The Physic Garden Read online

  I’ll not deny, a large part of the pleasure I took in it sprang from his gratitude. The warmth of the man. The way he would shake my hand like a friend. He was only a few years older than me, but he was born to quite different things and I was young enough to believe in heroes. His students were right. When I could spare the time to attend his classes – not half as often as I would have liked – I found that he was an exceedingly good teacher, lively, knowledgeable and generous. He treated me no differently from the way he treated the other students, even though they would cast scornful glances at me and make unkind remarks. In fact, I would have said that he treated me with even more warmth. He was, at that time, a god in my eyes. I would have gathered more than prickly whins and nettles to please him. I think I would have gone deep into the underworld for him at that time, a surrogate Orpheus in pursuit of his Eurydice.

  * * *

  As far as I remember, the day that I first met Jenny Caddas was the same day that he gave me the book, although I know that memories can be deceptive. They sometimes slide together and no two people will have the same remembrance of the same event, each one convinced that he is right. But the two events are conjoined in my mind. It is the same book that lies before me now, on my desk, the book that came to stand for all that we shared. I was tired and footsore on that day, and later than I had intended because I had lingered longer than I should have at Jenny’s house. I had arranged to meet Thomas in the college garden but he was nowhere to be seen, and I thought he might have given up on me and gone home to his house in the town, so I sat down on a stone bench, opened my leather bag and began to unwrap the plants, making sure that I had all that were required and that none had suffered too much on the way back to town. I became so engrossed in the task that I never heard him as he came along the path in the dusk.

  He threw himself onto the bench beside me. ‘You’ve got them all?’

  ‘Aye, most o’ them.’

  ‘I knew I could rely on you,’ he said.

  I stretched out my legs. I was tired, but only in the way you are when it’s almost a pleasure to you: not real exhaustion, so much as the kind of weariness that induces sound sleep. ‘I’ve foraged three miles and more from the town and walked three or four times that much.’

  ‘I know it’s demanding, William.’

  ‘No’ just walked either. I’ve been chased by dogs with sharp teeth and lads with stones and an auld wifie with a ladle and she was much the worst of the three!’

  It was true enough. People in the countryside, especially so close to the city, were suspicious of strangers, seeing robbers and vagabonds everywhere. And perhaps with good reason for we lived in lawless times and still do. The dogs that guarded the cottages were prone to nipping at your heels on sound preventative principles and even the young lads who were marauding through the fields, meant to be tending to the crops and scaring the birds, would toss a stone or even a boulder at you as soon as look at you. But the old women were by far the worst and even if you were to stop and ask for directions or a drink, they would likely hunt you from their doors with whatever was to hand, be it a besom or a garden rake. Jenny had been unusual in being so friendly, but I flattered myself that maybe she had liked the look of me and that was the reason why she had – against her better judgement – allowed me to help her and invited me into her house.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Thomas. But he looked amused rather than genuinely apologetic. He brought out his flask and offered me a drink again. It had become something of a habit between us, and my reward for all my efforts on his behalf.

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Tried what?’

  ‘The distillation.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, no. I haven’t. Don’t put ideas into my head.’

  ‘You’d have the knowledge right enough. As a medical man!’

  ‘I would. But I don’t have the time. And I’d rather not fall foul of the exciseman.’

  ‘Ah weel, it would be one way …’

  ‘One way of what?’

  ‘Of getting some siller.’

  He frowned. He didn’t have to ask why I needed siller. He knew.

  ‘Your apothecary business?’

  ‘It is going badly. You would hardly credit how badly.’

  ‘Oh, I think I would.’ He sounded sad rather than angry.

  ‘Disastrously’ would have been a better word. My mother could hardly stir herself to tend to the shop after she had seen to the needs of the younger children. There was money owed to the moneylender. Even now, with high summer approaching, there were not enough herbs and plants to supply the shop and the botanical lectures. Not in the physic garden and not even with what I gathered for Thomas. He could use all that I could fetch him and more. Why had I ever started on such a venture?

  My only excuse had been my desperation about money when I had been unsure as to whether I would win the gardener’s position. And my mother had merely done as she was told, submitting to the will of a young man, too daft to know better, submitting because she was still smitten by grief. If my father had been alive and had suggested such a thing she would have persuaded him otherwise. But then he was a sensible man, and he would never have suggested such a thing, nor permitted me to indulge in it. He knew his own limitations and mine.

  ‘Do you not have enough to do with your time, what with the garden and all these?’ Thomas gestured at the plants. ‘I doubt if you could keep up to this and your apothecary venture and attend lectures as well.’

  ‘I cannot keep up to them. That’s the problem. And my mother is no hand with the herbs.’

  I wondered later if he was worried about me or worried that I would not be able to gather specimens for him. But to give the man his due, I think he was already aware of the difficulties and was trying to find a way to help me.

  ‘It is not an easy trade, you know,’ he told me. ‘Even for those who are born to it. It is not just a question of plants, but of scholarship. It tends to run in families, with folk passing the learning down from one to another over the years. And often it is the women who are the keepers of such knowledge. Folk talk of auld wives’ tales, but the auld wives can be repositories of profound learning and should not be dismissed out of hand. Or so I have always thought.’

  ‘I thought my mother would learn. And I hoped that my young sisters would help her.’

  ‘Your foolish sisters?’ He glanced over at me with a smile that was both rueful and foxy, making me smile too. ‘When you have told me that it is a moot point which is the more lazy of the two, Susanna or Jean?’

  ‘It was stupid of me.’

  ‘Not stupid. I would never call you stupid. But over-optimistic maybe.’

  ‘It’s what the old gardener before my father did, you know. He and his wife took a shop and his wife made all kinds of remedies with the spare herbs from the gardens. It was a very successful venture I believe.’

  ‘Aye but that was maybe back in the days when the physic garden was in a better state than it is now. And perhaps his wife already had the skills.’

  ‘She had.’

  ‘It worries me that you are tied into such a venture. I wonder if there is anything that I can do to help you.’

  ‘I doubt it. You may be a fine botanist and a better physician, Doctor Brown, but I cannot see you making distillations and medications for me, and I fear my mother will never learn to do it.’

  I had hoped that the apothecary business might be a way of adding to our meagre income over the summer, so that we could survive enough winters for the lads to be sufficiently grown to earn money on their own account. For Rab to grow strong and healthy. For wee Rab – as I thought of it in my darker moments when I lay awake, turning things over and over in my mind – to survive.

  The moneylender had come to our door, asking if there was anything he could do for us, sniffing out the needy like all such parasites who prey on the poor. I had taken the money, and had negotiated with the owner of one of the pro
perties adjacent to the university for the use of his front room as a shop. But, more often than not these days, it sat empty and dusty, while my poor mother found one excuse after another not to be there. And I could not do it for her. There were not enough hours in the day for me to do it.

  Even when she was there, she did little more than footer about the place, boiling up evil-smelling potions that fermented in their bottles and occasionally exploded, sending shards of glass and foul smells everywhere. Nobody would ever pay her money for these things and I would have been afraid to sell them lest the cure prove infinitely worse than the disease and ultimately kill somebody.

  The best thing she ever made was a variety of ale from the tips of the young nettles, and, later in the year, a sparkling beverage conjured from the creamy elderflowers that were everywhere to be found, the elder being a most prolific tree at seeding itself in this part of the world. Both of these were palatable and could – I suppose – be deemed to be health giving. But this was plain cookery, kitchen brewing rather than medicine and she felt herself on surer ground, as she also did when adding the green shoots of ramsons, with their strong flavour, to white cheese, making a delicious concoction that had been a favourite with my father.

  Thomas had offered to pay me extra for my excursions into the countryside on his behalf but I was reluctant to take anything from him and he knew it. I think it was why he had suggested I attend his lectures. I was afraid of spoiling our friendship. We never felt like servant and master, but I had an inkling that if I allowed him to pay me, it would subtly alter something between us. Maybe I was wrong. Now that I have been in business for so many years, I can see that it is possible to have a good financial relationship with a man and yet be on friendly terms. But back then, it seemed that we were negotiating some precarious pathway, feeling our way into a friendship that was rare for both of us, and I wanted to do nothing to upset the balance between us.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Gift

  That evening, with the sun slanting into the garden and my mind full of thoughts of Jenny, I watched Thomas lifting the plants, handling them carefully, sniffing here and there at some herb, rubbing a leaf between his fingers. I can close my eyes and I am back there. I am in my flesh as it was then, healthy and vigorous, with all my senses acutely aware and the blood of youth coursing through my veins.

  In the distance, somebody was singing in a high, clear voice. It might have been a girl or a young lad, his voice unbroken. It was impossible to tell, but I remember a sudden awareness that the sound was immeasurably beautiful, enough to bring a tear to the eye. I think I was in that state of exhaustion that provokes sentimentality. Nearby, a few scholars were playing at a game of ball, laughing and calling to each other. The sounds seemed to echo off the old buildings in the warmth of the evening, making a canticle with the swallows that circled deliriously among the stones.

  ‘These are very good,’ he said. ‘But best put them away before they dry out. I wonder if we’ve got enough?’

  ‘To be honest with you, Doctor Brown,’ I said with emphasis, ‘I’ve lost count. And I’m very loath to go out again the day!’ I felt suddenly very tired but it was the thought of all I had to do, of all who relied on me, that exhausted me and not the walking I had done that day. It was as much fatigue of the mind, I think, as the body. ‘How many students did you say?’

  ‘Thirty,’ he said, with a grin. ‘And I have no intention of sending you out again the day. And I’ve told you before, my friends call me Thomas, Mr Lang.’

  ‘Aye, but what would Faculty say. The gardener hobnobbin’ with the nabbery!’ Whisky always loosened my tongue. Afterwards I would look back on my own effrontery with something like shame, but it never seemed to bother him. He never seemed to think the worse of me for it.

  ‘Faculty wouldn’t approve,’ he said. ‘But what would Faculty know of plants or herbs and their uses?’

  ‘Or gardening for that matter!’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘Which is why the professor is glad to have you lecturing in his stead. Otherwise he would have to make shift to do all this for himself.’

  ‘It’s true. Jeffray has no great love for botany.’

  ‘No, he’s a regular sawbones.’

  Thomas regarded me narrowly. He already knew my feelings about dissection, the students and their professors who all seemed so ghoulishly attached to cutting up bodies in the name of science.

  A necessary evil, Thomas called it, during our frequent debates on the subject. I remained unconvinced.

  ‘Each to his own,’ he said. ‘But they are never so glad of me that they will pay me. I get only what the students are prepared to give, you know.’

  ‘All teachers should be paid so!’

  ‘Then some of them would die in poverty.’

  ‘Much the same as the rest of us. But not you, I think. They would pay you readily enough. And besides, my heart bleeds for you.’ But I said that last under my breath. Sometimes, like now, when I was footsore and weary, I was possessed by rage at the difference between us, at the fact that his idea of poverty was – for me at any rate – riches beyond the dreams of avarice. And because I was relaxed and friendly with him, I felt at liberty to say so. Or almost.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said my heart fair bleeds for you!’

  ‘Ach, I’ll not quarrel with you!’

  It was what he always said. He never would quarrel with me. Even at the bitter end of our friendship, I think he resolved that he would not quarrel with me.

  ‘Will you not?’

  ‘No. Not today or ever, William. But why are you so angry with me all of a sudden?’

  ‘I am not angry with you, but I was thinking that they should never have let the type foundry go ahead. And building it so close to the garden as well. And if Professor Jeffray was more interested in plants and less obsessed with anatomy …’

  ‘Printing must always take precedence over planting. In the college, at any rate.’

  ‘Aye, but if they are offering the young scholars botany lectures, they need plants. Thirty specimens of every plant on your syllabus? What do Faculty know of plants and their classification? What do they know of green and growing things, if it comes to that?’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Will,’ he said. ‘Never let the uncertain truth get in the way of a good sound prejudice.’

  He had taken to shortening my name sometimes, a gesture of familiarity and affection. I was ‘Will’ to nobody but him, not even my mother, nor ever have been since, not to a single soul.

  ‘What’s uncertain about it?’

  ‘The truth is that we probably need both. Gardens and books. And anatomy. We need that too. We dissect plants so why not the human body? Which is, after all, only another growing thing. Whiles, a very green and growing thing.’

  I thought he was making mock of me, but gently, as was always his way.

  I stared at him, thinking that we would never agree on this point. He was right, of course. I could see that. I can see it now. But I could never feel it, in my heart, in my blood and bones, and that was the trouble. I repacked my bag and handed it over to him. He would store the plants in cool, damp conditions until his lecture, the following day, and give me back the bag for my next expedition.

  I brushed the earth from my hands.

  ‘Aye, but which bodies?’ I asked. ‘Which bodies do you cut apart?’

  ‘Whichever you can get, I suppose,’ he said, light-heartedly.

  I thought it best to change the subject then, too tired to think of further arguments, so I said only, ‘I helped a lassie take a swarm of bees today!’ Besides, Jenny had been on my mind. I wanted to talk about her, the way you do when you like somebody, and I thought that I should not mention her to my mother. Not yet.

  ‘Did you?’ he asked with interest. ‘And was she bonny?’

  ‘Well I thocht so. She was standing there with her skep and the swarm was, oh it was a muckle big
swarm, hanging in the hedge like this great … you could hear it … like this creature, this living creature just hanging there. And she was tall and slender as a birk, barefoot and all. I cut the branch for her. It’s mair of a problem when they’re clustering on a fence post or at least that’s what she was telling me.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever taken a swarm myself.’ He was really interested now, not just humouring me.

  ‘Have ye no? Well I expect you’ve aye got a body to do it for you. Some gardener or other!’

  ‘And how many swarms have you taken yourself, Will?’

  He was determined to ignore my contrariness. Determined to keep his temper.

  I started to laugh, in spite of myself. ‘None! And that’s the truth. My father used to do it, and I would watch him.’

  ‘Did you get stung today?’

  ‘Aye. Just the once.’ I held out my finger to him.

  ‘Poor William!’

  ‘The lassie said that when she’s stung, it never even hurts her. She cannae feel it!’

  ‘Now that is interesting,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a blessing for her.’

  ‘But I mean as a doctor I find that interesting. Why should that be, I wonder?’

  ‘Some folk get very ill.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen a man die from a single bee sting. He swelled up and couldn’t breathe and there was nothing to be done and so he died. And yet you tell me your lassie never feels a thing?’

  ‘She says she likes bees and the bees like her fine.’