Chapter 7 #3
“Depends on the dose. It’s heart medicine when done properly,” I continue.
“You know, by actual chemists. The old name was folk’s glove—fairies’ fingers.
Although whether the fairies got their hands stuck in the bell shape or whether the flower was theirs to begin with depends on who’s telling the story.
In the old days the leaves were used for dropsy, and they killed as many people as they cured.
Nowadays people know that foxgloves are poisonous. Even cows seem to know that.”
“Aye,” he says, as if remembering something specific. “There was a woman in the village south of here who knew the right dose for it. Saved a few lives.”
“When was this?”
“Before the road came in.”
I look at him, wondering when that was. He doesn’t return the look. He sets the foxglove gently back in the press.
“Beautiful, but with the disposition to be dangerous,” he murmurs, then glances at me. “Think I might have to call you foxglove.”
Please do, I think pathetically as my cheeks go bright red.
“There’s eyebright on your spit.” He turns back to the bench. “On the moor side, the way to the road. The small one. White flower, yellow throat.”
“Euphrasia.”
“Aye. The old name was the herb for the eye.”
“The doctrine of signatures!” I can’t help myself, he opened the door and I’m waltzing right in. “It looks like an eye, so it’s good for the eye. Pliny said so.”
“Pliny was a fool with a good library.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. He almost smiles. My god, I’m practically giddy. Aside from my father and a few folks at college, I don’t think I’ve ever used Pliny—as in Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist who all of botany owes a great debt to—in a real conversation before.
“A good-hearted fool, perhaps,” I tell him. “Did you know he died while trying to rescue villagers from the Mount Vesuvius eruption?”
From the quirk of his lips, I can tell he already knew that, but he says, “As I said, a fool.”
“Anyway,” I go on, “I think Effie grew it. Or did she let it grow in? I can’t tell where Effie’s garden ends, and the moor begins.”
“She let it grow in.” His hand is flat on the bench. “She used it for headaches, mostly. Some of the women on the coast still do. There’s an old way of brewing it—you steep it cold, never boiled. The heat takes the medicine out.”
He moves past me to the back wall, and the air shifts cool against my arm where he passes. He smells like the country—the salt water of the loch, the smoke of peat, maybe a bit of sandalwood. Whatever it is, it’s distinctive and lovely.
“You’ll want eye-bolts up there.” He’s looking at the rafters. “For drying a proper line.”
“I’ll look around the cottage for some; there’s a lot of stuff in there.”
He reaches up to indicate the spot, and his shirt pulls tight across his back and shoulders in a way that makes me gawk. I quickly look down at the bench, as if it’s suddenly fascinating.
“And leave the door propped after you’ve worked,” he says, lowering his arm. “An hour or so. The damp gets in and won’t get out otherwise. It’s the way the buildings are here, they all bend to the weather’s ways sooner or later.”
I bend to pick up a length of cord he’s left coiled on the floor, and when I straighten, he’s closer than he was.
Not crowding me. Just closer. Half a step into the space my body had thought was mine.
I don’t step back. I probably should, but I don’t.
He’s looking at the rafters and then at me and then at the rafters again.
“You’re going to need a stool.” He eyes me up and down.
“A stool?” I whisper, aware of how close he is.
“For the rafters. You’re tall, but you’re not quite tall enough.”
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Right.”
He moves away. The air goes warmer where he was, and the warmth feels almost like a loss.
We work. He shows me where the iron will hold a nail and where it won’t. He hands me things—the hammer, a length of cord, a small block of wood to wedge under the bench’s short leg. Every time his hand comes near mine, he doesn’t quite touch me, and the distance feels strangely like torture.
When the racks are done, he steps back and looks at the shed the way a person looks at a job that’s finished, brushing his hands together.
“That’ll do,” he announces.
He turns toward the door. He stops at the frame with one hand on the wood, the sun coming in across the bay and outlining him.
“You’ll want the place to yourself now,” he says, glancing at me over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to go,” I blurt out.
He turns slightly and looks at me, almost in surprise.
“Iris…”
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s best I don’t come to your cottage again. Not unless you ask me to.”
I stare at him for a moment, feeling slightly off-balance, like everything in the shed has been skewed a couple of degrees. In all the strange things this strange man has said, this one might just take the cake.
“Okay. Well, how can I ask you to if I don’t see you?”
“You’ll come find me when you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
He looks at me for a long moment, a strange intensity passing over his face like a cloud.
“You’ll know, Foxglove.”
Then he turns and walks out of the shed, heading toward the road. I’m left in my new studio with my hands on the workbench and the heater humming softly under it and the smell of grass and salt coming in through the open door and I honestly couldn’t tell you what the fuck just happened.
He said I’ll know. Know what exactly, I’m not sure. Ready for what, I don’t know that either.
But it seems I’ll find out soon.