The Herbalist (36 page)

The herbalist was standing in the corner of
a dark room, wearing a white vest. He grinned at me and turned his head to the side,
stretched out his tongue and gave the hula lady on his arm a long,
slow lick. And I was there, just watching, numb, dumb and falling slowly forward into
his wink.

Blood and nerves. Nerves, nerves … all those
nerves. A syringe, a piece of wire, a rod. I held my breath, I would not think of him,
or of what any of it meant. I would not.

I practised a hair-do for my new dress,
settled on a smooth pleat, a swept-back fringe. My skin looked dingy in the mirror, but
once I was all done up my complexion would glow and my satin gown would shimmer and I
would be invited to dance. Several times. I would nod politely and step forward into a
daring tango. So elegant I wouldn’t even have to speak. But when? Soon. It had to
be soon. No good making a dress if you’re not going to show it off. I wasn’t
going to end up like Carmel Holohan, creeping around the garden gathering small spuds
for Eliza’s mush in her tatty fur from better days. Back when I was her shop girl
and fit to peg her sheets on the line, she used to parade around the vegetable patch
with a trowel and shovel, letting on to be industrious. ‘I’d say that coat
could tell some stories, Mrs H,’ said I. Carmel just gave a tinkly laugh as if her
stories were too juicy for words. Then she turned up her collar and flew past the
cabbages like a bear on its hind legs. She could be a terrible eejit sometimes.

I’d a bad dream that night and I
thought it was because of the herbalist. I thought it was a premonition. I was back on
Aggie’s boat, sitting at her table. Rain pitter-pattered against the window. The
lamp was down to a glimmer; long shadows licked the ceiling. Across from me Aggie
shuffled a deck of cards and the flab on her arm jiggled. She was dressed in her slip
and her skin was the colour of lard. The fat man was tied up in the corner.
His nibs
won’t get next nor near you now
, Aggie said.
I cut out his tongue too
for the hell of it.
Delighted with herself, she dealt a row of cards face down,
snap, snap, snap
, and leant towards me.
Pick one, my love
, she
said, her breath cold. She had turned into the old Aggie, the one who teased me so, but
I did as I was bid, eased a card from the centre and handed it back to her. She grinned
and held it up.

It was a Joker, the same leering, hopping
jester as before, wearing slippers with bells on them. He was still waving a stick
puppet that
looked just like him. The ugly divil came right up to me
then, and it wasn’t a puppet at the end of his stick; it wasn’t a puppet. It
was a child.

Aggie gripped my chin, the way my mammy did
when she wanted to wipe my face clean.
See chicken, chicken sees everything.
And the fat man in the chair smiled and his mouth was all bloody.
Make it go
away
, I wanted to say, but the words had no proper sound.
Your wish is my
command
, said Aggie, and she ripped the card right down the middle. The
trickster gave a small cry as he was split in two.

I didn’t mean for her to hurt him like
that.

You talk about everything, Aggie. As if there’s no shame.

Tell it and tell it and there’ll be
no shame, only the facts of the matter and the question of who’s to blame. And it
wasn’t you, child, it wasn’t you.

Let me begin. It was dusk. I heard a woeful
screech from the herbalist’s old shed. I’ll never forget the sound.
Don’t cover your ears, pet, don’t. It’s your tale, but we all own
it.

I raced across the grass with my lantern.
The door was locked from the outside, but the wood was rotten. A few kicks and it
shattered open. Inside a young girl lay on the filthy stretcher bed. She looked at me,
but didn’t speak.

‘What on earth ails you?’

‘My tummy hurts. It feels so pulled
apart and all the blood, it keeps coming and it’s so hot and high smelling. Did
you smell it – is that why you came?’

‘Of course not.’

I felt around and began to light the candles
on the shelf.

‘Am I going to die?’ The child
started to blub.

‘You won’t – you’re in
good hands now.’ I saw the bucket beside her and retched.

‘I’ll never get into heaven, or
my baby …’ The girl began mewling.

‘It was only the makings of a baby –
look.’ I tilted the bucket towards her. ‘Look! There’s no baby
there.’

She vomited bile on to the grey towel that
covered her.

There was a knock on the door. It was sharp,
a
rat-tat-tat
knuckle rap. A woman’s knock.

I shoved a chair against the door and put my
finger to my mouth, warning the girl to be quiet. We held our breath and listened. A
mouse dropped from the roof into the bucket of blood, and the girl
screamed. The shed shuddered as the door was pushed.

‘Hello? Are you all right in
there?’

If I kept silent someone with a tougher
elbow might be called to investigate. So I wiped my hands on my skirt and opened the
door slightly, keeping one foot wedged against it. Who was it only Lady Chatterley
herself, Birdie Chase?

‘Is everything all right?’

‘A mouse, bedad, a mouse ran over my
foot – can’t abide them.’

‘May I come in?’ she asked.

‘It’s not my place. Sorry,
madam. Tra laa.’

I shut the door and listened carefully,
heard silence and then a sigh before the steps on the other side faded away.

‘Madam never asked after you, but she
wouldn’t be here otherwise. She must know something.’

‘Oh God, oh God.’ The girl
scrambled off the bed, held her stomach, bent over.

‘No, no, stand over the
bucket.’

I let the girl put her arms around my neck
and hang there, over the bloody bucket.

‘Is it nearly over?’

‘How the hell would I know?’

The girl rocked on her heels, crying
low.

‘Help me, help me, ah, Mam,’ she
said.

The girl stayed rocking, all modesty
forgotten. Her shift bloodied and rucked up around her back. She stilled as red lumps
slid out of her and into the bucket.

‘Oh, God.’

We waited.

‘I think that’s all.’

The girl got on to the bed.

‘I’ll fetch water as soon as I
tidy this up a bit.’

The young one looked exhausted. Soon she was
dozing restlessly, gripping her belly in her sleep.

Then muggins here had to wipe the floor with
rags. The whole business made me sick. I covered the bucket with straw; it quickly
seeped up. I went out, made my way down the side alley, through the
hedging and on to the wasteland that edged the river. When I was sure that no one could
see, I emptied my burden into the reeds. River life moved towards the dark patch, and
old Aggie here walked back as quickly as she had come.

The herbalist’s deserted handiwork was
asleep and whimpering. I collected the bloodied rags and went into the yard behind the
shed. The moon was full. The rags took to light slowly in the tin barrel where the
doctor burned everything he no longer held in favour. I threw in some twigs, stoked the
flames with a blackened stick and sat in the old armchair. Remembered how I’d
laughed and called the chair his throne, called him lord of the river, king of all he
surveyed. The low flame slowly ate the fabric. I had a slug of gin and fell into a
daydream in which the leaves chattered from the trees and talked to the reeds, till the
whole town was babbling that Agnes Reilly was a murderer of unborn children. I could
just hear them.
She flings remains into the river, feeds changelings to the trout.
Don’t fish there; you don’t know what you’ll catch, or what will
catch you. Hear that? That’s not the wind; it’s a poor unbaptized soul
crying for its mother. It’s a river of tears. A weeping welt. And she’s
the queen of it. Queen of the dumb suck.

The girl’s moans interrupted my
reverie. I twisted my numb foot as I hobbled towards the shed to quieten her.

She was sitting up, naked from the waist
down, her fingers covered in red, screaming.

‘Where’s my baby!’

‘Hush, hush, it’s over now.
It’s over now. There was no baby; it’s all in your head, there was no
baby.’

Eventually she slept again, or maybe she had
passed out. How thin she was: I could see the pearled row of her spine.
We’re
no better than animals
, I thought,
losing our offspring in straw, like
cattle
.

After an hour I checked the lane for any
sign of life, and then lifted the girl from the bed.

‘Put your arms around my neck.’
She did as she was told.

An obedient thing, she let herself be
carried on to the boat and laid on the settle bed. Seemed to curl up, seemed at last
ready to
rest. I sat on my stool outside while my kettle simmered.
What would the herbalist think when he found his birdie had flown? It was all only a
shambles. Everything was strange and yet felt like the realest of dreams. I felt old and
of little use to anyone except for that girl. I didn’t often think like that. I
knew how wise I was, how I knew men and their women too. How when you weighed up my
bodily sinning against my adoration for the holy virgin I came out even. Just look at
the love Jesus showed for Mary Magdalene over everyone else. Washing his feet with her
tears. Oh, I’d give my right arm to dry the saviour’s feet with my hair.
Sure Jesus died for our sins; if we committed none, the poor man would’ve died for
nothing.

The girl wasn’t happy when she woke,
fretting. Her skin was like fire. I opened the hatch.

‘Why did his lordship leave you there
all alone?’

‘He said I’d be all right, that
it was over, and when I wasn’t looking he slipped out.’

‘Was he meeting someone?’

‘I don’t know; he said it was a
matter of extreme urgency.’

‘Must be Emily up to her tricks.
She’s mad for him. She stops short of wrapping herself in butcher’s paper
and delivering herself to him.’

‘She’s too soft.’

‘You’re too good-natured. And
now you have to go home. Are you listening to me? We have to take you home and tell your
father and mother what happened. They can help you. You’re fevered; you might have
an infection. We have to get proper help for you.’

The girl wouldn’t meet my eye,
wouldn’t answer. I went back to the shed and gathered her clothes. I began to help
her dress, and went about it slowly, as you would with a child, raising one arm and then
the other, slipping her back into her beautifully cut garments. Her pale blue finely
tailored skirt and jacket. I cleaned the girl’s hands with a damp cloth, her palms
first and then between each finger, over and over, rinsing the cloth many times in a
bowl as she tried to rub the last of the dried blood from her nails. She just watched,
as if they were someone else’s hands, as if none of this
was
happening to her. Her blonde curls were flat to her neck with sweat. She was so thin,
like a fledgling fallen from the nest. Raw boned, fragile. Helpless.

‘Stay there. I’m going to get my
odd-job man to take us in the trap. Don’t worry – he won’t ask any
questions. He’s not the type.’

I half expected her to have run off when I
arrived back with Seamus in tow, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. But she
hadn’t; she was curled in a ball, crying. Seamus carried her to the trap without a
word. Thank God it wasn’t day-time or the whole town would have been out gawking,
asking questions. The streets were raw with silence. The clatter of the horses’
hooves was the only sound. Crouched between us, the girl winced at every knock of the
gig but never said a word. I held her hand, gave it a squeeze.

‘You’re a good girl,’ I
murmured, ‘a good girl.’

She looked at me strangely, as if I was
speaking foreign. It didn’t dawn on me till afterwards, but I never asked the girl
the big question. I never asked who the father was. At the gates to her home, she spoke
up.

‘I’ll go in on my own. My father
would blame you, you and Seamus. He would have your boat destroyed, Aggie.’

Between us, we helped the child out of the
trap. She hugged me then with a strange fierceness. Whispered into my ear.

‘What did she say, Ag?’ Seamus
asked as the girl made her way inside.

‘“I love you.”
That’s what she said. Can you credit that? Such a strange poor
craythur.’

My voice went a bit hoarse but I contained
myself. No tears for Aggie. That was my rule. Always my rule, from way back. I watched
as the girl hobbled along the tree-lined avenue, watched as she approached the dark
house and became a shadow. No tears.

‘Gee up, Seamus,’ I told him;
‘get this old filly home.’

I spent the afternoon looking for the
herbalist. Maybe I was wrong in what I was thinking about him. Maybe he could explain it
all away nicely. I called to his house, but he wasn’t there. There was no sign of
him anywhere else. I wondered had he up and left the town. I wondered had I accused him
in the wrong.
Nothing they don’t ask for.
That’s what he had said.
Nothing they don’t ask for. What did they ask for? What did he do? He saved the
day. I asked around, asked had anyone seen him; I got laughed at, I felt like a
fool.