She got to her feet, saying, ‘Now, Roddy, the past’s past, we can’t go back. And I must tell you straight that what I said that morning, I still say: there’s nobody in the world for me but Hal.’
He was on his feet too now, his voice low, his words quick. ‘Yes, yes, I know, but you asked and I had to tell you. I’ll just say this and no more. I envy him. I suppose that’s why I’ve played the big fellow ever since I’ve met him. Understand?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded at him. ‘Yes, Roddy, I understand. But your wife, don’t you get on?’
‘Oh…oh.’ He threw back his head now. ‘Oh, yes, we get on. She’s the world’s organiser. I’m where I am today because of her; without her I’d still be doing some hack work in a back room in somebody’s office. Oh, I’ve got a lot to thank her for.’ His tone was becoming light again and with it he was choosing his words as he went on, ‘There’s different aspects to life. If one market closes on you, don’t worry, try another. That’s what Mary says. And she’s right, it works.’
He turned now as the door opened. He watched Hal push it wide. Then there came into the room a tall big-made woman. She was wearing a grey taffeta silk skirt and matching blouse. Her hair was black and straight and dressed in coils on each side of her head. But his eyes were riveted on her face. Mary Ellen had said their daughter wasn’t like her and that she took after him only in height. And she was right. My God! he said to himself, she was right. This woman was plain. Yet…yet…The artist in him searched for a word to fit her. The bone structure of her face was prominent, the cheekbones high, the jaws squarish. On a man he could have depicted a god with the same features. But here was a woman. She was standing but two yards from him now and he was looking into her eyes. Now here was something, here was something. They were beautiful eyes, her one good feature. But her lips were well-formed too.
‘How do you do.’
He was amazed at the sound of her voice: it was like a soft musical note coming out of a large unwieldy instrument. Yet no, she wasn’t unwieldy, her body was magnificent from an artist’s point of view. Put her on a dais in Paris and they would go mad about her. But here she was, his daughter. He had expected someone pretty, slim like Mary Ellen had been, pert like Mary Ellen had been, uneducated and somewhat raw as Mary Ellen had been. But here was this large cool creature who was speaking again. ‘I hope you had a good journey.’
The ordinariness of the words and tone not only surprised the man who was her father, but definitely, too, Hal and Mary Ellen alike. They had both fully expected some emotional response, but it looked, as Mary Ellen thought, that Kate was standing summing up this man as if he was a visitor they all had some doubts about. Yet she was being confronted by her father.
‘Hello, Kate.’ He could find nothing else to say. His voice sounded ordinary, no twang to it now. After a moment of most uneasy silence in the room, he added, ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m very well. And you?’
‘Yes, I’m very well too.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, let’s sit down.’ Another time Mary Ellen would have thought, Oh! Hal, there you go again, but now she smiled and said, ‘A better idea would be to let us have some tea. Come on.’ And she put out her hand towards Hal. ‘Let’s see if the girls have got everything ready.’
Hal paused for a moment as if reluctant to leave the room, but an extra tight pressure on his hand brought him forward. And when Mary Ellen pulled the sitting-room door closed behind them he hissed at her, ‘What did you have to do that for?’
‘’Tis best to leave them alone for a few minutes, thickhead.’
‘Thickhead am I?’ They were walking along the passage towards the dining room now. ‘Aye, I might be, but I’m not blind. You’re sorry for him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘My God! I never thought to hear that.’
‘Well, you’re hearing it now.’
She made a face, then smiled at him; then leaning her head impulsively against his shoulder, she muttered, ‘Oh, Hal, Hal. We’re lucky.’
He pulled her round and, staring into her face, he demanded, ‘No regrets?’
‘Aw, man!’—she shook her head at him—‘don’t be so damned silly. No regrets, you say. Twenty-four years working on you, having to put up with you! Of course I’ve got regrets.’ She watched him pull his chin into his neck before she added, ‘I’m only sorry it hasn’t been forty-two.’ Swiftly he put his arms about her and kissed her hard on the lips, only to spring apart from her as John and Tom entered the passage and simultaneously turned away, their hands over their eyes, as Tom cried, ‘In the daytime at that, John!’ and John replied, ‘Shameless! Absolutely shameless.’
‘You two want me toe in your backsides?’
‘You’ll have to do a standing jump to achieve that all in one go, Dad.’ John’s face was solemn, and Tom added, ‘Bet you the cream heifer, Dad, you can’t do it.’ And at this, Hal’s two fists swung out and the young men, dodging them, hurried ahead of their parents into the dining room to find Gabriel already there with the girls. But once in the room and the door closed, their manner changed and Tom asked, ‘How’s she taking it?’
Mary Ellen looked at Hal, and Hal looked at his family and said after a moment’s thought, ‘You know, I couldn’t really tell you. Polite, wasn’t she?’ He glanced at Mary Ellen and she nodded. ‘Yes, coolly polite.’
‘Coolly?’
‘Aye’—Hal nodded now from one to the other—‘that’s the word, coolly. As cool as spring water I would say. I was worried—I thought on the sight of him we would have lost her—but I’m not any more.’
‘She wouldn’t go away with him, would she?’ They all turned and looked at Florrie, and after the mutterings of: ‘Of course not. Don’t be silly. Whoever put that idea into your head?’ Mary Ellen said quietly, ‘It’s just possible, at least for a time. He’s…he’s a very famous man and he could show her a different part of the world.’
Hal came at her now, saying, ‘What are you talkin’ about? You never said anything like that to me.’
‘Oh, didn’t I? I must have forgotten.’
‘Forgotten? Don’t be aggravating, woman, and startin’ me worryin’, ’cos once she went away on a trip like that she wouldn’t come back, would she? This life would be very tame after seeing France, Paris and places like that.’ Then his voice dropping and his face becoming very serious, he said, ‘She wouldn’t, would she? I mean, go off with him?’
‘I couldn’t say what she would do if he made the offer.’
‘Gabriel. No…you, John and Tom, go and make yourself known to him and bring them into tea.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. They’ll come when they’re ready. Now sit yourselves down, all of you, and show a little patience and good manners.’ Then, her lips slightly trembling, Mary Ellen said, ‘I…I want him to see the bunch I’m proud of…’
Back in the sitting room Kate and her father were seated now opposite to each other, and he, leaning towards her, was repeating the invitation that Hal was dreading. ‘It would be an experience,’ he said. ‘You could just come for a month and I can assure you that you would enjoy it. The only thing is you wouldn’t have a moment’s peace: I…I have a number of friends who would want to paint you.’
‘Paint me?’
‘Yes, yes.’
She rose to her feet now, saying quietly, ‘And what would they see in me to paint?’
He did not get to his feet but, lifting his head, he let his gaze travel over her before he said, ‘So much.’
‘It certainly wouldn’t be my beauty.’
His mouth opened then closed: her frankness seemed to have nonplussed him for a moment. Then he said, ‘From an artist’s point of view, they would find something more than beauty. Pretty faces and pretty figures you can engage for a few francs. Then…then there is your voice. You have an unusual voice. You must know that. And besides everything else in our short acquaintance, I realise you’ve got a mind of your own. Oh, our frie
nds would certainly enjoy you, artists or no artists. What do you say?’
‘How would your wife take this?’
Now he did rise to his feet and he walked from her and put his hand on the high mantelpiece and looked down into the empty grate where the half-burnt logs were arranged tidily across the bars, and he said, ‘As an artist she would welcome you.’
‘But as a stepmother?’
He turned and looked at her, saying quietly now, ‘You have your mother’s mind and her frankness. Perhaps you are right. But I had to ask you.’
‘Thank you. Now may I ask you a question.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Why has it taken all these years for you to come and see me?’
He looked down into the grate again, placing his other hand also on the mantelpiece, and as she watched him droop his head forward she had the desire to go to him and say, It’s all right, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want an answer. But he gave her the answer, saying, ‘I…was afraid.’
‘Afraid to come and see me?’
Slowly he turned round towards her, his hands hanging limply by his side now. ‘No. This is between you and me…Afraid to see your mother.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, yes, I understand.’
‘We all make mistakes, even the strongest of us, and I’ve got to admit I’m not a strong-willed person. So when a different way of life was offered me I grabbed at it with both hands. Your namesake, old Kate, whom I’m sure your mother has told you of many times, she used always to say everything in life must be paid for, and there was never a truer saying. And I have paid for it, and I’m still paying for it in an over-fed, pampered body, hundreds of acquaintances but hardly one true friend, and a way of life that is ordered from the time I get up in the morning till I go to bed at night. It did not take me overlong to realise where my real life lay, but as I say, I’m a weak-minded man.’ He now spread out his hands. ‘I must admit though, I was surprised to see you as my daughter, so different from what I expected, but so much better. And undoubtedly you are surprised to find that the great man you’ve heard about, billed and fêted, is just a shallow manoeuvred individual.’
She looked at him. Yes, he was all he was saying. But what he wasn’t saying was, he was clever in his own interests, for in a way he was playing on her sympathy, hoping that now she would succumb and say she would accept his offer of a holiday in France. For a moment a touch of bitterness entered her thinking as she imagined how he would present her. His daughter undoubtedly, but how would she be named by his many acquaintances? Oh, she knew how she’d be named: Greenbank’s bastard.
He said now, ‘It’s been a strange meeting, don’t you think? I never intended to say any of this. It’s the atmosphere of this place, not only the house’—he wagged his hand towards the ceiling—‘the whole area.’ He walked from her now towards the window. ‘It’s in the very air. Everybody speaks their mind, no reticence. If you had used tact, diplomacy, or polish, you would have been known as a nowt, an upstart. Even the upper class here washed their linen in public. Now that’s funny.’ He swung round and looked at her. His manner had changed entirely now. It was as if he recognised his pleading had failed and was using one of his many fronts. ‘You know, the Hall and the many big houses around here, well at one time, I wouldn’t have been allowed into their stables, whereas now, believe it or not, I’ve had two invitations to dine, and with the best of them.’
‘Are you going to accept?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. We are only here for a week. There may be no time, there’s a lot of functions to be got through in Newcastle.’
He stopped a few feet from her and again they surveyed each other, and it was she who spoke next, saying, ‘Well, I think all that has had to be said has been said. Don’t you? Shall we go into tea?’
He now gave a soft chuckling laugh; then with exaggerated courtesy, he held out his crooked arm and she placed the tops of her fingers on it, and like this they left the room and entered the dining room, to the surprise, and not to say amazement, of all the members of her family.
The reaction of the family to Kate’s almost forgotten father was varied. Gabriel’s version of him when with his brothers was: ‘He talked too much.’ And both John and Tom rounded on him and said, ‘Well, you gave him plenty of leads, it was you who asked the questions,’ for Gabriel to come back with, ‘Yes, well, if I hadn’t, the meal would have been dead, because you all sat there like stooks.’
‘I must say, though, I found him interesting.’
John looked at Tom scornfully. ‘Only because he mentioned all the places he had been to in Paris.’
‘Aye, perhaps. Anyway, he made me feel I’d like to take a trip over there. And perhaps I will.’
At this he received a none too gentle dig in the back from John who said, ‘Well, it won’t be the Opera House you’ll find yourself in, but that place called the Conciergerie or the House of Justice or some such.’
‘Anyway, he’s given me an invite over and I might take it.’
‘What you’ll take,’ said John, ‘is a journey to the byres. You can go by horseback, coach, mail van, or pack horse or just carrier cart…or on the tip of me boot.’
As they were about to disperse laughing, Gabriel said, ‘I can’t understand our Kate, she wasn’t a bit ruffled, was she? You would have thought she met her father every week. She’s changing is Kate, isn’t she?’
His two brothers looked at him, and it was John who said quietly, ‘Yes, she’s changing…’
‘That’s what Maggie said to Florrie. As cool as the dairy slab she said she was. And I could have fallen through the floor when they came in arm in arm. I didn’t like him. I felt he was acting all the time, and bragging.’
‘He was only telling us about his home and the way they live over there.’
‘Did you see how he looked at Mam when he left her? For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss her. Dad was glad to see the back of him, I know that, one-time friend or not…No, I didn’t like him. And Kate’s been funny enough of late, and now she’ll be funnier still after this.’
During this conversation in the kitchen Annie had been standing at the table shredding up a cabbage, and for the first time she spoke, quietly saying, ‘And she’s had plenty to make her funny, if you ask me. And whether you like him or you dislike him, I’d keep your tongues quiet about it when you are within earshot of her. You hear?’
‘Yes, Annie,’ was the quick concerted reply.
They did not think it strange that they never retaliated when Annie chastised them, whereas, had it been their mother, Maggie at least might have put up a show of defiance. But in Annie’s case it was different. She was family, yet not family, and in a sort of dependant position, so you did not take advantage. Moreover, she had been like a second mother to Kate. Moreover still, their father thought a great deal of Annie…
Their father at this moment was discussing the very same subject. He was in the office reckoning up his outlay and income for the month and Mary Ellen was sitting opposite to him at the other side of the desk. She had her arms folded tightly across her breasts, and her lips, too, were tight. She determined to let him go on and get out of his system a suspicion that had come into his mind when he had brought Roddy home yesterday. He was on now about Kate’s reaction, but she knew that any minute now he would hark back to the main subject that was troubling him.
‘It amazed me that she should like him. He’s a big-head. I would have thought with her common sense she would be able to see through him. My God! To think that we worked side by side in the mill, tramped the hills together; and it was me who used to go gathering charcoal so he could do his damned drawings. And another thing I’ll tell you, he’s not as well off as he makes out to be. Anybody can go round visiting fancy places if they live in a city. If I was going over to France I could brag about all the fine buildings in Newcastle. Anyway, people know that artists are ten a penny and th
at they don’t make all that money unless they’re right at the top of the tree.’
She couldn’t keep her tongue still any longer, for she now snapped at him, ‘He appears to have got there, doesn’t he?’
‘Aye, appears, appears. You’re taken in by his fancy clothes and his pot belly. By God! I’ve never seen anybody so bloated. Look at his face. Where’s your bonny boy now? But even so, you were sorry for him, weren’t you? He got back at you, didn’t he? Pushed you to where you used to be, goggle-eyed, gazing at him, wishing now that he had taken you to London with him the last time you saw him…’
He was startled as she jumped up, her face aflame now, and crying at him, but in a low voice, ‘I’ve heard enough. After all these years, I still haven’t been able to convince you. Deep in you, you’re still holding it against me that I had her. Well, I’ll say what I said to you years ago, it was my fault that I had her, not his. He wasn’t to blame. I made him. And don’t say a woman can’t make a man do what she wants. Some don’t need much coaxing, but let me tell you what I’ve never told you afore, he needed a lot of coaxing. So there you have it, Hal Roystan. And you’ve spoilt something that was…was—’ she choked and now stammered through spurting tears, ‘bea…beautiful.’
He was round the desk and holding her straining body to him, pleading with her now, ‘Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen. I’m sorry. I am. But I was scared, scared daft. I was, I was. I’d always thought that there could be twenty Roddys come back to see you and I wouldn’t turn a hair. But from the minute I saw him looking at you, I knew that he was regretting letting you go, and you recognising this. Why lass, I nearly went mad. ’Twas a wonder I didn’t hit him, especially at the last when I thought he was going to kiss you. I would, I would, I would have hit him. Aw, Mary Ellen, don’t, don’t cry, please. It’s ’cos I love you. I still feel like a young lad inside about you. I’ve been so sure of me damn self all these years, and now I’m not and never will be again.’ As his arm slackened about her she looked up at him, and now, slowly taking his face between her two hands, she muttered, ‘Oh, Hal, Hal, if you don’t know now, there’s no way I can make you believe it. And yes, I was sorry for him. I pitied him, and at the same time I was thanking God things happened as they did, for I know now I’d never have been able to put up with him. Underneath, he’s still Roddy Greenbank, out for number one. To use old Kate’s words, I’d sooner have a dinner of herbs with you than a fat ox with him.’
A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 46