The Herbalist (24 page)

Sarah was doodling on the previous
day’s paper, pencilling an angry moustache on a millionaire’s daughter who
had just flown her first aeroplane –
THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
said the
headline – when she smelt a whiff of cedar and saw a shadow move over the paper. Master
Finbar was standing there. How had he got in without the bell ringing? Her mouth went
dry.

‘Is my sister on the
premises?’

‘She’s lying down – will I wake
her?’

‘No, no need. It’s a flying
visit. I was in the locality.’

She resisted the urge to cover her stomach
with her hand.
He couldn’t know
, she thought.
Of course not. See how
prim he is, how clean his collar is. He knows nothing except for book learning.
His eyes, when they found hers, said otherwise.

‘How are you fitting in,
Sarah?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Nothing untoward to report?’ He
smiled with his mouth shut.

He talked like that – nonsensical, sarcastic
but gentle. She never knew what he really meant, even though he spoke plainly enough.
His shirt was the whitest she’d ever seen. He was wearing a black tie, neatly
knotted. Who did all that for him, kept the widow man so spick and span?

‘I see you’re filling
out.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It wasn’t a compliment. It
wouldn’t do to put on too much condition. Not at your age.’

He tapped the counter absent-mindedly. He
was treating her coolly. It hurt. From the time Sarah was four and started school, the
Master made no attempt to hide the fact that he’d a soft spot for her. Was
especially kind, attentive. Now he was icy. Suspicious. Angry in a calm way. He held his
fingertips to his temple as if he
had a terrible headache. Sighed, as
if there were nothing left to say.

‘Have you seen Mai, Master
Kelly?’

‘For what?’

Sarah pressed against the counter, the wood
smooth on her stomach, shielding her from his gaze.

‘I’ll be off – give Carmel my
regards.’

‘I’ll do that.’

His cologne lingered after he had left; it
was pungent. There was too much alcohol in the mix.

Sarah felt chilled. Finbar Kelly knew. Or
maybe he just suspected and had come to confirm his suspicions. But how had he guessed?
Had Mai told him? No, of course not, Mai knew he’d have Sarah locked up, hidden.
Buried alive, if he could. She saw it in his eyes.

That Saturday afternoon, when Sarah met the
herbalist and he doffed his cap and asked her if she could assist him, she listened. She
needed extra money and sooner rather than later. Carmel paid her a pittance. Subtracted
bread and board from her wages, and left her with hardly anything. As if a girl had no
future, no need of money, as if they were doing her a favour. Sarah needed the price of
her fare, a ticket to somewhere.

It was very simple. It seemed the herbalist
couldn’t keep up with demand. Sarah would write the labels for his remedies. There
might be other small chores to do around the making of the ointments and such, but not
to worry, she wouldn’t get her pretty hands too dirty. He proudly gave her the
directions to his new address.

When she arrived the next day, the herbalist
was at his kitchen table, rubbing leaves off stems. The leaves crumbled easily between
his fingers. They were too dry and brittle; they should still have been green. She said
nothing. Fine herbalist he was. Aunt Mai would be disgusted. His new place was a simple
two-roomed house, but there was plenty of light in it. He tapped at a child’s
school-desk; his latest acquisition, he told her. This was where Sarah was to work, to
write out the labels. There was black ink in the inkwell, a fine narrow nib to work
with, a blotter, gum and
sheets of thin paper. Sarah was to write ten
labels for a ‘Warming Chest Rub’ for starters. She watched him work as she
practised her strokes on a scrap of paper.

The herbs he had picked that morning were
pulpy. He must have gathered them too late. She could see that he overhandled the
leaves, bruised them, took too long. Sarah considered not telling him, letting him go on
making that mistake. She didn’t know why – other than that he was so high and
mighty when he obviously didn’t know half as much as he let on.

‘You should pick before the plant
flowers, on the morning of a finer day than this, after the dew has been burnt
off.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who says?’

‘My aunt Mai.’

‘Well, tell her the herbalist sends
his regards.’

What a funny way of saying thank you. There
were a dozen sealed glass jars on the mantelpiece. Sarah wondered if they had any
potency at all. When she finished her work, he handed her a slip of paper, an ‘I
owe you’, he called it.

‘I’ll have cash next
time.’

Sarah hoped that the herbalist would pay her
sooner rather than later. She had less and less time to save her skin and that of the
child that was coming.

It had occurred to her, to her shame, that
there might be time to meet a man, to get herself safely wed. However, the men she met
in the shop were either very young, or married, or widowed and decrepit. The older and
uglier they were, the more freely they flirted. Her only offer had come from Jackie, a
fifteen-year-old who had wanted to take her to the latest Andy Hardy picture. It was
laughable. Pitiful.

‘Well, if no one else comes along,
he’s not the worst,’ Carmel said.

They started roaring laughing then, her and
Dan; it cheered their night up no end.

‘You’re too good-looking, Sarah,
you scare them,’ said Dan when Carmel had left the room.

Then a new man began to come to the shop.
Shy, with high cheekbones and dark slant eyes, a full mouth in a sunburnt face. Matt was
his name. He was much older than her, lines winging from the corner of his eyes, grey
cutting through his hair. He got his paper and tobacco every second day. Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Saturdays.

‘He comes three times a week,’
Dan would say. ‘Sarah has a shine for three times.’

It was true that Sarah lived for when he
came in. She could see that he liked her too. And it grew on her that he could be her
ticket – her way out. But, for some reason, she found herself lost for words when she
was serving Matt.

I waited till Charlie had gone to bed
before sneaking out to see the herbalist’s new house. Charlie was starting to quiz
me on my whereabouts. It was a bit late for anyone to be giving a toss about my
whereabouts. I sneaked down the stairs, carrying my shoes. My father was crumpled in the
armchair. The curtains were still open, the fire was dead. A saucer of cigarette butts
had fallen from the arm of his chair on to his lap. He never so much as stirred as I
tiptoed past him to open the back door.

I kept my torch aimed at the ground in front
of me. There were strange shapes in the fields, looming and sinking, like pirate ships
in high winds. The moon looked brittle. The breeze bit at my ears; my own steps sounded
like those of someone close behind me, my own breath like that of a twin chasing me
down.
Turn back
, she was saying,
you’re sinning. Turn back
.
Turn back.

I began to run and run, my arms pumping the
air like pistons, like when I was a child and we were playing catch in the fields and I
wanted to be the fastest and to never, ever get caught. Sweat covered my back in
seconds, but I felt better, felt wonderful. Even the ache in my calves seemed to sing.
Soon, soon, soon
, they said,
soon you’ll see him
.

Light glimmered between the curtains at the
back window. I gave my secret tap. He swung open the back door as if he was welcoming
the sweet Lord home to Jerusalem. Oh, he was in the best of form: he rubbed me all over,
to make me warm. He was wearing the loose white cotton shirt that I liked so much. He
smelt good.

I got the grand tour; it took half a minute.
He had two rooms. The kitchen had a nice fire going and a gas-lamp glowed on the narrow
table. He had new furniture, a school-desk, a cupboard for his potions, a big armchair
by the front window. The curtains were a
beautiful cornflower-blue. In
the bedroom, his bed was done up all nice, with fresh pillows and a cover. His
knick-knacks, ointments and boxes were all neatly arranged on shelves.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

He was excited, full of plans. Now that he
had a proper house, he would attract a better class of customer. Those who weren’t
too keen on queuing in the market could call round here instead. He was making a sign
for over the door:
HERBAL SURGERY
, it would say. Once he had an idea, he
put it into action immediately. The wood, he told me, was outside. For, ta da da da, he
had a yard and all … He flung open the back door to show me: the river was silvery and
swollen in the moonlight. The place would flood in a bad winter, but I didn’t say
anything, didn’t want to spoil his fun.

The herbalist’s brand-new house
wasn’t that much of a step up. It was bigger than the shed, but not by the miles
that he had said. Two rooms that you could just about swing a cat in, if it was a
kitten. Of course, nothing would do me but to tell him that. He was not amused. As far
as he was concerned, he was nearly on par with Doctor Birmingham.

His golden Holy Mary calendar hung on a nail
on the back door. There were lines through the days that had passed, and I felt a sting
of hurt.

‘What are you counting off the days
till?’

‘Till we can leave this place and be
together in Brighton by the sea, a double act, a team. “The herbalist and his
lady”.’

‘Are you asking me for
marriage?’

‘You’ll just have to wait and
see.’ He nipped at my neck.

‘Dracula!’ I fell back in a
swoon.

‘Casanova,’ he corrected,
catching me and turning me towards the bedroom door.

The new house was less draughty than the
shed, I had to give it that. But I was heart-sore for the shed. I always felt sad when
worn-out things were abandoned.

Then I suddenly thought of Father. But he
was no one to be feeling sorry for, not him. No, it was poor Mam. Then I thought,
Why did she leave us?
And I felt like going all the way back home and
waking my father and shaking him and asking,
Why, why did she
leave us like that, when we needed her so much?
Before I knew it, I was
weeping.

The herbalist put his arms around me, pulled
me to his chest and whispered, ‘I know, Emily, I know.’ He made me feel
better for a bit, but what did he know? How could he know, when he never asked why I was
crying? How could he know, when he just clamped his mouth over mine?

He took off his shirt and told me to wait in
his new bed while he shaved his face smooth. It wouldn’t do for me to have a beard
rash; it wouldn’t do for me to have a mark on me. What would the people say? I
took off my dusty shoes and sat high up on the pillows. I still felt shaky, so I told
myself things that would make me feel better, hearty things like
No more manky
curtain walls for us!
I told myself that we were like Gable and Colbert in
It Happened One Night
. They’d had a blanket too. It hung between
their bachelor beds to preserve their modesty when they were forced by circumstances
beyond their control to share a motel room. ‘The walls of Jericho’, Gable
had called it. And, in the end, when they got hitched, he brought a trumpet into the
motel, and when we heard the trumpet sound we knew that the walls of Jericho had come
tumbling down. I told the herbalist all this while he shaved. But he had no interest in
films, and pointed out that we didn’t have any curtain now. The gas-lamp by the
bed spooned light upon the wall. I made shadow shapes with my hands while he tackled the
awkward bit around his Adam’s apple. I made a dog with slit eyes, no, it was a
wolf. ‘Ahwooo!’ I called out. The herbalist looked at me funny.

‘Have you forgotten that you’re
a secret?’

I bunched my other hand to create a rabbit
with two twitching ears and watched the wolf chase it away, but I didn’t make any
more animal noises.

I liked being a secret, being there in my
special place, night-time queen of a two-roomed castle. The herbalist’s new
pillows were high and full of feathers. He was a funny man that way: took as much care
of himself as a woman would, better than a woman. Mam had never cared where she slept; I
used to find her out cold on
the armchair with a coat thrown over her.
Not so my man. He was meticulous. He taught me that word.
Meticulous
. He spoke
English better than most. He had a dictionary that he consulted when thinking up good
names for his medicines. That navy book with its skin-thin pages was with him at all
times. The right words were important to him. Precision. He tried to rename me once.

‘The name is very important. I think
they got your name wrong. Cleopatra suits you nicely or maybe Boadicea …’