The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

Before she ingested the drops she reported a good deal of nervous energy concentrated about the solar plexus. After one hour we came to her again and she reported a change in her person, namely, the strength and turbulence of her agitation had subsided. To this had succeeded a state of being uncommonly serene and tranquil. When Patient E was questioned about the previous injury done to her person she recalled it only in the mildest terms: ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, to use Mr Wordsworth’s phrase.

  Rebecca blinked twice, three times. Ran her knuckles across her lips. Turned over.

  In this case we calculated that P was equal to 30 (Where P = Pain), owing to physical and mental anguish following on from an incident at the bawdy house. Accordingly we gave her 18 drops in the morning.*

  It was Eva. He had made a study of Eva. And, her heart turned itself over – Alexander, with all his probings, squatting down by her side, after she had had her drops – he must have made a study of her too.

  One hour later Patient E reported a great warmth and general unusual glow about the chest, in direct opposition to her anxieties of the previous 12 hours.

  And across the margins: ** 30 drops of laudanum will be found to be equal to one grain of heroin salts.

  Rebecca turned to the next page, her breath coming quickly. In the kitchen Mrs Bunclarke moved pans about and dropped one, and cursed.

  Owing to the nervous nature of women, and the extreme susceptibility of the female race to stimulation both positive and negative, we find that heroin is the best method to regulate the weaker half of our sex. Many who have been unproductive members of society may be cured! It is not too great to claim that we may perhaps hold in our hands the formula of happiness.

  That was what they had wanted all along! They had wanted Eva and her subdued. Unable to laugh or shout, or run away. The shoe was part of it. The very last shoe any woman could run away in.

  The great benefit of Patient E is that her life is such as it is provides a great many events, each of differing magnitude, and hard to tolerate by the patient herself, owing to her fallen nature and her nervous constitution. That is where our experiment can flourish!

  Eva! Poor dear Eva. She had found this, had perhaps known it all along, but even so could not escape.

  Note: For the measurement of pain, both mental or physical, we have assigned both the Non-Verbal Pain indicators designed by Mr Hunter, and Mr Lesseques and Mr Hayman’s Symptom Assessment System, where 0 is no pain. See Blue book for further description.

  Where P = 3, a worry or anxiety, we found H = 1 grain on average. We also, through repeated experimentation, have come up with a formula of a 1:3 increase of P to H depending on severity.

  More of this, equations and annotations and corrections.

  Rebecca turned to a further page, which had spread out towards the door, her eyes passing over it all bit by bit. She was growing dizzy; she must rest her forehead on the papers and close her eyes, and then go on.

  These pleasant sensations were not new, they were felt but to a lesser degree, on ascending some high mountains in Perthshire. (NB This means the brain contains within it its own salvation! One day could we not train minds to produce the chemical analogous to opium for themselves? But – alas – there is no money in it.)

  Perthshire – that was she! She had told Alexander, when first he had given her the medicine, in the first flush of her feelings. She had enjoyed, back then, the attention he had given her, which she realized now, her heart falling, always came one hour after her draught.

  Patient B is of a malleable disposition and will make an excellent subject for the study. However, one difficulty with the patient lies in the necessarily docile life that a wife must lead. To which, on the first occasion, I was lucky enough to apply to her the most strenuous emotion a wife can feel – that of her husband’s infidelity. NB Does it not being true, by which I mean, true as she thought it to be so, compromise the experiment in any way? I think not, due to her belief of its being true.

  Although the main part of our experiments lies in the direction of suffering and mental difficulties and their alleviation, it may be worth exploring their opposite, to see if a draught can subdue an excess of pleasurable emotion, which also may disrupt the feminine character and indeed often has. To that end, Mr Badcock has suggested I take Patient B to the Gymnasium for an outing, to observe the effect of well-formed men on her disposition, and then to make her docile again with the draught. NB This will be an invaluable experiment for husbands of all kinds!

  Rebecca drew back with a breath. Had she been watched even then? And how would Alexander find her now? He would expect her to be crushed, upon reading this. But she was not crushed, she was angry. She felt the anger as a swelling and engulfing tide.

  But something nagged at her; something was not right. Why had Alexander and Mr Badcock come after her with a syringe and tried to kill her?

  Because she had seen him in the house of flagellation. Because he knew about Gabe.

  No. She pinched the skin between her eyes. No – it made no sense.

  If she was Patient B then would they not want her alive, for more tests?

  They had come after her only to subdue her. The anger had come from their fears that she would not be subdued.

  But Rebecca had underwritten Eva’s death, had she not, in – oh, countless ways? She ought to have run away with her when she asked. She ought not to have let her take the second injection. She ought not to have … they ought not to have let the days go by together drunk on their medicine, at all.

  She sighed, smoothed her eyebrows apart with the tips of her fingers and stood up, meaning to go back to her rooms. But she had got up too fast, the blood rushed away from her head and the ground swam before her eyes. She staggered forward onto Alexander’s desk, knocking it with her hip bone.

  She held her breath. But the cook still banged down her pots on the sideboard in her usual way. But in knocking it she had dislodged another set of papers that lay beneath, bound together tighter, that she had not seen.

  There on the front page, written very neat:

  Talk to be Given before the Royal Society of Chemists: The Formula of Happiness.

  Or: An Attempt to Correct the Feminine Problem with Reference to Heroin (the Aim Being to Establish a Working Formula).

  Rebecca sat down again and pressed her hand to her head. She glanced at the clock. Alexander ought not to return yet. She crept into the dining room and poured herself a glass of water. She must read all of it. She must know what the men would say about her and Evangeline, and perhaps if she knew it she may end up with a plan – a proper plan – after all.

  But not here. She picked up the papers very carefully, as she had once done the newspaper. She would have to pray Alexander did not miss them.

  CHAPTER 28

  It took her the rest of the morning to read them – why were men’s papers so long? And further into the afternoon to think on them, as her feet grew cold and her legs numb and the cat swarmed round underneath the table. But by teatime Rebecca knew what to do. Kitty Kat was hungry and she needed candles, for the light was already failing, and firewood and paper and a pen.

  Well then, she could do all the tasks at once. First, Rebecca went to her little table with its uneven legs and wrote out a note:

  Gabe, I have found the papers. Will you go to the Royal Society and find out when Alexander is speaking? I have forgotten it, but I must know the date.

  Your friend,

  R

  Quickly round the corner then, in case her husband or Violet should return unexpectedly and see her on the street, and find a boy to take a note to Gabe. She would have to hope he was there at his parents’ house, not out looking for work. She hurried towards the High Street to the little shop that sold paper of every size and colour.

  ‘I am not looking for paper with roses on, or any other flower,’ she said to the man behind the counter. ‘I need plain writing sheets, of the kind men use, if you have any. And a hole in the
m, if you would be so kind as to make me one, just there in the corner.’

  On to the stall that sold only string – for she had nothing, nothing at all of her own – to tie the sheets together. And then to the ink and pen shop, to buy the cheapest pen they had, which would have to do, and some more expensive ink, so it would match. Lastly to the fishmonger, for some fish heads for Kitty, which, even though the fishmonger wrapped them in five layers of newspaper, still smelled very bad. The wet worked its way through them all onto her dress as the package bumped along her thigh on her way home.

  ‘You must thank me for this, Kat,’ she said as she dropped the package on the floor. ‘And I dare say you would, if you could speak. Wait now, I will open it, no need to tear into it like that!’

  The smell, together with the picture of the cat working his way through the snout of the fish, chewing with the side of his mouth, his eyes closed, meant Rebecca felt no need of her own supper, even though darkness had fallen by the time she got back. The season was such that the days seemed to barely come into being before they went out again. It was cold, freezing even. She must keep on her bonnet and her shawl, and warm her hands by rubbing them, for when she sat down at her desk again the cold air shot in through the window frame where it rattled and made the cobwebs in the corners sway and shake.

  But Rebecca did not mind it. She was even – could she say it? – happy. If happy it was to start about the business of getting revenge on her husband. Say, then, not happy. What then? The fulfilment of her plans. The writing of herself, as she sat on the chair with one leg shorter than the other three, at her spindly desk that creaked and groaned at every press as if it might at any moment collapse, into the story. A feeling of her place in the world – just for a moment, under darkened sky – that was not too far away from the feeling her draught had once lent her.

  Rebecca took out the papers and set them before her. She took out an old envelope and set it next to the papers, very close. No, she could not see well enough, she would have to light one of the candles. The flame on it twisted and gave off an uneven light, but if she set it close to the papers it was enough.

  She fixed her eyes on the first page. Alexander’s hand was angular, vigilant, with very small gaps between the words. It was like being in a cloud of swarming bees, to look on it. And he pressed on the paper very hard, sometimes rucking it up in front of the nib.

  She took a breath. The writing was so unlike her own that she doubted her ability to copy it.

  Women have many traits in common with children, wrote out Rebecca, trying to press as hard as she could.

  But that would not do! The h, l and d, were all wrong. And the W, and the o.

  h,l,d

  h,l,d

  h,l,d,h,l,d. Words, letters, only marks on a page.

  But marks on a page are all I have, and they are enough to imprison me, and all women, inside them.

  h,l,d, There now, that was a little better. But her hand was already aching with the pressure of the nib on the paper, and the upright stems were the only letters that looked anything like at all. There were still all the rest to get right, with their loops and curves and the occasional letter, such as V, that Alexander wrote in a way that was all his own.

  Women’s field of understanding is very narrow, ruled by sentimentality.

  No, no she had not got it. But she worked on till the candle was halfway gone, Kitty threading his way between her legs.

  Women’s moral sense is deficient, she wrote out.

  They are irrational, jealous, inclined to vengeances of a refined cruelty.

  But Alexander’s S’s were sharp at the corners and when she attempted to match them, they were unrecognizable. Ink blotted her hands and stained her cuff. She was getting nowhere! She flung the pen down and stood up, glad to straighten her legs and feel the air on the back of her thighs.

  She had not put up the shutters, the night was windy and the trees slashed about near her window. She stared out at the blackness. This was going to be harder than she had first thought.

  She let Kitty Kat’s tail run through her fingers, his purring the only sound in the house, until the knocker sounded, loud enough in the darkness to make her jump, though it was not late yet, only dark.

  It was Alexander! Her pulse beat in her ears. He had seen her on the street, and had followed her here.

  She would not go. He could not get her, not if the door was locked.

  Thumping now, hammering. And her name being called.

  But it was not Alexander’s voice, it was Gabe’s. Only Gabe. Rebecca put her palm on her chest to slow the beating but instead her heart gave a leap, in spite of herself.

  And how nice it was to see his face, to have a little company, on this lonely night.

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked her anxiously.

  ‘If you mean, have I stayed away from the drops? I have.’

  ‘Dearest Rebe, you are strong, I knew you would be. Only, it is so easy to fall back into old habits, and when every pharmacy sells them, even easier.’

  ‘Sit a moment, will you? I have nothing to offer but chicken bones and a little tea.’

  ‘I should rather tea, but chicken bones will do if I must.’ He grinned. Sitting there at the table he made it look flimsy, with his hands spread out on top of it. Her heart, again, twisted in its socket. She turned to the stove and busied herself with the kettle.

  ‘I have come, well, perhaps you would have rather I sent a note,’ he began.

  ‘Oh no, it is fine that you came. I am struggling in my work and I am glad to have a break in it.’

  ‘Are you glad? Then I am glad too, and to see you looking so well.’ He dropped his eyes and his cheeks reddened. ‘Though I don’t know what work you are bent on, but if it has to do with the Royal Society, that date you asked of, ’tis tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Rebecca put her hand against the stove. ‘Oh, that soon? Tomorrow, you say?’

  ‘Is it too soon? It is bad news?’

  Rebecca blew out her breath. ‘’Tis not too soon, but sooner than I had hoped, oh much sooner! I think I will get no sleep tonight. I think I will have to work the whole way through it.’

  ‘Is this the work?’ Gabe picked up the sheets. ‘The Formula of Happiness. This sounds promising.’

  ‘’Tis not! The title is a lie, and the reason my husband has been persecuting me. Turn over and see for yourself.’

  ‘An Attempt to Correct the Feminine Problem with Reference to Heroin—’ Gabe broke off. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Read on.’

  ‘For Millennia human society has been run on the equable division between the sexes, men and women in their separate yet equal spheres. But now we find to our dismay that the “Angel in the House” has come under threat, from womankind herself, in the guise of monstrous females who call themselves “reformers” but who would take on the role of men in the public sphere by expanding their brains to an unnatural and dangerous degree.’

  Gabe stopped again. ‘Who wrote this?’

  ‘My husband, the chemist.’

  ‘Now I see why you ran away!’

  ‘There is more, much more, that I have not told you.’ The kettle was starting to steam and she took it off the stove before it shrieked. She had burned herself already on the handle, which was only a bit of twisted wire. ‘I was happy to take the medicine he offered, at first,’ she said. ‘I wanted to disappear too. But I ought never to have married him.’

  Gabe started to talk but she cut him off. ‘I can’t blame you for that! I was greedy and I thought that being a wife, to anybody, would be better than being a spinster.’

  Gabe looked at her, and then, as if he could not bear it, dropped his gaze back down onto the papers and started to read again.

  ‘None are more at risk from the ministrations of these women than their gentle sisters, and it is these females with whom we chiefly concern ourselves.

  Every day beset by the pressures of the modern world, these wives and mother
s – and even, dare we say it, fallen women too! – find themselves tempted by the supposed freedoms espoused by their more manly counterparts. They are desirous to be good but are torn asunder by anxieties from all sides. And it is this anxiety that puts in jeopardy the very future of our race, and the future of the Empire!’

  Rebecca came to Gabe’s side and set down his mug; some tea slopped out and onto the paper and blurred several of the words. ‘No matter,’ she said.

  ‘But will he not notice?’ said Gabe. ‘Or will you hide it from him, so he cannot make the speech?’

  ‘I will do better than that. At least, I had a plan, a good one, but Alexander’s hand, see here, is so heavy that I cannot make its likeness. P’raps if I work all night it might come right. But look here, at this,’ said Rebecca: ‘And this is added to the weakness that females must inevitably suffer thanks to their grandmother Eve: less capable in mind and strength than a man, narrower in perception, more volatile in emotion, beset by sentimentality. But what is the matter, Gabe?’

  ‘I see here my own sin,’ he said, pushing his fingers over his forehead.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My own sin of hubris. I, too, wanted to change the world.’

  ‘Oh Gabe, there is no need to look so grim. I don’t think that is a sin! It only matters how you go about it.’

  But Gabe shook his head. He stood up. ‘You will need the fire if you are to work all night. Let me make it up for you?’

  Rebecca went to the fireplace and knelt next to him. A flame leapt up, she could feel the heat on her knees. Gabe took up her hands and kissed them at the fingertips and at the knuckles. ‘I left you,’ he said, hardly louder than the flames.

  ‘None of that now,’ said Rebecca. ‘We have been through this.’

  He dipped his head to her hand again. His moustache was soft where it tickled her palm. She wished he would kiss her more. Instead, he raised his face. ‘Let me try.’

  ‘Try, try what?’