The Physic Garden Read online

  This was not, you must understand, the Ayrshire needlework currently very much in vogue and advertised in all our newspapers, especially here in Glasgow, but an older design, albeit very similar, the same that was brought by Mr Ruffini to Edinburgh from his native Italy. For that reason alone, I think Jenny could command a high price for her work. There was so little of it to be found here in the west at that time. This explained why she devoted so much of her time to it, and her father encouraged her. He liked to see her working out in the garden, taking the fresh air and sunlight as well. His philosophy was that, ‘folk aye need claithes’, by which he meant that the work of the weavers would never disappear. I don’t think he foresaw the advent of the enormous weaving machines that would supersede his cottage industry within a generation, driving the weavers from their own homes where they were kings, controlling their work as they chose, and into the hands of the factory owners who regulated the lives of their workers in every particular. Or if he did foresee it, he dismissed it as an impossibility. Nobody, he thought, would be able to reproduce the quality of the work done by a weaver, labouring diligently under his own instructions. And perhaps he was right. But that is, I’ll allow, quite another story.

  * * *

  Once or twice, Jenny would rush out and intercept me and tell me that her father was in the weaving shop from which he might emerge at any moment, and we had better not be seen together in the house. Then we would walk a little way away and sit among the trees, just talking, just passing the time of day with daffing and laughing the way lads and lassies do and have done since time began. Once or twice she let me take her hand. When I kissed her, it was very cautiously because it was such a new thing for me to kiss a lassie. Her lips were dry and warm. The touch of them made me feel strange. I had the clean scent of her breath in my nostrils, honey, which I think she had been eating, and something else that made my heart pound and my ears sing. Then I looked up and saw her sister standing watching us, with her doll clutched in one hand and her thumb in her mouth. She had grown somewhat since that first day when Jenny had taken the swarm and she had looked on. She was watching, aye watching us, her eyes large and dark, hazel eyes, nothing like her sister’s bright blue. Jenny looked around and saw her too. She rose up swiftly and flew over to her.

  ‘You don’t say aethin’ aboot this! D’you hear me now? If you say aethin’ at a” – she cast about her for a sufficiently horrible threat – ‘I’ll tak’ Maisie,’ (for that was the name of the wee rag doll) ‘I’ll tak’ Maisie and put her at the back of the fire. There now!’

  I thought the child would greet but she did nothing of the sort. She tucked Maisie safely under her arm, stuck out her tongue at her sister, turned around and flounced off down the path. I don’t think she believed a word of the threat but the gravity of the situation must have struck her forcibly, for as far as I know, she didn’t tell.

  Gilbert was a different matter. Gilbert was the boy who worked for Sandy Caddas and I think right from the start he disliked me. I don’t know whether it was because, young as he was, he was over-fond of Jenny or because he sensed my dislike of him. He was twelve, a scrawny, undersized lad who lived nearby with his mother and came to work for Sandy every day. He looked ill fed, and sometimes there were bruises on his face and his arms and shins. I knew Sandy treated him well enough so could only assume that his mother, or perhaps her man, who was Gilbert’s stepfather, was not above giving him a beating or a kicking. I didn’t enquire too closely. In fact, I ignored him as far as was possible. I’ll allow I didn’t like him much. I know I should have felt sorry for him. I was sorry. But he irritated me. He sniffed constantly, his face was covered in raw blemishes and he had a way of grinning, like a dog will grin at you with curled lips, to avert a beating. He was very polite to me, to my face, calling me Mr Lang, but there was an edge to the way he said the words, and I thought that if he could do me an ill turn, he probably would. I found him repellent. Jenny was always kind to him, and perhaps that too disposed me to dislike him. But she had a deal of sympathy for him, defending him more often than not. Sandy Caddas kept him very busy and we seldom had more than a glimpse of him, trailing after his master, or working with him at the loom and being roundly – albeit only verbally – abused when he got the threads in a fankle.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Whitebeam

  I think at that time I was as happy as I have ever been, before or since. Having got rid of the unwanted encumbrance of the apothecary business, I was working hard in the garden, learning more of my trade with each passing season and growing in confidence. I had complete charge of the physic garden as well, although the allowances for plants and manure were made to Thomas, who promptly handed them over to me, to spend as I saw fit. I think we both knew that there, at least, we were fighting a losing battle. Besides, we had another and perhaps still more serious problem.

  A little over twenty years previously, the anatomist William Hunter had died in London and, in view of his old associations with the place, he had left his entire collection to the University at Glasgow. It was the result of a lifetime’s interest in many aspects of scholarship, minerals and archaeology included, and it contained books, manuscripts and artworks, as well as all kinds of anatomical curiosities.

  ‘It’s worth a fortune,’ observed Thomas. ‘And they will be very glad indeed to have it, but it is something of a poisoned chalice.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I wonder where they are going to put it all?’

  I think he already knew what their plans were and had been reluctant to tell me because he also knew what my reaction would be. Hunter had been so concerned for its preservation as a single collection that he had left a massive sum, £8,000, an amount of money which was almost beyond my comprehension, so that the university could build a museum to house it. There was to be a lecture hall as well, both for the benefit of students and for the general public to gain admittance and ‘enlightenment’, as he put it in his will. The museum would have to be built but, as usual, this would not be without a certain amount of debate.

  I had learned by then, after so many years of labouring alongside these men of intellect, that nothing whatsoever could be done in the college without a good deal of argument. If these people were, by some miracle of transposition, to be precipitated into the real world, the world outside those venerable walls, I am convinced that they could never survive. They would not be able to so much as decide what to eat for supper, or whether they should change a shirt or wear it for one more day, so reluctant were they to determine anything without what they called ‘informed debate’. With so many opinionated people gathered in one place, it was inevitable I suppose. And who am I to complain? I had spent all my young years in and around the college and it must have influenced me too, even if the harsh realities of earning bread for the table and fuel for the fire were foremost in my mind each day.

  During those first years of my appointment as gardener, Faculty was still much occupied with arguments over the siting of the museum. These seemed to be centred upon whether the teaching of anatomy and midwifery should be kept separate from the housing of Hunter’s great collection. Some wanted the two to be amalgamated into one building, while others argued that the elegance of the museum would definitely be harmed by the inclusion of facilities for the teaching of anatomy which was at that time and still is, for all I know, a dirty, smelly and far from elegant occupation. Parallels with butchery spring all too easily to mind. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, many of the professors considered the students to be wholly undesirable, a necessary evil, an inconvenient interruption to the real business of scholarship.

  Besides, the mob outside the college walls (and who more alarming than the Glasgow mob, in full cry!) were known to be readily inflamed by any suggestion of grave robbing. And they invariably associated anatomy with the unlawful ‘resurrection’ of bodies for dissection. Always allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, they were probably right in their ass
umption that the anatomists were so desperate for corpses upon which to practise their new skills, that they would seldom seek to question the provenance of the cadavers on offer. They would simply take the goods the gods provided and do what they wished with them.

  Eventually, the authorities decided upon the physic garden as a site for the museum. It was fully enclosed, which would allow them to protect their precious collection from any possible incursions by the unwashed of the city who might wish to protest about the violence being inflicted upon the dead in the name of progress. The fact that the building reduced an already besieged physic garden to something the size of a pocket handkerchief didn’t seem to concern them. But the way in which the new building ate into the already meagre and polluted area of the garden meant that I had to spend even more time foraging about the surrounding countryside for specimens for Thomas’s lectures.

  I must say that I enjoyed these excursions more, the more my knowledge grew. Occasionally, Thomas would even find, or perhaps he would make, the time to accompany me and we would scavenge about quite happily together, like lads let out of school. He taught me all he knew of botany in the field, and I was a regular sponge and absorbed everything he cared to tell me.

  Once he brought bread and cheese, and we ensconced ourselves down beside a burn in the hills, somewhere to the south west of the city. We ate our makeshift meal with the song of water on stone as an accompaniment, and then we lay flat on our bellies, side by side, watching the eddies and dipping our fingers into the icy waters that had come tumbling down from the narrow, birchfilled glen behind us, but which were now flowing more smoothly between flat sun-warmed stones.

  ‘Can you guddle for trout?’ he asked, brushing crumbs from his hands into the water.

  ‘Aye. Well, I know how to dae it, but I would not say I am a master of the art.’

  He nudged me, grinning. Although the water was cold, it was a warm day and before we knew it, we were in our bare feet, wading cautiously into the burn and standing there in companionable silence, peering down into the water. Neither of us caught anything that day, but I mind yet the fishes rising to the crumbs and flies on the surface, the breeze that lifted our hair, the scent of grasses and the sight and sound of swifts and swallows, soaring and diving all around us, hunting those same flies, their high, sharp calls piercing the air.

  At such times I would find myself torn between disappointment that I would not be able to visit Jenny, and the absolute pleasure of his company. Not once did he suggest that I should introduce him to Jenny on those occasions. He never even mentioned her, and I never raised the matter either, much too happy to be his companion and confidant for however short a time, regretting only that such occasions were so few, so far between.

  * * *

  All the same, I was surprised when he suggested that an excursion farther afield might be in order: a journey to the island of Arran, which I had never even seen at that time, although its peaks and glens are clearly visible from the coast to the south and west of this city, when they are not obscured by all-too-frequent clouds and mist. But then I had never had occasion to travel so far. He said that we should be away some time – a week or more – and he made me read a volume from his library by one Martin Martin in order, I think, to tantalise me as much as to inform me.

  It was called A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland. I have a copy of it in my own library now and often find myself rereading it, although it was written more than a hundred years ago. Martin had visited the Isle of Arran and reported, among much else, that there was a ‘valuable curiosity in this isle which they call Baul Muluy, that is Molingus his stone globe’. This Molingus was, I believe, very nearly a contemporary of our own patron saint Mungo, living only half a century later, and dying a martyr to his Christian cause. Martin describes the globe in some detail.

  ‘It is a green stone, much like a globe in figure, about the bigness of a goose egg. The virtue of it is to remove stitches from the sides of sick persons, by laying it close to the place affected; and if the patient does not outlive the distemper they say the stone removes out of its bed of its own accord. The natives use this stone for swearing decisive oaths upon it.

  ‘They ascribe another extraordinary virtue to it, and it is this: the credulous vulgar firmly believe that if this stone is cast among the front of an enemy they will all run away and that as often as the enemy rallies, if this stone is cast among them, they will lose courage and retire. They say that MacDonald of the Isles carried this stone about him and that victory was always on his side when he threw it among the enemy. This stone is now in the custody of Margaret Miller, alias Mackintosh. She lives in Baelliminich and preserves the globe with abundance of care. It is wrapped up in fair linen cloth and about that there is a piece of woollen cloth; and she keeps it still locked up in her chest when it is not given out to exert its qualities.’

  ‘I should like very much to see that stone and test its medicinal properties,’ said Thomas, with a laugh.

  ‘And do you think it would be efficacious?’

  ‘Who knows what might happen if there was a belief in it? If I were one of the credulous vulgar, who knows what it might do for me?’

  ‘Perhaps we could bring it back with us and cast it before Faculty.’

  ‘Perhaps we could. But you will come with me?’

  ‘I’d like nothing better. But what will Faculty say if their gardener goes jaunting off on a sea voyage?’

  ‘Oh, Faculty have already agreed,’ he said, airily. ‘And all without the assistance of Baul Molingus. I have already asked them. You see this is in the nature of a collecting trip. Our first real collecting trip together, William. And perhaps the first of many more to come. I hope so at any rate!’

  ‘How did you persuade them?’

  ‘There is a tree grows on the island. A whitebeam of great beauty and interest, which is only to be found there. It is the Sorbus pseudofennica or Arran service tree, although I have also heard it called the bastard mountain ash.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘No, you would not. It was discovered only a handful of years ago, in Glen Diomhan at the north end of the island. In essence this tree seems to be some rare product of the rowan and the whitebeam together. I should like to see it, to draw its leaves, to bring a small specimen back with me if I could.’

  ‘It would never survive in the physic garden.’

  ‘No, it would not, although I have not said as much to Faculty. But perhaps my uncle’s garden in Ayrshire might be a better home for it. Will you come with me, William? I should very much like to have your company.’

  * * *

  It was a very long time ago, and now I am hard put to it to write the details of that voyage. I remember it more as a series of pictures, like a man looking at illustrations in some fine old volume. My mother fussed most dreadfully, I know that, and I’m sure she thought we would both be drowned and that she would never see either of us again. You would have thought we were sailing halfway round the world, rather than across the sea to Arran. She begged and pleaded with me not to go, but wild horses would not have prevented me.

  I know that we took a gabbert from the Broomielaw down to the coast, and I have an image of the tall Merchants’ Steeple on the skyline and the smoke of the city behind us, with the women doing their washing on the banks of the river as we went past. From the port, we could see the Isle of Arran lurking on the horizon, all misty peaks and troughs, like the blessed isle of the ancient Celts. Wearing borrowed oilskins against the weather, we embarked on a small sailing vessel which carried us over the Firth of Clyde. Thomas pointed out to me that the mountains are said to be in the shape of a sleeping warrior who will awaken when he is needed, but I’m afraid I couldn’t see it myself. Besides, although the firth was reasonably calm, I was very sick and disorientated, especially when we reached the mid point between the mainland and the island, and each shore seemed so very far away that the long horizontals on all sides, with t
he dazzling height of the sky above and the heaving green waters below, made my head spin. I was imagining all kinds of monsters down there. Once or twice, there would be a swell on the surface, and we would see some great creatures swimming by. The sailors said they were called basking sharks. They roamed these waters in profusion and were harmless enough creatures, being quite without teeth, except that they could overturn your boat if you did not keep a sharp lookout for them.

  We had brought food with us, and Thomas, who seemed quite indifferent to the motion, encouraged me to eat. ‘An empty stomach does the mal de mer no good at all,’ he told me. ‘You must eat and it will settle you.’

  Not a morsel could I manage, and the movement of the vessel induced a dreadful dizziness and stupefaction, followed by a dry retching which was most unpleasant. I felt chilled to the bone and utterly miserable. The sailors laughed at me behind their hands until Thomas spoke sharply to them, whereupon they looked sheepish and ignored me. I had begun to think that my mother had been right after all, that we never would arrive, but so dreadful were the sensations induced by the motion that, for a while, I confess I didn’t care whether we arrived or not. Death seemed a good and desirable option.

  Then – quite suddenly so it seemed – the misty distances resolved themselves into land, we were in the lee of the island, the air had the scent of grass and other growing things upon it, and miraculously my sickness evaporated. I felt quite hungry.