The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 24

  He was pacing again. Ella came out of the shower and, finding the room empty, leaned out of the window and saw him in the light from the downstairs windows, walking up and down the garden, talking into his phone.

  She sighed and pulled the window to, closing the curtains, and got into the bed for warmth. She remembered wanting tea, hours ago, but couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed again and boil the kettle. She would wait for Franz now.

  He returned, phone in hand, full of news.

  ‘Sharma’s heard from his wife,’ he told Ella, as he walked in. ‘Her relationship broke up: she found out the man had a wife and five children in Karachi. Sharma’s asked her to come home and she’s thinking about it but he thinks she will.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He hasn’t got any further with the missing boys, which is worrying him, but he’s feeling better and Phil has been going round the streets with him in the early hours of the morning when it’s quiet. Sharma’s certain they’re still back in our area and still alive.’

  ‘That’s something.’

  ‘Alison left a message that everything’s going fine at The Healing Place. She sounds as if she’s enjoying being in charge.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Did I tell you what happened about Rory?’

  ‘The builder? No, you were just going in to meet him after Sharma was taken ill, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and he said what I’d expected – no problem, just a crack in the plaster. I told him I wasn’t prepared to accept that so he said he’d call in a structural engineer and get his opinion. Alison says they’re coming in tomorrow.’

  ‘They don’t need you to be there?’

  ‘No. All I need to know is his verdict; they won’t do anything until we get back anyway.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘And Sharma says Phil and Jan send their love and they’re praying for you and the baby.’

  ‘Fine. Franz?’

  ‘Yes. Did you have your cup of tea yet? Shall I put the kettle on?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Yes, thanks. Franz?’

  ‘I got cheese rolls,’ he said, ‘from the pub, and crisps and bars of chocolate, and Diet Pepsi. I thought we could have a picnic.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘A picnic in bed – yes?’

  ‘A picnic in bed sounds fantastic,’ Ella said. ‘And a chat.’

  ‘Ordinary tea or herb?’

  ‘Franz.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I know. We will talk. Do you mind if I leave the phone switched on tonight? I’ll only answer if it’s Rachel,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Of course. I like Rachel,’ Ella told him.

  ‘Do you? She liked you, I could tell.’

  ‘That’s good. I always wanted a sister. A sister-in-law will do just as well.’

  ‘She’s not technically my sister, you know?’

  ‘You said. But family and technical don’t seem to go together, do they?’

  He grimaced. ‘Not in my family, certainly. Shall we just have the picnic, Ella, and leave the serious talking stuff till tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said gently.

  ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I might have a shower first, though.’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Or not,’ he said. He made them both tea, handed her the carrier bag from the pub, undressed quickly and got into bed beside her.

  ‘Your feet are freezing!’ she said. ‘I thought Irishmen were born impervious to the cold?’

  ‘Not Romanian-Irishmen,’ he said.

  She sipped her tea before answering, instinct still telling her to take it slowly, to savour the information he offered but not to rush him.

  ‘That’s an interesting mixture,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know about the Romanian.’

  ‘My mother. Her parents were refugees. I’m not sure – she wasn’t sure – exactly how or why they ended up in Ireland. They were travellers, whether by tradition or because once they arrived in Ireland they couldn’t afford to live any other way, she didn’t know either. They died shortly after arriving here, in a flu epidemic.’

  ‘Was your mother the only child?’

  ‘Yes. She was nine when they died. A family of Irish travellers took her in. They couldn’t pronounce her Romanian surname, if they even knew it, which they may not have done. Anyway, they gave her their own name.’

  ‘Finnucane?’

  ‘Yes. Her first name was Maria, which was easy enough for everyone so she kept that. Maria Finnucane sounded Irish enough. She never quite lost her Romanian accent, though, which was strange because she was so young when she lost her parents and the Finnucanes were Irish through and through.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ella said, remembering the old Eastern Europeans who had lived in the doorway of the newsagents’ and how easily Franz had managed to understand their accent.

  He stopped and ate a cheese roll, hungrily and without tasting it. Under the duvet, she could feel he was trembling. She both wanted to let him off the hook, tell him he didn’t have to talk about anything if he didn’t want to, and to force him to get it over with, to tell her these terrible secrets that would not be so terrible if only he could speak them.

  She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘I love you,’ she told him.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ he said. ‘There’s so much I haven’t told you.’

  ‘I do know you. I see you. I touch you. I feel you. You won’t change, if you fill in the blanks.’

  ‘You might change,’ he said. ‘You might change the way you feel about me.’

  ‘Risk it and find out,' she said.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ He was shaking so uncontrollably now that she had to take the cup from him before he spilt its contents.

  ‘Tell me about the place where you were born.’ Start with the facts, she thought. Facts were clinical: simpler than feelings.

  ‘County Mayo. The west of Ireland. A small village on the coast. The villagers spoke Irish; some didn’t have any English or refused to speak it if they did. I hardly spoke English myself till I went to school. Even people from the town three miles down the road were considered foreigners. Travellers were not considered people at all, or not in the same league as people of fixed abode.’

  ‘And Romanian refugee travellers?’

  ‘Not a hope. Might as well have been from the planet Mars,’ Franz said, and laughed. ‘My father had a soft spot for the underdog,’ he said, and his voice shook.

  ‘He was a priest when he met your mother?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Yes. And a bit of an underdog himself. His father had thrown him out and disowned him.'

  ‘Because of your mother?’

  ‘No. Long before that. His father was a self-made man, a millionaire. Started out stripping secondhand cars on the dumps and selling the engine parts; ended up with a chain of quick refit outlets – tyres, exhausts, windscreens, that kind of thing. An empire to pass on to his only son and heir. Who developed a vocation, from an early age, that everyone thought was a holy phase – not uncommon in Irish families, especially ones with mothers who were always praying – until he left school and signed up for the seminary.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Seminary. As in 'sowing the seed' - a training college for priests, future sowers of God’s word.’

  ‘Oh. Without his parents’ knowledge?’

  ‘His mother was all for it. His father was off his head with rage. Marched down there and demanded his son back. Very embarrassing for my father as a young student.’

  ‘I can imagine. Did your father refuse?’

  ‘He must have done. Anyway, he stayed, got through the six years and was ordained. His mother was at the ordination, at the back of the church. He didn’t know she was there until afterwards.’

  ‘That sounds kind of lonely. He must have been very sure of what he was doing.’

  ‘He was. Sure, and lonely. His first posting was to a church where the priest was an
alcoholic. A very uneven-tempered man, my mother described him, and she never said a malicious word about anybody, so he must have been a real bastard. He gave my father all the early Masses to say, all the mortuary visits to anoint people who’d died, and all the visiting of poorer parishioners and travellers.’

  ‘Which is how he met your mother?’

  ‘D’you want some crisps?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ella patted his leg encouragingly.

  ‘Salt and vinegar or plain?’

  ‘Whichever comes first. We’ll share the pack.’

  ‘Okay. Ella?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can’t do this,’ he said desperately. ‘I’m sorry. I want to. I just … it feels so wrong to tell these things, Ella!’

  ‘I think,’ she said, sliding down the bed and pulling him down beside her, ‘we need to take a break. I’m going to make love to you. That you can do, fantastically.’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t stop shaking.’

  ‘You will, when I’ve finished with you,’ she promised him. ‘Now, lie back and think of England, Ireland or Romania, whichever suits you, Michael Francis Finnucane, and I will take care of everything.’