The Lost Apothecary(13)

I forced a half smile, somewhat envious that I couldn’t say the same about my own job. Admittedly, plugging numbers into outdated software on an outdated PC at the family farm didn’t often leave me smiling as big as Bachelor Alf did now. Instead, I spent day after day at a wretched yellow oak desk, the same at which my mother worked for more than three decades. Ten years ago, unemployed with a new home, the job opportunity at the farm had seemed too good to pass up—but I sometimes wondered why I’d stayed so long. Just because I couldn’t teach history at a local school didn’t mean I was out of options; surely something more interesting existed than administrative work at the farm.

But kids. With children someday in the picture, the stability of my job was paramount, as James often liked to remind me. And so I’d stayed put, and I’d grown to tolerate the frustration and uncomfortable musings about whether I’d missed out on something bigger. Maybe even something altogether different.

As I stood in the riverbed with Bachelor Alf, I considered the possibility that long ago, he also used to work an uninteresting desk job. Did he finally decide that life was too short to be miserable forty hours a week? Or maybe he was braver than that and bolder than me, and he’d turned his passion—mudlarking—into a career. I considered asking him, but before I had the chance, another member of the tour called him over to inspect a find.

I took the vial back from him and leaned forward, intending to put it back in its spot, but a sentimental, wistful part of me refused. I felt a strange connection with whomever last held the vial in their hands—an inherent kinship with the person whose fingerprints last impressed on the glass as mine did now. What tincture had they blended within this sky blue bottle? And who did they mean to help, to heal?

My eyes began to sting as I considered the odds of finding this object in the riverbed: a historical artifact, probably once belonging to a person of little significance, someone whose name wasn’t recorded in a textbook, but whose life was fascinating all the same. This was precisely what I found so enchanting about history: centuries might separate me from whomever last held the vial, but we shared in the exact sensation of its cool glass between our fingers. It felt as though the universe, in her strange and nonsensical way, meant to reach out to me, to remind me of the enthusiasm I once had for the trifling bits of bygone eras, if only I could look beneath the dirt that had accumulated over time.

It dawned on me then that since touching down at Heathrow this morning, I hadn’t cried once over James. And wasn’t that exactly why I ran off to London, anyway? To cut away, if only for a few minutes, the malignant mass of grief? I fled to London to breathe and that was damn well what I’d done, even if some of that time had been spent in a veritable mud pit.

I knew that keeping the vial was exactly what I should do. Not only because I felt a subtle attachment to whomever this vial once belonged, but because I’d found it on a mudlarking tour that wasn’t even part of the original, fated itinerary with James. I’d come to this riverbed alone. I’d stuck my hands into the muddy crevice of two rocks. I’d staved off tears. This glass object—delicate and yet still intact, somewhat like myself—was proof that I could be brave, adventurous, and do hard things on my own. I dropped the vial into my pocket.

The clouds above us continued to build, and lightning struck somewhere to the west of the bend in the river. Bachelor Alf called us over to him. “Sorry, folks,” he hollered, “but we can’t go on after a lightning strike. Let’s pack it up. We’ll be back out tomorrow, same time, if anyone wants to join again.”

Pulling off my gloves, I walked over to Bachelor Alf. Now that I’d grown somewhat accustomed to my surroundings, I couldn’t help a sense of disappointment about the tour ending early. After all, I’d just had my first real find, and I felt a growing curiosity and the urge to keep looking. I could see how such a pastime might become addictive.

“If you were me,” I asked Alf, “where would you go to learn more about the vial?” Even though it didn’t have the markings Alf expected on a typical apothecary vial, perhaps I could still glean some information about it—especially given the tiny animal etched onto the side, which I thought resembled a bear walking on all fours.

Giving me a warm smile, he shook off my gloves and threw them in a bucket with the others. “Oh, I suppose you could take it to a hobbyist or collector who studies glassmaking. Polishes and molds and techniques change over time, so perhaps someone could help you date it.”

I nodded my head, having not the slightest idea how to find a “hobbyist” glassmaker. “Do you think it’s from here, somewhere in London?” Earlier, I’d overheard Bachelor Alf telling another tour participant that Windsor Castle was about forty kilometers to the west. Who knew how far the vial had traveled, and from where?

He raised an eyebrow. “Without an address or any text to help us? Almost impossible to determine.” Above us, a roll of thunder warned. Bachelor Alf hesitated, torn between wanting to help an inquisitive novice like myself and keeping us both dry—and safe. “Look,” he said. “Try headin’ over to the British Library and ask for Gaynor at the Maps desk. You can tell her I sent you.” He checked his watch. “Not open much longer today, so you best get moving. Take the Underground, Thameslink to St. Pancras. It’ll be fastest—and driest. Plus, it’s not a bad place to wait out a storm.”