‘When they’re not leerin’?’
‘Oh, take no notice of that. Anyway, ’tis but one or two of the dimwits an’ them without a wife.’
‘What about the wives? You said yourself, you’ve never had so many women since your son was born.’
‘Aye, ’tis true. But they got short shrift, and it’s only me regulars show their faces now. Anyway, human beings are like cattle. Oh no, they’re not. I always question that sayin’ an’ chide meself for it, because some cattle are more sensible and cleaner than some folks that I could name, an’ not a mile away at that. Still, everybody must live their own life, as I keep tellin’ you, girl. So finish your floor, then get the peat in, and I’ll tell you what’—she smiled conspiratorially—‘then we’ll settle down and I’ll take you through the big box.’
So Mary Ellen finished scrubbing the stone floor, then laid sacks over the front part to take the tread of dirty feet, after which she brought in armful after armful of peat and stacked it up at each side of the fireplace. When this was done, she sat down on the bench by Kate’s side, the box between them, and so learned more about the mystery and use of herbs and potions. And yet all the while she was asking herself what she would say or do should Roddy come in that door.
She need not have worried herself on this score, for when Hal returned that evening he brought them a letter. It had been delivered by the coach to the office in Hexham, together with the mail for the agent at the mill, and it was picked up by a clerk who, knowing Hal, said, ‘Would you like to take a letter I have here for Mrs Makepeace?’
On entering the room he didn’t hand the letter to Kate but held it in his hand and said, ‘I’ve got a letter here for you.’
‘Aye, you have. Well, where’s it from?’
‘London.’
‘Oh, London.’ Her voice was flat as she said, ‘Well, get on with it.’
He opened it; then looking at Mary Ellen who was sitting at the table rubbing brittle leaves between her fingers, he asked quietly, ‘Would you like to read it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, but she stopped what she was doing and stared at him and waited. And he began.
‘Dear Kate,
’Tis sorry I am to have to write these few lines, and disappointed I am too, but I will not be able to manage the journey home for Christmas. Perhaps it is selfish of me but I’m sure you will understand when I tell you that I have been invited to accompany Mr Cottle over to Paris in France to see an exhibition of paintings.
It is a chance that I never dreamed of, and if I had been with you, you would have said take it, ’cos chances like that won’t come very often in your lifetime. So I know you will understand, Kate. I shall miss seeing you, but come the spring I will be home. I send you my warm affection.
As always,
Roddy.’
When Hal finished reading he looked towards Kate and repeated, ‘I send you my warm affection. As always, Roddy. No “Give my regards to Hal”, and of course he wouldn’t think of Mary Ellen. No, of course not.’
And saying this, he turned to look at her. But she was already rising from the chair, and as she hurried up the room towards the ladder, his voice came at her, crying, ‘Don’t be so thin-skinned and daft. I knew he wouldn’t turn up. And you in your heart knew it. He’s gone. He’s gone for good. Kate here knows. So you make your mind up to it an’ all.’
‘I’ll make me mind up to whatever I think fit. And I won’t ask your opinion of it. You never change: you keep on and on, nigglin’, nigglin’. Oh, you!’ And she began to climb the ladder, lumbering, and when her legs disappeared through the hatchway he walked quietly to the settle and, sitting down beside Kate, he said, ‘We don’t change, do we?’
‘You ask for what you get, lad. You should leave her alone on that quarter.’
‘He’s a swine, a selfish swine. I’ve said it afore, and I’ll say it again.’ His voice was low but his words were thick and deep. ‘He’s already grown too big for his boots. If we ever see him again I’ll be surprised. And you know it in your heart, don’t you?’ He pushed her arm gently, and she answered quietly, ‘He’ll be back, some time he’ll be back, if not out of affection, out of pride, because he’ll want to show all around how he’s got on. And he’ll get on.’ She now turned and looked fully at Hal. ‘He’ll rise. He means to. And he must be fittin’ in with his new friends or they wouldn’t have put up with him this long.’
‘Perhaps it isn’t the male but the female friend that is puttin’ up with him.’
‘You think that?’
‘Aye, I do, not only think it, but I’m sure of it. That madam that came along here with him that day, she might have considered herself too young for her husband but not too old for him. Women of that age like them young, especially if they’re tied to a fading man, and from what you’ve told me he must have been sixty if he was a day. Oh aye, our Roddy will get on, but he’ll have to pay for it, ’cos a woman like that will demand the last ounce of him.’
Kate stared at him through her narrowed bloodshot eyes for some seconds before she said, ‘You seem to have learned a lot about women, Hal.’
‘Enough, enough.’ He nodded at her before picking up the poker and stirring the fire into a blaze.
‘Then why don’t you use different tactics on…?’ She jerked her head towards the ceiling.
‘Why should I? It wouldn’t make any difference.’ He stabbed the poker into the heart of the fire now and stirred it round. ‘She’ll come to like me when the devil likes holy water. Oh, there’s no hope in that quarter.’
‘But you’d like hope in that quarter, wouldn’t you, Hal?’
‘Me’—he screwed up his face at her—‘and Mary Ellen?’ He now jerked his head towards the ceiling. ‘You must be daft, Kate. Now, if you had said Maggie Oates, there might be some chance.’
He laughed, and she joined in with a croak, adding now, ‘Aw, there’s too much competition in that quarter; you’d be just as unlucky there.’
‘Well, there’s one place I’m not unlucky and that’s on the farm. Aw, Kate, I wish you could see it. Look, I’m going to bring the cart over some day if we have a break in the weather and I’ll take you across. You won’t believe how I’ve got that little house now.’
‘What for? To live there on your own?’
‘Suits me.’
‘Don’t be silly, man. If you can’t go one road, go the other. Take a lass, take a wife. There’s plenty that will be willin’.’
‘Oh aye. They’re fallin’ over their feet to get at me, I’m havin’ to dodge ’em.’
‘Go on, get yourself off home.’
‘Yes, that’s where I’m goin’, home. ’Tis the first real home I’ve had, Kate. Do you realise that? Abel’s place wasn’t a home, merely a shelter. Ah, well, goodnight. I’ll pop over the morrow, or soon anyway.’
‘Wait a minute. Did you get your bull?’
‘No, I didn’t get me a bull.’
‘Why not? Weren’t there any there?’
‘Aye, there were three, but even a lonely cow wouldn’t have looked at the side they were on. Fit for the hammer, poor devils, that’s all they were. But I’ll get me a bull and one me lasses will trip over to get at. I usually get what I want in the end. Goodnight, Kate.’
‘Goodnight, Hal.’
Kate screwed her body round and stared into the fire, muttering aloud, ‘I wonder. I wonder if you’ll always get what you want.’
Seventeen
The weather was changeable: there were no heavy falls of snow, only hail, sleet, rain and wind; then days when the whole world seemed to be covered with glass.
Mary Ellen had prepared for such emergencies. Both sides of the cottage door she had piled high with wood and peat, and she had a good stock of pulses in, and flour and fat.
The child was not due until early February, but just before Christmas the feeling of dragging tiredness turned to a feeling of illness. This seemed to have started after she had experienced that unpleasant incident.
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br /> It had been raining without let up for three days and nights. Every place seemed to be awash with mud. Kate, who had taken to her bed a week before, unable to go about any longer because of the pain in her stomach and refusing to let Hal fetch a doctor, said to Mary Ellen on this particular morning. ‘I’ve never seen rain keep up like this for years. What does it look like at the bottom of the garden?’
‘I can’t see much down there for water,’ Mary Ellen told her.
‘Well, if that’s the case, the ditch is stopped up. One year we had it coming into the kitchen here and my Davey made a drain down there. It’s never been blocked up for years, but if it’s blocked now it needs clearin’. How far is the flooding from the front step?’
‘Oh, not halfway up the garden.’
‘’Tis more than enough. Another day of this and, I tell you, we’ll have it inside. When Hal comes, get him to clear it.’
‘That won’t be till later on,’ said Mary Ellen; ‘he said he was going to Allendale the day. I’ll go down and have a look at it meself.’
Kate made no protest at this, but said, ‘There’s a long rake in the wood house. Take that and poke it to the right of the gate, you know, where the drain is. There’s likely stuff stuck on the grid.’
Mary Ellen had already pulled on an old coat and tied a shawl around her head; now she got into a pair of working boots that were much too big for her, for they had once belonged to Roddy, and then went out.
It was the middle of the afternoon, but she could hardly see through the rain. Having found the rake she made her way down to the gate and began thrusting through the swirling water in an effort to find the drain. Within a few minutes the iron head of the rake struck the metal of the grid, but scrape as she might she couldn’t dislodge it. And so, with an impatient movement, she pulled up her sleeve and, bending awkwardly to the side, she thrust her hand down into the icy water, groped for the grid, then with a tug she cleared the obstruction, almost falling on her back as she did so.
Whilst standing looking down to where the flood water was now being sucked in a spiral down the drain, she was aware of figures approaching over the rise that connected with the road to Haydon Bridge. It wasn’t anything unusual for people to take this short cut when making for the mill cottages, but because of the rain she hadn’t been able to distinguish who they were. But now, as they came upon her, she saw that there were four men, two of whom she recognised, for they had been temporary visitors to Kate when she herself had first come to live here. And it was one of these, a thin faced, smallish man, who greeted her loudly, saying, ‘Why, hello there, Mary Ellen.’
From the tone of his voice and the look on his face she recognised he had been drinking liberally of ale, as had the others, because they were all standing grinning at her now.
‘How’s it goin’, Mary Ellen?’ said one of the other men.
She didn’t answer, but made to go past them to the gate. However, the man who had first spoken to her stopped her by thrusting out his arm and gripping the gatepost and saying now, ‘On your time, aren’t you, Mary Ellen?’
‘Let me past, Mr Smith,’ she said.
‘Oh, what’s your hurry, Mary Ellen? Eh, fellows, what’s her hurry? Like to take a bet? Will it come out a big ’un with black hair, or a broad ’un with brown hair, eh? Like to take a bet?’
One of the men now said, ‘Come on, Nick, come on. Enough’s enough.’
‘Enough? Couldn’t get enough of Mary Ellen. Tried, didn’t I? Tried. An’ you know what? When this’s over I hear she’s settin’ up house against Maggie. Well, she’s got a better chance than Maggie of makin’ a fortune, hasn’t she? An’ you know summat? I’m booked up to be her first customer. Aye, aren’t I, Mary…?’
The rake in the left hand and the grid in the right, she’d had the greatest desire to swing the grid into the man’s face, but instinct told her she might do him a great injury. Yet the insult wasn’t to be borne, and so, flinging the rake and the grid to one side, she stooped and gathered up two handfuls of the clarts and swung them with force into her tormentor’s face.
There were gasps from the other three men and a spluttering yell from the man Smith, for he’d had his mouth open and the mud had gone into it and down his throat. But it had covered only one eye, and now, like an infuriated beast, he came at her. His arm swung out and sent her flying, and she fell back on top of the drain that she had just cleared, her fall spraying more clarts over the man and bringing cries of, ‘God damn! You shouldn’t have done that,’ from the others.
‘Bloody bitch! Well, she asked for it,’ yelled Smith.
Two of the men heaved Mary Ellen to her feet. Her head was swimming; she was gasping for breath; her back was weighed down with the mud and water on her coat and shawl.
Thrusting off the men’s hands she had staggered up the garden path, and once inside the cottage she stood leaning against the door aware that she would have to scrub it down afterwards to get the mud off.
Kate was resting on her elbow. She had pulled herself to the end of the bed. ‘What was all that out there?’ she said. Age had taken toll of every part of her body except her ears, for her hearing was as keen as ever.
Mary Ellen did not reply because she couldn’t, she was divesting herself of her mud-clotted clothes; and when she stood in her dress and her stockinged feet she still gave Kate no answer, but went into the scullery and washed the mud off her hands, then her face. And after doing this she stood, one hand gripping the shallow stone sink, the other tight across her open mouth, her head turned to the side as if away from the sight of something repulsive. When eventually her mouth closed she dropped her hands onto the mound of her stomach and there dizzied round in her mind the words: ‘Big ’un with black hair or a broad ’un with brown hair?’
That’s what they were saying about her. And that man…those men, all of them, the village, the cottages all around, the farms, saying she would go like Maggie Oates.
Kate’s voice, harsh, had brought her back into the kitchen, and she moved slowly towards her, and when Kate’s bony hand clutched at her hand, pulling her down onto the side of the bed, she did not wait for Kate to ask for further explanations but said, ‘He…that Nick Smith, he named Hal or Roddy for givin’ it me and he said I’m…I’m goin’ to be like Maggie…Maggie Oates, and he was goin’ to…to be me first…’ Her head bowed onto her chest and the tears streamed down her face. And now Kate’s arms came out and pulled her forward, holding her tightly but saying nothing for some minutes. Then patting her back, she remarked, ‘Why, you’re wet, lass. Your frock’s wet.’
‘He…he knocked me over.’
‘He what?’
‘Well, because of what he said, I…I threw some clarts at him.’
‘You did right an’ all. I would have choked him with them. And he knocked you down?’
‘Yes, aye.’
‘Do you feel hurt?’ The hands were moving over her now, and she replied, ‘Shaken, like, shaken. I’ll…I’ll go upstairs and change me frock.’
‘Do that, lass. And look, I’m all right for the next hour or so. Lie on the bed and rest. After a fall like that you don’t know what happens. So do what I tell you now, lie on the bed and rest.’
Mary Ellen made no answer but rose from the bed and went up the ladder. Once under the roof she pulled off her dress; then dropping onto the pallet bed she pulled the cover over her and, turning lumberingly on to her side, she buried her face in the pillow to smother her sobs.
It was about an hour later when Hal came in. When he pushed open the door it stuck, and after having entered the room he looked down at the obstacle, the mud-covered coat and shawl, before hurrying to the bedside where Kate had propped herself upright in the bed, and demanding, ‘What’s this? Why that lot there?’
‘Sit yourself down.’
‘What is it? Where is she?’
‘Be quiet. Don’t raise your voice. She’s upstairs and likely sound asleep. Pull up a chair.’
; When he was seated by the bedside she related to him what had happened and she ended, ‘Why, in the name of God, they should name you, I don’t know.’
He said nothing; nor did he when he rose from the chair, which caused her to ask anxiously, ‘Where you goin’?’
He still did not answer, until, her voice harsh and loud, she called, ‘Hal! Make no do about this.’
He turned now and demanded. ‘Why did you tell me then, if you didn’t want me to make a do about it?’
‘I told you because you wanted an explanation, but not to stir up more trouble. Let it die its natural death.’
‘Aye, he will when I’ve finished with him.’
‘Hal!’ She had pulled her legs over the side of the bed, but he was gone. And after resting a moment, she lay back, saying, ‘Oh my God! What now?’
He was back much sooner than she expected. In the dim light of the room he looked just the same; that was until he lit the lamp, when she could see that he, too, was bespattered with mud and that there was blood on his cheek. When she asked, ‘What happened?’ he answered in exasperation, ‘What d’you mean, what happened?’ And when she cried at him, ‘Don’t be such a bull-headed bugger,’ he went up to the bed and, leaning over her, he said, ‘I called him out. He was sleeping it off, him and his brother. It was a good job there were two of them for I might have done for him on his own. I left them both something to remember, and I can promise you she’ll have no trouble from that quarter again.’
‘Don’t be so bloody soft, man. They’ll have it in for her all the more now, and for you.’
‘Well, let them. There’s decent fellas in the mill, an’ friends of mine, they know the rights of the case, her case. They mightn’t say much, but they feel for her. John Tollet and Will Campbell came out of their cottages and witnessed the whole thing, and I made no small mouth of what it was about. So they know what to expect if anybody gets fresh. But there’s always a rotten apple in the barrel, you know, and the Smiths are it around here. Anyway, when did you eat last?’
A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 25