The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  ‘You’re not what I was expecting: you were meant to be older and a lot plainer. Ah, well, what can you do? Was the food all right for you?’

  ‘It was very nice, thank you.’

  ‘Did it go well today? Do you have any questions for me?’ She took a packet of Sweet Afton and matches from the dresser, then put an ashtray on the table.

  ‘No, Mrs Holohan, it went fine.’

  She sat down beside Sarah and looked out on the garden.

  ‘Is that eejit playing fetch with Eliza?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Nothing. Never mind.’ She lit her cigarette. ‘Who are your people, Sarah?’

  ‘Whytes.’

  ‘Yes, but what do they do, for a living?’ The smoke rose between them, and Mrs Holohan began coughing.

  ‘My aunt Mai Fox reared me. My mother died having me. Mai was in England at the time and stepped in to take care of me. Then the Spanish flu killed my father …’

  ‘Oh, you’re an orphan. I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Ah, it’s not so bad. Mai’s very good to me. When my father died, she gave up her position; we came to Ireland and made our home near her sister Gracie. I never knew any different.’

  ‘It must’ve been hard, though – how did she manage financially?’

  ‘Well, she’s a midwife, Mrs Holohan, so she worked.’

  ‘Oh.’

  That seemed to displease Mrs Holohan, and made her cough again. Why did she smoke if it caught in her throat?

  ‘You can sweep the downstairs and upstairs and polish; then your time is your own. And of course you have tomorrow off, except for preparing dinner; we’ll be going to the holy well. You can come with us.’

  Sarah was exhausted by the time she got to bed. At least she’d been given a bright, freshly painted bedroom. There was a grand brass hook on the back of the door. She hung her coat on it and looked around. There was a bed, a lovely rocking chair in the corner and lemon curtains. She tried the bed: the springs were firm. In front of the fireplace was a screen on which someone had begun to paint a daisy but had given up after a stem and a few petals. There was a tin monkey on the mantelpiece. There must’ve once been a drum or some other instrument between its arms, the way they were stretched out. She turned the tiny key in its back, and the arms came together and parted over and over again without a sound.

  She put her suitcase on to the bed and opened it. She set her hairbrush on the mantelpiece and folded her under-things, blouses and cardigans into a drawer in a small white locker. Sarah lifted out her tin of tricks. She wasn’t a magpie, like Mai. The small box contained all of Sarah’s treasures: her lipstick, cold cream, a powder compact, toothbrush, a set of linen handkerchiefs, rosary beads, her missal and the green glass-droplet earrings. Left in the suitcase was her fringed peacock shawl, a jam jar containing three and fourpence, and a copybook that held Mai’s mother’s recipes. She removed the jam jar before shutting the case and shoving it under the bed. No need for fringed shawls in her new life. Sarah set the fire screen to one side, put her hand up the chimney and felt for a ledge, somewhere safe for her savings. When she found it, she tested that the lid of the jar was closed tight and then put it in its new hiding place. She was slow moving, taking her time. No matter how strange this place was, she was glad to be here, because home would never be the same again.

  16

  I was wrecked from crying. The mornings were the worst. There was always that second when I forgot Mam wasn’t with us. How could I? I don’t know. But I did, every single morning since the day she died. I missed her so much, it was like my heart was cut out. I missed her hands, her voice, her lovely soft hair. I even missed her giving out. Father was around less than ever. He had a wandering soul. If we met of an evening, I couldn’t look at him: the skin was near raw under his eyes. A bit late to be showing his feelings.

  I called round to the herbalist. Told him it felt like someone had picked me up and wrung me out, asked had he a cure for that? He didn’t laugh; he invited me in and sat me down in the chair with the high back. The one for proper visitors.

  ‘There’s no cure’ – he rubbed my hair, and then he held my chin – ‘there’s no cure and there never will be.’

  I won’t tell what he did then. No, I will. He kissed me so hard I thought the chair would topple. And it was wonderful. He called me a goddess, an empress. I started to cry.

  ‘There are so many bad things …’ I said.

  ‘I’ll make them go away.’

  He kissed me again. And then we had tea, and a rock bun each from the half dozen he’d exchanged for some remedy. There was no butter, so the bun was a bit dry. I would bring him some later, a present.

  I was rightly set up, then, had myself a man. That’s what I thought.

  But when I went back later with a pat of butter, his door was shut and there was no answer. That doesn’t sound like anything much, but here’s the thing: I knew he was in there, I just knew it. I was growing myself some women’s intuition.

  It went from bad to worse. There was a new girl in Kelly’s. A live-in help, who worked six whole days a week. Her name was Miss Whyte. A country one. The people were only too delighted to tell me all about her. Seems she wasn’t a patch on me, slow and a bit full of herself, as country ones are.

  I went straight to the shop, stood by the grocery window, careful not to be seen from inside. Carmel was standing beside a tall, dark girl. They were examining a ledger. Carmel had flour on her jaw, her white apron on; the glass was all steamed up. The girl’s head was bent, and her coal-black hair hung in a thick plait that she lifted every now and again. I couldn’t see her face. Carmel leant in and it looked like she was about to press her lips to the nape of the girl’s neck. I stepped back. What a strange thing. Or did I imagine it?

  I entered the shop, and they stopped talking. I didn’t care if I was told off or sent on my way. I just wanted to see that girl’s face.

  ‘Oh, hello, Emily,’ Mrs Holohan said, as if no trouble had passed between us.

  The girl looked at me. Her eyebrows were thick and straight and her eyes were blue, a dark blue like you’d see on delph, and slightly slant. There was a lot wrong with her face: a wide mouth, a chin an inch too long, flared nostrils. And yet … she was perfectly lovely. What was Mrs Holohan thinking? A barren woman inviting a beauty into her home. That was asking for trouble.

  ‘This is Emily,’ she said; ‘she was with us for a while.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’ The girl smiled and held out her hand. Her palm was warm.

  ‘I worked here till you came,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘They sacked me the day Mam died,’ I sobbed.

  Carmel had me by the shoulders and out the door before I could catch the girl’s response.

  I went to see what the herbalist had to say about all this. He had nothing to say. He grudgingly let me in – didn’t even put the kettle on. Had he forgotten that I was his empress? Had I imagined that kiss? Was everyone against me now?

  ‘Emily, you have to stop loitering at the stall.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘People are talking.’

  ‘No. They’re not.’

  ‘Why, then, did you lose your job? I’m a businessman. I have to be careful.’

  ‘This morning I was queen of everything, now I’m nothing.’ I sidled towards him.

  ‘I can’t breathe; back away.’

  ‘Why are you talking like that? You hate me!’

  ‘If you don’t stop, Emily, I will. Stay away till I tell you otherwise.’

  He sighed and kept pasting labels on to his bott
les.

  ‘You said you could keep the bad things away, stop them hurting me, but you know doctor shite, you’re the bad thing!’

  I waited for a reaction, but got none. I slammed the door on my way out, but got no pleasure from it.

  17

  Carmel felt incredibly well. Maybe it was having the help. More than likely it was the remedy. She would have loved to know what was in it. Of course, the phial of medicine the herbalist gave to Carmel had no label on it. She was eager to ask the doctor about his herbal remedies; she intended to interest him in recording his recipes, and maybe together they could collect them in a book, like Doctor Culpeper. Her talents were wasted in the grocery. In the meantime she would talk to him about selling his wares on her premises.

  The next time he appeared in the shop, Carmel pushed past Sarah to attend to him. He set his tin on the counter and took off the lid. Tobacco and sugar were all he wanted, and he seemed quieter than usual, though his smile was ready. Carmel hoped to steer the conversation around to his medicines and the possibility that she, Carmel, might sell them, and perhaps they could eventually record them.

  Carmel could see it already: a small cream volume, with the name Mrs Daniel Holohan in sweeping script on the title page. And the herbalist’s name too of course, Don Fernandes, or whatever it was. But everyone would know it was really her work, that his English wouldn’t have been up to scratch. She could fill the shop window with books, put some in the library, maybe even write a letter to the Press.

  ‘Those back windows are filthy, Sarah.’

  Sarah took the hint and went on into the back. Carmel weighed the sugar and added an extra generous scoop with a wink. He smiled as the hill of white grains grew high. Then she poured the lot into the tin he always brought with him.

  ‘You forgot to drop by?’ he said, no longer smiling.

  ‘Drop by?’

  ‘To settle up, for the month’s supply of tonic.’

  ‘It slipped my mind.’ She had hoped he would give her more time.

  ‘That’s understandable; you’ve been to hell and back.’

  ‘I have, I have …’ Carmel opened the drawer and counted the coins into her hand.

  ‘By the way, while there are no ears to hear –’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  He seemed so kindly now, the way he looked at her.

  ‘It must be very inconvenient for you, to be pestered so by Emily. It’s best not to be too kind to some people; they can be very hard to shake off. And it sets people talking, and the things they say, you would be appalled. So it’s best to just cut it off at the root; it would be kinder in the long run. Do you understand my meaning?’

  He picked up his money and put it in a leather pouch he had taken from his inside jacket pocket. It didn’t look like he was going to answer.

  ‘I’m not inconvenienced by much, Mrs Holohan. In general and nowadays, I suffer no inconvenience at all.’

  She wasn’t sure what he meant. Felt strangely rebuked, like an old biddy who didn’t know what was going on in the world beyond her prayer book.

  ‘I was thinking of doing you a favour, as it happens –’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I would be happy to help you record your remedies for posterity; we could have a fine herbal volume on our hands?’

  ‘Why would I give away my remedies for just anyone to use?’ His voice was curt.

  Carmel was taken aback. Who was he, to talk to her in such a manner?

  ‘You’re a very gracious and generous woman to think so highly of my remedies. I can see you have only good intentions, Mrs Holohan, but my prescriptions are not for everyone; in fact, they could be quite dangerous in the wrong hands.’ He had changed his tone.

  ‘I see.’ Carmel didn’t quite know how to retrieve her dignity.

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Good evening.’

  She retreated to the living room and sent Sarah back out to the shop. The girl looked confused, but she put away the cleaning rags, took off her apron and returned to the counter. The herbalist had left so abruptly. Carmel had wanted to consult him about her sleeping difficulties. Why did she feel so chastised?

  She’d read Mr Corcoran’s bible. That would settle her. Dan said she was a fool, having her head turned by the salesman’s smart talk. ‘What odds?’ she told him. ‘At least “the salesman” has taste.’ The man had admired her hair, in particular the way it was plaited and pinned around her crown. She’d been delighted. Dan used to tease her when they were courting – ‘How’s Heidi?’ he’d ask. Not so Mr Corcoran; no, he had called her plait ‘a wheaten halo’, said that she reminded him of a German princess. By the time he left, her cheeks were scarlet and she was holding the beautiful leather-bound bible to her chest. Carmel read it all the time nowadays: she liked the stories, and she liked to remind herself a man had once called her a German princess.

  She took the book from under her chair, reached down and pulled out the old leather handbag. It contained the Buckfast she kept for times of distress or sleeplessness. She poured herself a generous and much needed mug full. It had been an upsetting week in general. Very upsetting.

  This morning, when they were washing the bed linen, Sarah had asked again about the child. ‘I was told I’d be minding a baby?’ were her exact words, as her elbows moved up and down, crushing fabric against the washboard. Carmel didn’t know what to say. She wrung out a pillowcase. Why hadn’t Finbar informed Sarah? He’d hardly forget something so important. Well, he hadn’t told her, and after a weekend of avoiding the question Carmel had to answer it.

  ‘He’s in limbo,’ Carmel said, short and sharp. Let her feel the bite too.

  Sarah stopped what she was doing, stepped near and put her wet arms around Carmel. Sarah pulled her tight, and Carmel took in her breath. Carmel wasn’t going to cry, not in the arms of a shop girl.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Holohan, sorry for your trouble, I really am.’

  ‘You’re grand, you’re grand. Take those sheets out to the line while there’s still a bit of sun out.’

  Sarah did as she was told.

  She was the first and only person to have offered Carmel condolence on the loss of her baby. No one else had ever spoken much about the matter. They had followed Carmel’s lead in that respect. She wasn’t like Grettie B, making a fuss over everything. Grettie would have had Mass said for a splinter in her finger – she talked far too freely about private matters. Carmel didn’t do that. It wasn’t her way.

  Sarah was back. Carmel had left soup and bread in the kitchen for her.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Holohan?’

  ‘No, thanks – look after yourself.’

  The tonic was going down nice and easy. She heard the girl fill the kettle and go about her supper. Carmel half closed her eyes; she liked that the living room was dark. It was like a cave. She must try to shift those Sacred Hearts. They unnerved her. It was a consignment Dan had ordered in that hadn’t sold. She could have told him that they wouldn’t. Anyone with a few bob spent it on food or fuel.

  People used to wonder if Carmel and Dan were up to something anti-Catholic, seeing as no children had come along in the early years of their marriage; or, worse, and more peculiar, were they up to nothing at all?

  As it went, neither was true. When they first married, Carmel had been keen. She had wanted to eat Dan up, butter him and smother him in jam. He smiled when she talked like that; it tickled him how different she was in the bedroom, how warm and loving. When did that all change? It was the little things. And the little things had added up, as Carmel said, to a mountain she couldn’t bear to look at, let alon
e climb. ‘The smell of your feet alone would wither love in an angel’s heart.’ He had never asked her what she meant.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Holohan.’ Sarah held a hot-water jar in her arms.

  ‘Sleep well, Sarah.’

  Carmel poured another drop of tonic into her mug. She pushed off her shoes. The words in the bible were very small; even with her glasses she found them hard to decipher.

  Dan was in the yard, locking the shed and talking to Eliza. Telling her she was a great girl, the best and most beautiful pig in Ireland. All silly lovey dovey. He never used that voice with Carmel. She lit one of her Sweet Aftons and took a drag. Read about Lot, leaving the burning cities of sin, with his wife and daughters behind him. And his wife, though she was told not to, looking back over her shoulder and turning instantly into a pillar of salt.

  Carmel always wanted to stop the story just before Lot’s wife turned, to stop it and grab Lot’s wife’s hands in hers, and say ‘Look into my eyes’ and lead her safely away. As if you could step on to a page, especially a sacred page, and change anything. She knew it was mad, but Carmel couldn’t read or hear the story without wanting to do that.

  She could hear Dan in the kitchen, cleaning his teeth with baking soda, gargling to beat the band. It was a horrible sound. At least Sarah couldn’t hear it; she wouldn’t be back down. She tired easily for a young woman. Or maybe not everyone was a night owl like Carmel, that’s what Dan said. And then in he came. He swaggered past her to check himself in the hall mirror. It was the same scene six nights of the week now – Dan with his face shaved, looking dapper and smelling of cologne, flying out to the local.

  ‘Oh, they’ll love you, Dan. You look wonderful,’ Carmel mocked. ‘Off to Murphy’s done up like a film star. They’ll lap you up.’