by Boyce, Niamh
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Lizzie saw you coming out of that shack he calls a dispensary. Did Mr Sing-Song promise to make you look younger? The things women believe. Only a time machine could do that. Is that what he has in there, Carmel, a time machine!’
‘Very funny. Lizzie must’ve been on the lash because it wasn’t me she saw, mark my words.’
She snapped her novel shut. Brave New World indeed – she couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It vexed Carmel that Dan thought she wanted wrinkle lotion. The whole thing vexed her.
‘Look, I’m sorry for laughing. He’s only a con man, you know that, don’t you?’ He reached over and touched her knee.
‘What would you know about anything?’ Why was there a lump in her throat?
‘He’s just peddling hope, Carmel.’ Dan’s tone had softened.
‘What have you got against hope?’ She gave him a water-eyed glance.
‘Nothing.’ He held her hand, and dared to say the unmentionable. ‘Did you think he could help us have children, is that it?’
She couldn’t speak.
‘So what now?’ he said. ‘Bed?’
‘Why not.’
She poked the fire while he left the room, didn’t want to meet his eye. Followed him up the stairs as if she were in no great hurry. Unbuttoned her dress with her back to Dan, hung it carefully in their wardrobe. Got into bed with her slip on.
‘My eyes are sore, Dan.’
He got up and closed the heavy drapes. All light left the room except for bright pins where the curtains didn’t meet. It reminded her of when the thread ended on the spool and the needle ran on regardless, puncturing seed holes of light into the seams of the fabric. He pulled up her slip. This was the first time, the first time since she had lost the child. Again, she felt guilty. She tutted and sighed as she allowed him to adjust her clothing, like it was all for him. He was more gentle than usual, went slow. Still, it stung. She winced at first, but then she felt herself move beneath him, in time with him. Mortified that her body had betrayed her. It was greedy, ready and waiting.
Afterwards Carmel had a dream, as mixed up a dream as she’d ever had. The roots of her hair were bedevilled by care; someone kissed her fingertips with a soft mouth. ‘Oh, my dear, you have dancer’s hands.’ She wasn’t sure if it was a woman or a man. They wore a headscarf like a man in a play who acts as a stepmother, who dresses as a witch, who pretends to be a good woman selling an apple to Snow White. ‘Be careful what you wish for, it could come true,’ whispered this stepmother, as she pressed the apple to Carmel’s mouth. It was green and felt hard against her lips. Blood pooled in the loose skin over her front teeth. ‘I don’t want it!’ Carmel screamed.
Dan woke her.
‘What is it, kitten?’ He always called her silly names after.
‘It was Goldilocks’s stepmother; she was trying to feed me a poisoned apple.’
He hugged her. ‘No, she couldn’t,’ he said. ‘Goldilocks didn’t have a stepmother.’
‘That doesn’t mean she couldn’t force an apple down me.’
‘It does, because she didn’t exist,’ he said, pleased with his logic.
He smiled, moved in closer. ‘Do you think we’ve made a baby?’ he whispered.
‘Stop it. Don’t tempt fate.’ She pushed him away.
‘You’re awful contrary, Carmel, you know that?’
‘Oh, what happened to “kitten”? Is kitten gone?’
He pulled on his trousers and walked downstairs with his hands in his pockets, trying to whistle.
11
I chanced calling round to the herbalist early one Sunday morning, just after breakfast. Curious to see if he observed the day of rest. He answered the door with his shirt hanging out and his hair all over the place. Asked if I was ill, but he was only joking this time. He looked up and down the lane to see if there was anyone about – there wasn’t – so he let me in. The partition curtain was half pulled back. His bed was a stretcher bed. A basin and a jug stood at the end. A golden virgin-and-child calendar was taped over the head of it. He stoked the stove, slipped in a piece of turf and set the kettle on heat.
‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
I arranged myself on the corner stool with my new mending bag on my lap. He got on with his morning routine as if I wasn’t there. Soaped and shaved in front of the mirror taped to the wall above the basin. With his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, I could see he had the muscles of a barrowman. I moved a bit, to get a better view of him and his reflection. As he tapped his razor off the basin, something he did again and again, I kept seeing a flash of green in the crook of his arm. His skin was inked in jade, some sort of tattoo. He caught me staring then, thought I was admiring his muscles and dared me to feel his arms; I did. They were like stone.
‘Are you human at all?’ I asked.
He liked that. Said he did physical exercises every day in the yard. I made an impressed face, didn’t mention the tattoo; maybe he was ashamed of it, maybe that’s why he shaved with his shirt on and didn’t strip to the waist, like I had hoped he would. He had the cheek then to say that Irish women were square-shaped, when he was no Johnny Weissmuller himself. Told me that I was shaped like a girl from his country. His family, he did not talk about them. All dead.
‘Your mother too?’
He shook his head. No more talk. He splashed some cologne on to his palm, rubbed his hands together, then patted his jaw and neck. The sweet peppery scent would send you to heaven and back. Oh, he was a proper herbalist, no matter what Mrs B said. He walked the fields collecting weeds and wild flowers most mornings, till his trousers were wet to the knee. I saw him, but he never saw me. At least I hoped he didn’t.
The kettle was beginning to steam. The herbalist rushed to take it off the heat. Steam wasn’t a good idea, not when he was drying plants. I was surprised at how withered they were. What good was a dried-up old flower head?
‘You love them old weeds,’ I said.
He got in a huff. Snapped that common didn’t mean useless.
‘There’s often good in bad and bad in good. Poison in the root, medicine in the flower – like you perhaps,’ he said, softening.
‘Yes, but too much of a good thing will kill you?’ I said.
‘No, not you.’
I hadn’t the faintest notion what we were talking about. He handed me a cup of sugary black tea and lay up on the bed. I took some work out of my bag and unpicked threads from the seams of Birdie Chase’s dress. We could hear all the sounds of the square. A horse and trap clattering, children playing swing rope and chanting, ‘Call for the doctor, call for the nurse, call for the lady with the alligator purse …’ I snipped a thread with the tip of my scissors and thought, Isn’t this lovely – don’t I have a good life now? Between my new job and my own mending work, I’ll soon be able to buy a few yards of fabric and make a brand-new dress of my own. I won’t know myself then.
There were three sharp knocks on the door. I jumped, but the herbalist just smiled.
‘I’ve some business to attend to,’ he said, nodding at me.
The nod meant feck off. I gathered my things and let myself out, curious to see who was calling on him. I turned to tell the herbalist that there was no one at the door, but he just waved me away with a flick of his hand, like you would a fly.
I was going mad in the head from eating rabbits. You’d think on Sunday we’d stretch to one of the old hens. As soon as the dishes were done, I made my escape. Mam was in a strange mood: she hadn’t said a word to me, bar calling out ‘Don’t you dare go far’ as I was climbing the stair
s. Sure how far could I go in that direction? I went to my room and had a grand time lying on my bed totting up my earnings. I kept track of my few customers in a copybook. There was Birdie Chase, Carmel Holohan, Mrs Daly, the Moriarty sisters, Mary Burke and her mother. I was hoping that the list would get longer and that I’d get to do some real sewing, perhaps for Mrs B’s daughter Rose. She wore something different almost every day. Beautifully tailored dresses from Dublin. She got a Jean Harlow white fur for her sixteenth birthday.
For now it was mostly zips. People hated doing zips. I loved them; loved sewing. Would hem a handkerchief just to keep my hands busy, for the pleasure of making rows of neat, even stitches. I was only earning pennies, but in a matter of weeks there might be enough. The problem was, though, that once I’d mended something it was usually mended for good. So my main source of income was Birdie – or Lady Chatterley, as Carmel had taken to calling her. As long as she kept discovering clothes that needed renovating, my dream dress remained a possibility. I never called Birdie by her new nickname. If she knew that I knew, and that the whole town knew, she sold filthy banned books, Birdie would be mortified.
‘Emily!’ Mam called. ‘Emily, come down to the parlour if you please.’
If you please? Why was she talking like that? I went downstairs to see what she was carrying on about. And who should be there, plumb on the sofa of the ‘parlour’, but only Doctor Birmingham. He had never crossed our threshold before. Not one of our family calamities had ever been great enough to warrant summoning the gracious Doctor B. Not when our father went missing, not when Mam wrung the neck of every single chicken. This must be shocking serious.
‘You’ve been consorting with the peddler.’ The doctor spoke to me but looked at Mam.
How could he know? Doctor B would never be caught mucking around the square on market days – he’d rather be caught picking his nose. Mam gave him a pinched smile and then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, real gently. Doctor B seemed to relax then; leant back and let his fat legs fall open. I could see the lump between them. The seams were stretched to breaking. He laid a hand on each knee and cocked his head to the side.
‘I came for Grettie’s sake, blood being thicker than water and all that, you know yourself. But of course you don’t. You don’t know anything, you’re only a girl. A slip of a thing.’
What family connection was he yammering on about, with the big grey bollocks on him eyeing me from beneath his trousers? I’d swear it moved. He cleared his throat. I was going to be sick.
‘Come here like a good girl so I can talk to you properly.’ His voice had gone hoarse. ‘Come on, closer.’
He raised his hand out towards me. I didn’t know what he was going to do and I never got the chance to find out, because right at that moment a scream came out of my mouth. And then I near ran through the door to get away from him.
Mam was just sitting there in the kitchen, at the head of the table; it was set all fancy, with the white and gold teapot. She brushed past me and went into the parlour. The front door slammed. She was back out again in seconds.
‘What did you do to the poor man?’ she said. ‘He’s after running past me without so much as a word. What will he think of us at all?’
She sat down at the table.
‘Who on earth is going to help me now?’ she cried.
‘I’m so sorry, but he gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I thought …’ I rubbed her shoulder.
What had I thought? What was Mam thinking? Why couldn’t she talk to me herself? There was always a man being called in to deal with me: it used to be my father, then it was the priest, now it was the doctor. Who next, the plumber?
She shook off my hand and began to clear away the nice crockery and put out the ordinary plates. The silence over tea was hell. Charlie was in a world of his own. The only sounds were our forks and knives, and the odd cough from my father. He didn’t ask what was wrong: he’d no curiosity when it came to goings-on under his own roof. We were eating lettuce and tomatoes with cold potatoes; they were waxy, and felt like marbles in my stomach.
I was miserable for making Mam miserable, and for making her call the doctor and bringing her strife – she hated strife. And how dare Doctor B call the herbalist a peddler? How dare he? I hoped Doctor B wasn’t coming back. Fancy doctor man or not, I didn’t care – something wasn’t right. But I’d never be forgiven for scaring him off, and for having done something to have him called here in the first place. And I only befriending a poor stranger. Consorting. What a horrible word. And the big fat mouth on him and he saying it.
Mam started to choke – held her hand over her mouth. Father stood up, like that was enough of a help. Just stood there gawking at her. When her hand came down, her face was flushed. Then she started laughing. It was an age before she calmed down, and we just waited in silence as she wiped the tears away.
‘The face on poor Doctor Birmingham and he springing out of here like someone had shot him up the arse. Oh, Emily, what am I going to do with you at all?’
She looked sad again when we were doing the dishes after the tea. ‘You know I love you,’ she said. I knew that. She said that it was coming time for me to leave, leave the house and go somewhere if I was to have a chance of anything better.
But where was a girl like me to go?
Mam never mentioned consorting of any sort again. She also never asked me why I had screamed that afternoon. I suppose she put it down to me being daft.
12
Sarah woke at daybreak and heard Mai pottering around. She wrapped a blanket around her and tiptoed into the room. The kettle was steaming and Mai was sitting on the stool, waving a slice of bread over the fire. She was shivering. Daylight had crawled halfway across the floor.
‘What has you up at cock crow, Mai?’
‘I’m only home – was in Phil Green’s. They sent for me after midnight; I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘You should’ve – they’re a tough lot. I would’ve come, no bother.’
‘Well, I’m fine, and all’s well – a boy, 8 pounds 10 ounces. And they actually paid me.’
‘I thought Phil wasn’t due till June? Aren’t they only wed since Halloween?’
‘It was an early delivery. I don’t know who the father is, but it’s not the string of a thing she married.’
‘I pity the men.’
‘I do too. I pity them all. Phil looked terrified but she was quick. “It’s come terrible early, hasn’t it, Mai?” “Indeed it has,” said I, looking at the fat-faced leanbh; “the poor craythur is lucky to be alive.”’
‘How could she?’
‘What choice did she have?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Ah, the innocence of youth.’
Later that morning Willy the Post knocked on the back window. Mai opened the window and took the envelope. The postman stood peering in, as was his habit. Mai took her time fidgeting with the letter before sighing ‘Ah, think I’ll read it later’ and placing it in the pocket of her apron. That was her habit. Willy rarely took a scrap of news from Mai’s house. Sarah thought it was uncharitable of her aunt; the old man loved news of any sort and considered it his vocation to spread it.
‘Well, hope it’s good,’ he said, as he loped away.
It was a note from Finbar: Sarah was to start in Kelly’s shop the coming Saturday. There would be six weeks’ trial.
‘Trial sounds about right,’ said Sarah.
‘No, no, listen to me now.’ Mai made her sit down and began to talk.
Sarah felt bad for her cheekiness when she saw how hard Mai was trying. She carried on about what a busy town it was, and how man
y interesting people Sarah was bound to meet. What a wonderful opportunity, to work in a shop! She remembered when Finbar’s mother had run the place, and what a gentle person Frances had been. She reminisced until she wasn’t really talking to Sarah any more, till she was talking to herself. ‘You always remember the ones that die young the best. She loved flowers. Her watercolours were all over the shop. Maybe you’ll see them when you go there, or maybe not, that was a long time ago.’ Then she began to talk about a party. Mai, who’d never had a party in her life.
‘I want to have a nice supper for you, a send-off.’
She retrieved her big black handbag from the trunk under the stairs, sat in her armchair and began to ease her feet into her best shoes.
‘Thursday evening.’
‘What about it?’ asked Sarah.
‘That’s when I’ll tell them to come, for your send-off.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Why, everyone.’ At that Mai left the house.
That Thursday, Sarah walked in on the preparations. There was steam everywhere. The scent of cinnamon, roast chicken and burnt sugar filled the air.
‘What are you doing?’
‘A few neighbours, a drop of sherry, no big fuss,’ Mai sang as she pierced the roast chicken breast.
The skin crackled and broke under her fork. There were beads of sweat on her upper lip. Her tight bun had feathered askew.
‘This is too much, Mai,’ Sarah said.
‘I want to send you off in style.’
And she did. The table laden to breaking, teacup towers, apple tarts, rock buns, a Victoria sponge with jam and cream. The best cloth, white linen, shiny shamrocks embroidered on each corner – finally good enough to eat off, now that Sarah was leaving. A fine spread to celebrate her new position.
There wasn’t a neighbour that didn’t come. By ten the party was in full swing, and Sarah sat with her cousin Mary and Bernie and the other girls on the bench in the kitchen. The Flanagan boys played a reel, her lemonade was warm and flat, and all she could think was Is James ever going to ask me to dance at all? The tune went faster and faster, like the fiddle was fighting the box accordion. They were all trying to outdo each other. So many musicians, there was almost no one left to clap. Feet stamped, the people called for a waltz, a waltz. A chance for couples to take to the floor. Was he ever going to ask her?