‘Yes, I do.’ Ben’s voice was quiet and he turned and looked at Hal and added, ‘All being said and done, it leaves us both in the same mind: you determined that I shan’t have Kate, and I determined that I shall. Whatever happens, I shall.’
‘We’ll see, lad. We’ll see. Let’s get out of this first, then we’ll see.’
Fifteen
The kitchen was crowded. Mary Ellen stood with her back to the fire, her hands joined tightly at her waist, and gazed at the numerous men standing awkwardly sipping at mugs of mulled ale. Men from different walks of life had been coming and going all day since noon. This was after John and Tom had gone over to the Bannamans’ house and found the two horses in the stables. From there, they had climbed the hills to Ben’s cottage, but found no-one. They had been hardly able to see a hand before them; the snow, being powder dry, was whirling like low clouds over the hills. The only live thing they had seen between the swirling drifts of snow was a glimpse of a goat that had come out of its hut at the bottom of the field. It was after this that they had set the alarm.
The only lead they had as to where Hal might have gone had been from Jamie Pollock. But that had turned out to be a wild-goose chase, and as the men said, nobody should have taken any notice of what Jamie said, him being wrong in the head.
The manager from the mine said, ‘I’ll have a group out come dawn, Mrs Roystan. Who knows, he could have taken shelter somewhere.’ As far as he and the others helping in the search knew, they were looking for only one man. It was Farmer Dickinson who said, ‘Funny he should be makin’ for Bannaman’s place. Was he going to have a word with young Mr Hamilton, him that’s taking it over?’
‘Aye, yes, just a word,’ John answered, nodding at the man.
But Farmer Dickinson’s curiosity was aroused: ‘Wouldn’t have thought Hal had much time for anybody who took that place. Funny. ’Tis funny,’ he said.
‘Would you like some more beer?’ Florrie was profferring the jug towards Farmer Dickinson. And he, smiling at her, said, ‘No, lass, thank you very much; I want to keep straight legs to get me home, and that’s strong stuff, that is. Good an’ all.’ He jerked his chin at her. And Florrie turned to another man, saying, ‘Mr Robson?’ and he answered, ‘Yes, just a drop. It gets down to your toes, that does.’
Moving from the fireplace towards the table, Mary Ellen now said quietly, ‘Thank you very much, one and all. I’ll…I’ll be glad to see you in the mornin’.’
Buttoning up their coats and pulling their caps tight on to their heads, the men now said their goodbyes, one after the other promising to be back at first light. And then she was left with her family.
‘Come on, lass.’ Annie was gently guiding her towards the settle, saying, ‘Sit yourself down; you can do no good standing about. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t come stumbling in that door at any minute.’
‘Oh, Annie, Annie.’ Mary Ellen closed her eyes, then murmured, ‘What in the name of God could have happened to them?’ Then looking at Annie again, she said, ‘Where’s Kate?’
‘She’s all right. She’s all right. I’ve got her soaking her feet in her room. She was wet to the skin. And the best thing you can do is to go and lie down for an hour or two.’
‘Don’t be silly, Annie; I’ll never sleep again till I know what’s happened to him…to them.’ She now looked towards Maggie who was placing a kettle on the hob and, leaning forward, she cried at her, ‘I hope you realise, girl, that this is all your fault. If your father’s dead you’ll have it on your conscience till the day you die. And…’
‘Mam. Mam’—John was standing over her—‘’Tis no good taking that line. It would have come out somehow, some time or other. It had to happen.’
Mary Ellen looked up at him and asked pityingly now, ‘But where could they have got to? They must both be together, their horses being in the stables. What in the name of God could have happened to them?’
‘I don’t know, no more than you do, except one thing, if there was any violence it would come from Father’s side not Ben’s.’
‘What a thing to say.’
‘Well, ’tis true, Mam, isn’t it? Because let’s face it, when he’s aroused he’s like a bull charging straight ahead.’
‘Shut up, John!’
‘I’m only trying to point out to you that he would come to no harm through Ben.’
‘Well, if it’s any news to you, I’m worried an’ all, and at bottom about the same thing that’s worrying you, and that is, what he might have done to Ben. Oh God!’ She put her two hands to her head and gripped her hair. ‘To think our family should come to this. Things were going too well for us, too smoothly. It seems as if there’s a curse on us an’ still connected with them Bannamans.’And when no-one made any attempt to be more enlightening she turned about and, leaning her forearm on the mantelpiece, dropped her head on to it, and in her own fashion she began to pray.
At first light the men were again in the yard. There were ten of them altogether and they said there were more to follow. They paired off in twos, planning to keep within hailing distance of each other in case they should come across what they were looking for. They spread out fanwise, John and Tom plumping once again for the road that led to the Bannamans’ farm, feeling that at least Ben might turn up.
Terry and Gabriel were left to see to the cattle, while Annie and Florrie took it upon themselves to see to the hens and pigs.
It had stopped snowing sometime in the night, and now a thaw had set in and a weak sun was shining. Inside the house Maggie was seeing to the fires, and Kate and Mary Ellen were alone in the kitchen. They were both bleary-eyed as they had sat up all night, just dozing now and again. Neither of them had eaten anything, but they had drunk numerous cups of tea. And now Mary Ellen, brewing once again, turned from the hob at the sound of Kate’s sharp tone as she said, ‘I can’t just stay here, Mam; I’ve got to go out looking.’
‘There are plenty doing that, lass. Look how you came in last night. We don’t want you bad.’
‘I won’t take bad, but I’ve got to go out.’ She turned away and hurried from the kitchen, leaving Mary Ellen standing, asking herself once again just where it would end.
Five minutes later, when Kate returned to the kitchen, Mary Ellen gave her but a swift glance for there was a sudden commotion in the yard. She ran to the door, to see John and Tom and two of the searchers running towards the harness room. Quickly, she went out into the yard, shouting, ‘What is it? What is it?’
‘Be with you in a minute.’ John had turned from the harness room door. He was talking rapidly to the men. Then he ran to her and, taking her by the arm, almost dragged her back into the kitchen. And there was a smile on his face as he looked from her to Kate, then back to her again, saying, ‘He’s all right…both of them. Ben made his way down the hills. We met him on the road. He’s a bit exhausted. He was coming for a stretcher, a canvas one; he says a door’s no good, too slippery up there.’
‘Why a stretcher? Why a stretcher?’ Mary Ellen was clutching him.
‘’Tis all right. ’Tis all right, Mam,’ John said, catching hold of his mother’s hand. ‘He’s had a blow on the head and his ankle’s broken, but he’s…’
‘Who did that?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. But he’s alive and he’s all right, Ben says.’
‘Ben. How is Ben?’
John looked at Kate and paused before he answered, ‘All right, Kate, but, naturally, tired. He must have had a time of it up there.’
‘I’ll…I’ll go along with you.’
‘No, no.’ He now patted her shoulder. ‘You’d only be in the way. You’ll be needed here. Anyway you’ll have to get the bed ready, the warming-pan going and plenty of hot bricks.’
‘How long are you likely to be?’
He paused a moment, thinking, then said, ‘Two hours I should say will see us down. Now, there! Cheer up, they’re all right.’ He looked from one to the other, and Mary Ellen said,
‘Thanks be to God.’ But Kate didn’t speak, for the wave of relief that was passing through her made her feel faint, and in case she should do something silly she turned quickly about and hurried out of the kitchen. And when she reached her own room she dropped onto her knees by the side of the bed and said deeply and profoundly, ‘Thank you…Thank you.’ She wasn’t given to praying, she hadn’t been brought up to pray. The only member of the family, she thought, who said a nightly prayer was Florrie. But she herself over the past twenty-four hours had made up for her lapse of years; every step she had taken through the snow yesterday had been accompanied by a beseeching prayer, especially while she was trying to reach the cottage and being sick at the thought of what she might find there. The only reason why she hadn’t succeeded in getting that far was that she had met the boys coming down and they had found it empty and, as they had said, ‘Everything left tidy.’
Slowly she rose from her knees and got out of her outdoor things before going downstairs again to await the return of her father and Ben, for surely they would bring Ben back with them.
Two and a half hours later when the almost exhausted men carried the canvas sling into the kitchen, Ben wasn’t among those accompanying them.
When they laid Hal gently down on the mat before the fire Mary Ellen dropped onto her knees by his side and, touching the only exposed part of him besides his eyes, which was his cheekbone, she said, ‘Oh, my dear, my dear.’ And at this he brought his hands from underneath the blanket that covered him, and gripping hers, he said, ‘’Tis all right, lass, ’tis all right. Get me to bed and warm, and I’ll be as fit as a fiddle in no time.’
Looking down into his face now, she saw that it was haggard and grey; then getting to her feet, she looked at her two sons and at the other two men who had helped to carry him the last part of the journey, and she said, ‘Would you take him up?’
At this, willing voices from others around said, ‘We’ll do it, missis, they’ve done their stint.’ And the men laughed as they picked up the four poles that were threaded through the canvas sheet and, Mary Ellen leading the way, they followed her out of the room. And as the door closed on them a strange thing happened, strange at least to John and Tom and the rest of the men who were crowded in the kitchen, for Annie, big Annie as she was known, buckled at the knees and fell in a dead faint down by the side of the table.
‘Well, did you ever see anything like that?’
‘Lift her up onto the settle.’
‘Get some burnt paper, lass.’
‘Well! I never thought Annie was one for fainting.’
Kate rolled up a wad of paper, and lit it at the fire, then nipped it out before going to the settle and waving it backward and forward under Annie’s nose, the while thinking, No, no-one would imagine anyone as big as Annie fainting; big people were supposed to be tough and didn’t do silly things like that. They weren’t to know that Annie loved her father almost as much as her mother did, perhaps equally, or more so, because her life had been frustrated. No-one had ever put this into actual words except that time when her mother had said, ‘Annie’s always been very fond of your father,’ and she had laughingly added, ‘Funny, but I think she had hopes in that quarter at one time.’
Yes, it was funny, to everybody but Annie.
‘There you are, lass. Come on, come on. Now what made you go and do that?’ The man patted Annie’s cheek.
Annie slowly opened her eyes, wetted her lips, and looked at Kate, and Kate, now taking her by the arm, heaved her up, saying, ‘Come and lie down for a while and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’And with this she led her through the men and out into the hall and to the sitting room, and there, pressing her down into the couch, she lifted her feet up, arranged a cushion at her head, then, bending over her, said, ‘You stay put there.’
‘It was a daft thing to do.’
‘We’re all daft at the moment, Annie. I’ll get you a cup of tea.’
As Kate went to move away, Annie gripped her wrist and, staring up into her face, she said, ‘Whatever happens, go to him, lass. Don’t let your life be wasted, because you’ll never meet another like him around these quarters, you won’t. As for your dad, he’s had his life, or most of it. So follow your heart, lass.’
‘I will, Annie. I intend to do so, no matter what happens.’
They looked at each other for a moment longer, then Kate went from the room.
The men had left the kitchen, but Florrie and Maggie were hurrying up the room carrying hot bricks wrapped in blankets. There was only Tom left. He was standing before the fire, one hand holding a mug of tea, the other held out to the blaze.
Going to him, she asked quietly, ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘He…he went off to the farm.’
‘How was he?’
‘Tired, I would say.’
‘What had happened up there?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. He wasn’t for talking much. But he had attended to Dad, got his boot off, cut off the sock and things. It’s a bad break. He must have gone through it.’
‘You don’t know what happened?’
‘No.’
‘If they were in the cottage, why didn’t you find them before?’
‘Because they weren’t there.’ His voice had an impatient ring to it. As she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ the far door opened and Florrie came running into the room, saying, ‘Where’s Annie? Mam wants her.’
‘Annie’s not well. She’s resting in the sitting room.’
‘Well then, you had better come up, Kate. Maggie’s no good, and he’s yelling out, and…and I’m sorry, but I can’t bear to look at his foot.’
Kate hurried from the room now and up the stairs and into her mother’s bedroom. Hal was propped up in bed, covered all over except for his right foot, which was turned to the side and looked twice its size. But the swollen flesh hadn’t covered the ominous piece of bone sticking up through the skin. Her mother was saying, ‘The doctor should be here any minute. The mine manager was sending in a man to Haydon Bridge. They’ve got the road cleared that far for the carts.’ She turned and glanced at Kate, saying, ‘Where’s Annie?’
‘She’s…she’s not well. She in the sitting room.’
‘Not well?’ Mary Ellen made an impatient movement with her head for a moment; then said, ‘Well, you come and help me get your father changed.’
‘Leave me be, woman! I…I can’t stand much more of this. Get me some whisky.’
Mary Ellen now looked across the bed to where Maggie was standing wringing her hands and she said, ‘Go and bring the bottle from the sideboard. Quick now.’
As Maggie scurried from the room Kate moved up the side of the bed and looked down onto the haggard face, but she said nothing; nor did Hal, but he put out his hand and took hers and held tightly on to it.
And he retained his hold for the next twenty minutes or so. Mary Ellen had had to push a chair up near the bed so that Kate could sit down and they had exchanged glances but said nothing. Even when Maggie had returned with the whisky and Mary Ellen had poured a stiff measure into a glass, still he did not release his hold on Kate’s hand, but took the glass from his wife with his left hand and swallowed the spirit almost in one gulp. It was only when the doctor entered the room that Kate rose and, pulling her hand from his grasp, stepped aside.
‘Well now, what have you been up to?’ Doctor Brunton had been a friend to Mary Ellen from the day when he took her to the prison to visit Roddy Greenbank, and he had attended each of her confinements over the years. He knew all about this family, particularly about its head, who was answering him now in characteristic fashion, saying, ‘Well, if you open your eyes you’ll see what I’ve been up to.’
The doctor bent over the foot and muttered something; then looking at Mary Ellen, he said, ‘When he does things, he always attempts to do them thoroughly. You know that, don’t you, Mary Ellen?’
‘I…I do indeed, Doctor.’ She smiled wanly at him.
He had been d
ivested of his greatcoat downstairs; now he unbuttoned his jacket and slowly took it off, saying the while, ‘Get John and Tom up here, will you? And then I’ll want some hot water and two pieces of wood, about two foot long and three inches wide, and a shorter piece, and some strips of linen…and whisky, of course.’ He turned his head in Hal’s direction, adding, ‘That’s right, isn’t it? You’d like to be washed inside and out with whisky?’
‘Get on with it.’
He looked at Mary Ellen again and smiled. Then unloosening the cuffs of his white shirt and rolling them back, he moved up the side of the bed and, bending over Hal, said, ‘Let’s have a look at your face.’ Turning it gently to the side, he added, ‘You’re lucky there, it’s just below skin deep. It’ll want a stitch or two. Got a headache?’
‘What d’you think?’
‘I think you’re a very lucky man to have been brought down the hill when you were. Another day and I mightn’t have been able to do much with that.’ He thumbed towards the foot. ‘And I’m telling you—’ His voice had lost its bantering tone, but he returned to it a minute later in greeting Tom and John entering the room saying to them, ‘Hello, there. Your father would like you to hang on to him time I straighten out this foot of his. By the way’—he turned and looked at Hal again—‘how did you come to do it, and your head?’
When Hal did not answer immediately, Mary Ellen, Kate and the two men looked at him apprehensively, waiting for the answer which would be in the nature of, ‘I got it in a fight.’ But when he said, somewhat reluctantly, ‘I was bumped by a bloody goat,’ their faces stretched, and they looked at each other in disbelief. Then as Kate covered her eyes, for she had a vision of Biddy carrying out her greeting to an intruder, the boys spluttered, but Mary Ellen burst into a high laugh touching on hysteria which ended abruptly as the doctor said, ‘There now, there now.’ And the tears spurted from her eyes and ran down her face.
A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 57