A Dinner Of Herbs (89 page)

never kept to a

pattern. You were determined to be different to other people. If you want a different way of life, you

should have been married and had hairns. You had the chances. Who’s to blame but

yourself for your

dull life, if that’s how you see it? But it’s too late now, so you’ll just have to put up with it, an’ us, won’t

you, madam?”

“Hal! Hal, stop it!” Mary Ellen had pushed him none too gently, and as he hitched up his coat around

his shoulders and went to stamp from the room, he turned his head and spoke to John:

“Are you in agreement with her?”

And John, looking straight back at him, said, “Partly, yes, and I think like she does, if the man’s not long

for the top you could have given the lass a home, at least for a time.” And on that he turned about and

went out, banging the door after him.

“Well, well, home truths are flying around the day. I never thought to live to see it. But Roddy

Greenbank’s visit has brought to me mind what I’ve been thinkin’ quite a lot lately, I’ve outlived me

time. In fact, I think we are both lucky we have had this long a span.” He nodded towards Mary Ellen,

then went on, “The lead should have killed me years ago, and high living him. Well, well, his number’s

been called, and who knows?” He let out a long-drawn sigh and now walked slowly up

the room and

into the hall. And Mary Ellen, flopping into a chair by the fire, turned and slanted her eyes towards

Maggie, saying, “See what you’ve stirred up? As he said, you’ve always been

cantankerous, always the

stirrer.”

Their glances were tightly mingled. Maggie had half turned away as if she was about to make for the

back door, her lips were quivering slightly, and the mature beauty of her face was lost behind the

tightened muscles. Then each word coated with bitterness, she said, “What do you expect from a

bonded but unpaid servant?” And with that she went out, leaving Mary Ellen gaping.

It was about two hours later when Tom Briggs galloped his pony and trap back into the

yard, calling as

he did so, “Hey! there. Hey!

there. “

John had just returned from the field with the plough horses and was unharnessing them in the stable

when be heard the man calling, and, going out, he was brought to a stop for a moment by the sight of

Tom Briggs hurrying now towards the house, and cried, “What’s up? What’s wrong?”

“Everything, man. Everything, I would say. I’ve trailed all kinds of folks over the years in me trap an’

nowt like this’s happened afore.”

“What, for God’s sake?”

“Well, he fell over, just flat. Nearly fell out of the trap, and they took him into Peggy Bowen’s cottage,

and the lass had a job to hang on to him. She’s in a state, I can tell you. Tis a good job we were near

Peggy Bowen’s. But we could hardly get him in, ‘tis so cluttered. She has everything in there but her

goats. Tell you the truth, she didn’t want to let us in. It should happen that Mickie

McGuire was passing

at the time, off to set his traps no doubt. He’ll get caught one of these days, he will.

Anyway, he gave us

a hand, and there we laid him on the mat. And then Mickie, who can move faster than

any horse when

he likes, cut over the field to Haydon Bridge an’ fetched the doctor.

Doctor Brunton was laid up with his leg again so his assistant came out, but he was too late, he was

dead. “

“What did you say?”

“I said, he was dead, the big fellow.”

“Oh, my God!” John now turned and, yelling, “Mam! Dad!” rushed into the kitchen.

The sound of his yelling brought Maggie from the barn and she arrived at the house just as John was

holding open the door for his mother to enter from the far end.

“What did you say?” Mary Ellen was staring at John.

“He’s dead. That’s what Tom Briggs has just come to tell us. He collapsed, and they took him into

Peggy Bowen’s cottage.”

“Oh my God!” She turned back into the hall and called loudly, “Hal!

Hal! “

And when he appeared from the office she said, “Come ... come and hear this. Roddy’s

dead,

collapsed.”

Hal stared from one to the other, then moved slowly past them into the kitchen. Tom

Briggs was now

standing beside Maggie, and as soon as he saw Hal, he blurted, “Lass’s in a state. She had me come

back here for one of you. She keeps rambling on in her foreign tongue.”

“Get me hat and cape,” Mary Ellen demanded of Maggie; then turning to Hal, she said

“You should

come an’ all.”

“Aye, yes.” He sounded slightly dazed, but when John put in, “I’ll go, Dad,” his relief was obvious.

“Aye, aye. You’d likely be more use than me,” he said.

“I’ll change me boots.” John began to unlace his heavy working boots, and these off, he hurried up the

kitchen and in the hall he met Maggie who stopped him and, gripping his arm, said,

“Bring her back with

you.”

“I’ll have to see ... Mam.”

“She’ll have no place else to go. They’ll put him in the mortuary; you can’t leave her in an inn by

herself. Bring her back.”

He stared at her in the gloom of the hall. Maggie had always appeared to him to be

indifferent to other

people’s feelings, yet now she seemed set on having this girl in the house. He hadn’t

before fully realized

her need for younger company, having imagined he was the only one who was chaffing at

the bit.

“I’ll... I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

A few minutes later both he and Mary Ellen mounted the trap, and Tom Briggs called,

“Gee-up! there,”

and the pony went trotting out of the yard.

It took them forty minutes to reach Peggy Bowen’s cottage, and Mary Ellen’s reaction as she entered

the room was to wrinkle her nose against the smell. Then she stopped still and looked at the bulk of the

man stretched out on the floor, and her chest became constricted and her throat full.

Slowly she walked towards him. Her eyes were dry, but her sight seemed blurred. She let her gaze rest

on the face, and this gradually came into focus. The puffiness had gone from it, the lines were smoothed

out, there beneath the skin lay the Roddy Greenbank she remembered, the boy she had

loved with a

possessiveness that, with the years, grew almost into mania, and nothing had restrained her until he should

possess her. But it was she who had possessed him. Even so, from his reluctance had

come Kate. And

now there he was, lying dead, a big bloated man. She became aware of Johnlifting the

girl to her feet and

of her looking up at him and muttering brokenly, “Mon pere. Mon pere. What I do

without him? What

I do?”

“Tis all right. You’re coming home with us.”

At this the girl looked across at Mary Ellen and said, “Yes, but... but my father?” Her hand waved

slowly in the air like a benediction over the prostrate form, and it was as if she knew she had to

endeavour to make this woman understand, whereas the woman’s son understood without

explanation.

It was not Mary Ellen who answered her question but Peggy Bowen. To the dead house,

hospital,” she

said. The sooner the better. Can’t get stirred.”

“No, no, not hospital.” The girl turned and looked at John, and he looked at his mother and said quietly,

“We should take him back home.”

Take him back now? “ It was a bewildered question, and John answered, “ Yes. There’ll

have to be

arrangements made. He’ll have to be buried.

You and Dad . well, you were his friends. “

“Yes, but....” She seemed in a daze.

John now caught hold of Tom Briggs’s arm and, drawing him through the door on to the

rough grass,

said, “Slip along, Tom, to Patterton’s farm and ask them for a loan of a horse and flat cart. Tell them

what’s happened.”

“Aye, all right. But who’s goin’ to stand the racket for all this?”

“I’ll see you’re paid.”

“An’ will I tell Patterton the same about the horse and cart?”

“Mr. Patterton won’t mind loaning the horse and cart.” John’s voice was sharp.

“But to make it easier, you can tell him if you like, only get going.”

John did not return to the cottage immediately, but he stood looking over the unkept

ground to where

four goats were tethered and hens were scratching and geese cackling. But he didn’t see these, it was as

if he were looking into a clear sky. There was a strange feeling within him, a feeling he seemed to be

dragging back from past years, from the time when he was on the point of asking Nan

Cody to be his

wife, then changed his mind at the last minute. Yet what this feeling had to do with the dead man and the

girl back in the cottage, he couldn’t understand. There was no seeming connection. But what came over

with the feeling, and strongly, was the knowledge that here he was, forty years old, and that life had

passed him by.

Roddy Greenbank’s return in such a dramatic way had stirred the memories of the older

people. Many

of them made a point of attending the funeral and, later, related the history to those who did not know the

full details of the events that had taken place some forty years earlier. But the talk was centred mostly

upon the daughter Roddy Greenbank had left behind him and who was the half—sister of

Mrs. Hamilton,

who had been known as Kate Roystan, but who had really been fathered by the man who

had dropped

down dead on the road after visiting Mrs. Roystan, for what purpose nobody seemed to

have been able

to find out, only that he had made his way from Haydon Bridge station and hired Tom

Briggs’s trap.

Another thing that set the tongues wagging was that the Roystan women had attended the funeral

together with the young girl and Mrs. Hamilton. And there was never such a contrasting pair as the

half-sisters as they stood by the side of the grave, one as big as a house-end, the other such a slip of a

thing the wind could have blown her away. It was about the contrast between herself and her half-sister

that Kate was speaking now to her mother. Mary Ellen was upstairs in her room resting, which was

something she very rarely indulged in. But the past ten days had taken their toll on her, and she was now

both physically and mentally exhausted. She hitched herself slowly up on the couch as

Kate, who was

sitting beside the window, said, “I still can’t take it in about the relationship.”

“Well, it’s something you’ve got to accept, lass. She’s your half-sister, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, nobody would believe it. And I can tell you this much, it came as a shock to her.

Why didn’t he

tell her? She’s not as innocent as all that. She knew her mother was his mistress, and, living in a place

like Paris, she would know what life was all about. And the way she talks, even in her broken English,

she’s not without knowledge of lots of things.”

“Don’t be bitter against the lass. I’m not all that keen on her me self ‘cos she’s foreign to me in more

than nature somehow. She’s not like anyone you would see in these parts.”

“Well, you seem to be the only one in the family so far, Mam, who isn’t taken with her.

Even Dad has a

smile and a word for her, and that’s rare these days.”

“Oh, it isn’t only Dad, it’s our Maggie and John. You would think they’d got a new

playmate. I’m

amazed at our Maggie. She’s like a clucking hen with her first chick.”

There was a pause before Kate said, “Well, I can understand that. Our Maggie’s

frustrated. I say again

and I’ve said it before, I can’t understand her not marrying.”

“Nor can I. But now she’s got me worried. It’s that Willy, and she’s at that daft age.”

“Willy?”

“Aye, Willy. Every opportunity she’s talkin’ to him, an’ they laugh together. I’ve seen them.”

“Well, you can’t make anything out of that, Mam. Willy? Why, she’s too high and

mighty to stoop to

anybody like Willy.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen it happen afore. Women get desperate.”

“But not for Willy. After all, he’s a farmhand, and he may be a very good one, as Dad’s always pointing

out he’s worth three of any of ours.”

“Aye, and he’s a bit different in other ways an’ all in that he can read and write an’ he studies books. At

times I think he’s got ideas about himself. All through coming under the protection of his old master. It’s

not a good thing to take people out of their class.”

At this Kate got to her feet just in time to stop herself from saying, “You should say that to Dad

sometime.” Instead, she said, “We’ll be over on Sunday as usual. You rest now.” She put her hand out

and stroked the hair back from Mary Ellen’s forehead, and her mother, looking up at her, said, “How’s

things going with Fraser?”

“Oh’—Kate smiled—” I think we’ve struck the right note at last. No more schooling if

he’ll promise to

learn the farming. He likes dealing with horses best, so Ben’s put him in charge of the third stable with

Pedro and Jasper there. They are both quiet animals. And he’ll be under Dawson who’s

going to show

him the ropes and take him into market for the sales and things. I’m sure this will work. “

But the smile

slid from her face as she added, “ It’s got to. I can’t have Ben worried any more. The winter’s coming

on and as we are not going away, he’ll have to have at least peace of mind. Well, see you on Sunday,