A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘It wasn’t very long before my father discovered he had married a very strange individual, a mother who didn’t care for her child. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother I think I should have come off much worse than I did. But nevertheless, I was subjected to unmerciful thrashings. My father was in business which forced him to do a great deal of travelling. It was his father’s firm, they were coachbuilders on a big scale. While he was at home my life was easier, but when he was away, neither my uncle nor my grandmother could save me from thrashings.

  ‘I understood that from the second year of their marriage they ceased to live as man and wife. Yet she was known to give her attention generously to other men. At times she became mad. I think that she was insane, that she had been insane all her life. Anyway, both my grandmother and my uncle were afraid of her, but like a lot of insane people she was very clever and wily. And when my father, at one stage, tried to get her confined to a clinic, she spoke to the doctors so reasonably that they could not agree on her mental state.

  ‘My father wanted to send me away to school but she was against it. I was her whipping stool. It was nothing for me to be locked in a cupboard for twenty-four hours at a time. My father died when I was twelve, and the day after he was buried she gave a party to people from the lowest part of the town. What happened at the end of the party is still a mystery. It is known my grandfather Hamilton appeared on the scene, as did my Uncle Benjamin, who by this time was living his own life away from her. There was a fracas as they tried to turn out the motley crew, and in it, my mother was struck with a poker. It was whispered it was my grandfather who did it; then again, that it was her brother, my uncle; but of course the blame was put on one of the visitors who had disappeared back into their holes. Whatever the truth of that, she was dead.

  ‘It was the happiest day of my life so far when I joined her funeral cortège. And after that life became so wonderful that I imagined that I, too, might die before I had enough of it. My grandmother Bannaman is a very gentle woman, and as she grew older she talked more and more of her life spent in this country, mostly of her happy childhood and girlhood before she married.’

  He stopped talking and put his hands over his eyes, and she saw that beads of sweat were running down his face. And now she wanted to put her hands out to him and bring him down beside her, but he began to pace the floor again and talk as he did so, saying, ‘I forgot to mention that my grandmother’s cousin didn’t find her relatives from England very compatible. And if my mother hadn’t married quickly, that association would have been broken up in any case. I understand she died when I was quite young. But—’ He stopped in his pacing and, looking at her, he said, ‘As time went on and I listened to my grandmother reminiscing, I knew that there was something she was holding back, something she wanted to tell me but was fearful of doing so. Incidentally, I was seventeen when Grandfather Hamilton took me into the business, but he was failing in health and three years later he sold the entire company. His retirement didn’t last long and he died a year later. He had been a widower for many years, and but for a few bequests he left his entire fortune to me.’

  Her mouth fell open at this stage. He had said he had been left a fortune, yet had been living in that one-roomed hovel all the winter. What was the matter with him?

  ‘You seem surprised, and I know what you’re thinking. Why haven’t I lived differently? I will tell you. Last year, my grandmother became ill, and fearing that her time might be running out, it was then that she told me the whole grisly story of her husband’s life, which she had had no inkling of until the constables came to the house, although apparently my mother had gleaned some knowledge of his doings earlier on. There was a store under the cellar.’ He turned his head and nodded towards the far wall of the kitchen. ‘I have been in it. She must have discovered it at some time. Anyway, she knew what my grandmother didn’t know, and what my grandmother also didn’t know until she had been some time in America, and she only learned of it from her son when he had drunk more than usual one day, for he became a heavy drinker, was that they had left a man trussed up in the barn of the house and that there was no possibility of his ever being found alive. My grandfather had apparently killed this particular man’s father.’

  He now brought up his shoulders tight around his neck as if to shrug off some burden he was carrying, then ended, ‘You know all about it. And now, about me. When happily my grandmother recovered, I resigned from the old firm at which I was still working and came here, because I was haunted by the story. I could not believe that these things had happened until I remembered what my mother was like, and then I had to admit the truth of them to myself. Yet, I had to come.

  ‘At first I stayed at an inn in Allendale and from there went out walking. And one day I saw that little hut of a cottage. There was a man on horseback outside it. He turned out to be Charles. He said at one time it had been a shepherd’s cottage, and it happened to be on his land. I apologised for trespassing. He was very kind. We rode back together and adjourned to the inn, and as we talked the idea came to me to live in that place, to experience life at its lowest, and also to give a reason for my presence. I said I was a kind of writer, more of a journalist, and wanted to record this part of the country, for some of my forebears had come from here. I gave their name as Hamilton. He knew no-one in the vicinity by that name. As he said, they must have lived here a long time ago. So there it is, Kate. Now you know why I’m here, and who I am. But there are two things you don’t know as yet. The first is that I own this house and the land surrounding. I bought it last week. I have no need to come through the pantry window, I have a key to the front door. And the other thing that you don’t know, Kate, or perhaps you do. I hope you do.’ He now moved slowly towards her and sat down on the edge of the settle and, taking her limp hand, he said, ‘I love you, Kate.’

  The room was spinning around her. Outside the smeared window the land was lifting from its base, the whole world was whirling. Something was happening inside her head. She was going to faint. No, she wasn’t. She had never fainted in her life and she had very little use for women who used this as a last resort, mostly to achieve what they wanted. Isabel Younger over at Bretton House could faint to order, and always succeeded to bring her husband to his knees. No, she wasn’t going to faint. But something was happening to her: her heart seemed to have stopped beating. Yet again, that was wrong, for it was thumping against her ribs so forcefully that she felt it would break through.

  ‘Kate. Kate. Look at me.’

  She did not know that she had turned her head away, and now when she looked back at him, she heard in surprise her own voice saying, ‘You can’t mean that. How can you?’

  ‘I can, because I think you’re the finest creature I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘Oh—’ She turned her head away again, then muttered, ‘Don’t make fun.’

  His hands were on her shoulders now and she was actually being shaken. ‘I was never more serious, Kate. Don’t accuse me of making fun. Listen to me. I’ve loved you from our first meeting on the hills, perhaps even before that, when we looked at each other in that hotel dining room. The spark was kindled then. These things happen.’

  ‘Oh, Ben, please’—her voice was soft—‘don’t make me say it.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Well—’ She tossed her head now from side to side. ‘Look at me. I’m an outsize in women, but that wouldn’t matter so much except I am beyond plain. Let me put it starkly. I have seared in my mind a remark made by a friend of ours. He did not mean me to overhear it, but what he said was, I wouldn’t be everybody’s taste in ale, but then the man could always close his eyes when he put the mug to his mouth.’

  ‘God Almighty! And you’ve stored things like that in your mind? Kate, you have never looked at yourself squarely. You’ve got a body on you like a Venus, and eyes the like I’ve never looked into before, and a voice that sounds like music. And in addition, you have a mind. And again, what is more, you are k
ind, your character oozes kindness. Kate, to me you are a lovely creature. Oh, my dearest, my dear. Please, please, don’t cry.’

  Now he pulled her to her feet and, his arms about her, he was holding her tight, and as she leant against him she shivered from head to foot as if with cold. After a moment he pressed her head upwards and said firmly, ‘We shall be married, Kate, you and I, and we shall cleanse this house of all its past memories.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ She pushed herself from him. ‘Ben, no, no.’ She turned away, her hands clasped tightly under her chin now. The situation had raced out of all control: her living in this house; her marrying a man, the son of the woman who had tried to kill her father, and in such a terribly cruel way, not forgetting how his grandfather had murdered both her father’s and her stepfather’s fathers. The obstacles against their ever coming together were so gigantic that she groaned aloud. Shaking her head, she said, ‘It’s impossible. It could never come about.’

  ‘It must.’ He was holding her by the shoulders again. ‘Because I know now, I hadn’t to leave the comforts of my home in America, the friends I had made, the business I had been thinking of investing in, and undertake a damnable crossing just to find out where my terrible forebears had begun. No, they were best lain hidden, not unearthed. There had to be something else, and that something else was you. Then what stopped me marrying two years ago? I was on the point of proposing to the daughter of a friend of ours, but then I almost took to my heels and ran. I went off on a shooting expedition. Upset the girl greatly. But…but suddenly I knew I couldn’t ask her to be my wife. Yet from the moment I looked up at you on your horse from where I lay dozing on the path, I knew the reason for it all: I had found the one that was for me. Don’t shake your head in such a way, Kate, I’m no silly boy experiencing a calf love.’

  He was no silly boy. The statement brought forward the matter of age. He must be younger than her, quite a bit, but he looked older. Yet after all what did that matter? It would make no difference one way or the other. Yet she said, ‘You must be younger than me. That’s another thing.’

  ‘Yes, I should imagine nearly eighteen months. But that’s utterly irrelevant. Age does not come into this, but love does. You are for me, Kate, and…and I know now I am for you, because you do care for me, don’t you?’

  She closed her eyes tightly and put her hand across them, only to have it pulled away, and, his arms about her once more, he said, ‘Tell me. Just let me hear you say it.’

  Her mind was winging away from her, seeming to lift her big body from the ground. She felt light and for the first time in her life she knew it didn’t matter what her appearance was like for she was being loved. Not that she hadn’t known love. But that was family love, and that kept you solid and protected on the ground. This love bore upwards, made you feel beautiful inside and created in you a power that you imagined could conquer all obstacles, and brought to your lips words that you never imagined you would have the chance to say to any man. ‘I love you, Ben. Oh, yes, yes, I love you. But I can’t believe…’

  Her breathing was checked by his mouth on hers and she knew that never in her life would she know a moment that would exceed the happiness that was in her now.

  She was brought back to reality when he said, ‘You will tell them, your people? I particularly would like to talk with your father, not only about us, but to tell him how I feel.’

  As if a pain had now shot through her body, she drew in a sharp breath. And so evident was her distress he said, ‘Kate! Kate! What is it? Are you feeling ill?’

  ‘No, no.’ She pressed herself gently from him, then slowly sat down on the settle again and, looking up at him, she said, ‘You…you don’t know the…the feeling of bitterness and recrimination that is still alive in my father against all the Bannamans. Even the name is enough at times to set the muscles of his face working.’

  ‘But I am not a Bannaman.’

  She dropped her gaze from his, bit on her lip, and said, ‘She was your mother, and…and no matter what you felt about her, I…I can never see you bringing Father round to your side.’

  ‘But I must.’ He was on his knees before her now. ‘Kate, I must. We must. We must. Either that or just go off together. I’ll take you back home.’

  ‘Oh, no! That’s impossible.’ She put her hands out and touched his face. ‘As much as I would like to see America, I…I could never just go off and leave them. My real father went off and left my mother. I couldn’t repeat the pattern. It would be too cruel.’

  ‘The reverse would be too cruel as well, Kate. If they tried to part us, what then?’

  Yes, if they tried to part them, what then? It was unthinkable. That must never happen. Yet what was to be done? The only solution that appeared to her mind was a slow breaking down of her father’s prejudices, and it wasn’t just the prejudices, it was the deep hate. Her mother had once told her that her father had periods when he would wake up in the night groaning and trying to speak. He would be reliving in nightmares the period when he was strung to the beam and knew he would suffer in agony till he died.

  ‘I…I will come across with you and…’

  She almost toppled him onto his back, so quickly did she rise to her feet. But then, her hand going out to him, she pulled him upwards, and she said, ‘Leave it for a while, please. Let me see what can be done. I shall try to pave the way somehow. But, Ben’—her voice dropped to a murmur—‘however I go about it I…I know there will be trouble.’

  ‘I can face trouble, any kind of trouble, as long as I know in the end we shall be together, and for good, whether it is here or across the water.’

  Quietly now he gripped her hand and they walked from the kitchen and into the hall, and there, taking a key from his pocket, he opened the oak door, and when they had passed through he locked it again. He untethered the horses, and before helping her to mount he went to take her in his arms. When she glanced around somewhat apprehensively he laughed gently and said, ‘No-one ever comes here, at least I haven’t seen anyone. But at the moment I wish there was a crowd standing at the gate, and then they could spread the news.’

  When she shuddered the jollity went from his voice and he said, ‘Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see.’

  The answer that was on the tip of her tongue was, ‘You don’t know. You have no idea of the strength of feeling that you’ll have to combat before everything is all right,’ assuming that it ever could be combated, in which case it would mean they would never come together, no, no, this wondrous thing that had come into the wilderness that was her inner life would be lost. She must fight for it as he was prepared to.

  After they had kissed, not once, not twice, but three times, she had to draw herself from him. And now he helped her up into the saddle, and when she leant forward and, taking his hand, laid it tenderly against her cheek, the softness in his dark eyes deepened and he murmured, ‘My Kate. My Kate.’

  They rode out of the gate side by side, and had little to say except in their exchanged glances until they came to where the paths divided and she would not let him come any further. His last words to her were, ‘Will you come tomorrow?’ And she answered after a moment’s thought, ‘I couldn’t tomorrow.’ And when she added, ‘It’s my turn for the ironing,’ he put his head back and laughed as he said, ‘Oh, Kate, Kate, it’s your turn for the ironing. Oh, that is lovely, lovely…When then? The following day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So be it. I’ll be waiting here at the same time. Bring me news that you have broken the ice.’

  She made no reply to this, but, turning her horse sharply, she rode off, without looking back.

  In the yard John helped her down from her horse, saying, ‘Had a nice ride?’ There was a big question mark in his words, and she answered, ‘Yes, John. I’ve had a very nice ride.’

  ‘I’m glad, Kate.’ He smiled at her. ‘Charles thinks he’s a fine fellow.’

  ‘He is, John.’

  ‘Why don’t you fetch him hom
e?’ He nodded towards the house.

  ‘I…I will, one of these days.’

  ‘Do. Do, Kate. It would probably ease things. You see, something else seems to have got into Dad now; he’s come back from Newcastle in a tear.’

  She left him with a puzzled look on his face and went into the kitchen. There, Maggie and Florrie were talking to Gabriel, and they turned and looked at her in such a way that she was forced to ask, ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Gabriel answered; ‘but, as you know, Father went early into Newcastle this morning to see the solicitor about buying Morgan’s piece of land. He said if things held him up he would stay overnight. Well, he couldn’t have been there more than a couple of hours, and he’s come back, and in a bit of a rage if his face is anything to go by.’

  Kate felt a fluttering in her throat. Could he have heard about Ben’s true identity? But then no-one except herself knew. Then what could have caused him to come racing back like this? He enjoyed his visits to Newcastle, and if he couldn’t pick up a coach that would stop at Haydon Bridge or Haltwhistle, from where he could hire a horse, he often stayed in Newcastle overnight. Her voice was small as she asked, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Closeted with Mother in the office. They’ve been there this past half-hour or more. Something’s up.’ Maggie was nodding her head. She looked at Kate as much as to say: Your business has hardly cooled down and now there’s something else afoot.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Kate?’ Florrie went towards the big brown teapot resting on the hob, and Kate answered, ‘Yes. I’ll come back for it; I want to get my things off.’

  She went swiftly up the kitchen and was crossing the hall to the stairs when, along the corridor that went off to the right, the door opened and her mother appeared. She stood staring at her for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Will you come in here a minute, Kate?’