The Miller's Daughter

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘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.

  Bridget Smith was small and slim. Her bright, blonde hair was drawn neatly back from her face into a stylish chignon at the nape of her neck. Little tendrils curled on to her forehead and framed her delicate, pink cheeks. Her coat, a vibrant red on this cold November day and with a luxurious fur collar, fell in straight lines to her neat ankles and her button boots encased tiny, dainty feet. A delicate, flowery perfume wafted across the counter towards Emma as she gazed into the woman’s face. She wore face powder so skilfully applied that her skin looked soft and velvety. Her lips were darker than their natural colour, toning perfectly with her scarlet coat and her eyes were the blue of a summer sky, twinkling as she smiled, her cheeks dimpling.

  ‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ Mrs Smith said and, releasing Emma’s hand, she hitched herself elegantly on to the high stool that always stood on the customer’s side of the counter. She crossed her slim ankles in an action that was almost coquettish.

  Taking a deep breath, Emma tried to force out the responding words, but she could utter no sound. Her mind was reeling. All she could think about was what William had told her. ‘Arrived out the blue, she has. No one knows who she is, or where she’s come from, nor anything about her.’ He had glanced at Emma awkwardly and then added, a little hesitantly, ‘But she – er – seems to have set her cap at ya dad. At least,’ he added quickly, ‘that’s what everyone reckons. Mind you, ya know what village gossip is. And I’m sure your dad has more sense than to get caught up with the likes of her.’

  Emma had stepped closer to William. ‘What do you mean “the likes of her”?’

  He had wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably as if wishing he had not said so much. ‘Well, er, she seems a flashy piece. Y’know?’

  ‘No,’ Emma had murmured, ‘I don’t know.’ But William could not be persuaded to say any more.

  Facing Bridget Smith now across the counter, Emma was seeing for herself the woman whom the village gossip described as ‘a flashy piece’. Now, trying valiantly to be fair and unbiased, Emma thought the name a little uncharitable, in fact, now she saw the woman for herself, very uncharitable. Certainly Bridget Smith was elegantly dressed, extravagantly so if compared to the village women, yet it was not in the bold, brassy manner she had anticipated from William’s description. What Emma felt as she took in the whole of the woman’s appearance, was not disgust but envy. How she would have loved the chance to dress in such clothes, to have her hair prettily styled and to wear cosmetics. And the woman’s expression was warm and friendly and though Emma had determined to be on the defensive when she met ‘the Merry Widow’, instead she found any planned resentment melting under Bridget Smith’s smile.

  ‘Oh, your father is so lucky to have a daughter,’ Bridget gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘How I do envy him. I have only one son, the absolute bane of my life.’ She held up her hands, palms outwards as if in despair, but the tinkling laugh that accompanied her statement belied her words.

  In spite of herself, Emma felt her own smile widening. ‘I don’t think,’ she murmured, speaking for the first time since the woman had entered the shop, ‘that my father would agree with you.’

  ‘Oh, go on with you,’ Bridget flapped her hand playfully towards Emma. ‘I’ve heard all about that, don’t you worry. Him and his silly mill. Besides, from what I’ve heard,’ she leant forward, sympathy in her voice, ‘he has you working every bit as hard as any son.’

  Emma nodded. ‘But it’s the name, you see. Even when I marry . . .’ she paused, almost tempted to spill out the hurt of years, but she took a deep breath and corrected herself, ‘even if I were to marry, it wouldn’t be a Forrest at the mill.’

  Bridget shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘Does that really matter so much? You and your children would still be Forrest descendants, now wouldn’t you?’

  Emma sighed. ‘Yes, but that’s still not enough. Not for my father.’

  At that moment, the subject of their conversation came into the shop from the door leading into the kitchen. Seeing Bridget sitting there, he gaped in surprise for a moment and then, as she watched, Emma saw the most astounding transformation come over her father.

  ‘Why, Bridget, my dear.’ He was moving round the counter, holding out his hand and smiling such a sycophantic smile that Emma stared in astonishment. Bridget was looking up into his face, fluttering her eyelashes, putting her dainty gloved hands into his dusty paws and allowing him to help her down from her perch on the high stool. Standing beside him – she only came up to his shoulder – she looked like a delicate china doll beside the tall, slightly stooping frame of the miller.

  ‘We’ve been having such a nice chat,’ Bridget trilled and Emma stifled her amusement. The woman seemed to speak with an emphasis on nearly every other word. ‘What a dear girl. I can’t wait for her to meet my Leonard.’ She leaned towards Emma again with a conspiratorial air. ‘You’re not engaged or promised to anyone, are you, my dear?’

  ‘Well—’ Emma began but her father’s loud guffaw swept away any such ridiculous notion.

  ‘Suitors for my daughter aren’t exactly queuing at the door.’

  ‘Now, now, Harry,’ Bridget scolded and tapped his arm playfully. ‘She’s a lovely girl and if you were to allow her to buy some pretty dresses – with my help, of course – ’ Bridget turned her head slightly and gave Emma a broad wink, an action that could not have been missed by the girl’s father, ‘you’d soon see.’

  Emma held her breath but then her mouth dropped open as Harry Forrest, a stupid, besotted grin on his face and his gaze never leaving Bridget’s, said, ‘Whatever you say, my dear.’

  Six

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes,’ Emma confided in Sarah, though her hands never paused in kneading the dough beneath her strong supple fingers. ‘He’s like a lovesick lad. Mind you, she seems very nice.’

  Sarah’s reply was a snort, her round little body shaking with indignation. She pushed the long handled, wooden spade-like peel
into the depths of the bread oven and brought out a cottage loaf. Six more followed swiftly, all round and brown and perfect, their smell permeating the bakehouse and drifting appetizingly through the kitchen and into the shop. Sarah, her face flushed from the heat of the oven, shot a tight-lipped look at Emma. ‘You bin taken in an’ all by her pretty ways and her fancy clothes? Aw, Emma, I’d have thought better of you.’

  ‘Eh?’ Emma’s eyes widened. ‘Why, is there something more? I know the village folk reckon she’s a flashy piece,’ she smiled as she repeated William Metcalfe’s words, ‘but then, any stranger who dares to set foot in the village is eyed with suspicion until they’ve been here about fifty years.’

  Sarah wagged her finger at Emma. ‘Now then, dun’t you mock. Mebbe we’re slow to accept new faces, but once we do, then they’re friends for life.’

  Emma nodded, ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  Indeed it was. The small community of Marsh Thorpe protected its own and as Sarah said, although they were suspicious of newcomers for a time, almost requiring that the stranger should prove themselves worthy of living in their midst, once they had accepted them, then they welcomed them wholeheartedly.

  ‘I suppose it’s the same in most villages,’ Emma murmured.

  ‘Aye, well, mebbe it is. I wouldn’t know about that,’ Sarah said and her tone was almost smug. Sarah had lived all her life in Marsh Thorpe, hardly venturing beyond its boundaries. She had visited Lincoln, but London might as well have been on another planet for all Sarah knew about it.

  Emma set the dough in the proving hole below the firebox and followed Sarah through to the shop, carrying a tray of the steaming, freshly baked cottage loaves.

  ‘So, come on, Sarah, tell. What is it you’ve heard about Mrs Smith?’

  Sarah wriggled her plump shoulders and her cheeks grew even pinker. She was a homely soul, content with her lot. A country woman, born and bred, who never seemed to question the need for her to work from morning until night, Sarah had not married until the age of twenty-eight when, only five years ago, she had wed the much older Luke Robson.

  She had come to live at the millhouse as a young girl of seventeen to help the delicate Frances Forrest and to care for the two-year-old Emma. The affection between Luke and Sarah had grown slowly, but now their love glowed in their eyes every time they looked at each other.

  ‘He needed someone to care for him,’ Sarah always laughed if anyone dared to remark on the difference in their ages. ‘He’d been on his own ever since his first wife died. Must have been twenty years or more, and that’s too long for any man. And I weren’t no great shakes as a catch.’ The laughter would grow louder. ‘Not many young fellers like us big lasses, but my Luke he says there’s plenty to get ’old of.’ At this point she would grab the folds of flesh around her waist and roar with laughter and wink saucily. ‘Love handles, he ses I’ve got.’

  But now she seemed curiously reticent. ‘’Tain’t my place to say owt, Emma lass.’

  Deftly, Emma placed the loaves in a line along the shelf. ‘Oh, now come on, Sarah. You’ve been like a mam to me since me own died.’

  Sarah’s voice was soft now and there was a suspicion of tears in her eyes. ‘And you’ve been like a daughter to me and Luke.’ Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘The daughter we’ll never have now.’

  It was the only disappointment in her otherwise happy and contented life: she and Luke could not have children.

  ‘So,’ Emma prompted, ‘what is it you know that I don’t?’

  ‘I really don’t think I ought . . .’

  ‘Sarah . . .’ Emma began warningly.

  ‘Oh, very well then, but only because I don’t like to see you taken in an’ all. It’s bad enough with ’im.’

  ‘For heaven’s sakes! What is?’

  Sarah leant forwards, sharing a secret. ‘They reckon she’s not a widow at all. That she’s never been married.’

  Emma’s mouth dropped open. ‘That can’t be right. She said she had a son . . .’ Then as realization dawned, her eyes widened and comically she said, ‘Oh heck!’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Exactly!’ There was a pause before she added, a little mysteriously, ‘But there’s more to it than that now, ain’t there?’

  ‘Is there? What?’

  Sarah’s shoulders lifted again, but she would not meet Emma’s questioning gaze. ‘Well, they reckon she’s still young enough to have bairns.’

  The words fell like stones into the silence. ‘Oh,’ Emma said flatly. ‘Oh, I see. So that’s what they’re saying, are they? That my father’s still after a son.’

  There was another silence and then Emma said slowly, ‘Well, soon it won’t worry me.’ She lifted her eyes to meet Sarah’s concerned gaze. ‘Because once Jamie comes home—’

  ‘Aw lass, he’ll never let you wed a Metcalfe. You know that.’

  ‘Sarah, if Jamie Metcalfe comes home safely from this war, then nothing and no one will stop me marrying him.’

  Sarah shook her head and her double chin wobbled. ‘Ya stacking up a lot of disappointment for ya’sen.’

  ‘No, I’m not. If Father wants to marry Mrs Smith, then it’ll make it all the easier for me to leave.’ She put her arms about the woman’s ample waist and hugged her. ‘Oh, Sarah, please try to understand. I’ve always loved Jamie. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Well,’ the fat arms came around Emma and held her lovingly. ‘I know you’re fond of the lad, fond of ’em both if it comes to that, but I thought it were only a girl’s first romantic nonsense. You’re a woman now, Emma, and you ought—’

  The shop bell clanged and the two women drew apart and turned to face their customer. Whatever Sarah had been going to say was to remain unsaid.

  William was standing in the bakery shop doorway, blurting out the news even before the sound of the doorbell had died away. ‘He’s coming home! Jamie’s safe and he’s coming home. I’ve just heard.’

  Emma eyes shone. ‘Oh, William. That’s wonderful. When? When will he be here?’

  Beside her, Sarah’s inner struggle with her emotions could be seen plainly on her round face. Jamie Metcalfe was coming home and all Sarah could see was trouble ahead for her beloved Emma. Yet the woman rejoiced in the safe return of the young man.

  Gently, she said, ‘Now that is good news, William. You must be so thankful.’

  ‘It’s a big relief all round, I don’t mind admitting.’ William sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m so glad he’s safe.’ He ran his hand through his soft brown hair and glanced at Emma. Dropping his voice, he muttered. ‘But it isn’t the sort of homecoming I’d have wished for him.’

  Emma moved swiftly round the counter towards him. ‘If your mam and dad had still been here, they’d have wanted him welcomed home with a brass band playing and all the flags out. At least, your dad would. You know he would have, William.’

  William’s smile was wistful, as if thinking of the big man who had always been at the forefront in organizing village events or sorting out problems for the village folk.

  ‘He fancies hissen as the Mayor of Marsh Thorpe,’ had been Harry Forrest’s resentful comment years earlier, but the rest of the villagers had been content to leave such matters to Josiah Metcalfe. ‘Ask Mester Metcalfe, the blacksmith, he’ll sort it out.’ And even, ‘Ask the Mayor.’ The title had stuck so that when Josiah later became Chairman of the Parish Council many of the villagers believed that the title was official and even addressed him as Mester Mayor. Josiah, basking in the importance, had said nothing to disillusion them and secretly Emma had been amused that the name her father had bestowed so scathingly on the man he disliked had then been accepted as a reality. Harry had become even more bitter seeing Josiah Metcalfe accorded all the deference that such a position demanded.

  As they stood in the shop together Emma could see that William was remembering the final weeks and months of his father’s life, how the big man had wasted away so swiftly, so painfully that he could not even hang on to life u
ntil the day his hero son returned from the war. Now there was only William to welcome his brother.

  ‘Aye, you’re right, of course, Em. But I don’t know, well, if it would be quite the right thing to do. Not now. You know what I mean. We’re not really out of mourning for me mam and dad.’

  Emma’s violet eyes softened. ‘I know how you feel.’ Then she brightened and turned to Sarah. ‘But let’s ask around the rest of the village. See what everyone else feels. What do you think, Sarah?’

  The older woman’s face was unusually serious as she flicked her duster absentmindedly at nothing in particular on the already spotless counter top. ‘Mm, well, I suppose we could. I’ll have to think about it.’ She seemed ill at ease, and Emma, guessing what was coming next, fought valiantly to keep the smile from her face and waited for Sarah’s next words. ‘Er, would it be all right if I just nip home for a moment, Emma?’

  Airily, Emma said, ‘Of course. We’re not exactly rushed off our feet just now.’

  Sarah untied her apron and bustled through to the kitchen to fetch her hat and coat from the peg behind the door. Jamming her hat on her thick hair, she popped her head back round the door and said, ‘I won’t be long, I promise, only I must go . . .’ As she turned away again to leave by the back door to hurry across the yard towards the orchard, they heard her mutter. ‘I must tell the bees about this.’

  Emma clapped her hand to her mouth, her eyes brimming with laughter and as soon as Sarah’s bustling little body was well away from the shop, her merriment bubbled over and she leant weakly against the counter. She looked up at William and was relieved to see that he was grinning, the anxiety for the moment wiped from his young face. He shook his head and said fondly, without a trace of ridicule in his tone. ‘Oh dear, Sarah and her bees.’