The Herbalist (28 page)

She sank down under the covers. She heard
Carmel sobbing downstairs – was that part of the reason why Emily had left, this
miserable atmosphere? But no – Emily was annoyed to have been let go, wasn’t she?
Ah, yes, it was her obsession with the herbalist – her ‘inappropriate
behaviour’, as Carmel had called it – that had led to those final marching orders.
The poor girl thought she was in love.

Early on, some customers had called her by
Emily’s name. It was simpler to answer to it than to explain, so they stayed doing
it. She didn’t mind. The townspeople weren’t so bad when you got to know
them. Once she got past being nervous, Sarah learnt people liked to be coddled, to be
made fun of. A Peggy’s Leg for the children, sympathy for the wives, and a laugh
at their jokes for the men. Dan had noticed last Wednesday.

‘Why, Sarah,’ he had said,
‘silver-tongued Sarah.’

‘Yes,’ his wife added,
‘silver-tongued Sarah, sly as a fox.’

That had hurt, though Carmel had laughed
when she’d said it.
However, it didn’t hurt Sarah now; her
expectations had fallen considerably since then. She felt under her mattress for
Mai’s letter, opened it out into her lap and popped the last of Rose’s
chocolate into her mouth as she read.

Dearest Sarah,

Are they being good to you? I hope so. We are all grand here T. G. Sarah, did
you hear? That James Kelly has got engaged to Helen Mahon of the drapery
Mahons’. It has only dawned on me what Master Finbar was up to putting you
forward as a candidate for his sister’s shop. He wanted you out of the
way. He wanted someone better-off for his James. You know there’s no one
better than you in my eyes, Sarah, but to a schoolmaster like Finbar, who thinks
he’s a cut above, an orphan living with her old aunt wouldn’t be
high up enough.

I’m heart-broke. He expected us to fall for it and we did. Or I did.
It’s all my fault. I jumped at the chance. Thought it was a golden
opportunity for you to better yourself, get a few bob in a respectable position
and be able to have nice things, meet nice people. I didn’t think twice. A
start for you, that’s all I wanted. Me and my pride, I was hot-headed with
it, hot-headed with excitement that you were getting out, doing things. And Big
Notions Mai goes and has a do, a send-off, and look what it did to you. Look
what it did.

Are you drinking the tea? Is there any sign? Please write soon and let me know,
I’m out of my mind.

Bless you always,

Mai

James was engaged to Helen Mahon. Sarah
couldn’t recall him ever saying two words to Helen Mahon, or one word even. And
poor Mai, blaming herself. The sound of birds started up from the chimney breast again.
If another bloody bird flew into the room tonight, she’d strangle it.

I woke alone in the herbalist’s bed
the morning after the fortune-telling. My head hurt. Everything hurt. I closed my eyes
again. Whatever had happened the night before was mixed up with the leavings of a bad
dream.

Voices washed over me, some more real than
others; those ones had a bite in them. I didn’t want to go to the ball, but they
dragged me anyway, dragged me and left me lying in the middle of the floor. Laughter
bubbled in the throats of the ugly sisters, Lila and Judy.
Fine girl you are!
They stepped back to allow someone else to step forward. The bogeyman was invisible and
he had a thousand hands. Fat, cold and pinching. Those fingers never let up their
pawing. It was a dream, it was a nightmare, and it was real. First, I was safe on his
lap.
My laudanum whore
. Then I was sore and torn beneath the glinting laughter.
And then,
bam!
The door opened and cold and rain and a wild woman all rushed
in. Aggie’s voice, and Aggie’s foul tongue.
Leave the fucking child
alone!

It was daylight. The bells were ringing for
Mass. I stung down there. That was the worst of it. I peeked. There were bloody
scratches on my thighs. What had happened? Had the herbalist been overcome? He
wouldn’t have hurt me like this, not him. He had given me a potion, I remembered
that. Someone had tied a scarf around my head; it was too tight. Some of my hair caught
in the knot but eventually it broke free.

The door opened. It was the herbalist,
rubbing his head and looking rough. The fat baritone peeped in behind him: one eye was
swollen and purple. He sneered at me.

‘A right little earner!’

The herbalist slammed the door in his face.
I was well pleased by his abruptness, the way he sent that horrible man packing.

‘What happened to that fella’s
eye? Who hit him?’

‘Old Aggie.’

‘Why?’

‘Never you mind.’

I drifted in and out of sleep. After a while
the herbalist shook me awake. He was holding out a lovely slippery nightgown. Red satin,
could you credit it? Ankle length and all.

‘I’ll look like a
starlet.’

‘A skinny starlet.’

There he went again, making me feel great
just so he could move me back down to second place. He liked doing that. I wondered
where he’d found the gown. I felt cold all over, couldn’t get warm. ‘A
chill in your kidneys’ was his diagnosis. I put on the nightdress and slipped
around the bed, shivering. The tea he brought was cold and greasy, so he lay on top of
the covers and shared his tipple with me.

The herbalist drifted off. I gazed at the
smiling face of the hula girl on his shoulder, traced my finger along her sweeping black
hair, and thought of the jade snake curled up unseen beneath the covers. I became
sleepy, but, afraid of the bad things sleep would bring, I rose and tried to use the
chamber pot. No luck, only pain. A shoebox stuck out from under the bed. I helped it on
its way. Lifted the lid. Amongst beads of dried lavender lay a photograph. A white woman
– tanned, wide-faced and thin-lipped, her hair swept back from a severe middle parting
into a bun, making black wings each side of her head. She was wearing an old-style
striped blouse and a dark floor-length skirt. Her stoutness and clothes made her seem
middle aged, but when I looked closely there wasn’t a line on her face. She held a
dark-skinned baby dressed in a sailor suit. The woman looked at whoever held the camera
with real fondness and pride. The infant smiled, and his eyes were wide, as if someone
outside the picture was making funny faces at him. One of the baby’s feet was a
blur. I turned the photograph over to see what names were written on the back.
Vikram
…

‘Nosy!’ It was snatched from my
hand.

Once you had offended him, there was no
talking, no use in trying to explain.

‘Get dressed. Get out.’

There were pinpricks of sweat over the
bridge of his nose. He hadn’t shaved; his lips were dry. His demons were here
again; he didn’t have to tell me this time. As I took off the nightgown and put
back on my own things, he laid a bottle, a napkin and a cup on the bedside table. The
ceremony soothed him. He began to breathe easier. He smiled when he lied – I’d
learnt that much. So when I was fully dressed, I asked him: ‘Did you come into the
bed with me last night?’

He knew what I meant.

‘Maybe I did.’ He smiled a
peculiar smile that bleached the skin around his mouth.

What a funny way to run your lies, towards
sin. But maybe he was telling the truth. I’d been touched, that much I knew. I
remembered my dream – thick fingers pulling at me, the sneering face of the fat man. Did
he come in here? Into the bedroom with me?

No. The herbalist wouldn’t let anyone
hurt me, he never would. Funny how real some dreams can be.

I folded up the red nightgown and wrapped it
in a sheet of newspaper. Part of me wanted to put it back on, run over the bridge and
swan through the town in it. Let them talk, let them laugh. They did anyway. There was
no more talk to be had here; I could tell by his bent back, and the way his shoulders
touched his ears, that the demons were climbing on top of the herbalist, one by one. I
went over to say goodbye, rubbed his neck.

‘Disappear,’ he hissed,
‘disappear.’

Aggie, why did you pal with the herbalist? Didn’t you know he was bad?

The way I look at it, we’re all a bit
bad inside. We just have different ways of dressing it up. But, Lord help me, when I saw
what happened to poor Emily, I did get a quare shock. I should’ve stepped in then.
It would’ve saved an awful lot of suffering.

I had been outside with one of my paramours,
and returned to be greeted by a terrible commotion. Emily was crying from the next room.
The Don was stretched bleary-eyed, out of his mind in the kitchen. In I went to the
bedroom, and what did I see but only those two witches crowded around the bed, laughing
and clapping. I pushed them back to see that big fat bastard moving on top of her. You
wouldn’t know to look at me, but I’ve a fist like concrete. You
should’ve seen the fat lad reel. I split the skin beneath his eye wide open. That
put a stop to their shenanigans. Emily seemed drugged or something, fevered – I
couldn’t wake her, so I covered her up with blankets.

Cursing like a demon, the fat man staggered
over to the table and collapsed on to a chair. Then he began to fall forward, really
slowly, till his face lay among the plates, bottles and glasses. Blood trickled from his
cut. That big head of his looked just like an ugly joint of meat. Lila and Judy were
nowhere to be seen; they must’ve abandoned him, not that he cared, he was busy
snoring. I shook The Don, tried to tell him. ‘Aye,’ was all he said.
‘Aye.’ He waved me away and went back to his drunken sleep. He smiled to
himself then, content with wherever he was in his head. The hate set in there and then.
But I bided my time and kept close to his side. You catch more flies with honey, and I
wanted this fly.

I called round to him soon after, hinted
that he should pack up,
move on. That people were talking. Did he
listen? Not a hope. The Don was too brimful of pride and Jameson’s to take one
blind bit of notice.

‘I’m a professional and a
successful one; my travelling days are over.’

He fixed another drink. Then he whipped out
a small black notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket. Licked an inky finger and
flicked through the pages. Put on a high and mighty voice, like I’d never seen him
on his hands and knees crying with the horrors for his mammy.

‘This log records patients, illnesses,
treatments, all the ups and the downs, comings and goings, and of course what works and
what doesn’t. What is efficient in the system of things.’

‘There’s many would pay a pretty
penny to read that.’

I reached out to take the notebook, but he
snapped it shut and tucked it away again. The big cold smile on his greasy smig annoyed
me.

‘I’m just telling what the
people are saying,’ I said, ‘and they’re not nice things. You’d
want to be careful. Maybe cut your ties with a certain young lady; it’s doing you
no favours.’

‘What they say is up to them. What
they see is up to them. Not my doing. I’m anything they want me to be, from
Lucifer to the guardian angels at the gates of heaven. I was needed here, Aggie,
welcomed. I’ve had offers of help from all quarters – wealthy quarters. You would
be surprised, I think. Wanting to advise me on the ways of the place and who’s
who. As if here were any different to all the other places. The same pinched faces, but
who can blame them? It’s a tight corner we’re all in, yet the market is
livelier now, is it not? And not just with farmers and their vegetables, eggs and
chickens. Are you listening? Are you listening to me?’

‘You’re too full of yourself.
People don’t like that.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? I walked
home today with a case bereft of potions and pockets packed with money. Children, three
or four, skipped alongside me, across and in front of me, circling in great excitement.
“What’s in those bottles, mister?” asked the smallest and boldest.

‘“Magic,” I said.
“Pure money-making magic.”

‘“Can you cure leprosy? Can you
cure TB? Are you a miracle worker?”

‘“What do you think!” I
bent down and took a penny from behind his ear, hoping I didn’t pick up lice.

‘“Are you from
Africa?”

‘“Are
you
from
Africa?’

‘“Of course not, mister,
I’m from the lane, you know that!”

‘So why wouldn’t I be full of
myself, as you put it? There’s magic at the tips of these fingers, pure
money-making magic. I’m getting myself a motor-bicycle as soon as I’ve
enough stacked up. Are you listening, Aggie?’

There was no talking to him. But, I suppose
more than anyone, I knew how that lad operated. We were in the same kind of business.
The same fake How Great Thou Art. And afterwards the exact same ‘I have your few
bob, now feck off’. His ladies liked a comment, a little flattery. They may have
huffed it off, but they always came back. Like my lads.