The Herbalist (31 page)

‘Good evening,’ Sarah said, as if
she had met them in the street.

What a stupid thing to say. She almost
tripped, and then a man appeared out of nowhere, and she rested her head on his
shoulder, till his fingers strayed where they weren’t wanted. She shred the skin
of his groping hand with her nails and wrestled free. She didn’t go back into the
house to collect her things, she just stumbled home to the Holohans’.

She expected Carmel to be standing guard,
but she was nowhere to be seen. Dan was home. He stood up when she came in. His hair was
tousled – had he been dozing? Sarah focused on the stairs, tried walking towards them
without wobbling. If she could get her hand on to the banister, she’d be
grand.

Dan was having none of that. He said he
smelt alcohol off her. Sarah tried to interrupt him, but he wouldn’t stop talking
and accusing, accusing her of entertaining notions about the herbalist, of being up to
no good at all hours. He had it all wrong if he thought Sarah was pining after the
herbalist. She didn’t even like him; he frightened her almost. She just
desperately needed the money he would pay her. But she couldn’t tell Dan that,
couldn’t tell that to anyone.

‘You’re not going back to that
place.’

‘I’m not a child; you
can’t tell me what to do.’

‘I can let you go.’

That gave her a fright. She took a step
back.

‘I’m disappointed in you.
Visiting a man like that, consorting.’

‘Like what, Dan, like what?’

‘Immoral …’

‘What makes you think he’s
immoral?’

‘Just look at who he consorts with –
bad women who –’

‘It takes men too.’

‘Stop that. All I’m saying is,
adult or not, no more of those visits.’

‘What else will I do? Sit and listen
to you and Carmel argue all night?’

She shouldn’t have mentioned their
arguments.

‘You disgust me, Sarah.’

‘No, I don’t.’

She took his hand and placed it over her
heart. Held it there. Saw him redden. He was so big and tall. She would have liked him
to collapse, to have held him in the palm of her hand. To have had his naked body cover
hers. Where this desire came from she didn’t know; she hadn’t known she had
it in her.

‘I think you’d better call it a
night,’ he said, turning away.

I had sewn in my bedroom all day. My eyes
were sore and my elbow ached from feeding fabric to the sewing machine, but I was happy.
I got through a pile of mending and then drew out a pattern for my new satin – yes,
satin – dress. I had paid for and collected the fabric that very morning. It was only
divine, slippery and shiny, and the most beautiful blue I’d ever set eyes on.
‘Are you making curtains?’ the shop girl had asked when I bought it. Some
people have no class. I asked Charlie over supper if he wanted to come along to
Aggie’s spiritual session. Charlie thought it was a load of silly codswallop. So I
decided to clear up and go to bed instead. I was wrecked by that time anyway.

I was drifting off to sleep, warm and
lovely, in my own world, when I felt someone was there in the room with me, someone who
was looking down on me. I froze, afraid to open my eyes or even to let my breath out. A
finger pressed against my lips. I bit down. The yowl put my mind at rest. I recognized
his voice.

The herbalist was standing over me. He was
holding his finger and looking mad as hell. He placed his hat on the chair and sat on
the bed alongside me. He was unshaven; it made his face look thinner, meaner.

‘You frightened me!’

‘You frightened me too.’ He held
up his marked finger.

‘What do you want – has something
happened?’

‘I just want to talk.’

‘All you do is talk. You said
you’d build me a boat, that we’d float down the river all the way to the
ocean. Oh, I was to be the queen of the river, the love of your life …’

‘We will, we’ll go down the
river.’

He pulled back the bed-covers and turned me
over, on to my belly. He undid the string at the neck of my nightdress and slipped
it off my shoulders. I felt his jaw against my skin: the bristles
felt like a shoe brush.

‘When, when will we?’

‘Some night soon. Where did you put
the fox-fur, Emily?’

‘You can’t take it back; it was
a present.’

He pressed his fingers against my neck and
then he spread them wide till he was holding my throat, real gentle, not so it hurt.

‘It will all come to pass, I promise
you. We’ll drift along the river in a cascade of flowers. You will be
queen.’

‘And we’ll have a feast?’
I was glad he’d forgotten about the fox-fur.

‘Everything we want and more, wine,
women and –’

‘And what about that other one,
writing your labels?’

‘Sarah can barely spell. I gave her
the sack today. “Get out!” I told her.’

He tightened his fingers on my throat,
pressed himself against me. Then a sound came from outside: the honking of a
motorcar.

He jumped up and just left the room. I heard
his steps on the stairs and then nothing. The herbalist had never come here before. I
should’ve liked it better. I pulled back the curtains and looked out of the
window. There was no sign of him. Why had he left without so much as a word? Was he
afraid of my father? As if my father would notice anything I did. I could have the whole
army up here and there wouldn’t be a word about it.

I eased the cloth bag from between the bed
and the wall, opened the drawstring and pulled out the fox-fur. It was funny, but there
in the moonlight, as I tugged it from the mouth of the blue bag, it looked like an
animal being born. I slipped it on and lit one of my father’s cigarettes and
smoked with my elbows on the windowsill. Maybe the herbalist had been lured all the way
out here by my womanly mystique. I blew the smoke out into the dark and spent a few
minutes being sultry. After that I couldn’t sleep a wink, so I hid the fur, made
myself respectable, and decided to take Aggie up on her offer and drop in on her
spiritual session.

I might’ve been better off in bed. It
was roasting on the boat, and only one sod in the stove. I was sweating. It didn’t
bother Ag; I suppose she was used to it. There were great sopping patches under the arms
of her new dress, and yet she threw a black crocheted shawl across her shoulders.

‘Will you not boil up in that
yoke?’

‘I always wear this – it adds to the
magic.’

There were three women due that night. Aggie
told me it would be great sport, and Sally Heaney coming made it an easy one. Aggie knew
Sally’s recently deceased fairly well – well enough to know what he’d say if
he was summoned from the grave for a chin-wag. He liked a fine wide arse on a woman, and
Bisto in his tea. That’s what Aggie told me. The trick, according to her, was not
to say too much too quickly.

‘Let them wait, whet the appetite,
like a striptease. The Gypsy Rose of the tea leaves, that’s me.’

Aggie had set up her stow-away table with
four stools around. We heard the women making their way on to the boat, the
clip-clopping of heels and squeals, as if they were stepping on to the high seas. Aggie
stood by the hatch to welcome them and take their sixpence admission. There was Mrs
Heaney, Mrs James and Miss Fortune.

Mrs Heaney tried to bring her cat. No
moggies on my boat, said Aggie, and she fecked it back to dry land by the tail. Aggie
hated cats. The women sat around the table with their hands flat and fingers touching.
There were dozens of candles on the table. It made their faces look paler, and the
shadows under their eyes darker. I knelt in the corner on a cushion like a squaw.

‘There are things that do happen,
ladies,’ Aggie said, ‘that there’s no earthly explanation for. As you
know I was born with the caul, so I see what others do not …’

There was a sharp rap on the door. Miss
Fortune leapt. Hot wax spilled across Mrs Heaney’s wrist, and she roared like a
banshee. A narrow face peeped in – it was Ned. He never missed a thing.

‘Come on, come on in,’ Aggie
shouted, red-faced with impatience.

Ned had a dusty old job sweeping the roads but
was always neat as a pin. Lived in one of the worst terraces for rats and muck, but to
see him on a Sunday in his good suit and gleaming shoes you’d swear he lived in a
manor. He tucked himself on to the step by the door. Mrs Heaney wanted a word with her
Raymond; Mrs James wanted to talk to one of her dead children, it didn’t matter
which one. Miss Fortune just wanted to listen; it was her first time, she didn’t
want to ‘rush things’. Her fiancé had been killed in the war and it had left
her very fragile. Twenty years later and she still wasn’t over it.

When Aggie spoke on behalf of the departed,
her voice went very deep and she pressed her chin on to her chest. The women were
delighted to hear their relatives were having great craic in the ever after. I had
nearly drifted off when they began to stretch their legs and take out the gin. Aggie was
relaxed, now she was done conning them out of their sixpences. Miss Fortune started
humming and I could feel a sing-song coming on. The hatch was opened to let some night
air in.

‘I can feel them, out
there.’

‘Who, Aggie?’

‘The restless ones.’

‘Oh, God, don’t say that,’
said Miss Fortune.

‘It’s all right – they often
come. They come when I’m half dozing – when I’m sitting out on the deck in
my chair, snug with all my coats on, and a blanket up to my chin. Once you’ve seen
them, you can’t go back to when you didn’t – you can’t do
that.’

‘What do they look like?’ I
asked. She turned sharply, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

‘Like wisps of smoke rising from the
river. It goes real quiet, like the whole river is holding its breath. It’s always
around three in the morning.’

‘The time of death,’ whispered
Ned.

‘My living heat pulls them, draws
them.’

‘The way a poultice draws the
poison,’ said Ned.

‘The very same.’

‘I’m frightened,’ said Mrs
Heaney.

‘They’re the frightened ones,
poor things. They come close to me, then closer again. The air cools. I hear them, but
mostly I don’t understand what it is they’re whispering … but they’d
break your heart.’

‘Whimpering like a shivering pup of a
winter’s evening?’ said Ned.

‘The exact and the same. Poor
divils.’

‘What do you do, Aggie – are you
terrified?’ I asked.

‘Nope. I go shush, shush, it’ll
be all right. And I might sing an old rhyme.’ Aggie began to sing:

‘You’d want to be careful. What
if you fell asleep with your mouth open? And one of the ghosts got in?’ said Mrs
Heaney.

‘Who do you think they are,
Aggie?’ I asked.

‘Us. Townspeople. Townspeople that
didn’t get a proper burial or met death when they weren’t ready for
it.’

‘Who’s ready for death?’
said Mrs James in a cross voice.

‘I am!’ Aggie stood up and
puffed her chest out, held up her fists. ‘Come and get me, old son.’ She
jabbed the air. ‘Come and get me, old son. I’ll pull the first punch and you
can pull the last one.’

Grettie B had dropped into the shop quite a
few times, on her own for a change. She was over-solicitous. Probably to show that there
was no ill-feeling. And to make sure Carmel didn’t blab. Carmel hadn’t
blabbed: she wasn’t going to give Dan the satisfaction of knowing he’d been
right, that the fine Mrs Birmingham had wanted more from Carmel than the pleasure of her
company.

It had been a strange evening. Grettie
really seemed to think that she had money to spare – but no matter how much sherry she
fed Carmel, it wasn’t going to make her any the richer. It was true that Carmel
had a nest egg – the money she had tucked away for the baby – but she didn’t think
of it as her money any more. No, that was the baby’s money, and she wouldn’t
have dreamt of touching it; it might bring bad luck. If Carmel had had any other money,
she would have lent it in a blink. Grettie B would have been good for it. Just look at
the style they lived in – all those rooms and only the three of them?