A Dinner Of Herbs (23 page)

about his future. They even spoke about it to the newspapermen.”

For the past three weeks Mary Ellen had not walked along the track which would have

taken her past

the quarry, but had gone the longer way, keeping to the road, because she had been afraid to go past the

scene where the body had been found. Today, however, she did not hesitate, for the

immediacy of her

desire to know about Roddy overcoming her fears, she stepped out onto the ride and

wove her way

over the torn ground circumventing the holes and piles of earth and uprooted trees that seemed never

ending. :

People had stopped coming to the quarry to gape; in fact, j she saw no one except a

solitary figure. He

was standing still i and looking down at the earth, and she wasn’t surprised when,

drawing nearer, to see

that it was Hal; nor did he seem surprised to see her, for on her approach, he turned his head towards

her and said quietly, “Hello, there.” And she answered as quietly, “Hello, Hal.” She felt kindly towards

him these days. I He looked at the ground again, saying in the same quiet! tone as before,

“I’m going to

have a stone put there.”

“But... but I thought he ... I mean your father, is in the cemetery now.”

“Aye, yes, he is; but nevertheless I’m puttin’ a stone there and I’m going to put one word on it...

injustice.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide, and when he turned and looked at her he muttered

thickly, “They

should have known he wouldn’t have done anything like that. That firm was his life; he lived for nothing

else, except me. As I remember, he was as proud of it as if he owned it. And anyway,

what was two

hundred and seventy guineas compared with the sums he had carried afore that? He used

to talk to me,

you know,”—he nodded at her now’ about the skills he used to dodge the footpads.

And the footpads, he always said, were more dangerous than the highway men, because

they would let

you off with your life, but not the pads.

No’—his voice rose ‘not the pads, like Bannaman and Feeler. And if he’d carried a gun

like he should

have done he’d likely to be here the day, but he relied on his head to outwit them. “

She continued to stare at him in silence wondering, as she watched the muscles of his

face working, how

strange it was that the name of footpad could be applied to Mr. Banna man. But that’s

what he had been

in his early days, as the evidence showed when the customs and the constables searched the place. A

store of all kinds of things had been found in a secret place going off the cellar.

“Twas said it was a tunnel like an air shaft and went right under the house.

More to break the black concentration on his face than anything else, she asked, “Have they found

Feeler yet?”

He shook his head a little before saying, “Not yet, but they will... or I will, because he’s here,

hereabouts.” And he looked around as if expecting to see the man emerge from one of the heaps of

rubble and twisted undergrowth.

“I can smell him. A rat like him would be afraid to run far, thinking everybody would

recognize him.

And too he must know that his closest friend, if he had one, would turn him in on sight,

‘cos it says on the

notices that have gone out, anybody harbouring him is likely to the same or such. No,

he’s hiding

hereabouts.” And he nodded twice before turning away; and she moved off with him.

They walked in silence for some time, until she stumbled, when he put his hand out and steadied her,

saying, “You shouldn’t come along this way, it isn’t healthy.”

“It’s a short cut, and I’m late. What I mean is, later than usual.

Mistress kept me back. “

Again there was silence between them, but at the roadway he stopped and said, “I’m not goin’ in, in fact

I’ve just recently left there.

But I’d better warn you, there’s bad news. Well’—he shrugged his shoulders ‘that’s how you’ll view it.

“

“What do you mean? What’s happened?”

“He’sleavin’.”

“What! Roddy? He’s not fit.”

“Oh, he’s fit enough now.”

“Where’shegoin’?”

His lower jaw worked from side to side before he said, “Newcastle, for a start. His brand-new friends

came during the week with what they called a career mapped out for him: lodgings at

Newcastle, his

dues paid for art lessons, an’ then what?” Again he shrugged his shoulders.

“London town, the world? His tone changed and now there was real bitterness in it as he said, “ They

talk so big, act like gods, an’ he laps it up. It’s a chance in a lifetime, he says. He doesn’t give a damn

about leavin’ Kate or’—he poked his face towards her ‘you. “

Then he added bitterly, “As for me... well, I may never have existed;

I might have lain with me da all these years ah’ just come on the scene now. I’ll tell you this, Mary Ellen,

one of the two things I’ve ever craved for in me life was to have me da’s name cleared. “

He did not go

on to mention the other thing, but said, “ I tell you this, though, I wish to God he had never got his

memory back, because he’s changed he is. “

After he had stopped speaking they continued to stare at each other.

This news had caused her whole being to ache with the loss that was to come, yet so

intense was this

man’s feelings that she could forget her own for a moment and say, “He thinks the world of you, Hal,

always has, you know that, at least you should. He’s... he’s pushed me off time and again to go with

you, walkin’, fishin’.”

“No, Mary Ellen, I pushed you off to go with him, and you know that’s true. In our young days we are

fools, eaten up with wants and fancies that have no place in real life... real livin’. It’s that that’s got to be

faced, Mary Ellen, life. Once you’ve turned the twenty mark it’s life you’ve got to face.

You think

you’re a man when you start work at ten or so, and your thinking has taken on a surety when sixteen or

seventeen, but nothing prepares you for the blows to come, an’ I don’t mean punches to the body, but

things that happen to your thinkin’. You hate deeper and you love deeper and you learn that all the will in

the world of mind and body won’t bring about the things that you want. As I see it, Mary Ellen, life is a

parcel tied up with twine. Some folks never have the guts to undo the twine, so they live in the parcel in

which they were born to the day they die.

Others have the parcel opened for them an’ in it there’s the contents of their life ahead.

Like it or not,

they’re stuck with it. That’s happened to me and Roddy. As for you, Mary Ellen, you

haven’t opened

your parcel yet. And don’t look at me like that. I’m not talkin’ through me hat, and if you don’t know

what I’m getting’ at now you will someday. Anyway, let’s hope. “ And with that, he

inclined his head

towards her in farewell, then turned abruptly and walked away.

She herself did not walk on; all the hurry seemed to have left her.

She stood gazing after him. He was a queer individual, he really was, the way he talked, like a

preacher. No, no, she contradicted her thinking; there was no preacher about him for what he said went

deeper than the preacher’s talking. All that business about life being a parcel, well, she supposed, there

was something in it, but she felt sure that very few people looked at it like that. He had said she hadn’t

opened her parcel of life yet. What could he mean by that?

Except perhaps, that when she did she would be hurt. Well, she couldn’t feel more hurt than she did at

this minute.

She turned now and took the path leading to Kate’s. She had somehow felt that what she had done for

Roddy would make him feel differently about her. In fact, she felt sure he did feel

differently about her.

On the three occasions she had seen him since he had come home he had been nice to

her, more than

nice, and talked openly to her. He had even, in a roundabout way, remarked on his

feelings for that girl,

the Bannaman’s girl, or woman, as she was. His words referring to her had been stilted:

“Must have

gone through a mad phase to let me feelings rampage as they did,” he had said.

“Anyway, it’s over, thank God. Never again. Some lessons are hard to learn, but I’ve lea mt Well, if

that wasn’t sayin’ plainly he no longer thought about the woman, she hadn’t been hearing aright.

But now, what did it matter? He would go. Oh God! She couldn’t bear the loss of him.

His going

would drain the blood from her heart, from her whole body. What would life be like if

she wasn’t to see

him on a Sunday? She knew what it would be like, just days of toil and listening to the chattering voice

of her mistress going on and on, jumping from one thing to another, hardly stopping to take a breath it

would seem from she came down to the kitchen in the morning at six o’clock: expecting

everything to be

ready for the breakfast, the fat pork laid in strips, with the white pudding next to them, and the thick

slices of greased bread ready for the frying-pan. And she would talk as she fingered each portion, then

turn and examine the hearth to see if it had been bath-bricked properly. Oh yes, that

would be her life.

There would be no need to open the parcel: she knew the routine that would be in it; it would be the

same as it had been every morning since she had gone into the farm at ten years old and for the first time

in her life had been roused from her bed in the attic at five o’clock in the morning, and on the stroke of

nine at night had been pressed up to it again by the little woman. And so it had gone on, for never ever

had she been allowed to remain in the kitchen after that hour at night with the menfolk.

Her mistress went

to bed at nine, so she must too.

And this was to be her life ahead. Even if she were to marry Lennie, which she wouldn’t, the pattern

would

158 I

remain the same, except it would be he who would push her upstairs at nine o’clock in

the evening. She

shuddered at the thought and protested almost verbally, never, never, because if she

couldn’t have

Roddy, then she’d remain alone and her nights would go on being filled with her

imaginings, imagining

what it would be like to be held close to him without the barrier of her frock, her

petticoat, her habit-shirt

and her corsets. Her thoughts at night were wicked. She was well aware of that, but she didn’t care.

Her attendances at church, travelling there with Mrs. Davison, were limited to Festival Days because as

her mistress said, neither of them could be spared more often:

God’s work had to be done in the kitchen and the dairy and the byres, and He understood that even if

parson didn’t. Anyway, it was enough that Lennie should represent the family by calling in at Hexham

Abbey should he be in the town.

One Sunday, after a visit to the House of God, she had caused consternation in the

kitchen by asking a

simple question of how long people were likely to last in the sizzling heat of hell seeing that bacon could

be kizzened up within a few minutes if the fire was hot enough. When she pushed open

the cottage door

the scene that had become the usual over the past Sundays was not that which met her

today: Roddy

was not sitting in the big chair to the side of the fire with his feet on a crack et and Kate was not seated at

the table sorting out her herbs or pouring muddy-looking liquid from a jug into little bottles.

She was sitting on a crack et but her back was pressed against the stonework of the

fireplace as she

watched Roddy, at one end of the table, packing drawings into a folder, while on the floor to the side of

the table stood a cloth travelling bag, full and strapped.

She became still, and they both looked towards her. It was Kate who spoke first.

“Hello, girl,” she said. The words were usual but not the tone of the voice which trembled slightly.

“Hello, Mary Ellen.” Roddy’s voice, too, was different.

She didn’t answer him with, “Hello, Roddy,” but as if she were unaware of his imminent departure she

said, “What’s all this?”

He spread his hands slowly over the table, saying sheepishly, “I’m ... I’m going to

school.”

“School?” She had moved up the room and was standing opposite Kate now, and it was

Kate who

answered. Nodding her head, she said, “Aye school. We all have to live and learn.”

“What kind of school?” She had turned to face Roddy, and he, his colour rising, hesitated before he

said, “Well, ‘tis not like a real school I suppose, ‘tis learning about drawing and things.”

“But you can draw.” Her voice was stiff.

“Aye, so I thought, until I saw other people’s work; now I know, well, I haven’t even

started yet. Tis

amazing what people do, you know,” he said nodding at her.

“Aye, yes, ‘tis amazing.” Her tone was tart and her inference clear.

And he came back at her angrily now, saying, “Well, what would you have me do? Sit on

me backside

here, a burden on Kate?”

“Don’t you say that, lad. You’ve never been a burden on me and never would, and you

know it.”

“Well, I’m not fit for the mill any more, so what would I have done, Kate?” He had

placed his two