The Herbalist (17 page)

‘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?

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 full 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.

‘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.