A Dinner Of Herbs (85 page)

“Well, you might be damned if you won’t. Anyway, sit yourself down.

I’ll pour you out a cup of tea an’ then see to the bread, it’s rising beyond itself. “

“See what the lads say first.” He pointed to the letter on the corner of the table, and she picked it up

and looked at the envelope, saying, “It isn’t from the lads this. It isn’t their writing.”

No, I thought it wasn’t. Well, open it up, woman, and see who it is from. “

She picked up a knife from the table and split the envelope and took out the single sheet of notepaper.

Then, after scanning a few lines, she raised her eyes and looked at him, and something in her expression

made him cry, “What is it, woman? What is it?”

At this she resumed her reading; then, the letter held slightly away from her, she went and sat on the

settle, and from there she gazed up at him as she said softly, “It’s from Roddy.”

“Roddy? Roddy Greenbank?”

“Which other Roddy do we know?”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to come and see me ... us.”

“Why? He’s been a long time thinkin’ about it, hasn’t he? Must be all of sixteen or

seventeen years

gone since he was here. He never came to his own daughter’s weddin’. And what did he

send her? A

picture. And what was it about? The flamin’ Smelt Mills. He had painted her a picture of the Smelt

Mills.”

“He sent her fifty pounds an’ all. Remember that.”

“Fifty pounds. Aye, and what was that an’ all? Poor return for her being kept for years.”

“Hal!” She sprang to her feet, and he wagged his hand at her, saying, “You know what I mean. You

know what I mean. Don’t twist me words. But tell us what he wants to come here for?”

“He’—she looked at the letter again ‘he says he’s got something to ask of me. He’s... he’s not well.

Well, read it yourself.” She thrust the letter towards him. But he hesitated before taking it from her and

when he did he held the end of it between his finger and thumb as if in some way it might infect him.

After a moment he handed it back to her, saying, “He could be here the morrow by that.”

“Aye, yes.” She nodded at him.

His chin thrust out, he said, “Aye well, aren’t you gona fly round the house getting’ it spruced up? If I

remember, the last time his majesty proposed to visit us you had the place turned upside down; non-stop

work for twenty-four hours.”

Her face took on a quiet, even sad expression, and her voice was low as she answered, “A lot of water

has passed under the bridge since then, Hal. Then, I had wanted him to see how well you had done, and

what a fine family we had. Well, now he knows. There will be no trumpets blown for him this time, I can

assure you. If you keep your temper and show a little dignity, that’ll be all that is required to impress him,

and prove to him he’s not the only one who’s got on in the world.”

She had expected him to come back at her, likely about the word dignity, but he must

have thought

better of it for when she rose to pour out his tea, he sat down, saying half to himself, “I wonder what he’s

after now? He wants something or else he wouldn’t be comin’ here.”

“Yes, I think you’re right.” She handed him the cup of tea, adding, “But we’ll only have to wait and see,

won’t

we? “

“Aye, yes we will.” He looked up at her.

“He’ll see his grandchildren for the first time and the boyo. I wonder what he’ll make of him? Will he

recognize him as a copy of the man who killed his father, do you think?”

“Hal! Hal! Don’t rake that up, for God’s sake. Whatever happens the morrow, don’t rake that up.

There’s enough trouble, and right here an’ all, because I’ll tell you what’s worrying me more than

anything at this moment, and that is that Willy ups and goes.”

Over in the cow byres Maggie was putting that very question to Willy himself and not in a very

roundabout way. She had just come in from the dairy with the two empty pails, and as

she took the

yoke from her shoulders, Willy Harding turned his head from one side to the other on the cow’s belly

and, glancing at her, said. There’ll only be two more, leave them, I’ll see to them. And you know, I

never see what good those wooden monstrosities do. Besides tearing the skin off your

shoulders, they

hump the spine through time an’ all. I think it’s just as easy to carry the buckets by hand.

“

“Oh, I don’t mind them. I’m used to them, and I’ll have to go on getting used to them if all rumours are

true.”

He lifted his face from the cow while his hands still kept working on its teats as he said,

“What rumour is

that?”

“That you’ve been given an offer to go in with Picker Robson.”

“Huh! Oh, that.” He was laughing now. She liked to hear him laugh. It started as a

rumble in his chest

and rose like the notes of a scale.

It was like his voice, pleasing. He shook his head, saying, “It funny what a few coppers will do.”

“I don’t call a hundred pounds a few coppers.”

“No, perhaps not, but he never approached me afore the money was heard of.”

“But others have, haven’t they, without the money?”

“Oh aye, aye.” He now stood up, pushed the stool back with one foot and, bending, drew out the pail

from under the cow. Then patting its rump, he said, “You’ve done well today, girl. Look at that!” And

he pointed down to the full pail.

“As creamy and as thick as whitewash. You’ll get some good butter there.”

They were standing facing each other now. He was just a shade taller than her. His hair was fair to

brown and had a wave on the top. His face was squarish: his eyes deep blue, round, and set in wide

sockets;

his nose was straight, inclining to largeness; his mouth too was large, the lips slightly shaped; but there

was no jut to the chin, it lay flat and would have dismissed all aggressiveness and

determination from the

character except for the squareness of the jaw. His eyes narrowed and he peered at her in the dim light

of the byres as she said, “Why do you stay then? You’re not overpaid.”

It was a moment before he spoke.

“Why do you ask?” he said.

“Just that... well’—she jerked her chin up ‘you could get a better job than this with more money any day

in the week.”

“Perhaps I like it here, and ... and I’m not one for change.” He smiled again.

“This is only the second job I’ve had in me life, you know. I was about twenty-six years with Sir

Reginald. It was a long time.”

“Did you really start work when you were six? You once said you did.”

“Oh yes, aye, anyway they said I did, because I howled me eyes out when me mother

died. So her

ladyship said the best cure was to give me something to do, so they put me to work with a miniature

brush. I swept the yard and kept the hen crees clean, and her ladyship saw I went to half day schooling

too. That was up till I was eleven, by which time I had tried me hand at most things on the farm. Then

her ladyship died and everything altered.”

He now scraped his heavy boots on the edge of the brick channel that ran down the centre of the byre,

and as if talking to himself he said, “Tis strange how a woman can

keep things going. Keep their heads above water, so to speak’. He glanced now at

Maggie, adding,

“Sir Reginald was no farmer. He was but a distant relation of the old master, and had

really been cut out

for a teacher. Well, anything to do with books, ‘cos he had been brought up in his father’s bookshop in

Cambridge. But when he came into the title everything changed, yet not his passion for books.” His

smile widened, then slid from his face as he said, “He seemed to lose interest even in life after the mistress

went. Certainly, he left the reins in the wrong hands because he was rooked right, left, and centre. In my

father’s day, and when her ladyship was alive, there had been eight indoor servants and six working

hands outside, not counting the steward. Not a big staff as estates go, but then it wasn’t a big estate. But

by the time I was sixteen there was only Betty Fowler left indoors, she was the cook, and her niece

Emma, who was the housemaid.

Most of the rooms were closed up. And outside there were only two men besides me self

But by the

time I was twenty, that was down to one.

And the stock had dwindled to practically nothing . well, about fifty sheep and half a dozen cows and a

couple of horses and some arable fields. It kept you going. It was more than enough for the two of us,

but we managed. “

He was about to pick up the buckets when she said, “But I understood you spent a great deal of time

with Sir Reginald.”

He paused, his shoulders half bent, he turned his head towards her.

“Yes, yes, that’s true. He was lost for company. Well’—he smiled quietly ‘not so much

company, as

someone to talk to, or talk at, which would be a better term. He was a natural teacher you see, and if

he’d had his way, I would have spent half me time in the library. As it was, I used to go in there at

nights.” He straightened his back and looked down the byre as if seeing into the past.

“It was a fine room, lined from floor to ceiling in black oak, and the shelves all spewin’

books. And

that’s the correct word, spewin’, they were all over the place. But I’m grateful to him. I’ll be grateful all

me days, for he opened a new world to me. And that chance isn’t given to many farm

lads. Oh no.”

His lips fell into a firm line and stayed there for a moment before he went on, his voice low, “He talked to

you as if you were an equal, and he thought of you as an equal. He used to quote a man who died in the

last century called Lord Chesterfield. Have you ever heard of him?” He cast his eyes

sideways at her

and she shook her head.

“Well apparently.... Oh’—he stretched his neck out of his open-necked shirt “ I take that back, not

apparently, because he was he was a great man, as his books tell you. And Sir Reginald said that in his

will Lord Chesterfield left his servants some money, saying, and these were his words’—

he was nodding

at her now—”These men were my equals in nature, they were only my inferiors in

fortune.”

“And Sir Reginald was like that an’ all. He judged people for what they had in their

minds, or what

could be drawn out of their minds, not what they had in their pockets.” Looking fully at her now he went

on, “I don’t mind sayin’ this to you. I’ve never said it to anybody afore, but I looked upon him in the

light of a father. And, I think, towards the end of his days, he saw me as the son he never had, and if he

could have done anything more for me, he would have. But he did enough, he made me

mind work, and

in the right way: he showed me where true values lay. “ He paused again, and then said,

“It was well he

went when he did; I couldn’t have borne it if he had been turfed out. But he was up over his head in

debt, and had been for years. Huh! Dear Sir Reginald. Just think, in his last will, which he made when

his mind was still clear’—he nodded at her—’he left me two thousand. pounds in order

that I could

attend to my further education, and all the books I wished to take from his library.”

He took in a long breath and let it out now before adding, “Well, it’s common knowledge that when the

burns moved in I wasn’t allowed to take as much as a sheet of paper. But I already had a good store of

my own books

that he had given me over the years and all signed by him. It’s taken over three years to settle his

business, because the house remained unsold, but now all his debtors I understand are

practically

cleared, but my two thousand was reduced to one hundred pounds, for which I was

grateful, though

more so for the thought that generated it. “

She stood staring at him. Her hands were joined tightly at her waist.

There was a strong desire in her to let them loose and put them out towards him, to touch him, have him

hold them. To check the madness she had to turn away, and at this he said, “I waste

time.”

She was round facing him again, saying rapidly, “Oh no, no. You’ve.. you’ve never

wasted a minute in

your life, I should imagine. I was only thinking, it... it seems like an injustice that you weren’t able to

carry out what Sir Reginald wanted for you, an education.”

“Oh’ he raised his eyebrows, his head to one side now ‘there’s part of me uppish enough to think that he

saw to that himself: he gave me the chance to read and select what I wanted to read.”

“You’re lost here.”

“Don’t say that. I never feel lost where there’s animals.”

“You ... you’d be quite content to spend the rest of your life on a farm?”

“Yes.” He inclined his head slowly towards her.

“Yes. Did you hear what I said a little while ago about Sir Reginald putting my values straight for me? I

know what I want.”

“And is this all you want out of life, to work like this?”

He turned his head from her and looked at the bespattered white washed wall, and it was some seconds

before he turned to her again, and after a moment he said quietly, “No, it isn’t all I want out of life. It’s

part of it, but certainly not all....”

“Willy.” The byre door had opened and John was standing there.

“I’m off now. I don’t suppose I’ll find the rascal tonight as it’ll be dark soon, but I might hear of him.