The Pharmacist's Wife

by Vanessa Tait

‘And Mr Badcock! Both men! I’m afraid I am not making myself clear.’ Eva was smiling in her stretched way and shaking her head, but even in this moment of awkwardness her cheeks remained a blanched white.

  The noise still went on. ‘Ah the poor wee bairn,’ said Jenny. But she was looking at Lionel, who was reaching up for a slender bottle full of dark liquid, with Godfrey’s Cordial written on the side. His shirt had escaped his trousers and a bony hip poked out from beneath.

  ‘Now now, there we are,’ Alexander was saying. ‘No need to cry. It will soon be better. There is treacle in it to make it sweet for the children. No more than twelve drops a day.’

  ‘I am so glad to make your acquaintance, I have oft wondered about who would be Mr Palmer’s wife, and here you are, of all people!’

  ‘Of all people?’ Rebecca said. A pulse had set up in her toe once more; it was like a heartbeat.

  ‘I wondered if you would like to call on me one day? I have so few friends and – I know this is very irregular, but if you do, call on me, I mean, I had something in particular I wished to ask.’

  ‘How do you know my husband?’

  The mother was trying to rock the baby and twist the stopper from the medicine at the same time. She leaned and tried to sit the baby on the opposite hip. ‘Allah, allah, allah!’ he cried.

  ‘I was a regular visitor to the other place, and we struck up an acquaintance.’ She shivered and Rebecca could see her skin pimple where it met the air, between her glove and her sleeve.

  Eva meant Alexander’s previous pharmacy, which had been owned by someone else. The flutter in Rebecca’s chest became something worse. She looked again at her husband. But Alexander was twisting the bottle open for the mother, instructing her, tapping the top of the bottle with his index finger.

  Rebecca thought that Evangeline would move away towards Alexander, but she did not. Rebecca could feel her trembling as they stood, hip to hip.

  ‘Have we met somewhere before?’ Perhaps she had seen Evangeline at the last pharmacy, or perhaps, and this was worse, she had seen her hurrying away from her house at night, running out of the back door as she came in the front.

  Eva sneezed into her handkerchief and her large blue eyes filled with water. ‘Perhaps we have! We could think on it, if you came to see me.’

  Rebecca stared. What boldness! She felt her colour rise.

  But Eva’s manner was not gloating. ‘I was often at the other place. We may have caught sight of each other. I have an ailment, you see. I expect it will be the same in here. Though I am not allowed to get—’ Eva stopped herself by pushing down on her mouth with her filthy glove. She looked afraid, her eyes darting over to Alexander again.

  Alexander was poised with the dropper just above the baby’s mouth. The baby twisted away, fearing mistreatment. But Alexander managed to get a taste of the medicine on his lips, and when the baby tasted how sweet it was he turned his face back towards the dropper.

  Suddenly the noise fell away. The baby sucked on the dropper as if it were a nipple. Rebecca heard Mr Badcock say quietly: ‘I told you it would work, this situation on the bridge.’

  Eva said: ‘I live on Blackfriars Street, number nine.’ She opened her reticule and riffled through it. Rebecca caught a glimpse of a mirror and something torn out of a newspaper, and a small blue bottle, with no stopper. ‘Here, this has my address.’ She held out a handwritten card, jabbing the corner of it, in her hurry, into Rebecca’s wrist.

  Evangeline seemed so urgent, so ardent, and Alexander, who had turned at last, so angry, that Rebecca snatched the card and hid it up her sleeve.

  ‘Remember to call ahead to let me know you are coming. Otherwise I shan’t know—’

  ‘Evangeline?’ Alexander’s voice, in the quiet, was terrible. ‘What a surprise to see you here. Are you ill again, that you could not wait?’

  ‘A little,’ she stammered out. ‘I had not expected to be—’

  ‘Neither had I expected it.’ He turned his eyes on Rebecca. ‘There is no need for you to be here now, wife. You may go home.’

  Mr Badcock took hold of Eva’s wrist. ‘Now, now; have you been a naughty girl?’

  ‘I am sorry, truly I am!’ Out of the corner of her eye Rebecca saw Eva blush at last, suddenly and effectively, as far up as her forehead.

  ‘Go home, wife,’ said Alexander, taking hold of Rebecca’s shoulder and turning her towards the door. ‘Do not wait up for me, I shall be back late.’

  Rebecca turned against his hand. ‘Alexander!’

  ‘You are tired,’ said Alexander. ‘Your maid will take care of you.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jenny, hurrying to be by her side.

  ‘Oh please, husband!’ cried Rebecca. ‘She told me!’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Eva – Evangeline told me!’ Alexander stopped walking and grew very still. ‘She told you what?’

  ‘That – that – she knew you!’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘That is all – but why would she, and you—’

  ‘Then she told you nothing. She is sick, as you can see.’ Inside the pharmacy Eva had been overcome by sneezing and trembling. ‘She has a cold, she has come for medicine. As everyone does. She was a regular visitor to me in my last place of work. I hope to get much new custom that way. But,’ he tightened his grip on her arm, ‘I do not want you talking to her, if you should see her again, here or anywhere. Do you understand?’

  ‘Why? Why not?’

  ‘Because she is the wrong sort of woman for you to know. Go home now, and do not expect me. There is a great deal for me to do here and that boy will not be much help.’

  But after Alexander had turned away, Rebecca still stood outside the pharmacy, staring in. Alexander had not gone in to his chores, but was braced into a corner of the shop with Evangeline, taking no notice of the other customers at all. He stood so close to her that the brim of Eva’s bonnet pressed against Alexander’s forehead.

  ‘Should we get home, then?’ said Jenny, the black clouds pressing down on them both.

  Alexander’s cheeks were flushed and he was talking to Eva urgently. With each word Evangeline blushed and flinched, but she did not take her eyes from his face.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to go. If Mr Palmer sees us still here …’ Jenny went on.

  ‘Mr Palmer,’ said Rebecca, her heart cold, ‘has forgotten all about us.’

  She stood for a moment more, as if she would gorge on the sight, though with every second that passed she felt more sick, until at last Jenny took hold of her arm and pulled her away.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rebecca sat at her dressing table, put her fingers to her forehead, stretched out the thin skin between them, and started to cry. She could not bear to look at her reflection, so instead she sobbed towards the silver-backed hairbrush, with its long black hairs still caught between the bristles.

  ‘Should you like me to take off your shoes?’ said Jenny. ‘You’ve been half hobbling since we left the pharmacy.’

  ‘I had dreamed …’ She sniffed. ‘I had dreamed of today! And how proud I would be to see Alexander standing behind his own counter at last. And now everything is ruined.’

  Jenny began to ease off Rebecca’s shoes. ‘You did see that, though, didn’t you, madam: Mr Palmer standing behind his own counter? Times will be good now, surely they will.’

  ‘But how can they be good, when he has betrayed me? You saw them together! He and that woman in the green dress, that Evangeline.’ She pressed her forehead into her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘I saw them,’ started Jenny, ‘but I did not hear what they were saying.’

  ‘You did not need to hear! I have never seen Mr Palmer talking that way, to anyone. Not to me. And she is so beautiful.’

  ‘She may be a customer, as she said, who is always ill, and he knows her that way.’ Jenny looked up and put her hand on Rebecca’s knee. ‘Don’t fret so.’

  ‘Jenny, you are trying to comfort me,
thank you for it. But my husband would never talk to a customer that way. He hardly talks to anyone – except Mr Badcock. No, she is his mistress, I am sure of it!’

  Jenny took up a pillow and shook it out. ‘Even if you were to be right,’ she said carefully, ‘it would not be so uncommon, so as I’ve heard.’

  ‘Aye, not uncommon, you are right. But I have not been married above six months!’

  ‘But even that is not so rare,’ said Jenny, settling the pillow against the headboard and smoothing it.

  ‘I don’t think, at fifteen, and coming from the middle of nowhere, you ought to know what is common, should you?’

  Jenny said stoutly: ‘The middle of nowhere is as filled with vice as a city brothel. More perhaps.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Rebecca. ‘I dare say you are right.’

  ‘I think you should rest, madam,’ said Jenny, passing her a handkerchief.

  ‘Rest? I do not think I can, not yet.’ Rebecca stood up and gazed through the window. A skivvy shook out a rug from the opposite house; it was still only the middle of the afternoon. Rebecca sighed. ‘You know, Jenny, I have worked so hard on this house, before you came, trying to get it right. Trying to get myself right, to be a good wife, as Mr Ruskin says. But I find that I am wrong for it somehow. Alexander only hates me the harder I try.’

  ‘You are not wrong for it, madam! I don’t see how you can be. I think perhaps …’ Jenny turned away to the bed again to straighten the sheet. ‘It’s no’ but a period of adjustment. I am sure Mr Palmer will come back to you, husbands usually do.’

  Rebecca sighed again. ‘Aye, perhaps you are right. I had not expected it, not today.’

  ‘Your feet look awful sore, madam, even behind your stockings. Shall I fetch some cream?’

  ‘Oh yes, that would be grand, Jenny, thank you.’

  But when she was alone Rebecca felt her heart grow low, almost into her stomach. She cast her mind back over her marriage. What detail, what deed, signified that Alexander was lost? Why, only six months ago she had thought herself happy. During their brief engagement Alexander had taken her to a coffee shop and it hadn’t mattered that the cruet stand was broken, or that the paint had been peeling, or that the waiter had slapped down their mugs hard enough to spill them, because his knee had been pressing into hers under the table and above it he had leaned forward and almost taken her hand. Rebecca had taken the press of him as complicity, a sign of a shared future.

  ‘My real work,’ he’d said to her, rolling the r, and she’d noticed how the woman at the next-door table had sent him an admiring look, ‘is not in the pharmacy dispensing medicine, but in the laboratory above it.’

  ‘In the laboratory?’ she’d said, dipping her head to her cup.

  ‘I intend to invent new medicines up there. And with them I will make a name for myself. Who knows, I may even become a member of the Royal Society of Chemists! That would be a very fine person to be married to, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh yes! Like Mr Bird,’ she’d said.

  ‘I don’t think Mr Bird is a member of the Society, even though, it’s true, he is a chemist.’

  She’d laughed then, embarrassed. ‘I only meant that Mr Bird invented his custard in the laboratory above his pharmacy, and now it is sold all over the world.’

  ‘And now he is rich, you mean to say. Yes, I dare say money will flow from my inventions, and we shall be rich, if you like.’

  And Rebecca had dropped her eyes to her cup again and stirred her coffee. For he had found her out: she would like to be rich; that was why women married – some of them, was it not? Being rich wasn’t a sin.

  ‘Illness is nothing more than a body out of kilter,’ he’d continued. ‘’Tis a wrong to be righted and it’s my business to put the body back in balance. Similar to algebra. Do you know algebra?’

  Rebecca had nodded her head, a little vaguely. Her governess had not mentioned it.

  ‘If I can get my formulation right, I can get the body right, and even the mind, too, if it is depressed, say, or overwrought.’

  But perhaps, after all, the press of his knees had only signified that the table was too small. There was to be no shared future, not now that Alexander was with another woman. Even now he could be prigging Evangeline in the back of the pharmacy, her green skirts up around her waist, his bowler hat knocked from his head and rocking on its top beside them.

  Jenny came back, pushing open the door with her foot. She was carrying a tray with some food on it: a mackerel with blackened skin and cold potatoes, and the lotion she had promised for Rebecca’s blisters.

  ‘Oh Jenny, thank you. That is thoughtful. I am hungry, awful hungry, now that I see the food.’

  ‘I thought you would be. Shall I set it on the table?’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘But do not go, not quite yet. I don’t think I am ready to be alone. Won’t you sit with me while I eat?’

  ‘I still have the fire to light,’ said Jenny. ‘I hadn’t the time earlier.’

  ‘No need for that now. Won’t you sit?’

  So the girl sat on the edge of the easy chair and blushed, and put her hands between her knees, and watched Rebecca eat.

  ‘You must be hungry also,’ said Rebecca.

  Jenny shook her head.

  ‘But I think you must be. Will you have some? Look, you have given me a heap of potatoes I cannot possibly finish. And that mackerel is big enough for two.’

  ‘Oh no, madam – I couldn’t!’

  ‘If you mean that a maid ought not to eat with her mistress, never mind! There is no one here to see.’

  The girl looked, and frowned. ‘If you are sure. I don’t think Mrs Bunclarke—’

  ‘Never mind Mrs Bunclarke. Eat – please.’

  Jenny picked up Rebecca’s fork and began to eat, shyly at first, biting the tip of the fork with her teeth, and then more boldly.

  ‘We are alike, aren’t we, you and I?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘We have both come here almost as strangers, and do not know quite where we are.’

  ‘Aye, madam,’ said the girl, ‘perhaps.’ A lock of hair had fallen forward over her face, the colour of sand, the same colour as the beaches she’d left in Argyll. Perhaps her home had stained her somehow.

  ‘Are you happy here?’

  ‘Aye, madam, as happy as can be.’

  Rebecca did not know if she meant she was as happy as it was possible to be, or as happy as it was possible to be under the circumstances, having left her family two days’ journey away, and the croft where she had lived all her life. ‘You must be homesick. I will not take it as an insult. I am homesick too, though I know not what for!’ She thought of the house she had left, which was not hers any more, but sold to pay her father’s debts: empty, cold, full of ghosts. Her father had died in it so recently she had fancied she could still see the edges of him if she came suddenly into a room.

  ‘Sometimes I am homesick, aye,’ said Jenny, pushing her hair back up into her cap. ‘But most of the time I am glad to be here. I never thought I should leave the croft and come to Edinburgh. There are enough carriages here to fill up the whole world, I think! Somebody is always about, even at eleven o’clock at night. At home, darkness falls, and that is that.’

  Rebecca smiled. ‘You are unusual then. But I am glad for it.’

  Jenny glanced out of the window, as if to check she was still in Edinburgh. Darkness had not yet fallen but the heat had gone from the day. ‘I’d best be off,’ she said, rising.

  ‘No need to go just yet!’ Rebecca’s eyes fell on the newspaper, neatly folded over, that Jenny had put on the tray.

  ‘Aye, I thought, seeing as Mr Palmer did not come home ...’ said Jenny, following her glance.

  Alexander always read the newspaper first, over breakfast, but today he’d not had the time. Once Rebecca had taken it before he had read it, and got some grease on it, and he had been angry. Red spots had stood out on his cheeks and she had thought for a moment –
though of course he would never – she thought for a moment that he would strike her.

  But Alexander would be home late tonight, he had told her as much … prigging.

  Rebecca took up the paper carefully. ‘Thank you, Jenny; that will pass the time very nicely. Only, p’raps I will wipe my fingers first.’ She rolled each finger on the napkin. ‘Shall we take a look at what is happening in the world, what do you say?’

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ said Jenny, who had got up only because she thought she ought, and had no wish to return alone to her little room at the top of the house.

  ‘Oh, look there: The Edinburgh Seven Petition the University. I have been following them with interest.’

  Jenny squinted down. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Just imagine it, seven women in amongst thousands of men!’

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Jenny.

  A cart rolled by outside, its driver very angry. ‘Shall I turn over?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘If you like, madam,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I mean, have you finished?’

  ‘Finished? Oh no, madam, I cannot read.’

  ‘Oh! Oh yes, of course. Well, I can read for both of us.’ Rebecca spread the paper in front of them. ‘And, if you should like it, p’raps I could teach you a little, shall I?’

  Jenny looked doubtful. ‘But what use is there in reading, for me?’

  ‘What use? I think to know about the world. Or to read the railway timetable. Or a book, for fun.’

  ‘But I have no time to read.’

  ‘Well, if I, if I lighten your load, what do you say? P’raps the grate does not have to be blackened every week. And if the silver has not been used then there is no need to get it out and polish it.’

  ‘But if Mrs Bunclarke sees me sitting idle—’

  ‘I shall tell her you are not sitting idle but learning to read.’

  A dog howled from a yard nearby, shut out or in. Rebecca turned to the front of the paper. ‘Now, come here, look, this is the first letter: A. It goes up and down just like a wigwam. The normal type of a looks like this, see.’

  ‘There are two sets of letters for every sound?’ said Jenny. ‘Why?’

  ‘Capitals start off sentences, and names, but never mind them now. Let us keep to the more usual version of a, here.’