The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

  ‘Oh yes, very proud,’ answered Rebecca, hardly able to speak. She would take the seat behind, Mrs Shrivenham’s feathers would obscure Alexander’s view of her.

  ‘I saw the title of the talk and I must say I could not resist, and from your own husband too!’ Mrs Shrivenham looked at her.

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed. Oh, I think they are beginning!’ Rebecca wished she had eaten breakfast, her stomach churned horribly. Mrs Bunclarke would have swept it all away by now, sitting in the kitchen with her legs stuck out towards the fire.

  A thin-faced man dressed in a pair of tweed trousers stepped out in front and began an introduction. Rebecca heard nothing but the beating of her own heart, and a few, entirely expected, words: esteemed colleagues … scientific endeavour … important new drug. She noticed that on the table behind him lay a syringe, and behind that, a blackboard, polished to a shine.

  And then Mr Badcock stepped out, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. Alexander stumbled up the step and had to be helped.

  Alexander fiddled with his papers, squinted at them, and began to speak.

  Rebecca could see nothing on his face that suggested surprise, nothing to imply that he was reading Gabriel’s writing, not his. Although his face wore the same blurred look that she had seen so often on Evangeline’s.

  Evangeline ought to be here, to see this, if it went well! And if it did not … But Alexander had begun to speak.

  ‘It is of utmost importance that we are gathered here today, in light of the Pharmacy Act now being drafted by Her Majesty’s Government.’

  Several nods from the audience and murmurs of agreement.

  ‘We who are pharmacists oppose the regulation of medicines, especially opium. This new Bill will take our business from us and put it in the hands of physicians. Otherwise, its requirelent … requirement …’ he passed his hand across his lips, ‘… that we register ourselves and record all purchases of so-called dangerous medicines questions our ability to carry out our work.’

  More nods, more agreement. Someone wrote busily down on his notepad.

  ‘But my colleague and I are here this morning not only wish to prevent this act, but to prevent … present …’ he shook his head again, ‘present some explorations of the use of opium that have not been explored before.’

  A pencil fell to the floor and rolled to the front.

  Not yet, not yet. It was all the same speech that Alexander had written for a few pages more; that way it would work better when the words were not his own.

  First Alexander must explain how he had made his new medicine, how high the hopes he had for it were. His head sunk lower and lower as he spoke and Mr Badcock had to dart forward and catch him by the arm, and apologize.

  ‘Are you well, Mr Palmer?’ asked the sharp-faced man. ‘Ought we to postpone?’

  ‘Yes, Alexander, we ought,’ whispered Mr Badcock loud enough for everyone to hear. But Alexander shook him away. Thank God for his obduracy!

  ‘Many, if not all, will be aware of the habitual nature of opium, and that is where the benefits can be said to fall down. But heroin is not only four times more potent than morphine, but also decreases the desire for morphine by an equal amount.’

  A questioning hum and several more note-takers scratching away on their pads. Alexander was leaning back against the table, and, Rebecca was glad to see, had need of frequently consulting his notes.

  ‘I learned from my many years working in my laboratory that chemistry may be defined as one substance working on another to create a different, often more powerful, substance. Heroin, for our purposes here today, may be seen as analogous to laudanum, only far more effic … efficacious.’

  Alexander paused and fell silent and Mr Badcock had again to leap out from behind the table and plead with him: ‘Really, Alexander, what on earth is the matter? Let us reconvene, I beg you!’

  But again, Alexander shook him off, like a drunkard told to leave the public house. ‘I may have been working too hard in preparation for this speech and find myself over-taxed. For which, please, excuse me.’ He stared down at his notes, turned over a page, and began again.

  ‘Philosophy, for its part, could be said to be the study of the nature and meaning of life. And this morning, if I may … if I may …’ Alexander’s eyes grew vague and his eyelids fluttered … drooped … drooped lower. In the room the atmosphere grew tense. A book fell on the floor, and Alexander snapped upright and started speaking again.

  ‘If I may be so bold I will attempt to bring the two branches of knowledge, chemistry and philosophy, together. The Stoics of Ancient Greece practised self-sufficiency, so that, in the words of Epictetus, a person would remain, “sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in disgrace and happy”. And yet the females of our species lack the willpower to be able to enact this triumph of mind over matter. Heroin acts upon chemical substances already in the brain, and the resulting compound alters how the brain perceives the world, not the world itself – we do not lay claim to that much!’

  He paused, to wait for laughter. Someone guffawed.

  ‘We believe that heroin, in short, may be seen as a replacement to Stoic Virtue, for the frailer half of our species, in the light of their own more powerful brains.’

  That part, in Alexander’s notes, had read less powerful, and before it the phrase, ‘more childlike’.

  Rebecca held her breath – would he notice now, and call an end to it, too soon? Now – at last – she clenched her hands into fists, here it was …

  But instead of reaching for his notes again, Alexander turned sideways to the end of the front row and crooked his finger, to bid someone come – which was strange, for Mr Badcock still sat behind, and Rebecca in front, and there was no one else … save … Violet. Violet! Who came to the centre very stiff. Arms hanging loose at her sides, her gaze slack, her rosebud lips parted, and her hair very beautifully put up into a net of tiny violet flowers.

  ‘Thank you, Violet; now you need not be afraid.’ Alexander stood on one side of her, Mr Badcock on the other.

  She did not look afraid; she gazed into the audience with a perfectly blank expression.

  ‘We merely want you to answer a set of short questions. Will you do that for us, Violet?’ said Mr Badcock.

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. Here is the first. Are you, would you say, content?’

  Violet’s eyes came into focus. She rubbed her nose. She nodded.

  ‘And were you, before we started this treatment, happy or unhappy?’

  Her voice came very low. ‘I would say, unhappy.’

  ‘Why would you say that you were to be found in that frame of mind?’

  ‘I thought it was simply the way my mind was made. And I thought I was not made for marriage.’

  Mr Badcock looked pleased. He pressed his palms together. Some of the audience shifted about in their seats. ‘And now you are quite content, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Violet, looking out with eyes that had never seemed more blue.

  Now Alexander spoke again. ‘I trust you will not consider me as possessing any sentiment of vanity when I say that the equation of happiness lies within our reach. Just as Lord Owen collects the ephemera of the natural world to fill his museum in the environs of Kensington, my associate Mr Badcock and I have been collecting the feminine emotions, to harmonize them and make them bearable.’

  Rebecca sat forward on her seat, her fingers pressed to her temples.

  Everything now depended on this.

  Alexander looked – thank God for it – down at his notes.

  ‘For women are strong and bear much punishment.’

  Nothing still.

  ‘Women’s intelligence is manifold and more broadly encompassing than a man’s, whose field is narrow and only intent on their own ambition.’

  Mr Badcock’s mouth fell open. But Alexander had not noticed anything was awry.

  ‘There will come a time when women shall throw off the shackl
es of men and not submit to being dosed and pierced by needles for the taking of medicine they need only because of their state of oppression.’

  Mrs Shrivenham laughed, which Alexander, in his befuddled state, took for praise of his experiment.

  ‘Alexander, stop!’ said Mr Badcock, trying to take his arm.

  ‘Until that time, Mr Badcock and I have been taking women, and even my own wife, against their will and turning them into depraved opium eaters’ – Rebecca had decided on the use of ‘depraved’ for its sensationalism. The medical men set up a murmur that grew louder as Alexander went on.

  ‘We have administered every sort of pain, which we have called P in our research, and given them the antidote, which we have called H.’ This just like the original document, to keep him going on.

  ‘And in the course of my research I have been a constant visitor to Mrs Bard’s House of Flagellation where—’ Here at last Alexander broke off. He turned to Mr Badcock in confusion. He turned back to the papers. He swallowed. Pushed a hand across his face. ‘What is this …?’

  From the floor there started up a slow clapping.

  Alexander turned the page. He rubbed his forefinger back and forth across his lips. He turned another page. ‘A working formula … what’s this?’

  Oh, it had worked better than she had dared to hope! Rebecca had never dreamed he would go on so far.

  ‘This is not fit!’ cried someone in a high voice.

  ‘No, no, this is not the paper I meant to bring before you. It has been changed.’

  ‘By whom? A woman?’ called out Mrs Shrivenham.

  Laughter. Alexander gave a twitch, one corner of his lip drawn towards his ear.

  ‘I meant to say, a working formula that will have great implications for the human race!’

  Mr Badcock’s face underneath his beard had turned the colour of paper-hanging paste. He put his hand to his cheek, as if in a trance, and shook his head.

  ‘I have it here somewhere, or I can go on, I remember it all … Heroin may be the most important medicine yah … yet discovered!’

  ‘Get off!’

  ‘’Tis a disgrace to the Society!’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mr Badcock.

  ‘We are scientists, man, you bring shame on us!’ A ball of crumpled paper hit him on the forehead.

  At last Alexander came to a stop and looked about him, bewildered. ‘John?’

  ‘No, no no no,’ Mr Badcock said, shaking his head. Another ball of paper was thrown and hit his cheek.

  ‘What has happened?’ asked Alexander. ‘I think this is a dream.’ He pinched his arm. ‘John?’

  But Mr Badcock had already stumbled up the aisle, being pelted with balls of paper as he went, leaving the doors swinging behind him.

  CHAPTER 30

  The audience rose up in a babble and quickly went out, bending their heads together. Violet had been left standing alone on stage in her white dress, her cheek as pale and glossy as a pearl.

  Rebecca took her hand, which was very lightly trembling. ‘Was it something I did wrong? Mr Badcock was so insistent I get it right, and I didn’t, did I?’

  ‘It was nothing you did, Violet; it was I who ruined it all.’

  ‘You? You were not up here. But what should I do now? Mr Badcock said I should go with him – but they have gone – do you know where?’

  ‘No,’ said Rebecca, though she thought they would have gone to Albany Street. ‘Why do you not come with me?’

  And so Rebecca sat with Violet in her rooms, that night and the next, trying to help her. She wrote a note to Violet’s husband to say that she had been invited to stay with her for the weekend. Her habits must have become more erratic of late, for he made no objection.

  The first night passed without incident, Violet snored all through it. The day after passed slowly, tolerably, with Rebecca reading aloud and starting a tapestry, and taking Violet on a walk out of town when their confinement grew too hard to bear. Towards the end of the day, however, Violet grew fretful. ‘You are holding me here against my will,’ she said. ‘Do not try to save me!’

  The second night, as Rebecca knew, was the worst. If she could help Violet through the dark hours of it, Violet would be on her way to throwing off the medicine for good. But Violet took it worse than Rebecca had. Every quarter hour, as the evening grew into night, she started up from her chair, her hair matted with sweat, her pupils wider and wider with anguish.

  ‘You must have some drops. Where are you hiding them?’

  ‘No drops, not here, no, Violet, not now. Wait awhile.’

  ‘But if we wait awhile the pharmacy will close – let us go, let us go now!’

  ‘If you have the drops you will not be free of the heroin. It will pass, this craving for it, I know, for I have felt it too.’

  Violet grew angry then. ‘I don’t think you have, for then you would not be so cruel. Why are you keeping me prisoner? All I want is my medicine! I am not like you! Do not force me to be someone you think I ought.’

  Rebecca stood at the door and they grappled, facing each other, breathing heavily. But after a while Violet fell back on her chair and sobbed. ‘You are a bitch for stopping me. I only want to carry on as I was before – content – as Alexander says!’

  ‘I am sorry, Violet, to have brought you to this! You are right, it is down to me that you are here, but I am trying to rectify it now, if you will let me!’

  Violet seemed to calm then, and after a little while lay on the couch and slept. But later, just as Rebecca was falling into a fitful sleep of her own, she heard Violet pacing about. She heard her go to the door and rattle it, and then try the windows, but Rebecca had locked the door and hidden the key under her pillow and the rooms were three storeys up.

  She did not hear Violet again until a watery sunlight quivered over the mustard-coloured walls. Violet was gaunt and drawn but her mood was sweeter.

  ‘I have done it, haven’t I? I have lived through the night! But how I long for a bath! I think that would mend me more than anything.’

  Rebecca pushed herself up from her bed and pulled down her nightgown. ‘I have no tub here,’ she said.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Violet looked as if she were going to weep again. ‘For I don’t know what I will do without one.’

  Rebecca sighed. ‘Very well. There is a shop nearby that sells tin baths. I suppose I could buy one there and boil up some water for it.’

  Violet clasped her hands before her and smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, would you, would you really? What a good friend you are, Rebecca. I owe you my life!’

  So Rebecca went to the shop and came back up with the bath, her back aching from awkwardly bending over the two handles. Violet would only be able to crouch in it and pour water over herself, but it ought to soothe her a little.

  She was boiling the first pan on the stove when she heard the door open. Rebecca had forgotten to lock it behind her. The next instant Violet was out on the stairs; she flung one backward glance at Rebecca, her lips wet, her eyes streaming.

  ‘Violet! Do not go – the worst is over!’

  But Violet made no reply, Rebecca only heard her clattering down the stairs and out onto the street. Too late to catch her, even as she started to. As she turned to the door she saw a bit of paper, with a scrawl of writing on it, laid on the floor.

  I am sorry, Rebecca, I cannot! I know I ought to want to stop, but I don’t. I am not strong enough and life is better with the medicine than without it.

  Thank you for trying to help me – I did not mean what I said.

  V

  Rebecca sank down and pressed the heels of her palm into her eyes. The pan was boiling heavily on the stove, slopping out water and making it hiss. She got up wearily and tipped the water into the bath: better not let it go to waste. She went to the stove and boiled another one, and another, until she had enough for a shallow soak.

  The first moment, as she sunk her body into the warm water that was meant for Violet, cheered her. But the water s
oon cooled, its heat dissipating into the sides of the bath, and in another moment she was too cold to stay in.

  For a week Rebecca watched number 19. Violet came but she left a short while later, setting her face against the cold and frowning. Nobody else, not even Mr Badcock.

  ‘But you cannot go back!’ said Gabe, when she told him of her plan. ‘He may try to hurt you again.’

  ‘The experiment is finished with,’ she told him. ‘He will not come at me with the syringe, or anything else, I think.’

  ‘But he may want to punish you,’ said Gabe. ‘He can still overpower you; he is bound to be angry.’

  ‘But where else am I to go? I cannot stay here.’ She waved her arm round the little room. The glum light of the winter afternoon had made it look even worse.

  ‘You could take another set of rooms – better ones.’

  ‘And who should pay? I have taken enough from you already.’

  And for the first three weeks back in the house it was as she’d thought: Alexander kept to his study. He did not go to the pharmacy, or to the parlour, or anywhere else. The only sign that he was in the house at all were the plates that Mrs Bunclarke carried to and from his room, and they came out almost as full as they went in. Rebecca did not seek him out; she found after all that to see a man broken down was not something to gloat about.

  Christmas came by; wreaths went up on the front doors and at dusk candles were lit on all the trees up and down Albany Street. Lionel knocked and asked for Mr Palmer, only to stand at Alexander’s bedroom door until the latter opened it by not more than the width of a hat’s brim and told him to go away.

  ‘But Lionel, now is your chance to run the shop for yourself,’ said Rebecca, when he came back downstairs.

  Lionel rubbed his chin. ‘I cannot manage it by myself,’ he said. ‘Even though custom has dropped away since the Act and we have lost half our custom—’ He broke off.

  ‘Oh Lionel, there is no need to be embarrassed on my account,’ said Rebecca. ‘I know you heard of my flight. Jenny misses you, I think. She has kept a piece of soap—’

  ‘Aye.’ Lionel nodded. ‘The rosewater and glycerine. I made it up for her.’ He blushed and put his knuckles to his cheek. ‘Jenny told me you suffered, but bore it bravely.’