The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

  They took me to see the men who worked the canal, who were slaves, or part of a forced labour camp, which means the same.

  It was deep in the night, we had to go quietly to the men who slept at the canal’s side on the bare ground, else the French would be alerted. Our orders from the British: to arm the workers ready for morning, to overthrow the French and bring an end to their slavery!

  The sun’s rays were already lighting up the eastern horizon, and the light fell in such a way on the dunes that everything seemed suffused with meaning. My heart began to beat violently, for, in my imagination I felt I had been called upon to do something for mankind! I thought that we were on God’s side. We were doing what was right.

  The Bedouin had given me a sharp spear, and as we crept along we armed the workers with more. But the men were starving and weak, and some could barely walk, let alone fight. So it was up to the Bedouin to take on the French, as soon as there was enough light.

  You are still asleep, thank God, and I can still feel you, the memory of your face and your body … that there should be that, and this, which I am coming to, in the same world …

  Rebecca put the letter on her lap and pressed her cheek to the window. She felt again the breadth of him, the hollow at his collarbone that she could put a fist in. The old lady had fallen into a doze, her cap fallen down almost over her eyes. The train leaned round first one bend, then another.

  In the chaos of the fight a man – a boy, really – got struck down. He was one of those Frenchmen paid to keep the Egyptian labourers working, who whipped them sometimes, and refused them food. I should’ve hated him. The boy must’ve had a spear to his side because he cried out and clutched onto it and blood spilt out from between his fingers. What blood! I never knew blood gushed like that out of a man.

  I must tell it, because in telling, you will understand why I kept away.

  I often thought, afterwards, if the boy had not died at my feet, would I have come home and thought it all a great success?

  I tried to help him. I tried to stem the blood with my hands but there was too much of it. His face got so white, Rebe. It was exactly like the marble on your father’s mantelpiece. I thought of that, as I watched him die. What a stupid thought! I know only a little French, but he was calling for his mother, over and over again. Maman, Maman!

  I must stop a moment and watch you. I am not the only one who has suffered, after all, and I have written so hard that my hand aches with it.

  He must have written all through the night! Perhaps she had heard his pen scratching away and mistaken it for bed bugs. She had not had good dreams.

  The Bedouin are hospitable, it is their way: they must feed and shelter any visitor to their tent for three days and nights. That was one of the things I most loved about them and so different to our pinched manners! But the British officers made a sport of their hospitality, they would go to the Bedouins’ tents for some trifling reason, and sit, whilst the Bedouin slaughtered their lambs, and their chickens, and baked their bread, to feed them. All the time the British men sneered at them behind their backs.

  One night the men were drunk on gin. I heard one of them, Snakes, say that they ought to give the whole thing up and go home. And the other said, ‘Don’t you like it here, Snakes, in all this land of plenty?’ When they had stopped laughing Snakes said, quieter: ‘Britain doesn’t give two figs for the plight of the working man. Why, we have used forced labour a thousand times, on any railway you care to mention. Only difference is, the French have got at this canal first. All this is just jealousy. Men have died for jealousy.’

  ‘Everyone knows that,’ the other said.

  But I hadn’t known it! It came as a shock to me, Rebe, as you know it would have.

  I know I did wrong to stay away without telling you, and I have hurt you, and Mother and Father too. But I made my own enquiries, and Snakes was right, and of course work started up on the canal again soon after, just as bad as before.

  Everything I had thought of myself, and my home – you above anyone know how highly I had regarded both! Everything fell away. I went back to Cairo and took lodgings in a very poor part of town. I longed for the oblivion that I had had when I was with the Bedouin, living as one of them. I let my hair grow out and my beard, and then, because it was easier, I wrapped up my hair with a turban and afterwards, though I hadn’t meant to, I found I could pass as an Arab again.

  Only this time it was because I was a shadow.

  I learned some Arabic. People started coming to me with bits of work, translations and the like, and in their eyes I saw myself as someone else. My life in Edinburgh no longer seemed real; each day I left my old life further and further behind. The hashish helped the days to pass, and I fell into a routine that seemed normal to me: a little work in the mornings, and in the evenings sweet tea at my local ahwas. The afternoons I passed with the help of hashish. I was largely alone and talked to no one except the men at the ahwas, who were my only friends, though they did not know what to make of me, I think. In this way the weeks passed, until they passed into years.

  And now at last I am back here, with you, in Glasgow! You are right, Glasgow is not as bad as they say. I still feel strange, gazing at you, and again everything is different, only this time it does not matter. I would be a fool to hang onto what I know, for life is made up of strangeness, is it not, Rebe? We are both strange, and we have met there.

  You will wonder why I came back after all, when I did. It was quite a little thing that started it, I will tell it you quickly, for it is getting light.

  I was quite unrecognizable, or so I thought, and drinking tea in my ahwas one evening. A lady traveller came in – she was not such a rare phenomenon, many come to see the Pyramids – but women were never seen in my ahwas. But as she was foreign they let her pass, and she in turn did not seem to mind their stares. She was used to it, I dare say. But somehow in the course of it – I will never know how, she recognized me as one of her own. She was from a small town in Perthshire! We fell into conversation and spoke a great deal of home. I found the damp, the weight of the buildings, the smell of rain, all coming back to me. I broke into tears there and then. She thought I was cracked! Of course, I was crying for you – for what use are buildings and drizzle if they do not have you in them? The lady, with her talk, had brought back a part of me I had thought lost. And it followed on that I must set sail, immediately, for I saw straight away that I had been away too long.

  And I left on the next steamer, and I am here.

  How you are tossing about, my darling! I think you will wake soon, I must—

  Rebecca turned over the page. But there was no more. She must have woken then, and not seen him. But now she thought on it, she had only stared down at her own legs, which were kicking about, to see if they belonged to her.

  Well, she had his reason now, after waiting so long for it. She folded up the letter and put it back in her reticule and waited again, this time to watch how she felt.

  But she only felt as if she must leave her seat and walk about. Her legs still had an itch to them and she longed to stretch them. She only felt as if she must yawn, and put her arms up to the ceiling, and yawn again till her eyes watered.

  She only felt as if she must endure these next few days, else fall back into the grip of her husband, and then she would never feel again.

  And Gabe – and last night – she must put from her mind, though if she put her nose to the gap just above the button of his mother’s gloves she could smell him still.

  CHAPTER 26

  As the train steamed into Inveraray Rebecca saw that her note had arrived: Jenny had come to meet her, her face shining out through the gloom.

  ‘I thought you’d prefer it if I was here. It’s only an hour’s drive but it can be awful lonely in a bad frame of mind!’

  They embraced. ‘Oh Jenny, it is good to see you!’

  ‘But you look bad, Mrs Palmer. Thank God you have got away. Have you come to get yourself bett
er?’

  Rebecca hadn’t said as much in her note. But of course Jenny knew; she must have known all along. Rebecca could weep – had she been the only one who had not been able to see what was coming? ‘Did you hear of Evangeline?’ she said.

  ‘Aye. A bad business. I am sorry for you, Mrs Palmer, right sorry.’

  ‘Please call me Rebecca – after everything, let us not be formal!’

  ‘Rebecca, then.’

  They climbed up into the dog cart and squashed up together by the driver. And what a comfort it was to feel Jenny’s body pressed alongside her own up in the trap, and to have her draw the blanket tighter around her as the mist came down and drifted around them all as the little pony clattered along.

  ‘I am glad you returned home. I had dreaded that you were out on the street, or somewhere worse.’

  ‘Yes, I am here. But would that I were in Edinburgh still.’

  ‘Why did you not stay – could you not?’

  ‘With your reference I thought it would be easy. I got an interview with a lady in the New Town, but Lionel came to me and told me I should not go.’

  ‘Did he not want to keep you close by?’

  ‘Oh yes, he wanted nothing more. But Mr Badcock had asked after me at the pharmacy. Of course, Lionel refused to tell him where I was, but he worried about it. He worried Mr Badcock may find me out, or spread rumours to my new employers. And so we both decided I would be better off back here.’

  They had left the town and its two markers of society: the huge castle with its iron railings, and the low-lying prison with its iron bars. Almost immediately the road narrowed until it was no more than a grass track leading over the hillside. And now they were trotting along inside the belly of a cloud; the tartan rug pulled over their legs was not thick enough. Rebecca’s skin pimpled and her clothes rubbed against it like sandpaper.

  ‘Your teeth are chattering! Look, have my portion of blanket.’

  ‘No, Jenny, I cannot – do not give it to me. Look now, you have made me cry.’

  ‘Do not cry, Mrs Palmer, I thought you had come to get away from that.’

  ‘Rebecca, I beg you!’ Rebecca rubbed at her eyes. ‘I am crying because I do not want you to get frozen on my account. I think I bring you nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Do not say it! I will always help you, I am happy to do it.’

  The driver was looking at them both frankly, taking in Rebecca’s good cloak and bonnet with its woollen flowers sewn by Gabriel’s mother, and Jenny’s dirty coat and skirt that had been patched twice at the front. Seeing it Rebecca bloomed with sweat again and every fibre of her dress seemed to press harder onto her skin and made her want to throw it off. It seemed they were going very far, towards nowhere. The enormity of what she had to go through struck at her.

  ‘From the city, is she?’ the driver asked Jenny.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Come to get well?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Dare say she spends her time indoors.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Lot of diseases they have there, right enough,’ he said.

  P’raps it was not too late – they had not left Inveraray so long ago. Rebecca grabbed Jenny’s arm. ‘Could we … could we go back, d’you think? We have not yet gone such a great distance and there is something I need from one of the shops back there.’

  But Jenny turned to her and stared. ‘We have come too far to go back now. We have everything we need back at the house.’

  ‘But I think we must! Oh Jenny, can I not visit the pharmacy there? I should not be above a minute. I have forgotten something I need.’

  It used to be her giving the orders, and now it was her taking them. Rebecca squirmed further into her seat and told herself that she was stupid, and a worm, and unfit to crawl across the face of the earth.

  ‘You have come here, Mrs Palmer, to get better. I think you should. I think more drops would only delay it.’ Jenny squeezed Rebecca’s arm.

  Rebecca felt a sob rise to her throat, whether of gratitude or desperation she could not tell. And this too – Jenny knew Rebecca’s mind, what was inside it.

  The driver slapped his reins on the pony’s back and turned to gape at her again, his eyes glinting through his mass of beard and hair. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ he asked Jenny.

  ‘She hasn’t brought a thick enough coat. She is cold, that’s all.’

  ‘That’ll be as she’s from Edinburgh.’ He slapped down the reins again and the trap lurched forward. ‘Probably no used tay being out o’ doors over-much, is she?’

  Jenny spoke quietly. ‘I have told Mother that you are here on your husband’s business, and you had a romantic notion about staying in a croft, as some of the English do. I had to tell her something, but I have left it vague.’

  Rebecca nodded, too miserable to speak. It had been a ridiculous idea, hadn’t it? But she had been desperate. She had fled, she was still alive. She let herself lean into her friend’s shoulder while the trap bounced and jerked them forward into the mist.

  At last they pulled up outside a single-storey stone cottage, its white stones fading into the whiteness all around. Rebecca pushed off the blanket and stumbled down from the cart. A woman came out of the door without a cap, Jenny’s mother. Rebecca swallowed and raised her hand and tried to smile. The ground, just there on the boggy path that led to the house, looked good enough to lie down on; she would have done it if she could have borne the mother’s look.

  She must get in the house and – what? A bath was what she longed for, but they would not have it. Get out of her clothes, then. Lie down.

  Mrs Campbell was frowning. Rebecca stumbled forward. ‘Good afternoon. I am Mrs Palmer. Thank you so much for opening your house! I am afraid I have been taken ill on the journey. It is such a long way and I am weaker than I thought. But it is so kind of you to have me for these few days, while I rest, between … business.’ Her voice shook.

  ‘My mother speaks only Gaelic,’ said Jenny. ‘I told her you have been looking at the pharmacy in Inveraray, for your husband’s business. It is a good one, known for miles, though I dare say she wonders why you have come so far.’

  Jenny spoke to her mother, and then to Rebecca. ‘I was reminding her of Mrs Macdonald’s goitre that everyone thought would kill her, and the chemist there gave her something to put on it that made it drop off in a week. Perhaps that will convince her!’

  Mrs Campbell wiped her hands on her apron. Was there suspicion in the woman’s gaze? Then Rebecca could go to the hotel, back in Inveraray, it would be better. ‘I don’t mind staying in a hotel; I think I am putting you to too much trouble!’ she said. If the pharmacy was as good as they said then she could buy her drops there without problem and retire to the hotel. Gabriel had given her enough for it.

  But Jenny must have heard the eagerness in her voice because she said hurriedly: ‘Not too much trouble, Mrs Palmer, we already have the bed made up.’

  And they had. When she saw it, Rebecca felt even more the madness of her position here: the bed was nothing more than straw pulled together with string and topped with a woollen blanket. Yellow shafts poked out through the wool. The house itself was only one small room. There was another bed of similar arrangement by the side of it, and a fire belching out dense smoke in the middle that filled the whole place.

  ‘Where do your sisters sleep?’

  ‘Mother and Mhairi and I sleep here.’ Jenny pointed to the bed. ‘The others have gone to Canada.’

  ‘To Canada?’

  ‘It is better there than here; they have all emigrated. Rhona has a husband already and the others hope they may find one.’

  The idea of it made Rebecca feel a moment of gladness – a new life – it was possible!

  ‘Mother still feels it awful hard,’ Jenny went on.

  ‘Have you any money?’ said a voice near the fire.

  ‘Oh yes, money!’ Rebecca started. She had meant to give it to Jenny’s mother, outside. Mo
st of the crofts had gone long ago, evicted by landlords who burned them to the ground and left the crofters on the hillside to die. The ones that were left had to struggle.

  ‘Mhairi! Don’t ask like that – it is rude.’ Jenny turned to Rebecca. ‘Mhairi does not ask for it for herself. She likes to count it, and sort it, and arrange it in rows, whenever we have any coins. Which we do not, so often! But it stops her from her weaving, and we need her weaving to live by.’

  ‘But I meant to pay you – I mean, pay my way,’ said Rebecca, blushing. ‘I must, I insist upon it.’

  Now that her eyes had got used to the light, Rebecca saw that the little croft was not as gloomy as she had first thought. It was true that the walls were bare stone, with gaps in it through which wind darted, and the roof was wooden. Every so often bits of peat fell through the rafters from above. But a good dresser took up most of the top wall, with stacked tin plates and cups. A single chipped china mug hung from a hook in the middle as if on display. Spindly wooden furniture of different dimensions made up the rest, except the loom. A short shelf was nailed above the bed, with two books upon it, and a piece of soap that looked to be new.

  ‘That soap, is it from the pharmacy in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny, blushing. ‘Lionel gave it to me.’

  ‘Sent it to you?’

  ‘No, gave it, some weeks ago.’

  ‘But it is new, it is hardly touched!’

  ‘It is too good to use. Every time I think I might be dirty enough, I think ’tis a pity to waste when the water is so cold. And besides, the soap was a gift.’ She frowned, and then smiled.

  ‘It is only two days’ journey that separates you – could he not visit?’

  ‘It may as well be two years!’ said Jenny. ‘I cannot leave here for even a day, not at the moment, when money is so short. But p’raps one day I shall return. I would like to. Not as a maid. In some other profession.’ She tugged down her shirt and pointed to the shelf. ‘See those books there? They are mine. After you started me off, I found I could not pass by letters in the same way that I used. I wanted to read, so I have taught myself, more or less. There is an old lady who is glad of the company, not too far from here – she helps me. I find there is some pleasure in it after all, and ’tis thanks to you.’