Page 8 of The Laudanum Ladies' Society

She began searching through boxes to distract herself from waiting to see if there would be any effect. In an old chest that had come with her from Wales, she found an old, leatherbound book that had belonged to her grandmother, and her mind tumbled back over the years until she could almost taste the salted air of her home beside the sea.

As a child, Gwen had loved reading the handwritten recipes and remedies, with lists of ingredients that sounded like poetry. She had half a dozen of them on hand in the kitchen, and many of the ingredients featured in some of the modern medicines the pharmacy made. Peppermint oil, nutmeg and cloves. Liquorice root and raspberry leaves. She bit her lip, recalling the more unorthodox purpose of some of Nain Bevan’s mixtures that Archibald, or society at large, would never condone. She put the book on the bed, planning to study it in greater depth when she had the time.

When the effect started, it felt like being stroked between the eyes with an ice-cold feather. She felt a little nauseous at first but soon that passed and she was enveloped by a pleasant feeling of lethargy. There was no sudden burst of creativity, much to her disappointment, but perhaps one needed to do something creative to be so inspired? Miss Rosewood played the piano and Mr Rosewood painted, but all Gwen did was serve customers and keep the house. There were worse things to do than be a wife, she knew, but it was a drab life.

If she could do anything, what would it be? She would quite like a business of her own. She glanced at the bed, which was made up with a sheet and blanket and her entire body felt heavy with longing. She was the mother of an adult son who did not need her. Who had never come home from that long voyage across the sea.

What an exciting life Archie must be living that he had no time even to write to his parents. She lay on the bed and closed her eyes, recalling the letters he had sent at the start of his employment, the descriptions of a world so unlike the London she lived in now, and the Wales she’d grown up in.

‘That’s what I shall do,’ she murmured, raising her hands aloft as if feeling the breeze. ‘I shall take a ship and find new worlds. Archie, shall I come to you?’

There was a tap on the door bringing Gwen down to earth. The door opened and Archibald walked in. He was in his nightgown and his feet were bare.

‘Gwen, what are you doing?’

She brought her hands down quickly and sat up, feeling as guilty as a child caught with its hands in the biscuit jar.

‘I’m reminiscing,’ she said, hoping that her voice sounded clear and decisive.

Archibald looked around. ‘We should rent out this room. It’s a good size and we could do with the money.’

Gwen felt a motherly stab in the heart at the suggestion, exacerbated no doubt by the effects of the tincture. She put her hands to her chest to stop the painful fluttering. ‘Archie may need it again. He’s sure to come back and visit before too long.’

Archibald gripped her hand tightly. ‘Gwen, come to bed. It’s late and I worry about you. All this work you’ve had to do must be tiring. You’re not accustomed to anything too taxing.’

‘Archibald Walters, I am not taxed in the slightest,’ Gwen said indignantly. ‘I enjoy it. Truthfully.’

She was starting to feel tired, though. The tincture was clearly working as intended because her limbs were starting to feel a little heavier. A little easier. She yawned. The euphoria was starting to wear off, but it had been rather wonderful. She understood perfectly why Miss Rosewood wanted to feel it again.

‘Yes, I suppose it is time for bed.’ She put her hand in Archibald’s and let him pull her upright. In the soft candlelight, she caught a glimpse of the man she’d fallen in love with years ago, and felt a quick pulsing between her legs that rarely came upon her these days.

‘Do you remember where we met?’ she murmured. ‘The Great Exhibition in London. I wanted to see the elephant and my father wanted to stay looking at the microscopes. You offeredto escort me. Just imagine, we might never have met if you had walked into the hall five minutes later.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Archibald said, sounding a little puzzled.

‘I remember the dancing, too,’ Gwen murmured. The sleeve of Archibald’s nightshirt was loose, and she slid her hand inside the striped cotton to stroke his inner wrist. He drew his breath in sharply. Audible proof of the effect she was having upon him. The slight throbbing between her legs intensified, and for the first time in longer than she could recall, she wanted the closeness they had shared in their early days. Archibald was always the one who initiated the conjugal act, but tonight she felt daring. Could she rekindle some of the dying embers of affection?

‘Let’s go to bed.’ She leant into him and whispered in a husky voice, ‘Just not straight to sleep.’

‘Mrs Walters!’ Archibald’s voice caught in his throat and he stepped back. ‘I am exceptionally tired. I think I shall retire. Don’t be too long in coming to bed, but please tread softly so you don’t wake me.’

He walked out. Gwen sat back on the bed and closed her eyes as tears of humiliation burned her cheeks. The tincture had given Miss Rosewood music, and Mr Rosewood artistic visions. Yet all it had done for Gwen was show her the staleness of her marriage. She listened to Archibald clattering below in the bedroom. Soon he grew quiet. He’d be saying his prayers, which were always longer and considerably more devout than Gwen’s. Then came the sound of springs as he climbed into bed. She loitered for another ten minutes before joining him, by which time he was asleep.

She lay beside him, unable to sleep as each of his snores drilled into her head and when the soft chimes of one o’clock struck, she climbed out of bed and went to the kitchen.

She lit a stub of candle, sat at the table and looked around the kitchen, trying to work out what she had done differently. She closed her eyes, reliving the making, step by step. The careful weighing of opium and cocaine, the filtering of theliquid. If she had been sitting at the workbench in the pharmacy, she would have ground the powder in the pestle and mortar there, but being in the kitchen she had used thekitchen one.

She cried out in delight.

She’d been preparing Christmas cakes on the day in question, using her mother’s recipe, and had used the pestle and mortar that she’d been grinding spices in. She knew the recipe off by heart, having helped make it since childhood. She’d used cloves and ginger, nutmeg and allspice.

She consulted the pharmacopeia that lived on the shelf in the pharmacy, then went up to the attic and cross-referenced it with Nain Bevan’s book. Both the nutmeg and cloves were likely culprits. On their own, each might have been benign, but together, and combined with the coca leaf and opium, it seemed she had created something quite remarkable.

On Sunday morning Gwen excused herself from attending the morning service, pleading a headache, and Archibald went happily to the church alone. Once he was safely gone, Gwen gathered the ingredients and attempted to replicate her efforts. The resulting light brown liquid smelled and looked the same as the first bottle. Satisfied, she poured it into the green glass bottle and sealed the top with wax. It was tempting to try a spoonful to see if she had done what she hoped, but she resisted, not wanting to subject herself to another bout of unrequited ardour. She put the bottle on the shelf in the kitchen along with herbaking ingredients, where it could remain until Miss Rosewood could try it.

Archibald returned from the service crotchety and complaining of a headache himself. He snapped at Gwen when she presented him with a cup of tea, criticising its strength. She turned to fetch the milk jug and caught sight of the small bottle nestled beside her jars of sugar and vanilla essence. A daring idea struck her, but it was unethical and she pushed it away.

‘Hurry with the milk, otherwise this will be too cold to warrant drinking even without,’ Archibald snapped. ‘I’ve had to tolerate a bad head while you have lazed around at home.’