by Vanessa Tait
‘That sounds like someone in a book! I suffered, yes. I don’t know about bravely. I suffered, because I had to. But Jenny wants to come back to Edinburgh, she said so.’
‘Aye, she does, but she cannot find a position from there and she won’t travel without one.’
‘It’s a pickle, then.’ Rebecca looked up the stairs, she thought she had heard a footstep, but Alexander’s door was closed tight. ‘But she could help at the pharmacy! Could she not?’
Lionel’s eyes widened. ‘Aye! The work is too much for one, and I think her so sensible she would learn quick enough!’ But then he shook his head. ‘But what about Mr Badcock? He might trouble her there.’
‘You would be there; I don’t think he could get to her at a shop. ’Tis not like being in service. And I could be there too, now that Mr Palmer is out of sorts. Yes, that is true. I could help you and Jenny. I am not experienced either … still, between the three of us we may be able to manage. I have been married to a pharmacist, I may have picked up something along the way.’
‘It is a grand idea!’
‘I could not pay her much. The pharmacy has gone slow, as you say, and we need to think of a way to make it go faster again. Perhaps Mr Palmer has neglected the business side of things, always being in his laboratory. It needs a woman’s hand – forgive me, Lionel, but I think it does. And Jenny always did advise me, in worse times. Write and tell her, Lionel, do it today!’
CHAPTER 31
When she came, not more than ten days later, Jenny turned out to be far better suited to the pharmacy than she had been to maiding: thanks to Mhairi she had an immediate talent for order and display. The labels on the shop-rounds had got blurred, so she soaked them off and wrote out new ones in her neat looped hand. ‘I knew it would come in useful, you see, this writing! Mother said it wouldnae, but look here. Is it right?’
‘Aye, Jenny, just right,’ said Lionel.
Then Jenny scrubbed the counter and straightened everything on the shelves. While she was doing it she noticed that some of the powders had been put into narrow-necked jars when they ought to have been put into wide-necked ones, for ease of pouring, so she swapped them over, creating a deal of mess for several days. But when all the jars were in their right places at last, and the corners had been dusted, and the windows polished with vinegar, and the tiles swept clean, the shop looked brighter, and more competent, and Lionel had more people to serve, even if they did not know why they had come in.
And if sometimes the two of them took their break out in front of the shop, under the beech tree whose roots pushed up the paving stones, and if sometimes their heads bent together as if they were laughing, or kissing, then what was the harm in that?
‘And what do you think, Jenny, of the carboys?’ Rebecca asked her one day, pointing to the great glass jars in the window.
‘The carboys, Mrs Palmer? Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘What does she mean?’ said Lionel.
‘You wouldnae see it, Lionel, but they are looking dusty.’ Jenny ran her finger across one of them. ‘See?’
‘I suppose I had forgotten about them in recent months.’
‘But more than that,’ said Rebecca, ‘they look old, and they take up a deal of space.’
‘Space?’ said Lionel. ‘That is what they are meant to do. Else people might think we are a … I don’t know … a fishmonger.’
Jenny laughed. ‘They will not!’
‘I know, it is a strange idea,’ said Rebecca, ‘to get rid of them—’
‘Get rid of them? Why?’ Lionel said.
‘Only because we should stand out from the rest. We ought to look modern.’
‘But what would we replace them with?’
‘Fishes, Lionel,’ said Jenny, sucking in her cheeks. ‘That is the latest thing.’
‘Stop!’ He tugged at her apron.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rebecca. ‘Shelves, p’raps, with the latest medicines displayed along it. Though they will have to be displayed in the right way. In the cleanest and most arresting jars and pots – but you can see to that, Jenny. P’raps I shall have a look around and see what we might get.’
And so the next day Rebecca found herself peering in at all the windows of all the pharmacies in town. Some were dirty, some were clean, some were busy and some were desolate. But Mrs Shrivenham’s pharmacy still seemed the most welcoming and the busiest of all. Even though Rebecca got there late in the afternoon it was still filled with people.
‘I am glad to see you, my dear, glad indeed!’ said Mrs Shrivenham. ‘Anthony, look to the shop for a moment, will you, whilst I talk to my friend here. How is your husband?’ They moved along the counter and Mrs Shrivenham dropped her voice. ‘Not well, I hope. That lecture of his was the most execrable load of tosh I have ever heard. At least, it started so. And ended, most unusually, in the defence of women.’ She looked at Rebecca and the corners of her mouth twitched. ‘I think someone – a woman, say – got to his notes before he read them.’
Rebecca dropped her voice. ‘I was very lucky, if you can call it that, to be married to a devil, but I never thought my plan would work out so well!’
‘It was the talk of the town, my dear! Chemists, apothecaries, apprentices and women – especially women – could talk of little else! I think the excitement will carry on for some time. The Society has never seen anything like it; the old boys are in uproar, there is talk of a general meeting to see how such a paper got through. And good, serve them right, that’s what I say, my dear. Serve ’em right!’ She gave a chuckle. ‘I think you have done women a great service.’
‘I am glad for that,’ said Rebecca.
‘You must be, dearie, you must be.’ Mrs Shrivenham swept away a little powder that had fallen on the counter with her fingertips. ‘But did you come here to hear the gossip? You would be welcome any time, my dear, but perhaps you had something else on your mind?’
Rebecca glanced around the shop. Anthony was grinding down something in his pestle and mortar. A woman in a velvet hat was turning over a package of herbs, finely wrapped and tied with ribbon. ‘Now that Mr Palmer keeps to his room, we – I mean, my apprentice and his sweetheart, who used to maid for me – have taken the pharmacy over and are trying to make a go of it.’
‘Mrs Palmer, that is good news!’
‘But since we have lost the trade that comes with opium, the place is much emptier. Which is why I have come to you – for advice. I know hardly anything about the business,’ said Rebecca.
‘Neither did I. Although you will know more than you think. If you come back after the shop closes I will show you all these.’ Mrs Shrivenham waved her arm round the glass bottles behind them labelled: tinct assaf, oil eucalypt, oil juniper, and a thousand more. ’Tis not nearly as hard as it looks. There is a great book, Pharmaceutical Formulas, as heavy as a boulder. That will tell you everything.’ Anthony had come up to ask her something but Mrs Shrivenham waved him off.
‘I wouldn’t like to take up your time,’ said Rebecca.
‘I am glad to do it, Mrs Palmer. You are not imposing on me, not at all, my dear. The men like to make this business seem complicated, as if they alone can hold the keys to it. But it is not, not really, so long as you are taught in the right way.’
‘But do you really think I might take charge of it on myself? Jenny and I have been seeing to the look of the place more than anything. I don’t think I had thought any further.’
‘Of course you can! You need not use the laboratory, if you don’t like. I do very well without any laboratory above my shop.’ Mrs Shrivenham tapped her nose. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. There’s nothing so remarkable about my methods, and this is the key: buy tons where others buy hundredweights, if you have the cash that is, my dear, so you can knock off tuppence or so and still make a nice little profit. And you have the other trick already – ’tis a woman’s trick: make all the articles you sell look as attractive and neat as possible. That is all there is to it, my dear, I
promise you.’
Though there was no tree, no baubles, nor any other sign of the festive season at 19 Albany Street, for Christmas Day Mrs Bunclarke had cooked a turkey. As the smell of it came out of the kitchen Rebecca thought Alexander would be drawn from his room at last. The table looked almost proper, with cranberry sauce on it, and peas, and potatoes, only the tablecloth was stained due to the girl they sent out the laundry to being pregnant, and dust, as ever, was on the mantel, this time because Rebecca was too busy to see to it herself. She must hire another maid.
The table was laid for two. Mrs Bunclarke must know more than her, for she saw him more than Rebecca did now. Perhaps he had said something. Well, she would start without him anyway – the potatoes were giving off steam and the buttered carrots were hardening in the dish. And if Alexander did come, well – she must see him some time. Though when she picked up her knife and fork she found her hands were trembling.
The food was good, and she ate for a while with only the grandfather clock for company. But after a bit she got to thinking about her Christmases as a child, all those ordinary Christmases with her mother frowning over the oven, pulling crackers, toasting the Queen … But now her mother and father were both gone … and Eva too.
She blinked. She would not be lonely, not today. Though perhaps Christmas was a time to be lonely, if you were on your own.
Gabe would be having his Christmas dinner with his parents. It had been more than a month since she had seen him. Their labour, to bring down Alexander, she missed even that, sitting together in the candlelight, with the soles of her feet towards the fire. And now she had one last favour to ask of him, another loan, but this time she hoped to pay it back, and he always did love to help out the poor; she imagined his serious frown as she asked him it, and that was some consolation.
It was not until Boxing Day that Rebecca heard Alexander’s door open and his tread, slower than usual, making its way down the stairs.
‘Is it turkey again?’ he said. ‘I imagine it is. How I hate cold turkey!’
Rebecca put her knife and fork down and half stood up. P’raps Gabe had been right, Alexander would come for her, try to throttle her … But he was not making for her after all, but the sideboard. She tried to take him all in: his face was overgrown with hair, as if by shaving it down for so long now it burst from his skin with desperate vigour. His beard was tinted red, even though the hair on his head was black. His jacket had lost two buttons, the shirt was stained with every kind of brown. His trousers were grey at the seams and hung off him.
He spooned a large amount of cranberry sauce onto his plate. ‘Will you let the cook go, or shall I? Though I dare say we will not find another who will work here. But her food grows worse and worse.’
‘Yesterday was not too bad.’ Rebecca did not mention it had been Christmas Day.
After a few bites Alexander put down his fork. ‘You could have been rich, you know, if you had not destroyed it all. And I could have been famous.’ His eyes glittered as he spoke. ‘Someone else will happen upon my invention, in one year, or two, or twenty, and then they will be rich and famous, and remembered for the greatest invention in history.’
‘I do not care for being rich,’ said Rebecca. ‘Not any more.’
‘I ought to have concentrated on my solution, and not tried to apply it to the wider human good. That was where I fell down …’ Alexander’s eyes drooped and seemed to close, but then he fixed them on her again. ‘Women are devious, calculating and ruled by their emotions.’
‘’Twas a pity you read out the opposite then, to the Society,’ said Rebecca.
‘But why would you want to let emotions govern you? That is what I do not understand. I have been thinking of it over and over. Far better to be reasonable – like a man. My medicine only made you – and Evangeline – and Violet – more stable. Is not life better when lived that way?’
‘Life is better when lived, not half-lived. That is what you have taught me.’
‘A tautology! You were alive when you were on my medicine. A better, more suitable, way of being alive.’
Rebecca paused, her elbows on the table, and looked outside. ‘You are right – sometimes it was better. But, then, and I do not know why – it changed, and was worse. My life was happening somewhere outside of myself. I couldn’t feel anything, not good, not bad.’
‘And that is what I hoped for. Yet you have sabotaged it.’
Rebecca sighed and put down her fork. ‘Someone else will stumble across it, as you say.’
Alexander sighed also and laid his knife and fork together. Thinness did not suit him, the fine bones of his face were too sharp, his eye-sockets too deep.
He stared at her morosely for a moment. ‘I have not lost all hope,’ he said. ‘Something may still be salvageable.’
‘With us, do you mean?’
‘No, no! With the experiment. I have something up my sleeve, so to speak.’ He chuckled mirthlessly, then he scraped back his chair and shuffled from the room, holding on to the door frame for just long enough to leave a greasy mark.
CHAPTER 32
A week later Rebecca was at the pharmacy awaiting delivery of her new orders: French chalk and powdered starch to make up perspiration powder, tincture of capsicum to mix in with eau de Cologne for the relief of dandruff, and much else. It had all been bought with Gabe’s money and she wanted to be sure it was all there.
But instead of French chalk, there was Alexander at the door, sweating about the eyes. Jenny shrank back behind the counter and took hold of Rebecca’s arm. Lionel stood with his hand before his face. But Alexander only strode through with a nod directed at the floor and stamped on upstairs, as he always used to do.
Lionel started up the stairs behind him, but Rebecca shook her head at him. Wait, she mouthed.
‘But what if he has come to stay?’ whispered Lionel.
Rebecca shook her head again and turned her palms to the ceiling, as if to say, What can we do?
Their eyes were fixed on the ceiling. They could hear Alexander thumping about, a bench scraping back with a shriek, a glass beaker dropped. Eventually Alexander reappeared on the stairs, rubbing his cheek.
‘Have you taken anything from up there?’ he said.
‘No, Mr Palmer, nothing at all,’ said Lionel.
‘I could have sworn, I could have sworn I had some acetic anhydride, in the big bottles there on the shelf, but perhaps I …’
‘We have not been up,’ said Rebecca.
‘I could synthesize it, perhaps, by heating potassium acetate with benzoyl chloride, only …’ Alexander came back downstairs as he spoke and pulled on his beard. ‘Only they are hard to find too, and it will take too much time.’ He stared at Rebecca unseeingly. ‘I have no other option, though, I see no other way.’ He was at the door now. ‘Yes, yes, I will do that. Though it takes longer, it will be more satisfying.’ He pulled open the door, still muttering to himself, and went across the outside of the window with his head bent down.
‘What was that about?’ said Jenny.
‘He is gone at least,’ said Rebecca.
‘But what if he returns?’ said Lionel.
The three of them were uneasy all day but he did not come back in. Although when Rebecca returned to Albany Street an unfamiliar figure started up out of the gloom of the parlour and came towards her.
‘You are not in your room?’ she said anxiously.
‘I cannot bear to be in there. I must move about! I mean to ask you something of great importance. My salts – do you have any left, hidden away, say, in your bedroom?’
‘No, I threw the last of them away.’
Alexander turned away and put his face into his hands. ‘And I was hoping, oh! I was sure …’
Rebecca came a little way into the room and put her hand to the back of the sofa. ‘You are feeling the need of your salts.’
‘I could not find the chemicals I needed … They take time to prepare, and I had no time, not enough. And no
w they have passed that damned act I can no longer go to a pharmacy for drops, or even a twist …’ He slumped down on the arm of the sofa. ‘But I will manage! I will brazen it out until tomorrow.’
‘Very well, then,’ said Rebecca. ‘Perhaps I will see you in the morning.’
‘Wait! Tell me. Does it hurt?’
‘Does what hurt?’
‘Tonight – what must I go through?’ He still leaned on the sofa, as if he had not the strength to stand up, worrying at a loose thread.
‘How long have you been taking the salts?’
Alexander faltered. ‘Ever since the talk at the Society.’
‘That is not too long. Not as long as I took them for. It will be easier for you. You will not sleep, though, I doubt. Perhaps you will feel as if ants crawl about under your skin. You will long for a draught more than the religious long for God.’
‘I see.’ Alexander sat back down again and put his hands to his forehead. ‘And I am sweating. Is that usual, or does it mean I have a fever? I think I do! I think I must send for the doctor!’
‘It is not a doctor you need! You must bear it. A freezing kind of sweat is one of the first signs of the sickness. There is no other way but to go on.’
Alexander shook his head again. ‘And I will not be able to master it any other way? Say, through will alone? No, no I can see I will not, for the craving for a draught has begun already. Though I push it from my head a thousand times, it returns, to snap at me.’ He turned his face to the back of sofa. When he looked back his face was damp.
‘It helps not to be alone,’ said Rebecca, with a sigh. ‘Dark thoughts come when you are alone. I will sit with you a while, if you like.’
‘Sit with me?’
‘I have been through this before. It may be some comfort.’
When Alexander put his hand to his face it was trembling. A tear fell onto his fingers. Rebecca knew those tears – they came from the lack of salts. If heroin was a cloak that smothered all, when it was lifted, everything sprung again to unwelcome life. But she would not tell him that – let him feel his tears, let him feel that he could not stop them.
