Deep in their conversation, neither of them heard the back door open.
‘Building land?’ Emma was frowning already, even though she still did not fully understand exactly what it was Micky was suggesting. ‘How can anyone build anything in the yard, there wouldn’t be room enough—’ Her eyes widened in horror as realization slowly began to seep into her reluctant mind. ‘You don’t mean – pull down the mill?’
They heard a slight movement and looked round to see Boydie standing in the doorway, his face ghostly white, a stricken look in his eyes. Stiffly, he moved forward to stand facing them both across the kitchen table.
‘Gran? What are you saying? What are you thinking of? Don’t listen to him!’ The boy’s voice rose until he was shouting. He stabbed his forefinger towards her, punctuating every word. ‘Don’t – you – dare – even think – of pulling my mill down!’
Micky was on his feet. ‘That’s enough. How dare you speak to your grandmother like that?’
The young man, his blue eyes flashing fire, turned on his father. ‘And how dare you interfere?’
‘Boydie, it’s not a viable proposition. There’s no work—’
‘Don’t give me your “banking talk”, Dad. I’m not interested in “viable propositions”. That mill,’ Boydie said slowly and deliberately, leaning towards his father and pointing out of the window as he spoke, ‘has been in the Forrest family ever since her grandpa built it. And it’s staying in the Forrest family.’
‘Then what are you proposing to do with it?’ Sarcasm lined Micky’s tone. ‘How are you going to keep it running with nothing to grind? Gran’s money’s – all her life savings – have all but gone. She’s hanging on to a worthless heap of bricks and wood just so she can hand it on to you.’ His tone softened and he shook his head sadly. ‘Just think a minute, Boydie, please. Is that fair on your grandparents?’
For a moment, the boy looked unsure, glancing from his father to Emma and William.
‘Boydie—’ Emma began, rising from her chair, but he put out his hand towards her as if fending her off.
‘I don’t want to hear it, Gran,’ he said bluntly, ‘whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.’
He dragged open the back door, slammed it behind him and then they heard his feet pounding across the yard towards the mill.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Emma said, her voice breaking as tears threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Go after him, William. Tell him I—’
William’s arms were about her. ‘Leave him be, Em,’ he said gently. ‘Just wait.’
‘But I can’t let him think I mean to pull down the mill.’
There was silence in the kitchen as the two men looked at each other, whilst Emma’s wild glance went from one to the other. ‘Oh no, no, that’s not what you think too, William?’
When he did not answer, she sank back into her chair. ‘Forrest’s Folly,’ she murmured.
‘Eh?’ Micky said. ‘What do you mean?’
She sighed heavily, thinking back down the years to the tales old Luke used to tell her. ‘When Grandpa Charlie built the mill, the villagers called it “Forrest’s Folly”. Perhaps,’ her voice quavered, ‘it was.’
She was lost in her own thoughts remembering – no son to carry on the Forrest name as Charlie had wanted, then the destruction of the sails through her neglect and the years of desertion. And now, when at last they had a male heir who loved and wanted the mill so desperately, now there was no work for it to do.
‘Oh Grandpa Charlie,’ she whispered inside her mind. ‘What am I to do?’
Fifty-Three
Boydie stayed in the mill all day and only when Emma herself went across the yard and pleaded with him to come into the house, did he climb down the ladders. But he refused to speak to any of them and the following morning he stood in the yard dressed in his best suit and holding a small suitcase.
‘I’m going back to Lincoln with Dad,’ he said bluntly.
‘Why? Oh, Boydie, don’t go. Not like this. Please . . .’
For a moment, the angry, determined look in his brilliant eyes softened. Gently, he kissed her wrinkled cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Gran.’ He patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry about anything.’
He eased his lanky frame into the front seat, slammed the door of the car and rested his arm on the frame of the open window.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Micky said, kissing her goodbye. ‘I’ll talk to him when we get home. I’ll explain it all to him. It’s high time he understood.’
She shook her head, her eyes still on the figure sitting in the car, waiting for his father. ‘I won’t ever allow the mill to be pulled down whatever you say – not while there’s breath in my body.’
‘But it’ll fall into ruin again,’ Micky protested. ‘It’ll become a danger and an eyesore.’
‘No, it won’t. William will keep it in working order, even if there’s no work for it to do.’
Micky sighed again and shook his head. It was like swimming against the tide. ‘Mother, that’s all part of what I’m trying to tell you. Dad can’t go on much longer. It’s too much for him.’
‘Then Boydie can do it. If only he’d stay. He’s old enough now. He’ll be sixteen in a few weeks. He can leave school then.’ She was frantic, clutching at straws. ‘Why won’t he talk to us and why’s he suddenly decided to go back with you? What did you say to him last night, Micky?’
‘Nothing. He won’t talk to me either. But maybe he’s seeing sense at last.’
‘It’s what you said about it being unfair to us,’ she said suddenly. ‘That’s what’s done it. Micky, you shouldn’t have said that.’ She tried to push past Micky to get to the car, to talk to Boydie. But Micky’s arms held her fast.
‘Mother. Leave it. You’re both upset.’
‘Micky’s right, Em,’ came William’s gentle, but firm, voice behind her. ‘Let them go.’ She stood in the yard, for the second time watching her beloved Boydie leaving her. This time he did not look back out of the rear window, did not even raise his arm in farewell.
‘Oh, William,’ the tears were running down her cheeks. ‘He’s gone. This time he’s really gone for good.’
‘Now, now. Just wait and see.’
Emma was inconsolable. Even Sarah’s blind faith in the bees was shaken.
‘I can’t believe it, Emma. That he’s just gone off like that. Given in to his father so easily. What’s he going to do in Lincoln? Stay on at school or leave and get a job?’
Defeated, Emma shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I can’t believe it myself. That he just packed his bag and went off.’
The old head shook and Sarah’s gaze went to the hives in the orchard. ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all,’ she murmured.
‘You know, I never thought Boydie would run away,’ Emma said, again and again, unable to think of anything else in the days that followed Boydie’s going.
Despite their shared anxiety, William smiled. ‘He hasn’t. That lad wouldn’t run away from anything. ’Specially not the mill.’
Emma blinked and stared at him. ‘But he did before – from Lincoln.’
‘He didn’t run away, Em. He was running to. To the mill.’
‘But this time he has,’ she said.
‘Wait and see,’ was all William would say.
‘We might as well pull it down as Micky wants,’ she said bitterly. ‘There’s no future for the mill without Boydie, that’s for sure.’
She stood in the yard looking up at the mill as, throughout her long life, she had done so often. The sails were idle, and so, if she were honest, was the mill itself. She put her hand on its side, feeling the black-tarred brickwork beneath her hand. But there was no pulse. Its heartbeat was silent. The heart had gone out of the mill just as her own heart was gone along with Boydie. If he was gone, then there was nothing left to go on fighting for any more. Nothing else mattered. She was old and tired and, now, she felt defeated. She had struggled for so long but now she felt that the ba
ttle was no longer worth the effort.
She went into the mill, breathing in the familiar dusty air. No bulging sacks of grain waited at the bottom of the chains to be hoisted to the bin floor. Emma climbed slowly up the wooden ladders towards the very top, pausing on each floor to look about her. The machinery all stood silent, well oiled and kept in working order by her faithful William, but silent, oh so deathly still and silent. She shuddered and climbed again, bending to look out of the tiny windows, seeing below her the houses and beyond them, the flat fields of waving corn awaiting the combine harvester; a machine like those that had brought about the demise of her mill. She stood looking out of the topmost window down into the yard. It was a long way down. Far enough down to kill her beloved Grandpa Charlie.
She heard a bang and jumped, dragged back to the present, and saw William crossing the yard, glancing round him, calling her name. ‘Em? Where are you?’
She blinked back the tears and a small, tremulous smile touched her lips. William, her dearest William, who, no matter what happened, loved her always.
Carefully she climbed down again and went out into the bright, mocking sunlight. She stood a moment, her gaze travelling slowly over the outline of her beloved mill, the sharp lines of the black shape became blurred as tears came into her eyes.
‘There you are, love. All right?’ Tender concern was in his voice.
Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded. Then, with an effort she said, in a voice that was not quite steady, ‘I’ll be in soon. There’s just just something I must do.’
Slowly, she lowered her head, turned and began to walk towards the gap in the hedge. This was something only she and she alone could tell the bees. She walked into the orchard and as she approached the hives beneath the trees she could already hear an angry humming. They were all around her head, swooping and diving, their buzzing louder and louder in her ears. She flapped her hand in sudden fear but the droning went on and then she felt them on her hair, on her clothes, touching her face, her hands and arms. She felt a sharp jab in her arm like something sticking a pin in her and she realized that, for the first time in the whole of her life, she, Emma Forrest, had been stung by a bee. With a sob, she turned and fled from the orchard.
Fifty-Four
The rumours were flying around the village.
‘Micky’s fetched his lad back, then? So much for Emma’s high hopes.’
‘But there’s no future in milling.’
‘What’s going to happen to the mill?’
‘Pull it down, that’d be the best thing. Why, they’d mek a fortune selling it for building land.’
And then, like echoes from the past, ‘Ya missed out there, Jamie, all them years ago, didn’t ya?’
‘I don’t want a fortune,’ Emma wept. ‘I just want Boydie back.’
Late in the evening of the third day, she heard a knock at the back door and her heart leapt. When she flung it wide open, it was not Boydie who stood there but, to her surprise, Jamie Metcalfe.
‘Come in,’ she said flatly, turning away listlessly, hardly able to bear the disappointment when each time a knock came on the door and brief hope fluttered in her breast.
Still a tall and fine looking man despite the years, Jamie stood there awkwardly, twisting the cap he held in his hands. He stepped into the kitchen, his frame seeming to fill the room. ‘He’s not come back, then?’
Emma bit her lip and shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered.
With his large, work-worn fingers, fingers that trembled ever so slightly, Jamie touched her white hair. His deep voice was husky as he said, ‘Poor Emma. You don’t deserve all the sadness you’ve had in your life. And,’ she heard him swallow painfully before he said very softly, ‘I’m not proud of the unhappiness I caused you all those years ago. I was a fool, Emma. I’ve spent a lifetime regretting what my life – what our lives might have been together if I hadn’t been so blindly stupid and proud.’
Impetuously, Emma took hold of his big hand between hers and briefly she held it to her cheek. ‘Oh, Jamie, how much I loved you then. It’s all such a long time ago now but at least now we’re old . . .’
‘You’ll never be old to me, Emma. You’ll always be the young girl I loved.’
‘There, there,’ she patted his hand and let it fall. ‘Come on up,’ she said and led the way upstairs into the living room, where William was sitting beside the fire. The newspaper he was pretending to read had slid down his knees, where it lay unread whilst he stared into the coals, his mind anywhere and everywhere but in this room.
‘William . . .’
At the sound of her voice, he turned his head slowly and stared for a few moments at his brother. Then he struggled to his feet asking, ‘Is summat wrong?’
‘No, no,’ Jamie said, hastily, putting his hand up, palm outwards, to reassure William. He sat in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. ‘But I’m sorry to hear about Boydie leaving. I know how it must hurt both of you.’
William sank back into his chair. ‘Aye well,’ was all he said.
Emma watched them for a moment; the two men whom she had loved most of all in her life. Jamie, her first love, whom she had adored and worshipped with the passion of youth. And William, her last love, the man who had loved her and only her his whole life through. The generous, kindly man who had buried his own feelings for her, knowing she loved his brother. Who had waited through the years until he had found her again.
As she stood watching them talking softly, she realized that William had not found her by accident again during the war, he had never, ever, lost sight of her. He had known all the time what was happening to her and when the time was right to seek her out he had come, as he always did, when she needed him the most. In that moment, Emma found new strength. Though her heart was aching for Boydie, she still had William. Dear, faithful, loving William. As long as she had William, all was not lost.
‘What about a nice cup of tea?’ She smiled and, as William looked up at her, she saw some of the anxiety in his own eyes fade as he heard the renewed vigour in her voice.
Emma went back down to the kitchen where she filled the kettle under the tap and plugged it in, comforted by the murmur of their voices from the living room above. She was stretching up to reach down cups and saucers from the shelf in the cupboard when she heard it. The sound of whistling. She could hear whistling.
Boydie’s whistling.
Before she could move towards it, the back door opened and he was standing there, the cheeky grin on his face, his black hair glistening from the light drizzle that had begun as darkness fell. He wiped his feet on the door mat and closed the door. ‘Hello, Gran. Just in time for a cuppa, am I?’
She was still staring open-mouthed at him when William, followed by Jamie, came down the stairs and into the kitchen. William, too, just stood looking at the boy, but Jamie pushed past his brother and made for the door.
As he passed Boydie he put his hand briefly on the boy’s shoulder and said gruffly, ‘Glad to see you, lad, but I’d best be off.’
As the door closed behind Jamie Metcalfe, Emma turned away quickly to hide the tears that suddenly sprang to her eyes. Brushing them away impatiently with the back of her hand, she reached down another cup and saucer and said, in a voice that was none too steady, ‘My, you know how to time it, Boydie. Sit down.’
He did as she bade him, but she could sense an excitement about him. The boy could hardly sit still in his seat. ‘Gran,’ he began, as if he had some news that would keep no longer. ‘Gran, I went back to Lincoln with Dad because I had an idea, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it because – well – I didn’t know enough.’
‘Idea?’ she said slowly, sitting at the table and pouring the tea. ‘What sort of idea?’
William, too, sat down, pulling a cup towards him and scarcely noticing as the liquid slopped into the saucer. His gaze was fixed on Boydie.
‘Do you remember me going on a bus trip with the school?’
; She nodded. ‘Yes, you went for the whole day.’
‘We went to a museum in Yorkshire. I thought it would be awfully dull, but when we got there, it was great. It was a farm, but a working farm, so that the visitors could see what it was really like to have been farming at the beginning of this century.’
Emma found she was holding her breath. She was staring at him, but she could not speak.
‘Well,’ Boydie went on with an air of triumph. ‘I’ve been in Lincoln seeing folks. I’ve been to the County Council offices, to a museum, and I’ve talked to all sorts of people. I’ve been asking their advice, and do you know what we’re going to do with the mill?’ Now, he was beaming happily. ‘We’re going to keep it, but we’re going to turn it into a museum – a working museum, just like that farm. People will be able to come and see what it was like to be a miller in your Grandpa Charlie’s day.’ His excitement was rising with every word, shining out of his brilliantly blue eyes. ‘And we’ll open up the bakehouse again and bake bread and sell it. Maybe we could even open a tearoom with homemade jams and scones. Now, what do you think to that, eh?’
‘You mean the Council want to buy it off us?’
‘Well, they might, but we can do it ourselves.’ For the first time a note of doubt crept into his voice. ‘Can’t we?’
Again, Emma glanced at William but his gaze was still fixed on the boy’s animated, eager expression. ‘Now, tell us again, Boydie, calmly . . .’
They talked far into the night but by the time Boydie yawned, stood up, and kissed his grandmother’s forehead, it had all been decided.
As they listened to the sound of Boydie’s feet going up the stairs to bed and heard his whistling, Emma and William looked at each other across the kitchen table.
‘Do you know, Emma,’ William said, with a slightly bemused expression on his face. ‘If you were to tell me that your Grandpa Charlie had been reincarnated in Boydie, do you know, I think, at this very moment, I would believe you?’
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