by Boyce, Niamh
‘You want me to leave – is it something I’ve done?’
‘Did I not just explain all that to you? Master Kelly’s doing us a favour. Don’t be ungrateful, Sarah – you’ll have a wage, live in a busy town, you’ll meet people.’
‘I meet people here.’
‘Oh, is that so? Your heart’s desire is here, is it?’
Sarah didn’t know the answer to that one any more.
‘Hasn’t he two legs whoever he is – can’t he cycle to see you? And if he won’t go to the effort, you’re better off without him.’
‘Do I have to go?’
‘Are you not excited? A job in this day and age? And a good one?’
‘Why did Master Kelly pick me? Did you ask him?’
‘No, it came out of the blue. Last time he was here, do you remember? We came out here for a chat?’
‘Yes, you were very cosy. Maybe he wants me out of the way? Maybe he wants to clear a path to your door? He’s been a widower a long time now, fine man like him must get lonely.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Sarah. The opportunity may not present itself again. I’ve been mulling it over for the last couple of weeks. It’s not easy for me either, but I want you to have a few bob in your pocket, to live a little. If I was only thinking of myself, I’d keep you here for ever, my constant companion and helpmate.’ Mai squeezed Sarah’s hand.
‘When do they want me to start?’
‘Finbar will let us know. It’s likely to be as soon as the baby arrives and it’s due shortly.’
‘So it’s been settled?’
‘I suppose it has.’
Mai got up and went into the house. Sarah sat for a while, taking it in. Why would Finbar do her such a favour? She had never hinted that she wanted a job. Perhaps Mai had. Oh, Mai. And what of James? What would he say? Or did he know already?
She sat looking out over the place that had been her home for so long. Who’d keep the garden in order, the vegetable patch, collect the apples from the orchard, bake and take care of the house while Mai worked? Mai was fit but she couldn’t do everything. She rarely had two days together without a call. The poorer the people got, the more babies popped out. But obviously Mai thought she could survive very well without Sarah, and she had every intention of trying to do so.
9
I arrived in work looking very swish, if I do say so myself, but all Carmel wanted to know was the whereabouts of the damn shop-bought dress.
‘I’m keeping it for a special occasion, seeing as it cost the guts of a week’s wages.’
Out came the big ugly apron. I could see by Carmel’s face she thought someone like me wasn’t ever going to be having any special occasions. Maybe she was right. Michael Ryan used to smile at me. I thought he was gearing up to ask for a walk but nothing came of it, and then he stopped smiling. He must’ve found out who I came from, that we were not respectable.
As the days went on and people got used to seeing me serve, they began to treat me like I was one of them. They whinged about drenched laundry, swollen ankles and spoilt hams. It was all end of my tether, one of these days I’ll throw myself in the river. I jumped right in – sighed along with them, threw my eyes up to heaven – and had a grand old time. Time went much quicker once everyone was gabbing. When there was a lull, I swept the floor and polished the counter. Once the place was spick and span, I felt great.
One morning, when it was quiet, Mrs Daly swanned in. She couldn’t walk through a door without looking as if she’d earned a round of applause. She was disappointed when she saw I was on my own. It wasn’t the same if there were no men around; she got a lot of attention from them. I couldn’t see the attraction myself: her cheeks were pockmarked from old acne but seemingly she’d a nice figure. She was wearing widow’s weeds. Some said she’d buried her respectability along with her husband. A nappy pin was keeping her side zip together.
‘I could fix that for you,’ I said, pointing towards her hip.
‘Ah, these new zip yokes are a nuisance,’ she said. ‘I haven’t the patience to do it myself, always make a mess of it. Are you sure you could manage?’
She took out her compact, blotted the shine on her forehead and tugged a few curls free from her headscarf. She was very proud of her blue-black hair.
‘I can indeed,’ I said. ‘I’ll collect it from the house later today, bring it back and all. I’ll be cheap.’
‘I’ve a few others, a waistband or two that need letting out. There’d be no need to come to the house, though, I can get Margery or Joan to drop them here.’
‘I’ll mend the lot.’
‘You won’t take too long? I don’t want to be caught short.’ She smiled at her reflection and snapped her compact shut.
‘A day, done in a day.’
She sent her daughter Joan over with the garments later. Joan was still waiting for her good figure to arrive and it made her grumpy. You should’ve seen the greasy waistbands. Nell Nickety Nackety Daly didn’t even launder them before she handed them over. I planned to charge her the price of a zip and a few pence. I’d let on that I’d bought the zip in the drapery. One from a skirt of Mam’s would do the trick; she was wearing her old clothes again. Her usual few skirts had been sitting in the airing cupboard for months now. While all the other women her age were getting fatter, Mam was getting thinner. I couldn’t credit that people would pay for such small jobs. Perhaps Mrs Daly would recommend me to her friends. I imagined the pennies adding up and me buying yards of silks and satins.
Carmel came down early that afternoon. She seemed happy enough with my work. I told her all about Mrs Daly and my sewing job. Carmel fingered the slack material around her own waist – maybe she’d want the smock altered. She looked fresher than before. I hoped she wasn’t getting so well that she didn’t need me any more.
Dan came in then. Carmel scooped a few acid drops from a jar, popped them in the pocket of my apron and told me to head off home. Any price for a moment alone with her husband: she was pure mad about her child bridegroom.
I rushed to the market square, worried that the herbalist would be gone already. It was late in the day and had started to rain. I couldn’t believe my luck. All the stall-holders except the fishwife had left – she was entertaining her cronies with some yarn or other – but the herbalist was there, packing his wares into a suitcase. His table was folded and set against the wall. Even with the soft rain he took his time. He wore a suede brown hat instead of the white one. Old vegetables and whatnot were strewn on the ground. I felt ashamed, him looking so clean, and that he’d think we were a dirty class of people. I walked over to him. I said nothing, I’d nothing to say. I just smiled, and waited. He didn’t seem to notice. Was he going to ignore me altogether? I began to feel stupid. He looked up from his suitcase: his skin was slick with rain, and his eyes crinkled as he flashed a grin.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Can I give you a hand – carry your case?’
He laughed. The herbalist wouldn’t let me carry anything but he let me walk alongside him. He didn’t talk much either; he just whistled. We walked across the square, down the lane by the River Inn, and I nearly died then. He didn’t live in a house; he lived in a hovel with a tin chimney. It was almost bare inside – rags, an earth floor, hooks on the walls. I wondered how he slept at night. How he kept so clean-looking. For a fancy-looking man, the herbalist had nothing – no possessions beyond his case and folding table and the clothes he stood up in. He had a box of greasy bottles and jars. I stood there looking on as he began to wipe them clean with newspaper. Then I walked across to a small square window. It overlooked a yard of weeds and beyond
that was water. The river looked different from there, blacker, higher, faster.
‘Well, now,’ he said, as if it was time for me to go, but I didn’t want to go.
‘Do you like it here?’ I asked.
‘Well enough, but pious people are hard to get to know.’
That was my opening: if there was one thing I knew, it was the people of this town. I informed him who was who, ran quickly through the Greaneys, Nashes and Chases, to the Feeneys, Purcells and Ryans, and of course the Holohans and their recent problems. I told him Grettie Birmingham looked posh but rarely spent a penny and certainly wouldn’t come near him, what with her husband being the proper doctor, no offence. ‘None taken.’ I left my own family out of it. I told him what people were saying about him – that he was a godsend, saved them a fortune in doctor’s bills. That he was clean. And that he was an Indian. When I ran out of information, I just sat quietly on a crate while he wiped glass jars.
Then the herbalist took some blankets and old papers from a heap in the corner. I followed him outside and around to the yard, where he piled them up, poured kerosene over the lot and set it alight.
‘Hope you’re not burning anything that doesn’t belong to you, my boy!’
It was Aggie Reilly, shouting from the deck of her shabby black barge, bosoms and dusters flapping.
‘Just rubbish, just foul rubbish, madam.’ He took off his hat, waved it and bowed low like he was in a play.
She cocked her head to the side, almost smiled. Aggie never moored on this side of the bridge. She must be after something. I didn’t wave. The poor herbalist, though, wasn’t from around here, he didn’t know any different.
‘She’s a bad woman,’ I whispered; ‘goes with men.’
‘Ah.’ His hand felt hot on my waist as we turned towards the shed. ‘Like you?’
I stomped off. Regretted it the second I left. I would rather have been with him clearing his shed, making it suitable for human habitation, than facing into Mam’s questions, into the hot air of our house.
I mooched around for a day or two, spent most of my time stitching a new sewing bag, dark green, with my name embroidered in red. I was fevered with imaginings: that the herbalist was being seduced by some lecherous widow; that he had run off to greener pastures; that someone had set light to his shed while he slept. I couldn’t settle to anything, so I swallowed my pride and went to check on him.
He was letting out Catty Dolan as I arrived. She nodded at me and hurried on by. Then she stopped and turned. ‘I’m beating the queues,’ she said.
‘Are you?’
The herbalist didn’t look a bit surprised to see me. He walked on into the shed and left the door open for me to follow. There were shelves there now, filled with brown bottles and jars, pestle and mortars, and tins for tea and sugar that didn’t look like they contained tea and sugar. He had a gas-burner. Someone must’ve given him a kettle, someone else a saucepan. I felt bad that I’d nothing to give him. A dowdy partition curtain stretched from one wall to the other. There were herbs everywhere, tied by string and hanging from the rafters of the shed to dry. Honesty, sorrel, herb Robert, speedwell, and others I didn’t recognize.
I sat on the chair, suddenly aware that I’d no biscuits or cake with me.
‘Are you ill?’ he said.
He looked so concerned, and so kind, that I wanted to fall into his arms.
‘No, no, I’m not ill at all, thank you.’
‘Well, why are you here?’ He looked puzzled.
I didn’t know how to answer. For a terrible second I thought he didn’t remember me.
‘Would you like a quick cup of tea?’ he asked.
‘I’d love one.’
He gave me the nicest smile then, the herbalist, and I knew I had been right to come. We’d a lovely drop of tea till I had to go: someone else was coming. He told me he was making special tonics now, for people who wanted them. That was why Miss Dolan had called.
‘I concoct remedies especially tailored for the individual.’
‘Bespoke,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m impressed.’
I thought the tea would go to my head.
10
Dan couldn’t pass the hall mirror without admiring himself. He never seemed to age, not like her. It drove Carmel bananas.
‘That looking glass,’ she said, ‘is for lipstick only.’
‘Anyone can look in a mirror. It’s not the preserve of the ugly.’
‘You swine.’
He laughed, held her wrists above her head and gave her neck a quick kiss. She pretended horror but didn’t really mind. She went upstairs to change out of her smock. A song wafted up from the kitchen. Dan was listening to the gramophone. Vera Lynn sang ‘My Cinderella’. Eliza and Vera, the twin loves of Dan’s life. Those records were expensive but how could she begrudge him? He was being so good to her, not saying anything about the state of the house; she hadn’t had the energy to lift a finger, fell into bed as soon as Emily arrived. It was great to get the break, but it wasn’t enough. Carmel had got weak this morning: she had been trying to wash the damn clothes. The hot water, the steam, standing for that length of time, she just wasn’t able. The washing was still soaking. She needed a live-in: she would write to Finbar and tell him to send that girl, for a couple of weeks at least. That was all Carmel needed to recover – a few weeks – she could let her go then, make up some excuse. Emily was a quick learner, but she wanted her gone. The Maddens were unstable. Look at Brian, claiming shell shock, when it turned out that the bombs had been way off in the distance.
Carmel lay on the bed and began another letter to Finbar; she must post this one. It was a hard thing to write down, that her baby was gone. She started off easily, asking him to send the woman, thanking him for the books – she had rented a few already. She thought of Mr Purcell skittering by earlier with his head down. It made her long for a Sweet Afton. She left the real news till last – it took one sentence. She wept then.
She woke to roars. Dan was singing and rattling the grate. She checked her face: it was creased from the pillow. Ink from the words she had written stained the corner of her mouth.
‘Carmel, the food’s ready!’
She rubbed her mouth. Put her housecoat on. Went down cross.
‘Did you fall asleep?’
He wrapped his hand in a tea towel and lifted the lid off the bastible. The stew smelt delicious.
‘How could I, with all the noise you’re making?’
She set the table while Dan looked out at Eliza. You’d swear he cared more for that hog than he did for his wife, the way he talked to her, calling her a fine girl. They ate in silence, both famished. When the dishes were washed, she joined Dan in the living room, sat by the fire and tried to read. The evenings could be very long. It would have been so different if they’d had children.
Carmel was tired, yet restless. She was meant to stay in bed as much as she could. Doctor B said she had probably lost a lot of blood; then he asked her if she’d visited ‘that quack in the square’. He was worried about losing patients to Don Vikram Fernandes. The apple of Emily’s eye. Customers were commenting about the girl’s carry-on. She was pestering the herbalist, hanging around his stall. And if a certain someone was to be believed, she had visited him alone.
Emily had turned out to be surprisingly efficient. She had done a great job on their window display – people had commented on it – and Carmel was grateful, but there was a shiftiness about the girl. Her gestures were theatrical, unnerving. The constant fiddling and babbling about Harlow, Gilbert and Garbo was very wearing.
But that wasn’t the real why of it, why she wa
nted Emily at a distance. Carmel had visited the herbalist on the sly. She wanted to get strong again, she wanted to have another baby; she was going to give it one last try. If anyone could help her, he could; God knows she had tried everything else. So it didn’t do that Emily was around. Not that the herbalist didn’t seem discreet – he’d have to be in his line of work, wouldn’t he? – but Emily … well, Emily had a habit of seeing things you didn’t want her to see.
When he first came, she wouldn’t have dreamt of seeking him out, but that was before her baby was in the ground. Now she didn’t care what she had to do, as long as no one knew. She could do her penance later, after she’d had another child. She felt a change in herself – whether it was a hardening or a softening she wasn’t sure. And there was the guilt. All the time the guilt of wanting a living baby when poor Samuel was lost and alone in limbo.
Carmel had waited till it was dark one evening and gone to his door, nervous as a girl. It had opened on the first soft knock. Well, you’d swear she was royalty, he was so welcoming, so understanding. She didn’t have to explain. He had just the thing, and wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s the way Carmel wanted it: she needed the small bulb of dark liquid to remain secret, as secret as her wish. It hadn’t taken a second and had cost her one and six.
Dan sat down on the settle bed, crossed his legs and opened the Sunday Press.
‘I wrote to Finbar,’ Carmel said; ‘told him that we’ll take the girl he was going to send before, when … Anyway, we won’t need Emily any more – will you tell her?’
‘I thought Sad Eyes was a great help?’ He straightened up. ‘And do you know what she told me? Did you know, Carmel, that Carole Lombard and Clark Gable weren’t even properly married?’
‘Ah, how would Emily know, she’s full of nonsense. Dan, Grettie B says she’s besotted with that herbalist person; it’s unseemly and reflects badly on us.’
‘Emily’s no worse than the rest of them – sure isn’t every woman in the town lapping up his miracle elixirs? You even.’ He winked at his wife.