by Boyce, Niamh
When she went down, the kitchen was sweltering. A pan of water bubbled on the fire. Mai was in her favourite chair at the head of the table: her eyes were closed but she wasn’t asleep. Captain Custard was curled purring on her lap. The table was covered with jam jars. A basket of violets was set at her feet. Mai prayed any time or anywhere. Sarah gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. Her aunt smiled and opened her eyes.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Bernie and me had to walk all the way home. Her uncle’s horse was lame and he told us to try and get a lift with someone else. I’m bushed, that’s all.’
‘Don’t give me that, I’m not a thick. And I had that dream last night –’
‘Not that dream again.’ Sarah lifted a glass bottle of clear liquid, uncorked it and sniffed. ‘How much did this set you back?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Ah, come on now, nothing?’
‘Billy owes me a favour or two.’
‘Let me come to Billy’s next time you go. You’ll need me someday; you won’t always be able to make the journey alone. I won’t tell a soul.’
‘It’s only a few miles up the road, young lady. I’m not dead yet.’ She stroked the cat on her lap, whispered into its ear, ‘Isn’t that right, Captain?’
‘Which road is it a few miles up?’ Sarah jiggled the bottle.
‘Whist. Pour that poitín into the jug before the smell knocks us out. And pour me a wee dram. Not too much, mind.’
Sarah let a splash fall into a small glass and handed it over. Mai sipped it and let out a whoosh that scared the cat off her lap.
‘If anyone could see you knocking back the hard stuff like that –’
‘Stop that kind of talk.’ Mai frowned. ‘I’m just checking the purity; don’t want my tinctures going mouldy. And stop standing over me, you lanky lass, lend a hand.’
Sarah put on an apron and sat. She began to break the sweet violet apart while Mai worked with a copybook and scissors to prepare some of the tiny labels she liked to paste on to the undersides of all her jars and bottles. Mai never wrote her name, just the name of the herb – she was modest about her talents.
‘Bristly babies, aren’t they?’ Sarah’s fingers were reddening already.
‘You always say that – you’re just sensitive to sap.’
They lapsed into silence. Mai wasn’t fond of chatting when they were preparing cures. Once the jam jars were full of violet, Sarah poured in the mixture of spirit.
‘Sarah,’ said Mai, ‘stop frowning; do it with love.’
‘Listen to the old romantic.’
‘Sarah!’ She pointed her fountain pen in Sarah’s direction.
‘Yes, Mai, with love, Mai.’
‘Or is it, Sarah, that you have no love left? Is it, Sarah, that you’ve been giving your love all away?’
Mai was imitating the wheedling voice of her older sister Gracie. She was getting a bit too close to the truth for Sarah’s comfort.
‘Look at that face! You’re courting, aren’t you?’
‘Stop that lovey-dovey talk. An old woman like you.’
‘Who is it? Go on, you can tell me.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ She looked at Mai. ‘Well, not yet.’
They both laughed. Custard climbed back on Mai’s lap as she wrote. His fur was the same colour as her cardigan, so he appeared to have become part of her. He purred with satisfaction. They both seemed pleased with themselves.
‘A toast’ – Mai put down her pen and lifted her empty glass – ‘to Sarah’s young man!’
‘It’s early days, don’t.’
‘How well I knew. It was the gallons of water you’ve been bringing up to your room. Is she washing herself or an army up there? That’s what I was thinking. Then it hit me, Sarah’s soaping herself to nothing over some young man. So, who is he?’
‘I can’t tell, so don’t bother your head throwing names at me.’
‘Why ever not, Sarah?’ Mai’s voice became sharp.
‘It’s like you and Poitín Billy – I just can’t. There are no two ways about it.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How’s it different?’
‘If a girl can’t say who her beau is, either he isn’t free or she isn’t … and I know you are.’
‘Not free! That’s a shocking thing to say, and of me! As if I’d do something so awful, so, so out of the question!’
‘It’s not as out of the question as all that. I of all people should know – don’t I deliver the consequences?’
‘You’re a filthy old woman for thinking that of me. I feel sick; I think I’m going to get sick.’
‘Sit down and stop fussing – I had to ask. You’ve no one to blame but your own sweet self. Just spill the beans and tell me who your fancy man is.’
‘He’s not my fancy man!’
‘Not a fancy man, then, your …’ Mai scrunched up her face as if to think of a name. ‘Your pal? Your comrade –’
‘Please stop. I can’t tell yet, but I’ll tell soon.’
‘You’d better, Sarah, believe me, secrets aren’t good. And what’s more your lad should be proud of you, beauty and brains in one, he should be shouting it from the rooftops.’
Sarah began to fix the lids on to the jars. She held one up.
‘I love when they are like this, so pretty. The green leaves and the tiny purple petals.’
‘Don’t be tormenting me with your soft talk. If you want to change the subject, pick the weather.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Sarah pretended to tip a hat.
‘Make sure the lids are tight.’
‘Are these tinctures all for old piss-the-bed up on the hill?’
‘Leave be – the poor lonely colonel doesn’t have long; he deserves comfort the same as the next man. That reminds me, fetch me a few jars of comfrey cream from the back of the press.’
Sarah got up, opened the press, took down six small jars and set them on the table.
‘The poor lonely colonel indeed!’ she said as she sat down. ‘How lonely can he be with everyone and anyone traipsing up to see him? Strange-looking characters, they say, of every seed and creed.’
‘That’s not you talking, Sarah – who told you that?’
‘Bernie.’
‘Tell Bernie she’s sounding like an old woman already – she should have more charity.’
‘You’re very forgiving.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be? Give and so you shall receive.’
‘And what would you need to receive forgiveness for, Mai? Have you ever even hurt a fly?’
Sarah was surprised when Mai didn’t respond. She looked up.
‘Mai?’
Her aunt was wiping her eyes.
‘Did I say something?’
‘Nothing, you said nothing.’
They worked in silence for a while, with Sarah glancing over at her aunt every few seconds. Mai stood up and began to sweep some fallen leaves. Suddenly she moved behind Sarah and tapped her.
‘So! Is it Paddy Murphy?’ Mai’s sudden liveliness seemed forced.
‘Don’t be mad.’
‘His cousin Tom?’
‘Leave me be.’
‘It’s not James Kelly, is it?’
‘Stop.’
‘It had better not be, it had better not.’
The back door opened and Master Kelly strode in. Sarah froze. Had he heard?
‘Evening, Mai. My God, it smells like a brewery in here.’
He looked around, but there was nothing suspicious to be seen. Sarah had the bottle under her apron, clamped between her
knees. She only hoped it didn’t slip. Mai glanced over and looked relieved.
‘Cup of tea? Sorry I can’t offer you anything stronger, Finbar.’
‘A cup of tea is strong enough. Imagine if the headmaster were to be seen indulging!’
He smoothed his sleeve across the table and cleared the remains of the herb on to the floor.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘isn’t this a cosy set-up?’
Sarah tried not to stare at his hands; they had always fascinated her. The skin on Master Kelly’s fingers and palms was discoloured. When they were infants learning their letters, he told them it was from picking too many blackberries; when they became older, he said it was from a fire, but didn’t tell them how it had happened. Said it was a painful memory. Mai reckoned that if it was a painful memory, he was mightily attached to it, for she had offered him a lotion that would improve the appearance, even at this late stage, but he’d refused.
Sarah was dying to excuse herself, but the bottle of poitín was nestling between her knees, so she had to stay and listen to the Master inquire about the colonel’s Tropical Disease. Tropical, my eye. Bernie said the dogs on the street knew it was syphilis. Mai seemed to be enjoying the conversation; it was hard to tell sometimes whether she was fond of Master Kelly or not. They both had firm opinions and liked to exchange them. Mai had known his family well. He liked to hear about them and she liked to talk about them, especially his mother.
Sarah was afraid the bottle was about to slip to the floor. Just in time Master Kelly did something unusual and asked Mai to go for a stroll around her beautiful garden for a chat. As he followed Mai out, he turned and gave Sarah a wink. He had never done that before.
Something about Master Kelly was beginning to unnerve Sarah. She had been in awe of him as a child. He was courteous to the girls in the class, especially quick thinkers like Sarah. The boys, she felt sorry for the boys, even James. How would the Master react when James revealed that he and Sarah were walking out? Would he call her a fine girl then? Well, she’d find out soon – Jamsie couldn’t put it off for ever.
Sarah leant out the window to scoop a jug of water from the barrel. Mai and Master Kelly were sitting on the low wall. He was talking nine to the dozen, and Mai seemed thrilled. Sarah poured the water into a bowl; the sap had turned her fingers pink. In fact they looked just like the Master’s. She was glad to soap them back to normal.
4
Mam was up the stepladder, painting the kitchen ceiling. She kept giving me jobs to do: fetch this, wipe down that. If Charlie thought he had it hard in the foundry, he was wrong: he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes under Mam’s watch. For weeks now she had been spring cleaning, like someone was coming. Then she started going on how it was a terrible pity about Birdie and Veronique falling out, said she might get Seamus to take her over to Veronique’s shop in his trap, just to have a word, see if she could persuade her to make up with her sister, try to make peace. Father interrupted from his chair, said Mam wouldn’t know what peace was if it jumped up and bit her ‘on the bum-bum-bum’. She shouted that he only stuttered when it suited him, that perhaps ‘that man’ was right, and my father was putting it all on, the whole thing, that perhaps he should go into show business. When Mam mentioned ‘that man’, it was time to leave the kitchen, so I did.
I swung on the rope that was tied to the oak and tried not to hear what they were saying indoors. Mam raced out, took my hand and dragged me through the gate with her. I knew better than to ask where we were going. Lately she had taken to wandering the roads after a flare-up – no coat, no money, just roaming about till it was dark. She let go of my hand, untied her head rag, flung it over the hedge and marched along with her arms crossed. I prayed we’d end up in town, and not walking in circles like the last time. After around twenty minutes she took a lipstick out of her pocket, smeared a bit on her finger and rubbed it over her mouth. Her face and hair were spattered with cream paint. The lipstick made her seem even paler; she looked a fright.
‘Do I look all right?’
‘Lovely. Really lovely. Like a beautiful –’
‘That’s enough, Emily.’
She veered down the slip towards the river walk, and I followed. Now that we were going into town, I was dying to ask – could we nip into the market and see if the famous herbal man was there? But I didn’t say anything. It made my mother a bit agitated if I sounded too interested in someone. I don’t know why, just the way she was.
It seemed the herbalist had been an instant hit. Some beautiful lady had tried to buy him out of face cream; she’d had skin like milk, hair like ebony and jewels in her ears like an Egyptian queen. Of course the rest of them couldn’t buy enough after that. They swarmed him. There wasn’t a bottle or jar left by midday. He was the talk of the place. Tessie Feeney said he was an ugly man; Milkie Nash said he was divine, and her mother slapped her for blasphemy.
In the days that followed his potions worked a treat: warts, veins and dandruff disappeared overnight. The people wondered where he was lodging. And, more importantly, would he be back? Some said he had sold so much that he was already sailing home to buy a temple. I heard that from Birdie Chase. It got me worried: maybe I’d missed my chance to get a look at him. Mind you, Birdie was no expert: she hadn’t seen him either, too short to see over the crowd around his stall and too achy to wait it out.
Birdie was Mam’s friend, but she was too old to be making any plans with. You’d be afraid to say, ‘Will we go to the pictures next week, Birdie?’ in case the thrill killed her. Last time she went to a performance in the town hall, in her eagerness to grab a front-row seat – it had to be the front for the Chases – she got giddy, fell sideways and hurt her hip. So now she was on a stick and couldn’t walk out to The Farm. That’s what she called our place. ‘Never mind the decay, it still has a luscious air to it.’ That’s what Birdie said.
Birdie could afford to be big-hearted – she owned nearly every house on her terrace and she had stacks of cash. I often wondered why Mam and Birdie were so pally. We weren’t exactly Birdie’s kind of people. She had two Protestant ladies up for sherry all the time. Miss Murray and Miss Hawkins were single and afflicted with flat shoes, thin voices and no men on the horizon as far as the eye could travel. They played bridge and talked about theatre, the reds and how great things had been when they’d better use of their legs. They were Birdie’s kind of people. She had probably adopted Mam as a charitable case.
Birdie’s twin sister Veronique had lived with her until she went and bought an identical shop in a town a few miles away. Veronique used to drive a motorcar and visit every week. Then they fell out. It was shortly after Birdie’s fall. Maybe the two were connected. You never knew: old people could be terrible odd.
Months passed and there was no sign of Veronique. Birdie fibbed to save her pride – said she was ill and couldn’t visit often. According to Mam she didn’t visit at all. They must’ve had a bruiser. Twins shared the one soul, so they’d have to make up if they fancied having a good time for eternity. I’d often heard Birdie telling Mam that riches in this life didn’t matter; it was the reward in the next life that counted. The next-life rule definitely didn’t apply to Birdie; anyone who wore yellow stockings like she did wasn’t waiting for the next life to have fun.
Anyway, whatever Birdie said, our house wasn’t a farm house, it was a shambles. We weren’t respectable. Father was well shook, and nobody knew this, but around January Mam began to drink too. It wasn’t as simple as that – there were good times as well – but you get the gist: dinnertime, the spuds boiled dry, the bottom of the pan burning and her holding out her skirt, singing, ‘Dance with me, daddy, dance with me.’ By
tea-time, she’d be asleep or hunched on the stool crying over some well-aimed insult from my father’s mouth. Mam called them his fits of eloquence; she could be very sarcastic. But I think she preferred them to his other fits.
‘Lush.’
‘I’ve never darkened the door of a public house.’
‘How-how-how I ask you, Maureen, is that a virtue? Not doing something you can’t do anyway. Now, now, if you didn’t drink this house dry, you’d have something to boast about. So-so-so you would.’
‘Brian, how dare you? I don’t drink.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘aye, Mrs Medicinal.’
Until she started drinking on the sly, Mam used to try to hold things together, used to put on a brave face and take Charlie and me for long walks with her make-up on, telling us that love was only a cod, a luxury people like us couldn’t afford. Something that happened before I was born had left our family unable to hold up their heads in public. Until then Mam’d had a life, friends even.
Before she gave up pretending, she liked to act like we were normal and she would be all about my education. She’d smooth down my hair, look into my eyes and tell me I’d have a future and a good one at that. Of course, that fell by the wayside, and two years ago I was kept home to help out.
I had liked school but nothing much was expected of me. No one checked my homework, but I was first in line when there was a nit scare. Immaculata said I was a daw, like the rest of my lot.
‘Who here’s going to be a nun?’ an inspector asked once.
‘The four at the front; we’ll leave the rest to the men,’ old Immaculata had said with a wave of her hand and a sneer.
So, here I was: spared the convent and the men. I never dreamt that someone would fall in love with me, not someone normal and good living. Maybe Aggie was wrong about love coming my way; maybe I was a fool to believe her.
Mam did love us when she wasn’t nervous or in a terrible temper. When she was in a good mood, she forgot everything else. ‘I’ve a great little family,’ she would say, ruffling Charlie’s hair. We were the best in the world then. Touching our heads, kissing our necks. The rest of the time we gave her a pain in her eye and would have to get out, get out, get out, or the brush would be across our backs.