The Herbalist (42 page)

Carmel opened the shop – what else could
she do? People were in shock, white-faced.
Did you hear? Did you hear?
Milkie
and Moll Nash, Tessie Feeney, Lizzie Murphy and Mrs Purcell all arrived in more or less
together. They crowded the counter. She filled a threepenny bag with toffees for Milkie.
When she looked up, the floor was full. More had come in: she could see the heads of
Miss Murray and Miss Hawkins, Nell Daly, Miss Harvey, Catty Dolan, Miss Fortune, Sally
Heaney and was that Rita Brennan in the doorway?

Carmel sat on the stool. They were
chattering together, and they were all glancing at her, feasting their eyes. Being
careful not to mention her husband, or the shop girl, or adultery. They were just there
to take note of her condition, complexion, demeanour. Notes they could compare later,
expand upon in comfort. For now, in here, they would pick over other carcasses. Like Mrs
Birmingham, who had lost everything. Didn’t she think the world of Rose! It was so
sudden and there were terrible rumours! People said poor Rose was in the family way.
Nonsense and tommy-rot, that girl never went anywhere without her mother. She had no men
friends anyway; that was just jealous people making gossip for a good family in their
time of trouble. And so it went …

I’ve never seen a couple in such a state of despair.

They loved that girl so. She was the apple of her father’s eye.

What sort of illness was it at all?

No such thing. She died in childbirth. Blood soaked the earth.

Don’t believe a word. The poor innocent died from an infection.

The mother’s suicidal.

Don’t say that.

The father upped and left, went to America or Cork, or somewhere equally
remote.

The mother is drinking herself into a puddle of piss.

Emily Madden made a complaint against the herbalist.

Emily?

Yes, Emily.

Are you sure?

Of course we’re sure. He tried to abscond.

Must be guilty, then!

They caught him; he had gone to his house for something.

Must’ve been something valuable.

Not at all. It was a photo. A woman with a baby.

Ah, his mother. He can’t be all bad, then.

He was no innocent.

Rose was an innocent. Yes, a living, breathing angel.

There’s no smoke without fire.

Her mother has gone to the dogs, nursing rum in a public lounge.

Can she not fall apart in the luxury of her own fine house?

Lonely, I suppose, with her husband gone.

How did she manage that one? I’d have to put a bomb under my lad to be rid of
him.

Oh, that Mrs Birmingham, she was always one big disaster.

A big-boned famine cow.

Rose told someone.

Really?

Shush, yes, before it happened.

It?

Her death.

No.

Yes, I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. ‘I’m in deep
trouble,’ Rose said, ‘but I’m keeping it and I’m going
away.’ It was a reliable source, not someone given to gossip.

Who?

I can’t say, I swore.

Ah, go on.

It was Charlie, Charlie told us. He was sweet on Rose; he’s fit to kill.

‘Get out, every last living rotting
one of you. Get out,’ shouted Carmel.

She pushed and shoved at the women’s
backs till she had herded them on to the street. Then she locked the doors of
Kelly’s shop.

His house was neat if a little bare. They
were both awkward, Matt less so since they were on his home turf. He went outside to
finish his work, and she rested by the fire. Her limbs still ached from having been tied
up. Her head didn’t feel that great either. There was a faded photo of a stern
woman over the mantelpiece. Sarah was examining it when he returned.

‘That’s my late wife.’

He stoked the fire, took down a heavy black
pan and greased it with lard. It was relaxing to watch him: he moved slowly and with
deliberation. The door on to the garden was open; the only sounds were the starlings. It
was another world here – even the air seemed fresher.

‘My sister was taken away for the same
thing.’ He nodded towards her stomach. ‘So I don’t mind marrying you,
keeping you respectable. A favour.’

‘Don’t get notions.’

‘I’ve no notions left; I’m
not a young man. I was born alone and I’ll die alone and I’m happiest
alone.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ said Sarah. A dark
shape had flitted by the window.

‘What?’ He nearly dropped the
pan, nearly lost an egg.

‘It’s him, oh God, it’s
the herbalist. He’s come to get me!’

‘It’s only your
imagination.’

He handed her a mug of warmed brandy.

‘Lock the doors.’

‘There’s only one door and
there’s no one near it.’

‘Do you have a gun?’

‘Just for hunting. Aw, the bloody eggs
are burning with all this fussing. You’ve had a shock, you need to rest. Go into
the back room. I’ll make you a fresh egg.’

She checked that the window was shut and sat
up on the bed
beside it. She pulled the rough blankets up around her
and sipped her brandy. The river was out there, the same river. The herbalist could come
down it at any time, come after her.

He said his sister was sent away for the
same thing.

The same thing.

She remembered Jamsie; how he had pinned her
down. Was Matt’s sister pinned down too? Jamsie had laughed, imitated her
expression and made an O-shape with his mouth. Then he heaved on top of her, pressed the
air from her lungs. Tore at her like a greedy piglet, the heel of his hands on her
collarbone. She was afraid it would snap. She thought of the wishbone drying on the
stove, imagined she was still inside the house holding warm lemonade, safe and sound
instead of being on the ground. When he stopped, he was puce. He looked at her.

‘You stupid bitch,’ he
whispered.

The Walls of Limerick gathered momentum as
she stumbled up the stairs to her room. Mai followed, shut the door. Sarah told her.

‘May the Lord have mercy on your
soul.’

Mai crossed herself, as if Sarah had died.
Gracie said Sarah would have to be sent away. There was a place.

‘You led him on. These lads
aren’t in full control. Everyone saw youse dancing like lunatics. Enough
said.’ Gracie was furious.

The two women fought like cats when everyone
was gone. Sarah had sluiced herself with cold water from the jug and dried off with a
towel, rubbing her skin so hard it almost bled. Then she put on her nightdress and a
cardigan. She picked up her dress – muck and blood on gingham – and wrapped it up for
burning. She prayed to the Little Flower, promised her all the roses in the world if
they didn’t send her to the place, the place where Annie Mangan had gone.

Divine intervention prevailed. She was to
begin her new position with the Holohans. She was to pretend nothing had happened, to
work hard, and to wait and see if the Lord would have mercy.

Sarah finished her brandy and looked out on
the river. Maybe mercy was a lock gatekeeper.

Aggie, what did they say? Did they believe all that was said about him?

Look here, my dear.

30 August 1939

CHARGE AGAINST HERBALIST

Don Vikram Fernandes, a middle-aged
coloured man with an address in Black Walk, will appear in Court on Friday, 1
September, charged with an offence against a girl.

Does that ring any bells for you? It’s
a poor article, barely the length of my thumb. Middle aged. Oh, he wouldn’t like
that, no siree, he would not!

You’d miss it, if you weren’t
looking for it, but there were plenty looking for it, plenty with an interest. And not
who you’d expect. ‘Go away, Aggie, you’re only a gossip …’
That’s what was said to me, even when it was there in black and white, hidden
amongst those other ink-worthy events: Byrne’s tot thrown to Daingean for robbing
a plank, young Greaney caught for no light on his bloody bicycle, and that lone sentence
in memory of you, poor Rose.

You wouldn’t know it, but it’s my story. You won’t find me in the
column inches. You won’t find me in the newsprint. You’ll find me in the
gaps, the commas, the full stops – the small dark spaces where one thing led to
another. I was afraid to speak, but now I’m not, for who’ll hurt me now?
I’m past that, past touch. Isn’t that right, Aggie?

Shush, a leanbh, that’s enough. See
how it rains and rains; see how the river breaks its banks? As I speak, mothers are
warning their daughters to never, ever, go near strange men. And to always stay away
from
that
lane. Bad things happened in that lane, and now it’s haunted by
the ghost of an unfortunate girl. Oh, yes, they say, there’s
a crack in the centre of town where young girls slip down. And among themselves, the
women talk of matters they’ll never tell their children or husbands. Late-night
confessions.
He performed unmentionable acts. Put a spell on my daughter, my sister,
my neighbour. And on me … on me … on me.

Doctor Sin, with his herbs, lotions and
potions, creeps into their dreams. And what, they wonder – tiptoeing downstairs to their
cupboards to select one of his brown glass bottles and hold it up – just what, they
wonder, really swims therein? What sort of herbs, what breed of medicine?

Ladies, the herbs were his fingertips, his
quiet lips, his dry hands cooling you down, cooling you down. Now what will you do
without him?

The day the black maria came, he let the
gardaí lead him away. He looked at no one. The women of the town hung around. ‘Let
us at him, let us at him!’ Crows cawed from the wires, as sharp and determined
soapy arms rose. They drove him off in a puff of smoke. I went over to his house. The
rooms were empty, dull. The rows of bottles that were its only ornaments, gone. The
stretcher bed, gone. The space where it used to be looked different to the rest of the
floor; more dust motes seemed to gather over that space. Maybe it was just the morning
light through the boxy windows. God preserve us, but who’d call it a surgery –
only a mad man.

There was a scent of wood burning. He was up
to his old tricks: a tin barrel was smoking, and he’d set light to bits of wood
from the bed, the curtains. What else, I could not see. Ancient things burning, a sad
smell indeed. There wasn’t hide nor hair of him anywhere, no sign of who had lived
there. He was a great man for covering his tracks. He’d led everyone on a merry
dance.

‘I converse with the dead. Does that
scare you?’ I said.

‘Not as much as the strength of this
whiskey,’ he said.

‘You don’t believe me? Let me
look at your palm … your mother loved you –’

‘Only a mother could.’ He
laughed. ‘Let’s dance.’

And so the first night went like that, a
world away from the last.