The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 22

  When ten miles had gone by on the dial, Ella thought they must be nearly there, wherever there might turn out to be and, sure enough, shortly afterwards the car turned into a driveway framed by open rusted gates, with a sign saying something she couldn’t read in the gathering darkness, except that she thought the last word might have been 'convent.'

  The sign outside the front door of the big house, when they drew up in front of it, was clearer. 'Immaculate Heart of Mary Nursing Home,' it read. Not convent, then. Perhaps ex-convent, now a nursing home? Or a nursing home run by nuns? Immaculate Heart of Mary sounded more like a convent than a nursing home, Ella thought; in fact, it sounded like something out of The Sound of Music. But maybe in Ireland it was a perfectly normal name for a nursing home?

  She followed Franz through the double front doors. There didn’t seem to be any security. The doors were unlocked and there was no entryphone; the doorbell, an old pushbutton type, was embedded in paint within its doughnut-shaped surround and didn’t look as if it would yield to touch or emit a sound.

  A slim elderly woman wearing a white overall and a long kerchief (or a short veil? Ella wondered) stood in the hallway talking to a younger woman in a blue overall who was steering an old man in a wheelchair towards a far door.

  ‘I’ll be in with his medication shortly,’ she said, before turning to meet Ella and Franz.

  She wore a large silver cross strung on a black cord round her neck and hanging low on her chest, Ella noticed. The stretched figure of the man on the cross lay against her heart. Ella thought it must be an encumbrance when nursing patients, bending over to lift them, for instance, or give them a drink. You could do someone a nasty injury if you hit them in the eye with a bit of metal that size. She was aware that she was looking for distractions, thinking about anything except why they were there and what Franz was doing. She felt scared, suddenly. I want to go home, she thought childishly.

  The nurse – or nun, if she was a nun – came towards them, smiling.

  ‘Hello,’ said Franz, before she had quite reached them. ‘Sister Briege? I phoned you earlier.’

  ‘Hello, yes. Michael, isn’t it? We never actually met, did we? I nursed your mother when she was dying but always the daytime shift. You would have been out at work,’ said Sister Briege, shaking his hand. ‘I was very fond of Maria. A lovely person.’ She turned to Ella. ‘You’re Michael’s wife?’ she said.

  Ella stalled, waiting for Franz to tell the woman’s he wasn’t Michael.

  ‘This is Ella,’ said Franz. ‘My fiancée.’

  ‘Glad to meet you both,’ said Sister Briege. ‘He’s had his tea and he’s saying his Office but you can go in. Follow me.’

  She set off ahead of them down a long narrow passage. Franz followed her and Ella, after a moment’s hesitation, followed him. Michael? she thought. The letter that arrived at the flat, the one with the Irish postmark, the one he said gave him the idea of going to Ireland …

  They passed a series of doors, some closed and two ajar, one giving a glimpse of an old man in a plaid dressing gown, sitting up in bed, waving hopefully at anyone who passed. Sister Briege waved back at him.

  ‘With you in a moment, Archie!’

  Archie grinned, revealing gums, and waved at Franz, who didn’t notice. Ella waved back.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Sister Briege, stopping outside an open door. A very old man, probably tall once but now folded almost double, sat hunched in an armchair, peering down at an even older-looking book on his knees. One hand, bony as a bird’s claw, was poised over the book, tracing the line of the print with a forefinger.

  On the green vinyl-covered floor, in a corner of the room by the high narrow iron bed, lay a black metal cylinder of oxygen, and on the chipped painted wooden bedside cabinet stood a half-full glass of water. On the wall above the bed was a large wooden crucifix with the same stretched-out figure of a man dying.

  ‘Father McCarthy,’ said Sister Briege, raising her voice. ‘You have visitors.’

  He looked up vaguely, his blue eyes cloudy.

  ‘It’s Michael to see you,’ said Sister Briege. ‘Michael and Emma.’

  ‘Ella,’ corrected Franz.

  Never mind the Emma: what about the Michael? thought Ella desperately. Was Franz impersonating this Michael Somebody? She couldn’t remember the surname on the envelope.

  ‘Michael and Ella?’ repeated the old man. He peered at both their faces then shook his head and returned to perusing his book.

  ‘It’s Michael, from England,’ Sister Briege told him. ‘You remember I told you I wrote to him? To everyone in your address book? And Michael has come all this way to see you, from England, with his fiancée.’

  The old man looked up again and raised a finger, as though requesting permission to ask a question. He addressed his query to Sister Briege.

  ‘Is it sixty-three?’ he said.

  Sister Briege stooped over him and looked at the book on his lap.

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘Psalm 63. 'My God, you are my God, for you I long.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  He hunched over the book again and began muttering, only just audibly.

  ‘His eyesight is failing him,’ Sister Briege told Franz and Ella. ‘But if we start him off, he knows all the psalms by heart anyway. Sit down, won’t you? Will you have a cup of tea?’

  As though it were quite normal, Ella thought despairingly, for them to sit drinking tea in the private room of some poor old bloke who wanted to be left alone to read his prayer book and who clearly didn’t know Franz or Ella, or anyone called Michael or Emma either.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. The sooner they got out of here and Franz stopped pretending to be someone else, the better, she thought.

  ‘Call me if you want anything,’ Sister Briege said, and left them.

  Franz stayed standing, watching the old man, who ignored them. Words escaped his lips and floated towards them. His finger moved along the lines of print as his eyes followed it, apparently sightlessly.

  ‘My body pines for you,’ the old man read, or recited, ‘like a dry, weary land without water.’

  His body did look dry and weary, Ella thought, inescapably old. How terrible to be still pining for somebody, at his age.

  ‘So I gaze on you,’ said the old man rapturously, ‘in the sanctuary, to see your strength and your glory.’

  Franz cleared his throat. The old man looked up inquiringly.

  ‘May I help you?’ he said courteously.

  Franz crouched down on his haunches, bringing himself to the old man’s eye level. In a broad Irish accent that Ella could hardly decipher, he said loudly, ‘So what’s a fine County Mayo man like yourself doing in the wilds of Wicklow?’

  There was a silence.

  Don’t, Franz! pleaded Ella silently. Whoever this stranger is, don’t try to humour him with your comic accents and your hail-fellow charm, while all the poor old guy wants is ….

  The old man opened his mouth in a wide, silent O and began laughing, his face lighting up delightedly, his arms stretching out in front of him.

  ‘Francis?’ he exclaimed. ‘Is it Francis?’

  ‘And who else but meself?’ said Franz. He began laughing as well, his shoulders shaking and his deeper voice mingling with the reedy tones of the old man’s.

  Ella wasn’t sure when the tone changed, whether the tears began first, rolling out of the corners of the old man’s eyes, or whether the laughter turned to sobbing before that, or whether he had been laughing and sobbing at the same time, from the beginning. She only knew that the sound of it became unbearable.

  Unable to hold back, she darted towards him but Franz was there first. Dropping to his knees beside the chair, he grabbed the old man roughly around the chest and hugged him fiercely to himself.

  Over Franz’s shoulder Ella saw the old man’s eyes close, streaming with tears, and his wide mouth open in anguish, till the cl
awlike hand, waving helplessly behind Franz’s back as he sobbed and struggled for breath, relaxed and, very gently, started patting Franz on the back, comforting him as his own sobs subsided and gave way to Franz’s.

  Ella turned to go out of the room, unable to stay and witness such anguish, and as she did she caught the eye of a young girl, equally startled, who had stopped in the doorway, clad in a blue overall and carrying a pile of clean towels.

  What amazing skin she has, thought Ella confusedly, before the girl ran out. Like caffe latte, and smooth as silk.

  She followed her into the corridor, for no reason except that she couldn’t stay in the room, and that when the girl had met her eyes Ella had felt a sudden physical stab of pain in her heart, coming from the girl but mirroring her own. She can’t stand it either, she thought, and didn’t know why.