Mary Ellen swallowed deeply; the tears came into her eyes again and she said, ‘Thank you, Willy. You were always a capable and likeable fellow. Thank you. But…but there’s one thing more besides your outside work, there is—’ She now turned her eyes on Maggie, saying, ‘your dad. I need help to turn him every day.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Roystan, about that, I’d be only too pleased to assist you in any way I can inside or outside. And now I don’t know whether Maggie has told you, but we are to be married next Saturday in the registry office in Newcastle.’
‘Oh.’ Mary Ellen looked from one to the other, then said, ‘Well, yes, yes, I understand.’
‘But we won’t be gone all that long, just the morning.’ He glanced at Maggie and she nodded at her mother, repeating, ‘Just the morning. Would you like a cup of tea, Mam?’ And after a pause Mary Ellen said, ‘Yes. Yes, lass, I think I would, and a drop of something in it. I wouldn’t say no, lass, I wouldn’t say no.’
As they both made to go out of the room, Mary Ellen said, ‘About the little place you were after, what do you intend to do?’
It was Willy who turned and said, ‘Oh, we’ll have to stand the loss. I’ll tell them this afternoon.’
‘I wouldn’t do that; I would take it and put someone in. Land and property is good round Corbridge.’
Willy said nothing, only made a motion with his head, and when they were both out in the hall, Willy stopped and said, ‘Now would you believe that? Would you believe that?’
Maggie nodded at him slowly. Yes, she would believe that. She had been right to insist on everything legal like; her mother was far from being finished. Oh yes, she was far from being finished.
In the kitchen, John and Yvonne were waiting for them, and Maggie said immediately, ‘’Tis all right. It’s fixed.’
‘It is all right for you?’ There was a shadow of the old brightness in Yvonne’s face, and Maggie nodded as John said, ‘She agreed to it being legalised?’
‘Yes, John, yes.’ Then she laughed and looked towards Willy, saying, ‘She did, didn’t she, without a murmur? Yet, being Mother, not quite. Anyway, you two’—she held out her hands, one to each of them—‘you’re free now. Like us, you can start a life together. It’s come late in the day for both of us.’ She looked at John. ‘But there’s a saying, you know: You should never pluck a herb before it is fully ripe.’
At this John put his arms around her, and she about him, and they clung together for a moment. And she thought: How strange, I’ve had to wait, too, until I’m forty before my brother embraces me.
Quietly now, she turned from him and went towards Willy and, taking his waiting hand, she gripped it. She would have all the embraces she needed in life from now on. And when her child was born, be it male or female, she would see that it was cuddled and held as a baby, and that never in its life would it be starved for affection. So whatever it did in life, good, bad or indifferent, could not be laid at the door of a starved life. Moreover, she would teach it not to hate.
The End
A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 74