by Boyce, Niamh
‘Have you forgotten that you’re a secret?’
I bunched my other hand to create a rabbit with two twitching ears and watched the wolf chase it away, but I didn’t make any more animal noises.
I liked being a secret, being there in my special place, night-time queen of a two-roomed castle. The herbalist’s new pillows were high and full of feathers. He was a funny man that way: took as much care of himself as a woman would, better than a woman. Mam had never cared where she slept; I used to find her out cold on the armchair with a coat thrown over her. Not so my man. He was meticulous. He taught me that word. Meticulous. He spoke English better than most. He had a dictionary that he consulted when thinking up good names for his medicines. That navy book with its skin-thin pages was with him at all times. The right words were important to him. Precision. He tried to rename me once.
‘The name is very important. I think they got your name wrong. Cleopatra suits you nicely or maybe Boadicea …’
‘I’m called after one of the Brontë sisters.’
‘And who are they?’
‘English writers, very famous. Mam was romantic back then, said she’d waited too long for a daughter to name her anything other than a name she’d picked herself. There was war about it in our house. You see the first girl is meant to be named after her mother’s mother.’
‘And what name would that have been?’
‘Peggie.’
The herbalist found that hilarious for some reason; he laughed till he was wheezing. I waited till he had calmed down a bit.
‘And, after all that, my mother ended up calling me Millie.’
‘Millie?’
‘When I was a child.’
‘That doesn’t suit you either.’
‘She thought it did.’
There was a sharp rap on the door. Not giving up or going away or getting fainter but instead becoming louder and louder. He dropped his razor in the bowl. He’d cut himself. The towel he held to his face had a growing stain. He met my eyes in the mirror.
‘Turn down the lamp. You’re not here,’ he whispered.
He put on his shirt and closed the bedroom door softly with a look that meant it must stay closed. I lowered the gas-lamp. Imagined some jealous man come to kill him. Men weren’t mad for him. Women and children took to him, the market men too, but ordinary husbands were suspicious. They liked to refer to him as a dandy. A fop. Made jokes that he was a doctor in name only. Trying to take the magic off him.
I would act quickly, overpower his attacker. But with what?
With the lamp, one knock to the crown.
I heard whispering and a low hum and hmmm. It was Mrs B: she was talking and crying. The herbalist said nothing. Then he said, ‘No.’ A very definite no. Mrs B got upset again. I heard him soothe her, go into the kitchen and rummage. Then the front door shut and there was silence for a few seconds. The herbalist came in swinging a red fox-fur.
‘A present for my lady.’
‘For me?’
‘Well, I can hardly swan about in it.’
‘You swan about enough. Did Mrs B give you this?’
‘You shouldn’t have been listening – you’re a terrible girl.’
As if I wouldn’t recognize Mrs B’s fur anywhere. I hadn’t heard a word of what had passed between them, but he didn’t know that. Why did she give the herbalist her best coat? What was it in exchange for?
‘Is the fur a bribe to keep me quiet?’
I slipped my arms into the silk-lined sleeves.
‘No. It’s just because you are here and it’s pretty on you.’
‘I can’t wear this about the place either. Mrs B would go mad.’
‘It’s just for here, for when you’re the lady of the lamp.’ He stroked my neck, looked at me different.
‘You’re a strangely lovely pointy-faced beast by times.’
He always said my chin could cut diamonds. He ruffled my hair. The fur smelt musky. I recognized Mrs B’s perfume. Shalimar. Named after a garden a shah had built for his beautiful wife. Mrs B liked to tell stories like that, back when I worked in the shop. So she had parted with her famous fox-fur. I made a guess.
‘Why didn’t she just give you money?’
‘She has to account for every penny of her weekly allowance and it’s hardly a cost she can put in her housekeeping book, now is it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, of course not.’
I wondered what he had given her in exchange for the coat, and in the middle of the night. A woman like that, to come here, to lower herself – as she would have said – when she lorded over us in the shop. Mrs High and Mighty. I snuggled into him.
‘All women are equal in that respect. The Birminghams are no different.’
All women get the curse, but Grettie B hardly gave him a fur coat after midnight for a dose of iron tonic or a bottle of pain relief. He was measuring me with his eyes. If he realized I’d heard nothing, he would tell me nothing. Might even get mad at me for stringing him along. I snuggled into the fur – it was soft as sin.
33
It was nearly eleven o’clock when Carmel heard the latch lift on the back door. What was the girl doing out so late? Sarah strolled into the living room, shrugging off her coat, cool as you like, unaware of Carmel curled up in the armchair with her tonic wine. Carmel waited till she had her hand on the banister.
‘What time do you call this!’
Sarah let out a cry of surprise. She turned around; her face was pale and tired.
‘I’m so sorry, I –’
‘Who was courting you till this hour?’
‘No one, there’s no one.’
‘I’m not an ogre, you know, Sarah. I know what it’s like to be young, I’ve been there myself.’
‘It won’t happen again, Mrs Holohan.’ Sarah turned on her heel and skipped upstairs.
Carmel stoked the grate. Embers flew out on to the rug – what matter, it was singed already. The girl must have a young man. She could’ve said. Carmel would’ve understood. Why did everyone treat her as if she were about to bite their heads off? Like she was some kind of harridan? Carmel remembered what it was like to be young and in love, didn’t she? She tried to summon up the excitement of her own courtship but couldn’t remember much. Ach, if she still had notions about love at her age, she’d be a very unhappy woman indeed, wouldn’t she?
Dan came home a few minutes later, a bit earlier than usual and irritable. Maybe the teasing had started up again. ‘Go forth and multiply,’ the men used to call when he was leaving the pub. Lizzie Murphy had told Carmel this when she was expecting, when it was safe to mention it. He was used to the ribbing he got for not being a big drinker – Mr Mineral they called him – but that was different – they should mind their own business about more private matters.
‘Are you okay, Dan?’
‘Of course I am. Why are you swigging that tonic stuff again?’
‘For my nerves, Dan, for my nerves. The bloody washing line snapped today, and all the clean sheets ended up on the grass. I should have brought them in last night. A day’s work down the drain, and there’s no point getting Sarah to wash them all again, not till the line is fixed. Will you see to it, and get a good strong rope this time? Don’t be scrimping.’
‘I will,’ he said. He took up the small brush and knelt to sweep the hearth rug. ‘Speaking of our young Miss Whyte, do you know what I found out tonight, Carmel?’
‘Go on.’
‘She’s been seen coming out of the herbalist’s house at all hours, on Sundays.’
‘Who said?’
‘Mick, and all of them that were in
the pub tonight. They were saying things. You know men, seeing as Sarah is young and single.’
‘So that’s where she was! Annoying the poor herbalist, just like her pale-faced predecessor. The poor man.’
‘Mick said he wouldn’t find Sarah’s attentions too tiresome.’ Dan laughed.
Carmel leant over and gave her husband’s ear a tug. ‘She’s nothing to write home about.’
‘Ah, that’s it, I’m off to bed.’ Dan got to his feet and disappeared upstairs.
‘I’m off’ seemed to be Dan’s favourite words lately. Carmel would have to take matters into her own hands; she couldn’t sit by and let carelessness ruin anyone’s reputation. She went upstairs and knocked on the girl’s bedroom door. Sarah was sitting up reading some yellow booklet; she looked as innocent as if she had come from Mass. Carmel got straight to the point.
‘I know where you’ve been, Sarah. I don’t know what kind of house you came from, but when you’re under this roof you’ll keep your dealings with men to the minimum, especially that man.’
‘I need the few bob, Mrs Holohan.’
‘He pays you!’ Carmel clasped her hand over her mouth.
‘Is that what you think of me? And with an itinerant hawker?’ Sarah looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘I write labels for his medicines, we talk herbs and sometimes we play rummy.’
‘Talk herbs my backside.’
‘It’s true. I’m a good girl: you can’t take that away from me.’
Sarah was very convincing. She seemed so offended that it made Carmel feel guilty, bad-minded even.
‘Well, no more late nights. The odd bit of work would do you no harm; it would get you out of the shop. I might drop down to make sure everything’s above board, though, if I’ve the time. But no more socializing of an evening in that man’s house, do you hear?’
Carmel closed the door before the girl could answer. Sarah didn’t look chastened enough for her liking; in fact she looked annoyed. And what had Carmel been thinking? A woman of her standing couldn’t frequent that man’s house. It just wasn’t done. Why, then, did Carmel want to? And why did she have to stop herself from putting on her coat, walking through the town with her half-empty medicine bottle in her pocket, knocking on his door and crying ‘Let me in, let me in, I need help’?
Carmel was swimming in the river: the water was black and viscous. Someone was waving at her from the bridge. Signalling at her to get out of the water, but she didn’t want to: she felt too drowsy, it was nice and warm in there.
‘Carmel, wake up,’ Dan whispered.
A door banged; bare feet slapped the hall floor. She sat up in the bed. The soft light told her it was almost dawn. Her headache was immediate.
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Dan.
‘You go look.’
Dan left the bed, and Carmel drifted in and out of sleep till he returned. When he came back, he was chatting as if it were the middle of the day.
‘There’ll be some cleaning up after that.’
‘Just come straight out and tell me, Dan, I’m tired.’
‘A bloody blackbird! It came out of the chimney, Sarah said, flew around the room, flapped against the glass, and when she ran out, the damn thing followed. It knocked itself dead in the stairwell, made a pretty mess.’
‘Did you clean it up?’
‘Give me time to get dressed, won’t you? Maybe we should block up that fireplace again. I knew there was a reason why your mother had sealed it.’
Carmel pulled the blankets over her head till he had gone. She could hear the two of them now, Sarah and Dan, running up and down the stairs as if the house were on fire. It was a bad omen, a bird in the house. Carmel would stay in bed until the place was cleaned up; she didn’t want to see the marks on the walls, didn’t want to see the soot on the stairs.
34
Sarah decided to ignore Carmel’s warning. She did the herbalist’s labels in batches of ten on Sunday evenings, and stayed late if she had to. Sometimes it was very late, but what choice did she have? She needed the money. She tried to come and go discreetly, so as not to provoke Carmel again. The woman could be very unpredictable.
The herbalist hadn’t paid her yet. He said he would soon; it was adding up, he told her. ‘Think on it as saving.’ She worked carefully, never smudged the ink. Kept all her letters flowing and even. She got immense satisfaction from the odd flourish.
The herbalist would often consult with her on names for the tonics; he liked to change them every now and then. People thought it was a new formula if it had a new name.
‘Emily came up with some choice ones.’
He always spoke of Emily in the past tense, in a careful way that made Sarah wonder.
‘What would you call a tonic to grow hair back?’
She thought for a minute.
‘Root Reviving Lotion?’
‘More respectable than Bald Bastard Balm,’ he laughed.
‘What about for ladies whose hair is thinning?’
‘Crowning Glory?’
‘Miss Whyte, you’re a natural at this.’
He handed her a well-thumbed navy dictionary. ‘All you ever need to say is in that book.’
He was proud of his vocabulary, his enunciation. Used his teeth for his th’s.
Sarah was glad to be getting a break from the shop. She was tired of Dan’s roving religious eyes and Carmel’s fevers. Fevers of excitement, fevers of accusation … the term ‘highly strung’ was invented for that one. It was a relief to be away from them, even for a short while.
‘We’re good to you, Sarah, are we not?’ Carmel had asked crossly, as if aware that Sarah was getting weary of a life full of snipes and challenges she didn’t quite grasp. And of their night-time arguments – over money, over the shop and sometimes even over her.
‘You think the sun shines out of her fat arse!’
Dan mumbled some low denial.
Sarah wanted to scream: ‘I’ve got two ears as well as a fat arse!’
The niceties were over. Their only concession to her presence was to move to other rooms. But not always.
When she had finished work at the herbalist’s, she sometimes stayed on for a game of cards. If he didn’t have a customer, he had a visitor. They played gin rummy, twenty-five and poker. Sarah won the first hand of poker she ever played. Aggie called her a right shark, said she’d take the eye straight out of your head. Sarah just smiled; it was a welcome few bob. When the cards fell by the wayside and there was a sing-song, the herbalist wasn’t as free with her as with the other women. They said some awful things and, depending on his mood, sometimes he’d laugh and sometimes he’d wince. But when he talked to Sarah, he kept to herbs. He often quizzed her about plants, about Mai’s tonics. Sarah only joined in the cards or the singing a few times. She was afraid of what would get back to Carmel. She was such a bad-minded woman.
Tuesday was a Matt day. Sarah was trying to think of a topic of conversation, something that could help them strike up a friendship. She was writing out a price list for the window display. Carmel looked over her shoulder.
‘Suppose that’ll do,’ she muttered.
That irked Sarah. She was doing an excellent job and knew it. The herbalist was more than happy with her work, said she had a beautiful copperplate script. Sarah had once won a certificate for handwriting. Master Finbar presented it to her himself while the children did a drum roll on their desks.
As Sarah slipped the price list into the window of the shop, she waved at Birdie, who was sitting on the windowsill of her own place, as she did every market day. Matt was due in for his paper any minut
e, and Sarah still hadn’t thought of anything to say. Then she opened the newspaper and there it was: a full-page notice for the summer carnival. Everyone was talking about the carnival. It stayed in town for the whole month. She would say, ‘Are you going to the carnival? I hear it’s great.’ That would give him a chance to ask her out.
She made sure to have the paper opened casually on that page when he came in. He couldn’t miss it. Her nerves were killing her.
Matt was pleasant but quiet as usual. Sarah held back his change so she would have his full attention.
‘I see there’s a carnival on – are you going to it yourself?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you ever been?’ This was hard work.
‘Oh, yes, I went last year; it was great gas altogether.’ He smiled at the memory.
‘I’ve never been to a carnival.’
‘Really? You’re missing out. You should go.’
He said it so encouragingly it nearly broke her heart. The opportunity would slip through her fingers if she didn’t act fast.
‘To be honest I don’t know many people … I can’t think of anyone to go with.’ She held out his change and he took it.
‘Well, Sarah …’ He had never said her name before.
She felt an arm slip around her shoulder. Dan beamed down.
‘You poor thing, why didn’t you say so before? It would be a pleasure to take you to see the big carnival, girl, we’d only be delighted.’
‘Good luck now.’ Matt was off, his paper tucked under his arm.
What was wrong with her at all? She was raging with Dan, raging. He had spoilt her chances.
‘He was going to ask me out! How am I ever going to meet anyone? Why did you do that, Dan?’