The Herbalist (9 page)

‘I concoct remedies especially
tailored for the individual.’

‘Bespoke,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m impressed.’

I thought the tea would go to my head.

Dan couldn’t pass the hall mirror
without admiring himself. He never seemed to age, not like her. It drove Carmel
bananas.

‘That looking glass,’ she said,
‘is for lipstick only.’

‘Anyone can look in a mirror.
It’s not the preserve of the ugly.’

‘You swine.’

He laughed, held her wrists above her head
and gave her neck a quick kiss. She pretended horror but didn’t really mind. She
went upstairs to change out of her smock. A song wafted up from the kitchen. Dan was
listening to the gramophone. Vera Lynn sang ‘My Cinderella’. Eliza and Vera,
the twin loves of Dan’s life. Those records were expensive but how could she
begrudge him? He was being so good to her, not saying anything about the state of the
house; she hadn’t had the energy to lift a finger, fell into bed as soon as Emily
arrived. It was great to get the break, but it wasn’t enough. Carmel had got weak
this morning: she had been trying to wash the damn clothes. The hot water, the steam,
standing for that length of time, she just wasn’t able. The washing was still
soaking. She needed a live-in: she would write to Finbar and tell him to send that girl,
for a couple of weeks at least. That was all Carmel needed to recover – a few weeks –
she could let her go then, make up some excuse. Emily was a quick learner, but she
wanted her gone. The Maddens were unstable. Look at Brian, claiming shell shock, when it
turned out that the bombs had been way off in the distance.

Carmel lay on the bed and began another
letter to Finbar; she must post this one. It was a hard thing to write down, that her
baby was gone. She started off easily, asking him to send the woman, thanking him for
the books – she had rented a few already. She thought of Mr Purcell skittering by
earlier with his head down. It
made her long for a Sweet Afton. She
left the real news till last – it took one sentence. She wept then.

She woke to roars. Dan was singing and
rattling the grate. She checked her face: it was creased from the pillow. Ink from the
words she had written stained the corner of her mouth.

‘Carmel, the food’s
ready!’

She rubbed her mouth. Put her housecoat on.
Went down cross.

‘Did you fall asleep?’

He wrapped his hand in a tea towel and
lifted the lid off the bastible. The stew smelt delicious.

‘How could I, with all the noise
you’re making?’

She set the table while Dan looked out at
Eliza. You’d swear he cared more for that hog than he did for his wife, the way he
talked to her, calling her a fine girl. They ate in silence, both famished. When the
dishes were washed, she joined Dan in the living room, sat by the fire and tried to
read. The evenings could be very long. It would have been so different if they’d
had children.

Carmel was tired, yet restless. She was
meant to stay in bed as much as she could. Doctor B said she had probably lost a lot of
blood; then he asked her if she’d visited ‘that quack in the square’.
He was worried about losing patients to Don Vikram Fernandes. The apple of Emily’s
eye. Customers were commenting about the girl’s carry-on. She was pestering the
herbalist, hanging around his stall. And if a certain someone was to be believed, she
had visited him alone.

Emily had turned out to be surprisingly
efficient. She had done a great job on their window display – people had commented on it
– and Carmel was grateful, but there was a shiftiness about the girl. Her gestures were
theatrical, unnerving. The constant fiddling and babbling about Harlow, Gilbert and
Garbo was very wearing.

But that wasn’t the real why of it,
why she wanted Emily at a distance. Carmel had visited the herbalist on the sly. She
wanted to get strong again, she wanted to have another baby; she was going to give it
one last try. If anyone could help her, he could; God knows
she had
tried everything else. So it didn’t do that Emily was around. Not that the
herbalist didn’t seem discreet – he’d have to be in his line of work,
wouldn’t he? – but Emily … well, Emily had a habit of seeing things you
didn’t want her to see.

When he first came, she wouldn’t have
dreamt of seeking him out, but that was before her baby was in the ground. Now she
didn’t care what she had to do, as long as no one knew. She could do her penance
later, after she’d had another child. She felt a change in herself – whether it
was a hardening or a softening she wasn’t sure. And there was the guilt. All the
time the guilt of wanting a living baby when poor Samuel was lost and alone in
limbo.

Carmel had waited till it was dark one
evening and gone to his door, nervous as a girl. It had opened on the first soft knock.
Well, you’d swear she was royalty, he was so welcoming, so understanding. She
didn’t have to explain. He had just the thing, and wouldn’t tell anyone.
That’s the way Carmel wanted it: she needed the small bulb of dark liquid to
remain secret, as secret as her wish. It hadn’t taken a second and had cost her
one and six.

Dan sat down on the settle bed, crossed his
legs and opened the
Sunday Press
.

‘I wrote to Finbar,’ Carmel
said; ‘told him that we’ll take the girl he was going to send before, when …
Anyway, we won’t need Emily any more – will you tell her?’

‘I thought Sad Eyes was a great
help?’ He straightened up. ‘And do you know what she told me? Did you know,
Carmel, that Carole Lombard and Clark Gable weren’t even properly
married?’

‘Ah, how would Emily know, she’s
full of nonsense. Dan, Grettie B says she’s besotted with that herbalist person;
it’s unseemly and reflects badly on us.’

‘Emily’s no worse than the rest
of them – sure isn’t every woman in the town lapping up his miracle elixirs? You
even.’ He winked at his wife.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Lizzie saw you coming out of that
shack he calls a dispensary. Did Mr Sing-Song promise to make you look younger? The
things
women believe. Only a time machine could do that. Is that what
he has in there, Carmel, a time machine!’

‘Very funny. Lizzie must’ve been
on the lash because it wasn’t me she saw, mark my words.’

She snapped her novel shut.
Brave New
World
indeed – she couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It vexed Carmel
that Dan thought she wanted wrinkle lotion. The whole thing vexed her.

‘Look, I’m sorry for laughing.
He’s only a con man, you know that, don’t you?’ He reached over and
touched her knee.

‘What would you know about
anything?’ Why was there a lump in her throat?

‘He’s just peddling hope,
Carmel.’ Dan’s tone had softened.

‘What have you got against
hope?’ She gave him a water-eyed glance.

‘Nothing.’ He held her hand, and
dared to say the unmentionable. ‘Did you think he could help us have children, is
that it?’

She couldn’t speak.

‘So what now?’ he said.
‘Bed?’

‘Why not.’

She poked the fire while he left the room,
didn’t want to meet his eye. Followed him up the stairs as if she were in no great
hurry. Unbuttoned her dress with her back to Dan, hung it carefully in their wardrobe.
Got into bed with her slip on.

‘My eyes are sore, Dan.’

He got up and closed the heavy drapes. All
light left the room except for bright pins where the curtains didn’t meet. It
reminded her of when the thread ended on the spool and the needle ran on regardless,
puncturing seed holes of light into the seams of the fabric. He pulled up her slip. This
was the first time, the first time since she had lost the child. Again, she felt guilty.
She tutted and sighed as she allowed him to adjust her clothing, like it was all for
him. He was more gentle than usual, went slow. Still, it stung. She winced at first, but
then she felt herself move beneath him, in time with him. Mortified that her body had
betrayed her. It was greedy, ready and waiting.

Afterwards Carmel had a dream, as mixed up a
dream as she’d
ever had. The roots of her hair were bedevilled
by care; someone kissed her fingertips with a soft mouth. ‘Oh, my dear, you have
dancer’s hands.’ She wasn’t sure if it was a woman or a man. They wore
a headscarf like a man in a play who acts as a stepmother, who dresses as a witch, who
pretends to be a good woman selling an apple to Snow White. ‘Be careful what you
wish for, it could come true,’ whispered this stepmother, as she pressed the apple
to Carmel’s mouth. It was green and felt hard against her lips. Blood pooled in
the loose skin over her front teeth. ‘I don’t want it!’ Carmel
screamed.

Dan woke her.

‘What is it, kitten?’ He always
called her silly names after.

‘It was Goldilocks’s stepmother;
she was trying to feed me a poisoned apple.’

He hugged her. ‘No, she
couldn’t,’ he said. ‘Goldilocks didn’t have a
stepmother.’

‘That doesn’t mean she
couldn’t force an apple down me.’

‘It does, because she didn’t
exist,’ he said, pleased with his logic.

He smiled, moved in closer. ‘Do you
think we’ve made a baby?’ he whispered.

‘Stop it. Don’t tempt
fate.’ She pushed him away.

‘You’re awful contrary, Carmel,
you know that?’

‘Oh, what happened to
“kitten”? Is kitten gone?’

He pulled on his trousers and walked
downstairs with his hands in his pockets, trying to whistle.

I chanced calling round to the herbalist
early one Sunday morning, just after breakfast. Curious to see if he observed the day of
rest. He answered the door with his shirt hanging out and his hair all over the place.
Asked if I was ill, but he was only joking this time. He looked up and down the lane to
see if there was anyone about – there wasn’t – so he let me in. The partition
curtain was half pulled back. His bed was a stretcher bed. A basin and a jug stood at
the end. A golden virgin-and-child calendar was taped over the head of it. He stoked the
stove, slipped in a piece of turf and set the kettle on heat.

‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

I arranged myself on the corner stool with
my new mending bag on my lap. He got on with his morning routine as if I wasn’t
there. Soaped and shaved in front of the mirror taped to the wall above the basin. With
his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, I could see he had the muscles of a
barrowman. I moved a bit, to get a better view of him and his reflection. As he tapped
his razor off the basin, something he did again and again, I kept seeing a flash of
green in the crook of his arm. His skin was inked in jade, some sort of tattoo. He
caught me staring then, thought I was admiring his muscles and dared me to feel his
arms; I did. They were like stone.

‘Are you human at all?’ I
asked.

He liked that. Said he did physical
exercises every day in the yard. I made an impressed face, didn’t mention the
tattoo; maybe he was ashamed of it, maybe that’s why he shaved with his shirt on
and didn’t strip to the waist, like I had hoped he would. He had the cheek then to
say that Irish women were square-shaped, when he was no Johnny Weissmuller himself. Told
me that I was shaped like a girl from his country. His family, he did not talk about
them. All dead.

‘Your mother too?’

He shook his head. No more talk. He splashed
some cologne on to his palm, rubbed his hands together, then patted his jaw and neck.
The sweet peppery scent would send you to heaven and back. Oh, he was a proper
herbalist, no matter what Mrs B said. He walked the fields collecting weeds and wild
flowers most mornings, till his trousers were wet to the knee. I saw him, but he never
saw me. At least I hoped he didn’t.

The kettle was beginning to steam. The
herbalist rushed to take it off the heat. Steam wasn’t a good idea, not when he
was drying plants. I was surprised at how withered they were. What good was a dried-up
old flower head?