A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy)

by Catherine Cookson

  It was two o’clock in the morning. The room was hot and quiet, except for Ben’s laboured breathing. Gabriel was asleep in an easy chair to the side of the fireplace. Kate, weary and hardly able to keep her eyes open, had just replenished the four candlesticks which she placed, two on the dressing table and two on the mantelpiece, and she was about to take her seat once again by the bed when Ben flung his arm wide and, bringing his shoulders from the pillow, coughed up some phlegm, then cried out in a clearer tone than he had used before, ‘Kate! Kate!’

  ‘I’m here, darling. I’m here.’ She put her arms about him in an endeavour to press him backwards, but when he began to struggle with her, she turned her head and cried, ‘Gabriel! Gabriel!’ And Gabriel, coming out of sleep, ran to the other side of the bed and, gripping Ben’s arms, he said, ‘There you are. There you are, old fellow. Lie down. Lie down.’

  Slowly they eased him back on to the pillow, but he still thrashed, and when his breathing became painfully fast and each breath sounded like a gasp, she said quickly to Gabriel, ‘Go and bring Mam.’

  When Mary Ellen came hurrying into the room, pulling a gown around her, she merely glanced at Ben before she said, ‘This is it. Bring the dish and towels.’

  For the next half-hour they alternately sponged Ben’s face and neck and hands, and tried to stop him rising from the bed, and it seemed to them that he had been imbued with a last fatal bout of strength.

  It was towards three o’clock when he became limp in their hands and lay still. And Kate let out a cry, ‘Oh, no! Oh, no! Ben! Don’t go. Please! Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me, Ben. Don’t leave me.’

  ‘There, there, lass, there. He’s all right, he’s all right. Look, he’s still breathing. Give over.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Kate.’ Gabriel was pulling her from the bed now. ‘Look, it’s as if he was asleep. Look, his chest’s still moving. Stop it! Stop it!’

  Stretching her head towards the bed, Kate saw only the closed lids and the long white face, and she wondered why Gabriel was telling her to stop it. Of a sudden she was shivering from head to foot, her teeth chattered and she looked at her mother and asked pitifully, ‘Is he? Is he?’

  ‘He’s all right, lass. It’s over. He’s passed it.’ The words seemed to convey that he was gone, and she pulled herself from Gabriel’s arms and went to the bed, crying, ‘Ben! Ben!’ Then when Ben slowly raised his lids and as slowly closed them again, she turned and staggered to the chair and, dropping into it, she began to cry. One hand across her eyes, the other straining across her open mouth, she endeavoured to dull the sound of her sobbing, and when Gabriel remonstrated with her, saying, ‘Quiet, Kate, you’ll wake him,’ Mary Ellen turned to him, saying, ‘’Tis all right. Let her be. ’Twill do her good. They’ll both sleep after this. Now go and wake our Maggie, she’ll stay with me, it will be a kind of penance for her, because this one here is dropping on her feet.’ She now drew Kate’s head towards her, saying, ‘There, there, lass, the travail is over. Pray God He’ll show us some peace from now on.’

  Seventeen

  Ben’s recovery was slow. It was a full fortnight before he was able to sit up in the bed. That he had neared death, he knew only too well. He could recall the moment when it almost touched him. It had seemed to keep its distance for days, and had actually backed away once when a voice had come to him, saying that he had leave to marry Kate, that the stubborn bull-headed man had given his consent.

  He lay now looking towards the door. They were all so kind to him in this house. He hadn’t seen the master of it yet, but he received messages from him, which was strange, even laughable. The only other person he hadn’t seen was Maggie. Maggie, he understood, was in everybody’s black books, so Gabriel had said. Yet, in a way, he had a lot to thank Maggie for, for how other could he have got round that irascible man if she hadn’t run home with the dire news of his true identity, and so almost causing them both to die. In no other way would he have melted. He must ask Kate to tell Maggie that he felt no bitterness towards her, as indeed he didn’t. But now, what would the head of the house say when he heard the doctor’s opinion of what should happen when he was fit to travel? Would there be more protests, more tirades? Yes, very likely, because to keep them within his orbit he had, without giving his blessing, consented to their living in the Bannamans’ house, although, as Kate had said, they weren’t to expect him visiting, ever; they would have to do the calling. Well, he didn’t mind that in the least as long as he could carry out the desire in his mind to erase the evil from that place.

  But now, if he were to follow doctor’s orders, Kate would be taken out of her dad’s orbit not only for some months to come, but for many winter months of each year. Kate coming back into the room, he said to her, ‘You’ve been a long time.’

  ‘A long time?’ She smiled at him. ‘I said goodbye to the doctor, had a word with Annie about your dinner and told her she’s not to make you such luscious meals, and I washed my face and hands, spoke to Mother at the top of the stairs, and here I am.’

  ‘It’s been nearly fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Oh, Ben.’ She sat down on the edge of the bed and he put his arms out to her, and she held him, and he murmured into her neck, ‘Italy or France, the very sound of it, or perhaps Switzerland.’ Then raising his head and looking into her eyes, he added, ‘How do you think he’ll take this last blow?’

  ‘I don’t know. Doctor told Mother what he told us; I’ll give her time to tell him and then I’ll go and face the barrage. Yet somehow, I don’t think there’ll be much, he’s changed…What really happened up there? You never said.’

  ‘There was nothing much to tell. After Biddy did her work I found him, dragged him into the hut, then got him up to the cottage, and there we told each other what we thought in no polite language.’ He laughed gently now as he said, ‘I recall, when I went to wash the blood from his face he snatched the cloth so quickly from my hand it slapped him across the mouth. I remember I wanted to laugh, but thought better of it.’

  ‘You saved his life, and nearly lost your own. And you hold no bitterness against him although it has left you with this?’ She patted his chest. ‘That’s small payment to extract for you, Kate, and for his willingness that we should be together, because although somehow or other I would have taken you from under his nose, you would never have been really happy, knowing how you had hurt him, whereas now—’ He laughed again as he said, ‘He will really want to shoot me when he knows I’m going to take you out of the country for months at a time.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She bent forward and kissed him gently. Then holding his face between her hands she said, ‘You know, I’ll never be able to understand the reason why you love me. Of all the women in the world you could have had, and yes’—she nodded at him—‘I think you could have had anyone you chose, you’ve got to come into these backwoods and find me, and tell me that you love me. I know it’s a dream, and I’m going to wake up from it some day, because it can’t be true, can it?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t true that I love you and you love me, and that you are the only woman in the world for me, and always will be. No, of course it isn’t true. And one day we’ll wake up and find we were both dreaming. But until then, let’s make believe, eh?’ Now he put his lips on hers and held her close to him until there was a rattle on the sneck of the door, and they moved apart. And Mary Ellen came in, saying, ‘Well, now. Making plans?’

  ‘Yes, sort of.’ Kate rose from the bed, then added, ‘Have you told him?’ And Mary Ellen said, ‘Aye. Aye, I’ve told him.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘Quietly, which in a way, I’m sorry to say, hurts me, because as you know it isn’t like him to be baulked in any way and take it quietly. But go in and say your piece, and I’ll sit on the bed here and ask this man of yours how it is he’s come to alter my husband so; and whether it’s for better or worse, I’m not sure, because I miss me bawling lad.’ She smiled sadly now; then with a wave o
f her hand she sent Kate from the room.

  But Kate didn’t make straight for her father’s room, because there, coming from the top of the landing was Maggie. She was carrying a clean water bucket in one hand and a broom and duster in the other, and she cast her eyes downwards and made to pass Kate without a word, as she had done since the day she delivered her message in the kitchen. But now Kate put out her hand and drew her to a stop, saying quietly, ‘Let’s forget about this, Maggie. ’Tis all over. I hold you no bitterness, and neither does Ben. Believe that.’

  Maggie’s head drooping lower now, and her voice breaking, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. And…and I’ve gone through hell thinking he might have died.’ The tears were running down her cheeks now. Kate, putting her hand on her shoulder, said gently, ‘Well, he didn’t, and everything’s turned out all right. In fact, if you hadn’t done what you did do, I doubt if Ben and I would have ever come together, not really, at least not happily like we shall now. So there, you see, good’s come of it.’

  When Maggie shook her head from side to side, Kate said, ‘Believe me, everything’s all right. Look, when Mam comes out, go in and have a word with him.’

  At this, Maggie ran from her, her body half bent, the pail jangling in her hand. And Kate looked after her sadly for a moment before turning and going in to Hal.

  He was propped up in bed and there was a newspaper and a magnifying glass lying on the quilt as if he had been reading. But his hands now lay idle in front of him and he greeted her with, ‘If he doesn’t soon take this damn wood off me foot, I’ll never be able to move it again.’

  ‘I thought he was going to do something this morning?’

  ‘Aye, he’s let me toes free, that’s about all. Have a look at them.’

  She pulled back the cover from the cage and looked at his bare toes sticking out from the bandage, and she said, ‘Can you move them?’

  ‘Can I hell! He says I’ve got to practise. But I haven’t got to touch them, or anybody else, like massage them, I’ve got to think I can move them and then move them. That’s what he says. He’s up the pole, that fellow.’

  She covered up the cage, then sat down by the side of him, and he looked at her and said, ‘Well?’ And she answered him in the same vein, saying, ‘Well?’

  He moved restlessly for a moment, then began to pick at the threads from a square of patchwork in the quilt before he said, ‘Came as another shock, that.’

  ‘What? That Ben has an infected lung? Or that we must spend part of the winter months in a warm climate if he wants to get entirely better?’

  ‘Aye, well, both you could say. But why not go to some warm part in England?’

  ‘There are no really warm parts in England, not in the winter.’

  ‘Oh aye, there are. They say Devon’s warm.’

  ‘Well, it’s a different warmth Ben needs, so doctor says, constant sun and no damp.’

  ‘Where d’you think of going then?’

  ‘France, Italy, perhaps Switzerland, we don’t know yet. You see it was just sprung on us today.’

  ‘Aye, just sprung on us. An’ you say France. You’ll go to Paris likely, eh? And call on him?’

  Her eyes widened and her whole face stretched. It was the last thing she had thought of when naming France, that she would ever go to Paris and call on her father. She said now somewhat vehemently, ‘Just like you to say that, isn’t it? No, I won’t go to Paris to see him. He means nothing to me. I’ve told you before, but you’re so thick-headed and…’

  ‘All right, all right. Don’t take a pattern from your mother. I only thought you might. ’

  ‘Well, I won’t.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I can promise you that, Dad, I won’t go near him. We won’t even go anywhere near Paris. He took twenty-four years to come and see me, so I’m not going to break my neck in the next six to twelve months to go and see him. No’—she caught hold of his hand—‘never worry on that score. You are my father, always have been, and always will be.’ She leant towards him now and he put his arms about her, and they held each other close. When she muttered, ‘I could never have been really happy without your consent, no matter what I’d said,’ he pressed her from him and, his eyelids blinking and his nose sniffing, he said, ‘Damned hazardous way I had to go about giving it to you, hadn’t I? And when we’re on, about the house, he still intends to set up there?’

  ‘He would like to, Dad. He’s got this feeling that somehow there he can erase the harm his mother and his grandfather did.’

  ‘That’s a tall order, lass. You cannot raise the dead, or erase how they met their death. But still, if he’s bent on it, I’ve got no say in the matter now, have I? The only thing is, as I told you, I can’t see me visiting you.’

  ‘Well—’ She pulled a face at him, and rising from the bed she said, ‘We’ll only have to bring the children every Sunday to visit you. And to make sure we don’t go back on our word, I’ll go now and get him to sign a paper to that effect.’ She laughed aloud as she backed from the bed, and at the door she turned and gave him a little wave. It was an action she had been wont to do as a child when, from her mother’s arms, she had watched him ride out of the yard. And when the door closed on her his chin dropped on to his chest and he muttered to himself, ‘Bring the children every Sunday afternoon. Children with Bannaman’s blood in them. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation.’

  PART FOUR

  and hatred therewith

  One

  The cows coming across the yard made a chorus of moos, all thirty-two voices seeming to be vying with each other. Mary Ellen considered the sound a mixture between a wail at their having been driven from the pasture to a paean of praise at the imminent relief of their low-slung swinging udders.

  She glanced sideways from the table where she was kneading bread in a big brown earthenware bowl and as her gaze fell on the man following the herd she said, ‘Terry’s walking worse than ever. He’ll have to get off his feet for a time. Yet, how we’ll manage I don’t know.’ Then her eyes were drawn sharply towards her daughter who was standing near the dresser changing her apron, for she had just said, ‘He’ll have to engage another hand.’

  ‘You know your dad doesn’t like new hands about the place.’

  ‘Then he shouldn’t go enlarging the stock, should he? We’re lucky to have what good pasture we have got in this area, but it’ll only feed so many.’

  Maggie had her hands behind her neck adjusting the straps of the white bib, and her head was bent forward as she ended, ‘And what’ll happen if Willy decides to up and go?’

  Mary Ellen stared at her daughter, the one, as she put it to herself, she had never been able to fathom. There she was, thirty-nine years old, a spinster seemingly self-chosen, for it wasn’t for the want of chances that she hadn’t married. She couldn’t understand her. She was the best-looking one in the family yet seemed to have the sourest nature. She had been a flirt and a bit of a flibbertigibbet right up until she was twenty-three. But from the time she had exposed Ben’s relationship to the Bannamans she had changed. Of course, what she had done could have been the means of killing both Ben and her father and that must have preyed on her mind, for from then her ways had changed: instead of setting out to attract every man who came within yards of her, she avoided him. Under the circumstances you would have thought she would have been glad to have married and got away from the house and the unspoken censure of her father, but the reverse was the case. In fact, for months at a time she would never leave the farm, not even to go into the market on a Saturday. That was, until she reached her middle thirties.

  She couldn’t quite pinpoint when the second change occurred in her daughter except that it was at a time of upheaval all round. What caused it was that Gabriel, who had worked on the farm for years alongside his brother John and was then thirty years of age, had up, without notice, and told them he was going into Newcastle to live with Hugh and find work t
here in the glass factory all because he had become interested in glass objects, such as engraved goblets and the like that were being produced in the city.

  Like much else that had happened in her life it wasn’t understandable. So they had to take on a new man. And in this they had been lucky. Oh yes, very lucky. Willy Harding would be worth his weight in gold on any farm for he could turn his hand to anything. Well, was it from when he came that Maggie had changed? Sometimes this thought worried her but she would push it out of her mind. No, it was from the day Jimmy Broadbent from over Allendale way came to the house with the sole purpose of asking her to marry him. That day, there had been an explosion in this very kitchen, for Maggie had threatened to throw a pan of hot stew over him and scratch his eyes out. And she might have done so at that if John hadn’t restrained her.

  Jimmy’s wife had been dead for six months. She had left seven children all under ten, the youngest fourteen months old. She had died trying to deliver her eighth. And it was common knowledge that Jimmy had just used her for breeding, for he sought his pleasure with his fancy woman, a widow who lived in a cottage over in the dale. Apparently, he had expected this lady to come and take charge of his household while he got on with his work, which was mostly horse dealing, but he had been disappointed. His proposal to Maggie was covert and couched in terms as if he were doing her a favour by presenting her with a ready-made family because she was so far gone in her spinsterhood that it was very unlikely that she would breed now.

  That day it appeared to Mary Ellen that her daughter had been sleeping for years and had just woken up, for after staring into the man’s grinning face in utter silence for a full minute, she had emitted a sound like a screech, crying, ‘You dirty, pot-bellied, whoring swine! You dare think I would come within a mile of you or your tribe?’ And she had swung round, looking for something to grab at. There was the long black handle of the iron pan sticking out towards her from the hob and, gripping it with both hands, she lifted it up, still screaming, ‘Get out! Or you’ll get this over you.’ Then because the weight of it was so heavy, she did an unheard of thing, she dropped the sooty-bottomed pan on to the long white scrubbed table, then advanced round it on the hastily retreating man. And she would have pounced on him if she hadn’t been prevented by John gripping her from behind, while at the same time yelling to Jimmy Broadbent, ‘Get yourself away, man! And don’t come back.’