The Herbalist (14 page)

‘There’s no cure’ – he
rubbed my hair, and then he held my chin – ‘there’s no cure and there never
will be.’

I won’t tell what he did then. No, I
will. He kissed me so hard I thought the chair would topple. And it was wonderful. He
called me a goddess, an empress. I started to cry.

‘There are so many bad things …’
I said.

‘I’ll make them go
away.’

He kissed me again. And then we had tea, and
a rock bun each from the half dozen he’d exchanged for some remedy. There was no
butter, so the bun was a bit dry. I would bring him some later, a present.

I was rightly set up, then, had myself a
man. That’s what I thought.

But when I went back later with a pat of
butter, his door was shut and there was no answer. That doesn’t sound like
anything much, but here’s the thing: I knew he was in there, I just knew it. I was
growing myself some women’s intuition.

It went from bad to worse. There was a new
girl in Kelly’s. A live-in
help, who worked six whole days a
week. Her name was Miss Whyte. A country one. The people were only too delighted to tell
me all about her. Seems she wasn’t a patch on me, slow and a bit full of herself,
as country ones are.

I went straight to the shop, stood by the
grocery window, careful not to be seen from inside. Carmel was standing beside a tall,
dark girl. They were examining a ledger. Carmel had flour on her jaw, her white apron
on; the glass was all steamed up. The girl’s head was bent, and her coal-black
hair hung in a thick plait that she lifted every now and again. I couldn’t see her
face. Carmel leant in and it looked like she was about to press her lips to the nape of
the girl’s neck. I stepped back. What a strange thing. Or did I imagine it?

I entered the shop, and they stopped
talking. I didn’t care if I was told off or sent on my way. I just wanted to see
that girl’s face.

‘Oh, hello, Emily,’ Mrs Holohan
said, as if no trouble had passed between us.

The girl looked at me. Her eyebrows were
thick and straight and her eyes were blue, a dark blue like you’d see on delph,
and slightly slant. There was a lot wrong with her face: a wide mouth, a chin an inch
too long, flared nostrils. And yet … she was perfectly lovely. What was Mrs Holohan
thinking? A barren woman inviting a beauty into her home. That was asking for
trouble.

‘This is Emily,’ she said;
‘she was with us for a while.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ The girl
smiled and held out her hand. Her palm was warm.

‘I worked here till you came,’ I
told her.

‘That’s nice.’

‘They sacked me the day Mam
died,’ I sobbed.

Carmel had me by the shoulders and out the
door before I could catch the girl’s response.

I went to see what the herbalist had to say
about all this. He had nothing to say. He grudgingly let me in – didn’t even put
the kettle on. Had he forgotten that I was his empress? Had I imagined that kiss? Was
everyone against me now?

‘Emily, you have to stop loitering at
the stall.’

‘Why?’

‘People are talking.’

‘No. They’re not.’

‘Why, then, did you lose your job?
I’m a businessman. I have to be careful.’

‘This morning I was queen of
everything, now I’m nothing.’ I sidled towards him.

‘I can’t breathe; back
away.’

‘Why are you talking like that? You
hate me!’

‘If you don’t stop, Emily, I
will. Stay away till I tell you otherwise.’

He sighed and kept pasting labels on to his
bottles.

‘You said you could keep the bad
things away, stop them hurting me, but you know doctor shite, you’re the bad
thing!’

I waited for a reaction, but got none. I
slammed the door on my way out, but got no pleasure from it.

Carmel felt incredibly well. Maybe it was
having the help. More than likely it was the remedy. She would have loved to know what
was in it. Of course, the phial of medicine the herbalist gave to Carmel had no label on
it. She was eager to ask the doctor about his herbal remedies; she intended to interest
him in recording his recipes, and maybe together they could collect them in a book, like
Doctor Culpeper. Her talents were wasted in the grocery. In the meantime she would talk
to him about selling his wares on her premises.

The next time he appeared in the shop,
Carmel pushed past Sarah to attend to him. He set his tin on the counter and took off
the lid. Tobacco and sugar were all he wanted, and he seemed quieter than usual, though
his smile was ready. Carmel hoped to steer the conversation around to his medicines and
the possibility that she, Carmel, might sell them, and perhaps they could eventually
record them.

Carmel could see it already: a small cream
volume, with the name
Mrs Daniel Holohan
in sweeping script on the title page.
And the herbalist’s name too of course,
Don Fernandes
, or whatever it
was. But everyone would know it was really her work, that his English wouldn’t
have been up to scratch. She could fill the shop window with books, put some in the
library, maybe even write a letter to the Press.

‘Those back windows are filthy,
Sarah.’

Sarah took the hint and went on into the
back. Carmel weighed the sugar and added an extra generous scoop with a wink. He smiled
as the hill of white grains grew high. Then she poured the lot into the tin he always
brought with him.

‘You forgot to drop by?’ he
said, no longer smiling.

‘Drop by?’

‘To settle up, for the month’s
supply of tonic.’

‘It slipped my mind.’ She had
hoped he would give her more time.

‘That’s understandable;
you’ve been to hell and back.’

‘I have, I have …’ Carmel opened
the drawer and counted the coins into her hand.

‘By the way, while there are no ears
to hear –’ she said.

‘Yes?’

He seemed so kindly now, the way he looked
at her.

‘It must be very inconvenient for you,
to be pestered so by Emily. It’s best not to be too kind to some people; they can
be very hard to shake off. And it sets people talking, and the things they say, you
would be appalled. So it’s best to just cut it off at the root; it would be kinder
in the long run. Do you understand my meaning?’

He picked up his money and put it in a
leather pouch he had taken from his inside jacket pocket. It didn’t look like he
was going to answer.

‘I’m not inconvenienced by much,
Mrs Holohan. In general and nowadays, I suffer no inconvenience at all.’

She wasn’t sure what he meant. Felt
strangely rebuked, like an old biddy who didn’t know what was going on in the
world beyond her prayer book.

‘I was thinking of doing you a favour,
as it happens –’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I would be happy to help you
record your remedies for posterity; we could have a fine herbal volume on our
hands?’

‘Why would I give away my remedies for
just anyone to use?’ His voice was curt.

Carmel was taken aback. Who was he, to talk
to her in such a manner?

‘You’re a very gracious and
generous woman to think so highly of my remedies. I can see you have only good
intentions, Mrs Holohan, but my prescriptions are not for everyone; in fact, they could
be quite dangerous in the wrong hands.’ He had changed his tone.

‘I see.’ Carmel didn’t
quite know how to retrieve her dignity.

‘Good evening.’

‘Good evening.’

She retreated to the living room and sent
Sarah back out to the shop. The girl looked confused, but she put away the cleaning
rags, took off her apron and returned to the counter. The herbalist had left so
abruptly. Carmel had wanted to consult him about her sleeping difficulties. Why did she
feel so chastised?

She’d read Mr Corcoran’s bible.
That would settle her. Dan said she was a fool, having her head turned by the
salesman’s smart talk. ‘What odds?’ she told him. ‘At least
“the salesman” has taste.’ The man had admired her hair, in particular
the way it was plaited and pinned around her crown. She’d been delighted. Dan used
to tease her when they were courting – ‘How’s Heidi?’ he’d ask.
Not so Mr Corcoran; no, he had called her plait ‘a wheaten halo’, said that
she reminded him of a German princess. By the time he left, her cheeks were scarlet and
she was holding the beautiful leather-bound bible to her chest. Carmel read it all the
time nowadays: she liked the stories, and she liked to remind herself a man had once
called her a German princess.

She took the book from under her chair,
reached down and pulled out the old leather handbag. It contained the Buckfast she kept
for times of distress or sleeplessness. She poured herself a generous and much needed
mug full. It had been an upsetting week in general. Very upsetting.

This morning, when they were washing the bed
linen, Sarah had asked again about the child. ‘I was told I’d be minding a
baby?’ were her exact words, as her elbows moved up and down, crushing fabric
against the washboard. Carmel didn’t know what to say. She wrung out a pillowcase.
Why hadn’t Finbar informed Sarah? He’d hardly forget something so important.
Well, he hadn’t told her, and after a weekend of avoiding the question Carmel had
to answer it.

‘He’s in limbo,’ Carmel
said, short and sharp. Let her feel the bite too.

Sarah stopped what she was doing, stepped
near and put her wet arms around Carmel. Sarah pulled her tight, and Carmel took in her
breath. Carmel wasn’t going to cry, not in the arms of a shop girl.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Holohan, sorry
for your trouble, I really am.’

‘You’re grand, you’re
grand. Take those sheets out to the line while there’s still a bit of sun
out.’

Sarah did as she was told.

She was the first and only person to have
offered Carmel condolence on the loss of her baby. No one else had ever spoken much
about the matter. They had followed Carmel’s lead in that respect. She
wasn’t like Grettie B, making a fuss over everything. Grettie would have had Mass
said for a splinter in her finger – she talked far too freely about private matters.
Carmel didn’t do that. It wasn’t her way.

Sarah was back. Carmel had left soup and
bread in the kitchen for her.

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs
Holohan?’

‘No, thanks – look after
yourself.’

The tonic was going down nice and easy. She
heard the girl fill the kettle and go about her supper. Carmel half closed her eyes; she
liked that the living room was dark. It was like a cave. She must try to shift those
Sacred Hearts. They unnerved her. It was a consignment Dan had ordered in that
hadn’t sold. She could have told him that they wouldn’t. Anyone with a few
bob spent it on food or fuel.

People used to wonder if Carmel and Dan were
up to something anti-Catholic, seeing as no children had come along in the early years
of their marriage; or, worse, and more peculiar, were they up to nothing at all?

As it went, neither was true. When they
first married, Carmel had been keen. She had wanted to eat Dan up, butter him and
smother him in jam. He smiled when she talked like that; it tickled him how different
she was in the bedroom, how warm and loving. When did that all change? It was the little
things. And the little things had added up, as Carmel said, to a mountain she
couldn’t bear to look at, let alone climb. ‘The smell of your feet alone
would wither love in an angel’s heart.’ He had never asked her what she
meant.

‘Good evening, Mrs Holohan.’
Sarah held a hot-water jar in her arms.

‘Sleep well, Sarah.’

Carmel poured another drop of tonic into her
mug. She pushed
off her shoes. The words in the bible were very small;
even with her glasses she found them hard to decipher.

Dan was in the yard, locking the shed and
talking to Eliza. Telling her she was a great girl, the best and most beautiful pig in
Ireland. All silly lovey dovey. He never used that voice with Carmel. She lit one of her
Sweet Aftons and took a drag. Read about Lot, leaving the burning cities of sin, with
his wife and daughters behind him. And his wife, though she was told not to, looking
back over her shoulder and turning instantly into a pillar of salt.

Carmel always wanted to stop the story just
before Lot’s wife turned, to stop it and grab Lot’s wife’s hands in
hers, and say ‘Look into my eyes’ and lead her safely away. As if you could
step on to a page, especially a sacred page, and change anything. She knew it was mad,
but Carmel couldn’t read or hear the story without wanting to do that.

She could hear Dan in the kitchen, cleaning
his teeth with baking soda, gargling to beat the band. It was a horrible sound. At least
Sarah couldn’t hear it; she wouldn’t be back down. She tired easily for a
young woman. Or maybe not everyone was a night owl like Carmel, that’s what Dan
said. And then in he came. He swaggered past her to check himself in the hall mirror. It
was the same scene six nights of the week now – Dan with his face shaved, looking dapper
and smelling of cologne, flying out to the local.