A Dinner Of Herbs by Yelena Kopylova Read Free Book Online Page B

fell agape.
    “Your name’s Roddy.”
    “Roddy? I don’t know.”
    Very softly now she said, “Don’t you remember your da?”
    His eyelids nickered. It was as if he was trying hard to recall something. Then he said,
    “No.” And his
    face puckered as if he was about to cry.
    Patting him soothingly she hastened to reassure him.
    “There now. There now,” she said.
    “It’ll all come back. It’s because you bumped your head.” She stroked his dark hair.
    “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It’ll all come back to you as you get stronger.”
    She wondered for a moment whether, if she told him that his father was dead, the shock would revive
    his memory. But that might do more harm than good. Far better leave things as they were and to nature;
    nature cured all, given the time. It was later in the day when the doctor called and
    shocked her still
    further. Standing outside the cottage, he said, “He might never recover his memory.
    There are such
    cases. In his fall he must have hit himself on a vulnerable part of the head; it causes what we call
    amnesia.”
    “What?” Kate said.
    “Amnesia,” he repeated.
    “It’s a kind of forgetfulness. Il could cure itself tomorrow, or never. It’s a thing like that.”
    “Dear God!” Kate had replied.
    And the doctor, being a man who, like herself, had doubts about the Almighty, had
    answered jokingly,
    “Dear, indeed! The prices He causes one to pay at times.”
    He was an odd customer that doctor, but not un likeable No, not un likeable
    But she couldn’t say the same thing about her next visitor, for if she hated anybody in this world, it was
    Clan Bannaman.
    Clan Bannaman was in his forty-fifth year. He was tall and handsome in a rugged kind of way. He was
    a farmer who had prospered in all years.
    When other farmers were suffering from drought, or floods, the sun seemed to shine on
    Clan Bannaman,
    for his herds grew and his house got larger. And his nine-year-old daughter was being
    educated like a
    lady, and his only son, who was eight years old, was boarded out at one of the fancy
    schools in Hexham.
    Everything had seemed to fall into Clan Bannaman’s lap since he’d come as a young boy
    in his teens to
    his Uncle John, who was then running Rooklands Farm.
    John Bannaman had been liked and respected, although everybody knew that he spent
    more time
    hunting and drinking than he did on his farm.
    And when he died childless and left his one thousand acres of land, mostly poor stuff, being on the hills,
    he also left innumerable debts to be settled by his nephew Clan. Yet, from the time Clan Bannaman
    came into possession of the estate he seemed to have, as it was said around, the touch, for he not only
    married Rosalie Fountain, who came of good family, but whereas most farmers took on
    the occasional
    buying and selling of horses for the mines and mills, he did so in a big way.
    It was thought that the dowry Rosalie Fountain had brought with her must have been
    scraped together
    by her family, for although they were of good class they weren’t wealthy by any means.
    But a dowry she
    must have brought.
    There were three people, four at the most, who knew that Clan Bannanman’s rise to
    prosperity didn’t
    originate from his wife’s dowry.
    There had been six at one time in the know, but one was now dead, another was in
    America.
    Kate held the door in her hand and stared at the man, and when he smiled at her and said,
    “Well, hello,
    Kate. Aren’t you going to ask me in?” she said flatly, “No, no, I am not.”
    The smile slid from his face, “That’s a pity then, Kate,” he said.
    To this she answered, “You can’t frighten me, not any more.”
    “You’d be suprised, Kate.”
    “Aye, I would that.”
    “I have friends over there.”
    “You might have, or you might not have, but America’s a very big place, and he’s moved on.”
    “How do you know that? You have no way of telling.”
    “You’d be surprised.” A thought coming into