The Physic Garden

by Catherine Czerkawska

  ‘We’ll speak about it tomorrow. It’s about Jenny.’

  ‘Jenny?’ He seemed very surprised. ‘Have you spoken to her at last?’

  ‘I went down to Dumfries to see her. It was for that reason I needed the horse. Did you not guess?’

  ‘You said she was helping to look after a sick relative. I wondered whether that was where you had gone, but your brother would tell me nothing definite.’

  ‘Well, he was under instructions to be circumspect. I didn’t want the likes of …’ I glanced into the hall. Jeffrey’s voice could be heard relating one of his interminable stories. ‘I didn’t want the likes of the professor enquiring too closely about where I had gone.’

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘I went south.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It was between me and Jenny.’

  ‘And is all well in that quarter?’

  ‘No. No, Thomas. Nothing is well. But we’ll speak about it tomorrow.’ I could hear Marion now, calling for her husband from the drawing room. Perhaps she needed some leavening in the steady flow of Jeffrey’s tales, which were all to do with himself and his own cleverness.

  ‘I need your advice,’ I said. ‘You know Jenny well enough, and I think you are fond of her.’

  ‘Of course I am. She’s a lovely lass.’

  ‘Aye. She is.’ I almost said, ‘she was’, God help me. Why was I tempted to say it?’ She was fine and well. I had to cling onto that fact. She must be fine and well.

  ‘And a very clever young lady.’

  ‘Aye.’

  But not clever enough, I thought. Not nearly clever enough.

  ‘Marion has grown very fond of her too,’ he continued.

  ‘Please!’ I found myself touching his arm. ‘Say nothing to your wife about this. Not yet a while.’

  He frowned. ‘Why? Has something happened to her? What is amiss, William?’

  ‘We’ll speak of it tomorrow.’

  I turned to go, just as Marion came out into the hallway in all her party finery, a flowing muslin dress like a fountain of water, a dress that was scattered with flowers, each blossom embroidered in glowing silks. I looked at her and could think only that Jenny must have stitched those flowers. That she would never have been able to spare the time to make such a gown for herself, but that she would have looked very beautiful in it. She would have been much more beautiful than Marion, who was quite a thick-set woman, and had an air of awkwardness when she moved in the delicate fabric.

  Not long ago, I saw a copy of a painting by an Italian artist, Sandro Botticelli. It was in a book just, for I have never travelled abroad to see such things and cannot imagine that I will ever do it now. The painting was called Primavera, and among a number of lassies who were dancing as naked as nature intended, there was one in a gown covered with flowers. Flora she was, a goddess of the spring or some such, very tall and fair with flowers in her hair and around her neck and on her gown. It reminded me of the gown that Marion wore that night. But it was Jenny I could fancy wearing it, for the girl in the picture was most astonishingly like her. Even after all these years, I found myself gazing at the picture and remembering Jenny.

  Marion seemed surprised to see me. ‘William? What are you doing here?’ she asked, controlling her anger at the interruption to her party when she saw me. Maybe she noticed the distress which I was at such pains to conceal. Marion Jeffrey was nothing if not kindly. A nice woman. I still think of her as a nice woman: brusque and forthright to be sure, but you always knew where you were with her. And it was not in her nature to dissemble. She would sooner give you the unvarnished truth than tell you a lie. And that is a good quality, if a little uncomfortable to live with.

  ‘I’m away now, Mistress,’ I said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘I brought a message for the doctor here, that’s all. But I’ll not interrupt your party any longer.’

  I turned and left them, standing together on the threshold, still not altogether pleased with my own diffidence. I felt inferior in that company and I didn’t like the sensation. I could assume only that it was the presence of Jeffray in the other room that had made all the difference. I don’t know what Thomas told Marion, nothing about Jenny I suppose, because you could always rely on him to be discreet. They went back to their party and I went home to another restless night, although exhaustion gave me a few hours of sleep at last.

  * * *

  The night was intensely cold and the following morning the frost was everywhere, inside and out, papering all the windows of our house with ferns and feathers. It was the kind of weather that always brought the fumes from the type foundry down low into the garden, covering everything with a bitter fog that left a metallic taste on your tongue, but we soldiered on, covering our faces with woollen mufflers which allowed us to breathe more easily. Later in the afternoon, though, there was a blink of sunshine, the fog lifted a little and Thomas came into the garden and sought me out. We went into the old but ’n’ ben where I kept the tools. It had once been a dwelling but was now little more than a tumbledown store. Still, it had a fireplace and a chimney, and we gardeners would often set ourselves a fire there with dead wood from the garden so that we could heat up ale to warm us, or a pan of porridge maybe. Whiles we would roast apples in the embers and float them in our drinks, where they would explode and froth up into a foam of sweetness on top of the ale. I poured a couple of mugs of the cider I had made with last year’s harvest. I heated up the poker till it was red and glowing and plunged it into each pewter mug while it hissed and spat and made the drink very palatable. Then Thomas and I huddled up close to the fire, holding the mugs in our fists, and holding our fists out to the blaze. Mine were blue with the cold. Thomas had on a pair of gloves but he was still shivering.

  Full winter had descended on us quite suddenly. The leaves, which had turned all shades of orange and gold, had blown down into hillocks in the recent gales and were lying about the gardens. The students ran and jumped and tumbled through them, laughing like younger boys than they were. I watched their careless joy with something very like envy. I hardly remembered that I had ever felt that kind of elation – except perhaps as a wee boy just, when I had run through the gardens and been conscious of nothing save the strength and speed in my own legs. I had a vivid memory of running, running, running so quickly through the gardens and among the trees, that I think I forgot my own body altogether.

  Even now, as an old man, I can remember that feeling. I remember the wind rushing past my ears and the sense of breaking through some barrier so that my feet hardly seemed to be touching the ground at all, so that I thought I was like to fly, and I can call to mind the utter elation of it, of that new sensation, even when I stopped, panting, surprised by how far and how fast I had come. Strange how even rheumatic limbs can keep the memory of such lightness. But all too soon, unrelenting hard work had been my lot, and the effort had doubled after my father died. The sodden earth had rooted my boots to the ground as surely as if I had been one of my own trees.

  Then Jenny Caddas had been my salvation. Well, Jenny and Thomas, always Thomas, who had shown me what it was to be the valued friend of such a man as he. But for a long time now, it seemed to me that Jenny had been the sun in my sky and the moon that rose over my nights. She had been my joy and now she was my intense sorrow and I didn’t know what to do with all these unfamiliar and unmanageable feelings that flooded my mind: anger, worry, resentment, disappointment. They filled my head and spilled over and I didn’t know what to do with any of them.

  We sat there, Thomas and I, ower-warm at the front, freezing cold at the back, as is so often the way of it in winter, and I told him about my visit to Dumfries in search of Jenny. I described her terrible cousin and the skivvy Rebecca, the story she had told me and the lies and evasions of Jenny’s father. The whole sorry tale, the fact that Jenny was with child but was now nowhere to be found, came spilling out of me. I heard his sharply indrawn breath at the news, saw h
is sudden frown, but then he sat there, listening quietly, as was his wont, while I came to the end of my story. Once or twice he patted my shoulder or my knee. I saw grave concern in his eyes. He looked deeply troubled, sad and anxious but there was no censure, certainly. He got up and walked over to the crumbling window of the but ’n’ ben, gazing out across the wintry garden.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked,. ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The truth was that I felt helpless in the face of such a situation. ‘I would have her back, you know. I would marry the lass tomorrow, if I thought it would set everything to rights.’

  He came back and sat down again, staring at me.

  ‘You would marry her? Even with another man’s baby in tow?’

  ‘Aye, with another man’s baby and all. It would make no difference to me.’ As I gave voice to this, I realised that it was the truth.

  ‘Then you love her most truly, William.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘She’s a lucky lass to have you. There are few such men in the world.’

  ‘I would think myself lucky to have her for my wife.’

  ‘But you have to find her first.’

  ‘I have to find her first. It cuts me to the quick that she did not see fit to confide in me.’

  ‘But it would have been a difficult thing for any lassie. And there is no word of her at all?’

  ‘Nothing. Not a sight of her, nor a sound of her. No word of her on the road anywhere. I stopped at all the inns, the best and the worst of places. I asked everyone I met as I rode back to town. But then, who would notice her? And even if she has won back to Glasgow, she has disappeared and I have no way of knowing where she might be!’

  He set his mug on the hearth, got up again and began to pace about, frowning, kicking stones over the uneven flagged floor, hugging his arms around his body to warm himself up. The wood in the hearth burned down quickly and gave out a subdued heat. I threw another couple of logs onto the embers but they were too green and a thin spiral of aromatic smoke went up from them, giving off little heat.

  ‘God help the lassie,’ he said. ‘God help her.’

  ‘Don’t say such things.’

  ‘Did she have any friends, other relatives maybe? Is there anywhere at all she might be?’

  ‘Oh there were lassies in the village, but nane that will admit to having seen her. Or if they have, they aren’t telling. And what reasons would they have to keep silent? I’m so worried about her, Thomas.’

  ‘You must be.’

  ‘It’s like this dreadful ache, here in my chest, and I don’t ken what to do with the pain of it.’

  ‘My dear friend,’ he said, leaning across and embracing me.

  ‘My dear friend.’

  ‘I should have confided in you sooner.’

  ‘You should. You should.’

  ‘I have kept it to myself for too long, but her father told me very little.’

  ‘Well, now that I know, what can I do of a practical nature? How can I help? It’s a delicate matter, Will.’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘If she has found some shelter where she can have the child and then plans to return home, it would be a terrible thing if we were to destroy her reputation through too specific enquiries. On the other hand, if she is alone and in need of help … good God, what a dilemma!’

  ‘I could kill her cousins with my bare hands for the cruel and greedy souls they are.’

  ‘Why did they offer to take her in the first place?’

  ‘Exactly what I’ve been asking myself.’

  ‘They seem to be wretched hypocrites, that’s for sure. But perhaps they wanted to make use of her skills for their own ends and cared not what became of her.’

  ‘Despicable creatures.’

  ‘What does her father say to all this?’

  ‘Not a great deal. He blames himself and yet his intentions were all for the best. I know only that she has never been near her father’s door since she left Dumfries, and that worries me beyond everything.’

  ‘It looks very grave.’

  ‘She might avoid me out of shame. But he knew fine what her condition was, and I would have thought that she would return there if anywhere. There has been not a word of her in the village either.’

  ‘I could make enquiries, you know. Careful enquiries.’

  ‘Do you think that wise?’

  ‘There are discreet people. A scant handful who are known to help poor women in her condition. As a doctor, I am aware of them, and I could ask, if you think it might help.’

  ‘Anything might help, Thomas, anything at all. Her father is wandering the streets in search of her to the neglect of everything else. God knows what he has told Anna about the whole affair. I would spend my time looking for her as well, but I have my work and I have tried the patience of Faculty for long enough. I will go when I can, but I thought that perhaps you might be able to narrow the search in some way.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He sighed heavily, shaking his head. ‘In fact, I’ll go now, this minute. Courage,’ he said, as he left. ‘Courage! We’ll find her yet.’

  * * *

  He did what he could. Made discreet enquiries. Sent me here and there, to this or that house. And went himself, I suppose. I think he did that for me as much as for Jenny. Once, I found myself in a poor hospital, the rooms filthy and smelling of a terrible mixture of blood and vomit and worse, hellish with the moans and groans of the sick and dying, for whom almost nothing could be done. She was not there, nor had she been, thank God. There was no sign of her. A wheen of filthy houses and streets had sprung up in the town over the past few years in response to the demands for housing for the vast numbers of people who were employed in the new manufactories, incomers from the Highlands and Islands, and from over the water in Ireland. Sometimes, when I found myself peering into rooms that never saw the light of day, stinking, bug-ridden rooms and passages that led from other windowless rooms and passages in a drab and deadly succession, all leprous with damp, I thought that I had found myself in some hellish labyrinth, an underground warren where only troglodytes might live. A vulnerable lassie might go missing in this maze and never be found again.

  Days passed and then weeks, and still there was no sign of her. I grew weary and her father grew wearier. He looked terrible. He seemed to have aged ten years in the space of a few weeks. Anna said hardly a word about her sister. To our surprise she was often to be found in the weaving shed, keeping Gilbert and another lad, a new younger apprentice called Allan, hard at work, so that the business should not be neglected in her father’s absence, showing a capability that we had not suspected she possessed. I think Gilbert had a soft spot for her, but she treated him briskly enough, making it clear that she would stand no nonsense from him. She seemed to have grown up overnight. When she was not supervising the lads, she cooked and cleaned, washed and kept house, making things as easy as possible for her father. From time to time, he returned, sick and heart sore, only to go out again after dark and trawl the fetid streets, taking nothing with him lest he should be robbed, always a danger for an older man going into places where his face was unknown.

  It was easier for me. I think I looked what I was: young and strong and well able to take care of myself. All my years as a gardener had lent me a certain wiry presence and I thought that I was not in any great personal danger, particularly since I took James’s dog, Queenie, with me, a great, grey, shaggy beast – a poacher’s dog, I suppose, although I did not like to enquire too closely what my brother did with her on those occasions when he would venture out into the countryside. Often he would return with a rabbit for the pot and sometimes a pheasant and we did not question that either. I had confided in him to some extent, telling him that Jenny had gone missing and I must search for her.

  ‘You’ll tak’ Queenie then,’ was all he said, and she would accompany me, walking at my heel with her long-legged, rolling gait. She was a ge
ntle creature, so long as she knew you, but with a look of something savage about her and a mouthful of yellowing teeth, which she was not above baring at suspicious strangers. Once a couple of men edged too close to me with menace in their manners, but when Queenie slunk out of the shadows, growling low, ears laid back, her hackles bristling, her lip curled and all her teeth showing, they raised their hands and moved off, backwards.

  It was a sad and sorry business, and I think that for all that I had lived in Glasgow for so long, I had not been aware before just how many lassies, some of them little more than children, lurked on the streets of this city, displaying their borrowed or stolen finery, foolish clothes that showed their breasts and their ankles to passing strangers, all of them willing to sell themselves for a wee bit siller, or even for a drink or a loaf of bread. But then most likely they were not willing at all. Most likely some man lurked in the background, forcing them to do it. Or the grim prospect of starvation offered them no alternative. And there were always other men willing to take advantage of their desperation in return for a few moments of pleasure, cheaply bought, soon forgotten. We do not see until our eyes are opened, do we? We hurry on by and never notice, until something changes our perspective.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Chain Saws

  Even now, looking back on it, I am not entirely sure why Thomas took me to that place at that particular time. For sure, our debate about the respective merits of physic and surgery (with its necessary adjunct of dissection) had rumbled on for a little while, but without ever causing us to quarrel as we had once quarrelled over Hunter’s book. Thomas knew how I felt about Professor Jeffray and his inherent showmanship. He knew I was all for physic – even after my own failed apothecary venture – and so was he, otherwise he would not have been lecturing in botany, would not have been so interested in the medicinal properties of plants.