The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 30

  Rachel’s luggage consisted of one sports bag, one small flight bag and two plastic supermarket bags.

  ‘Is this all?’ Franz asked, putting them into the boot of the car.

  ‘All I have in the world,’ she said lightly. ‘That bag has my hairdressing kit in it, Franz; handle with care!’

  ‘You brought everything with you from Jamaica, when you came here?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘You didn’t intend going back there,’ he said, a comment rather than a question.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You know now, though – for sure?’

  ‘I’m not going back there.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me why?’ he asked bluntly.

  She shrugged and looked away. ‘Several reasons.’

  ‘Tell me one to start with,’ he said.

  ‘In the car,’ she said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Have you said all the goodbyes to everyone?’

  ‘Yes. I told them not to come out and wave me off. Let’s go, okay?’

  He drove as far as the main road before saying, ‘Now tell me.’

  Ella envied his ease at interrogating Rachel. If Ella ever took that approach with Franz, she knew from experience that he would close down the shutters, giving her the expressionless look that told her it was useless pursuing enquiries. Rachel might be giving him that same look, Ella thought, glancing quickly towards the back of the car, but he wasn’t letting it stop him.

  ‘It doesn’t suit me there, okay?’ Rachel said. ‘It was fine for a while but now I need something else.’

  ‘Something upset you,’ he said, ‘something serious, and we haven’t been on good enough terms for you to tell me or for me to really ask. I want you to tell me now, Rachel. We’re on the same side, okay? You’re my sister and I care about you.’

  There was a silence during which Ella could feel that Rachel was crying but no sound escaped her.

  ‘My mother lied to me, first of all about who my father was,’ she said. ‘That was while I was still in Ireland, when I first contacted her. I asked her, on the phone. I made her promise to tell me the truth and she said my father was Father Francis.

  ‘Then, when I made him go for that test to prove it and it proved that he wasn’t, she told me it was some bloke she’d met in the pub where she worked three nights a week. It wasn’t her partner, the one she lived with; it was some other guy. She couldn’t remember his name. She said she only saw him once or twice.’

  ‘Rachel, why didn’t you tell me at the time?’

  ‘I was ashamed.’

  ‘Did you tell Father Francis?’

  ‘Yes. A long time afterwards.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t want me to go and stay with her. But I was angry with him, so I went anyway.’

  ‘That was when you went the first time? After Ma died?’

  ‘Yes. I went for a month. It was okay. I know I told you I was going there for good, and I did think that at the time. It was all new and kind of, you know, exotic. I kept thinking about what my friends would say if they saw me. It was like being on a sunny Caribbean holiday and thinking it could be forever.

  ‘Then I missed everyone and I thought I mightn’t get much of a job if I didn’t finish at school and do my exams and stuff. So I came back.’

  ‘And then when you left school and went back to Jamaica to live, what was it like then?’ Franz pulled the car into the same lay-by where he had stopped before to pick up his phone messages, and turned round in the seat to face her.

  ‘Terrible. She’d had a baby by then and her boyfriend kept coming and going. He was scary. She threw him out but he kept coming round when I was there on my own. I told her but all she did was shout at him and he didn’t take any notice.’

  ‘My God, Rachel, why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You’d gone to London and I thought you’d be in some good job, making your way, and I was in this mess and I’d drag you into it as well.’

  ‘Did you tell Father Francis?’

  ‘No. He’d told me he didn’t want me to go back to Jamaica.’

  ‘Why not – did he say?’

  ‘He said my mother might not be reliable and I might get hurt.’

  ‘You didn’t want to tell him he was right.’

  ‘No. Then she got pregnant by somebody else and when the next baby came along and Max was still only a toddler, she said she couldn’t cope with being in the house all day and I had to stay home and help her. I had a job with a hairdresser by then - Lily. We were going round doing people’s hair in their homes and Lily was saving to get her own salon. She was doing well and I liked working with her and she was training me.’

  ‘Did you give the job up, then?’

  ‘No, I worked part-time but it was getting busy and in the end Lily said she had to take on someone else. So she took on another girl but the girl didn’t like me and she kept saying part-timers didn’t pull their weight and she didn’t want to be one of those dead weights herself and in the end she persuaded Lily to take her on full-time and let me go.’

  ‘You were at home, then, looking after the baby?’

  ‘Both babies. Max was only just walking when Kelvin was born. The kids were lovely but Mum took to drinking and going out a lot. I was on my own with Max and Kelvin most of the day and most nights as well. She … just went with anyone she met,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Rachel, you were writing me letters saying how happy you were and how well you got on with your mum!’ Franz said. ‘If I’d known ….’

  ‘I know. But I’d been so horrible to you, Franz, and to Father Francis as well, and I couldn’t forgive myself. I didn’t want to cause any more trouble.’

  ‘You didn’t cause trouble. You had trouble.’

  ‘I messed things up for you. I messed things up between you and Father Francis and I’ll never forgive myself for what I did.’

  ‘That’s not the way it was,’ he said.

  ‘Ella, you can see what I’m saying, can’t you?’ Rachel appealed. ‘He told you what happened, didn’t he?’

  Ella hesitated. Franz gave her a quick, anxious look.

  ‘What I can see,’ she said, ‘is that it wasn’t your fault.’

  She hoped Rachel wouldn’t press her for details. It wasn’t a time to humiliate her by admitting that Franz hadn’t prepared the way by telling her story for her.

  ‘See?’ Franz said. ‘Rachel, listen to Ella if you won’t listen to me. None of it was your fault. You did what you could, in impossibly difficult circumstances. Now, tell us the rest.’

  ‘There isn’t much else to tell. I moved out, eventually. Lily got the salon and she took me on. She didn’t get on with the other girl, in the long run. She came to the house one day and saw what my life was like and she told me to get out of there. She said, “Just put your foot down and say you’re not doing it any more. You’re living your mother’s life for her and she’s taken yours away. Take it back while you’ve still got a chance to live.”’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Franz.

  ‘Lily was a good friend. So I told Mum when she came home that night and she threw a hissy fit and called me ungrateful and selfish and stupid and all kinds of stuff, and she took all my money and said it was rent I owed her for staying. So I packed my things and turned up on Lily’s doorstep. She and her boyfriend put me up for a few nights, then Lily found me a room to rent and lent me some money to start with. I paid her back,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Did you like doing hairdressing?’ Franz asked.

  ‘Yes. But since I’ve been at the nursing home I’ve been thinking I’d like to do something different. I thought about nursery nursing or something like that.’

  ‘What made you decide to come back?’ Ella asked.

  ‘I heard Father Francis was sick.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me he was sick?’ Franz said.

  ‘He didn’t want you worried. And I thought you might n
ot be at the same address. You said you were managing a building and I thought, that’s an important job and you’ve probably moved to a better flat. I know I didn’t write for ages, so that’s my fault, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t write to anybody, not even Tina O'Connell. Maria used to say if you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything, and I didn’t have any good news to tell, for such a long time.’

  ‘I don’t think she meant it like that,’ Franz said.

  Ella could hear the pain in his voice. But how could he blame Rachel for not telling him anything? They’d had the same upbringing. Neither of them could talk about how they felt. And you never told me, for eighteen months, that you even had a sister, Ella thought.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone I was coming back to Ireland,’ Rachel said. ‘Sister Briege and Sister Imelda knew who I was because I had to tell them I was Maria’s daughter. Otherwise, they would never have given a job to some stranger who just wrote to them out of the blue from Jamaica and said she wanted to come over and work for them. They didn’t really have any vacancies for staff, and if they did they would have taken on local people, because there are always girls ringing the doorbell and asking for work.

  ‘They’ve been really good to me. They arranged it so I could nurse Father Francis and spend time with him. Of course I had to do other work as well but they didn’t give me as many other patients to care for as some of the other carers. They said he needed a lot of care and I should be left free to focus on him as much as I found necessary because I was his key carer. The other staff accepted that. They were nice to me, as well.’

  ‘Did they realize you were related to him?’ Franz asked.

  ‘No. He never said anything so they never thought of asking. Anyway, I’m not related to him,’ she said.

  ‘Connected to him,’ Franz corrected. ‘Listen, Rach, before we go on, you should know where you’re staying tonight. You know who runs the hotel we’re staying in? The O’Connells. Tom and Mary.’

  ‘Tina’s parents?’

  ‘Yes. You didn’t get in touch with Tina even when you came back here?’

  ‘I didn’t know where she was! I did ask someone who used to be at school with us, who I met in town one day, but she didn’t know Tina’s married name. I went by her old house once but it had all changed and a woman who was going into the house next door said some other family lived there.’

  ‘Mary phoned Tina this evening to say you were here and she’s crazy to see you,’ Franz told her. ‘She wanted your phone number immediately but I said you’d call her when you’d recovered a bit from today. She wouldn’t give up till I promised it would be either tonight or tomorrow, though.’

  ‘I’d love to see her! I’m just afraid …’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That she’ll think I’ve changed so much.’

  Franz reached over to the back seat and grasped her hand. ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘You haven’t changed at all. I’ve missed you so much.’

  ‘You’re going to make me cry again,’ she threatened. ‘Shut up, Mick…. Franz! Whoever you are!’