The Watermill

By Richard Noble

Thomas Ford lives a solitary life in the watermill with his cat and chickens for company. One day Emma and her mother stops by and Thomas' life changes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291972337

Book preview

The Watermill

The Watermill

By

Richard Noble

Copyright

© Richard Noble 2014

All rights reserved

First Edition

ISBN – 978-1-291-97233-7

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Also by Richard Noble

Mouse Island

Haven

Chapter 1

The great wooden wheel hung on the side of the mill house. It had not turned for many years since the river course changed direction after the flood. When walkers passed by on the footpath they always commented how beautiful the mill was with its water wheel and idyllic location but few asked where its river had gone; where its lifeblood was. It was like an exhibit in a museum. Very attractive and something that was once of great importance but was now part of then and not part of now.

The setting amongst the trees added to its beauty but somehow made it seem unreal, more like a film set for a Hardy novel.

Thomas was planting his French bean seeds. He always planted a variety called purple queen. It seemed a kind of magic trick when he put the purple bean pods into boiling water and they came out bright green and ready for eating. It was as if the beans had turned colour when they changed from being a plant to being food; natures’ way of saying they’re ready to eat now.

As always he heard the walkers before he saw them. The footpath ran behind the hedge alongside the vegetable patch and he heard the voice of a child trying to express the wonder of nature but falling short as her vocabulary was inadequate to express what she could see.

Look at that pretty flower and what a nice blue butterfly

As always they stopped at the small style that took the path into the field. The mother looked into the field of cows with the usual townsfolk fear, especially when they had children with them. The little girl turned and looked at the water mill. Look mummy, what a big wheel on the side of the house.

The mother turned and smiled. Everyone smiled when they saw Thomas’s cottage. It was out of a Victorian oil painting of idyllic countryside that really never existed of a woman with a child in her arms feeding chicken in in a cottage garden in front of a stone thatched cottage with the husband ploughing the field behind with shire horses.

Isn’t that a lovely cottage Emma? she