The Herbalist (19 page)

A lot of titles for so plain a book. The
word ‘mistress’ caught her eye. This couldn’t be a book from the
library. You’d never find that word in there. It opened on a much-thumbed page.
‘We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very breath with kisses,
threw me upon the bed again; but then being both well warmed, he went farther with me
than decency permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have denied him at
that moment, had he offered much more than he did.’

It wasn’t something Sarah felt easy
handing over, so she just left
it on the shelf under the counter, as
if she had forgotten it. ‘Stopping my very breath with kisses’ indeed.

Carmel came into the shop looking
harassed.

‘I had the misfortune to meet Mr
Gogarty on the road. That man is always complaining about something. Was he in here …
complaining to you, Sarah?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Was he talking about a certain book
by any chance?’

‘He was.’

‘Look, Sarah,’ Carmel asked,
‘are you a reader?’

Without waiting for an answer, she
continued, ‘Well, I’m a great reader, all my family are great readers, and I
suppose that’s how this started.’

Carmel’s eyes were sleepy, but she was
talking lively enough, whispering and gesticulating and the like.

‘My brother Finbar’s an educated
man, with contacts in Customs, and the gardaí. He’s a great friend to the clergy
too. And through all those connections he found himself with a certain amount of
literature that was seized, so to speak …’

She paused, as if waiting for some reaction
from Sarah, but Sarah wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

‘… and now he has a whole, a whole
room full of books still in their dust jackets.’

Carmel said this as if her brother possessed
a room crammed with gold bars. It was the first time Sarah saw a resemblance between
Carmel and her brother. The way she was smiling and saying one thing, yet you felt there
was something else behind it, something darker. She seemed to have forgotten that it was
Finbar, as she called him, who had arranged Sarah’s position with them. And that
as well as the gardaí and the clergy, he also counted amongst his great friends her aunt
Mai, humble midwife.

‘Sure it was Master Kelly who put me
forward for this position – he’s a friend of the family.’

‘Yes. Well, it pains Finbar to see
good books wasted, so he gave them to me. Of course I read them before I rent them out –
I’m obliged to. I have to be very particular about who I lend them to;
not everyone would be able to understand them as works of literature.
Now you see why I’m too busy for the shop and everything?’

Sarah didn’t see how eating apples up
in bed and reading books could be a terrible cross to bear.

‘He’d be in awful trouble for
giving me such books, corrupting my mind.’ She laughed a short bitter
hah
. ‘I rent them to discreet people, and, as long as they’re
returned, I’m all right. We all have to be discreet – do you know what I
mean?’

Sarah knew what she meant. Carmel was
running a sideline renting out racy books. Carmel brought her to the kitchen, took a
narrow black key from her pocket and unlocked the cupboard.

‘I run a respectable
establishment.’ She poked Sarah with the key, as if Sarah had rebuked her instead
of nodding obediently.

There were three deep shelves, and on the
bottom was a large box of books. Some were bound together with thick elastic bands; some
were loose.

‘There’s little in that lot for
the government to be worrying about. Mr Holohan isn’t aware of the extent of my
part-time work. He wouldn’t approve – he’s overly fond of Mr de Valera. He
thinks this press is for female hygiene products.’

She didn’t blush. Sarah wondered if
she used to be a nurse.

‘I carry a wide range, not like your
one across the road, Lady Chatterley, who only deals in notoriety. A few copies of the
same filthy book pawed to pieces.’

‘Miss Chase?’

Sarah was surprised; the shopkeeper
didn’t strike her as someone who would be involved in anything so shabby.

‘She thinks it’s a secret, but
I’m on to her – the whole town is on to her. Swanking around like butter
wouldn’t melt in her mouth. How she got copies of that book I’ll never
know.’

‘Have you read it?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Carmel
couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice.

Carmel warned Sarah not to breathe a word
about it to anyone. Surely she knew Sarah hadn’t a single friend to tell, even if
she were the telling type, which she wasn’t?

The shop bell rang. Carmel closed the door of
the cupboard and turned the key.

‘Not a word to Mr Holohan. He cares
not a whit for the running of the household, thank God.’

When they returned to the shop, there was a
woman leaning on the counter, sobbing. It was Mrs Birmingham, dressed in an old
cardigan. Carmel linked her into the back. Sarah heard the rise and fall of Mrs
Birmingham’s woes and Carmel’s murmurs of sympathy. Her brother Patrick had
died. Mr Birmingham wouldn’t give her the fare to England for his funeral. And
that wasn’t all: there was Rose, ‘telling lies again, saying awful
things’.

The door closed gently between the living
area and the shop.

Sarah wondered what the trouble could be
with Rose. The girl was always so fresh, so bubbly, so squeaky clean. She hadn’t
been around much these past few days. Busy with her studies, they were told. ‘A
studious girl is my daughter.’
How did Mrs Birmingham keep a straight face?
Studious? Rose would sell her soul for a bar of Yardley soap.

The women trooped back into the shop, Mrs
Birmingham sniffing up her sorrow, Carmel padding behind her like the cat that had got
the cream.

‘Wait, I almost forgot.’ Mrs
Birmingham began to rifle through her massive handbag.

‘Oh, no, really –’ Carmel
started.

‘Ah, found it.’ She tucked a
small card into Carmel’s hand. ‘I bought this for you. May it bring you and
Mr Holohan the luck you so richly deserve.’ She added, lowering her voice,
‘You know yourself what I mean. It’s a grade two.’

‘Bless your heart, thank you,
Grettie.’

Carmel opened the door for the woman. Went
out on to the path after her and waved her off down the road. When she returned, Carmel
looked towards the ceiling and addressed the Lord.

‘And there was me thinking she was
finally going to settle her bill. Feck her, and feck her bloody dead brother!
She’s as mean today as she was in school.’

She threw the card on to the counter and
trotted off. Sarah picked
it up: a prayer to St Thérèse, the Little
Flower, on thin, almost transparent paper with a relic stuck on – a smidgen of raw-edged
blue cloth. Grade two. Did that mean it had touched the cloth that had touched the cloth
that had touched the saint? Or was that a grade three? Sarah couldn’t remember. It
was pretty. A wreath of red roses circled the face of a beautiful young nun whose lips
were drawn in a cupid’s bow. Sarah put it in her pocket.

From then on, when she took her naps, Carmel
trusted Sarah with the key to the banned-novels cupboard. At first, Sarah was flattered.
Later she realized that Mr Gogarty’s outburst had left Carmel no choice. Sarah
flicked through the books. Most were long-winded explorations of gritty lives and
nothing to get excited about. The opposite in fact. They pulsed with grisly loneliness,
destitution and poverty. Nothing at all threatening. It didn’t occur to Sarah that
one day Master Finbar might come by to collect them.

Lo and behold, didn’t I have a swanky
customer first thing on Saturday morning? Rose of all people, and without her mother. A
rare happening. I don’t think Mrs B knew where she was. Don’t ask me why, it
was just a feeling. I hinted that we should do the fitting in her house next time.
I’d never seen past their fancy tiled hallway, always wondered what was behind the
door that led to their living quarters. I could hint all I liked, but Rose didn’t
bite – said she preferred to come to me. I knew why too. The looks she threw at Charlie
when she came in! And my poor brother beaming back like dark clouds had parted to let
the light of God shine down on him and him alone. You should’ve heard her.

‘All the boys have grown as brown as
Indians – it makes some of them
look like Errol Flynn.’

‘Ah, everyone is better looking under
the sun,’ I said; ‘come on upstairs.’

Rose skipped up the stairs after me, and
then she did a funny thing: she stopped at my bedroom door and began to examine it.

‘This is a very hardy door.
You’ve a lock, and a latch?’

‘Aye, it’s the old shed door.
Charlie hung it for me. Are you fond of carpentry?’

She laughed like that was the funniest thing
ever. Rose was harmless enough, even if her mother was a horror. But I liked things as
they were for Charlie. Rita was good to him. I didn’t want Rose toying with him,
passing time until her father selected some upstanding bachelor to pair her off
with.

I took her measurements – wasn’t a
pick on her. I’d the vital statistics of quite a lot of ladies in my copybook. I
lifted Rose’s hem out of the way as I knelt to take her length. She moved to stop
me but was too late. I saw them. Her knees.

‘Jesus Christ, what happened to your
knees?’

They were destroyed. Criss-crossed with white
and purple scars. Covered in thick, cracked scabs. The flesh was pulpy, red raw in
places. And there were cuts going up her thighs.

‘I want a pretty light cotton dress.
Long, if you please.’

‘But what happened to your
knees?’

‘Blue, a pale blue, with buttons all
the way down the front, and flowers.’

I looked up from where I was crouched. She
stared towards the window. The rope swing was moving back and forth in the breeze. One
fat tear ran down her jaw, along her neck and into the hollow of her collarbone. I
rolled up my tape.

‘Rose, what happened to your poor
knees?’

‘Nothing. I’m just a very clumsy
girl.’ Her voice was chirpy, broken.

‘Did you hear Charlie? He said summer
suits me. Whatever does that mean?’ She laughed, tugged one of her crisp platinum
curls.

There was no talking to her. No getting an
answer.

We said our goodbyes downstairs. Rose stuck
her slight chest out and swivelled her hips as she waltzed out of the door. Charlie just
stared with a really stupid smile on his face. When she was gone, he started singing
that stupid song, ‘Tea for two, and two for tea, just me for you and you for me …
alone.’

He had changed his tune. He used to tease me
over John Gilbert. Told me romance had brought on the Great Lover’s early death,
that he’d been a fatal victim of the kissing disease. Even one kiss could wither
the healthy. That kind of talk tormented me, for I had seen him with my own two eyes, Mr
Gilbert. It wasn’t long before he died, and no one had known that death was
imminent then, not even him, the poor lamb. They were showing a matinee of
Queen
Christina
and the queue was atrocious. I was itching to see what all the fuss
was about but knew I wouldn’t be let in; I was too young.

I hung about, waiting to sneak through. A
posh woman was kicking up a fuss at the door. Only room in the pit, Beardie Billy told
her, only room in the pit. He shone his lamp back into the full picture house so she
could see for herself. It was like a blue moon jigging over the rows of heads.

The woman wanted to go in, I could tell – was
only dying to run in to see the Great Lover – but she was too posh for the pit.

‘The picture is starting,
madam.’

That’s when I squeezed by, the
invisible girl. I couldn’t see the steps in front of me. I tripped and burnt my
knee but scuffled on towards the first bench in the pit. Didn’t care if I was
pulled out by the scruff of my neck as long as I got a glance at John Gilbert. The usher
shut the doors and pitched us into complete darkness.

I don’t remember what the funnies were
that day; I only remember
Queen Christina.
The queen was a reckless spirit –
you wouldn’t know if she was a man or a woman till she swept her hat off. You
should’ve seen Garbo, leaping from her horse, taking her castle steps two at a
time, dismissing her noble advisers with a wave of her hand and falling into John
Gilbert’s arms. It would make you swoon. You should’ve seen Gilbert; you
should’ve seen the eyes on him, dark as ink, as chocolate, as sin. He ruined me
for anyone else. That afternoon filled me for ever with the longing for my own great
lover. I ran home and was so excited that I forgot to hide my sin, told everyone that
John Gilbert was like God made man.
Emily, what a thing to say!

A while afterwards I was in the dispensary,
waiting for the nurse to be finished with Mam. The doctor was running late again; maybe
someone rich was sick. The women were grumbling. They were always grumbling.