Emma slept fitfully, disturbed by uneasy dreams of bands playing, people shouting, soldiers spilling from the train on to the platform. She was being swept away by the excited crowd before she could reach him. She was stretching out her hand, struggling through the throng, but she couldn’t get to him, couldn’t touch him . . . She awoke sweating, her legs tangled in the sheet and her long hair strewn wildly across her face. His name was upon her lips, ‘Jamie’. She heard a noise outside her door and then the sound of her father’s footsteps descending the stairs and knew it was time she rose. She gave a groan, pushed back the covers and swung her feet to touch the cold floor, feeling more tired now than when she had gone to bed the previous night. But there was no shirking the day’s work ahead.
As she was dressing and splashing her face with cold water from the ewer and jug on the marble wash-stand in the corner of her room, she heard the rattle of wagon wheels in the yard. Buttoning her blouse, Emma bent and looked out of the low window overlooking the mill and found herself staring down into the upturned face of Ben Popple standing in the yard below beside a cart laden with sacks of grain. Even in the pale, early morning light she knew he had seen her and she straightened and stepped back quickly from the window.
Tensing every muscle in her body, she waited for what would surely come next; her father’s voice calling from the foot of the stairs. ‘You there, girl? Ben Popple’s here. Get yarsen down here and help unload.’
She groaned aloud. Now there would be no escape until all the bulging sacks were stored in the granary and Ben Popple’s wagon empty. Then the odious man would invite himself into the kitchen to share their breakfast. He would sit in the wooden rocking chair at the side of the hearth – the chair that had been Grandpa Charlie’s – watching her as she moved about the kitchen, a smirk on his mouth and suggestive remarks coming from his lips.
Leaving her bed unmade, Emma banged her bedroom door. Downstairs, she strode through the kitchen and into the yard to begin heaving the sacks from the cart without even a civil word of greeting to Farmer Popple.
Now it would be the middle of the day before she could even think of seeing Jamie.
It was late afternoon and growing dusk before Emma managed to slip away unnoticed. The bakery was closed for the day and Sarah had gone home. Her father’s tea was prepared and the table laid, but there was every possibility he would be late in for his meal this evening, for the mill’s sails whirled in a strong easterly gale and Harry Forrest knew that with the coming of darkness, the wind might drop suddenly. He could not waste a precious moment of a good milling wind, not if he wanted to keep on the right side of Ben Popple.
Praying that the wind would not drop for at least half an hour, Emma hurried up the incline, past the end of the road leading to the chapel and on towards the market square.
The forge and the wheelwright’s shop were in darkness. Pulling her shawl over her head, Emma stepped beneath the brick archway bearing the sign P HWFDOIH and passed between the smithy and the workshop towards the cottage standing behind them. She found she was holding her breath as she lifted her hand to knock on the door. And then, from inside, came the sound of raised voices, arguing heatedly.
‘You’ve done nothing but complain since you came home. Give it a rest, can’t you?’
Emma drew breath sharply. That was William’s voice. Gentle, placid William and talking to Jamie in such a way. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her hand fell away and she leant a little closer to the door, unashamedly eavesdropping.
‘There’s plenty to complain about. The wheelwright’s business is all but gone and I daren’t think how many customers you’ve lost us from the smithy. You never were much of a hand with the hammer.’
‘Well, I’ve had plenty of time to learn these last three years, ’cos poor old dad couldn’t do much for the last part of it.’
There was a heavy, uncomfortable silence and then Jamie’s voice, bitter and belligerent, came again. ‘You’d have done better to keep the wheelwright’s side going. You’re a bit better at the joinery, but not a deal.’ The praise, if praise it could be called, was given grudgingly.
William’s voice, softer now and with an infinite sadness in it, said, ‘Whatever I’d done, it wouldn’t have been right, would it, Jamie?’
Again there was a silence, as if Jamie could not find an answer.
Suddenly the door was flung open. Emma, bending close, had not heard any movement from beyond and so was caught unawares. Embarrassed at being found obviously listening to their conversation, she straightened up and stammered, ‘I – er – came to see how you were.’
The frown on Jamie’s face deepened. ‘Oh, it’s you. Come in, why don’t you?’ He pulled the door open wider. Stepping across the threshold, she came close and looked up at him, her gaze taking in every contour of that well-beloved face. It was the vision she had carried in her mind’s eye and in her heart for three years from childhood into womanhood. She was so close, she could have reached up and touched his face, a face that was so much thinner now, the hollow cheeks and grey skin giving it a haggard look. She ached to caress his brow, to smooth back the unruly lock of dark hair that fell on to his forehead, to trace the strong jawline with her fingertips. But she kept her hand firmly by her side. The man who stood so close that she could feel the waft of his breath on her face, was almost a stranger to her. There was angry, bitter resentment in his tone. ‘Why not invite the whole village round to view the hovel this place has become? If me mother could see it now . . .’
Emma glanced towards William and her tender heart went out to the young man. He looked crushed, defeated. The longed-for return of the brother he had so loved and admired and, yes, revered and idolized, had turned into his worst nightmare.
William did not deserve such treatment and Emma’s violet eyes flashed. Turning back to Jamie she faced him squarely. ‘If your mother were here now,’ she said, speaking with deliberate emphasis, ‘she’d be thanking the Good Lord for your safe return. But she would not,’ she flung her arm out towards William, ‘be blaming William for something that is not his doing, not his fault.’
‘Oh, so that’s how the land lies, is it?’ A sneer twisted Jamie’s mouth. ‘William’s the blue-eyed boy with you now, is he, young Emma? I’m forgotten, I suppose.’
Emma gasped and shook her head slowly in disbelief. ‘What’s got in to you, Jamie Metcalfe? You’re not the same—’
Harshly, he said, ‘Of course I’m not the same. The things I’ve seen . . .’ Suddenly she saw the pain of remembered horrors in his eyes before he turned his head away from her saying roughly, ‘And nothing’s the same here either, is it? It’s all I thought of – out there. All I clung to, the thought that home was always here, just the same as it always had been. And now . . .’ He gave an angry sweep of his arm encompassing not only the house, but the smithy and the wheelwright’s workshop too. ‘Oh, what’s the use . . .’ Roughly he pushed past her and went out of the door banging it behind him with such force that the whole cottage seemed to shake.
Emma stared at William in disbelief. The young man ran his hand through his hair in a hopeless, distracted gesture. ‘Oh, Em, I’m sorry you saw all that. You came at just the wrong moment.’
‘What is it? What’s the matter with him?’
William shrugged. ‘I suppose it must be hard for him, coming back to all this,’ he gestured with his hand. ‘And – and – ’ his glance went to the mantelpiece where a matching pair of framed photographs of their parents stood, ‘and them not being here.’ He moved to the fireside chair that had always been Josiah’s place and sat down wearily in the worn, comfortable seat. A fire burned in the grate, the only light in the room. William leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The flickering firelight illuminated his gentle, youthful face that was, at times, still vulnerable and yet, at this moment, Emma saw a strength in his features, a mature understanding of the harsh realities of life. Quietly she moved forward and knelt on the peg
rug on the hearth.
‘I suppose,’ William went on, thinking aloud. ‘Like he ses, he carried the picture of us all still here, the home as he had always known it, the forge, everything. Imagining it all to be still just as he’d left it. It was what kept him going. I mean—’ He lifted his face to look at Emma. Though his eyes were in shadow and she could not read the sorrow in their depths, she knew it was there; she could hear it in his voice. ‘I mean, there have been some dreadful tales about what it was like out there, in the trenches. He must have been through an awful lot, you know. Mebbe all the while, he was carrying this mental picture of his home with him, clinging to it. It must be a dreadful shock for him to come back and find – this.’
She was quiet too for a moment, staring into the flickering flames. Slowly, she said, ‘Maybe you’re right.’ Then she was scrambling up. ‘I’m going to find him. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Oh no, Em, don’t. I don’t think it will do any good.’
But Emma, intent on putting matters right, was not listening to William’s words of caution and did not see, as she hurried from the room, his gentle, troubled gaze following her.
Outside, she stood listening. Through the deepening dusk of the winter’s evening, she could hear sounds coming from the forge. Pulling her coat closely round her, she bent her head against the wind, thinking briefly that at least her father would still be in the mill, and made her way into the blacksmith’s yard.
Jamie was standing in the middle of the cluttered yard, picking up pieces of metal, bits of wood and hurling them with frustrated anger into the farthest corner.
‘It’s like a rubbish tip,’ she heard him mutter. ‘Gone to wrack and ruin.’
‘Jamie.’
Startled, he swung round.
‘What are you doing? Creeping about like that?’
Stung, she retorted heatedly, ‘I’m not “creeping about”.’ She moved closer and asked more gently, ‘Jamie, what is it? What’s the matter?’
‘The matter? You ask what’s the matter? This – ’ he flung his left arm in a wide arc to encompass the littered yard, ‘this is the matter. Three years in the trenches with thick slimy mud as my bed and rats as sleeping companions, to come back to this.’
‘William’s done his best, Jamie. It hasn’t been easy for him either. He’s only young. He was only a boy when you left and he’s had to cope with – with losing both your parents and trying, single-handed, to keep everything going. Don’t be so hard on him.’
‘William, William, William. That’s all I seem to hear from you.’ He came and stood close to her, glaring down at her through the dusk, his eyes dark pools of accusation. His strong, blacksmith’s hands grasped her shoulders with the grip of a vice, ‘What about me? Does no one think of me?’ He pulled her to him roughly, crushing her against him. He bent his head and pressed his mouth hard against hers, so hard that she felt his teeth grinding against hers. There was no love in the embrace, not even a passion arising out of desire. It was a brutal, bitter attack. His fingers grasped roughly at the high neck of her blouse and tore at the fabric. She felt the neckline strain against the back of her neck and then a tearing sound and the cotton tore, the top button flying off. His hand was groping inside the top of her blouse, seeking . . .
‘No, Jamie, no! Please . . .’ She was shocked and repulsed by his violence. This was not the Jamie Metcalfe she had known, not the man she had loved.
‘Ya still a child,’ he said scornfully. ‘Ya not woman enough to understand a man’s needs.’ He gave her a violent push as if to hurl her away from him as, minutes before, he had been throwing the rubbish about the yard. Had she not been so robust and strong, Emma would have fallen to the ground. Physically, she was unharmed, but emotionally she was heartsore and wounded.
Through the gloom she stared at him, trying desperately to understand him. He was like a wild man. With a woman’s intuition, Emma knew he had to be tamed. Somehow the young man Jamie had once been had to be reached. And she was the only one who could do it.
Nine
‘We’ve company coming tonight. Mind you mek a nice meal, girl.’
Emma continued kneading the dough without looking up, her mind on Jamie.
‘Yes, Father,’ she replied automatically. Then, as the meaning of his words penetrated her wandering mind, she lifted her head and stared at him. He was turning away, opening the door of the bakehouse to go across the yard to the mill. The winter sky was lightening in the east and the black shape of the mill and its sails rose majestically against the pale light, but dawn had not yet come into the enclosed yard below. Outside the back door, the miller lifted his face and sniffed the clean air of a new day. A light breeze ruffled his wispy hair as he pulled on his cap, hunched his shoulders and made to pull the door closed behind him.
‘Who, Father?’ Emma’s voice stilled his action. ‘Who’s coming?’
He paused and looked at her, his hand resting on the door knob. ‘Bridget and her boy.’
Then, with a slam of the door, he was gone, his footsteps echoing in the sharp early morning air, leaving his daughter staring with wide eyes at the woodwork of the door between them.
‘He’s invited Mrs Smith and her son to come to supper tonight,’ she told Sarah later that morning.
‘Has he now?’ Sarah nodded knowingly.
‘Whatever am I to make for them? I can’t do the fancy dishes they’ll be used to.’
Sarah laughed. ‘A nice bit of home-cured ham, Emma, and your plum bread and a bit o’ cheese for afters. I bet that young feller won’t have tasted grub like that for a while.’
Emma smiled and the worried frown cleared a little from her smooth forehead. ‘Perhaps you’re right. What about a pudding? Do you think it’s too late for that? What do the gentry eat for supper?’
Sarah laughed out loud now. As a young girl, she had been in service for a year at a big house on the outskirts of Marsh Thorpe, but she had never risen above a kitchen maid and when Emma’s mother had asked her to come to the mill to help her in the house, Sarah had been thankful to give in her notice and move into the tiny attic room above the bakehouse.
‘The gentry, as you call ’em,’ she said, teasing Emma gently, ‘have dinner in the evening with four, mebbe five or more, courses.’
‘Oh, heck,’ Emma said with such a flustered expression on her face that Sarah chuckled afresh.
‘The Smiths won’t be expecting owt like that, I can promise you.’
‘But Father said “a nice meal”. I think he’s expecting me to take a bit more trouble than just a bit of ham and bread and cheese.’
Sarah shrugged. ‘Aye well, mebbe so. We’d best get our thinking caps on then. How about vegetable soup to start with, a nice cut of pork and all the trimmings as the main course, followed by a nice pudding? What about a steamed ginger or current sponge? You could still finish the meal off with plum bread an’ cheese if anyone’s got a corner left to fill after all that.’
‘Are you sure?’ Emma still looked doubtful but when Sarah reassured her firmly, ‘It’s better than that flashy piece deserves,’ Emma giggled and said, ‘Don’t say things like that, Sarah. And besides, I rather like her, though I do wish . . .’ There was silence between them as they worked, lifting the bread from the oven with the peel, their faces red from the heat of the long brick oven.
‘What do you wish?’ Sarah prompted.
‘That it was Jamie and William he’d invited to supper.’
Sarah glanced at her and gave a snort of laughter. ‘That’ll never happen. A Metcalfe and a Forrest sitting down to eat at the same table? Never, lass, never. You should know that, Emma.’
Emma stopped what she was doing, resting the long-handled peel on the edge of the oven and staring at Sarah, but the older woman merely said, ‘Come on, get this bread out else it’ll burn.’
Automatically, Emma obeyed, but her mind was in turmoil. ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said as, together, they set the loaves out on cooling trays. ‘I could
hardly fail to know that Father’s always been at loggerheads with old Mr Metcalfe – Jamie’s father – but what I don’t know,’ a slight note of resentment crept into her tone, ‘what I’ve never been told, presumably because I’ve been thought too young, is exactly what this silly feud is all about and why he’s carrying it on to the next generation, to Jamie and William. I mean, he used to let us play together when we were little, so why—?’
‘That was when ya grandpa Charlie was alive,’ Sarah put in, as if that explained everything. Yet, for Emma, it did not.
‘Do you know what it’s all about, Sarah?’
‘Oh, it goes back a long way. I don’t know the truth of it all mesen.’
Emma was getting a little annoyed now by all the mystery. Over the years she’d heard village gossip, yet no one had ever really explained it all to her. ‘What goes way back, Sarah?’
The woman glanced at her and then looked away. ‘The reason for this ’ere feud. It’s not the sort of thing to be talked about in front of a child. And ya dad’s not exactly a one for a lot of chitchat’
That was true, Emma thought wryly. Harry Forrest was no conversationalist, at least, not with his daughter. The only time he spoke to her seemed to be to issue orders. ‘Get up, go to bed, get my tea,’ or, more often, ‘Come on, there’s work to be done.’
‘I don’t know the whole story,’ Sarah was saying, ‘only that it started between your grandfather, old Charlie Forrest, and Josiah Metcalfe’s father and brother.’
‘You mean the two who started the blacksmith’s and wheelwright’s? But that’s years ago.’
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