A Dinner Of Herbs by Yelena Kopylova Page B

lasses. You know I haven’t....”
    “No, because you’ve had Mary Ellen to fall back on.”
    “I’ve never fallen back on Mary Ellen as you put it; she’s been there, like you’ve been there, one of the
    family. I’ve never thought of her in that way, never. But ... but this other is different; as soon as I
    clapped eyes on her I knew.”
    Kate slowly lowered herself into a chair now and she drummed her fingers on the table as she said,
    “What’s her name?”
    “I... I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know her name?”
    He hung his head as if slightly ashamed.
    “No, I... I don’t know her name,” he said.
    You don’t know? You mean to stand there and tell me you’ve met her three times and
    you don’t know
    what they call her? “
    “Aye, that’s it.”
    “They must have been brief meetings “ They were. Yes, Kate, they were, just brief. “
    “How long have you known her?”
    “Nine months.”
    “Nine months! and you’ve only seen her three times?”
    “Yes; and the first twice we never spoke. Isn’t that strange now?” He was mimicking her.
    “And I’ll tell you something else that’s strange, Kate. I saw her first through a window, sitting at a table
    in the tea house off the main street in Hexham, and I went in and had tea just to look at her. Now, isn’t
    that strange? And the second time was in the market, and I was close to her and we
    looked at each
    other, we looked at each other long. The third time was just a week ago, in Haydon
    Bridge, and it was
    there we spoke, not for long, but long enough to know that she’ll be in Newcastle the
    morrow.” He
    didn’t mention the times he had stood outside a particular house in Hexham where he had discovered she
    visited.
    Kate stared at him in silence for some seconds before saying, “Was the drawing business just an excuse
    to meet her away in Newcastle?”
    “No. That was all arranged a fortnight ago. You know that. This other just happened to fit in.”
    “And you still don’t know her name or where she’s from?”
    “No, I still don’t know her name. There wasn’t time to ask as we were standing in the
    street, and the
    coach came. One thing I did learn was that she comes from over Catton way, towards Old Town.”
    “Oh, then when you know her name, we’ll know all about her, because Catton isn’t the
    back of
    beyond.”
    “It’s far enough away from people to mind their own business.”
    He had never spoken to her like that before and they were both aware of it. And he turned from her and
    went into the scullery and, taking up a pail of water, he emptied half of it into a tin dish before dragging
    off his shirt and singlet. And he washed himself, thinking as he did so, I shouldn’t have spoken to her like
    that. What’s come over me? And somewhere in the back of his mind he got the answer.
    Love had
    come over him, and for the first time in his life he was finding it an overpowering
    emotion, and
    bewildering, because he had never imagined that a man could feel this way. Oh aye, want to take a
    woman. And he had; unknown to Kate, he’d had a go two or three times in Hexham.
    That’s really where his money had gone, not on his drawing paper as he had made out.
    But what he
    was feeling now was different. Not that he didn’t want to hold this perfect being that had come into his
    life and to love her in a way that a man loved a woman. But there was something more
    that he could not
    as yet understand. It was, in a way, he considered, a silly feeling, because he felt that it would be a kind
    of sacrilege to deface her virginity, she was so beautiful. Yet no, she wasn’t beautiful, her features were
    too strong, too defined for beauty. But her eyes laughed, and she had a presence that one would
    consider only a princess or someone of high breeding could acquire. She was like
    someone from another
    world, in all ways from another world.
    And of late, this had troubled his nights. So, in order to enter her world it was