The Herbalist (16 page)

When the herbalist banned me, he might as
well have cut off my arm, that’s how badly I felt. No one in the house but me, Mam
in her grave, my father in the pub, Charlie forever gone fishing with Rita instead of
with me. And me barred from all that had kept me happy.

Oh, so friendly Sarah was when she met me.
Said I was missed by the customers. Well, that was easily remedied. She had taken my
place with everyone, blinded them with her charm. Not me, though. She said she’d
call in to see me, let on that she felt sorry.

I went to see him, but the herbalist’s
door stayed locked to me. I pushed a note under it and carried on down the lane towards
the river walk, rather than facing the square, rebuked for all to see. Aggie was
crouched in the grass beside
Biddy
, her barge. She waved me over. Must’ve
seen me call on the herbalist, but she made no comment about that. A kettle was steaming
over a small fire. Aggie stoked it with a stick, made embers crackle up. The tea was
nice, black and kind of smoky. I had a pain in my chest. Heart-broke wasn’t the
word. Aggie was quiet too, worse for wear, I suppose. She must’ve been worn out
doing what she does at her age, especially seeing as she’s been doing it for so
long. She had a bruise over her eyebrow as big as a marble.

‘What happened to you, Miss
Reilly?’

‘Ach, they torment the cat till she
scratches. Look at this and tell me what it says.’ She handed me a piece of
paper.

‘It’s a list of names.’ I
recognized most of them. ‘It’s a petition to have a person of immoral …
oh.’

I read on. It was a petition by
Doctor Birmingham to have Aggie and her barge removed from the river,
or ‘local waterway’, as it was called in the petition. There were a lot of
names on it.

‘It was tacked to my hatch –
what’s it say?’ She knew it wasn’t good.

‘Doctor Birmingham is trying to get
Biddy
off the river.’

‘I couldn’t live without
Biddy
. My odd-job man mended her from a wreck for me. Without
Biddy
, I’d be nothing, just another old whore.’

She flung her tea into the grass. I did the
same. She never offered to read my leaves, just stoked away at the fire. I thanked her
for the tea and left her in the glooms.

There was a parcel from Carmel at our house.
Barley water, sugar and a Madeira cake. Charlie said that Seamus had delivered it; it
wouldn’t have killed her to drop it over in person. The Madeira was lovely. Carmel
always baked when she was in good form, when things were going her way. Well,
she’d got her way. The housekeeping money my father gave me wouldn’t keep
mice in cheese. I didn’t see any way out. Would I end up like Mam, going cracked
inside these four walls? I wrote to the herbalist again. ‘I’ll be good. Let
me back, just for a cup of tea and a chin-wag.’

I was like a ghost hanging around the market
stall, at the edge of everything. I was dead already. Nothing to get out of bed for. I
let everything in the house wait, the floor crying out to be swept. I was waiting for
someone to come and save me, or take me away.

I missed him, missed our chats. If I
couldn’t talk to him, I could talk about him. And there were plenty willing to
talk about him. My man, that’s how I thought of him. Everyone else called him the
herbalist, the doctor, the Indian or The Don, owing to the fact that they couldn’t
pronounce his name. The people said his name didn’t even sound Indian, and the
Indians in the films certainly didn’t look like him. He had told me that they were
different Indians. Said it like he’d said it a hundred times before.

I missed watching him. He had odd tastes,
loved his sugar, sprinkled it on everything, I’m not lying to you, even his meat.
He ate with the front of his mouth, as if every morsel was roasting hot, quickly
dropping his long fingers back to the plate for more. As if someone was going to snatch
it away from him. And all his ablutions at the magnifying mirror, tweezing hair from his
nostrils, don’t get me started on that. Or all the times I was sent packing
because
he had an appointment coming. Sometimes men, most times women.
But still I missed him.

I waited till it was dark and walked into
town. There wasn’t a soul about. I turned off my torch when I hit the square. It
was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The butcher’s
dog started barking and didn’t stop till I was well past. I stopped walking and
that was a mistake, for suddenly I didn’t know which way I was facing. I stood
there for the longest time, shivering. There was a baby crying somewhere in the
distance, and a chimney smoking and a smell of porter from the Inn. After a while I
heard the river rushing under the bridge to my right side, so knew to move ahead. I
walked like a zombie, with my arms stretched out. My palms hit the cold wall, and it
gave me a jolt, right into my armpits. I felt my way, one hand over the other, till I
met the corner. I was so relieved I could’ve cried. It was so strange – a lane
I’d trod a million times in my life had become an unknown thing. I followed the
turn and walked quicker, knowing once I passed a short gap behind the public house I was
at the herbalist’s shed.

I felt for the metal of his latch and
knocked gently on the door. I heard a rat scurry past but swallowed my yelp. There was
no sound from within. I began to feel watched; thought of the murderers that lurk in the
big cities, and of how they go on the run, roaming the small towns for girls to tear
asunder. I was about to start kicking the door when I heard a voice on the other side of
it.

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me, Emily, and I’m
scared,’ I whispered.

I was whipped inside the shed like a bride
on her wedding night, all commotion and examining me for injury. His long shirt lit the
darkness. What was it, he wanted to know, what in God’s name had happened to me? I
hated to let him down with the truth, but for once in my life I couldn’t think of
a lie.

‘I missed you terrible.’

I thought he would kill me then – but there
was just silence, and a sigh, and he put his arms around me. Outside, rain began to hit
the corrugated roof. It sounded like a tin shield between our heads
and an army of arrows. His mouth tasted of whiskey and I wanted to bite it, I wanted
to eat him all up. Never in my life had I been pressed so close to another person. He
pushed me away.

‘You couldn’t put me out in this
weather?’

‘I wouldn’t put an animal out in
it,’ he said.

And that was when he came upon the idea of a
compromise. He let me sit up in the bed beside him, and he talked and talked, and as he
talked he looped my hair around his finger, and I really wished he wouldn’t talk
so much, I would’ve been happier with some more kissing. The compromise was this:
I couldn’t be seen hanging around him, loitering with ill intent – he laughed when
he said that – but maybe, just maybe, I could pop in to see him the odd time at night,
if it was late and there was no one around. And as long as he said it was okay first. No
more surprises.

The herbalist didn’t try any funny
stuff; there was nothing like that. Just that one kiss, and talking shoulder to shoulder
on his bed – well, it was more him talking and me concentrating on the feel of his body
alongside my body. The rain had stopped without us noticing, and he said he’d
bring me across the town.

‘Bring me to my door?’

But no, I wasn’t to be playing the
helpless female after showing up at three in the morning at a man’s door. It
wasn’t three in the morning. Sometimes I wondered if we were on the same planet at
all. It was one o’clock at the latest.

He walked with me a bit, gave me a hug and
said goodbye. I switched on my torch then, and shone it on him as he walked away, his
white shirt like a flag moving off down the road. I was exhausted, and I was cold, and I
was happy.

Carmel rushed in the back door soaking wet,
wiped her face with a towel and wrapped it around her head. She had just been to the
Wuthering Heights
matinee at the Picture Palace and was famished. She threw
off her damp coat and went to fix herself a cup of hot tea and a few fried tomatoes. The
stove had gone low, and the kettle wasn’t anywhere near boiling. She threw in a
few sods and wiped her hands on her apron – it was only then she realized she
must’ve worn the apron to the Picture Palace. The mortification. Why hadn’t
Grettie B mentioned it? Maybe she hadn’t noticed. Carmel hoped so. The rain was
pelting down; it was loud but comforting. It had been raining every evening for days
now. She sat at the table and waited for the water to boil.

Carmel had her doubts about that Laurence
Olivier – he didn’t look a bit like the Heathcliff she’d had in her head all
these years, the one with the Irish accent and curly hair – but she had got used to him
after a while. She was surprised to be so full of emotion by the end of the picture, but
she refused to join ranks with the sniffers. Carmel wasn’t showy like that.
Grettie B had a particular set of handkerchiefs just for the Picture Palace. Carmel
wouldn’t mind living on the heath herself, the romance of it, the wildness.

She felt herself getting a bit down. A drop
or two of her herbal tonic would do the trick. She took the bottle from her bag; she was
never without her handbag, it was the only place safe from Dan’s eyes. She was
used to the taste by now. The herbalist’s tonics were very addictive. This one
would have to last a bit longer than the last bottle. A respectable shop owner had to
watch herself; couldn’t be seen to be knocking on some foreigner’s door
every second day. But she was desperately in need of something, anything. She stopped
the hand of the clock over the stove: it got on her nerves, had a
sharp, irritating tick.

Time was against her. She was ageing – even
she could see that. Her hands were her mother’s hands now. The raised blue veins,
the looseness to the skin, freckles that weren’t there before. Her hands were
often so slippery from Nivea that she couldn’t close the tin. Dan hated the way it
was always left open and the midges settled in the cream. The sight disgusted him. He
went on, and on, about her horrible habits. Carmel had become a creature of habit, bad
ones. Late to bed, late to rise, tonic wine and books. The latest one was the Sweet
Aftons. If Dan could’ve glimpsed how his bride would turn out, he would’ve
raced back up the aisle and hopped on to the first boat to England. Carmel was sure of
it.

It was very quiet when she went into the
grocery. For a second she thought there was no one about. Dan was just standing there,
watching Sarah humming as she polished the counter. He was smiling. Carmel sneaked up
behind him.

‘She won’t be such a songbird in
a few years, when her teeth have fallen out.’

Dan jumped, and went on about his business.
She wondered after if he’d heard her at all. He didn’t bring it up that
evening. Carmel would have to watch her tongue; it was running away with her these days.
It was how her unhappiness seemed to leak out, that and her sleeplessness. She had
arranged a river nature walk with the herbalist and Sarah tomorrow, a talk about the
health benefits of herbs. Maybe Carmel should procure a stronger dose of that Pick-Me-Up
for her nerves, and another bottle of Women’s Tonic wouldn’t go astray
either.

That evening was the same as most evenings
since they’d lost the child. She and Dan seemed to be at a loss as to how to pick
up their lives again; mostly they just grumbled at each other, especially once Sarah had
retired to her room. She was a quiet one, hard to get to know, but at least she kept
herself to herself, didn’t ask awkward questions, not like Emily. That Madden one
had never stopped with the questions, had gone on and on about the ‘jumping’
Sacred Hearts. Pointed out that one week there were six in a row, the next
only five and one higher and to the right. Carmel told her it was all
in her head. The next week Emily was at it again, calling Carmel into the living room to
show her that there were now four Sacred Hearts in a row, and two on the opposite wall.
Carmel laughed it off. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, she told the girl. She
wasn’t telling anyone that her husband had begun to box the wall when he came home
late at night. Not that many would believe her. She looked at Dan sitting across from
her, all respectable and indignant over something he was reading.

‘Canon Boyle has the right attitude –
did you read this?’

‘Oh, I did,’ said Carmel, though
she had no idea what Canon Boyle had said. She just wanted to stop Dan from telling her
all about it. But there was no stopping him when he got into his stride.

‘He’s of the opinion, like
myself, that it’s more vigilance we need, not less. To keep the – listen to this,
Carmel – “filth of modern romance” out of the country. I’ve said as
much myself, haven’t I? About them books. Great minds think alike.’