The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  ‘I’ll rest a while here. You go on home to your meal. Thank you for the pleasure of your company.’

  She rose and he said, ‘Miss Whyte,’ nodding with mock formality.

  ‘Doctor,’ she said, imitating his tone.

  As she walked away, relief made Sarah feel generous, and she turned to give him a wave. He was looking at her seriously, carefully. She dropped her hand and walked on under the horse-bridge. The stone path was greasy, smooth as soap. Her steps echoed. Grooves were scored into the arch wall: marks left from when barges were horse-drawn, from years of ropes eating into the stone. A phrase came to mind: Evil lurks here. And so it did. Didn’t it? When she got home, they asked how it went.

  ‘Lovely,’ she said.

  But, if she were to tell the truth, though nothing untoward had occurred, it had been a deeply unpleasant experience.

  Why did you take such a dislike to Sarah, when you barely knew her?

  A lot goes on how you meet a person. Well, when Aggie met Sarah, she met a seductress – that’s right, a seductress, weaving sticky traps for all of us. So, to me, she was a spider, she was poisonous. Don’t look at me like that! I suppose you think I first met her in Kelly’s, like you did? Not a bit. Here’s a riddle for you: when I met Sarah, she was a stranger and she was familiar.

  It went like this. Aggie never forgets a face, but when I saw that girl behind the counter with Dan Holohan I couldn’t put a finger on where I’d seen her before. I was tucked up in bed by the time I realized who she was. It was the way she was dressed that had put me off; she was all dowdy, her hair tightly plaited, not all done up, like it had been in the market. Yes, that’s right, the market. That’s where I first met Sarah Whyte. It was the very first day the herbalist appeared. Funny, thought I, how she arrived at the same time as the herbalist, funny how no one noticed, distracted by her wares – by her glinting eyes, her sleek dark hair. ‘I rinse it in rainwater; you should try it,’ she’d said. Sure we all rinsed our hair in rainwater, but it didn’t look like that. Who trawled to the pump for wash water? Didn’t the herbalist himself get up at cock-crow to sluice himself at the rain barrel? Didn’t I see him with my own eyes? Not a stitch on him. A nice way to start the day, I must say.

  Am I going in circles? I like going in circles. Where was I? Yes, it was the first week he arrived and people were standing around his table; they were gawking and listening to his selling talk, but no one was buying, no one wanted to be the first, the amadán, in case it turned out to be a pile of shite. He had face creams for keeping wrinkles at bay, tonics for the sleepless, rubs for sore feet, hair-revival oil, mixtures for dry coughs, wet coughs, itchy throats … you name it, he had it, and had it corked and sealed.

  ‘My customers look younger and healthier by the week; by the time I leave they have the health of the wealthy. Sometimes I can hardly recognize them!’

  Fine talk, but it was met with silence – and that’s when we heard her velvet voice. ‘Do you have a special ointment, your own soothing skin cream?’

  ‘Right here, madam.’

  ‘My friend lent me some and it has worked wonders for my complexion. Wonders.’

  We all turned to look at the girl who had spoken. She was tall with pearly skin, not one blemish, and healthy pink lips and white teeth like from a beauty advertisement. Her hair was swept back from her forehead and waved down her back. She had rings in her ears: not clip-ons – they went right through, like a gypsy’s. She wore a gold-fringed shawl, like one of those exotics from the carnival.

  One by one the people bought. She started to talk to the woman beside her, admired her ugly baba. No one doubted her, no one said, ‘Sure she’s a stranger, we don’t listen to strangers. Who are you? Where do you hail from?’ No one said boo to the beautiful lady; they just took her cue and started parting with their money. I’d say everyone that heard her speak bought something that day. That was just a taste of her power.

  When weeks later I met her in the shop, and put two and two together, I thought that she and the Indian herbalist must’ve been in cahoots all along. Wouldn’t anyone – wouldn’t you? Though credit where credit is due – I’ve a keen eye, and not many would’ve made the connection. The country girl behind the counter seemed worlds apart from the lovely woman from the market. She’d looked so different that day – made up, glamorous and something else, glowing I suppose, as if she was in love.

  22

  I was lying in the long grass, catching a bit of sun, reading Woman’s Life on Sunday afternoon, when who did I see canoodling along together – only Sarah and my herbalist. She had her hair loose and was carrying a basket full of weeds. They passed me on the river path as if I didn’t exist and headed towards the town. Alone! Together! And I only permitted to sneak around under moonlight. I banned and she allowed. Had I not seen them part that second, I would’ve parted them myself.

  I went to his place that night to express my grave disappointment. There was no answer. I went around the back, climbed the low wall and threw gravel at the tin roof. Made a hell of a racket, but the herbalist never came out. What did I hear then only someone singing near by and coming nearer? I crept back around to the side of the shed. ‘Tea for two, and two for tea, just me for you, and you for me …’ Charlie. I ducked down as he turned into the lane. What did he want? I heard him knock at the herbalist’s door and then him and the herbalist muttering. After a minute he left, no longer singing, his hobnails striking the ground. He crossed the square quickly and was swallowed up into the night. I jumped down and knocked on the herbalist’s door. One, two, three. Open sesame.

  The herbalist wouldn’t let me in. My brother was looking for me, and it upset the herbalist that Charlie had guessed I might be there.

  ‘You told on us!’ His fingers were speckled with black.

  ‘I never told Charlie anything.’

  ‘Then how would he know to come here?’

  ‘Someone must’ve seen me.’

  Did he think I was invisible or what? I would’ve loved a hot cup, but he said I wasn’t allowed, that we’d have a real break this time, a holiday from each other.

  ‘Like a siesta?’

  ‘No, longer than that.’

  ‘Why is she allowed? Sarah? I saw her.’

  ‘It’s just business.’

  ‘Well, give it up, your business, whatever it is.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  He shut the door in my face without a by-your-leave. I called and called him. A voice carried clear as anything through the dark.

  ‘Put a sock in it! You’ll wake the dead!’ Aggie roared.

  ‘Old bitch!’ I shouted back.

  Something cuffed my head. She was right beside me, oozing gin, filth and sin.

  ‘Think you’re above me? You’re right next to me and you don’t even know it.’ She laughed into my face.

  The door opened then, and the herbalist, he stepped out and yanked me in by the arm. Anything to avoid a scene. I didn’t mind. I was delighted to be let in.

  ‘It’s only for a few minutes, till you see sense,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t Aggie an ugly old toad?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe if someone kisses her she’ll turn into a princess?’

  ‘That one, she changes into nothing – she barely changes her clothes!’

  ‘Whist about her.’

  He wasn’t outraged enough, as far as I was concerned. But at least he forgot for a while about keeping me away, about what the people would say. And I forgot all about Charlie. There was no kissing – it was like the kissing had never happened – it was all him going on about his new concoctions. Of course, I was evicted at fi
rst light, and scurried away like a thief, my tongue bitter from all the potions he’d had me test during the night.

  Later I dreamt a strong one, heard a crowd cheering me on. I was in a boxing ring with Sarah. Dancing circles around her. Then I knocked her on the flat of her back with a punch, and when she fell her skirt flew up and everyone saw her silly frilly drawers. I ended up with a restless sleep full of night terrors, and in the last dream, the one that shook me awake, I was falling, falling past all that was righteous and good to sit at the right hand of the devil. Our thrones were side by side, red velvet, gilt gold and high. Then someone ousted me from my place: she had blue eyes and a deadly glare. She was there. Then she disappeared. I trusted her absence less than her presence. It filled me with a cold fear. It tore me from my sleep.

  No matter what I said, he wouldn’t let me back. All I could do was watch the women trooping constantly to and from his door. So on Monday, I told Mrs Holohan exactly where her fine shop girl was tripping to on her Sundays off. Carmel just acted annoyed with me, said that I wasn’t in any position to be so pass remarkable, that Sarah was a respectable woman on a nature excursion and to take my elbows off her counter.

  I waited by the town hall on the next market day. I was going to make him see sense by acting normal and calm, and showing him that nobody would complain about us being friends. Why would they?

  All the stall-holders had set up, but there was only a space where he should have been. I waited for an hour and then I got worried – what if he was sick or in trouble?

  When he didn’t answer my knock, I let myself in. A towel over the window blocked out the light. The place smelt like wet dog, or worse. The herbalist was on top of the bed-covers, stripped down to his vest, shivering. A woman was tattooed on his shoulder, and he didn’t even try to hide her. I cleared my throat. He took his hand from over his eyes, peeked and shooed me away. I wasn’t going anywhere and he was in no condition to make me.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m tormented, Emily,’ he said.

  ‘Can you not cure yourself?’

  ‘Some things have to be sweated out.’

  He made a sour face and started to ramble, but at least he let me stay on. I sat on the bed. He didn’t seem to care. His breath reeked of alcohol. I couldn’t make out what was going on.

  He soon told me everything. It turned out that he was tortured by demons. It was a real battle: he got the sweats and the shakes, but he always won in the end. Most times he was as fit as a fiddle, but when the devils came he had to take a few days off. Just to lie low.

  He said the devils got in through the skin, so a man had to be very careful. He had to wash, wash, wash his hands. The newly born were closest to clean, but the old were filthy, right next to hell. He tugged my cuff and began to whisper. I leant in: he called me Cleopatra, said I should be bathed in milk. He cried, and said other things, mixed-up things that I didn’t understand. I just studied the hula girl on his shoulder. Her lovely long black hair went right down her back. She wore nothing but a grass skirt, a garland and a smile. She wasn’t coloured in, so her skin was his skin – dark like treacle. I placed my palm over her body. He sat up.

  ‘Old hula hula’s just for fun,’ he said; ‘wait till you see this – this is the real business.’

  He opened out his arm, and on the inside crook was a fat coiled cobra. It was the shape of an s and was patterned with jade-green triangles. I had glimpsed its tail that morning I saw him shave. The fanged mouth opened wide to let a forked tongue shoot out.

  ‘I call her Ruby. Go on, touch her.’

  I placed my fingertip on the threads of red that were her tongue. I put my tongue between my teeth and let out a little hiss. I didn’t know why I did that.

  ‘Ruby has the power to make the devils go away.’

  I giggled. I shouldn’t have. He jumped up from the bed as if he was on fire, leant against the wall, held his snaked arm out straight and roared towards the darkened window. ‘Off with you!

  ‘That’s one less devil in the room.’ He looked at me, as if for a round of applause.

  ‘Which one was it?’ I asked, going along with him.

  ‘Beelzebub – but he’s gone now, the black-tongued demon!’

  He leant back on the bed, rootled under his pillow and brought out a bottle to uncork with his front teeth.

  ‘Why did you get tattooed?’ I asked.

  ‘To put terror into the heart of the enemy.’ He smiled, without really smiling.

  ‘I thought only jailbirds and sailors had them.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. I met a well-off woman once who had a swallow.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked. He smiled properly then, but wouldn’t tell.

  Then he wanted for me to go home, but I explained that I couldn’t, that there were demons in my house too: they lived in my father’s hands. He was an old man and evil, pure evil. He had medals for killing. The herbalist told me my father couldn’t be wholly evil because I was his issue.

  ‘His blood runs through you.’

  ‘I want him out of me!’

  I screamed, and screamed. Sick with the thought. If I could have, I would’ve bled him out of me. It’s funny, but my being so frightened seemed to calm him. He comforted me, soothed me down. He gave me a mug of strong tonic. It tasted of liquorice.

  Then somehow I was standing in a tub. Warm water was being poured over my head. There was a beautiful humming. I felt strange – the room swayed.

  ‘Emily, for the first time in your young life you are clean.’

  He put me on the bed then and pressed love and goodness into me. It hurt at first. Afterwards he popped a boiled sweet into my mouth and called me Cleopatra again. It was a lemon drop, with sherbet in the centre, my favourite.

  23

  Sarah loved opening shop, loved the way the light lit the silence first thing in the morning. But this morning wasn’t so peaceful. As soon as Sarah unlocked the door, Mr Gogarty burst through it, brimming with vim and vitriol. The solicitor was a short stout man who walked as if hurled forward by his own importance.

  ‘Where’s the missus?’

  ‘Not here at the moment.’

  Mr Gogarty was one of the ‘come on through to the living room’ people, those who came often but bought nothing. Those who were escorted into the back by Carmel with the small smile, secretive air and fluttering hand movements that she obviously mistook for discretion.

  ‘Well, give her this from me’ – he whacked a novel on to the counter – ‘and tell her she can keep her old penny books, they’re only a waste of time. There’s nothing’ – he jabbed the novel with his finger – ‘nothing at all in that.’

  And off he went. Sarah held the book on her lap under the counter. The cover was brown with a long and convoluted title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders; also, The Fortunate Mistress, or The Lady Roxana.

  A lot of titles for so plain a book. The word ‘mistress’ caught her eye. This couldn’t be a book from the library. You’d never find that word in there. It opened on a much-thumbed page. ‘We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very breath with kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then being both well warmed, he went farther with me than decency permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have denied him at that moment, had he offered much more than he did.’

  It wasn’t something Sarah felt easy handing over, so she just left it on the shelf under the counter, as if she had forgotten it. ‘Stopping my very breath with kisses’ indeed.

  Carmel came into the shop looking harassed.

  ‘I had the misfortune to meet Mr Goga
rty on the road. That man is always complaining about something. Was he in here … complaining to you, Sarah?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Was he talking about a certain book by any chance?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Look, Sarah,’ Carmel asked, ‘are you a reader?’

  Without waiting for an answer, she continued, ‘Well, I’m a great reader, all my family are great readers, and I suppose that’s how this started.’

  Carmel’s eyes were sleepy, but she was talking lively enough, whispering and gesticulating and the like.

  ‘My brother Finbar’s an educated man, with contacts in Customs, and the gardaí. He’s a great friend to the clergy too. And through all those connections he found himself with a certain amount of literature that was seized, so to speak …’

  She paused, as if waiting for some reaction from Sarah, but Sarah wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

  ‘… and now he has a whole, a whole room full of books still in their dust jackets.’

  Carmel said this as if her brother possessed a room crammed with gold bars. It was the first time Sarah saw a resemblance between Carmel and her brother. The way she was smiling and saying one thing, yet you felt there was something else behind it, something darker. She seemed to have forgotten that it was Finbar, as she called him, who had arranged Sarah’s position with them. And that as well as the gardaí and the clergy, he also counted amongst his great friends her aunt Mai, humble midwife.

  ‘Sure it was Master Kelly who put me forward for this position – he’s a friend of the family.’

  ‘Yes. Well, it pains Finbar to see good books wasted, so he gave them to me. Of course I read them before I rent them out – I’m obliged to. I have to be very particular about who I lend them to; not everyone would be able to understand them as works of literature. Now you see why I’m too busy for the shop and everything?’