, Sarah knew that May had arrived. She couldn’t face May, she had stood all she could from them all. She knew she was going to break down, but she didn’t want to upset Kathleen any more. She said hastily, ‘Pop down to your Aunt Phyllis’ when you can. Goodbye, my dea
r. Goodbye, my dear.’

  Once again Kathleen had her arms around her; once again they clung together. Then Sarah was walking quickly away.

  She could restrain the outlet no longer. When she reached the main road the tears were raining down her face, and she walked with her head down. The road between the fifteen streets and the New Buildings at East Jarrow was practically empty, but a woman who had passed her came running back after her, saying, ‘What’s the matter, lass? Are you in trouble?’ Sarah did not look at the woman but shook her head. And the woman, walking by her side now, said, ‘Can I help you, hinny?’

  She raised her eyes to the woman and managed to say, ‘No, thank you.’

  As the woman looked at her her face crinkled slowly with recognition. But Sarah stopped her making any exclamation by waving her off with her hand; then she said, ‘I’m sorry, just let me be,’ and hurried on, leaving the woman standing on the pavement looking after her.

  It was as she neared the New Buildings that the car drew up alongside the kerb. Michael had only a coat over his shirt and his hair was still ruffled. He said softly, ‘Get in.’ And she got in, still with her head bowed, the tears washing down her face.

  Michael sat in deep embarrassed silence looking at her before starting the car, then he muttered, ‘I’m sorry.’ After a short while he asked quietly, ‘Do you know the house?’

  ‘It’s in Laygate.’

  He went through Tyne Dock, cut through the Deans, and they were in Laygate before she spoke again. ‘She’s an old devil.’ He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. ‘I’ve had a job to keep me tongue meself. She’s always trying to dominate Kathleen. I was goin’ to try and get a job away last year in one of the Durham pits so we could move, but then things got a bit shaky. They’re closing some pits down, so you’ve got to stay put. But I’ll get a place out of it now. I told her afore I left just what I thought about her.’