The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 32

  ‘Talking of old friends getting in contact again, are you going to contact your schoolfriend who was looking for you in London?’ Ella asked.

  They had found a corner table in a restaurant in town. All the bars and eating places were surprisingly crowded. The Irish are more social than the English, Ella thought. You wouldn’t get so many people, except in the very centre of London, turning out on a night like this.

  The rain had begun lashing down as soon as they had parked the car, sending them scurrying for the nearest place to eat, which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. The dishes arrived as she spoke, steaming like incense as the waiter raised the lids, and smelling delicious.

  Ella hadn’t realized she was so hungry. She wondered if Franz would be able to eat, after all the upheaval of the past couple of days. She needn’t have worried.

  ‘Pat Quinn?’ he said, spooning rice generously on to his plate and Ella’s. ‘Yes, I think I will get in touch with him. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘I thought it might be good way to tie your two worlds together,’ she said reflectively, ‘and make sure that Michael Finnucane doesn’t get left in Ireland.’

  ‘Again,’ said Franz.

  ‘Again. Though you couldn’t have forgotten him really, could you?’

  Franz thought. ‘There were long periods of time when I did,’ he said. ‘I suppose the present was so busy that I did forget the past. It seemed long ago and far away. Yes, I will give Pat Quinn a ring.’

  ‘As soon as we get back to London?’ Ella suggested.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘Or even before?’

  ‘I thought you were the one who wanted me to switch my phone off?’ Franz teased her.

  ‘You needn’t phone anyone else,’ she allowed.

  He would tell her all the other things when he was ready, she thought. She was glad to see him eat and relax, for now. She knew he hadn’t forgotten that he still hadn’t told her the most important thing. She would wait.

  A group of seven or eight people came into the restaurant, talking and laughing and shaking off their wet umbrellas. The women were dressed for an evening out, high heels and high spirits, and the men were talking loudly about a debatable penalty in a match they’d been watching in the pub earlier. The waiter directed them to a table for four behind Franz and Ella and called another waiter to help move chairs and tables alongside. The men in the group made no effort to help them but stood continuing their conversation, so close to an elderly couple’s table that they were almost leaning on them.

  Only one man in the group seemed aware of anyone in the restaurant. He was wearing a brown suit and a green tie and looked uncomfortable. He hung back from the rest of the group and went back to close the door they had left open when they came in, apologizing to the family at the table in front of it.

  As his group settled themselves in the corner, pushing back in their chairs and arguing about whose was the next round of drinks, one of the men stood on Ella’s bag and one of the women decided to change places with her partner. She squeezed between the tables and let out a shriek of laughter as her backside brushed Franz’s elbow.

  ‘Ooh! Hope you don’t think I’m too cheeky, darling!’ She leaned over him, displaying a slightly puckered cleavage.

  ‘Put him down, Ede, he’s too young for you!’ one of her friends yelled.

  ‘There’s no such thing as too young for Ede, is there Ede?’ shouted one of the men.

  The man who had closed the door came back and said quietly, ‘Sit down now.’

  ‘I’m trying to!’ Ede exclaimed. ‘This young man here won’t leave me alone! Only joking, darling,’ she said, leaning over Franz again.

  The group spread themselves out, gaining territory around them with handbags, umbrellas and coats. They hadn’t left enough space for the brown-suited man, who had to bring a chair round to Franz and Ella’s side.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to them. Drops of water stood out on his forehead, either raindrops or sweat.

  Franz moved their table sideways slightly to make room for him. ‘No problem,’ he said.

  The man nodded thanks, peeled off his jacket as though too hot on this cold evening and put it over the back of his chair. He turned back to his own party and Franz and Ella went back to their meal.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said,’ Franz said, sitting back after demolishing half a plateful of vegetable noodles.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About people at The Healing Place. You said most of them have their own agendas, is that right?’

  ‘I think they have.’

  ‘Right. Which ones do you think don’t have? Who is for real, there?’

  ‘In my opinion?’

  ‘Sure. I won’t make you swear to it in court!’

  ‘I like Alison,’ Ella told him. ‘I know she wasn’t working there when I was but I’ve got to know her a bit since. I’ve called in a few times when she’s been on the reception desk and she wasn’t expecting me – I mean, some of them seem to go on best behaviour when I appear, as if you’re sending me in to check up on them or something.’

  ‘Really? I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘Yes. Well, Alison doesn’t. She’s the same when she sees me as when she doesn’t know I’m there. I’ve come in at odd times and heard her talking to seekers, and she really takes trouble with them, gets to know them and listens to them, more than the job requires.

  ‘And the staff as well – she makes sure she knows them all by name, all the maintenance staff and the cleaners, even the guides who only come in once a fortnight or something. People trust her. They tell her things about themselves and she’s really interested; she’s not putting it on.’

  Franz nodded. ‘Yes. Well, she’s doing a good job so far at standing in for me. Her message said she’d rearranged her shifts so she’s there at the times of maximum attendance. I didn’t ask her to do that and it must be hard doing evening shifts, with a kid. Who else do you trust there?’

  ‘Sharma. He’s on your side. If he tells you anything about yourself, Franz, or the way you’re running things, or the people there, listen to him. But I’m not sure after all about the idea of inviting him into partnership. Not for the reason you said – that he’s got a closed mind about anything he calls occult.’

  ‘For what reason, then?’

  ‘He’s got too many issues to sort out at home, with Sarita leaving him and now coming back. And this work he does with the police occasionally – it leaves him very vulnerable. Phil’s right: he doesn’t have the resources to protect himself. He needs more support, not to be given more responsibility.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d respond to more trust being shown in him, more opportunity to share in making the decisions?’

  ‘He’d be happy to know you valued him, but more as a friend, I think. He’s not an administrator and I’d say he has enough responsibility already. Especially now. Rebuilding his marriage and the trust of his kids is going to take all he’s got in him.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ He was silent, turning a knot of noodles with his fork and examining it as though looking for needles hidden in a haystack. ‘Which other people there do you have confidence in?’

  ‘Very few,’ Ella said bluntly. ‘Most of the rest who give you their support will do that as long as you make decisions that suit them. If you lost it all tomorrow, you wouldn’t see them for dust.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘I know it. In my guts.’

  ‘Your guts are reliable. I trust your guts.’ Franz smiled, but his eyes were serious. And sad, Ella thought. She hated telling him this but was glad he was willing to hear it.

  ‘That’s why you said to me if I wanted to walk away, you’d back me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Or if you wanted to walk away for any other reason, Franz. Things change, don’t they? What you wanted five years ago doesn’t have to be what you want now, necessarily.’
/>   ‘I don’t know what I want now. I have no idea,’ he said, so quietly she thought he was really talking to himself.

  ‘What d’you think your father would want for you?’ she asked. ‘If he was here now?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he want you to be a priest, ever?’

  ‘God, no!’ Franz let out a shout of laughter. ‘He’d be the last person to recommend it! To anyone, let alone his son.’

  ‘Why did he do it, then? Why stick it so long?’

  ‘It was his calling. From God.’

  ‘That’s what he thought?’

  ‘That’s the way it was. Nothing on earth would have made him do it, put up with all that, all those years. Literally nothing on earth.’

  Ella took his hand. ‘That’s the first time you’ve ever told me something you believed.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’ve never committed yourself to a personal opinion – not even voiced one to me. You always say "this is what someone else believes," and if I ask whether you believe it, all you’ll say is that you believe everyone has the right to their own beliefs. You won’t say if you think it’s true or a load of rubbish.’

  ‘Am I really that annoying?’

  ‘Yes. "Every opinion and every belief is of equal value." It’s one of your catchphrases.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not "Every person’s opinion and belief is of equal value?"’

  ‘Probably. What’s the difference?’

  ‘It’s valuing the person as equal to everyone else. Not because I agree with their beliefs but because they have the right to have them.’

  ‘But you can't deny that some people believe total dogshit, Franz.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re so graphic!’

  ‘What I’m so not is politically correct. You can end up sitting on the fence, saying everything’s worth the same or means the same. It makes every belief and value equally meaningless, if you do that. And the people who believe in things that are real, you make them valueless.’

  He went quiet, tossing the noodles again, every which way. The waiter hovered, waited, went away again. Franz looked up and met Ella’s eyes finally.

  ‘You don’t talk much about your own beliefs,’ he said. ‘What are the things that you believe are real?’

  A loud jeer from the next table made Ella glance sideways but it was not directed at her but at the man in the brown suit, who had dropped his fork in his lap.

  ‘Careful you don’t puncture anything vital, Declan, now!’ shouted one of the men, slapping him on the back.

  ‘You wouldn’t notice the difference, would you, Kathleen?’ shouted Ede.

  Ella could feel her heart beating unaccountably strongly, as if her body had decided to be nervous, without letting her mind know why.

  ‘I think love is real,’ Ella said, ‘obviously. I know it gets mixed up with other things but what survives is worth having. Compassion for people’s sufferings – even when they’re self-inflicted – is real. Looking at the events of life honestly, being prepared to revise what you believe, not being afraid to question the things you thought were certainties.’

  A piercing shriek of laughter from the group at the next table made everyone in the restaurant jump and then go silent for a second. One of the men had slid an ice cube down Ede’s cleavage.

  ‘What your sister needs is a good seeing to!’ another man shouted. ‘That’s the answer to women’s ailments! Fuck them senseless and you’ll have no trouble from them!’

  Ella, unconsciously, placed a hand across her stomach as if protecting her tiny baby’s unformed hearing. Franz, undistracted by the answering shrieks from the next table, remained looking straight at her, waiting for her to resume what she was saying. She had wanted him to listen but she was finding his total focus, in the rowdy surroundings, unnerving. She didn’t have his ability to shut out the background. She wanted with sudden urgency to go home. She forced herself back to the conversation.

  ‘What you’ve done now, here, is real,’ she continued. ‘Having the courage to come back, telling your father that he was a good father to you, telling Rachel that none of it was her fault …’

  ‘None of it was her fault,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Forgiving her, even if some of it was,’ Ella continued. ‘Admitting you were wrong in some things.’ She stopped. He didn’t move. ‘Admitting you were right, some of the time,’ she said, her voice growing quieter. ‘Forgiving yourself. Going home to get on with your life, without taking a load of guilt with you.’

  He let out a sigh. ‘It’s real, all right. I don’t know if I can do it.’

  The waiter came. ‘Finished?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘You want dessert? Ice cream, lychee, gateau?’

  ‘Ella?’

  ‘No, thanks.'

  ‘The bill then, please.'

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  The waiter cleared the plates, neatly evading the expansive gestures of the still-shrieking occupants of the next table. It would have been the point at which, in London, Franz might have offered him a card or a leaflet about The Healing Place, to show his colleagues. Ella was relieved that there was no need to do that here, so far from home.

  She had always accepted the need for publicity, if The Healing Place was going to continue to thrive; she just didn’t realize how much she had resented its intrusion into their private, all too infrequent, leisure times.

  ‘It’s the first time in ages you haven’t had to go back to work, after we’ve been out for a meal,’ she said. ‘No forum, no meeting to go to, no troubled seekers to sort out.’

  ‘No,’ he said absently, preoccupied with other thoughts. ‘What about God?’ he said suddenly. ‘Do you believe that’s real?’

  ‘Do you?’ she countered.

  He grinned. ‘No cheating. I asked first.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I believe in goodness. In among all the mixed motives and hidden agendas and games that people play, I believe real goodness is a possibility. If we look for it and are prepared to get rid of the other stuff in our lives.' The image of Franz turning over the pile of noodles returned to her. ‘You might have to dig quite deep to find it,’ she added.

  ‘Hmm. But God as a personality above and beyond all of us, in eternity and infinity and dimensions we can’t begin to fathom?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I can’t imagine what’s beyond my experience.’

  ‘Have you ever experienced something,’ he asked, ‘that went beyond your idea of what was possible, what was real?’

  She thought about it. ‘A sense of being part of something bigger,’ she said, ‘part of the universe – that kind of thing, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, but more personal – the sense of being held, being known intimately, held in a safe place in the midst of the worst that life can throw at you?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘Only a couple of times.’

  ‘The bill, sir!’ The waiter placed a small silver tray between them with a flourish.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Franz glanced at the bill, took out his wallet, then paused in mid-movement and went completely still. It was a habit he had - suspended animation - when he was thinking deeply about something or was about to make some decision. Ella had the same sense of waiting for something that she had felt at Glendalough.

  Franz cleared his throat a couple of times.

  Finally, he said, ‘I was there that day, when Rachel got the result of the paternity test.’