The Physic Garden

by Catherine Czerkawska

  The medicine helped, but even that made her fret because we had not paid for it. I told her that I obliged Thomas enough with all my hunting for plants on his behalf, but it made no impression on her.

  ‘We should not be beholden to him,’ she would say. ‘It is not right and no good can come of it. Your father would not have approved of it.’

  This was still her touchstone, the standard by which she judged everything: whether or not my father would have approved. And perhaps she was right.

  As well as my mother’s health, I would consult Thomas from time to time about my young brothers. The lads had commenced some schooling, but we had to pay a share of the dominie’s living, his food and his fuel. James McClure kept a damp schoolroom outside the college, large enough to house a few scholars of small means. He would turn a blind eye to payment some of the time, but he was not a rich man himself. His clothes, which were the garments of a bygone age, were all threadbare and snuffy. The boys made fun of him until he would lose his temper and pull out an ancient leather tawse which he barely had the strength to wield. He was the man who had taught me some years previously, and I liked him very much, but at the same time, I found him a pathetic figure. He was reduced to teaching the sons of poor men, and yet I believe in his youth he had once had the potential to be a great scholar, a potential that he had dissipated by an over-fondness for spirits, tobacco and gambling. He smelled to high heaven of smoke and whisky. But he could be an inspirational teacher when he found a boy who had the sense to listen to him.

  ‘Dear God,’ I said to Thomas ‘The man’s wig is losing more hair than his own head.’

  Thomas let out a great splutter of laughter and almost choked on his whisky. He said, ‘You’re telling me that your brothers have a dominie whose wig is going bald!’

  I started laughing too. It was comical right enough and the poor old dominie might well be a figure of fun, but it was no joke when we couldn’t afford for the weans to go to the schoolroom more than once a week. There was never enough money and there was never enough time either.

  In a panic, I sought Thomas’s advice about our plight, especially the complaints about the garden. There was nobody else I could take my troubles to, and he confessed that he was aware of the grumbles in Faculty and had done what he could to counter them.

  ‘You cannae grow trees where the air is filthy,’ I said. ‘No matter what I do, no matter how much care and attention I gie them, they aye look as though something has burned them. I try. I try my best.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  I pulled a few scorched leaves. ‘Maybe I should show these to Faculty. Try to make them see what the type foundry is doing to my plants.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’

  ‘Naethin lives here!’

  I remember it as though it were yesterday. ‘Even the birds,’ I said, ‘Even the birds sometimes fall from the branches, bundles of bone and feather. There’s no telling why. Well, nae doubt your Professor Jeffray would dissect them and find out and draw pictures of them afterwards.’

  ‘The slugs survive,’ Thomas observed, picking one off a leaf and then dropping it and squashing it beneath his foot.

  ‘Oh aye, the slugs always survive.’

  We walked on together, more than a little downhearted by the sight of so much destruction.

  ‘And how does the apothecary business go now?’

  ‘Disastrously,’ I admitted. ‘My mother is not really able to do the work and I don’t have the time to help her.’

  ‘I feared that might be the case.’

  ‘Then you should have told me so. Before I started on the venture.’

  ‘I did tell you it was unwise.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me it would be ruinous.’

  ‘I thought you might be offended by the advice, William.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken offence. Not if the advice came from you.’

  ‘Well, maybe not. But what will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Faculty are complaining that I don’t spend enough time on the garden. And perhaps they’re right. My mother is struggling. Jean and Susanna are no help, although they should be. But they are haunless as ever. They break pots and spill distillations and are better off out of it. Bessie is a capable lassie, but she has her ain work, and they keep her hard at it. We seldom see her.’

  ‘What about your brothers? Could they not help more?’

  ‘Och they are ower young yet. James works as hard as he can and since he is no scholar, and never will be, he’s better off in the garden, doing as he’s told. Johnnie is a thoughtless lad just, and Rab is as sickly as ever.’

  ‘What would be best for you? I mean what would be the best thing from your point of view? Can you tell me that?’

  ‘If I could pay back the money we borrowed for the room that houses the shop, I would put a stop to the whole venture. My mother would go back to keeping house, and the girls to their stitching. And then perhaps without that worry I could go back to doing what I am paid to do in the garden.’

  I didn’t add, of course, that so much of my time was spent gathering plants for him and not in the garden at all. And he didn’t see fit to mention it either.

  He said, ‘How much do you owe? Is it a great sum of money?’

  ‘Great enough for me. We borrowed some five pounds and although I have paid a little back it has grown to six pounds now. I cannot lay hands on such a sum. Not without going hungry for weeks.’

  ‘Why did you not borrow the money from me in the first place, William?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know you so well, back then. And besides, I would never have asked you for so much. You must know that. It would have been beyond me to ask you. It would be beyond me now.’

  ‘Will you let me help you?’ He seemed unusually grave. I stared at him but his look was unfathomable.

  ‘How do you mean? What could you do?’

  ‘You’ve been such a help to me this summer and yet you won’t take regular payment.’

  ‘You let me attend your lectures.’

  ‘I look for you but I seldom see you.’

  ‘I come when I can. The garden takes up so much time.’

  ‘Then will you let me assist you now? I can give you six pounds with very little trouble to myself. You know that. The only thing which has hindered me from offering it until now has been the knowledge that your pride would not let you accept it. If I give you the money, you can pay off your moneylender, let go of the shop, and give your mother peace to grieve for her man and cope with her children without having to worry about work she cannot do.’

  I was speechless for a moment, all kinds of feelings warring inside my head: gratitude, affection, discomfort at my own foolishness. Then I found my tongue. ‘It’s tempting, I’ll allow. But I would think shame to do it.’

  I had the words of my father nipping my ears. ‘Never borrow from your enemies,’ he had told me. ‘But still less should you borrow from your friends, for it is the soonest way to ruin a good friendship.’

  I think Thomas could see that I was wavering, and he hurried to press the point home. ‘There’s no shame in a friend assisting a friend. Particularly when the mere accident of birth means that one has more financial resources than the other. And it would be far better for you to be beholden to me, your good friend, than to some rascally moneylender, if that’s how you insist on seeing it! William, I would gladly give you this money as a gift from one friend to another. You know that.’

  He put it so plainly and simply that it was impossible to be offended by the truth. The offer was tempting. But my pride still hindered me.

  ‘I would borrow the sum, so long as you treated it as a loan and not a gift and allowed me to pay you back as and when I could.’

  Whatever makes it acceptable to you, William. Pay me back or not, just as you choose. I’ll not harass you for the sum, but if, in the future, you feel able to pay me, then please do so.’

  We shook hands there and then. And l
ater he paid off the moneylender himself, so that there should be no arguments with the man about the terms of the agreement. The rogue might have threatened me, but there was something about Thomas Brown that inspired a fear of unpleasant consequences, even in such villains as that. I think my mother was more relieved than she would ever have admitted to me, but she certainly told Bessie as much on her next visit, and Bessie related the same to me.

  It must have been all of fifteen years later, when I sent ten guinea notes, drawn on the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, being the sum loaned, plus a deal of interest, to Mr Thomas Brown at his house in Ayrshire. I had debated long and hard between my wish to be done with the debt and my fear (or should that be desire?) that he might take the repayment as a friendly overture, as an attempt to make contact with him again. But there was no reply, and now I don’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed or perhaps a little of both. At that time, I was fully occupied with my business and my family and I hardly permitted myself to think about him at all.

  I know only that today, when I flicked through the leaves of this old book, that sits here on my desk, I found the old bank notes, pressed between two pages. Untouched.

  I looked at the text, and read, ‘The black cherrie is a tree that I love well. There is a sort at Niddrie Castle whose fruit is preferable to any cherrie. I take it to be a soft heart cherrie but it’s a great bearer. Gather their stones when full ripe, eat of the fleshy part and lay the stones to dry a little.’ That’s what the words said.

  I took the notes and folded them back into the book at that exact place. This room is dusty at the best of times, but most particularly in the early autumn when the weather is cool and dry, and the fire is lit again. My eyes water. I must needs take a linen handkerchief and wipe them, rubbing at them until they are red and sore.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jenny’s Remedy

  I love spring best of all the seasons, but who does not? Even now, when I am in the winter of my years, spring brings a lifting of the heart, a return of the sense that anything is possible. Fluffy willow catkins and hazel lambstails appear as if out of nowhere, even in the town gardens. Back then, when I was working at the college, I would give my brother James and the other under-gardeners enough work to last the day and take myself off with my collecting bag on my back. Without the encumbrance of the apothecary business to worry about, my mother was much more cheerful. With my worries about her eased, I thought that I would be able to organise my gardening and my collecting duties more efficiently.

  As soon as I had gathered what I thought was a fair number of specimens, I would contrive to drop by Jenny’s door, preferably at those times when Sandy Caddas would be away from home. She used to wait for me at the side window from which she had a pretty good view of the path to the house. I’m sure she took pleasure from my visits. She would feed me freshly baked cakes or oaties and soft cheese, and mugs of her father’s ale, and sometimes she would let me steal a kiss or two when there was nobody to see. One week slid into another and I was blissfully happy. I must have been, because time passed so quickly and the blue, white and pale lemon of spring flowers imperceptibly gave way to the more vibrant colours of summer. Then I would find her gathering bundles of the lavender she grew in the cottage garden, and hanging them up to dry.

  ‘I’ll take some of them into the town and sell them just as they are,’ she said. ‘But some of them will have to be rubbed and the flower heads stored. So you can make yourself useful!’

  I helped her to do it and it was a pleasant, highly scented task. Then, Jenny and her sister would take the lavender and stitch it into muslin bags which could be placed among linens to keep the moths away. Some of these she would use at home and some would be taken into town with the bunches of lavender to be sold there. Lavender has many useful properties and she said that deterring moths was the least of them. Some of it she would make into lavender water.

  ‘It’s a very good remedy for a headache and if you sprinkle a few drops on your pillow you’ll sleep soundly and your dreams will be pleasant. Take some for your mother!’ she would urge me. She was a generous lass, wanting to share all that she had in the way of remedies and knowledge.

  ‘How come you know these things?’ I asked her, a little indignant that a lass should have a head so stuffed with things of which I was quite ignorant.

  ‘I had them from my mother,’ she said.

  ‘But you said she died while you were young.’

  ‘Aye, but I was a quick learner! Besides, she would make it all into a kind of game, so it was a pleasure, even though I was but a child. And she wrote some of it down for me.’

  We have them still, those receipts. I could lay hands on them if I wanted to, hardly a book at all really, but a sheaf of papers for this and that remedy, most of them scrawled on precious scraps of paper, covering every surface, the spelling erratic, the directions cryptic.

  Besides lavender, Jenny would grow pot marigolds in her garden, like so many miniature suns, shining among the other flowers. These have always been a favourite with me and she shared my affection for them. They have a lovely, peppery scent but she told me they had other valuable properties. She would make an ointment out of the petals and it was said to be very good for cuts and grazes and suchlike injuries. She gave me a pot of it to take home with me, and I used it whenever I cut my fingers in the garden, which was pretty often, and she was right. It was wonderfully effective for preventing infection.

  Thomas saw me using it one day, after I had torn my hand on a rose bush. I am very fond of roses and always have been, most particularly the little wild rose of Scotland that scrambles among the walls and hedges of this country, deceptively delicate but resilient where other plants will fail. They always remind me of Jenny, with her light hair. They are lovely but, quite unlike Jenny who would not willingly have harmed anyone, they are malicious plants. They seem to wait until you turn your back on them and then they pounce on you, no matter how hard you try to avoid them. I was more cut about with roses than with anything else, even nettles, in my whole career as a gardener.

  ‘What’s that?’ Thomas asked when he saw me applying Jenny’s marigold ointment to the latest crop of punctures and grazes. I explained that it was something my friend had made for me, and he asked if I might procure a pot or two for him, since I obviously thought it efficacious, and he would try it as an experiment on his patients. He offered to pay for it, so I got Jenny to make a few pots for him. He came back to me for more, as much as she could supply, because he said it was extremely effective. Jenny and I joked that in due course, we might be able to resurrect the apothecary idea, with a little help from Thomas. Because this was a real skill she had and, as Thomas said, there was always a call for simple remedies that worked, especially for sailors and the like who might have no recourse to more complicated medicines during their long voyages.

  ‘One day,’ she told me, ‘One day we’ll maybe go into business for ourselves.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ I would have been reluctant, all the same, having tried and failed so comprehensively.

  ‘Well, I think I would have the skills, especially with you to help me. But we would have to find another, better garden than your physic garden to supply us with plants. We’d have to grow things ourselves. Have a ready supply of the right herbs.’

  I remembered my father’s predecessor, and how successful he and his wife had been in similar circumstances, and it didn’t seem too fanciful to think that one day Jenny and I might manage it. The unspoken assumption in all this, of course, was that we would always be together. We skirted around the idea all the time, cautiously, both aware of what a momentous commitment that might be, aware too that neither of us had the necessary resources. But I was young and strong and full of hope for the future.

  * * *

  She had not met Thomas at that time, but she had heard about him, because I spoke about him often. In fact, I think I spoke about him rather too much for her liking. />
  ‘Thomas, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I hear this Doctor Thomas Brown mentioned on all sides! Is he the fount of all knowledge? Can he truly be right about everything, William?’

  She was laughing as she said it, but there was a germ of truth at the heart of her complaint. I did defer to Thomas on most occasions and about most things. Over the years, I have noticed that this is a fault of men more than women. We think our heroes can do no wrong, while clear-eyed women seem able to love theirs in spite of their faults. If he told me something, I believed him. If he advised me to do something, I usually found myself obeying. And yet it was not in my nature to conform. But at that time, I think if he had told me black was really white, I would have agreed.

  When my Jenny wasn’t working with her plants or in the garden, she was usually to be found stitching away at her silk or her muslin. She had it in a circular wooden tambour to keep it straight and whenever one of these broke I would contrive to make another for her out of a hazel wand. The needles she used were very fine and the thread too was so fine that it was a tricky task to thread the needles. She would give Anna, her wee sister, a penny to rub beeswax on it, and coax it through the eyes, keeping several needles threaded at once to save time. When the weather and the season allowed, she would sit outside the door on a boulder, deliberately rolled there for the purpose, and she would stitch away in the sunlight. She said it was hard on the eyes otherwise, and in any case it was hard on her neck and shoulders, always bending over like that, staring at the tiny flowers and sprigs she was creating, like an artist with his brush.

  I can bring her before my eyes yet, the curve of her neck, the fragility of it as she bent over, and the curls where she caught up her hair, coiling it onto her head to keep it out of her eyes. She had shapely arms and surprisingly sturdy hands with stubby nails, hands which could achieve miracles. The work was exquisite. I have never seen anything like it before or since. You would have sworn it was fine lace, but it wasn’t; it was embroidery. And at the centre of the flowers were even smaller centres, each with its own design, a minute cobweb of threads as though some tiny spider had been hard at work there. Some of the work would be made up into lappets for ladies. Sometimes it might go for baby gowns, for the infants of the rich, who liked their children to appear as fashionable as themselves.