A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘You were robbed, by the look of him.’

  ‘He’ll be all right. He’s big boned, let him get some flesh on him. Anyway, I’ve been thinkin’ about a dog for some time: the passing gypsies are not above comin’ in and helpin’ themselves, especially to chickens an’ hay. He’ll be all right. Won’t you, Boyo?’ He stooped down and patted the dog’s head, and the animal pressed itself against his leg and looked up at him, then turned, and went towards the clothes basket where the baby was lying, and after sniffing two or three times he lay down by the side of it, his head on the rim of the basket.

  ‘Well, what d’you think about that?’

  ‘I think he knows when he’s on a good thing. He looks a mixture.’

  ‘He’s young, part sheepdog, part hound, I’d say. Anyway, enough.’ He turned from her and went towards the bed and looked down on the white thin face and, softly now, he said, ‘Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen.’

  Slowly she opened her eyes, then blinked her lids as she tried to get him into focus. And when she did, she lifted her hand slowly and put it out towards him, and as he gripped it, he brought his lips tighter together to stop their trembling, for the gesture was as if she had bestowed on him the gift of herself for never before had she put her hand out willingly to him.

  As day followed day, she became stronger, but it was no thanks to the doctor’s medicine, for as soon as he had left the room, Kate made it her business to pour it into the swill bucket and fill the bottle up with her own concoction, which happened to be much the same colour.

  The snow slowly disappeared and by the beginning of February the earth was showing itself again, except higher up on the hills, and these would keep their white caps for some time yet.

  The first time Mary Ellen brought her feet over the side of the bed she felt as if she was about to float away, her body seemed so light, but her mind was clear. She sat with a hap over her legs looking down the room to where the fire glowed and the child lay in the basket to the side of it.

  ‘Could I have her?’ she said softly to Mrs Patterson. And Mrs Patterson, a slight figure of a woman with a melancholy face, said, ‘Aye, lass, aye, if you think you’re up to it.’

  ‘I’m up to it.’

  Mrs Patterson brought the child to her and laid it in her arms. It was not the first time she had held the baby; but she had not then taken its weight, for it had lain across her arm on the bed; now she was holding it, supporting it, and she looked down on to its face. Its eyes were round and looked deep blue, but then as Kate had said, most babies’ eyes were blue to begin with; as they grew older they could turn to black, brown, green or hazel. The cheeks were round, the mouth like an open flower, and the skin like velvet. She was a bonny baby.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ asked Mrs Patterson.

  ‘Kate.’

  ‘Kate? Oh, well, aye, I suppose…yes, you should, ’cos she’s brought you through, has Kate. Not forgetting Hal. My God, no! Say what you like about him, and he’s not the easiest to get on with, takin’ man or woman, but he’s worked like a Trojan these past weeks. How he got through to you that mornin’, nobody knows. Must have taken him hours, half the night I think because nobody could move for two days. Do you know, there were four horses lost in the drifts below the mill. And John Tollett was found almost frozen to death. Trying to get home he was. His son found him not twenty yards from their door. How long he’d been lying they didn’t know. But his feet are not right yet, they’re swollen up like balloons. Eeh! It was a dreadful time. I remember me ma sayin’ there was a like fall in 1802 or was it three? But anyway, it was round that time and they found Jimmy Crawford, the journeyman, dead in a ditch. Frozen as stiff as a seven-day corpse. And there’s never been a fall like it since. And they say there’s more to come.’

  Mary Ellen listened to Mrs Patterson’s voice droning on. It was known all round the village she was a harbinger of bad news: she was happy when she was foretelling disasters. She wished she would go and Hal would come.

  Hal. There was a mist in her mind covering the past weeks, yet through it she knew he had been there all the time, and she knew she owed her life, not to Kate’s potions, but to him. Vaguely she could recall the agonising hours before the birth. But the memory that surpassed that agony was the one when his knife went into her flesh. The mist thickened after that but Kate had cleared some of it away since, and she knew if he hadn’t done what he did, she wouldn’t be here now. There returned to her mind again and again the faint memory of the time she knew she was going to die, and his face on hers. She could not remember what he said, only the essence of it through the tone in his voice. She knew he had begged her not to go, and the intensity of his plea had awakened something in her that lay in the depths beyond the pain. Yet, as she became stronger, it seemed to sink deeper and deeper to where lay another pain, and its name was Roddy.

  Roddy. If she had known what she had to go through, would she have forced herself on him, as her honesty told her she had done? And the answer she got was, yes, because at that time she had no knowledge of childbirth, all that mattered then was the easing of her desire.

  She had lain here for days now asking herself odd questions such as, Why had God put this craving into girls who were not yet women? It was a craving that defied understanding or explanation. And as one grew up it became stronger, especially when it was centred on one person. God was funny, not really sensible because He told you to be good yet put into your being something that made you do bad, bad, that was, unless you were married.

  And then there were her mixed feelings about Hal, for her mind was presenting her with a picture of him that she had never seen before, having never associated him with tenderness. Even during the past months before the child came, he had been kind, but never tender, never. Then there was something else, something she couldn’t define. She only knew that if he stopped coming she’d miss him as much as she had missed Roddy. And now what she could not understand and what was troubling her for it didn’t seem reasonable, was that she had to add the word ‘more’ to that…

  It was a month before she started pottering round the kitchen again. The doctor’s visits had ceased. He had been six times in all and each time she had reminded herself how strange it was that he of all people should have come doctoring in this part of the world. He was a nice young man. She liked him. Not so Kate. Kate was rude to him. In fact, she had told him yesterday that she could buy him at one end of the street and sell him at the other. And he had been so nice to her: he had laughed and said he had no doubt in his mind at all that she could do just that. And not at the end of the street, he had said, but halfway down it.

  Even that hadn’t placated her. To her, the word doctor was just another name for butcher. Apparently one such had amputated her father’s foot when it had gangrene, and hadn’t even knocked him drunk before doing so.

  She walked to the window and looked out. The sun was shining. There was a wind blowing. The earth looked fresh, bare but fresh.

  As she stood, she saw a figure dropping down from the slope. The dog was running round it in circles. She smiled to herself. That dog was a funny creature. She had never seen one act like it did. There had been dogs on the farm: you only had to tell them to lie down, but this one, if you said lie down, it came and licked your hand. The only time it lay down was by the child’s basket. It seemed to love the child. At least, next to its master, it did, for if Hal went out of the door to bring some wood or peat in, it was at his heels, or whining until he came back.

  She saw that Hal was carrying something as usual. He had kept them going with both milk and food for weeks. She must ask him about this woman who cooked such good pastry.

  She moved from the window and when Hal entered the room she was sitting at the table chopping some onions on a board.

  ‘Hello, there,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘As you left them,’ she answered; then turned her head slowly to where Kate was nodding in a chair by the fire. When the d
og came up and nuzzled her she patted its head, saying, ‘He’s turning into a fine beast.’ And he answered, ‘He should do; he eats like a horse.’ And to this she said, ‘You didn’t ride over this mornin’?’

  ‘No. I felt like a walk. And anyway, I can leave her out in the field now. She’s had enough of late and her coat is lookin’ shaggy. We all need a rest now and again. And having said that, what time did you get up?’

  ‘Oh, not long ago.’ She looked now at the parcel on the table. From its shape she guessed what it was: ‘Another pie?’ she said.

  ‘Aye. Annie brought it over last night, two of them in fact.’

  Annie, he had said; before, it had always been, one of the farm lasses.

  ‘Which one is she?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, the youngest. I say the youngest, she must be kicking forty. But you can’t help feeling sorry for her. She’s glad to escape, I think and open her mouth, because she daren’t do it in the house. And she chatters away like a magpie; used to talking to herself most of the time by the sound of it, because I leave her at it.’

  ‘Does she do for you?’

  He turned and glanced at her, a twinkle in his eye now as he said, ‘Aye, for most things.’

  And when she lowered her head and went on with her chopping, his voice altered slightly and he said, ‘She’s a canny soul. I give her two shillings a week, and by! You would think I was giving her gold dust. I don’t think she tells the others what she gets, for her father sends her over in payment for the odd jobs I do for him now and again. Payment in kind, so to speak, ’cos he won’t part with a ha’penny. He must have a tidy packet put by. I wondered the other day what would happen when he kicks the bucket. I’d like to bet they’ll all go stark starin’ mad with spending. I’d like to see it. In fact I’d take them all into Hexham in the cart.’

  She looked at him now. He was pouring the milk from the can into the jug, and he was smiling broadly. He looked nice. She didn’t say attractive. She could imagine this Annie liking to work for him. That was another facet of his, kindness. Why hadn’t she recognised before that he was kind underneath?

  He took off his outer coat and hung it on the nail behind the door, then came back and sat at the table opposite to her, saying, but not smiling now, ‘You know who I saw on me way over here? They were on the Allendale road, going towards Rooklands. The two Bannamans, the son and her, the daughter. And that’s the second time I’ve seen them within the last few weeks. They’re after somethin’, I’d bet me life. The place has been up for sale for months now but there’s been few takers, so I understand. I wonder what they’re lookin’ for? They’re not makin’ that journey from right beyond Corbridge for nothin’. Perhaps they’re lookin’ for something that the excisemen couldn’t find. Yet, they found enough in that tunnel that was under the cellar. Anyway, I’ll keep me eyes open. If I see them on that way again I’ll know it isn’t sentiment that’s bringin’ them, although, as I remember, she did say she’d go back.’

  ‘I’d leave them alone, Hal, if I were you. It’s all over and done with.’ Her voice was quiet.

  ‘Aye, it might be on the surface, but not in that one’s mind. Nor yet in me own, to tell you the truth.’

  As she raised her eyes to his she saw that his face had that tight look about it. And she recalled that this man had hanged someone, or at least, as he said, seen that he hanged himself. For a moment she forgot the kindness he had shown of late, and even his thoughtfulness for this Annie woman, who she was beginning to feel curious about, and there returned to her the old feeling she’d had for him, for underneath he was still the old Hal with a bitterness still in him that would never be erased.

  He startled her somewhat by saying, ‘Why are you lookin’ at me like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well’—he pursed his lips—‘like you used to do at one time.’

  She looked away from him for a moment before facing him again and saying, ‘Well, truthfully, for a moment you did look as you used to do, full of resentment, ready to hit out.’

  He stared at her for a second or so; then leaning across the table he brought his face down to hers, saying softly, ‘We are what we are, Mary Ellen, and nobody knows what goes on inside deep under the skin. After all, we only see what we want to see in each other.’ He paused before straightening himself then adding, ‘People judge you by the look on your face or what rolls off your tongue; they don’t want to look deeper and see why you look like that. An’ why should they? Anyway’—he drew in a sharp breath—‘there’s no use me standing here, I’ve got to go into the town. I still haven’t got me bull, not the one I want.’ He laughed now, saying, ‘A funny thing happened the other day. I called in at old Frankland’s, you know, beyond Catton. I understood he had a young bull for sale. Well, there was something about it that just didn’t take me fancy and when I said so, but not in so many words, he said, “What you lookin’ for, a close relation, somebody like yourself?” Then he bellowed like his bull, and I joined him and said, “That’s it, I shouldn’t wonder.”’

  ‘What are you lookin’ for in an animal then?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t put me finger on it. A quiet fellow, I’d say though. A quiet fellow.’

  ‘Huh!’ She laughed. ‘Then it certainly won’t be like you.’

  Like lightning now he turned on her, saying, ‘There you’re wrong, Mary Ellen, there you’re wrong, as you’ve always been about me.’ And on this he went down the room, muttering, ‘I’ll get the wood in and see to the water.’

  He was in the scullery before she rose, calling to him in a conciliatory tone, ‘I can manage, Hal.’

  ‘One day I’ll take you at your word,’ he answered. Then the door banged, and she sat down again. And she wasn’t surprised when Kate’s voice came from behind her, saying, ‘And he could well do that one day. Think on it, lass. Think on it.’

  Twenty

  It was towards the middle of April. Hal had got his bull. He had ridden over to another farm over towards Whitfield and as he stroked the ringed nose he had said in an aside to it, ‘I’ve had to pay through that for you, remember that me young buck.’ And the farmer had countered, ‘I could have got more for him in the market. If you don’t want him it’s all the same to me.’

  ‘Let’s stop this sparrin’,’ Hall had said; ‘we’re both satisfied, and we know it. I’ll collect him the morrow, and on foot, because as you see me pony’s nervous at the sight of him.’

  He was aware that the farmer knew all about him and considered him too cocky, too big for his boots, just as a number of others did. Well, people would think what they wanted to think; it didn’t upset him. But there were two things that were upsetting him at the moment: Kate was near her end definitely this time; and last week there had come a letter from the big fellow to her, saying that he hoped to come through soon to see her. The first worry had a sure end. The second, he wasn’t so sure of at all. What would happen when he walked in that door and saw the result of his fling, and looked on Mary Ellen as she was now? For the girl had gone and in her place was a comely young woman, a very comely young woman.

  They had got on fine together these past few months. Once or twice they had scratched the surface and gone back into the old ways, their tongues thrusting at each other. But it had been over and done with in a minute.

  What if the other one saw her differently now and wanted to take her back with him?

  He had come up from the steep valley bank and had reached the Allendale road, but then decided to divert and take a short cut home. With this in mind he turned his pony into a narrow path in a thicket until they came on to open country. And there he put it into a trot. But he hadn’t gone very far when he drew it to a walk again. He had come to a broad track and along it in the far distance and disappearing into a patch of woodland, he saw a horse and trap with two figures sitting in it. Although he couldn’t recognise them or the trap, he felt instinctively they were the Bannamans on their way again to Rooklands.
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  Now why? He looked first one way and then the other. His desire a moment ago was to get back, not only to home, but to go later to the cottage to see how Kate was faring and, naturally, to see Mary Ellen, because he was never at peace with himself unless he was in her presence. Yet, what were those two going along there for? How many times had they been there when he hadn’t seen them? But this was the third time he had come across them.

  He did not pause to think any more but now he himself took the track that led to the Bannamans’ farm.

  The farmhouse was an imposing building. It was stone built, two-storied with attics above. But what were more imposing still were the outhouses. There was a fine range of them: stables, a big tack room, a fine barn, a granary store and a set of dairy buildings that would take some beating. He had been round the place a number of times, but had never encountered anyone. He had peered in the windows and seen the high-ceilinged well-shaped rooms, and the mice scurrying round them. He had been down in the cellar and seen the tunnel that the authorities had unearthed. And so again he wondered if those two were looking for something that the authorities had missed.

  He left his pony tethered to a tree some distance down the road from the main opening to the farmyard. There was a high wall bordering the yard and he walked along under cover of it, then he paused before stepping round it and into the yard, and looked towards the arch.

  The trap was standing in the yard, but there was no sign of anyone. He walked towards the trap, not stealthily, but openly. The horse turned its head and looked at him, and the wind lifting its long mane, brought it over its eyes. It tossed its head now and Hal laid his hand on its neck and stroked it to quieten it. Then he walked on, asking himself the while why he was doing this. But the answer he got was, he didn’t really know. Perhaps it was to gain a little more satisfaction from their downfall.