It was a long time since Marion had been up here in the mechanics of the mill, and it gave her renewed pleasure to see in the warm gloom each side of the sunbeam, the heavy wooden wheels and the cog-plates of thick applewood set at so precise an angle, all satin-smooth with years of rubbing. She recalled again the sight of the water-shaft that came in through the wall from the water wheel, beginning to turn as the sluice gate outside was opened and the connecting wheel, the wallover, which changed the direction of the power from horizontal to vertical turning, being dropped by two men into place with a loud ‘chlock’, and the upper millstone, thus engaged, starting to turn slowly, the cog-plates coming together like the palms of two hands, then slowly releasing each other, and at the same time the magic of the great upper stone smoothly sailing round. The sounds were vivid in her memory, the creaks and groans of the wooden machinery, the rush of grain pouring down the hopper and the crunch of the corn between the stones. It was a triumph and a wonder, an enormous saving of back-breaking effort and a promise of food combined, and an aesthetic pleasure as intense as any she knew. She remembered how, after a day’s milling, the wooden wheels were warm with friction and she would be sent up the ladder in the dark with folded blankets hanging over her shoulders to spread over the warm wheels, and oh how comfortable it was, having fetched them later, to be wrapped up in a warm blanket for sleeping. But all was still now except for the motes in the sunbeam, and all was silent. Marion went up the ladder in the corner to the top room.

The heat under the rafters and thatch hit her as her head came level with the floor. It was bright up here, for the wide window with the pulley wheel outside it was open, and so was the door to the plank bridge over the water wheel opposite. She observed Simon’s stringy legs, the black hairs on them whitened with the flour and meal which pervaded the whole building. He helped her up the last steps.

‘Not wanting grinding, are you?’ he said.

‘I brought my last sack of corn,’ said Marion. ‘It’s in the wheelbarrow with Alice downstairs.’

‘No hope,’ he said. ‘You saw all the other sacks down there? You’ll have to take your turn. Rollo will expect to be first once the pond’s full. Come and look at it.’

‘I’m not out of flour,’ she said, ‘and I can do a bit in the old quern if needed.’

‘You women and your old querns, do me out of my livelihood,’ but this stock grumble was given with a smile. They went out of the little door to the plank bridge which went over the sluice to higher ground beyond. The sluice, lined with thick elm planks was bone dry, and the broad water wheel below them, with all its elaborately made scoops, rested motionless, with a few strands of dried waterweed hanging from the edges of the scoops.