The Herbalist (37 page)

I never went to bed. I just sat by the
window in my bedroom. Had he run off? Had I offended an innocent man? It was past
midnight when I decided to go to see him again. After all, he wouldn’t have
expected me during the day. I was his night woman. I took Charlie’s bicycle.

There wasn’t a soul in the square;
even the corner boys had deserted the place. When I got to the herbalist, his door was
locked, and there wasn’t a stir from inside. I waited for a while and then decided
I might as well head for home. I cycled by the river way, glad of my lamp. You could
hardly tell the water from the path. The moon was a big one, and it seemed to float in
the river.

When I saw her, she was gleaming in the dark
reeds. It was Rose, half in, half out of the water. I knelt on the river edge and tugged
at her lapels, dragged her up on to the verge. I felt uneasy about touching her without
permission. She weighed nothing. Her baby blue jacket felt scratchy and opened out as I
tugged at it. The silk of her white blouse clung to her like a second skin. Her curls
were flat and darkened. The mud spatters on her cheek looked like tea leaves. Her eyes
were half closed, like she was swooning in the moonlight, but she wasn’t. She
couldn’t. There wasn’t a breath in her body.

I went to close her jacket over her, when I
saw something white peeking from the inside pocket. I slid it out. A card envelope,
addressed to her mother. It was stamped and everything. I shoved it
into my own pocket. The centre of her skirt was black with blood. What kind of monster
had Rose run into? Had I heard the grass rustle? Was someone moving through the fields
behind me? I wasn’t sure.

It was terrible peaceful then: just the
reeds swishing in the brown water, the weir running. I wanted to stay there, hating the
idea that someone else might come upon her. Her bloodless face was whiter than the moon,
than chalk, than bone. Her expression was smooth, her mouth relaxed. She looked calm,
almost pleased, like the last thing she had seen was something nice.

I wanted to shout for help but
couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t remember the last rites. I whispered into
her ear, ‘Oh blessed Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who sought
thy help was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, virgin of
virgins, my mother.’ Then I started to cry. She needed the rites, the last
sacrament, she wasn’t long passed. I kissed her cold forehead, made the sign of
the cross and cycled back towards town.

The place was dead, black except for a
glimmer between the curtains of the River Inn, and I wasn’t going in there for
help. Not again. A trap rattled in the distance but didn’t hear my calls. So I
hurried to the Birminghams’. How was I going to tell them? The avenue to their
house had never seemed so long. I banged on the brass knocker, but no one came. I kept
hammering, heard it echo inside. The door opened slowly and Margery Daly peeked out.

‘I need to speak to Mrs B or Doctor B.
It’s very important. It’s about Rose. It’s bad.’

She let me into the hallway, didn’t
ask any questions; just signalled me towards a small door. It seemed to be a storeroom
of sorts. I was about to turn when she pushed me. It went black and I heard the key
turn. Was she completely mad? I knocked and knocked on the inside of the door. I began
to shiver. My sleeves and skirt were sopping wet. I stank of river.

Seconds, then minutes passed, until I had no
more sense of time. I heard a commotion, people arguing, a knocking sound. I banged and
banged on the door – had Margery forgotten about me? I didn’t
know what to do. I called out. No one answered. And all the time Rose was lying on the
ground for anyone to see, all lonely under the moon. A voice said, real soft,
Rose
won’t be lonely any more
. But there was no one there.

I thumped the door again; it swung outwards.
It had been unlocked. The hall was empty. There was no sign of crazy Margery. The door
to the living quarters, however, stood open. I walked through. There in her dressing
gown was Mrs B, just sitting in a big green velvet chair with her hands in her lap,
staring at the pink-flowered carpet like it was talking to her. She didn’t seem to
see me, let alone worry about why I was there. I knelt in front of her.

‘Mrs B, I’m so sorry, a terrible
thing …’

She looked past me, towards the middle of
the room, and in the middle of the room was a bed with Rose laid out in it. I
must’ve fainted, for next thing it was me on the green velvet chair, with my head
between my knees and smelling salts under my nose. The salts were held by Margery. Her
pretty face was sulky, tear-stained.

‘I found Rose by the river. She was
dead, by the river.’ I was so cold, my teeth chattered.

Margery pressed her lips tight and shook her
head very slowly from side to side. Then she walked over to Mrs B, crossed her arms and
stood behind her. Mrs B’s mouth was slack; her hands were wrapped in a rosary
beads.

I approached the bed. Rose had been on the
river bank, wearing a blue suit. Now she was lying in a bed wearing a black dress with a
white Peter Pan collar. The curls around her face were dry, but the white satin pillow
underneath her head was water stained. How had she got from there to here? How had Rose
died? Why had Rose died?

Her father came in and looped beads through
her fingers. The stiff way he nodded at me made me realize that I was an intruder. That
all three of them, Margery, Rose’s mother and father, were looking at me with
disgust.

‘I’m sorry for your
trouble,’ I stuttered and left.

The hall was empty and the front door hung
open. I stood for a second. The house was silent. There was no priest, no prayers, no
mourners. Maybe someone in the family had found Rose before I came
upon her and, like me, had gone to get help. Maybe they were on their way to get her
while I was running towards the house. The horse and trap I’d heard, that
must’ve been them. That was it. But why hadn’t they moved her out of the
reeds, as I had? I left the Birminghams’ and shut the door behind me. My bicycle
wasn’t where I’d left it, and I couldn’t see it anywhere. Turning out
of their avenue, I put my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. That’s when I
felt the letter. I hadn’t the heart to go back. It felt wrong to pester them.
Also, I wanted to read it for myself.

Poor Rose. I’d known her all my life,
who hadn’t? She was well known but no one’s friend. Always smiling, always
perfectly beautiful, but hardly ever had much to say. She was a bit silly maybe, but in
a way that didn’t mean harm. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt a pain in my
heart for her, just like I did for Mam. But Rose wasn’t close to me, wasn’t
close to anyone. She was just a nice girl who looked like she’d love to have a
chin-wag, but her mother was always pulling her away from people. I thought of the
wounds on her knees, the cuts up her legs. I’d forgotten about them. What happened
to her at all?

I walked quickly. The shapes and sounds on
the road to our house didn’t seem so nice and familiar any more. Even my own
footsteps were putting the heart crossways in me.

And there was something else. Rose’s
name was in the herbalist’s notebook. But lots of people’s names were and
they weren’t dead. Whoever had hurt Rose could be out there yet, roaming the town,
waiting for another victim. I screamed the rest of the way home, swear to God I did.

Charlie was asleep in the kitchen. Head
down, his arms on the table, coat still on, the lamp left burning as if he was waiting
on me to come home. I watched him sleep. Wanted to put my hand out and ruffle his hair,
wake him and tell him everything. But I didn’t. He’d be heartbroken soon
enough. Charlie didn’t take things well; when Mam died he’d hauled her old
armchair out into the yard, hatcheted it to pieces and burnt it. I quenched the lamp and
went up to my room, unpeeled my wet clothes, took an extra blanket from the wardrobe and
slipped into bed with it wrapped around me.
Wishing Mam was there to
hold me safe and sound. I bawled myself to sleep.

Rose walked through my dreams all night. She
wore blue serge and carried a case like a schoolchild’s. The blue she wore was
like nothing in nature, bluer than a hot summer’s sky; it was a blue I could
nearly reach, nearly grasp, but never would. Her voice, when it came, came from
somewhere outside my dream, a soft crying.
Save me, Emily, save me
.

On the third morning in a row that Carmel
heard Sarah vomit into her chamber pot, the penny dropped. The way she was putting on a
bit of condition. The way her skin gleamed. The stupid girl had got herself in trouble.
Well, she could go back home, let her country aunt take care of her. And all the trust
they’d put in her. A wretch like Sarah having a child, when a respectable woman
like Carmel was crying out for one. Who on earth had fathered it? And under their watch!
The girl had to go.

Carmel threw on her dressing gown, ran
downstairs and signalled Dan into the kitchen. Sarah had already made it to the shop
counter, looking very green around the gills.

‘That Sarah one is expecting.
She’s been getting sick every morning. She can’t stay here, the stupid
girl.’

Carmel awaited his outraged response. Men
didn’t notice these things the way a woman did, so he wasn’t quite taking it
in. He looked at her blankly.

‘She may go back where she came from.
God knows we tried. I knew, I just knew something was going on.’

She babbled on and on, her heart missing
beats, fear infusing her, knowing she was skipping something right under her nose.

‘That’s the thanks we get, Dan,
isn’t it, for giving her a start?’

He opened his mouth but said nothing. He
stared at the clock on the mantel.

‘Well, say something.’

He didn’t look at her. More was wrong
than Carmel knew, and still it was eluding her. She looked around. There were two cups
and a packet of biscuits on the table. A funny old breakfast. But Carmel wasn’t
usually up for breakfast, so how could she know what they ate? The chairs were together,
the cups were together.
They had been sitting talking. Sarah’s
place was always set at the far end of the table. That’s where Carmel always put
her.

She walked over to the table and threw one
of the chairs to the floor. Dan stood as loose as a hanging man. Her throat was dry and
her heart seemed to be fluttering inside it.

‘It was you?’ Her hands
shook.

‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’
he said, his voice unsteady.

‘It was you!’ She pulled at his
shirt. ‘You bastard, look at me.’

He wouldn’t.

‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’

She screamed at him till she was bent in
two, till her voice ran out. When she stopped, he was gone. And Sarah, she had run off
too. The shop was empty.

Where did he go? Where did she go?
Everything they owned was here under Carmel’s roof except for the clothes they
walked in and their unborn child. She locked all the doors. As she secured the kitchen
window, she saw Eliza. The pig had got huge. It backed into the far corner of the pen,
as if it knew what Carmel was thinking.

Carmel sat on the last step of the stairs
and cut Dan’s face out of the wedding snap with her nail scissors.

Looked in the hall mirror. Old poached
face.

Carmel scored the scissors on the clouded
grey-and-green-speckled glass till the blades bent backwards and sliced into her palm.
Blood on the mirror. The shelter for her madness, for her ugly, tear-stained,
blood-smeared countenance.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall.

If Carmel had a hunter to do her bidding,
she would’ve ordered him to bring her the lying, cheating heart of Sarah
Whyte.

Sarah was serving Miss Dolan when she heard
Carmel begin to shout. The shop was packed. Silence descended as Carmel’s hysteria
rose. The women looked at each other, and at Sarah. She could feel, rather than see,
their smirks and raised eyebrows. She walked the length of the counter and past them
with her head held high. When she reached the living room, she could see Dan’s
silhouette through the bubbled glass. She raced up the stairs like a redshank, pulled
her suitcase from under the bed and flung in anything that came to hand. She pulled the
wooden panel from the front of the fireplace, put her hand up the chimney and felt
around until she found her jar of savings. She emptied the money into her purse, grabbed
her suitcase and raced down the stairs. Carmel’s screaming grew louder all the
time. The crowd parted as she went through the shop. Surely there weren’t that
many people when she had been there a minute before?