The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  ‘Night, night!’ And he was gone.

  Carmel sat by the stove with her mug of tonic, her closed bible and her dying Sweet Afton. She began to cry.

  She went on up to their bedroom, where she changed into her nightgown and got down on her knees. Closing her eyes, she recited aloud her nightly prayer against nightmares.

  Anne, mother of Mary, Mary, mother of Christ, Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist; these three I place between me and the malady of the bed, suffocation, drowning or injury …

  As she prayed she began to feel comforted, protected. On reaching the last line, she heard a sound, a low echo behind her, a voice joining in, whispering the same meaning at the same time, but in the Irish. Her mother’s voice.

  Carmel wanted to call out for Dan. He was too far away. She blessed herself with shaking hands and slowly turned around. There was no one there. The wardrobe and the dressing table were the only black shapes. She slipped on to the bed and between the sheets. They felt so cold.

  It wasn’t a voice, she decided; just the memory of a voice. Her mother had taught her that prayer in Irish when she was an infant. Carmel used to call it the ‘Anna Maha Mirror’ prayer. She didn’t understand what the words meant, just that they were good. Let’s say the Anna Maha Mirror and make the bad things go away! In school, they’d been taught the English version, which vexed her mother. Then Carmel realized the Irish words were ‘Áine, mháthair Mhuire’ – ‘Anne, mother of Mary’.

  The prayer didn’t seem to be working lately. If anything, the nightmares had become stronger and stronger. That night she felt the cool shadow of a bad dream spread its wings as she closed her eyes.

  18

  Sarah was smiling to herself over what Mr Holohan had said this morning. ‘Sarah, you’d sell sand to the Arabs!’ She had persuaded Mr Gogarty to settle his account just by squinting at the ledger with a woefully sad expression on her face. She wondered would it get her a rise in her wages. It was embarrassing having to wear the same few clothes day in, day out. Carmel had gleaming white cuffs on her satin blouse – no rayon for her – but by six o’clock she usually stank to high heaven anyway.

  Was Mrs Holohan ever going to get up? Sarah was weak on her feet, had had nothing to eat since breakfast. Sacks of potatoes, flour, sugar and tea surrounded her, crowded her. A woman came in wearing a long cream coat fastened with a belt. She left the door wide open.

  ‘And who,’ she asked, ‘might you be?’

  ‘I’m Sarah – pleased to meet you.’

  The woman ignored her offer of a handshake. So much for Mr Holohan saying how much all the customers were looking forward to meeting their new girl. The women only wanted boiled sweets. On tick. Opening the ledger, Sarah glanced up.

  ‘Your name, ma’am?’

  It was as if she had slapped the woman’s face.

  ‘Mrs Birmingham! Have you not been taught anything at all? Have you ever worked in a shop before?’

  ‘This is my first time, ma’am.’

  A girl swung in on a breeze of perfume.

  ‘Ah, Rose, love, there you are.’

  The girl had a painted mouth and blonde waves swept high off her forehead. While Mrs Birmingham was busy tutting and sighing, Rose whispered to Sarah from behind cupped painted fingers: ‘You poor thing, stuck in here for the summer!’

  The girl looked at Sarah with genuine pity. Sarah made a face, as if the shop were something she’d got landed with rather than a safe haven. Mr Holohan stuck out his head from the living quarters.

  ‘Such lovely ladies loitering in this drab place, when you could be enjoying the sights!’

  Rose started to giggle.

  ‘My dear’ – he slipped an arm through Mrs Birmingham’s – ‘let me accompany you.’

  He turned and winked at Sarah as he escorted mother and daughter from the shop. But it was all part of his act for them; he had nothing to be winking at her for.

  Mrs Holohan appeared then, looking for titbits of gossip. The customers didn’t tell Sarah much. She was still ‘the new one from the country’. Knew she was from the country without being told. Her hair was the tell-tale sign, she realized, so long and old-fashioned. And the dowdy skirt, almost ankle length, didn’t help either. Even if they did talk, she didn’t know who they were talking about, except for the stranger in the market. She figured out that he was the same hawker who’d asked her to pretend to be a satisfied customer, the one who’d given her the skin cream that had ended up in a ditch. Don’t think about it.

  ‘Any news from the great unwashed?’ asked Mrs Holohan.

  ‘The herbalist is making a fortune; they say he’s going to buy a car.’

  ‘I could do with making a fortune myself.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Holohan.’

  Sarah thought she was very well off indeed.

  ‘Don’t call me Mrs Holohan – it makes me feel old. Call me Carmel.’

  ‘You’re not old at all, Carmel.’

  ‘I certainly feel it. This scrimping and saving life is bearing down on me – I’ll be woollen legged and exhausted before I’m thirty-seven.’

  Carmel’s eyes were baggy, and there were deep lines across her forehead. Her complexion was, as Mai would say, the colour of a boiled shite. She looked well past thirty-seven and in need of some sound beauty advice.

  ‘I cut out the Pond’s Cold Cream advertisement and taped it to my mirror; I follow the face-massage instructions every morning.’

  ‘How old are you, Sarah?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘It’s easy for you, but I don’t have time for such nonsense.’

  Neither did Sarah, seeing as she now spent every waking hour behind a shop counter. She noted the sag beginning at her employer’s jawline and wondered if it would happen to her own. Sarah took care of herself, but sometimes she wondered why she bothered. Brushing her hair a hundred times just to sell groceries to housewives. Sometimes Sarah wished she were a man and could have adventures.

  A customer came in and Carmel put on her shop smile. ‘Ah, Nora, Nora!’

  Nora was a faded woman in a blue coat. Her shoulders were hunched, and her headscarf had slipped over the tops of her glasses. She took her time, pointing out the various boiled sweets and broken chocolates that her nephews liked. Her hands were raw knuckled. She reminded Sarah of her aunt Margaret, Mai’s eldest sister, not so much in stature as in her air of worried kindness. The woman had Carmel divide the sweets evenly into three paper bags and pop a gobstopper into each.

  ‘Now,’ she said to Carmel, ‘will you give one of them bags to that nice new girl?’

  Carmel wasn’t pleased but she handed Sarah the bag of sweets.

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Sarah was touched; she put the bag in her pocket.

  ‘I know what it’s like to be a blow-in. And speaking of blow-ins, Carmel, you know, I didn’t believe all they were saying about that dark man –’

  ‘The herbalist?’

  ‘Yes, him. I didn’t believe what they were saying, but he gave me a remedy for my rheumatism, and it has worked wonders.’

  ‘He knows his trade.’

  ‘It’s more than that, Carmel. We’ve a healer among us now.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Mark my words,’ the woman said as she left.

  ‘I will, Nora, I will.’

  Carmel turned to Sarah when she was gone. ‘Seems we’ve a miracle man on our hands.’

  ‘That man’s no healer.’

  ‘How would you know, sure you haven’t even met him? And that’s the least of what they’re saying. Mrs Cranny said he’s better than any doctor. Mrs Nash cla
ims he knows your heart, can even read your life. Maybe he’ll foresee a wedding for you, Sarah? Would you like that?’

  ‘I’d rather join the convent than be a wife.’

  Carmel reached out and pinched the top of Sarah’s arm. ‘That’s for your lack of respect for the sacred sacrament of matrimony.’

  Shocked, Sarah ran up to her room. She had got the impression that they were becoming friends. You’re not her friend, you’re her skivvy. There was a sharp knock and Carmel walked in. She was carrying a cup of tea, and there was a biscuit on the saucer. She left it on the mantelpiece. She looked and sounded apologetic but didn’t say sorry.

  ‘You shouldn’t rile me so.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  The following morning Sarah worked alone in the shop. She recognized her first customer – Emily. The girl just stood there without speaking. She seemed jittery. Sarah filled the silence.

  ‘I love your blouse.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. I made it myself; I can draw you a pattern if you like?’

  An elderly woman in a mauve beret passed the window, and made no bones about stopping and staring in at Sarah.

  ‘That’s Miss Birdie Chase. She owns the shop across the road. Mrs Holohan’s not too fond of her, calls her Lady Chatterley. Birdie’s all right, really, keeps lodgers sometimes, not that she needs the money. She and her spinster sister own this whole row except Mrs Holohan’s shop. They love the theatricals. The sister runs a shop the next town over. Her and Birdie used to go to the shows in the town hall. Sat right up front every time. Frank Taylor said you could smell the excitement off them. Guess what the sister is called, go on.’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Veronique! Seems they were musical in their youth. Birdie would take out her harmonica if you asked. You should ask; she’s not bad. She keeps her harmonica in her trousers pocket. Yes, you heard right. Trousers! She’s fond of an old puff too, at her age! And to look at her you’d think she was the plainest driest piece of cake you ever did see.

  ‘She’s mad about our Charlie. He’s my brother. He’s nineteen. Always asking after him. “Tell Charlie to come and see me.” Who does she think she is, Mae West? Most lodgers don’t stay long. She overcooks everything, a bit forgetful, more money than sense. Her and Veronique are twins, you should see them together, shrivelled peas in a pod. Both wear the same gold and red headscarves knotted at the back of their neck instead of under their chin. Same old birdies, down to the voice. Can’t abide to live together, get on each other’s nerves, you see. That happens when people are too alike, you know. They’ve had a big bust-up and they’re not talking. I don’t know why. Are you listening to me at all?’

  ‘I am of course, it’s very interesting. You must know everyone.’

  ‘That I do.’

  Emily put her elbows on the counter and began to read aloud from the paper without asking Sarah whether she wanted her to or not.

  ‘Get this: Mrs Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, a well-known society woman in New York, was selected by the American fashion academy from twelve of the best-dressed women in the United States as the fashion trail blazer!’ She lifted the page to show Sarah a photograph of a gaunt woman in slacks.

  ‘She looks like a man,’ Sarah said.

  ‘You’re just raging bet she has a dress for every occasion, instead of one-for-all like you.’ The girl looked miffed.

  A sharp tongue had Emily, and sharp eyes too.

  That night Sarah shivered under her thin blankets. There was a draught from the fireplace. She heard footsteps on the path outside, the sound of someone coming near, pausing under her window and moving away again. Then nothing except the wind whistling in the chimney. The town was too quiet at night. She was afraid to go asleep. Her nightmares were filled with Hottentots coming after her with spears, and she kept turning into a chicken with no opening and all her eggs were building up inside, going off, cracking. A cat’s chorus laughed at the high notions she used to have. Where are your fine clothes? Where’s your jewelleree?

  She thought about the farewell party Mai had prepared. Mai, who’d never had a party in her life. All that food, and drink and music. It was too much, Sarah had said. But she hadn’t meant it; she was delighted then. She hadn’t known what was to come.

  Oh, why didn’t Mai let Sarah go quietly, with no fuss, no little sing-song? Before Sarah fell asleep she had the clearest memory of Mai that night: she was laughing and flinging a wishbone in the air. Sarah had caught it neatly. Put it on the back of the stove to dry, so she could make a wish later, when it was all over.

  19

  When the herbalist banned me, he might as well have cut off my arm, that’s how badly I felt. No one in the house but me, Mam in her grave, my father in the pub, Charlie forever gone fishing with Rita instead of with me. And me barred from all that had kept me happy.

  Oh, so friendly Sarah was when she met me. Said I was missed by the customers. Well, that was easily remedied. She had taken my place with everyone, blinded them with her charm. Not me, though. She said she’d call in to see me, let on that she felt sorry.

  I went to see him, but the herbalist’s door stayed locked to me. I pushed a note under it and carried on down the lane towards the river walk, rather than facing the square, rebuked for all to see. Aggie was crouched in the grass beside Biddy, her barge. She waved me over. Must’ve seen me call on the herbalist, but she made no comment about that. A kettle was steaming over a small fire. Aggie stoked it with a stick, made embers crackle up. The tea was nice, black and kind of smoky. I had a pain in my chest. Heart-broke wasn’t the word. Aggie was quiet too, worse for wear, I suppose. She must’ve been worn out doing what she does at her age, especially seeing as she’s been doing it for so long. She had a bruise over her eyebrow as big as a marble.

  ‘What happened to you, Miss Reilly?’

  ‘Ach, they torment the cat till she scratches. Look at this and tell me what it says.’ She handed me a piece of paper.

  ‘It’s a list of names.’ I recognized most of them. ‘It’s a petition to have a person of immoral … oh.’

  I read on. It was a petition by Doctor Birmingham to have Aggie and her barge removed from the river, or ‘local waterway’, as it was called in the petition. There were a lot of names on it.

  ‘It was tacked to my hatch – what’s it say?’ She knew it wasn’t good.

  ‘Doctor Birmingham is trying to get Biddy off the river.’

  ‘I couldn’t live without Biddy. My odd-job man mended her from a wreck for me. Without Biddy, I’d be nothing, just another old whore.’

  She flung her tea into the grass. I did the same. She never offered to read my leaves, just stoked away at the fire. I thanked her for the tea and left her in the glooms.

  There was a parcel from Carmel at our house. Barley water, sugar and a Madeira cake. Charlie said that Seamus had delivered it; it wouldn’t have killed her to drop it over in person. The Madeira was lovely. Carmel always baked when she was in good form, when things were going her way. Well, she’d got her way. The housekeeping money my father gave me wouldn’t keep mice in cheese. I didn’t see any way out. Would I end up like Mam, going cracked inside these four walls? I wrote to the herbalist again. ‘I’ll be good. Let me back, just for a cup of tea and a chin-wag.’

  I was like a ghost hanging around the market stall, at the edge of everything. I was dead already. Nothing to get out of bed for. I let everything in the house wait, the floor crying out to be swept. I was waiting for someone to come and save me, or take me away.

  I missed him, missed our chats. If I couldn’t talk to him, I could talk about him. And there were plen
ty willing to talk about him. My man, that’s how I thought of him. Everyone else called him the herbalist, the doctor, the Indian or The Don, owing to the fact that they couldn’t pronounce his name. The people said his name didn’t even sound Indian, and the Indians in the films certainly didn’t look like him. He had told me that they were different Indians. Said it like he’d said it a hundred times before.

  I missed watching him. He had odd tastes, loved his sugar, sprinkled it on everything, I’m not lying to you, even his meat. He ate with the front of his mouth, as if every morsel was roasting hot, quickly dropping his long fingers back to the plate for more. As if someone was going to snatch it away from him. And all his ablutions at the magnifying mirror, tweezing hair from his nostrils, don’t get me started on that. Or all the times I was sent packing because he had an appointment coming. Sometimes men, most times women. But still I missed him.

  I waited till it was dark and walked into town. There wasn’t a soul about. I turned off my torch when I hit the square. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The butcher’s dog started barking and didn’t stop till I was well past. I stopped walking and that was a mistake, for suddenly I didn’t know which way I was facing. I stood there for the longest time, shivering. There was a baby crying somewhere in the distance, and a chimney smoking and a smell of porter from the Inn. After a while I heard the river rushing under the bridge to my right side, so knew to move ahead. I walked like a zombie, with my arms stretched out. My palms hit the cold wall, and it gave me a jolt, right into my armpits. I felt my way, one hand over the other, till I met the corner. I was so relieved I could’ve cried. It was so strange – a lane I’d trod a million times in my life had become an unknown thing. I followed the turn and walked quicker, knowing once I passed a short gap behind the public house I was at the herbalist’s shed.

  I felt for the metal of his latch and knocked gently on the door. I heard a rat scurry past but swallowed my yelp. There was no sound from within. I began to feel watched; thought of the murderers that lurk in the big cities, and of how they go on the run, roaming the small towns for girls to tear asunder. I was about to start kicking the door when I heard a voice on the other side of it.