The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  Sarah didn’t see how eating apples up in bed and reading books could be a terrible cross to bear.

  ‘He’d be in awful trouble for giving me such books, corrupting my mind.’ She laughed a short bitter hah. ‘I rent them to discreet people, and, as long as they’re returned, I’m all right. We all have to be discreet – do you know what I mean?’

  Sarah knew what she meant. Carmel was running a sideline renting out racy books. Carmel brought her to the kitchen, took a narrow black key from her pocket and unlocked the cupboard.

  ‘I run a respectable establishment.’ She poked Sarah with the key, as if Sarah had rebuked her instead of nodding obediently.

  There were three deep shelves, and on the bottom was a large box of books. Some were bound together with thick elastic bands; some were loose.

  ‘There’s little in that lot for the government to be worrying about. Mr Holohan isn’t aware of the extent of my part-time work. He wouldn’t approve – he’s overly fond of Mr de Valera. He thinks this press is for female hygiene products.’

  She didn’t blush. Sarah wondered if she used to be a nurse.

  ‘I carry a wide range, not like your one across the road, Lady Chatterley, who only deals in notoriety. A few copies of the same filthy book pawed to pieces.’

  ‘Miss Chase?’

  Sarah was surprised; the shopkeeper didn’t strike her as someone who would be involved in anything so shabby.

  ‘She thinks it’s a secret, but I’m on to her – the whole town is on to her. Swanking around like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. How she got copies of that book I’ll never know.’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Carmel couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  Carmel warned Sarah not to breathe a word about it to anyone. Surely she knew Sarah hadn’t a single friend to tell, even if she were the telling type, which she wasn’t?

  The shop bell rang. Carmel closed the door of the cupboard and turned the key.

  ‘Not a word to Mr Holohan. He cares not a whit for the running of the household, thank God.’

  When they returned to the shop, there was a woman leaning on the counter, sobbing. It was Mrs Birmingham, dressed in an old cardigan. Carmel linked her into the back. Sarah heard the rise and fall of Mrs Birmingham’s woes and Carmel’s murmurs of sympathy. Her brother Patrick had died. Mr Birmingham wouldn’t give her the fare to England for his funeral. And that wasn’t all: there was Rose, ‘telling lies again, saying awful things’.

  The door closed gently between the living area and the shop.

  Sarah wondered what the trouble could be with Rose. The girl was always so fresh, so bubbly, so squeaky clean. She hadn’t been around much these past few days. Busy with her studies, they were told. ‘A studious girl is my daughter.’ How did Mrs Birmingham keep a straight face? Studious? Rose would sell her soul for a bar of Yardley soap.

  The women trooped back into the shop, Mrs Birmingham sniffing up her sorrow, Carmel padding behind her like the cat that had got the cream.

  ‘Wait, I almost forgot.’ Mrs Birmingham began to rifle through her massive handbag.

  ‘Oh, no, really –’ Carmel started.

  ‘Ah, found it.’ She tucked a small card into Carmel’s hand. ‘I bought this for you. May it bring you and Mr Holohan the luck you so richly deserve.’ She added, lowering her voice, ‘You know yourself what I mean. It’s a grade two.’

  ‘Bless your heart, thank you, Grettie.’

  Carmel opened the door for the woman. Went out on to the path after her and waved her off down the road. When she returned, Carmel looked towards the ceiling and addressed the Lord.

  ‘And there was me thinking she was finally going to settle her bill. Feck her, and feck her bloody dead brother! She’s as mean today as she was in school.’

  She threw the card on to the counter and trotted off. Sarah picked it up: a prayer to St Thérèse, the Little Flower, on thin, almost transparent paper with a relic stuck on – a smidgen of raw-edged blue cloth. Grade two. Did that mean it had touched the cloth that had touched the cloth that had touched the saint? Or was that a grade three? Sarah couldn’t remember. It was pretty. A wreath of red roses circled the face of a beautiful young nun whose lips were drawn in a cupid’s bow. Sarah put it in her pocket.

  From then on, when she took her naps, Carmel trusted Sarah with the key to the banned-novels cupboard. At first, Sarah was flattered. Later she realized that Mr Gogarty’s outburst had left Carmel no choice. Sarah flicked through the books. Most were long-winded explorations of gritty lives and nothing to get excited about. The opposite in fact. They pulsed with grisly loneliness, destitution and poverty. Nothing at all threatening. It didn’t occur to Sarah that one day Master Finbar might come by to collect them.

  24

  Lo and behold, didn’t I have a swanky customer first thing on Saturday morning? Rose of all people, and without her mother. A rare happening. I don’t think Mrs B knew where she was. Don’t ask me why, it was just a feeling. I hinted that we should do the fitting in her house next time. I’d never seen past their fancy tiled hallway, always wondered what was behind the door that led to their living quarters. I could hint all I liked, but Rose didn’t bite – said she preferred to come to me. I knew why too. The looks she threw at Charlie when she came in! And my poor brother beaming back like dark clouds had parted to let the light of God shine down on him and him alone. You should’ve heard her.

  ‘All the boys have grown as brown as Indians – it makes some of them look like Errol Flynn.’

  ‘Ah, everyone is better looking under the sun,’ I said; ‘come on upstairs.’

  Rose skipped up the stairs after me, and then she did a funny thing: she stopped at my bedroom door and began to examine it.

  ‘This is a very hardy door. You’ve a lock, and a latch?’

  ‘Aye, it’s the old shed door. Charlie hung it for me. Are you fond of carpentry?’

  She laughed like that was the funniest thing ever. Rose was harmless enough, even if her mother was a horror. But I liked things as they were for Charlie. Rita was good to him. I didn’t want Rose toying with him, passing time until her father selected some upstanding bachelor to pair her off with.

  I took her measurements – wasn’t a pick on her. I’d the vital statistics of quite a lot of ladies in my copybook. I lifted Rose’s hem out of the way as I knelt to take her length. She moved to stop me but was too late. I saw them. Her knees.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to your knees?’

  They were destroyed. Criss-crossed with white and purple scars. Covered in thick, cracked scabs. The flesh was pulpy, red raw in places. And there were cuts going up her thighs.

  ‘I want a pretty light cotton dress. Long, if you please.’

  ‘But what happened to your knees?’

  ‘Blue, a pale blue, with buttons all the way down the front, and flowers.’

  I looked up from where I was crouched. She stared towards the window. The rope swing was moving back and forth in the breeze. One fat tear ran down her jaw, along her neck and into the hollow of her collarbone. I rolled up my tape.

  ‘Rose, what happened to your poor knees?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just a very clumsy girl.’ Her voice was chirpy, broken.

  ‘Did you hear Charlie? He said summer suits me. Whatever does that mean?’ She laughed, tugged one of her crisp platinum curls.

  There was no talking to her. No getting an answer.

  We said our goodbyes downstairs. Rose stuck her slight chest out and swivelled her hips as she waltzed out of the door. Charlie just stared with a really s
tupid smile on his face. When she was gone, he started singing that stupid song, ‘Tea for two, and two for tea, just me for you and you for me … alone.’

  He had changed his tune. He used to tease me over John Gilbert. Told me romance had brought on the Great Lover’s early death, that he’d been a fatal victim of the kissing disease. Even one kiss could wither the healthy. That kind of talk tormented me, for I had seen him with my own two eyes, Mr Gilbert. It wasn’t long before he died, and no one had known that death was imminent then, not even him, the poor lamb. They were showing a matinee of Queen Christina and the queue was atrocious. I was itching to see what all the fuss was about but knew I wouldn’t be let in; I was too young.

  I hung about, waiting to sneak through. A posh woman was kicking up a fuss at the door. Only room in the pit, Beardie Billy told her, only room in the pit. He shone his lamp back into the full picture house so she could see for herself. It was like a blue moon jigging over the rows of heads.

  The woman wanted to go in, I could tell – was only dying to run in to see the Great Lover – but she was too posh for the pit.

  ‘The picture is starting, madam.’

  That’s when I squeezed by, the invisible girl. I couldn’t see the steps in front of me. I tripped and burnt my knee but scuffled on towards the first bench in the pit. Didn’t care if I was pulled out by the scruff of my neck as long as I got a glance at John Gilbert. The usher shut the doors and pitched us into complete darkness.

  I don’t remember what the funnies were that day; I only remember Queen Christina. The queen was a reckless spirit – you wouldn’t know if she was a man or a woman till she swept her hat off. You should’ve seen Garbo, leaping from her horse, taking her castle steps two at a time, dismissing her noble advisers with a wave of her hand and falling into John Gilbert’s arms. It would make you swoon. You should’ve seen Gilbert; you should’ve seen the eyes on him, dark as ink, as chocolate, as sin. He ruined me for anyone else. That afternoon filled me for ever with the longing for my own great lover. I ran home and was so excited that I forgot to hide my sin, told everyone that John Gilbert was like God made man. Emily, what a thing to say!

  A while afterwards I was in the dispensary, waiting for the nurse to be finished with Mam. The doctor was running late again; maybe someone rich was sick. The women were grumbling. They were always grumbling.

  ‘His mother ruined him.’

  ‘Who’d blame her? I’d ruin him.’

  ‘Died of a heart attack.’

  ‘The doctor’s dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Whist, child. It’s John Gilbert, Gilbert’s dead.’

  ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’ Mrs Brennan reached out and slapped my hand.

  ‘He had an operation and got an infection.’

  ‘Did not – he had a heart attack.’

  ‘He died of an infection, I tell you!’

  ‘He would’ve died of old age waiting to be seen here.’

  I got some dirty looks then, because it was Mam holding some of them up. I was crying snots from being smacked and the shock of John Gilbert’s death.

  ‘Women swooned at his funeral.’

  ‘Poor Garbo will kill herself.’

  ‘Don’t be sacrilegious in front of the child.’

  ‘I saw him once,’ I said, heartbroken.

  ‘Will you stop, you’re only a baba!’

  No one paid any heed to my grief at home. They thought it funny when I lit a few candles for him, hilarious when I asked for money to get a Mass said for the repose of the soul of John Gilbert. That’s what too much kissing gets you, Charlie said. Heartless. They hadn’t seen him. They didn’t know.

  25

  Carmel went into the shop to collect the tin of Aggie’s coins. Dan had insisted they rinse her money. Expected the notes to be washed too, but she’d rather be damned than hang up pounds to dry. It was a bit of a fuss, but Aggie was their only customer who didn’t owe a small fortune.

  Dan was tightening a hinge on the shutters. Sarah was on the ladder, taking down a box of caramel creams from the shelf above the window. She tripped as she put her foot to the floor and Dan reached out and held her elbow to steady her. Carmel could’ve sworn she saw something pass between them. Sarah’s stupid smile and that glance from Dan. If anything happened to Carmel, that Sarah would be quick as lightning into her house, her kitchen, her bed. Pictures of them together came to her, smiling into each other’s eyes, whispering hot I love yous, full of that early sweetness. It made her feel pinched and angry. Carmel wanted to turn around and slap Dan. He was beaming. Had he the same picture in his head as she had?

  It felt so real – more real than Carmel standing there beside him, or these past few weeks of tiresome arguing. Or those long stretches alone while he’d worked across the water. Dan hinted that he might go again; a lot of the men were. He might be trying to keep her on her toes, or maybe he was serious. Money was as scarce now as it had been then.

  She hadn’t wanted her husband labouring in England, mixing with all sorts. ‘My year as a widow’, Carmel called it; eleven months, Dan always corrected her. As if there was a big difference, though there was. She worried that he’d get more than his hands dirty. ‘It’s only for a few months,’ he had said. It was all Mick Murphy’s idea. That gobshite was full of great ideas. Though only for Mick, Carmel mightn’t be married at all. It was he who had met Dan working on a big job in England and brought him to the town when it finished up. Carmel and Dan had been married for only three months when Mick announced there was more work for them over there.

  Every day he was away Carmel missed him sorely. She couldn’t warm up in bed on her own. She couldn’t find a book to settle into. The wireless was a poor substitute. Dan sent a few bob, but there was no sign of him coming home. Carmel wrote she was going over. He wrote back, ‘Don’t be daft.’

  She went so far as to go to the chemist’s to get her photo taken for a Travel Identity card. Stood stiffly in front of the hump-backed tripod with her hair coiffed, trying to look jolly in case people started to talk.

  ‘A holiday, Carmel?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Martin.’

  As she left, she heard him laughing to his assistant – another one off to bring the husband home from England. Dan must’ve got wind of her activities, because he was back within a fortnight.

  She’d never forget the sight of him in the doorway. His hair was shorn and his nose was sunburnt; he dropped his case and opened his arms. He smelt of a soap she didn’t own. ‘My little wren,’ he whispered into her neck, as he squeezed her and lifted her high. Then, as if caught unawares by his own affection, he started to cry.

  It was through Lizzie that Carmel heard about the lodgings the men had shared in London. Mick, the big eejit, told her everything. Seemed the landlady had mixed lodgings, men and women. Mick’s rip of a mother could barely conceal her excitement.

  ‘Delia was her name. And get this, Mrs Holohan, she allowed women to lodge under the same roof as our fine men.’

  ‘Who on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘The landlady across the water. Where my Mick and your Dan and half the town stayed, stayed with fallen women, and their offspring to boot. Widows, Mick said they called themselves. Aye, tin rings and imaginary husbands.’

  ‘I highly doubt it,’ Carmel replied; ‘my Dan wouldn’t stay a second in such a place.’

  ‘Ah, when in Rome …’ Lizzie Murphy flashed a gummy grin.

  Carmel had quizzed Dan.

  ‘Old gummy-face told me all about that blowzy British bitch.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Dan said, looking wounded. ‘She was a decent woman, and
charged very reasonable rates.’

  That infuriated Carmel.

  ‘There were female lodgers! Did you meet them over breakfast? Oh, I can just see it: “Pass the buttermilk, you trollop.” You wouldn’t tolerate the carry-on of that here!’

  ‘The rules are different over there.’

  ‘Decency is decency, no matter where you are.’

  She tortured Dan and herself with questions for months after. She’d say ‘Go back to London’ or ‘You’re not in London now’, sounding just like her mother.

  ‘You deserted me.’

  ‘I sent a wage. Lots of men do it.’

  He would stand up and leave the room before she could really get going.

  Carmel thought she should tread easily this time round. Maybe the glance between her husband and the shop girl was a figment of her imagination. She didn’t want Dan scooting off to London.

  ‘Come into the back, Mr Holohan,’ she said softly.

  Dan looked up and smiled; she led him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table. She took her husband’s hand.

  ‘Are you happy with me, Dan?’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. Sure isn’t everything grand? Aren’t we as happy as anyone else, on the pig’s back?’

  What pig’s back? How were they grand? He bore her moodiness, the tears and the odd night sucking from the bottle. And she bore him daily, for nearly everything he said nowadays chilled her.

  ‘Look, Carmel, aren’t we glad enough? We’re moving towards happy, no different to anyone else.’ Dan rubbed her hand and glanced towards the window.

  ‘I nearly forgot poor Eliza; she’ll be wanting her feed.’

  Carmel watched him leave. Maybe he was right. Who’d be completely happy living like church mice all waiting to have fun in the next life?

  She called Sarah in, gave her a few bob and sent her off to buy some stamps and envelopes at the post office – told her to take her time. She hoped there was a queue. Carmel didn’t want stamps but she wanted the time. She went into the shop to take over. The place wasn’t empty for more than a second. The constant clattering of the bell as customers came in and out began to get on her nerves. She wedged the shop door open, unhooked the bell and placed it on the counter. Dan appeared, mentioned getting some timber for a bookshelf and went out on to the street. Every now and then Dan would talk about building her a bookshelf; he would even make drawings and ask her where she’d like him to put it; but the bookshelf itself never materialized, probably never would. Time flew by – it was busy but Carmel could do it in her sleep. Maybe her health was returning.