me how Mr. Pramal might not have approved of the union between you and Mr. Singh.”
“Yes, that’s right. I think he thought my husband could have done better.” She smiled at Maisie. “And perhaps he could, but he’s got me—and Pramal can see now that we do all right, me and Singh.” She pointed to the bindi in the center of her forehead. “You can tell I give it my best. I get on very well with people around here, now they’re used to me.”
Maisie nodded. “Mrs. Singh, you seem to know a lot about all these spices and herbs.” Maisie held up her hand towards a series of shelves filled with jars of spices. “Can you cure ailments with these powders and petals? Do you think they really help the body, or do you think it’s all in the mind? Could it be that because people believe in the cure, then it works?”
Mrs. Singh set down the ornate silver spoon she was using to measure the powder onto a small weighing scale. “That’s a fair question, Miss Dobbs, and one I would have asked myself, but you know, we all have our cures, don’t we? I thought of that when I was first told to put a little of that powder—the deeper yellow one over there—into my food each day. I was told it would help the pains in my shoulders, where I wrenched myself carrying shells at the munitions factory in the war. Oh, it would play up on a cold, damp day and give me trouble. But it helped all right, and if I forget to put a little sprinkle in my soup, I know all about it again after a few days. I don’t believe there’s any mind over matter there. And think of us, you know, the English. You can go anywhere in this country of ours and find the locals use something they pick themselves for their ailments, whether it’s comfrey, peppermint, or a sprig of rosemary. My mother swore by a cup of her own ginger beer for a digestive upset, and if you had a bee sting, she’d stick an onion on it and tell you to hold it there. Then there was my father: he said that if you cut yourself, a little sprinkle of gunpowder in the wound would sort out any poisons festering in there. It’s the same sort of thing—it’s just that we’re letting doctors and their pills and medicines wipe out our memories of what we can do for ourselves; there’s no money for them in it, is there? But that’s not happening so much in a tight little community like this. Mothers teach their daughters, and it goes on down the family.”
“I was a nurse, in the war, and I suppose I became used to the medicines, and I saw how they saved lives,” said Maisie. “Mind you, the French soldiers carried garlic juice to cleanse their wounds and prevent sepsis, and we used it sometimes, too.”
“There you are then,” said Mrs. Singh as she screwed a top on the jar.
“I expect Usha knew how to use all these spices and herbs to heal a sick person,” said Maisie.
“Now it’s interesting you should say that, because Mr. Pramal has always said his own mother was acknowledged as a local doctor, though she wasn’t trained, not like our doctors are trained. But people came to her when they were sick, and she would treat them, and they would leave her what they could afford—I suppose it was often a bag of vegetables or something like that. They said she had a gift, though I’ve often wondered why she couldn’t save her own life, but then I’ve never asked the question either. I don’t know that Usha was able to learn much from her—after all, she died when the girl was very young—yet Usha definitely knew how to mix the spices and add what was needed to take away pain. That was what she was good at, whether it was touching someone or mixing up a drink—taking away pain was her specialty. But she wanted to be a teacher, so she never saw people at her home, like her mother had before her.”
“I see, that’s interesting,” said Maisie.
Mrs. Singh turned to her. “Now, don’t you go putting Usha on a pedestal, you know. There’s many a woman I know, living on these few streets here, who could do the same thing. Like I said—we may be forgetting our