SCENE SIX

ELLEN: (not talking directly to SARA yet — nor to MAGGIE) I like the idea of a winter baby. Swaddled in shawls. I’d feed him in bed by the light of the fire. I’d keep him safe from the feeding storms. When spring burst on us, he’d be fat as a lamb, he’d laugh at the leaves.

MAGGIE: (muttering) Lie in bed? All right for some! (Busy, busy… self-righteousness increasing) Lying in bed! With a baby to look after? (Seems to calm down… and then it gets to her again. With scorn and envy) Lying in bed! Huh!

(She goes. Meanwhile SARA appears, with some quiet kind of work, maybe knitting: she would be knitting as she walked)

ELLEN (to SARA): What do I have to take, Sara? What do I have to do? Don’t say: ‘Time enough!’ Don’t say: ‘Be patient!’ I need a child now! Nor for me — well, not for me only — for the maister! (…) Sara?

(But SARA can’t think what to say)

ELLEN: It was your mother brought me into the world. She knew all the cures. My mother always said she did. You know them, too, don’t you?

SARA: Be happy, Nell. You were happy as a lark, once. And so was the maister.

ELLEN: He has things on his mind. Yields per acre, tiles for drainage … mortgage for mortgage … I don’t know what. I’m useless in that great house! Dressing up; pouring tea. His mother minds the house, Betty Hope minds me. I’d shift the sharn if it’d help; mangle the neeps, feed the beasts. I watch him at his desk, writing, counting. He doesn’t even know I’ve come into the room. He breaks my heart. I only want it for him. I’m plump, I’m greedy, I’m healthy! Damn it, why can’t I swell? It happens soon enough for those who don’t want it, who don’t even think about it!

SARA: Then don’t think about it, Nell.

(Exasperation from ELLEN)

There’s time.

(More exasperation)

Be patient!

ELLEN: Sara!

SARA: And don’t let him sit at his desk all night. You can’t fall for a baby while he sits at his desk!

(They laugh)

ELLEN: ( … ) There’s a herb. It cures a’thing, my mother used to say. It grows round these parts. I don’t know its name. But it looked like a docken, I remember she said that.

(SARA shakes her head very slightly, as she continues knitting or whatever)

ELLEN: You know about it, don’t you? You know where it grows?

SARA: It cured cuts and wounds. We put the leaves on the wound, and bandaged them round. I never knew it to fail for things like that. For sickness too, and fevers, and wasting.

ELLEN: Barrenness?

SARA: (gently) Nell —

ELLEN: Tell me where it grows. I’ll fetch some. I’ll dig it up. Tell me what to do with it. Eat it? Wear it? I’ll wrap myself in it from head to heel.

SARA: It used to grow at Craig’s Pool. It never had a name. ‘The leaves by Craig Water’, that’s what we cried it. But — I’m not sure it would have cured barrenness, Nell —

ELLEN: I could try.

SARA: You aren’t barren, Nell — you’re spun dizzy with nerves. You just need to —

ELLEN: Craig’s Pool — on the crook of the river?

SARA: The leaves don’t grow there now.

ELLEN: Where else do they grow?

SARA: That’s the only place we ever knew of. But they don’t grow there now. The maister had a wall built, some years ago — to keep the river from flooding the fields. He had the bank raised. They moved tons of earth. And build a braw dike, and a paving on the bank so we could wash the linen. ( … ) Nobody thought. We used the leaves all the time — your mother was right, we used them for a’thing … well … (Partly her sensible opinion, and partly trying to comfort ELLEN in her dismay) not so much for babies, Nell, some women tried, but I don’t —

ELLEN: I could have tried. I could have tried.

SARA: Nobody thought to save any of the roots. Nobody gave it any thought …