A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy) Page 6

  ‘Coming up eight I understand.’

  ‘Well, he’ll soon be ready for work, or at best, part-time schooling. But if I can do anything in that line, I will. You could do worse than let him come to me on the farm. He’d learn a lot. And I mean it.’ He bent towards her now. ‘Give me credit for this one good thing, Kate.’

  She had been brought up to think that there was some good in everyone, that no-one was totally bad, so on this she wanted to answer, ‘All right, I’ll take you at your word,’ because if anybody could help a lad like this one without a father and without any good prospects but those of going into either the smelting mills or the coal mine, he could. But what she said was, ‘He’ll not lack for education. I’ll see to that and at the right time. As for work, that’ll come at the right time an’ all.’

  ‘You don’t change, Kate.’

  ‘No, I don’t change.’

  ‘’Tis a pity.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Both of us.’

  ‘That remains to be seen. I wish you good day, Mr Bannaman.’

  The man looked once more at the boy who was still looking at him, then turned and went out.

  She paused a moment, then looked at the door before going and opening it and looking to where her visitor, now on horseback, was riding over the field. Presently, as if coming to a decision, she closed the door again and walked slowly to the boy and said, ‘Do…do you remember that man?’

  He stared at her for a moment. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t seen him afore?’

  ‘No.’

  She straightened herself; then with a smile she asked, ‘Do you feel better?’

  For answer he put his hand to his head and she said, ‘Your head aches? Oh, I’ll give you something that’ll fix that.’

  But before doing so, she went once again to the door and, having opened it and satisfied herself that Bannaman had really gone, she stood thoughtfully looking into the distance. Why had he shaved off his beard? But then he’d only had a beard during the last three or four years; he’d always been clean-shaven before that. But why had he shaved it off now? And this talk of gathering up young trees.

  Later on she would go up to the copse and look round.

  Towards evening she went up on the top of the quarry and she stood on the part from which she had caught sight of the boy’s hand four days ago; and she walked round the small clearing where the bushes had been trampled down. But there had been much more trampling about since then so that now there was nothing to see but stones scattered about. Men from the mine had been clearing a way to make a fresh path to get from one end of the quarry to the other.

  She next walked further along the track, penetrating the growth here and there, and although she saw that there were holes where young trees had been dug out, there were not all that many, not enough to start a plantation, not more than a couple of dozen all told.

  That weird feeling was still on her. If only the boy could remember what had actually happened. Well, all she could do was wait, and likely when he did remember she’d be able to say to herself, I hadn’t me feeling for nothing.

  PART ONE

  The children

  One

  ‘Now I’ve told you, Mary Ellen, anyway you know as well as I do, your da doesn’t like you changing your Sunday clothes and rampagin’ around like a wild thing.’

  ‘’Tis the only day I’ve got to rampage around, Ma.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky.’

  ‘I’m not, Ma; but I don’t see why I can’t take me good boots and frock off and have a dander in the wood.’

  ‘Dander? You mean gallop.’ Jane Lee turned on her young daughter, half smiling now as she said, ‘I didn’t give birth to a daughter but something atween a rabbit and a fox, I think, because I do believe if you could burrow into the earth you’d do so.’

  ‘Rabbits sit still, Ma, to wash their faces, and they sit stiller when a fox stares at them.’

  ‘Cheeky face!’ Her mother’s hand came out and slapped her gently on the cheek, at which Mary Ellen coaxed, ‘Aw, Ma, let me change me frock; me da won’t be back from Haydon Bridge for another two hours. And look’—she went and put her arms around her mother’s waist—‘I’ll be back long afore then and I’ll do another quick change and I’ll sit on the chair’—she nodded towards the seat she had just vacated—‘and I’ll put me hands on me lap and I’ll cross me ankles and when he says, ‘Well, what have you been up to, miss, since I’ve been away?’ I’ll say, ‘Nothin’, Da; I sat here waitin’ for you.’

  A none-too-gentle push knocked her almost on to her back, but her mother was laughing as she said, ‘I know where you’ll end up, in the House of Correction while you’re alive and in hell when you’re dead.’

  ‘Eeh, Ma!’

  ‘Never you mind, “Eeh, Ma.” You’re as wily as that fox you were talking about.’

  They stared at each other for a moment, and when Jane next spoke there was a serious note in her voice. ‘You know, Mary Ellen,’ she said, ‘you’re ten and you’re going out into the world next week and you’ll have to stop your flighty ways.’

  ‘Oh, Ma.’ Mary Ellen moved her head from side to side now and it showed her impatience as she replied, ‘It’s only Mr Davison’s farm, and I’ve been goin’ back and forwards there for years, and I know them all.’

  ‘Yes, miss, you might know them all, but you knew them when you were fetchin’ the milk, now you’re going to work in the kitchen, and Mrs Davison will be giving you a wage and so she’ll expect respect and no back answers.’

  ‘I don’t back-answer…well’—her lips were pursed now and a deep twinkle came into her eyes—‘only you and—’ she drew her lips into a tight line before she added softly, ‘me da.’

  ‘Your da.’ Jane jerked her chin upwards. ‘He’s to blame really for the way you are, he’s ruined you, broken your neck an’ given you ideas above your station.’

  ‘Yes, Ma, yes, he has, like makin’ me wear me Sunday clothes all day. Sarah and Mary Roberts don’t have to.’

  ‘Sarah and Mary Roberts!’ Her tone was scornful. ‘It’s a wonder they’ve got a decent rag to their backs, the way their father goes on. And anyway, you know your da doesn’t like you mixing with them. And another thing about mixin’, now I’ve got to tell you this, and I’m serious’—Jane wagged her finger at her daughter—‘you’ve got to stop this running wild with the lads.’

  ‘I don’t, Ma.’ The small figure stretched, the ringlets of hair bobbed up and down, the chin was thrust out, and the brown eyes blazed with indignation. ‘I don’t run wild with them, they always come after me. ‘

  ‘That isn’t true and you know it. You’re never away from Kate’s when you think Roddy’s there.’

  ‘Well, Roddy’s different. I’ve always played with Roddy.’

  Jane’s voice had a patient note to it now as she said, ‘Yes, you’ve always played with Roddy; that was when you were little, but now you’re ten years old and he’s a young lad. What is he? Coming up thirteen, and he could be taken for sixteen any day. Your playin’ days are over, Mary Ellen. And it isn’t only him, it’s Hal Roystan, too. Now he is fourteen, although strangely he doesn’t look it. It’s the opposite way with him, not being of Roddy’s height and build. Now I’ve always warned you against Hal, haven’t I? He’s a strange lad, bitter. Of course he’s got something to be bitter about. It was all right when you were all little together, but now you’re all growing an’ there are things you should know…’

  ‘Ma, I don’t want to know, I mean I don’t want to know any more, please.’

  The appeal in the voice and small face silenced Jane and she stared down on her daughter’s troubled countenance. At times, her child both amazed and frightened her with her understanding of things that she herself could not explain in words, nor yet conjure up in thought. And now she listened as Mary Ellen said, ‘I’ve told you, Ma, I don’t like Hal, but in a way I’m sorry for him, and I get a bit pipped against
him at times because he always wants to be with Roddy. I suppose it’s because Roddy found him that time sleeping out in the woods and brought him to Kate…’

  At this point Jane put in, ‘Mrs Kate,’ and was immediately answered with, ‘Not any more, Ma. Kate herself said I needn’t call her missis any more now I was goin’ out to work. She said that only yesterday. But Hal, Ma, I’ve never run wild with him ’cos he doesn’t like me any more than I like him. But where Roddy is, he’s always there an’ all. Just ’cos he works alongside of him he has to go rabbitin’ and fishin’ with him.’

  ‘And what about swimming?’

  ‘Oh! Oh Ma’—again the small body bristled—‘I never go near them when they’re swimmin’. And anyway, the water in the dam would freeze you. It’s bad enough if you plodge along the edge. Ma—’ Once more the small arms were round Jane’s waist and the face upturned to hers and the voice placating as it said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be good at Mrs Davison’s an’ do me work and I won’t answer back, but Ma, don’t stop me goin’ to Kate’s and…an’ seeing Roddy, ’cos…’cos, Ma, I like Roddy.’

  Jane closed her eyes. Then, her voice as soft but not as placating as her daughter’s tone had been, she said, ‘Mary Ellen, don’t let on to anybody, not anybody mind, that…that you like Roddy. Lasses don’t do that kind of thing. Well, not until they are fifteen or sixteen or so, and you’ve got a long way to go yet.’

  ‘But…but I couldn’t stop liking Roddy, Ma.’

  Jane sighed and, unloosening the hands from around her waist, she held them together in front of her as she said, ‘Nobody’s asking you to stop liking Roddy, but you haven’t got to say it out. You see what I mean? You don’t go round saying you like lads, this one or that one, not even one like Roddy…You haven’t said to him you like him, have you?’

  ‘No Ma.’

  ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘No, Ma, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, don’t ever.’

  ‘Not ever, Ma?’

  ‘Oh child. Well not until you’re grown up, and by then you’ll likely have your eye on somebody else and have even forgotten Roddy.’

  ‘I’ll never forget about Roddy, Ma.’

  Jane had been in the act of turning away to attend to her baking, but now she looked at her daughter again and in the glance they exchanged there was certainty on the one side and fear on the other, and the fear almost caused Jane to shout now as she said, ‘What if he regains his memory and remembers that his da was a sailor and gets the urge to do what he did and go off? What about it then?’ And her daughter’s reply to this stilled any remark she would have made if she could have thought of one, for Mary Ellen said quite quietly, ‘We’ve talked about that, and he said it might happen and it might never happen, time will tell, it’s all in the wind.’

  ‘What you want to draw my face for when there’s better-looking things even in the pigsty, I don’t know.’

  ‘Keep yourself still, and stop twitching your nose.’

  ‘I’m sweatin’, it’s running out of me hair.’ Kate slanted her eyes to where the boy was sitting, a slate held on his knee, a chalk poised over it, and there was love and admiration in her glance, for if this lad had been born of her own flesh, she couldn’t have loved him more dearly. Looking back now, she hardly remembered her own son; her life seemed to have begun the day she saw this boy’s arm hanging from the quarry wall. And she had loved him from that moment. Sometimes she was surprised that she hadn’t carried him in her womb, so deep was her feeling for him, and so close were they together in all ways. She only wished one thing, that fortunes were different, that he hadn’t to work down in that stinking smelt mill, for God knew, even with their newfangled tunnels leading to chimneys on the hill to take away the gases, life was limited if you spent twelve hours a day, six days a week over there.

  Her eyes now slid to the other occupant of the room. She had feelings for him too, but they were mostly of pity for he’d had a hard life of it since his father, the big-headed clerk, had slunk off with the wages. The lad had been hard put to survive. Twice they had taken him to the poorhouse, and twice he had run away. And then had come the day that Roddy brought him to her, dirty, practically starving and more like a wild animal than a boy. It was she who had gone over the hill to Abel Hamilton, who was a widower with no chick or child of his own and a man who was against all order. He lived by what he made out of his stint and the few animals he kept on it, and she had persuaded him to give the lad shelter in return for which he would work for him. And Hal had worked for him till he was eleven, when he went first into the coal mine and then, for bigger money, down to the smelt mill.

  She sometimes thought that the lad had grown like the old man, wary, close, wasting no words on speech. The only time he had ever let his tongue loose was the day he came to her for a potion for his bruises, for he had been kicked black and blue by some louts from Haydon Bridge way. And on that occasion he had said to her, ‘I’ll suffer to me dying day for what me dad did. Nobody’ll ever let me forget it. But you know something, Mrs Kate, I’ve a feelin’ in me that one day he’ll come back. I get it strong at times.’ And then he had cried: his head in his folded arms, he had sobbed while she rubbed his discoloured body with a balm that never failed to give ease, for her mother had passed the recipe on to her before she had died, and over the years since she could have made a pretty penny, had she had enough to hand to satisfy all those who had offered to pay her for it, especially those who went hunting and could not keep their seats.

  The next day the boy had brought her a sack of peat, saying her salve was magic. And she had agreed with him, saying, ‘Aye. Yes, it is,’ for so it had proved in many other cases. Always she kept her recipe to herself: to enquirers she would say, ‘Oh, ’tis mainly oil of roses, and St John’s wort.’ To others: ‘Pound up some baccy leaves in a mortar with some balsam.’ She never mentioned turpentine or masticke, or a drop of wax, or resin to give the whole a stiffness, or the quantities. And so the recipients of her information always came back to her, saying, ‘I did what you said, Kate, but it didn’t work for me like yours does.’

  One thing that irritated her about Hal, but not to the extent it did Mary Ellen, was the fact, to put it in her own words, he hardly let Roddy breathe. But then he had no other friend to her knowledge, nor did he trouble the lasses.

  Hal now caught her glance but there was no answering smile in his eyes, and her lips champed against each other before she spoke with an effort to keep her face straight, ‘Did he ever want to draw you, Hal?’ And the answer she received was ‘No.’ And now, trying not to move, she turned her eyes in Roddy’s direction and asked, ‘Why don’t you draw Hal?’ And the answer she was given this time was, ‘He’s got a difficult face.’

  And now she did move: she put her head back and laughed, and Roddy cried, ‘Oh, that’s done it! Well, I’ll finish you later.’ And he stood up and turned the slate downwards, and when she said, ‘Let me have a look,’ he answered, ‘When it’s finished and I’ve put it on paper.’

  ‘I’ll likely be dead by then; that’s the third go you’ve had on me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder, as I’m not very good at faces.’

  ‘You mean you’re not very good at mine. Anyway, after that business of sittin’ like a stook I’ve got a thirst on me. What about you two?’

  Before they could answer she glanced through the open door, saying, ‘Ah now, here’s one who never refuses a drink.’ And as Mary Ellen stepped into the room, Kate said to her, ‘I was just saying you’d like a drink.’

  ‘Aye. Yes, thanks, Kate, I would; it’s hot.’ Mary Ellen pulled the top of her cotton dress away from her neck. Then looking towards where Roddy was putting his slate and chalk into what looked like a canvas bag, she added, ‘You been drawin’ again?’

  ‘No, he’s been fishin’.’

  She turned a sharp glance on the boy sitting to the side of the fire, and she retorted immediately, ‘Yes, I can see that an’ all, a
nd you likely got the hook in your tongue, you’re so sharp. You should have got the line round your neck—’ She was about to add, ‘and swung from it’, but she thought that nasty; instead, she continued to return the stare of the steel-grey eyes until Kate said, ‘Now, now, you two. And you, me lass, get yourself in the room afore you start.’

  ‘Well’—she tossed her head—‘he started, not me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who started, I’m stoppin’ it. Do you want ginger or herb beer? But need I ask, it’s ginger, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She ignored the abrupt reply, nor did she ask the boys what they wanted as she struggled to get up.

  The room to themselves now, there was silence between the three of them for a moment before, looking at Roddy, Mary Ellen asked, ‘You goin’ down the dam?’

  ‘No’—Roddy shook his head—‘I’m goin’ over to the mill.’

  ‘The mill?’ She looked him up and down. He was in his Sunday suit. And he explained briefly by muttering, ‘I’m drawin’ it from the top of the bank.’

  ‘Drawing the mill? What do you want to draw the mill for?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t get enough of it while he’s there, and he wants to remember it when he gets home.’

  Again she was staring at the older boy. ‘Clever clogs.’ She made a face at him, then added, ‘I bet you don’t use a knife to spread your drippin’, you do it with your tongue.’

  At this Roddy laughed and said, ‘Well, I bet I know who showed him how to do it.’ And he gave her a push in the shoulder; and now she laughed too, a gay high laugh, ending it with the question, ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Eeh, no! Your da’s forbidden you along there, hasn’t he? And there’ll be a shift goin’ down about now.’