A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Read online

  When one man with his head bent low over a drawing said, ‘Promising. Very promising,’ another to his side growled, ‘Promising be damned, Willie.’

  At this he felt his face turning scarlet. It was like a dire condemnation. But then the man who had spoken these words looked up at him through narrowed eyes and said, ‘How long have you been on this, son?’

  His first reaction to this was a slight bristling at having been called son—of course the man opposite was elderly, but he himself looked no boy—and he muttered in a stiff tone, ‘As…as long as I can remember…far back.’

  The man straightened his body, and now his next words brought a warmth flooding through Roddy that heightened the colour still further in his face. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘for my part, I would say you haven’t wasted your time. You’ve got somewhere. This roasting furnace is good. Never missed a brick in it, did you?’ But then he qualified all he had said by adding, ‘Not that you haven’t got a lot to learn. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand, sir.’

  Then his bright thoughts of a rosy future were dampened yet again by a voice at the end of the table saying, ‘But all these have been done before, don’t let us forget that.’

  ‘Nobody’s forgetting that, Jim’—his champion was speaking again—‘but there’s additions here and initiative in the suggestions. I know damn fine constructive drawings have been done before and about smelting—I’ve seen dozens of them, hundreds in fact—but this applicant won’t stick to smelting, will you, Mr Greenbank?’

  He heard himself muttering, ‘No, sir,’ while wondering about the use of the word applicant. Then he was made to wonder still further when his champion went on, ‘Of the three of them, this lad’s got my vote.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see, we’ll see.’ It was the quiet voice of Mr MacPherson coming in now, and he went on addressing Roddy pointedly, asking, ‘Have you done any other kind of art, live art, or landscape, or anything like that?’

  Roddy paused, swallowed, then said, ‘Not much, sir, just a few sketches of the hills and things.’

  ‘No portraits?’

  ‘No, no. Very few. I’m…I’m not very good at that kind of thing.’

  ‘You never know. Art has many springs feeding the river so to speak. Anyway, gentlemen’—he looked around at the other members seated at the table—‘we’ll discuss this further after we have a cup of tea with the ladies.’

  A cup of tea with the ladies. He was hot under the collar.

  But the cup of tea with the ladies turned out to be a very jolly affair, and very informative because he discovered that all of the six women present were artists in different ways; and further, that they were all people of means; and further still, to his surprise he learned that he was one of three applicants whose work they were considering for sponsorship, which meant that they would pay his board and lodgings for two years to study art either here or in London. It was a gesture to the unprivileged, as one less-than-tactful lady had pointed out to him; also, that they were aware that here and there among the working class were talents that should be furthered.

  When an hour later he left the house he didn’t know whether he was pleased or otherwise. The meeting had been an eye-opener for which Mr Mulcaster had not prepared him. He had thought he would be meeting two or three men who were interested in engineering drawings. Yet on the other hand the thought of being trained properly for two years was like the revelation of a dream that he had never really dreamed but which had lain deep in his mind since he had first taken up a pencil. Anyway, he wouldn’t know the outcome for another month. One other thing that had disturbed him in the meeting was the knowledge that he was wearing the wrong-coloured suit. This had come from a very talkative lady who apparently did portraits and, after eyeing him for some time, had said, ‘You would make good material: you have very good bones; but your clothes are wrong. You should never wear grey, not that shade anyway, it’s much too light for your colouring; if I were to paint you, you would be in rough working clothes.’

  Was that how she had seen him, Miss Bannaman? Someone who looked like a workman in spite of his gentlemanly dress?

  Oh, he’d get himself away back home. He didn’t like Newcastle, well, not today he didn’t. If he had to live in it he might get to know it better. But first of all he must go and buy something for Kate, a head shawl or something like that to placate her. But was she a person you could placate? No. He shook his head at the suggestion. And when she knew that the girl he was sweet on was Bannaman’s daughter, then the upset he had already caused her by saying he had no feelings for Mary Ellen would be nothing to that news.

  Why were things turning out like this?

  It came to him as something of a surprise that he didn’t like being disturbed, and that up till now his life had run smoothly; at least, until today, he had known where he stood. But now, be damned if he did, in any way.

  Three

  Mary Davison said, ‘Put a shawl over your bonnet, the wind’s high. And look, if you’re going to get away, get away or else you’ll not be back afore dark. On the other hand, though, if you have a mind to wait, Lennie should be back at any time now and he’ll take you over in the cart.’

  ‘Aw, ma’am, I know me way blindfold. And anyway I won’t call home because I’ll see me da the morrow, but Jimmy said he found Kate none too well, so I feel worried.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that. She shouldn’t be there on her own at all. She should have moved in with your father, it would have been company for him since your mother died.’

  Mary Ellen said nothing in answer to this, she only knotted the head shawl tighter under her chin, thinking as she did so, What a daft thing to say, that old Kate should have moved in with her father. Kate would never leave that cottage. And anyway, who’d have looked after Roddy? As for moving in with her father, her father couldn’t put up with himself, so irritable he was these days, never mind putting up with Kate and her set-in ways. Oh, Mrs Davison was a good mistress but she did say daft things, things without thinking. It was, she supposed, because she liked company, the more the merrier. She should have had a great big family whereas she’d only had Lennie’s father. She was indeed a loving kind of woman, but she didn’t think.

  ‘Now here’s the basket. That piece of pork should grease her innards. An’ there’s a loaf there, and half a dozen real eggs, not like those pips from her bantams. And there’s a bag of cheese bits and a sugar bun. That should keep her going. Aye, it should.’

  Mary Ellen looked softly at the small tubby woman and she had the desire to put her arms around her and kiss her. She often had this desire, but you didn’t give way to things like that with your mistress. So what she said was, ‘Thanks. Ta, ma’am. Kate’ll appreciate it, she will,’ at the same time thinking what Kate would say which would likely be, ‘Does she think we starve over here? You tell her I have plenty.’ Yet when later it was time to leave, she would add, ‘And thank Mrs Davison for me. She’s a kind woman when all’s said and done.’ But likely as not she would add, ‘Although she hasn’t enough up top to keep her bonnet on.’

  Mary Ellen took up the basket and went out of the kitchen, across the roughly paved farmyard and on to the puddled ground that led to the gate. She didn’t bother where she walked because she had already lifted the waistband of her skirt high enough for the hem to come above her boots, the tops of which reached the bottom of her calves. Her legs were thin; in fact, she was all thin. This troubled her. At eighteen years of age other lasses had busts; some had showed from when they were fourteen, but hers had never seemed to grow. Grow she did, but as she told herself instead of going a bit outwards, she went upwards. It wasn’t good for a lass to be too tall, not taller than a lad, the one you hoped to marry. But she wasn’t taller than Roddy, she was just about his height. Of course, that was now. If she only stuck this way. Farmer Davison and Mr Archie, his son, both said that she had talked herself skinny. They laughed about her and teased her. But Lennie didn’t. Lenni
e always took her part, maintaining that she could beat them any day, at least with her tongue, and with most jobs on the farm, except the horse-breaking, and she was going to tackle that an’ all.

  Funny about the farm and the Davisons. They seemed more her family than her father did. Even when her mother was alive, she hadn’t felt the same warmth from her as she did from her mistress. The farm and all in it was home to her, and she loved them all.

  When she said she loved them, she did, but not in the way Lennie wanted her to love. Lennie was nice and he was kind; he was like his grandmother in that way, but also like her, he said and did the daftest things. Slap-happy, Kate called them both. But it was nice to be slap-happy; she wished she could be slap-happy. She was now and again when she could forget about the things she wanted most in life and which now troubled her more and more in the night…

  When she reached the cottage she found Kate lying on the bed and asked anxiously of her, ‘You feeling bad, Kate?’

  ‘No, I am not feeling bad. I can lie down, can’t I, without feeling bad?’ Then the acid tone changing she said, ‘Why do you come, lass? It isn’t your time off.’

  ‘Missis sent me with some odds and ends.’

  ‘Thinks I’m starvin’ again? How does she imagine that I’ve kept alive all these years and kept that big ’un. By the way, what time is it?’

  Mary Ellen turned and looked at the wooden-faced clock on the mantelshelf and she said, ‘Turned half past six.’

  Kate now raised herself up on her elbow; then sliding her legs over the edge of the bed, she stretched her gnarled arms slowly, saying, ‘Well, now you’re here, take your things off and sit yourself down.’

  ‘I won’t be able to stay long, Kate. It’ll get on dusk shortly.’ She turned to the table and began to empty the basket, asking now in an offhand manner, ‘What time did Roddy say he’d be back?’

  ‘He didn’t say, lass, he didn’t say.’

  Kate’s tone made Mary Ellen turn and look towards her for a moment before she walked back to the bed again and, sitting down beside Kate and taking her hand, she said, ‘What’s the matter? Something wrong?’

  ‘Aye, you could say that, lass, something’s wrong.’

  ‘You worried about…about him going away if they like his drawings?’

  ‘Well, a little bit I was, but…but not so much. ’Tisn’t that, ’tis about you I’m worried.’

  ‘About me?’ Mary Ellen pulled herself up until she was looking down on the wizened form of her very dear and beloved friend and she said, ‘Worried about me; why, Kate? I was never better. I have a job in a lifetime, and they couldn’t be kinder to me if I was their own. You know that.’

  ‘I know, I know all that.’ Kate’s head was nodding. ‘It isn’t the present I’m thinking about, ’tis the future, your future and what goes on in that mind of yours. Well, you know me.’ She turned her head now and looked into Mary Ellen’s questioning eyes and said, ‘Open and straightforward has always been me way of life, no beating about the bush, so I’m going to ask you now, do you like Lennie?’

  ‘Lennie?’ Mary Ellen screwed up her face. ‘Lennie Davison?’

  ‘How many Lennies are there in this valley for God’s sake? He’s the only one I know of.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Well, of course I like him. I’ve sort of…well, seems to me I’ve been brought up with him.’

  ‘Now don’t tell me—’ Kate closed her eyes and wagged her hand before her face as she said, ‘that you like him as a brother, ’cos it’s well known he doesn’t like you as a sister, the way—’ Here she paused and drew some spittle into her mouth; then opening her eyes, she turned her head sharply and again looking into Mary Ellen’s face she ended, ‘Roddy does.’

  With pain evident in her eyes, Kate watched this dear, good lass, as she thought of her, sink slowly down onto the bed; she watched her pressing her joined hands between her knees and gaze at them as she muttered, ‘He…he doesn’t think of me as a sister, Kate.’

  ‘He does, lass.’

  Presently, Mary Ellen turned her head slowly but did not look fully at Kate as she said, ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because…because, lass, he said as much in plain words. He said as much.’

  Mary Ellen rose from the bed and walked slowly to the table and began to rearrange the things on it: first the meats she had brought with her; then the two china mugs, the breadboard and the cheese platter; she moved them round as if fitting them into a puzzle. And now her voice scarcely above a whisper, she said, ‘Why did you tell me this, Kate?’

  ‘Because…because I thought you should know, lass. You will sooner or later. He’s got his eyes on somebody else.’

  Mary Ellen jerked round now and, her voice small and almost like a whimper, she said, ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, lass, aye.’

  ‘He said so?’

  ‘Aye, afore he went yesterday. We had words, the first real words, aye, the first real words we’ve ever had.’

  The fire was burning low. Mary Ellen looked at it; then she picked up some turfs from a straw basket to the side of the open hearth and piled them onto the low embers. She did this swiftly as if she was following a routine that she carried out every day. And now taking up two pieces of wood she knelt down and pressed them, one at each side of the fire as if to give support to the whole. Then dusting her hands, she got off her knees and, going to the table, she stood there for a moment before asking, ‘Who is she? Do I know her?’

  ‘No. Nor me, lass. He doesn’t himself I think.’

  ‘What!’ Mary Ellen’s voice was sharp now and loud, and she repeated again, ‘What!’

  ‘Somebody he’s just caught a glimpse of. And that bein’ the case, I tell meself it’ll pass. I hope to God it does, anyway. But I know I’m right in forewarnin’ you because if it had come from him and as a surprise it would have been worse. You’re better to be fortified against it, especially you feeling the way you do, for the sun has shone out of him from the first day you saw him.’

  There was a lump the size of a green apple in her throat, yet her eyes were dry. She lifted up her head shawl and, putting it on, she walked towards the bed, her eyes blinking rapidly now as she said, ‘Will…will you be all right?’

  Kate’s hands came out towards her and caught hers, and she gripped them tight before she spoke. ‘There’s an old sayin’ about there being many more fish in the sea than the one that slipped the line, but it’s always the one that slipped the line you think about, not about the rest, at least for a time. But then comes the day when your line goes out again and there’s a different fish on it. And you’ve learned a lot in the waitin’, and what you’ve learned is, you weren’t meant to catch that first one, you had to have some practice.’

  ‘I—’ Mary Ellen’s voice was breaking now, ‘I don’t want any practice, Kate. You know I don’t. From I was little’—she put her hand out to measure the height—‘I’ve known he was for me. And…and he has too, he’s known it.’

  ‘No, lass, no.’ Her hands were being shaken up and down between the gnarled ones now. ‘Give him his due, he didn’t. With him, you’ve been too close. If you had come on his horizon out of the blue like, it may have been different. But you’ve been too close, so close that he cannot see you, more fool him. Oh aye, more fool him.’

  The tears were starting, and she gasped, ‘I’ve…I’ve got to go, Kate. You’ll…you’ll be all right?’

  ‘I’ll be all right, lass. It’s you I’ll say it to now; you’ll be all right. Time’ll tell, but you’ll be all right.’

  ‘I won’t, Kate, I won’t, ever.’

  She turned blindly away and groped for the basket; then she went out and closed the door quietly behind her. But once she had got down into the meadow she began to run, stumbling as she went. When she reached the fork she took the ride path, running now until she came to a thick belt of willow herb, and she pushed her way through this to where she knew there was a small open space. And here she
threw herself down into the long grass and gave way to her grief, for it was grief and as painful as if she had been suddenly told he was dead. And all the time she cried she asked herself the question: Who was she, this girl who had taken him from her? Because he was hers. Had he ever looked at any of the other lasses round about? No, never, not to her knowledge. He never bothered with any of them, even at the harvest suppers. He might dance with this or that one, but just one dance he would give them, a reel or a jig or the barn dance, but with her he would dance for most of the evening, which proved that he was for her and he was showing everybody she was for him.

  Her face was buried in the grass, her two hands clutching at it. The ground was very damp after two days of rain, but she was aware only of the fact that she was experiencing misery and didn’t know how she was going to go on bearing it. What was she going to do? What was she going to say if she saw him?

  When a hand came on her shoulder she screamed and rolled on to her back, her hands now clutching her throat, and looked upwards into the concerned face of Hal on which was an expression she had never seen there before, and the tone of his voice was one she had never heard before as he said, ‘Mary Ellen, what is it? What’s happened? Somebody done something?’ He was on his hunkers now, kneeling by her side, his hands holding hers, and she was aware that this was the very first time there had been any personal contact between them, and that this was strange for she had known him as long as she had known Roddy.

  For a moment she could only gasp, but then managed to say, ‘You…you gave me a fright.’

  ‘Aye, and you gave me a fright an’ all. What’s happened? What’s upset you like this?’

  Lowering her head, she shook it from side to side, saying, ‘Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘Aw, don’t tell me that. For you of all people to bubble like a bairn, something must have happened and it cannot be light. Are you sure…sure somebody hasn’t done something?’