The Herbalist (25 page)

‘I’m called after one of the
Brontë sisters.’

‘And who are they?’

‘English writers, very famous. Mam was
romantic back then, said she’d waited too long for a daughter to name her anything
other than a name she’d picked herself. There was war about it in our house. You
see the first girl is meant to be named after her mother’s mother.’

‘And what name would that have
been?’

‘Peggie.’

The herbalist found that hilarious for some
reason; he laughed till he was wheezing. I waited till he had calmed down a bit.

‘And, after all that, my mother ended
up calling me Millie.’

‘Millie?’

‘When I was a child.’

‘That doesn’t suit you
either.’

‘She thought it did.’

There was a sharp rap on the door. Not
giving up or going away or getting fainter but instead becoming louder and louder. He
dropped his razor in the bowl. He’d cut himself. The towel he held to his face had
a growing stain. He met my eyes in the mirror.

‘Turn down the lamp. You’re not
here,’ he whispered.

He put on his shirt and closed the bedroom
door softly with a look that meant it must stay closed. I lowered the gas-lamp. Imagined
some jealous man come to kill him. Men weren’t mad for him. Women and children
took to him, the market men too, but ordinary husbands were suspicious. They liked to
refer to him as a dandy. A fop. Made jokes that he was a doctor in name only. Trying to
take the magic off him.

I would act quickly, overpower his attacker.
But with what?

With the lamp, one knock to the crown.

I heard whispering and a low hum and
hmmm
. It was Mrs B: she was talking and crying. The herbalist said nothing.
Then he said, ‘No.’ A very definite no. Mrs B got upset again. I heard him
soothe her, go into the kitchen and rummage. Then the front door shut and there was
silence for a few seconds. The herbalist came in swinging a red fox-fur.

‘A present for my lady.’

‘For me?’

‘Well,
I
can hardly swan
about in it.’

‘You swan about enough. Did Mrs B give
you this?’

‘You shouldn’t have been
listening – you’re a terrible girl.’

As if I wouldn’t recognize Mrs
B’s fur anywhere. I hadn’t heard a word of what had passed between them, but
he didn’t know that. Why did she give the herbalist her best coat? What was it in
exchange for?

‘Is the fur a bribe to keep me
quiet?’

I slipped my arms into the silk-lined
sleeves.

‘No. It’s just because you are
here and it’s pretty on you.’

‘I can’t wear this about the
place either. Mrs B would go mad.’

‘It’s just for here, for when
you’re the lady of the lamp.’ He stroked my neck, looked at me
different.

‘You’re a strangely lovely
pointy-faced beast by times.’

He always said my chin could cut diamonds.
He ruffled my hair. The fur smelt musky. I recognized Mrs B’s perfume. Shalimar.
Named after a garden a shah had built for his beautiful wife. Mrs B liked to tell
stories like that, back when I worked in the shop. So she had parted with her famous
fox-fur. I made a guess.

‘Why didn’t she just give you
money?’

‘She has to account for every penny of
her weekly allowance and it’s hardly a cost she can put in her housekeeping book,
now is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no, of
course not.’

I wondered what he had given her in exchange
for the coat, and in the middle of the night. A woman like that, to come here, to
lower herself – as she would have said – when she lorded over us in
the shop. Mrs High and Mighty. I snuggled into him.

‘All women are equal in that respect.
The Birminghams are no different.’

All women get the curse, but Grettie B
hardly gave him a fur coat after midnight for a dose of iron tonic or a bottle of pain
relief. He was measuring me with his eyes. If he realized I’d heard nothing, he
would tell me nothing. Might even get mad at me for stringing him along. I snuggled into
the fur – it was soft as sin.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when
Carmel heard the latch lift on the back door. What was the girl doing out so late? Sarah
strolled into the living room, shrugging off her coat, cool as you like, unaware of
Carmel curled up in the armchair with her tonic wine. Carmel waited till she had her
hand on the banister.

‘What time do you call
this!’

Sarah let out a cry of surprise. She turned
around; her face was pale and tired.

‘I’m so sorry, I –’

‘Who was courting you till this
hour?’

‘No one, there’s no
one.’

‘I’m not an ogre, you know,
Sarah. I know what it’s like to be young, I’ve been there myself.’

‘It won’t happen again, Mrs
Holohan.’ Sarah turned on her heel and skipped upstairs.

Carmel stoked the grate. Embers flew out on
to the rug – what matter, it was singed already. The girl must have a young man. She
could’ve said. Carmel would’ve understood. Why did everyone treat her as if
she were about to bite their heads off? Like she was some kind of harridan? Carmel
remembered what it was like to be young and in love, didn’t she? She tried to
summon up the excitement of her own courtship but couldn’t remember much. Ach, if
she still had notions about love at her age, she’d be a very unhappy woman indeed,
wouldn’t she?

Dan came home a few minutes later, a bit
earlier than usual and irritable. Maybe the teasing had started up again. ‘Go
forth and multiply,’ the men used to call when he was leaving the pub. Lizzie
Murphy had told Carmel this when she was expecting, when it was safe to mention it. He
was used to the ribbing he got for not being a big drinker – Mr Mineral they called him
– but that was
different – they should mind their own business about
more private matters.

‘Are you okay, Dan?’

‘Of course I am. Why are you swigging
that tonic stuff again?’

‘For my nerves, Dan, for my nerves.
The bloody washing line snapped today, and all the clean sheets ended up on the grass. I
should have brought them in last night. A day’s work down the drain, and
there’s no point getting Sarah to wash them all again, not till the line is fixed.
Will you see to it, and get a good strong rope this time? Don’t be
scrimping.’

‘I will,’ he said. He took up
the small brush and knelt to sweep the hearth rug. ‘Speaking of our young Miss
Whyte, do you know what I found out tonight, Carmel?’

‘Go on.’

‘She’s been seen coming out of
the herbalist’s house at all hours, on Sundays.’

‘Who said?’

‘Mick, and all of them that were in
the pub tonight. They were saying things. You know men, seeing as Sarah is young and
single.’

‘So that’s where she was!
Annoying the poor herbalist, just like her pale-faced predecessor. The poor
man.’

‘Mick said he wouldn’t find
Sarah’s attentions too tiresome.’ Dan laughed.

Carmel leant over and gave her
husband’s ear a tug. ‘She’s nothing to write home about.’

‘Ah, that’s it, I’m off to
bed.’ Dan got to his feet and disappeared upstairs.

‘I’m off’ seemed to be
Dan’s favourite words lately. Carmel would have to take matters into her own
hands; she couldn’t sit by and let carelessness ruin anyone’s reputation.
She went upstairs and knocked on the girl’s bedroom door. Sarah was sitting up
reading some yellow booklet; she looked as innocent as if she had come from Mass. Carmel
got straight to the point.

‘I know where you’ve been,
Sarah. I don’t know what kind of house you came from, but when you’re under
this roof you’ll keep your dealings with men to the minimum, especially that
man.’

‘I need the few bob, Mrs
Holohan.’

‘He pays you!’ Carmel clasped
her hand over her mouth.

‘Is that what you think of me? And
with an itinerant hawker?’ Sarah looked like she didn’t know whether to
laugh or cry. ‘I write labels for his medicines, we talk herbs and sometimes we
play rummy.’

‘Talk herbs my backside.’

‘It’s true. I’m a good
girl: you can’t take that away from me.’

Sarah was very convincing. She seemed so
offended that it made Carmel feel guilty, bad-minded even.

‘Well, no more late nights. The odd
bit of work would do you no harm; it would get you out of the shop. I might drop down to
make sure everything’s above board, though, if I’ve the time. But no more
socializing of an evening in that man’s house, do you hear?’

Carmel closed the door before the girl could
answer. Sarah didn’t look chastened enough for her liking; in fact she looked
annoyed. And what had Carmel been thinking? A woman of her standing couldn’t
frequent that man’s house. It just wasn’t done. Why, then, did Carmel want
to? And why did she have to stop herself from putting on her coat, walking through the
town with her half-empty medicine bottle in her pocket, knocking on his door and crying
‘Let me in, let me in, I need help’?

Carmel was swimming in the river: the water
was black and viscous. Someone was waving at her from the bridge. Signalling at her to
get out of the water, but she didn’t want to: she felt too drowsy, it was nice and
warm in there.

‘Carmel, wake up,’ Dan
whispered.

A door banged; bare feet slapped the hall
floor. She sat up in the bed. The soft light told her it was almost dawn. Her headache
was immediate.

‘Did you hear that?’ asked
Dan.

‘You go look.’

Dan left the bed, and Carmel drifted in and
out of sleep till he returned. When he came back, he was chatting as if it were the
middle of the day.

‘There’ll be some cleaning up
after that.’

‘Just come straight out and tell me,
Dan, I’m tired.’

‘A bloody blackbird! It came out of
the chimney, Sarah said, flew around the room, flapped against the glass, and when she
ran out, the damn thing followed. It knocked itself dead in the stairwell, made a pretty
mess.’

‘Did you clean it up?’

‘Give me time to get dressed,
won’t you? Maybe we should block up that fireplace again. I knew there was a
reason why your mother had sealed it.’

Carmel pulled the blankets over her head
till he had gone. She could hear the two of them now, Sarah and Dan, running up and down
the stairs as if the house were on fire. It was a bad omen, a bird in the house. Carmel
would stay in bed until the place was cleaned up; she didn’t want to see the marks
on the walls, didn’t want to see the soot on the stairs.

Sarah decided to ignore Carmel’s
warning. She did the herbalist’s labels in batches of ten on Sunday evenings, and
stayed late if she had to. Sometimes it was very late, but what choice did she have? She
needed the money. She tried to come and go discreetly, so as not to provoke Carmel
again. The woman could be very unpredictable.

The herbalist hadn’t paid her yet. He
said he would soon; it was adding up, he told her. ‘Think on it as saving.’
She worked carefully, never smudged the ink. Kept all her letters flowing and even. She
got immense satisfaction from the odd flourish.

The herbalist would often consult with her
on names for the tonics; he liked to change them every now and then. People thought it
was a new formula if it had a new name.

‘Emily came up with some choice
ones.’

He always spoke of Emily in the past tense,
in a careful way that made Sarah wonder.

‘What would you call a tonic to grow
hair back?’

She thought for a minute.

‘Root Reviving Lotion?’

‘More respectable than Bald Bastard
Balm,’ he laughed.

‘What about for ladies whose hair is
thinning?’

‘Crowning Glory?’

‘Miss Whyte, you’re a natural at
this.’

He handed her a well-thumbed navy
dictionary. ‘All you ever need to say is in that book.’

He was proud of his vocabulary, his
enunciation. Used his teeth for his
th
’s.

Sarah was glad to be getting a break from
the shop. She was tired of Dan’s roving religious eyes and Carmel’s fevers.
Fevers of excitement, fevers of accusation … the term ‘highly strung’ was
invented for that one. It was a relief to be away from them, even for
a short while.