‘Oh, Annie, aye. Well, now, she’s as good a worker as any man, and if she could just step into here with it all set up with its bits and pieces, it would be like heaven to her. If I give her four shillings a week and her keep, my! She won’t know she’s born. And there’s your father. She might even soften him up, you never can tell. What d’you say?’
‘I’d be only too pleased. But how’ll she take me?’
‘Oh, she’ll take you all right. She knows how I feel about you; she’s known for a long time. And only yesterday she said, “She’s a nice lass,” and that’s a compliment from her.’
She stared at him, her head slightly to the side now. Two men in her life and so different: one who thought of nobody but himself and that was the one she had wasted so many years of feeling on, for, call it young love or what you will, it had been real and a torment; and now here was this man who had none of the outward attributes of the other, because he wasn’t pretty, his face was too rugged for that, but unlike the other one, he was kind and thoughtful, just as he had said in his wishful thinking, he had thought of Annie…and her father. Oh, her father! She would be a miracle worker if she got through to him. Yet miracles did happen…one was happening to her now.
Putting her arms around his neck, she looked into his face and said, ‘I’ll be a good wife to you, Hal. God willing, I’ll bear you children that you’ll be proud of. And no matter how our fortune goes, I’ll be there beside you. As Kate was apt to say: Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.’
‘Aye, she did. I’ve heard her say it many a time. But let me tell you, Mary Ellen, and this is a promise, there’ll be no dinner of herbs for us, for I mean to rise, and one day I’ll put you in a house worthy of you. All your young life you slaved for others. Aye, the Davisons might have been kind, but they were only so because they got their pound of flesh. But come one day, you’ll have a servant or two of your own; what’s more, you’ll know how to treat them. That, Mary Ellen my love, is a promise.’
PART THREE
The Stalled ox
One
It was a Sunday evening in early November in the year eighteen forty-six. A high wind was blowing across the moor and bringing with it a heavy rain mixed with sleet that beat against the walls of the long stone farmhouse, diffusing the light streaming from the four long windows to one side of the front door. Two at the other side were also showing some light; and with the dim lighting coming from the windows on the first floor, altogether the farmyard seemed to be enveloped with a feeling of comfort and security. There was no sound from the animals in their stalls and outbuildings, which were ranged around two sides of the yard, which really had very little appearance of an ordinary farmyard, but looked like a courtyard attached to a small manor house. But when the animals were let out and the milk churns were rolled across the yard, with the clanking of harness and the bustle of workers, then it would come to life and be a farm, and a very busy one at that.
But on this Sunday the busyness was all inside the house, and particularly so in the dining room, for the whole family had gathered to join in a special supper, special because it was the last the eldest daughter Kate would partake of as a single woman, for on the morrow she was to be married.
The dining room was a large well-appointed room, the ceiling high with a deep cornice; the walls were half panelled and standing against them was an array of very good furniture, one piece being a magnificent nine-foot-long sideboard on which was laid out a large quantity of glass and silver. Eighteen people could be seated at the dining table in comfort. The dining chairs were upholstered in hide, and a suite covered in the same material was positioned at one end of the room. There were several small cabinets and two corner cabinets filled with china. The fireplace was stone, not rude stone but sculptured, and in a way looked too ornate and slightly out of place in the room, as well it might, for it had once graced the drawing room of a castle. The carpet in a deep red-patterned design did not cover the whole floor but showed a good expanse of nine-inch-wide polished boards all around it.
Towards each end of the dining table, which was covered with a linen cloth, stood a four branch candelabrum, and round about them such an assortment of foods that there was hardly room for the diners’ plates.
There were twelve chairs around the table, but only nine people were seated. Two empty chairs were tilted forward, their high backs leaning against the table, the tops of them protruding somewhat over it. To the left of these at the bottom of the table sat the mistress of the house, and next to her was another empty chair. This was usually occupied by Annie, who at the moment was in bed trying to ward off a cold so that she’d be fit for the celebrations on the morrow.
Mary Ellen was now forty-three years old, and for a woman who had borne ten children, she carried her age as might another who had known far less emotional stress. There was no grey in her hair, her face was unlined and her big rounded figure trim and straight.
At the other end of the table sat Hal. He was now turned forty-seven, but unlike Mary Ellen, he was showing the marks left on him by the years: his hair was grizzled, and there were two deep furrow lines running from the end of his nose down to his chin; his face looked weathered and his body, which had always been broad, had thickened still further, but it was a hard thickness, there was no flab about him.
Looking at him through the candlelight and amid the laughter and bantering chatter at the table, Mary Ellen thought, as she had done for many years now, If he’d only let up. If he’d only be satisfied, and know that I have all I want, and all I’ll ever want, as long as I have him. If only I could make him believe that.
Hardly a day had passed in their twenty-four years of marriage that she hadn’t, in some way, expressed her love for him. Yet, he was never certain of it, for always in his mind there was the memory of her first love, that all-consuming girlish passion that had given birth to her daughter Kate, whom she was losing on the morrow. Oh, how she would miss Kate. Of the nine children she had borne Hal, two had died with the typhus that had swept through Allendale and the surrounding district in forty-one. They had been her youngest, Peg and Walter, and they had been so beautiful, so full of life. Every Sunday night for years they had sat in those chairs now tilted to the side of her. And she could see their faces now, laughing and merry. They had been close, those two, and their natures had been sunny, like the twins John and Tom there, at the top of the table. They too had sunny natures. But not so their sister Maggie who came next to them. She didn’t know who Maggie took after; she was, though, somewhat like herself as she had been years ago, free with her tongue. Maggie was twenty-two and there was no sign of her marrying, although it wasn’t for the chance; she was a bit of a flibbertigibbet was Maggie.
Florrie came next. There was always a year between them. She had been regular in that way, except once, when it had come too early and she had miscarried. Florrie was quiet, not like any of the others at all, certainly not like Hugh, and Gabriel who followed him. These two were tough ’uns, hellraisers, as their father said, but laughing hellraisers. All her children laughed a great deal, except perhaps Kate.
With Walter her breeding had stopped. It was as if her nature had said, You promised to give him ten children and you have done that; enough is enough. And she could say she had given him ten because he loved Kate as his own, yes, as his very own. And this worried her at times.
They had both been well satisfied, until their nine of a family had been depleted by death. Then a blight had fallen on them, and only now did they seem to be rising through it, for she couldn’t remember such a merry night as this since before the youngsters went.
Up till a year ago not one of her family had shown the slightest sign of getting married; in fact, they had laughed about it. It was as Hal said, they were too well got at home to take on the responsibility of a wife or of a husband. But she knew that had suited him, for he loved them about him, inside and outside the house. And now here was Kat
e, although the eldest, the most unlikely one to have made the first breakaway; quite candidly, she had thought that Kate would always be with her, for as Maggie with her slack tongue had said, but on the quiet, well, their Kate wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
No, perhaps she wasn’t, but how had it come about? Her father had been handsome, and she herself had been bonny. And when Kate was born she’d been bonny too. When had she changed? When had she first noticed her prettiness slipping? She could have said fancifully that it was from the day she married Hal, and the child not yet a year old. But certainly from she was two, because from then she noticed a plainness creeping over the child’s face. Her skin thickened a little, but that was nothing. Then at five years old, she was as tall as a child of seven or eight, and she never seemed to stop growing. She was bigger than anyone in the family, being all of five feet eight inches tall, and big-boned with it. But it wasn’t only her height or her shape, which you could say really gave her a fine figure, it was her plainness; but she was saved, God help her, from being ugly only by her eyes. They were fine eyes, finer than those possessed by any of her other children, being large and of a soft brown colour and which at times held an awareness that hurt one to see, as it had on that day she had said to her, ‘Why haven’t I taken after you, Mam…and him?’
She had told her that Hal wasn’t her father when she was quite young in case it should be thrown in her face by other children, or whispered in her presence by other women. And on that particular day she had said, ‘You did tell me he was a fine-looking man.’
Yes, she had told her that, but she knew now that that young girl had held that knowledge to her, not as a comfort, but as a big question mark in her mind: why she should look as she did if her father had been good-looking and her mother pretty?
Yet how was she to convince her daughter that she had qualities that outshone those in her other children? She was kind—not that the others weren’t—and good-natured. If she had expressed her thoughts by saying, she’s lovable, she knew that every other member of her family would have shown surprise, even John who was very fond of her would undoubtedly have been amused by such a term being applied to his big sister.
Moreover, Kate had a fine speaking voice, and she could relate a story. When anyone heard Kate talk, really talk, they forgot what she looked like. And this must have happened to Harry Baker, for he had seen Kate for years and had taken no notice of her. That was until he had called to see Hal to ask for help: he and his folks among many had been hit by the poor crop; his farm, being not much bigger than a smallholding and on hilly land, where the grazing was poor, had yielded not even enough to pay his debts, let alone survive another year. And it was when she herself had invited him to a meal that he had first heard Kate talking. She was relating an incident she had heard in Hexham market that brought them all to laughter, and his the loudest: she was adopting the tones of various voices engaged in argument.
She herself hadn’t taken to him very much at first, having thought he was only after a free meal, but from the beginning she had realised that he was impressed by their way of living, for they always ate their main meal in the dining room. She didn’t know what kind of a cook his mother was, but on that first visit he had eaten twice as much as any of hers.
As it was quite a ride to his place, yon side of Haydon Bridge, which was a good six miles away, she had been to his place only the once, to meet his mother and father. But that didn’t seem to prevent him from visiting weekly, when he didn’t come on horseback but always brought his flat cart. One day, seeing Hal once again loading it up with hay and corn, she had said to him, ‘He’s not daft, that one.’ And Hal had answered, ‘I know that. I know that, but me generosity isn’t stretching to him so much as to Kate. She’s going to need quite a bit of help in that direction. And he’s no fool, he knows it’ll come through her.’
That night in bed she had said to him, the worry deep in her voice, ‘Hal, you…you don’t think that’s the reason he’s taking her?’
And she had become more worried by his reply: ‘Hard to say. He’s handicapped because his father’s a bit shiftless and his mother not much better. I should say, by the inside of the house, Kate’s going to have her work cut out there. But the fellow himself well, he seems he wants to get on. And let’s face up to it, lass, he’s about the only chance Kate’ll have. There’s been no-one in the running afore, has there? They must all be bloody well blind, because she’s a fine lass, is Kate. None better.’
‘Do you think she cares for him?’
And to this he had answered, ‘I was going to ask you the same question because she talks to you.’
Yes, she did talk to her, but not on the subject of her feelings for Harry Baker. Perhaps later tonight, when she was saying goodnight to her for the last time in this house, she would open up.
She looked down the table towards her daughter. She was seated to Hal’s left. Even the two sons she had given him at one and the same time, when they had become old enough to sit at the kitchen table in his first little farmhouse, he hadn’t had one on each side of him, Kate had always sat next to him, and to his left hand, for it was easier, she saw, for him to pass titbits to her with his right. And that’s how it had been through all the years. None of the children she had given him had supplanted Kate. And Kate loved him in return. She couldn’t have loved her own father dearer.
There were times when she thought of Roddy Greenbank, as he was when he worked in the smelting mill and roamed the hills in his spare time with his slate and pencil. And her thoughts would be soft on him then. However, when she thought of the man that both Newcastle and London town had produced, she would be filled with a bitterness, but mostly against herself for being a besotted, fat-headed girl, she who was supposed by everyone to be full of common sense, but as dear old Kate Makepeace, her friend and benefactor, that wise old woman had said, ‘Sense came from the head, trouble from the heart.’
Was it the head or the heart that was leading Kate to the altar tomorrow? She hoped it was the heart. Oh yes, she did, she did, because sense, although it might make you count your chickens after they were hatched, did little to help you while sitting on the eggs, and so, as she saw it, if the heart hadn’t led you to the altar it was a sure thing you wouldn’t look forward to going to bed that night.
She was recalled from her twisted metaphors by a great burst of laughter and seeing Tom thumping John on the back, causing him to splutter into his pudding, and she leant towards Gabriel who was sitting to her left and, smiling, she asked, ‘What was that?’ And Gabriel, wiping his eyes, said, ‘They were talking about what happened on Windy Monday, the day they were burying Maggie Oates, remember? And the one woman who had braved the walk to the cemetery, and the wind blew her skirts and petticoats over her head, and she nearly fell in the grave. And there were only two men there besides the parson, and he only buried her because she confessed her sins before she went. And those two fellows had some nerve an’ all, and brave, ’cos if all her customers had followed her, half the county would have been empty of men, so it was said.’
‘Oh, be quiet.’ Laughing, she thrust her hand out towards Gabriel, saying, ‘What d’you know about it?’
‘Enough, Mam, enough. I saw her once. I was only about eleven, and she smiled at me. Didn’t she, Hugh?’ He looked up the table to his brother. ‘And she patted your head, didn’t she?’
‘Shut up! Shut up!’
Again there were gales of laughter.
Mary Ellen recalled Maggie Oates vividly, and the day she was buried too, because that was the day of the hurricane in January, thirty-nine. It tore up half of the countryside and played havoc in Allendale. And after it was all over people remembered that Maggie Oates had been buried on that day. And some wit in a bar had said she had gone out on a blast and not only with one devil and a gale of wind, but with all of them she had served over the years. So the story went around, and whenever Windy Monday was remembered so also was Maggie Oates’ funeral.<
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She had once likened herself to Maggie Oates, that was after she had forced Roddy Greenbank into giving her the child, and she admitted, even now, that it was she who had done the running, and because of it she had been turned out of her post at Davison’s farm, her father’s door had been locked against her, and the only friend she had in the world had been Kate Makepeace. It was then that certain men had come to old Kate’s door presumably for potions and herbs for their ailments, but really to look her over to see if she was a younger up-and-coming Maggie Oates. And, too, they had coupled her name with Hal when there was nothing between them but their own secret thoughts, which had risen to the surface the day he had fought through the great drifts of snow and found her in the agony of labour and with his own hands had then delivered the child, and afterwards saved her life by bringing away the afterbirth.
It was on the night they were married that she thanked him for being so good to Kate. And he had said to her, ‘She was mine afore you were, for I brought her into the world, and I feel that I’m her father as he never was.’ And that feeling had continued between her daughter and her stepfather, for strangely she was closer to him than were his own.
Hal was speaking now, and she smiled at him down the length of the table from where he was looking at her, for he was saying, ‘Come on, let’s drink to our Kate and her happiness, and I wish that with all me heart, as I know you all do. And Kate—’ Hal looked into the brown eyes of the big young woman sitting to his side, and he said softly, ‘Your chair may be empty the morrow but you’ll still be in all our hearts.’
‘Oh, Dad!’ She leant forward and kissed him on the lips, and his hand trembled and the wine spilled from his glass, and Maggie cried, ‘Look out, Dad! I’ve got to get that stain out the morrow.’
A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 35