The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

  I miss Edinburgh and those in it but it is for the best, I spose,

  All fondest,

  Jenny

  Well, there was one piece of good news. Now perhaps Rebecca would sleep. She put the note aside and lay back to try it, only her sheets felt as if they were made from wool and itched her at every point. She turned and bunched her pillow up under her head. Yet how could she sleep when Eva lay dead? She should have moved her, hidden her somewhere! But she would have been seen, wouldn’t she, dragging her outside, and suspicion would have fallen on her, and besides, Eva had been so heavy.

  Tears came then. Rebecca turned on her other side and wiped her nose with the pillowcase. The side of her cheek that faced the ceiling was drenched in sweat. But she was not warm, she could not get warm. Her feet were as cold as the pavement outside.

  She thought of her salts. She must give them up – she saw that now. But not yet – not today. She must sleep, and they would get her to sleep. Alexander must keep a bottle here. No matter if she met him coming in! He could hit her, kill her, she cared not.

  If only Eva were here! Tears fell down her face and her nose ran with the same colourless liquid, as if all this water did not belong to her, as if it came from somewhere else.

  Then she threw off the covers and went into Alexander’s study. Nothing in the drawers or the shelves but books: Common Objects of the Sea Shore, Scientific Dialogues, The Playbook of Science. And a great many pieces of paper, covered over in Alexander’s hand.

  She went into the parlour. The flowers were brown on their stems, the apples had wrinkled in their skins. The salts would not be in here, but Rebecca still looked on the mantelpiece and on the occasional table, just in case.

  His room then, his bedroom, though she recoiled from going into it, it smelled so persuasively of him. She was starting up the stairs again with legs that felt as if they may never walk again, when the bell went.

  Eva, come to tell her she was up and about! She had been wrong, she was no doctor. Oh, Eva! Rebecca’s heart beat hard into her throat and she ran down to the door. Eva!

  ‘Yes, Eva,’ said Lionel, for she must have said the name out loud. ‘I have just found her, in the pharmacy, she is dead!’ Lionel was white all over. He spoke as if he could not believe his words.

  Rebecca let herself fall against the door. ‘Oh!’

  Lionel was rubbing his fingers together over and over, he was not wearing gloves, he must have forgotten them, the sound of it was like paper. ‘Where is Mr Palmer?’

  Now she must be careful! She must not admit that she had been there, that she knew already. ‘I have not seen him. He is not in the house. Have you sent for the inspector?’

  ‘Yes, I think he will be there by now. I came for Mr Palmer. I think …’ Lionel’s lips began to tremble. ‘I think it will be very bad for custom.’

  ‘Come inside, won’t you? Come in.’

  They went into the parlour. The paper-hangings gave the illusion of sunlight, but otherwise it was covered in dust. How long since she had sat in here? She could not remember.

  ‘I think I ought to get back, for the detective, and Mr Palmer.’ But Lionel only carried on fiddling with his fingers and bent his head. ‘I cannot believe it, I still cannot believe it.’

  ‘Why is she dead?’ said Rebecca, her words sounding unbearably loud.

  Lionel rubbed at his forehead. The red line that was usually on it was not there, he had come without a cap. His hair, full of oil, fell in locks over his face. Rebecca thought of the mouse in the pharmacy and its tail.

  P’raps she would be reminded of this night, by anything she saw, for ever.

  ‘First Jenny, and now this!’ Lionel rubbed his fingers.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Rebecca asked. Tea would be the usual thing.

  ‘The door of the shop was already open. I thought we had been robbed. That is what I thought as I went in. Drawers were opened, a bottle was on its side. And then’ – he shook his head again – ‘I saw her. Just lying there! Quite unnatural. Her face was bruised and her eyes were open and her skin …’ He shut his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again he pointed with a shaking finger to the ivory box. ‘Her skin was the colour of that. I thought at first that harm had been done to her. Her stocking was off as if someone had tried to …’ He swallowed. ‘But it was not that. It was the medicine. Her syringe was rolled away, not too far. I think she took too much.’

  Rebecca sat with her hands on her lap and stared at him. Did Lionel know where the salts were? She would ask him. He would wonder at it, but if she had ever needed them, she needed them now. He would understand.

  But Lionel was crying, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘Evangeline always speaks …’ He swallowed again. ‘Spoke so highly of you.’

  Rebecca bit her lip. ‘I did not know you knew her so well.’

  As he rubbed his eyes fiercely with the palm of his hand Rebecca remembered again how near to a child he was. ‘You were her … her visitor?’

  Lionel flushed. ‘Years – more than a year – ago. Of course she has given it up now.’ He blinked. ‘Had given it up. Oh, I must speak of her in the past tense!’

  ‘Let me fetch you a handkerchief.’ Rebecca fetched her reticule, opened it.

  ‘Thank you.’ He buried his nose, then dabbed at his eyes and his cheeks and his forehead. He must’ve caught the corner of it for he pulled it away and looked at it. ‘Did you embroider this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘RM – is it yours?’

  ‘Yes, Rebecca Massey, my name before I married. Mr Palmer says I must get rid of it. But I don’t embroider any more.’

  But Lionel had fallen to twisting the handkerchief into a rope. Tears stung Rebecca’s eyes again. Outside, birds were noisily singing.

  ‘She was a friend to me,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘And to me,’ said Lionel. ‘Oh, do you think Mr Badcock had a hand in it? She was afraid of him, said she had found something that made her more afraid.’

  ‘I don’t know. She wanted to leave – to run away, she said!’ Rebecca put her sleeve to her face. ‘And p’raps she might’ve if I had, we would have, but the hunger. And then it was too late …’

  ‘The hunger for the medicine that was meant to take it away! She was getting deeper in to her medicine even as she tried to pull herself out. I told her she ought not to use the syringe, it is not natural, it’s not right, I told her that. But she would not listen.’

  ‘I know.’ Rebecca saw her friend again, on the floor. She trembled. ‘But what of the detective, what will he do, do you think?’

  ‘Nothing, I expect! She is of no note.’ Seeing Rebecca’s expression he added, ‘To the detective, not to me! Or you. I mean to say, she was a … prostitute, at one time, a fallen woman, and now she has died, an accident of her own making – as they will see it. Laudanum addicts die all the time.’

  ‘He will not notice the syringe?’

  ‘I don’t think he will care a jot.’

  Rebecca crossed her leg over her knee and rubbed her foot. The cobblestones had made it ache. Only a few hours ago she had been with Eva and now she would always be counting the days, and months, and years, back to last night. The slipper fell from her toe with a slap.

  Lionel stared at it. ‘But I don’t think it was the fault of the medicine only,’ he said. ‘The shoes were what started it.’

  ‘The shoes, with the heels?’

  ‘Heels? Aye.’ Lionel fell silent.

  Rebecca closed her eyes. ‘She took me to see the shoes … to see the girl, I mean – Agnes – last night.’

  ‘Last night?’ said Lionel surprised. ‘She must have gone to the pharmacy after.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Lionel spoke quietly. ‘At your father’s factory Eva met a girl who was working in a … house, with the birch.’ In spite of his pallor Lionel blushed a little. ‘She suggested that the high shoes she made there could add to her costume for the night, and Eva saw money in it, mo
re money than she could make in a month at your father’s.’

  ‘My father’s shoes?’

  ‘They had the tallest heel, according to Eva—’

  ‘Yes, but they were nothing like …’ Rebecca faltered. ‘Your father stopped selling them to her when he found out what they were used for, and then she must have got them made somewhere else, for they had got popular at the … house by then.’ Lionel crossed one leg over another.

  So Alexander had chosen her on her father’s account! Some kind of whim, or private joke. Their first meeting, he had known who she was. What else had they talked of? Shoes … Rebecca’s insides fell as she remembered it. She had thought it remarkable that he could recall so much about women’s fashion. He had looked down at her own shoes, hadn’t he, even then? Finely made, of course, by her father. And now – horrible thought – p’raps his bowler hat had been covering a cock-stand, or the stirrings of one!

  But it was Evangeline who had really paid for it all. ‘Is that how she met Mr Palmer – at that house?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘Aye. It is notorious, they say. I never went there! But the house,’ said Lionel, staring at his hands, ‘did not agree with her. Her skin was thin, she was delicate. You know yourself how she was.’

  ‘Aye. Delicate.’

  ‘And sometimes, as is the custom there, she held the birch, other times she was under it – which one it was depended on the man. I heard only snips of this more lately, as she drowsed, but it bothered her greatly. As Eva told it, sometimes she would wear the shoes along with the rod, but sometimes it was just the shoes. Men liked to see girls wear them, and walk upon them.’

  ‘Walk upon – do you mean, all over?’

  ‘Up and down the back, and given the rod. There were men who paid for the same.’

  ‘Mr Palmer,’ said Rebecca, her voice not above a whisper. She pressed her hand to her chest to hold down the nausea.

  Lionel blushed and shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say.’ He took up a cushion and set it back down again. ‘But the house is notorious. Only there are so many politicians who visit it, it was not closed down. Other girls might not have minded the place so much.’

  ‘Yes – she always took things hard.’

  ‘And one night – and this was what tormented her the most; she would drift away and still dwell on it over and over again … One night a girl had her spine crushed, or bent, and it was Eva who’d done it with her heels, for the pleasure of …’ He ran his tongue over his dry lips. ‘For the pleasure of a man.’

  Rebecca’s heart plummeted. ‘Oh!’

  ‘She could not forgive herself, as the girl ever after could not walk without a stick.’

  ‘She never told me!’

  ‘You are Mr Palmer’s wife. How could she tell you?’

  ‘And it was my husband who suggested she take the medicine,’ said Rebecca. ‘To cure her!’

  ‘He said it would cure all her ills, and he was right, for a while. But then—’ Lionel turned his face away and buried it in the back of the sofa. ‘I had better go,’ he said, muffled. ‘They may need me there. At the pharmacy.’

  ‘But Lionel, you know all this, and you still stay in Mr Palmer’s pharmacy?’

  Lionel turned, with the faintest trace of his old swagger. ‘Of course I will stay. Till I have learned all I need. It is a good business, for the making of money. There would be plenty who would have my job if I were to leave.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘After a year I will be able to open a business for myself.’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘Eva, Eva said the same. She had hoped to save enough to leave her business and now—’

  ‘Now she is gone, because of her medicine, which was meant to soothe her and bring her back to the world, not carry her out of it.’ Lionel stood up and smoothed down the front of his trousers. ‘Mr Palmer told her to stop your friendship, but she would not, even though he threatened her. She said it was the only pure thing she had in the world.’

  ‘’Twas not pure,’ said Rebecca, shaking her head. The afternoons fugged with heroin. The sludge in their blood setting them out on feelings that were not theirs to feel. Rebecca pressed her knuckles into her eyes. A white blizzard took the place of her friend and obliterated her.

  But if they had managed to feel something for each other despite all that, it did not matter, did it, the circumstance.

  CHAPTER 21

  The two of them parted in the street, Lionel towards one pharmacy, Rebecca towards another. It was not far to Mrs Shrivenham’s pharmacy, but she paused outside the bow window and stared in. Mr Badcock had mentioned the place, notable for being run by Mr Shrivenham’s widow, as if the place would be all at odds. But inside everything was familiar: the same rows of bottles and drawers, the same polished wood counter, the same tins of opium stacked up on top, as her husband’s. Her heart gave a lurch at this. One of them was being handed over, even now, to a farm labourer, who was at the head of a great queue of people waiting to be served.

  Rebecca wanted nothing more than to be free from her salts. And she wanted nothing more than to take them again. Every part of her body demanded it. And – this was harder – her mind whispered that she would never be happy again, not truly happy, without her medicine. And then, when she looked out over the bleak and desolate landscape of her life, she saw it was true.

  The thought made her tremble and step inside. She had a ticklish cough, that much was true, and she had need of soap. She could ask for that first.

  Mrs Shrivenham was behind the counter, licking the lead of her pencil. She looked up.

  ‘Mrs Palmer, good morning.’

  Rebecca started. She felt so like a ghost that it was strange to be talked to.

  ‘Have you come in here to spy?’

  ‘Spy?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘For your husband’s pharmacy!’ Seeing Rebecca’s face she added, ‘I am not serious.’

  ‘I was passing this way. I am not well. I have a cough.’ Rebecca drew her handkerchief from her reticule and coughed into it.

  ‘A pack of Allcock’s Porous Plasters, that would be the very thing. Anthony! A packet of Allcock’s Porous Plasters please, for Mrs Palmer.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Shrivenham,’ said her apprentice.

  ‘For we have Mrs Palmer in here and we must show her we know what we are doing! You need to warm it up, you know, Mrs Palmer my dear, and put it on your chest. It eases the cough that way, by pulling it up. But you know all this! How is Mr Palmer?’

  ‘He is well.’ Rebecca’s eyes were watering. She blinked. ‘I cannot sleep, either, when I am coughing. I may need a draught.’

  ‘I think you ought to be in bed, Mrs Palmer, I should say. You are very pale, my dear.’

  ‘In bed, yes. But I cannot sleep.’

  ‘You could take … now, let’s see …’ Mrs Shrivenham tapped the end of her pencil on her upper lip. ‘You could take some of Mr Brandreth’s Pills. My customers like them; they cure everything, so they say. An explosive effect!’ She laughed.

  ‘Have you any laudanum?’ Rebecca held her breath – the lady would look again at her pallor, and refuse her.

  But Mrs Shrivenham only said: ‘Oh yes, laudanum, that would help the cough, and the pain too.’

  ‘I think I might need more than one bottle.’

  Mrs Shrivenham did look at her then, a quick glance, but if she had seen anything in Rebecca’s face she let it pass. ‘Three will be enough, will it?’

  Rebecca nodded. And now that she had relief so near at hand – she had noticed this before – it was as if she had already drunk it down. Her mood lifted. And catching it she felt guilty, that she still lived while Eva did not, and could feel anything at all.

  Anthony reached up for the bottles, standing on his toes. Rebecca leaned forward over the counter. ‘Does Anthony mind being given his orders by you?’

  Mrs Shrivenham smoothed out her apron. ‘He has no choice. It is this way, else he is out of a job, and you can see for yourself,’ she indica
ted the shop, full of people, ‘he would be stupid to let the position go.’

  How lucky Mrs Shrivenham was that her husband had died! But the woman gave a start. Rebecca realized she had said the words out loud.

  ‘I would not say that! Dear Alfred was a good man. But,’ Mrs Shrivenham lowered her voice, ‘terrible at business. The ledger books, when I came to them, did not add up. Did not add up at all.’

  ‘But have you been taught arithmetic?’ The drops were next to her hand now, and the plaster too, wrapped up in brown paper, as if they were a gift.

  ‘You can teach it to yourself. There is nothing to it. Anthony, the gentleman there! He has come in for his Cigares de Joy, for his throat. On the top shelf! To the left.’ She turned to Rebecca again. ‘But the Royal Society will not let me in to their club. There are not many of us lady pharmacists, I only know of Mrs MacDonald, and she got her shop when her brother died. Anthony, look there, the orange peel, you have broke it apart. Your hands have no subtlety in them.’

  Anthony’s round face coloured. ‘Yes, Mrs Shrivenham.’

  Mrs Shrivenham had her pharmacy. Eva could have had her undergarment shop, then. Though it was impossible to imagine her friend behind the counter in the same bright way as Mrs Shrivenham.

  ‘You have gone a bad colour, my dear,’ said the lady. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  ‘No – thank you. I had best be on my way.’

  ‘Send my regards to your husband, won’t you, my dear?’

  On the street Rebecca looked for a step to sit upon. But there was a little patch of green that passed for a park, with a bench upon it, that would do.

  She ripped apart the brown paper and pulled the stopper out from the first bottle, and drank the whole thing down. It tasted very bitter. And she felt nothing, no effects from it at all. When she caught the smell from the second bottle she coughed and retched until she spat. Eva had been right. But she put it to her mouth and drank down a quarter of it anyway. Her chest heaved with the taste of it; she leaned forward over her knees and spat again. The last bottle rolled from the package on the bench, picking up speed as it went, and splintered onto the stones.