grandfather. It took her many failed attempts to perfect each concoction, using her long-suffering family as stooges. They all lost count of the number of rashes and sores they endured from her mistakes. But her perseverance finally paid off and soon word of her successes began to spread around the neighbourhood. People began calling in, requesting her to help ease their complaints.
When she was young, the locals labelled her ‘the potion gel’. When Bertha married it was changed to ‘the young wife’. Now she was reaching the end of her life, she was known as ‘the old woman’.
For years her charges for these remedies had just covered her outlay in producing them, as she was content to be helping others, but on her husband’s retirement and with their savings gone to help their daughter through her own difficult time, Bertha had no choice but to up her charges to make herself a little profit. These days one or more of her young grandchildren would accompany her on country expeditions, to help her gather and carry back her ingredients which were then hung to dry in the outhouse. But the preparing and cooking up was done now in the more hospitable environment of the kitchen when all the family were out, either at school or at work. Bertha could have taken the easier option and bought all her requirements from a herbalist in town, but she refused to pay what she perceived were their extortionate charges and as a result have to put up the cost of her finished products.
To her dismay, though, and despite her trying to encourage them, none of her family, including her daughter, showed the slightest interest in what she did. It was her sad conclusion that, when her time came to meet her maker, her knowledge would die with her too and the old lady’s treasured recipe book lie gathering dust on a shelf.
At her unexpected return home, Bertha shot Aidy a worried look and demanded, ‘What’s happened? Why are you back at this time?’
Aidy explained to her.
When she had, Bertha smiled. With the likes of Pat Nelson in mind, she said, ‘So there are some nice people in the world after all. Cuppa?’
On being awarded some unexpected time off by her benevolent fore woman, Aidy had decided not to waste a minute of it. The first thing she ought to do was sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and work out the family budget from now on. She knew it was going to be tight, but it was how tight that worried her. Still, her mother had managed to keep them all on what she earned, which was less than Aidy did, so she was determined to manage.
On first walking through the back door, she had almost keeled over at the smell that met her. If it was true what her grandmother was always telling her, that the worse her remedies stank the better they were for you, then in this case whatever she was cooking up would instantly destroy the most virulent disease known to man.
Anyway, Aidy couldn’t stay here while this smell was as strong as it was. She needed to pay a visit to her marital home, to collect the rest of her belongings. A surge of sorrow swamped her then. It was something she was not looking forward to. She had been so happy in that house, under the impression that she and Arch would eventually raise their children and grow old together there, and that wasn’t going to be now. But she knew that to dwell on what might have been would only make her more miserable than she already was, if that were possible. She needed to get this visit over with and start looking ahead.
Hopefully, though, by the time she returned with her belongings, whatever her grandmother was cooking up would be done and the stench from it gone.
She told Bertha, ‘I’ll have a cuppa later, thanks, Gran. I need to go …’ she was about to say ‘home’ but the house she had shared with Arch was no longer that, ‘… back to my old house and collect the rest of my stuff.’
Bertha looked at her for a moment. Going back to the home she had shared with Arch and been so happy in was going to prove very difficult for Aidy. She offered, ‘My brew needs to simmer a while yet, so would you like company?’
Aidy smiled fondly at her. ‘Yes, I’d