The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 53

  The crowds had gone home but small huddles of people still hung around outside the church and inside. Franz and Ella found Phil sitting chatting to some of them. He waved and they went over to him.

  ‘All over bar the shouting,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘What state is the kitchen in?’ Ella asked. ‘Can we help clear up?’

  ‘It might need a final going over, tomorrow,’ Phil said, ‘but the youth group really excelled themselves. They were washing the floor, the last time I looked.’

  ‘You’ve all gone to a lot of trouble,’ Franz said.

  ‘It was good for them – for all of us,’ said Phil. ‘And a good suggestion has come out of it: a couple of the young people have had the idea of opening the church hall for early breakfasts for commuters – eat in or take away. Early morning’s a difficult time for a lot of people, waking up alone and having to motivate themselves to get up and out to work. If they popped in here on the way, it would provide a bit of contact and something to eat, which they might not have time to prepare.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Franz.

  ‘Talking of eating,’ said Phil, ‘that’s something I missed out on this evening. Why don’t you join me? Go through to the kitchen and I’ll come as soon as I’ve said goodbye to these people and locked up the church. Jan’s around somewhere; she’ll be pleased to see you.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t!’ said Ella. ‘Not after the evening she’s had! We’ve only called to see if you needed a hand with anything.’

  ‘Seriously, she might be glad of your help. She’s trying to settle the kids and Sarita’s in a bit of a state.’

  ‘Sure, we’ll go in,’ Ella said.

  ‘Perhaps if you go in, Ella, and Franz helps me to send the rest of these people away after their ordeal?’ Phil suggested.

  ‘Sure.’

  At the door connecting the church to the house, Ella looked back and saw Franz and Phil side by side, walking with the final group of people towards the main door, and smiled at the unexpected sight. I always thought they were alike, she thought smugly, satisfied with her insight.

  Jan was in the hall, reasoning with her son who, clad in pyjamas and protesting his wakefulness, was arguing that if Sharma’s boys weren’t in bed yet then it was only girls’ bedtime, which didn’t count.

  ‘Roheet and Raj are going to bed any minute now!’ said Jan firmly. ‘And I want you to set them a good example, so start moving up those stairs, Matt!’

  ‘They won’t go to bed,’ Matthew said. ‘They won’t leave their mum because she keeps crying.’

  ‘Where’s Sharma?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Out watching that row of houses again,’ said Jan.

  ‘I’ll go and sit with Sarita,’ Ella offered.

  ‘Would you? Thanks, Ella. Now, Matt, you heard that. Upstairs, now! I’m coming with you, now Ella’s here.’

  Grumbling, he started stomping his way up the stairs, as slowly as he could get away with.

  Ella, passing the kitchen, noticed that its floor, though no longer swamped with tea, was now swamped with soapy water. She wrung out the mop that was standing in a puddle by the door and swabbed the floor dry.

  She found Sarita in the sitting room next to Phil’s office. Her small sons, both with dark rings under their eyes, were hugging her as she sat crying. Raj, the younger one, held a damp handkerchief and kept dabbing his mother’s face.

  ‘Mummyji, stop crying! Please!’

  Roheet, his mouth set determinedly in a straight line, said to Ella, ‘My father has gone away.’

  ‘He hasn’t left you, Roheet,’ Ella promised. ‘He’ll be here when you wake up in the morning.’

  ‘Why is he not here now, when my mummyji needs him?’ His solemnity reminded Ella of Sharma.

  She sat down beside him and took his hand. ‘Your father is working. Did he explain? He’s helping the police.’

  ‘Police have gone now,’ Roheet pointed out.

  ‘Not the police who were here today,’ Ella explained. ‘They came because of a problem with the building, down the road. Sharma is helping some other police officers to look for some missing boys.’

  ‘Why does he love other boys now, more than us?’ asked Raj.

  ‘He doesn’t, sweetheart. He couldn’t love anyone more than he loves you. And your mum,’ Ella added, hoping Sarita would take note of that. ‘But these little boys are very frightened and sad. They’ve been taken away from their dads and their mums, by bad people who might do them harm. Your daddy is trying to find them.’

  The two children were silent, absorbing this information.

  ‘My father will find them,’ Roheet said definitely.

  ‘He will find them,’ echoed Raj.

  ‘And he will want to find you in bed, when he returns,’ Ella said. ‘If he thinks you’ve been up half the night and not getting your sleep, it will give him something else to worry about.’

  Roheet frowned. ‘That is true,’ he said, after consideration. ‘Daddy likes us to go to bed on time. We will do this for him. Come, Raj. This lady will sit with Mummyji – yes?’ he said, looking Ella straight in the eyes.

  ‘Yes, certainly, Roheet,’ Ella promised, trying not to smile. A miniature Sharma. No wonder Franz finds it hard to block out Sharma’s advice, even when he can block out just about everything else, she thought.

  The children kissed their mother, who made a big effort to stop crying and assure them she would be fine and would come up soon.

  ‘Ask Jan if you need anything,’ Ella told the children. ‘She’s upstairs with Matt and Rosie.’

  ‘Are we going to live with Jan now?’ asked Raj.

  ‘No,’ Sarita told him. ‘We will stay here tonight and maybe for a little while.’

  ‘I want to live with Matt and Rosie!’ said Raj.

  ‘People don’t live together with other people here,’ Roheet told him. ‘They all live on their own, in their own homes.’

  ‘We lived in Uncle Tariq’s house,’ Raj argued.

  ‘That was in Pakistan, Raj! We’re in England now! And Uncle Tariq is family. We don’t have family here.’

  ‘Why can’t Matt and Rosie be family?’ asked Raj.

  ‘Raji, go to bed now,’ Sarita pleaded. Her effort to hold back the tears was beginning to fail. Ella stepped between her and the boys.

  ‘Matt and Rosie are friends, which is kind of family,’ Ella told the boys. ‘And I’m sure you won’t be living far away. But Matt and Rosie have had to go to bed all on their own, and Matt’s been asking why you’re not upstairs with him. You don’t want to leave him up there on his own, do you?’

  ‘Can we sleep with Matt, in his bed?’ asked Raj.

  ‘You’re sleeping in Matt’s room, aren’t you?’ Ella said. ‘Didn’t Jan say he gave up his room for you?’

  As Raj opened his mouth to speak, she said, ‘I’m counting to see who can get to the top of the stairs first. Will it be you or Roheet?’

  ‘Me!’ Raj shouted. The two boys ran for the stairs and raced up them together, as Jan was starting to come down them.

  ‘Over to you,’ Ella told her.

  ‘Oh, well done,’ Jan approved. ‘Gold star in your motherhood exam, Ella!’

  Ella laughed and went back to Sarita. She sat beside her, saying nothing. Everything she could think of to say seemed too intrusive. She didn’t know Sarita well enough to say the things she would say to friends in these circumstances. In the end, she said just that.

  ‘Sarita, all the things I want to say to you seem too personal when you don’t know me very well, but I really do want to help.’

  Sarita dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief far too damp to do any good. ‘You can say anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ll get some tissues,’ Ella said.

  ‘I shouldn’t be blowing my nose in front of people,’ Sarita said.

  ‘English people don’t have the same reservations about it,’ Ella told he
r. ‘Be multicultural – squelch away disgustingly like the rest of us.’

  Sarita laughed and sniffed. Ella went into Phil’s office and took the box of tissues from the table between two armchairs. Part of the equipment of every caring professional, she thought with wry amusement. Franz had a box of tissues in his office. Jan carried a pack of them in her bag.

  ‘Here,’ she told Sarita, handing her the box and moving a wastepaper bin over by her feet. ‘Drip in comfort now. Did you love him, this man?’

  Sarita blew her nose with British abandon. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you in the beginning?’

  ‘No.’

  Ella waited.

  ‘I know what you must be thinking of me,’ Sarita burst out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A bad woman!’ she exclaimed, her breath catching in a sob.

  ‘I don’t think that. Were you lonely, Sarita? It can’t have been easy being at home with two children, with all your family so far away in another country. Was that part of it?’

  ‘I was lonely,’ she said. ‘My family didn’t write or phone me. They said I shouldn’t have married Sharma because he wasn’t a proper Muslim - half Hindu, and only half Pakistani.’

  ‘So not even halfway acceptable?’

  ‘No, not acceptable to them at all. Then, when I went back to Pakistan, my brothers told me I was foolish and ungrateful and didn’t have sense to see that Sharma loved me, and this man was no good – even though he was Muslim and from Pakistan. I didn’t know he was married,’ she added defensively.

  ‘You thought Sharma didn’t love you?’ Ella asked.

  Sarita nodded, scrunching up the tissue in her hand. ‘He was always so quiet,’ she said. ‘Always working, always thinking, never saying much. Every night he comes home and he is not happy with me. He always asks me, “Who have you seen? Where have you been today?” And I say to him, “Nobody; I see nobody and I go nowhere.”’

  Ella frowned. It didn’t sound like the Sharma she knew. ‘You mean he was so jealous he wasn’t happy if you saw anybody or went anywhere?’

  ‘No, not that! He says this is not good, for a woman to be in her home and there are no relatives around her. At home in my country, everyone is going in and out of one another’s houses, and going shopping together and cooking together. I can see he is thinking, “Why did I marry this wife who stays on her own all day and can’t make any friends and even her own family don’t value her enough to phone her?”’

  ‘Sarita, he was probably sad for you and worried about you getting lonely, not blaming you!’ Ella said.

  ‘But if my family valued me, we could have gone to live near them,’ said Sarita. ‘Sharma said he was willing to go to Pakistan to live so my family could be near me. But none of them were speaking to me! So we couldn’t even do that.’

  ‘But your brother phoned Sharma,’ Ella said, ‘when you were living out there, and said he knew Sharma cared about you and the other man didn’t, and your brothers wanted you to come back here.’

  ‘I know! They changed their minds about Sharma but they never told me that when I was here. I was thinking they would be happy to see me back home and my sisters-in-law would be glad for my children to grow up with their children, and they would prefer this other man who was of the same culture, and eventually we would get married and then my family would be happy and I wouldn’t be on my own every day.

  ‘But my brothers sent this man away and told me I should never have left Sharma and they were very disappointed in me and I was a bad woman who had brought shame on the whole family.’

  ‘They sent the man away?’

  ‘As soon as we arrived,’ Sarita confirmed.

  ‘So you weren’t living with him out there?’

  ‘No. We were living with my brother’s family, the eldest one. He got his friend in Karachi to follow this man when he went there on business, and he found out he is married with a wife and five kids.’

  ‘How did you feel when your brother sent the man away?’ Ella asked.

  ‘I thought, now I have nobody to take care of me and my children,’ Sarita said. She put her head down on her arms and sobbed brokenly.

  ‘Sarita,’ said Ella, ‘I don’t think Sharma knew this situation, did he? From what he said to us, your brother led him to believe you were still with this man – that he was giving financial support to you personally but didn’t want to support another man’s children, and that was why Sharma sent money.’

  Sarita looked up. ‘Sharma sent money? I thought the money all came from my brothers!’

  Ella stared at her. ‘How long were you with this man, after you arrived in Pakistan?’

  Sarita shook her head emphatically. ‘I wasn’t with him. My brother sent him away,’ she repeated. ‘He wouldn’t let him come in the house even to have a drink or wash his hands when we arrived from the airport.’

  ‘So since last year, when you left here, you’ve been on your own with the children? I mean, staying at your brother’s, but without a partner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sarita, why didn’t your brother tell Sharma you were no longer with the man? Why did he tell him the man was buying you expensive presents but not supporting the kids?’

  ‘He did send presents but I sent them back. He said he would leave his wife and children but I didn’t want him to. And I didn’t know my brother was phoning Sharma at all,’ said Sarita. ‘I don’t know why my brother let Sharma think this man was with me. Perhaps he didn’t want Sharma to think that even a bad man had rejected me. Or maybe he thinks if Sharma doesn’t want me back, it’s better if my brothers allow this man to come back for me. Perhaps it was not so bad for my brothers and the family honour if a man valued their sister, even a bad man. Better than being alone, wanted by nobody.’

  Ella tried to get her head round this reasoning. ‘But the man didn’t reject you: your brother was the one who wouldn’t let you live with him!’

  ‘I didn’t want to live with him,’ said Sarita softly. ‘My brother could see this, I think. I didn’t know the man really. I thought I did. He was a business colleague of my youngest brother and he came to visit us in London one time. Then he kept coming back when Sharma was out. I sent him away every time, but then ….’

  ‘But then one day you were too lonely and needing company, and too convinced that Sharma thought you were a worthless wife,’ Ella hazarded, ‘so you let him in?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarita whispered.

  ‘And when did you realize you didn’t want to live with him?’

  ‘On the plane journey. I was thinking, “What have I done? Who is this man to me? Why didn’t I stay with Sharma? He will miss the kids and they will miss him, even if he doesn’t love me.”’

  ‘Sarita,’ Ella said, ‘do you love Sharma?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said simply. ‘He is the only man I ever love. But he didn’t love me. And now he never will, because I have done this bad thing,’ she said, sobbing again.

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ Ella said.

  Franz walked in with Phil.

  ‘You men!’ Ella exploded. ‘Why can’t you say what you feel? What’s so flaming macho about keeping your feelings such a secret that we never know what’s going on with you?’

  Phil and Franz exchanged glances.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ asked Phil mildly.

  ‘Sarita’s brother let Sharma go on thinking she was living with this man, and Sharma let Sarita go on thinking he didn’t care about her instead of just going to Pakistan and telling her he wanted her to come home, and all the time she was ….. Franz, will you just get Sharma on the phone and tell him to stop trying to sort out other people’s tragedies and come back here and deal with his own!’

  ‘I have done,’ said Franz calmly. ‘It’s what Phil and I were discussing. We’ve just phoned him. And Jan’s in the kitchen making sandwiches for everyone. She said you shouldn’t go so long without eating, Ella, when you’re pregnant. It can play h
avoc with your emotions.’

  ‘There’s no havoc with my emotions!’ said Ella hotly, then caught Franz’s eye and she was the first to start laughing.

  At Phil’s suggestion, Sarita rang her eldest brother in Pakistan, although it meant getting him out of bed at an unearthly hour of the morning, given the time difference.

  ‘It’ll show him you mean business if you start by getting him out of his comfort zone,’ Phil said. ‘You can ask him his reasons for not telling you about Sharma sending money for the children and for your flights home, and get him to tell Sharma in person that he lied about your being with this man.’

  ‘My brother will be angry with me,’ said Sarita fearfully.

  ‘Don’t let him,’ said Jan. ‘You get in there first and be angry with him. He made a difficult situation much more painful and complex than it need have been for both you and Sharma. And the children.’

  Sarita nodded. ‘I can get angry for the children,’ she said.

  ‘And for yourself,’ Jan insisted. ‘You could have been home here last year if he’d been more truthful with both of you.’

  Sarita didn’t do badly, Ella thought. They couldn’t understand the language but her tone was assertive. Her voice shook a few times but she seemed to be standing her ground.

  Sharma came in and stood by door, listening to her half of the conversation, his eyes widening.

  Sarita held out the phone to him and he took it from her and began to speak.

  Sarita translated to the others. ‘I told Tariq he must tell Sharma why he lied and why he told me I would have to repay my brothers the money for our food and for the flights home, when they knew it had come from my husband and not from them. And he must tell Sharma why he let him think I was living with this man when I had been with the family all the time and sent away the presents when they came.’

  Sharma said very little on the phone, but listened. Finally he said a few words and listened again.

  ‘He is thanking my brother for looking after me and the children,’ Sarita relayed.

  Sharma spoke again, quietly but firmly.

  ‘He is saying there is no question of a loan to be repaid to them, and if they stop asking for it from me then in return he will not mention to them again the money he sent or embarrass them by checking whether I received it all,’ Sarita said.

  Sharma’s voice became stronger then and more vehement.

  Sarita’s was quieter when she translated this time. ‘He is saying he will forgive my brothers everything, except for not passing the message to me that he loved me and would be waiting for me if I wanted to come home.’ Almost inaudibly, as though to herself, she added, ‘But I don’t know if he can ever forgive me. I will never forgive myself.’

  Sharma put down the phone and walked out of the room, his face averted from everyone. Ella, nearest the door, saw his face contorted with emotion. She followed him into the hall.

  ‘Come back in, Sharma,’ she said.

  ‘Leave me,’ he said indistinctly. ‘I need a few minutes alone.’

  ‘Just now, I don’t care what you need,’ she said. ‘Sarita needs to see you upset or she’ll never believe how you feel.’

  ‘How do you think I feel?’ he retorted. His shoulders were shaking.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ Ella said. ‘Sarita doesn’t believe you ever loved her or will ever forgive her. Is that true?’

  ‘No! How can you think that?’

  ‘I don’t. She does. Come back in, Sharma, and move heaven and earth to persuade her it isn’t true. If you don’t do it now, it’s too late to try doing it later.’

  He let himself be led back into the room. Sarita was sobbing again. Sharma went over and took her hands and tried to speak to her, then broke down. Sarita’s crying intensified into wails. Ella looked helplessly towards Franz but he seemed to be struggling with emotion himself and didn’t move towards them. It was Phil who moved.

  Drawing up a chair he sat by them and separated their hands, holding one in each of his own, like a bridge between them.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I want you to speak one at a time, and the other one to listen. Sarita, you tell Sharma what you most fear. Tell him what you told us.’

  She tried to compose herself, exhausted now with crying. Jan sat beside her and handed her more tissues and stroked her back.

  ‘Go on, Sarita,’ she encouraged. ‘You can do it.’

  Haltingly, Sarita said, not looking at Sharma, ‘I wasn’t a good wife. I didn’t fit in here, with your life. I was lonely but I was no good at getting to know people.’

  Sharma went to speak but Phil stopped him. ‘Not yet. She hasn’t finished. Sarita, tell Sharma what you’re most afraid of now.’

  ‘That you will never forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘That you can’t love this worthless wife.’

  Sharma put his head down and drew a deep breath. Ella flinched. Franz put an arm round her waist.

  There was a long silence. Neither Phil nor Jan moved till Sharma finally spoke.

  ‘I haven’t made you happy, Sarita,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been there for you. It’s my fault that you didn’t know how much I loved you. I don’t know how to say these things. But I want to learn. I love you. Can you forgive me? Can you love me again?’

  Sarita was quiet and still by now. ‘I never stopped loving you, Sharma,’ she said. ‘I believe you will forgive me because you are a good man. But I can never forgive myself.’

  ‘No!’ said Ella suddenly and loudly.

  Everyone looked at her.

  ‘You mustn’t do that to him, Sarita,’ Ella pleaded. ‘Not if you love him.’ She brushed away tears impatiently. ‘It’s the worst possible way to punish someone who loves you – not to forgive yourself. I know. I live with a man who won’t forgive himself. I don’t even know what he’s done but I do know it’s not worth what it’s doing to the person who loves him!’

  Then she was the one who was sobbing and the others who got to their feet quickly and gathered round her. She caught a glimpse of the shock on Franz’s face before he, like Sharma before him, turned away from them all and left the room, alone.