The Flour Mill Girls, page 1
For Josie and Louis
Contents
Prologue
Before
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Next
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
The World Turns
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Nativity
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Welcome to the world of Anna Cliffe!
Letter from Author
Cynthia’s Simple Shortbread
Wartime Tales from Memory Lane
Victorian Tales from Memory Lane
Tales from Memory Lane
Copyright
Prologue
It was a winter morning that promised fair weather but at that moment Daisy felt wretched.
This once vigorous man slumped before her had been so handsome and full of life. Now, mere months later, he was broken and dependent.
It was most upsetting to see, and Daisy felt as if all the colour in the world around her had leached into dull grey tones, leaving her tender and raw.
Five young men she knew had volunteered to go and fight the Hun the second they could.
They were so bonny and bright as the train carried them away for training that Daisy had a swell of pride that almost burst through her chest as their shouted goodbyes mingled with those of all the other volunteers. It was a bittersweet farewell that climaxed in a crescendo of brave-sounding echoes reverberating the whole length of the station platform as friends and families shouted back.
But it wasn’t long before Daisy found herself certain that no one, whether at home or abroad, would survive the war unscathed.
She couldn’t stop wondering whether it was better for a soldier to suffer terrible physical injuries but to keep a strong mind, or to evade bodily harm but be terribly damaged within their head by what they had experienced. And what about if one or more of the five she knew had both physical and mental damage? Daisy never could decide which would be better, or worse, no matter how long she spent wondering.
She couldn’t often bring herself to think about the very worst outcome of all. Death. Corpses being left to rot, forever lost in a foreign land, although if anyone had asked her – which nobody did – she would have said that the shadow of death had begun to loom over everything she knew and held close.
What would this war mean for all those left at home? In a matter of weeks, young women of Daisy’s age had had to wave goodbye to nearly all the marriageable young men.
As far as Daisy could tell, the cost looked to be a very high price to pay for a war that had its genesis a long way away. Try as she might, she still couldn’t quite understand how the hostilities had begun, or why so many British men had been desperate to fight, or really what any of it was supposed to achieve.
The newspapers gave little away, obviously set on keeping up morale and making sure that those at home felt that things abroad were tip-top. Although those around her took what was said in the broadsheets as gospel, Daisy was more suspicious.
And casualties had started to come home. But at least this offered some hope.
The telegraph girls – and they mostly were girls – were a sight that made everyone shudder, with their news of confirmed deaths or loved ones missing in action.
Still, this early morning, Daisy tried to shrug these worries aside as she shook out the rug in her hands.
But the dark shadows at the edge of her vision seemed insistent, the raspy breath of the poorly man echoing in her ears.
She looked around at where she had grown up, a picturesque spot accompanied always by the inevitable creaks and whistles and whooshes of the turning sails of the smock mill that had been built just across the yard, and she could see a multitude of subtle signs of a decline in what she had always held dear.
Her parents were riddled with worry, Daisy knew, terrified her brothers wouldn’t return.
Asa and Clem’s absence had been cruelly felt, and meanwhile all three older Graham girls, and Cynthia too, and cousin Olive, had to help Jared in the mill, and pull together to try and keep their bakery and the tea room in business.
It was exhausting, but the Grahams knew that they were fortunate compared to other families in the area, as many harvests had been left to rot where they grew now that most labourers had signed up.
Those early summer months of 1914 had promised fun and larks.
But as the year ended, fun and larks were a distant memory.
The Grahams had once been a family full of happiness and with a strong trust in what the future might hold for them, a lively household with sisters and brothers who joshed each other certainly, but nearly always in fun. Sharp words and deeds were rare, and life had felt good.
How foolish they had all been back then in those months of June and July, Daisy thought now as the year began to wither, to believe that the manner in which they had lived from day to day, counted out in celebrations of harvest festivals, Yuletides and Easters, and maypole dancing and first kisses, would go on for ever. A time that would stretch but was always made rosy with the promise of husbands and babies to come.
Daisy now felt this younger self to be shallow and naive.
Looking up at the morning sun again and then down, she couldn’t shake the sense of bone-weariness beyond her years.
Gently, she tucked a wool blanket around the lap of the man in the wheelchair. His right hand attempted to pat a thank you on the lower part of her arm, the tremors overtaking his body making it hard for him. He didn’t say much these days.
Daisy manoeuvred his wheelchair to better catch the best patch of early-morning winter sunlight and then she made sure to smile as she said in as cheerful a voice as she could, ‘Do you want me to fetch you a scarf or a cushion?’
He shook his head and closed his eyes, carefully lifting his chin as if to enjoy the sunshine on his face, his cheeks desperately wan.
To think he feels he got off lightly! thought Daisy. It’s a crying shame, and a disgrace.
What was really eating Daisy was that she knew without a doubt that, worse than the morning ritual with the wheelchair and the blanket, after helping her patient with what were sometimes quite shameful ablutions, when she went to bed and was lying on her own, she would be plagued with sleeplessness.
It was a restless, anguished time each night, broken with occasional short snatches of sleep plagued with visions of marching enemy soldiers wearing their spiked Pickelhaube helmets, well-heeled boots drumming a beat that sounded more than a match for the British Tommy Atkins.
In these moments of lucid dreaming, her loved ones stood to silent attention in a row as they watched on with dark eyes and furrowed brows, and Daisy would waken with a gasp, feeling panic-stricken at the sight of both sides squaring up to each other within her dreams.
What she dreamed never altered, although sometimes she would awake with a cry on her lips and her cheeks tear-streaked.
Before
Chapter One
‘Oi, you rascals! Get your mitts away from those jam tarts, else there won’t be any left for your birthday party later and then where will we be?’ cried Daisy, as she gently slapped away the offending hands and then shooed Senna and Tansy out of the kitchen with a firm wave of a tea towel.
But Daisy couldn’t help smiling to herself as her twin sisters didn’t give up without a fight, standing outside the open kitchen door, giggling and making silly faces at her before putting their hands up to their chests as if they were puppies begging for treats.
She pretended not to notice though, as she certainly had no intention of giving in to their beseeching looks.
‘Ach, not you too now, Asa! You’ll burn yourself,’ said Daisy as a few seconds later she had to flick the tea towel really quite sharply at her eldest brother’s hand, which was hovering over the tarts cooling on their ancient wire rack.
But he was too quick for her.
‘No matter. Them that works hard deserve rewards,’ Asa announced with a slightly too proud nod of his head as he backed away. Or at least that was what Daisy thought he said as he’d crammed in a whole tart with one fleet move.
‘Oi, give over, you great lummox – you’re lucky you didn’t blister your mouth. I’ve been in the kitchen since first light this morning, mind, so watch what you say about work, Asa. And, truth to tell, all you’re doing right now is sorting out a few tables and chairs.’ Daisy’s words were curt.
‘Well, I’m dealing with Mother, who can’t make up her mind where everything is going, and—’ her eldest brother looked coy, his neck going very red suddenly ‘—I’m up to my ears with keeping Joy placated too as she’s having trouble resting and it’s not doing much for her good temper. So it feels like I’ve been at i
Daisy grimaced in understanding, and then she passed Asa another tart.
Brother and sister stood for a moment side by side, their shoulders lightly touching, as – Asa having to dip his head as he was tall and the top of the window was low – they stared out of the small kitchen window at all the activity on the sizeable patch of grass that took up most of the free space outside the mill house.
This was a square of green still shiny from the night-time dew, and it prettily separated the family’s white wooden smock mill from the small but sturdy mill house where the Graham children had been born and raised. The shadow of the windmill and its four turning sails would move reassuringly across the grass during the day, Daisy knew.
Right now, the sails were spinning around evenly at a gentle speed, accompanied by the familiar repetitive pounding from the components of the mill’s engine with the accompanying harsh grating of the huge, heavy grinding stones against each other as their father Jared kept up with milling the grain that local farmers brought to the mill by cart to be made into flour.
Brother and sister could see that their mother, Cynthia, known for being a stickler where order and tidiness were concerned, was staring crossly at her daughter-in-law Joy, Asa’s wife, and wasn’t paying any heed to the mill behind her.
Actually the mill was so much part and parcel of everyday life for each member of the Graham family that it was rare that anyone, other than Jared or his sons, noticed it standing there, or stood back to look properly at its sails slicing through the air, and so in itself this wasn’t in any way unusual.
Instead, Cynthia, with a firm pointing of a finger, was busily directing – there was no other word for it – a harried and extremely pregnant Joy as to exactly how the trestle tables on the grass should be set with their plates and cutlery upon the red-checked tablecloths.
Privately, Daisy had always felt Asa’s wife was misnamed as she was definitely a glass-half-empty sort of person, known far and wide in Crumford for never holding back if she thought Asa had stepped out of line, which he seemed to do with alarming frequency if his wife’s complaints were anything to go by.
But watching now, as Cynthia interrupted her own instructions with a sharp rap of a knuckle on the table, in case there could be any misunderstanding, Daisy thought Joy appeared to be setting the tables perfectly well already.
Cynthia’s new directions seemed to demand that Joy reposition the chairs and their cushions, and Daisy felt more than a twinge of sympathy for her sister-in-law as Cynthia could be very hard to please at times.
It was ironic that Daisy’s mother ruled the Old Creaky roost with an iron hand that everyone had to obey, her husband Jared most of all, as Cynthia often preached to her daughters and their cousin, Olive, that a woman’s role was to do as her husband bid (although these days when Cynthia said as much, Daisy and Jared would catch each other’s eye in a jokey way about this irony) as what Cynthia wanted, went.
Although Daisy’s sister-in-law kept any sharp comments to herself, judging by the dramatic rise and fall of her shoulders, Joy clearly gave a deep sigh of frustration as she straightened up and then rubbed her back in a very obvious manner, moving her jaw from side to side, as though biting back what she’d love to say to Cynthia.
Quickly, Daisy poured some cool water into a glass and thrust it into Asa’s hand. ‘You’d better give this to your wife pronto and make sure she drinks it sitting in the shade; if you’re quick, you’ll get to Joy before she gives Mother as good as she’s getting. And then make sure you distract Mother by asking where the tankards should go before they are needed, as she’ll never want those on the tea table until after the men have had their cup of tea and some food. If you’re lucky Mother might forget about Joy for a little while.’
‘Good idea,’ agreed Asa, and they grinned.
They were in the midst of a spell of relentlessly sunny summer weather, and all indications were pointing to it being yet another unseasonably warm June Saturday that would pass with barely a cloud in the sky. It was going to be a long day, with their guests arriving from five o’clock in the afternoon in order that those who needed could do more or less a full working day.
Asa’s hobnailed boots sounded their distinctive clatter across the stone flags immediately outside the back door to the mill house, and then his footsteps were silent on the grass as he made his way towards his wife.
Daisy turned and surveyed her baking. She’d better prepare some more jam tarts, she decided, as she reached for her hessian bag of flour and another jar of last year’s bramble jam that Cynthia had made.
Rather unexpectedly, this forthcoming tea party had grown into quite a big do, much more than the simple birthday party for the seven-year-old twins Daisy had first imagined. And luckily the weather seemed to be obliging them for an outside affair, as although the cloudless sky was a clear blue, fortunately there was enough of a breeze blowing in gently from the nearby English Channel that the heat wasn’t going to feel too oppressive.
Aside from the fact it was the twins’ birthday (something Senna and Tansy had for weeks been excited about), the family’s grain mill was doing reliable business these days. So in part this get-together had grown into a thank you for the local inhabitants of the historic Kentish town of Crumford that was half a mile or so from the mill.
Some of the pretty Crumford buildings dated from medieval times, while others had the steep pitch of Dutch roofs, with gable ends swooping down in alternating curves and right angles from the pediments at their apex. Over previous centuries a lot of Dutch people had crossed the sea to live locally, and their evidence could be seen everywhere, if one knew what to look for in the buildings they had constructed.
On a clear day, France could easily be seen across the English Channel if one stood on Crumford’s easterly shingle beach that was a fair way from the main drag of the market town, across some scrubby marshland and sand flats that were a paradise for many species of birds.
Daisy had anticipated the party’s timing would be fortuitous, as the local farmers weren’t as busy yet as they would be in the coming couple of months, when all hands would be needed on deck to bring in safely the various local harvests of hops, grains of many sorts, as well as hay and straw, at the same time as all the summer vegetables, salad and fruits that would constantly be cropped and packaged for sending to London.
As always, the Graham family felt very appreciative of the support and patronage thrown at their mill by all sorts of local people, and they wanted their customers to know this.
While milling had been for centuries integral to the community, it was a trade in which shysters sometimes operated, and the fact that the Grahams’ mill was widely known as being honest as the day is long, and well run too, had meant that over many years they’d built a sizeable and loyal clientele.
All the same, there were several other mills within a mile or two, all eager for their business, and so every Graham family member appreciated that theirs was a clientele who must never be taken for granted.
Their smock mill, officially called Graham Mill, had been in the family for generations. But rather than Graham Mill, it was known affectionately to all and sundry as Old Creaky as the four arms carrying the sails could make a real racket in windy weather if Jared hadn’t adjusted its head in time so as not to catch too much of the blow.
When Jared retired, the family accepted that Old Creaky would pass down to Asa, who was Jared and Cynthia’s firstborn, with slightly younger brother Clem as deputy. Really the mill was too much for any one man, and so both Asa and Clem had left school as soon as they could to help Jared in the family business.
The brothers worked hard each day learning as much as they could. Asa was better at the milling side of things, such as keeping the flow of grain steady into the large circular grinding stones, and making sure that everything was ticking over mechanically inside the compact wooden structure between the frequent visits of wheelwrights and journeyman mechanics. Clem, on the other hand, had more of a knack for dealing with the local farmers with wit and cleverness, and in drumming up new business.
Still, Daisy and her younger sister Violet, split by just a year between them and being only a tad younger than Asa and Clem, had proved over the last year or two to have solid business heads on their shoulders too, and they were now really beginning to add to the family’s income, despite neither young woman yet being twenty.
