The Carmel Sheehan Story

by Jean Grainger

  ‘But I can’t just swan in here and take your money, you worked for that, not me.’ She was trying to be reasonable.

  ‘Oh, my God, woman! Sometimes, you’re just infuriating! Why can’t you just accept it? I’ve spent years avoiding gold digging women who pretended to like me just because I am wealthy, and when I do find someone special, she won’t even take my money.’

  His frustration caused her to get a fit of giggles and they ended up kissing passionately.

  He had given her a credit card and a debit card for his account but she preferred to use her own money. It drove him crazy but she would never again be beholden to anyone, even Sharif if she could help it.

  She got up and stretched. She would have been far too self-conscious to rest with her eyes closed in public or to stretch herself like a cat before she came here, but here in Aashna, it was the sort of thing people did. As she slipped her feet back into her sandals, she spotted Zane in animated chat on his phone on the other side of the garden. She’d have to have someone keep a very close eye on him if he was organizing an engagement party while they were away. She just knew he would use their absence to recreate an unholy alliance of Strictly Come Dancing meets Cirque du Soleil.

  ‘Hi, Carmel,’ she was interrupted from her thoughts by Oscar, the yoga teacher, walking barefoot across the grass, Birkenstocks in hand.

  ‘I hear congratulations are in order? Delighted for you both.’ His smile was warm and genuine and not for the first time Carmel felt overwhelming gratitude for the life she now lived.

  ‘Yes, I’m still in shock, to be honest, but yes it seems like we are doing it.’ She chuckled, fizzing inside at the thought of marrying Sharif.

  ‘Well, good on you both, you deserve to be happy. I’d better move on, I’ve a class in the Kaivalya in ten minutes.’ He gave her a wave and wandered off. She longed for his inner peace, he always seemed so serene and chilled out. He was a fascinating man and she always enjoyed talking to him, and sometimes if she had time, he taught her a few stretches so she was building up her sun salutes and downward dog pose. The first time she tried it out at home, Sharif came home unexpectedly and she jumped up, flustered and embarrassed, but when he joined in for a few minutes, all her worries disappeared. Her reactions to things were still pre-Sharif as she called it, but she was learning. He wasn’t Bill, and she was a grown adult who could make her own decisions. She repeated the mantra often in her head and gradually, in infinitesimally slow steps, she was starting to believe it.

  For once, Sharif was home before her and had made a salad and mixed an omelette, which he put in the pan when she arrived. She loved that he could cook and that he seemed to enjoy it. Coming from a life with such clearly defined gender roles, it was a revelation to meet a man who cooked and ironed his own shirts.

  They ate and chatted about their upcoming trip. Just as they were clearing up, his phone beeped. She handed it to him and saw a shadow cross his face as he read the text. It wasn’t any of the patients; the staff always used his beeper to contact him if he was needed.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asked, trying not to sound nosey.

  ‘Oh…er…yeah, fine.’ His smile recovered instantly, but something had bothered him.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Carmel looked concerned; she thought he’d been a little preoccupied in recent days.

  ‘Yes, it’s probably nothing, but you know Mrs Johnson? She’s in the early phases of dementia, as well as having stage three Adenocarcinoma.’

  Noting her look of confusion, he added, ‘Lung cancer. Well, her son pulled me aside a few days ago, saying he wasn’t happy with the care she was getting, and that I wasn’t giving her the appropriate medical treatment and all of this. I told him that the care plan had been coordinated not just by me, though I led it, but had input from a variety of health professionals and that his mother was getting the best possible treatment for her condition. He left it go then but I don’t know, there’s something about him I just don’t trust. Mrs Johnson, when she’s lucid, doesn’t seem happy with him either, and the staff in the restaurant were saying he was complaining, claiming he’d found a hair in his food… I don’t know, he just seems to be a bit of a troublemaker. I’ve known her for years, but he’s new to me. I don’t think I ever even heard her talk about her son but he’s turned up out of the blue and seems to be determined to cause trouble. Marlena just texted me to say he’d been up to reception to say his mother’s room was freezing cold and that she was shivering in the bed. That just couldn’t be, but she sent someone from maintenance to check it out. The whole building is on a thermostat and everywhere is fine. I don’t know why he’s so determined to find fault…’

  Carmel felt a surge of protectiveness for Sharif but also for Aashna House. ‘God, he sounds awful. I think I know him, kind of rough looking? And his mum is lovely, a really gentle person. Maybe he resents her money being used to pay for her treatment; he sounds like the kind of person who’d be happy to dump her in a state nursing home and let the taxpayer pick up the bill.’

  ‘Well, she was a cleaner here in the hospice when I first started up. She was such a help to me, in the early days when I didn’t have too many staff, she’d not just clean but she’d feed patients, or push them around the garden in their wheelchairs. She was invaluable and she always used to say how lovely it would be to end your days someplace like here. When she got the diagnosis, she was a chain smoker so it wasn’t a surprise really, she came to me and asked if she could come here. Of course, I said she could and so she moved in. Not a mention of this Derek. I know her husband died when she was a young woman, long before I met her. So, this guy just shows up, he lives in Hammersmith someplace but suddenly he’s the caring son? She’s been here over a year at this stage, and he’s only turned up in the last few weeks. I’m not convinced.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say, where there’s a will, there’s relatives.’

  ‘That’s true, I’ve seen plenty of greed here over the years but this guy, I don’t know, there’s something dangerous about him. Also, she doesn’t have a bean, so I just can’t figure out what he’s after. I like his mother a lot, though, and she said she wanted to be treated here and so treat her we will. I just wish he wasn’t part of the equation.’

  Sharif was normally so unflappable, it was unusual to see him so perturbed.

  ‘I know, but we don’t get to pick who comes through the doors, nor do we get to choose their relatives, unfortunately. I know you’re worried, but the others are well able to handle anyone with a problem, Dr Alexander will be here as well as the junior team, and Nadia is going to move in here for the week, just to be extra safe, so let’s just enjoy our holiday and try not to think about this place. Johnson has no grounds for complaint; it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. His mother, like everyone else here, gets the very best of care, and the staff are aware of him now, so try to put him out of your mind, okay? Your mum told me the last holiday you took was actually to go to a medical conference in Madrid eleven years ago! And, well, I’ve never had a holiday in my life, so let’s just go and relax and have some fun together.’

  ‘Fun? What sort of fun did you have in mind?’ he grinned, drawing her close to him.

  ‘Oh, you know, Monopoly, Scrabble, that sort of thing…’ she winked and he lowered his head to kiss her.

  The holiday was wonderful. They wandered hand in hand around the old city of Saint Emilion, popping in and out of little caves selling local wines, cheeses, and foie gras. Carmel loved it all, though she drew the line at the foie gras once she learned how it was made. They marveled at the vast cathedral carved out of rock rather than built from the ground up, they bought baguettes and had picnics on the secluded lawn of their villa. Sharif taught Carmel how to swim in the pool, her first time ever being in water other than a bath. He stopped asking her how it was that she had never been to a beach or a swimming pool or even a cinema because he hated to see the look of shame in her eyes. She tried not to be too wide-eyed and
astounded at everything but it was so hard. She never imagined the world was actually like this, so beautiful and warm and welcoming. She realized, living as she had through all the years of her marriage through Facebook, that her world view was kind of distorted. She imagined all conversations to be political in nature, and people to be much more aggressive than they actually were.

  She and Sharif sat outside cafés, the sun brightening everything it touched, delighting at the simple beauty of it all. Each day for lunch they’d investigate the mystery of the plat du jour. She deliberately never asked what it was and was determined to try as many things as she could. She ended up trying escargot, deliciously swimming in their parsley butter, moules served in a large silver bucket and cooked in shallots and white wine, all mopped up with crusty baguettes; confit de canard that just fell off the bone and melted in the mouth with the most delicious chips she’d ever tasted. She was sure she must have gained ten pounds and marvelled at the slim French women. How did they live here and stay so slender, she wondered, as she and Sharif tucked into the buttery croissants and pain au raisin for breakfast each morning. The little kids blathering away in French fascinated her; she expected the adults to speak the magically romantic sounding language, but the children just blew her away.

  She and Sharif never tired of each other’s company as they told stories of their respective childhoods and lives up to the time they met. They talked about Dolly, Nadia, Joe, and the whole situation and she never felt as if she was boring him or droning on. To her utter amazement, he found her a constant source of delight and would often laugh out loud at something she said or stop her mid-sentence to kiss her. She never imagined happiness like this existed.

  ‘So, the wedding? What do you want to do?’ He was pouring her a glass of Sancerre on the terrace of the villa after they’d strolled home, having had yet another delicious dinner.

  ‘What do you mean, what do I want? To get married as soon as I can…though I’ll have to go on a diet at this rate or I won’t get a dress to fit me after all this food.’ She patted her still flat belly.

  ‘You have a delicious figure, and anyway, I don’t care about that. Those emaciated models never did anything for me, give me a real woman any day with curves. I’ve never understood those androgynous females, skin and bone, and I’ve never met a man who finds them attractive. No, I meant, do you want to get married in the UK or Ireland or abroad or where?’

  She thought fleetingly of the sad little ceremony seventeen years earlier in the church down the road from Trinity House where she married Bill.

  ‘Not Ireland anyway, that’s for sure. I don’t know, what would you like?’

  Sharif thought for a moment, ‘Well, weddings are generally a bride’s domain, especially in my culture, so I haven’t thought much about it, but I think I’d like something small, maybe at Aashna? And if it was nice weather, maybe the reception in the grounds. We could have a marquee for the food or something, and set up a bar and a dance floor and all of that… is that like something you’d like? Or would you prefer something else?

  ‘That sounds gorgeous. But there is the business of the divorce first. I know in Ireland it takes years, like you have to be separated for four of the previous five years, I checked it out online.’

  ‘But in the UK, it’s nothing like that. You just apply and the court grants it, simple as that. In terms of the marriage being an Irish one, well, that doesn’t matter as far as I understand it. You can divorce Bill from here, and get married here because under British law you are divorced.’

  ‘It’s so strange I haven’t heard from them. I mean, he must have gotten the letter the solicitor sent by now, he posted it six weeks ago, and because of that, he’ll know where I am, he had to put the address on the letter, and I’ve not heard anything. I know he didn’t care for me, but he’d surely want to speak to me or even Julia would, don’t get me wrong, I’d dread to get a letter from either of them, but even so, it’s weird, don’t you think?’

  Sharif sighed and sat down opposite her, giving her the glass of wine and holding her other hand.

  ‘To be honest, I find the entire relationship weird. The idea that a red-blooded man would have you beside him in bed every night for seventeen years and he never laid a finger on you. I just don’t get it, we’re simple creatures, carnal, and either his restraint is remarkable or there is something deeply wrong with that man. I suspect the latter. And as for that witchy sister of his, I mean, what on earth is that all about? She was horrible to you because she wanted to be some kind of pseudo wife to her own brother…as I said, the entire thing is a mystery to me.’

  Carmel smiled. Sharif had a few glasses of wine with dinner, so he was a little more candid than normal. Generally, he just remained silent on the subject of Bill and her years with him.

  ‘I just hope he agrees and just lets the divorce go through. Every time there was a referendum in Ireland on the subject, and there were three, it was the church that came out most strongly against it. It was only finally allowed in 1995 but the rules are still fairly draconian. Bill and Julia are pillars of the community and of the church, and even though people in Ireland have been getting divorced for over a decade now, in certain sections of society, there is still a stigma. Bill and Julia would be part of those sections.’

  ‘So better to stay miserable than be free to find happiness elsewhere? Seems mad to me.’

  ‘More or less, yes. What God has joined together and all of that.’

  She took a sip of her wine, it was delicious. The scent of the lavender that ringed the garden was being released by the evening sun and Sharif was captured in a beautiful buttery light.

  ‘You look like an angel.’ She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun. ‘Maybe you are, a gorgeous, sexy angel sent to me by my mother. Sometimes, I really think that, like, I know I never met her, but in Aashna and when I’m with you and Nadia and even Joe, I feel her, and I sense that she’s with me. Do you believe in all of that?’

  ‘I do, I suppose. I was reared a cultural Muslim, though not a very devout one, but like you with Catholicism, I have more or less walked away from it. The faith itself is not the problem, in fact, it has some good advice about how to live, just as the Bible does, but I want no part of what it means in the modern world. Religion only divides people in my view, and something I have observed in all my years in oncology and palliative care, no matter who we are, men or women, black or white, old, young, rich, poor, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, whatever, we all are born the same way and we all die the same way. We all want to be happy, to be loved, for our families and friends to be safe and well. Our bodies may look different on the outside but we all have the same internal organs, we are all the same.

  ‘As for the idea of angels and spirits and all of that, absolutely. If you have seen as many people die as I have, you couldn’t think otherwise. Something often happens in the last moments, a peacefulness, a joy, the pain just seems to go, and the person is at peace. They are moving on, to where or what I don’t know, but this is not the end. You saw it with Brian, but I’ve seen that same thing, many, many times, with people from all sorts of backgrounds.’

  ‘Do you think Dolly sent you to me?’

  ‘I don’t honestly know. What I do know is she wanted so desperately to find you. And I know that she loved me. It does seem strange that in all the times she went over there and searched, she got nowhere and then that I would find you in a Facebook group. I’m not even on Facebook; there’s an Aashna page but someone else manages it, but when Wayne Dyer came to speak here, it generated huge interest and he was such a large presence on social media, it was interesting to see people’s reactions. I do believe the dead are not gone, their energy, the essence of a person continues on in some form, but whether or not they can influence things in this world is the great unknown.

  So, to answer your question, I couldn’t be sure, and I am first and foremost a clinician, so I’d probably be drummed out of the Medi
cal Council for saying so, but possibly, she did, yes.’

  ‘Now, on that note, Joe and the DNA test. I don’t mind, obviously, it’s your decision but have you come to any conclusions about what you want to do?’

  Carmel sighed. She had thought so much about it but she was no closer to a resolution.

  ‘I don’t know, Sharif, honest to God, I have no idea what’s for the best. He is wonderful, and I feel a real connection to him, you know he told me the other day on the phone that he has asthma? Immediately, I was happy, not that he has it, but that I might have got it from him, you said Dolly didn’t have it. But then, maybe his father had it and that’s where it comes from. I don’t know, Sharif, it’s all such a muddle. I want him to be my dad, but if he’s not, then all of that is fake, isn’t it? I don’t mean he’s a fake but I mean, what’s the point? I’m forty years old, I don’t need a dad now, so it’s not like he can be a surrogate dad, like it would be different if I was a kid, am I making sense?’

  ‘Yes and no. I understand that you want him to be your father, and you feel like if he was then you could build up a loving relationship with him, so you are afraid to do the test in case the alternative is the case and it is his father who is your biological father. But have you thought of this? I’m not advocating any position, just a thought, but Joe feels like he is your father, he’s told you so, and you feel that he is, or maybe you wish it to be the case, so why not leave it at that? What good would finding out do?