Free The Herbalist by Niamh Boyce Page B

waist, like I had hoped he would. He had the cheek then to
say that Irish women were square-shaped, when he was no Johnny Weissmuller himself. Told
me that I was shaped like a girl from his country. His family, he did not talk about
them. All dead.
    ‘Your mother too?’
    He shook his head. No more talk. He splashed
some cologne on to his palm, rubbed his hands together, then patted his jaw and neck.
The sweet peppery scent would send you to heaven and back. Oh, he was a proper
herbalist, no matter what Mrs B said. He walked the fields collecting weeds and wild
flowers most mornings, till his trousers were wet to the knee. I saw him, but he never
saw me. At least I hoped he didn’t.
    The kettle was beginning to steam. The
herbalist rushed to take it off the heat. Steam wasn’t a good idea, not when he
was drying plants. I was surprised at how withered they were. What good was a dried-up
old flower head?
    ‘You love them old weeds,’ I
said.
    He got in a huff. Snapped that common
didn’t mean useless.
    ‘There’s often good in bad and
bad in good. Poison in the root, medicine in the flower – like you perhaps,’ he
said, softening.
    ‘Yes, but too much of a good thing
will kill you?’ I said.
    ‘No, not you.’
    I hadn’t the faintest notion what we
were talking about. He handed me a cup of sugary black tea and lay up on the bed. I took
some work out of my bag and unpicked threads from the seams of Birdie Chase’s
dress. We could hear all the sounds of the square. A horse and trap clattering, children
playing swing rope and chanting, ‘Call for the doctor, call for the nurse, call
for the lady with the alligator purse
…’ I snipped a thread with the tip of
my scissors and thought,
Isn’t this lovely – don’t I have a good life
now? Between my new job and my own mending work, I’ll soon be able to buy a
few yards of fabric and make a brand-new dress of my own. I won’t know myself
then.
    There were three sharp knocks on the door. I
jumped, but the herbalist just smiled.
    ‘I’ve some business to attend
to,’ he said, nodding at me.
    The nod meant
feck off
. I gathered
my things and let myself out, curious to see who was calling on him. I turned to tell
the herbalist that there was no one at the door, but he just waved me away with a flick
of his hand, like you would a fly.
    I was going mad in the head from eating
rabbits. You’d think on Sunday we’d stretch to one of the old hens. As soon
as the dishes were done, I made my escape. Mam was in a strange mood: she hadn’t
said a word to me, bar calling out ‘Don’t you dare go far’ as I was
climbing the stairs. Sure how far could I go in that direction? I went to my room and
had a grand time lying on my bed totting up my earnings. I kept track of my few
customers in a copybook. There was Birdie Chase, Carmel Holohan, Mrs Daly, the Moriarty
sisters, Mary Burke and her mother. I was hoping that the list would get longer and that
I’d get to do some real sewing, perhaps for Mrs B’s daughter Rose. She wore
something different almost every day. Beautifully tailored dresses from Dublin. She got
a Jean Harlow white fur for her sixteenth birthday.
    For now it was mostly zips. People hated
doing zips. I loved them; loved sewing. Would hem a handkerchief just to keep my hands
busy, for the pleasure of making rows of neat, even stitches. I was only earning
pennies, but in a matter of weeks there might be enough. The problem was, though, that
once I’d mended something it was usually mended for good. So my main source of
income was Birdie – or Lady Chatterley, as Carmel had taken to calling her. As long as
she kept discovering clothes that needed renovating, my dream dress remained a
possibility. I never called Birdie by her new nickname. If she knew that I knew, and
that the whole town knew, she sold filthy banned books, Birdie would be mortified.
    ‘Emily!’ Mam called.
‘Emily, come down to the parlour if you please.’
    If you please? Why was