The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 40

  Alison rang Ella on Sunday afternoon. ‘I’m just calling to thank you for the other evening.’

  ‘It was lovely to see you,’ Ella said.

  There was a pause.

  ‘So, how are things?’ Ella asked.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said Alison hesitantly, ‘if you knew what I should wear to go to Mass.’

  ‘To go where?’

  ‘Well, Pat rang and asked me out for a drink this evening.’

  Did he, now? thought Ella. So next Saturday week’s fishing trip seemed too long to wait. Excellent!

  ‘But he said he was going to evening Mass first and he’d pick me up afterwards,’ Alison explained, ‘and then he said that was unless I’d like to go with him. I’ve never been to anything like that before so I said yes, but now I’m thinking I won’t know what to do there and I don’t know what people wear.’

  ‘I’ll ask Franz. Hold on; he’s talking to Rachel on his mobile.’

  A whispered conversation ensued.

  Ella returned. ‘He says people don’t dress up, unless they’re the priest, and all you have to do is stand up and sit down when everyone else does, which is about as often as in an aerobics class. You can stay in your seat and wait while people go up to communion, and he hopes you enjoy it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Alison didn’t sound very reassured. ‘I didn’t realize Pat was religious,’ she confided. ‘I’ve never gone out with someone who believed in God.’

  ‘Do you like him, that’s the point?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Oh, yes! I thought he’d be more … well, you know. I haven’t gone on dates more than a handful of times since Carl was born and I was afraid he’d … you know, force the pace.’

  ‘And has he?’

  ‘No, he’s kind of gentlemanly. It seems strange when he’s so …’

  ‘Exuberant?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Alison laughed suddenly. ‘Like Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh. But he’s got this oldfashioned kind of gentleness, as well.’

  ‘Has Carl met him?’

  ‘No. I wanted to get Carl used to the idea of his mum seeing someone first, so I told him last night.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “I’m glad you’ve finally got round to it, Mum, because I’m not going to have so much time for you when I start high school”!’

  ‘No worries there, then!’ said Ella, laughing.

  ‘Thanks, anyway,’ Alison said. ‘I’ll let you know how I get on, shall I?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Ella. ‘What's the point in matchmaking if you don't get to hear how it went? Have a nice time this evening.’ She put the phone down as Franz ended his call too and said, ‘How’s Rachel?’

  ‘She’s doing well. She’s found a course starting in April and is going to sign up on Tuesday. She’s enjoying being with Tina and Martin and she’s going to look at a room in a shared house with two other girls this afternoon.’ His voice sounded a bit flat.

  ‘She needs to get her future sorted,’ Ella said, ‘then when she comes to visit us she’ll have something to tell.’

  ‘Yes. We need to get our future sorted as well,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I’d thought we might go and talk to some estate agents this afternoon but it’s sleeting outside now.’

  ‘We could look on the internet.’ She fetched the laptop from the kitchen worktop.

  ‘Start local,' Franz suggested. 'Do you know the names of any of the local estate agents?’

  ‘Of course I do. I walk past three agencies every day. So do you!’

  ‘I’ve never noticed,’ he confessed. ‘There’s no point if you’re not planning to move, is there?’

  ‘There certainly is,’ Ella told him. ‘I’ve fantasized about living in just about every kind of place – mews flat, penthouse apartment, mansion block, artist's studio, you name it! What are we looking for, Franz – a two-bedroom flat or a bigger one-bed one?’

  ‘A garden flat or a house with a garden,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t afford that, can we?’

  ‘I’ve decided I’m due to give myself a pay rise,’ Franz said. ‘And the baby will need some outside space to run around.’

  ‘Not for a while!’

  ‘Nothing huge,’ Franz allowed. ‘But we’ll want space for a washing line, won’t we, with all the baby gear? And a swing, maybe.’

  ‘A swing? It isn’t born yet!’

  ‘I’m thinking ahead,’ he said seriously. ‘And it’ll be better for the child if we’re married before it’s born, won’t it? Unless you'd rather wait?’

  Ella hugged him. ‘Are you getting used to the idea now – of having a baby?’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realized I had this idea at the back of my mind that I’d be a disaster as a father, until my father said that to me: "You’ll make a good father." I keep thinking of things he said, over the years.’

  ‘Good things?’

  ‘Mm. And I’m going to work less. There’s no point being a family if you have no time. I’m not leaving you two to have all the fun without me!’

  ‘I’ll believe in you working less when it happens,’ Ella said. ‘I can see you getting just as involved in Jake’s fundraising as you are in The Healing Place.’

  ‘No. I’ve lent Jake and Pat the Powerpoints and other presentations we developed for raising support for the Healing Place, to give them ideas, and I’ve given them some useful contacts, and copies of the notes I use for talks. Pat can do a lot of it.’

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘Why not? He’s got the gift of the gab. People would listen to him.’

  ‘Has he done anything like that before?’

  ‘No. He’s petrified!’

  ‘Are you going to go along and help him, at least at first?’

  ‘He doesn’t need me holding his hand. He can ask Alison.’

  ‘It seems a bit hard to dump him in it like that, Franz.’

  ‘Do him good to have a challenge,’ said Franz unrepentantly. ‘It’ll make him use his talents instead of being shouted at by the site foreman and subcontractors all day. Anyway, Sharma’s dumped me in his stuff: I’m taking the first of his classes tomorrow night.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I couldn’t find anyone else at short notice and he’s emailed me his notes and instructions. The trouble is, he doesn’t use notes much. He knows what he’s talking about and I don’t.’

  ‘Can’t you just postpone it till he gets back?’

  ‘It’ll be all right. He’s given me a couple of topics for visualizations. I can sit there and talk them through it and wait while they focus their imaginations, or whatever.’

  ‘Will it work, if it’s conducted by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing?’ Ella doubted.

  ‘How do I know?’ said Franz. ‘I’m not psychic!’ He paused, then said, ‘I sacked three people yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve had to do that.’

  ‘Who? The security guard?’

  ‘No, no. He was only employed to check that Leroy or others didn’t force their way past the receptionist and into my office; the poor bloke could hardly have foreseen someone shoving a child through the aircon vents from outside the building.

  ‘No, Hal and Stu, the Aura Cleansing guides, and Mel the Transcendental Meditation guide. For keeping people in the building when the fire service told them to clear it.’

  ‘They believed they were helping,’ Ella suggested, ‘by releasing safe vibes.’

  ‘I don’t care what they believed,’ said Franz. ‘They put people’s lives at risk.’

  ‘You’ve changed, since Ireland,’ Ella said. ‘You’re being yourself more, not trying to think what you should think but relying on your own gut instincts.’

  He looked concerned. ‘I don’t want to become intolerant of other people’s views.’

  ‘Some views are intolerable,’ said Ella forthrightly. ‘Telling people to stay and think beautiful thoughts in a building that might be blo
wn sky high is one of them.’

  ‘Quite. And I have been having doubts about some of this “each to their own spiritual path” concept,’ Franz admitted. ‘If people are pursuing a path that’s feel-good but illusory, we’re actually enabling them to move further away from spiritual health and lose touch with reality.’

  ‘Some are going to do that, with or without you,’ Ella reasoned. ‘I’d say the issue is more with you – what does it do to you, to offer people things you don’t believe will do them any good?’

  ‘I didn’t know what I believed would do people good,’ Franz said. ‘I didn’t know what I believed, full-stop.’

  ‘But you did know what you considered to be bordering on the realms of wackyville,’ Ella challenged him.

  ‘Okay. But a lot of therapies were considered stupid in the early days – in fact, anything that wasn’t on the National Health and administered by people with medical degrees. If everyone waited for guarantees, no one would ever try any alternatives, even to things that clearly weren’t working for their needs.’

  ‘So what did you actually believe, if you’re honest with yourself, when The Healing Place started?’

  He bit his lip and considered. ‘With hindsight, the beliefs I grew up with were so entangled with my own history, with people who abused the God of love they preached, that I didn’t want anything to do with anyone claiming a monopoly on the truth.

  ‘I suppose I believed it had to be a good idea to help people calm down and be less anxious and learn to still their thoughts. But then it seemed that people got stuck there - their lives revolved around their serene state of mind and health. Some of our long-term regulars seemed to stop thinking altogether and become detached from the everyday details of life.’

  ‘But that’s what worried me about you, in a different way, Franz,’ Ella said. ‘You seemed to refuse to think about what you agreed with and what you didn’t, in an attempt to give everyone’s opinions equal value. That’s not the same as respecting people’s beliefs. How can it be, unless you respect your own and really know what they are?’

  He nodded, accepting the criticism. ‘I had lost respect for my own beliefs, I guess.’

  ‘So now, what do you believe?’ Ella asked him.

  ‘Now, I’m thinking – wouldn’t all those people really searching long-term for spiritual health get closer to it by doing something like Pat does at the children's club, interact with other human beings and concern themselves more with other people’s wellbeing rather than their own?’

  ‘You need both, don’t you?’ Ella said. ‘You can get hyperactive do-gooders as well, so driven by other people’s needs that they never take time to reflect or get to know themselves.’

  ‘I guess so. It’s getting the balance, isn’t it?’ Franz said. ‘How do you get that balance?’ He looked over her shoulder at the computer screen. ‘How about that one? Garden flat, large sitting room.’

  ‘No. It’s in that street Sharma’s watching, though I don't think it's that actual house.'

  ‘I didn’t know he’d tracked it down to one particular house,’ Franz said. ‘Is he sure about that?’

  ‘He seems fairly certain. He’s spent enough time out there.’

  ‘Does he think the boys are still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ella went silent.

  Franz voiced the thought for her. ‘But God only knows what state they’re in by now.’

  Ella closed the website, stood up and leaned against him. ‘What must their parents be going through? Think, if something like that ever happened to ours ….’

  He wasn’t sure, afterwards, how that remark had led to their making love on the lumpy kitchen sofa; he only knew that he woke up and found it had grown dark outside and Ella was propped up on one elbow, looking into his face.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I was just thinking, about our different backgrounds and beliefs and so on.’

  He yawned. ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘This Christian thing. As I see it, isn’t it about God being the Father of everyone, but everyone walked off and did their own thing, so he came here in person, as the real son – a flesh and blood human who embodied all the consequences of people’s destructiveness but rose above them. Something like that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mm.’ Franz sat up, disentangling his legs from hers and stretching. ‘Want a cup of tea?’

  ‘If you like.’ Ella wasn’t easily sidetracked when pursuing an idea. ‘So, Franz …. was it that you stopped believing it was true? Did something disprove it for you, made you think, “Oh, that’s all a load of rubbish?” Or did you just want to stop thinking about it because … I don’t know … it got in the way of what you wanted to do?’

  He was already filling the kettle and didn’t look at her as she spoke but he moved slowly, taking down the mugs from the shelf, and she knew he wasn’t blocking the question, as he had tended to do with personal questions all the time she had known him.

  She waited while he stood with one hand on the kettle, frowning slightly, turning one of the mugs round and round with his free hand, as though trying to stay firmly in touch with material reality.

  Finally, when she was about to rephrase the question, he said suddenly, ‘It got too painful.’

  ‘Oh? What ….?’

  ‘The Father/Son bit,’ Franz said. ‘I could accept anyone going on about the Jesus-concept or the Universal Source of Life, or whatever else they called their image of God, as long as it was impersonal. An arm’s length relationship with God. A safe distance - whether it was someone distancing themselves from God because of disdain, cynicism, whatever – saying it was all childish and superstitious. Or distance from God because they thought he, she or it was too mighty and far above humanity to get messed up with our little lives. Any belief was fine by me, except that father-and-son kind of intimacy.’

  Ella tucked her legs under her on the sofa and watched his profile. ‘What made it so painful, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’d need to have grown up with that teaching to see it, maybe. Those catechism classes and sermons about the final scenes in the life of Jesus. The time he spent agonizing on his own, knowing how much venom people had against him – and against the God he called Dad. Feeling it all build up against him, knowing it was going to erupt in some terrible violence.

  ‘Having to accept he couldn’t – or wasn’t going to – walk away from it; he was going to take it on, let it all catch up with him. The only way out would be through it. Knowing his father was going to let him do that; he wasn’t going to rescue him from the suffering.’

  ‘Okay. No, you’re right, you probably do have to be brought up with that, for it to have that personal effect,’ Ella allowed. ‘It’s outside my experience - except in human terms. Was there a human element in it? I mean, was it in some way about you and Father Francis?’

  ‘Oh, for sure,’ said Franz. ‘A lot of the guys I grew up with weren’t affected by it at all; it was only ever a story in an ancient old book. But that last cry of a dying man, crucified for being who he was, got me. You know the words?’

  ‘I walked out before the end of the movie,’ Ella confessed. ‘It got too gory for me. What were they?’

  ‘He said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In my translation, that was, “Dad, you walked out on me.” Totally human. It freaked me out. I didn’t want anything to do with him, or his dad. Who would?’

  ‘Did you think your dad walked off and left you to it, then?’ Ella asked. ‘Let you take all the gossip and didn’t lift a finger to help you?’

  ‘Not my dad,’ said Franz. ‘He was the Jesus figure, in my book. In my eyes, he could do no wrong – not enough to deserve what he got, at any rate. It was his Dad I was mad with – his God. My father kept on loving that Father tyrant who didn’t stand up for him, who let all those fucking hypocrites claim to belong to God and make him the scapegoat who got it all wrong. I wanted to rescue him from that cross, shout at him to stop being a
bloody martyr; wasn’t it obvious his God didn’t care a toss about him?’

  ‘Wow. So you weren’t indifferent to God – you hated his guts?’

  ‘Oh, I hated him,’ Franz said. ‘I hated him for not having the guts, for leaving it to his son. I could only see as a son, then. I had no concept of what a father would be going through, letting his son go out there and take it all on, not zapping the enemies for him before they got anywhere near his precious son. Loving the enemies too because they were also his children, till even the blindest of them could see it was themselves they were destroying.’

  ‘And now? Has it changed, the way you think about things?’

  ‘It’s changing.’ He spoke almost inaudibly, putting down the kettle and coming over to Ella and laying one hand on her stomach. ‘I’m beginning to think like a father, and that’s changing my point of view. Don’t ask me how; I don’t know.’

  Ella put her hand over his. ‘I’m changing too. The baby is changing me – not just my shape! My mind too. And I can’t explain it either. But I think it’s good. I’m scared, though.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘What’s happening to those kids. What we see every night on the news. What kind of a world is this, to bring a defenceless baby into?’

  ‘I know. But defenceless babies grow up,’ said Franz. ‘Look at me. The odds were against me ever growing up, weren’t they? Thirty-something years in the world and I’m just coming out of an adolescent strop with God, the world and my dad.’

  Ella laughed. ‘It’s taken long enough, certainly,’ she said. ‘Look at you – can’t even make tea yet without taking half an hour to do it!’

  ‘Don’t push your luck!’ he said.