The Apothecary Page 0,5

the paned glass door open and held it for me. The shop had a strange smell, musty and herbal and metallic all at once. Behind the counter was a wall of jars. A balding man on a wheeled ladder, halfway up the wall, pulled a jar down. He seemed not to have noticed us, but then he spoke. “I’ll just be a moment,” he said.

He carefully climbed down the ladder with the jar in one hand, set it on the counter, and looked up at us, ready for our needs. He had wire-rimmed glasses and the air of someone who didn’t rush things, who paid close attention to each particular task before moving on to the next.

“We’re looking for three hot water bottles,” my father told him.

“Of course.”

“And how about some chocolate bars?”

The apothecary shook his head. “We have them sometimes. Not often, since the war.”

“Since the war?” my father said, and I could see him calculating: twelve years without a steady supply of chocolate. He looked a little faint. I wondered if he could get a prescription for chocolate from a doctor. Then I could have some, too.

“Come back again,” the apothecary said, seeing his dismay. “We may have some soon.”

“Okay,” my father said. “We’d better get some aspirin, too.” I could tell he was embarrassed by his undisguised need for candy, and he always made jokes when he was embarrassed. I could feel one coming. “And how about something for my daughter, to cure homesickness?”

“Dad,” I said.

The apothecary looked at me. “You’re American?”

I nodded.

“And you’ve moved here to a cold flat with cold bedrooms that need hot water bottles?”

I nodded again, and the apothecary guided the ladder along the back wall on its metal wheels.

“I was joking,” my father said.

“But you are homesick?” the apothecary asked, over his shoulder.

“Well—yes,” I said.

He climbed the ladder and chose two jars, tucking one beneath his arm to climb down. At the counter, he unscrewed the lids and measured two different powders, one yellow and one brown, into a small glass jar. “The brown is aspen, the yellow is honeysuckle,” he said. To my father, he said, “Neither will hurt her.” To me, he said, “Put about a dram of each—do you know how much a dram is? About a teaspoon of each in a glass of water. It won’t take effect right away, but it might make you feel better. And it might not. People have different constitutions.”

“We really don’t—” my father said.

“It’s free of charge,” the apothecary said. “It’s for the young lady.” Then he rang up the hot water bottles and the bottle of aspirin.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’ll want some pennies, too, for the wall heater,” he said, handing me our change in a fistful of big brown coins that clinked, rather than jingled, into my hand.

CHAPTER 3

St Beden’s School

The next morning, I swallowed my aspen and honeysuckle, over my mother’s halfhearted objections, to prepare myself for my first day at St Beden’s School. Showing up at a new school is never easy, especially in the middle of the year, when friendships are already established, and hierarchies understood. In England, all of that was heightened to a terrifying degree. St Beden’s was a grammar school, and to get in you had to pass a test. Most kids failed the test and went to something called a “secondary modern school,” which wasn’t as good, and where the kids were just biding their time before they could get jobs. So the students who got in to the grammar schools thought—rightly—that they were on top of the pile.

The school was in a stone building with arches and turrets that seemed very old to me but wasn’t old at all, in English terms. It was built in 1880, so it was practically brand-new. It had dark-panelled walls inside, and paintings of old men in elaborate neckties, and somehow it had escaped bomb damage. Two teachers walking down the hall wore black academic gowns, and they looked ominous and forbidding, like giant bats. The students all wore dark blue uniforms with white shirts—jackets and ties for the boys, and pleated skirts for the girls. I didn’t have a uniform yet, and wore my bright green Hepburn trousers and a yellow jumper, which looked normal in LA, but here looked clownishly out of place. I might as well have carried a giant sign saying I DON’T BELONG.

The school secretary, whose tight grey curls reminded me of a sheep, gave me my class schedule. As a