The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

  ‘I think reading is a gift that all us women should have. I thought that about my medicine once.’

  ‘But I can see you drooping, Mrs Palmer, it has been a long journey. Would you like your bed?’

  ‘Perhaps I could lie down, just for a moment.’

  Rebecca was gladder than she thought she could be to lie down on her lumpy mattress and rest her head on her pillow that made her sneeze. Even so, she felt sure she would never sleep. The straw was full of creatures, she could hear them rustling about under her head. But after a while the murmuring voices and the rustle of the sheep that stood in the next door shed lulled her into an uneasy slumber, where her skin crawled with straw insects and her eyes itched.

  When she awoke the soup was ready and she drank it down, and another bowl, until she dared not ask for more. Then she lay down again under her blanket and stared at the fire. Her nightgown smelled of Gabe. It ought to comfort her, but it only made her feel more alone. Her toes were numb and she pressed them into the back of her knees to warm them, and must have slept again, because when she looked again the fire had died back to its embers and was giving out a low hissing sound.

  Now Rebecca felt wide awake. She must get up then; she could not lie here itching. She pulled her blankets over her shoulders and went outside.

  How cold it was! The shape of the loch, which she had not noticed in the fog, pricked through the darkness. A heron was standing motionless near the shore, its legs disappearing into perfectly black water, its beak tucked into its feathers. There was a rightness to it that pierced her heart.

  Last night had only made the missing of Gabe worse. And Eva was dead and lying in her coffin, alone – and she had a husband whom she hated – and who wanted to kill her – and – where was comfort? Her father? God? And here she was, in a bog, at the end of the road, behind a clump of bracken, just as insignificant as that insect there crawling along a frond.

  Tears fell straight out of her eyes and onto the stones. Nothing there, no one to see it, no tree to grow watered by her tears, no one to bear witness. She sobbed harder until her nose ran and she had to scrub at it with her palm, only her palm was streaked with muddy sand, and scratched her skin, and made it worse.

  No God but the heron, and the curlew calling out over the water. Stones pressed into her knees and bog pressed into her feet. Far away a gull screeched, it seemed a confirmation of her aloneness, and she cried again.

  Finally she sat back.

  She would have to face the day. There would be chores to be done, she could help the family; it would pass the time. And now, Rebecca was surprised to notice, she felt a little better.

  She got back into her pallet of straw and watched the morning creep in through the stone walls. As soon as Jenny stirred, Rebecca got up again and washed her face and in between her legs from a pail at the back of the house, and asked what she could do.

  Mrs Campbell went off to the shore to collect kelp. Mhairi sat down to her loom. So Rebecca, just as Jenny had used to do for her, set to brushing the floor, and heating water over the fire, and setting the beds straight. After lunch she sat and watched Mhairi weave until her head lolled. After her tea she went for a walk and when darkness fell, she slept, fitfully.

  And the next day the same. And the day after that the same, only now Rebecca felt a little strength returning to her limbs. She did not feel as if she would rather lie down in front of the brush and be swept away herself. She did not feel as if she would rather fall into the bed as she was making it. Rather – this struck her as she was setting another of Mhairi’s rows straight on the hearth: a shell, a seed pod, a thimble – she felt a rising and quite unlooked-for joy. The oppression had lifted from her crown as a black hat might lift away, and now she felt this new thing – happiness! So fierce it buzzed in her ears.

  She went over to Mhairi and gave her a kiss. But the girl flinched.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mhairi, only I don’t think I have felt this well in all my life! I ought not to have forced myself on you. Here, let me.’ Rebecca bent down and pushed the clam shell back into place.

  And as she felt stronger, her thoughts turned to Alexander. Could she go into his pharmacy and let out the leeches, and tip out the salts, and mix them with ammonia, and scratch up his counter, and cut up the orange peel and swap the lozenges for the pessaries? It felt good to think of it.

  But it was not enough. It would only annoy him and she needed to do more than that. She needed to destroy him. But how? First she must find whatever it was that Eva had found just before she died; perhaps that would spark a plan.

  CHAPTER 27

  ‘You look better, much,’ said Gabe, pulling her towards him. Into the hair just behind her ear he added: ‘But you need a bath, a hot one.’

  It was true, she smelled of chemicals, she had noticed it herself, as if she had been too long in Alexander’s laboratory. She had sweated the sickness out but somehow it clung to her still.

  ‘But I care nothing for your cleanliness,’ said Gabe, drawing her back to look at her face. ‘Kiss me again!’

  Rebecca looked about her. ‘I cannot – we are in Edinburgh now! But is there a bath in the rooms you have got for me?’

  ‘A shower-bath, yes. The rooms are not fine, they are rather dirty, but they are near to your house and have one good long window looking out onto the street, where you may just about see your front door, if you crane your head.’

  ‘You smell better than I, for once,’ said Rebecca. ‘What has happened – they have invented a violet bath for the hides rather than a pure one?’

  ‘Would that they could! No, I have left the tannery. I thought I would look for another kind of work. I thought, if I was to ever see you again – I know we cannot be together as we were in the hotel – but I mean see you at all, it would be better if I did not smell of dogs’ leavings.’

  ‘Ha! Well, I cannot pretend to like you better when I have to hold my nose.’ She laughed and they turned and began to walk away from the noise and steam of the station, his hand lightly touching her elbow. She was dismayed to feel her heart beat harder at the touch, it was a waste of blood to feel that way.

  ‘You read my letter?’ He stared at her, chewing on his lip and frowning. The gesture was so familiar that she had to turn away. But Gabe mistook the movement for anger, or something like it. ‘It held nothing for you. I was afraid it would not! I ought not to have tried to explain myself; it is another form of selfishness, to want to.’

  ‘No – do not think that! I am glad you wrote it. We feel the same – and I understand now, I think, why you stayed away.’

  Gabriel waited, still frowning, still chewing on his lip.

  ‘But it does not change the fact that I am married to Alexander.’

  Gabe sighed. ‘Amongst the Bedouin it is easy to divorce. A man need only say to his wife “I divorce you” three times and it is done.’

  ‘And if a wife wishes to divorce a husband, what does she do?’

  They walked on. ‘She can only run to her father’s tent,’ said Gabe.

  ‘And what happens to her, afterwards? Is she cast out?’

  Gabe nodded.

  ‘I thought as much! And I suppose he keeps the children, as he does here. And all her property, as he does here.’

  ‘You are right, Rebe,’ said Gabe. ‘Though things are changing, do you think?’

  ‘A little. Too slowly.’

  After a while they came to the streets that Rebecca knew so well – there was the ash tree she had watched bud and leaf, there was the house where the dog was always barking from behind a closed door. But it all now seemed, to her eye, quite different. The tree was bare, its leaves stuck wetly around its trunk. The dog was quiet. Shutters were being raised and doors were being slammed.

  ‘I think we should part now, Gabriel. In case anyone should see. I must creep in alone.’ A dread of her lonely and unfamiliar rooms came over her. ‘Thank you, Gabe, for the rooms. And the money.’

  ‘But he canno
t hurt you, not when I am near. And surely you do not fear scandal?’

  ‘No, but I still fear him.’ A shiver, like a memory, ran through her. She could not stay in these rooms for ever. What would she do then? Well, she must see.

  Gabe drew her to an alley and kissed her hard on the lips, his other hand pulling her in at the small of her back.

  ‘Let me go!’ she said. She could not bear it. She wanted to be away from him, to think.

  But when she drew back Gabe had tears in his eyes.

  ‘It is hard to let you go again, when I have just found you!’

  ‘I know, I know. But we must.’

  Her rooms, when she came to them, were plain, as Gabe had said. A narrow bed, a stove much like the one Eva had had. The floorboards were cheap pine dyed darker to resemble oak.

  If only she could have told her friend that it was possible to leave the medicine behind! Even though it had run through her and changed her in some way, at the level of her cells. Another rush of loneliness ran through her and she turned towards the window and stared out.

  How strange it was to see everything from a different angle! From here she could see old Mrs Pringle sitting at the window, playing solitaire by the light of her lamp, as she must do every night. And Mr Todd, striding up and down in his living room, shouting angrily at his children. Whenever she had chanced upon him on the street he had been all politeness, and his children silent.

  Number 19 was in darkness. But there, sitting by the railings outside, was a poor wet cat, his fur pressed down onto his bones. She would have hardly recognized him! Without putting on her cloak or bonnet Rebecca quickly ran down and over to the other side and scooped up the cat under her arm.

  ‘Oh Kitty! Weren’t there enough scraps for you down there in the Old Town?’ Rebecca bent and scooped him under her arm. She rubbed her hand across his back. ‘You are too thin! Nothing but bones. Oh dear Kitty Kat, I will take care of you for as long as I can! Only, I do not live here any more, you see, dear Kat. Come with me across the road, over here, see now. And do you miss Eva very much? So do I. But if you stay with me perhaps we will find those papers. Then I might have a better idea of what to do.’

  Rebecca slept badly, dreaming of fighting her way through a thick forest. When she awoke it was still dark and Kitty Kat was curled on her chest, his tail draped over her face. She longed, with a keen pain, for her medicine. If it could be as it was the first time, when she could take it innocently! Life had been simple: no other choice, no other course of action, but to have her medicine, and then wait.

  She would never believe she could have grown so nostalgic for such a time. Now there were too many choices, and fear, and anxiety.

  Laudanum, perhaps … the nearest pharmacy …

  Rebecca put her palms to her temple and pressed them together. Not today. Not now. She must hold her nerve.

  She waited then, by the window, for the street to wake up. Air came in through it and cooled her tea faster than she could drink it. Her emotions came over her as strongly as a child’s: she was near to tears when she heard a boy whistling ‘Bonnie Heather’ in the street. A patch of blue sky brought a lump to her throat. Then the first men left the houses, and the first housemaids came to the steps and shook out the rugs. It was not yet nine o’clock.

  Pray God Mrs Bunclarke had stayed at the house and she could get in! But she had not been away so very long, not so many things could have changed, could they, except for her?

  It was too early to visit the shops. Even so, there was a woman from the New Town coming down the street, alone. Though this woman had not the stride of someone bent on shopping, she was more furtive, and vague: her feet slip-slopped along the pavement. She had the fair hair of a fashionable woman, but there was something awry.

  She reminded Rebecca of Eva – Rebecca half started up – but Eva was dead, she was being foolish. The window was not clean enough, that was all. She spat into her palm and rubbed the glass with her sleeve. As she squinted down again she saw that the woman was Violet.

  But what would Violet want with Alexander? Perhaps she had come to visit Rebecca, not knowing she was away. She’d had a habit of visiting her at odd times in recent weeks. But Alexander himself came to the door; Rebecca caught a moment of him as he stood there: she knew his eye, but not his beard, which had grown in.

  How thin Violet looked, how unwell! But how her face lit up, to see Alexander. It was he, then, that she had come to see, not Rebecca.

  Poor girl! She must warn her, she must get her away. But not today – she dare not risk it.

  Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. Then Violet came out again, in a dazed kind of way, and set off towards the New Town. Soon after came Alexander, pausing on the step to brush something from his jacket. He blinked rapidly, surprised to find himself out of doors. His beard was patchy, as if he had not meant to grow it after all. He went in the direction of the pharmacy, and turned the corner.

  Rebecca pushed back her chair; her legs were stiff. Kitty Kat leapt down from her lap with an angry thud. Rebecca drew on her cloak and tied on her bonnet and pushed her hair up into it, smoothing the wisps behind her ears. ‘Now, Kitty, you stay here. Look, here is a little milk. There now, do not follow me, I shall be back soon – I hope. And if I am not, look, I will leave the window open just a little. If you get desperate you can push your paw through the crack there. You will have to take your chances on the street, but that will be better than starving to death!’

  Rebecca closed the door in the cat’s face and crossed the short distance to her house. She had not her keys and must pull on her bell, as if she were a visitor. Her heart was beating hard.

  At last, here were footsteps, in no hurry at all. But what if it was Mr Badcock, staying here in her absence? She must turn back and watch a little longer! But the door had been pulled open, and Rebecca, who had been sure she would see Mr Badcock’s great jowls saw, instead, the lesser ones of Mrs Bunclarke.

  But if Rebecca felt relief, the other woman felt surprise.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Rebecca put her hand to her throat to stop her pulse beating. ‘I have been to my aunt’s.’

  ‘Do you have an aunt?’

  ‘Oh yes, poor thing, she has been quite incapacitated. And no daughters to take care of her, so I have been busy,’ said Rebecca. ‘And actually, I am only visiting, just for the day.’ The hall was just as she had left it – what else did she expect? Only now, everything in it reminded her of her medicine.

  She turned towards the cook. ‘I have come back, Mrs Bunclarke – it is rather irregular, I know – as a kind of surprise for my husband. It is for his birthday, did you know?’

  Mrs Bunclarke shook her head. She had a drip hanging from the end of her nose but it took her an age to reach inside her sleeve and pull out her handkerchief. ‘He never told me. He ought to have, if he wanted something special.’

  ‘Nothing special! At least, I am organizing something in particular for him. He thinks me still with my aunt, and I would be very grateful if you would not mention my visit here.’

  ‘He never told me,’ she said again. ‘Will you be having lunch?’

  ‘I do not think so, no. For I would not like Mr Palmer to return and find me out!’ She tried to keep her voice light, but there was a catch in it.

  She would not untie her bonnet, in case she needed to flee. Her cloak she took off and put on the chair near the door. Then she ran upstairs, pulling herself up the banisters, to Alexander’s bedroom. Her breath was coming fast. It was hard to search for something when she did not know what she was looking for. But there was nothing in his drawers, nothing in his bed, or under it. Every surface was clear, nothing to see, hardly anything in the room at all.

  Back out then, to the corridor. Nothing on the marble table, nor on the little shelf above it. Think! Where would Alexander keep a set of papers that he did not want anyone to see? She had thought it would be in his bedroom, but, as she went back downstairs, more s
lowly this time, she realized: in his study, in the same room that she had found the shoe. He did not expect anyone – any woman – to go in there.

  The house seemed to know she was trespassing; it creaked and groaned around her. She pushed open the door, half-expecting to see the shoe there again, in its wrong element. But there was no shoe. Only Alexander’s notebooks, which she had seen a thousand times, in the same place as the shoe had been. Notebooks, bound with tape at the spine, faded marbled covers. He was always writing in one or other. Could Eva have meant them?

  She walked towards them, pulling at her lip. This was too easy. But then the men would not expect women to want to read such notebooks, densely written on and annotated in the margins. They would not think of hiding them. P’raps Mr Badcock had even taken them to Eva and left his bag open for her to see. She pulled the first towards her.

  But it was only notes for the pharmacy, records of things bought and sold. Rebecca put the book back, sliding it onto the papers underneath in her haste to be away. But the papers were poorly held together and tumbled down, fanning out on the floor.

  In bending down to pick them up Rebecca caught sight of the writing on the first side, still close and cramped and festooned with crossings-out.

  We applied 15 drops of laudanum to Patient E after a violent shock of the heart owing to an occurrence at her place of work.

  Patient E? Now Rebecca’s hands were trembling so hard she thought she might never be able to read more. She put the sheets back on the floor and leaned forward with both hands.