The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me, Emily, and I’m scared,’ I whispered.

  I was whipped inside the shed like a bride on her wedding night, all commotion and examining me for injury. His long shirt lit the darkness. What was it, he wanted to know, what in God’s name had happened to me? I hated to let him down with the truth, but for once in my life I couldn’t think of a lie.

  ‘I missed you terrible.’

  I thought he would kill me then – but there was just silence, and a sigh, and he put his arms around me. Outside, rain began to hit the corrugated roof. It sounded like a tin shield between our heads and an army of arrows. His mouth tasted of whiskey and I wanted to bite it, I wanted to eat him all up. Never in my life had I been pressed so close to another person. He pushed me away.

  ‘You couldn’t put me out in this weather?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put an animal out in it,’ he said.

  And that was when he came upon the idea of a compromise. He let me sit up in the bed beside him, and he talked and talked, and as he talked he looped my hair around his finger, and I really wished he wouldn’t talk so much, I would’ve been happier with some more kissing. The compromise was this: I couldn’t be seen hanging around him, loitering with ill intent – he laughed when he said that – but maybe, just maybe, I could pop in to see him the odd time at night, if it was late and there was no one around. And as long as he said it was okay first. No more surprises.

  The herbalist didn’t try any funny stuff; there was nothing like that. Just that one kiss, and talking shoulder to shoulder on his bed – well, it was more him talking and me concentrating on the feel of his body alongside my body. The rain had stopped without us noticing, and he said he’d bring me across the town.

  ‘Bring me to my door?’

  But no, I wasn’t to be playing the helpless female after showing up at three in the morning at a man’s door. It wasn’t three in the morning. Sometimes I wondered if we were on the same planet at all. It was one o’clock at the latest.

  He walked with me a bit, gave me a hug and said goodbye. I switched on my torch then, and shone it on him as he walked away, his white shirt like a flag moving off down the road. I was exhausted, and I was cold, and I was happy.

  20

  Carmel rushed in the back door soaking wet, wiped her face with a towel and wrapped it around her head. She had just been to the Wuthering Heights matinee at the Picture Palace and was famished. She threw off her damp coat and went to fix herself a cup of hot tea and a few fried tomatoes. The stove had gone low, and the kettle wasn’t anywhere near boiling. She threw in a few sods and wiped her hands on her apron – it was only then she realized she must’ve worn the apron to the Picture Palace. The mortification. Why hadn’t Grettie B mentioned it? Maybe she hadn’t noticed. Carmel hoped so. The rain was pelting down; it was loud but comforting. It had been raining every evening for days now. She sat at the table and waited for the water to boil.

  Carmel had her doubts about that Laurence Olivier – he didn’t look a bit like the Heathcliff she’d had in her head all these years, the one with the Irish accent and curly hair – but she had got used to him after a while. She was surprised to be so full of emotion by the end of the picture, but she refused to join ranks with the sniffers. Carmel wasn’t showy like that. Grettie B had a particular set of handkerchiefs just for the Picture Palace. Carmel wouldn’t mind living on the heath herself, the romance of it, the wildness.

  She felt herself getting a bit down. A drop or two of her herbal tonic would do the trick. She took the bottle from her bag; she was never without her handbag, it was the only place safe from Dan’s eyes. She was used to the taste by now. The herbalist’s tonics were very addictive. This one would have to last a bit longer than the last bottle. A respectable shop owner had to watch herself; couldn’t be seen to be knocking on some foreigner’s door every second day. But she was desperately in need of something, anything. She stopped the hand of the clock over the stove: it got on her nerves, had a sharp, irritating tick.

  Time was against her. She was ageing – even she could see that. Her hands were her mother’s hands now. The raised blue veins, the looseness to the skin, freckles that weren’t there before. Her hands were often so slippery from Nivea that she couldn’t close the tin. Dan hated the way it was always left open and the midges settled in the cream. The sight disgusted him. He went on, and on, about her horrible habits. Carmel had become a creature of habit, bad ones. Late to bed, late to rise, tonic wine and books. The latest one was the Sweet Aftons. If Dan could’ve glimpsed how his bride would turn out, he would’ve raced back up the aisle and hopped on to the first boat to England. Carmel was sure of it.

  It was very quiet when she went into the grocery. For a second she thought there was no one about. Dan was just standing there, watching Sarah humming as she polished the counter. He was smiling. Carmel sneaked up behind him.

  ‘She won’t be such a songbird in a few years, when her teeth have fallen out.’

  Dan jumped, and went on about his business. She wondered after if he’d heard her at all. He didn’t bring it up that evening. Carmel would have to watch her tongue; it was running away with her these days. It was how her unhappiness seemed to leak out, that and her sleeplessness. She had arranged a river nature walk with the herbalist and Sarah tomorrow, a talk about the health benefits of herbs. Maybe Carmel should procure a stronger dose of that Pick-Me-Up for her nerves, and another bottle of Women’s Tonic wouldn’t go astray either.

  That evening was the same as most evenings since they’d lost the child. She and Dan seemed to be at a loss as to how to pick up their lives again; mostly they just grumbled at each other, especially once Sarah had retired to her room. She was a quiet one, hard to get to know, but at least she kept herself to herself, didn’t ask awkward questions, not like Emily. That Madden one had never stopped with the questions, had gone on and on about the ‘jumping’ Sacred Hearts. Pointed out that one week there were six in a row, the next only five and one higher and to the right. Carmel told her it was all in her head. The next week Emily was at it again, calling Carmel into the living room to show her that there were now four Sacred Hearts in a row, and two on the opposite wall. Carmel laughed it off. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, she told the girl. She wasn’t telling anyone that her husband had begun to box the wall when he came home late at night. Not that many would believe her. She looked at Dan sitting across from her, all respectable and indignant over something he was reading.

  ‘Canon Boyle has the right attitude – did you read this?’

  ‘Oh, I did,’ said Carmel, though she had no idea what Canon Boyle had said. She just wanted to stop Dan from telling her all about it. But there was no stopping him when he got into his stride.

  ‘He’s of the opinion, like myself, that it’s more vigilance we need, not less. To keep the – listen to this, Carmel – “filth of modern romance” out of the country. I’ve said as much myself, haven’t I? About them books. Great minds think alike.’

  ‘A great mind, is it, you have now?’

  Dan didn’t hear her as he folded up the newspaper with grim satisfaction. He acted like everything that was anti-Catholic had in some way contributed to their misfortune, as if not reading would bring them children. He hated Irish writers, hated foreign writers, hated women writers. Nothing was highbrow enough for Dan; yet all he bought were local newspapers and skinny Westerns. They weren’t highbrow, they were no brow. Not that he read them much; he was too busy with schemes for the shop. He wanted to put a bench outside on the path to encourage people to stop. Seems they all sat in the street in Paris. He saw it on a postcard. The bench had to be
primed first. A great man for solving things with a lick of paint. It couldn’t solve everything, though. Couldn’t freshen a marriage, cover those cracks.

  They were five years married this September. Carmel hadn’t paid much attention when Dan first started coming into the shop; he was just some young buck from Tipperary who had palled up with Mick Murphy while they were working in England. Then one day he asked to take her to the pictures. Simple as that. People would talk – he was a good ten years younger – that was her first thought. Her second was: He’s so handsome. The second thought won.

  They saw Of Human Bondage. Leslie Howard was a fine actor, but she didn’t enjoy one minute of it. Dan winced every time Bette Davis spoke and grumbled all the way through her hysterics. She asked him if he wanted to leave, but no, he didn’t. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen, didn’t put his arm around her or say a word till it was over.

  ‘Well, that was a holy disgrace. That woman behaved no better than an animal. It should be reported for indecency.’

  That should’ve told her everything she needed to know about Dan. He had lots of opinions like that, lots of gems. He saved the best till they were married.

  ‘Marital relations are solely for the production of children.’

  That became their weekly obligation. No children came, not for four long years, and when one finally did, they lost him. Since that day, Carmel and Dan had passed most evenings tormenting each other.

  ‘When my mother was alive –’ Carmel might begin.

  And then Dan would say, ‘I’m sick of hearing about when your mother was alive.’

  Did he have to shout?

  ‘When my mother was alive, she never raised her voice –’

  ‘She could hardly raise it after, could she?’

  Dan was such a short-tempered man, though on one of her visits his mother claimed he’d the patience of a saint. Carmel took that at face value till she realized it was meant as a rebuke: that Dan must’ve had the patience of a saint to put up with Carmel. Flighty, her mother-in-law called her, when Carmel was the one who did the cooking, laundry, cleaning, accounts, dealt with the wholesalers. Or used to. No wonder she needed a glass or two of tonic to get a decent night’s sleep.

  She looked over at him and noticed a shadow on his lip. She peered more closely and saw it was the beginnings of a ’tache. She couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Dan, there’s a bit of dirt over your lip. Here, do this’ – she licked her finger and rubbed her own lip – ‘and see will it come off.’

  She roared laughing.

  He growled and called her an ignorant old lush.

  Old indeed. Just because he was only twenty-six. It wouldn’t be worth remarking on if it were the other way around, but people talked. Carmel knew how jealous women could be. Jeeze, Carmel thought but didn’t say. She wasn’t allowed to say that word. Dan said it was ‘an abbreviated blasphemy’.

  Sometimes Carmel almost missed her mother. A fat ball, rarely kind but always dignified. That’s how Carmel remembered her, now that she was gone. She kept some memories, and buried the rest. Tried to forget the venom that had poured hot from her mother’s mouth. Dan didn’t like her mentioned. It interfered with his notions. They’d barely been married when he seemed to convince himself that he had built the shop, brick upon brick, with his own bare hands. Dan had the happy knack of believing his own bull.

  ‘We’re established since 1880. A family business.’

  He never added that it had had nothing to do with him. Maybe his brother Harry wasn’t the black sheep; maybe it was Dan.

  ‘They should be rounded up, every single last one of them, with their books and films …’ He was back talking about the writers.

  ‘Ah, live and let live,’ Carmel said; ‘save your energy for growing your moustache.’

  ‘Carmel, you don’t live’ – Dan almost hopped off the chair; she had hit the sore spot, his manliness – ‘you … you wallow. You wallow, you whinge, you nag and you drink.’

  ‘Excuse me, Dan, but I’m the one who –’

  ‘Excuse, excuse nothing.’ He grabbed the newspaper and flung it on the floor between them. ‘I’m sick of bickering, sick of ending the day like this, sick of us.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should find someone else to round off your day with, Dan Holohan, someone more to your liking?’

  ‘Well, maybe I should. Maybe I will.’

  Dan went into the kitchen, slamming the door after him, almost shattering the glass. Then she heard the back door bang shut. He was going into the garden to calm down – to see Eliza no doubt, to call her a great girl, to tell her all. Whispering in the dark to an overfed hog. How laughable. Laugh, Carmel, laugh, girl. Now why on earth are you crying?

  21

  After arranging the excursion, as she called it, Carmel never even got out of bed to join them. Left Sarah the task of accompanying the herbalist. They walked from the shop in silence. As they turned to take the slip down to the river, he stopped and looked at Sarah’s face.

  ‘Ah, it is you,’ he said, smiling.

  Even without her earrings, shawl and lipstick, the herbalist had finally recognized her. He thanked her for her assistance in April, winked at her, claimed kinship.

  ‘We are both outsiders, with an interest in herbs,’ he said.

  Sarah told him that she had no special interest. They were everywhere. It was as silly as saying you had an interest in air.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘but I can help you, you can help me. We can help each other.’

  Sarah didn’t want his help. She said nothing.

  They arrived at the river: the hedges were creamy with cow parsley. Setting off in the direction of the lock gates, he called over his shoulder to her: ‘Tell me what you see, Sarah – what plants can you name that I may not know of yet? Or are all of these’ – the herbalist waved his hand – ‘just bothersome … weeds?’

  He had already told Sarah that he didn’t believe in the word ‘weeds’; it saddened him, like the term ‘itinerant salesman’. She caught up with him reluctantly, listening as he expounded on the importance of a herbalist to a community. How someone with his knowledge of health and botany could treat people using the bounty of nature along with the wonderful formulations he was able to acquire from London and Dublin. What formulations, she wondered, but didn’t ask. When he talked like that, it felt like a trap. Sarah wished that they weren’t alone. He plucked the head of a white blossom twining through the hedge and proffered it towards her for identification.

  ‘Bindweed,’ Sarah said.

  She touched the petal, had always loved how it was shaped like the mouth of a trumpet, and was so fragile, thinner than skin even. A hair’s breath. What did that mean? The herbalist picked another flower and brought it to his nose.

  ‘No smell, no use,’ he announced.

  ‘Tell that to the hawkmoth.’

  A moth was diving from flower to flower collecting nectar.

  ‘Must have a long tongue.’

  She blushed. They walked on towards the lock gates. The water was high. He took her basket as she stepped to cross. There was no need. She didn’t want him to act like a suitor; he was much too unsuitable. She looked to see if anyone had witnessed it, but there was no one around. The herbalist didn’t notice her discomfort; he’d already reached the far bank and was kneeling down beside some plant, whistling. A cone-shaped leaf curled around a thick red anther.

  ‘Can you name it?’

  Again, she felt it was a question he must know the answer to. He must; everyone did.

  ‘Lords and ladies,’ she said, walking over to him. ‘The root’s f
ull of starch; it was used for stiffening clothes, collars and cuffs. I wouldn’t handle them much if I were you; some say they’re poisonous.’

  He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket.

  ‘So, it’s beautiful but dangerous?’

  He was trying to flirt. What did poor Emily see in him at all? Playing the woman and she barely grown? He could be charming enough when he wanted, she supposed, but when he looked at Sarah like that, all she wanted to do was get away. She realized that he saw her as a challenge. Any attempts to be cool towards him would only make him more fascinated. He muttered something in a tone of reproof to himself. She felt rude. It embarrassed her; she wished she were somewhere else. Wished Carmel had got out of bed. She heard Dan complain about having to make excuses for her at Mass again.

  ‘What will the people think?’

  They couldn’t mind their own business around these parts. Tell them nothing, Mai had warned her, too nosy for their own good by half, townspeople. The herbalist wasn’t nosy in the same way – more of an inquiring mind. Or so he claimed. He wrapped his handkerchief around the plant and uprooted it.

  He carried it carefully as they walked back over the lock gates, not taking her basket this time. The bushes crowded on to the path of the waterway, completely obscuring their view of the town. He could do her harm and nobody would ever see. Sarah began to make haste.

  ‘Late?’

  ‘Just hungry – dinner will be on soon.’

  They passed the gushing weir in silence. He stopped and sat on a wooden bench. The plant on his lap looked like a mint-green hand. He seemed tired. Reluctantly, she joined him. The willows behind them rustled and whispered, though there was no wind that she could feel.