The Blind Miller Read online

  THE BLIND MILLER

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  Cover

  Titlepage

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Books by Catherine Cookson

  The Blind Miller

  Copyright

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART TWO Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART THREE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  PART FOUR Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  PART FIVE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART SIX Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  In brief:

  Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting…

  Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow, which is now in Tyne and Wear.

  She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation, and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13, and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School, and in June 1940, they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!

  Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and went on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have three or four titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.

  She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic.’ To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people.’ For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves’ or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring, and compassion appear, and most certainly, hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film, and radio with her television adaptations on ITV, lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.

  Besides writing, she was an innovative painter, and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard, but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals, and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year, and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.

  Throughout her life, but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers, and stomach, and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bedridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her, and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven-day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities, and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80s.

  This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th, 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.

  Catherine Cookson’s Books

  NOVELS

  Colour Blind

  Maggie Rowan

  Rooney

  The Menagerie

  Fanny McBride

  Fenwick Houses

  The Garment

  The Blind Miller

  The Wingless Bird

  Hannah Massey

  The Long Corridor

  The Unbaited Trap

  Slinky Jane

  Katie Mulholland

  The Round Tower

  The Nice Bloke

  The Glass Virgin

  The Invitation

  The Dwelling Place

  Feathers in the Fire

  Pure as the Lily

  The Invisible Cord

  The Gambling Man

  The Tide of Life

  The Girl

  The Cinder Path

  The Man Who Cried

  The Whip

  The Black Velvet Gown

  A Dinner of Herbs

  The Moth

  The Parson’s Daughter

  The Harrogate Secret

  The Cultured Handmaiden

  The Black Candle

  The Gillyvors

  My Beloved Son

  The Rag Nymph

  The House of Women

  The Maltese Angel

  The Golden Straw

  The Year of the Virgins

  The Tinker’s Girl

  Justice is a Woman

  A Ruthless Need

  The Bonny Dawn

  The Branded Man

  The Lady on my Left

  The Obsession

  The Upstart

  The Blind Years

  Riley

  The Solace of Sin

  The Desert Crop

  The Thursday Friend

  A House Divided

  Rosie of the River

  The Silent Lady

  FEATURING KATE HANNIGANr />
  Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)

  Kate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)

  THE MARY ANN NOVELS

  A Grand Man

  The Lord and Mary Ann

  The Devil and Mary Ann

  Love and Mary Ann

  Life and Mary Ann

  Marriage and Mary Ann

  Mary Ann’s Angels

  Mary Ann and Bill

  FEATURING BILL BAILEY

  Bill Bailey

  Bill Bailey’s Lot

  Bill Bailey’s Daughter

  The Bondage of Love

  THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY

  Tilly Trotter

  Tilly Trotter Wed

  Tilly Trotter Widowed

  THE MALLEN TRILOGY

  The Mallen Streak

  The Mallen Girl

  The Mallen Litter

  FEATURING HAMILTON

  Hamilton

  Goodbye Hamilton

  Harold

  AS CATHERINE MARCHANT

  Heritage of Folly

  The Fen Tiger

  House of Men

  The Iron Façade

  Miss Martha Mary Crawford

  The Slow Awakening

  CHILDREN’S

  Matty Doolin

  Joe and the Gladiator

  The Nipper

  Rory’s Fortune

  Our John Willie

  Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet

  Go Tell It To Mrs Golightly

  Lanky Jones

  Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Our Kate

  Let Me Make Myself Plain

  Plainer Still

  The Blind Miller

  Mary Hetherington was a mother who dominated her family. She was kind, efficient and generous—provided they did what she wanted. But when David brought home Sarah from the ‘wrong end’ of the Fifteen Streets, she soon took against her as Sarah brought life and laughter into the dustless and sterile house.

  Then when Mary discovered that Sarah was loved not just by David but by all her menfolk, she realised that this ‘interloper’, if allowed to go unchecked, would become a challenge to her authority. Sarah, who did not have an unkind word for anyone, found that even the best people had their quarrels and secrets they were anxious to hide.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1963

  The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.

  ISBN 978-1-78036-026-3

  Sketch by Harriet Anstruther

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  Published by Peach Publishing

  TO THERESA AND COLIN

  ‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet

  they grind exceeding small;

  Though with patience He stands waiting, with

  exactness grinds He all.’

  HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

  PART ONE

  One

  ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Me mother should have told me.’

  ‘How did she know that they were going to give you fruit with your tea? And, anyway, you said you used the fork all right.’

  ‘I felt clumsy. It was awful…awful.’

  ‘What’s up with you, our Sarah, worrying about using a fork to fruit? Lord, if I was in your shoes I’d be thinking about what they thought about me…along that line.’

  ‘Well, I am…that’s what I’m doing. What’ll she think about me using a fork as if it was a pick shovel?’

  ‘Look, forget about the fork and tell us what it was like, the house and everything.’

  ‘Oh, it was lovely, lovely. You’ve no idea, Phyllis.’

  The two sisters sat on the edge of the bed, their thighs brought together by the sagging mattress. They looked at each other, one bursting to unload her experiences over the hump of humiliation brought about by a new venture in table manners at a Sunday high tea, the other waiting to be warmed in the glory that had befallen her elder sister.

  ‘There was a beautiful linen cloth on the table; everything was to match, china and all that, and tea-knives besides the knives and forks. I knew what they were for all right.’ She pulled a face; then her features flowed into a quick smile that illuminated her surroundings like a light through a dirty window. ‘And they’ve got a proper dining room, they don’t eat in the kitchen.’

  ‘That’s because it’s a corner house, it’s double like.’

  Sarah nodded quickly. ‘And there’s a carpet in the front room, and there’s a whole suite; and a piano, and a cabinet—glass-fronted you know, with best china in it. Oh, Phyllis, it was lovely.’

  ‘Did you get upstairs?’

  ‘Yes, she took me up to take me things off.’

  ‘All of them?’ Phyllis pushed Sarah in the shoulder and they swayed from each other before the bed brought them close together again.

  ‘Don’t be nasty, our Phyllis.’ Sarah’s eyes were blinking; her face was straining not to laugh now. ‘That’s what they do. An’ you know something…they’ve got a flush lav.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, truly.’

  ‘Coo! Did it wet your things?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I’m not; I sat on one once and pulled the chain. Ooh, lor! I was wringing.’

  ‘You are a fool you know, our Phyllis; you don’t pull it ’til you get up.’

  ‘I know now. But go on. Did they leave you in the front room to do your courtin’?’

  Now it was Sarah’s arm that shot out, and so quick was the thrust that it knocked Phyllis from the edge of the bed on to the floor. Within a minute they were back into position again, holding each other as they rocked silently together.

  When they were sitting upright once more, their faces wet with their controlled convulsions, Phyllis said, ‘I wouldn’t have been surprised if they did, you know. Coo! He’s not slow on the uptake, is he? You’ve only been going with him for three weeks and he asks you home. There’s May Connor, she’s been going with Harry Willis for six months and never darkened his mother’s door, and they’re supposed to be goin’ strong.’

  ‘That’s different…I don’t suppose Harry’s particular for May to see inside the house.’

  Phyllis wriggled her buttocks on the bed, which brought her feet from the floor, and she lifted them upwards and looked at them as she said, ‘They’re talkin’ about you next door. Old Ma Ratcliffe had her head over the wall the minute you went round the bottom corner. She said to me mother: “Sarah’s looking bonny the day”.’ Phyllis nudged Sarah with her elbow and stuck her tongue well out. ‘That was a sure lead-up to the old snake sticking her fangs in. Will I tell you what she said?’

  The eyes of the two girls were now slanted towards each other. ‘I’ll likely have heard it all afore,’ said Sarah.

  ‘You haven’t, not this bit…we’re all one family now.’ Phyllis drew her upper lip to a point, showing her large white teeth, and, thrusting her chin out, brought her face into a good imitation of that of their neighbour as she said, ‘“Well, Annie, you know nothing can ever come of that, we being at the bottom end.” We, you note…we’re all one big family now…no looking down her nose the day. “Stink-pots like the Hetheringtons couldn’t be expected to walk this way with wedding rings.” That’s what she said.’

  ‘Who’s talkin’ of wedding rings?’ Sarah’s voice sounded hoarse and threatening.

  ‘Well, I’m only tellin’ you what she said. And she didn’t forget to rub it in an’ all about them being chapel.
And then she fired her last gun afore saying she had to get the tea ready. “You’ll be having the priest sitting on the doorstep from now on,” she said.’

  ‘Damn her!’ Sarah got to her feet and walked the two steps to the window, and Phyllis, looking at her straight back, said, ‘Eeh! Our Sarah, fancy you sayin’ that; I thought you had said you’d promised Our Lady never to use a swear word in your life.’

  Sarah did not turn her head but stared through the lace curtain to the row of chimneys opposite. Her whole being was flooded with an anger that was not just the outcome of the moment, but stemmed from years of puzzled thinking, of probing and groping blindly to know the reason why. She had been protesting constantly for ten years now from a particular day when she had seen, as if in a revelation, the whole of her life being spent in the lower end of the fifteen streets. She’d had a bad cold and her mother had given her nearly half a bottle of cough mixture. It had knocked her silly, and she’d seen funny things, most of which she had forgotten. But she hadn’t forgotten the mud picture, as she now thought of it. In the picture she not only saw her mother and Phyllis and her new stepfather, wallowing, choking, in a sea of mud, mud like that which filled the huge timber pond at Jarrow Slacks, a mile down the road, but all the people of the fifteen streets, all of them, were choking in the mud; there wasn’t one of them who wasn’t up to the neck in it. And she knew that they all knew there was no hope of getting out. Yet they still struggled. Some upheld others, but some, like Mrs Ratcliffe next door, put their hands on the heads of those nearest them and pushed them under.

  ‘I hate that woman.’ She was glaring down at Phyllis now. ‘She’s never so happy as when he’s goin’ for us. But I’ll show her. I’ll get out of here, you’ll see.’ She bounced her head at her sister, and Phyllis nodded back, saying under her breath, ‘An’ the day you go I’ll be on your heels.’

  Again they were seated close, and Sarah’s voice, stripped now of all anger, asked softly, ‘But what about me mother?’