CHAPTER 11
‘I’m not going to talk about suing,’ said Leroy Watson on the phone.
‘Are you blackmailing me?’ said Franz incredulously.
‘No, man – that’s what I’m saying. I don’t want to go that way. But to refuse to see me even to discuss what I’m offering, when your mission statement says you believe in inclusion, sounds like discrimination. Also it could be seen as racism.’
‘Racism?’
‘Being that I’m black.’
‘I could hardly be expected to know that, on the phone!’ said Franz.
‘No, but in a court of law of course it would be seen,’ said Leroy.
‘Look,’ said Franz, with a hint of desperation. ‘We don’t have any space free for hire at the moment. I’ve just interviewed a lady who does Shiatsu and told her she has to use her own premises. I’ve had to mediate between our reflexologist and a hypnotherapist because the hypnotherapist can’t wake up his clients on time for the reflexologist to take over the room for her sessions. You see where I’m coming from? Logistics, not prejudice.’
‘But you’re trying to accommodate them, some way,’ said Leroy. ‘Me, you won’t even see for a chat.’
‘We don’t do religion,’ said Franz. ‘We’re a Healing Place for spiritual health: we embrace every kind of spiritual path and health therapy but we avoid religion or cults. That’s our clear policy.’
‘I don’t see that clearly in the small print of your written policy, and it sounds like discrimination to me.’
‘It’s not discrimination; it’s setting boundaries,’ said Franz. ‘And it does clearly state "non-religious."’
He was beginning to feel light-headed, dizzy. He remembered having this sensation the first time Leroy had phoned. If he had been more in control of his senses, he would have asked more questions then. He shouldn’t have made the appointment in the first place; now it was proving a nightmare to cancel. Surely the man couldn’t sue him?
‘We know our limits,’ Franz persevered. ‘We’re still a fairly recently established organization. The spiritual paths available to people have proliferated in the past few years. I’ve simply had to recognize that we can’t do everything.’
‘Luciferianism don’t come under the heading of religion,’ Leroy insisted. ‘We’re anti-religion. Religion has brainwashed people for centuries. We’re anti-guilt trip, anti-morality.’
Franz felt his brain becoming fogged. Why didn’t somebody come into the office and interrupt him? When he wanted to be left alone to get on with something, he was invariably interrupted every five minutes.
‘Okay,’ he said, wanting to end the conversation. ‘Okay. This is what I can offer you – and it’s the best I can do. Send me all the information you have about your organization. I’ll need to know all its affiliations – your head office or central hub or whatever, the person in charge of your group and of the wider organization – and its policies and mission statement, with a couple of references from members or people who are prepared to say how they’ve benefited from being Luciferites.’
‘Luciferians.’
‘Sure. Send me the information and I promise I’ll read it carefully, take up the references, and then – when we have vacancies, I’ll see what we can do.’
‘Sounds like you’re fobbing me off, man.’
‘No. I’m telling you the procedure for becoming associated with The Healing Place.’
‘You do this with everybody?’
‘Unless they’re known to us previously.’
He hadn’t put the Shiatsu lady through any procedures. Tokuko was petite and self-assured. Her spoken English was much more fluent, face to face, than on the phone. Franz had taken one look at her smiling face and known she would be an asset to The Healing Place.
It was true he had told her there was no space available for her to see clients there but he had mentally allowed her to jump the queue. He had already made up his mind that if the Nordic massage practitioner who time-shared a room with the acupuncturist (who did, admittedly, tend to leave needles lying around on the couch) had one more row with her in public, her time-slot would be offered to Tokuko.
In the meantime, he had agreed to oversee the updating and redesigning of Tokuko’s modest publicity leaflets and had booked her a desk at the next forum evening to attract clients. None of this was he going to let Leroy know. He had an uneasy feeling that Leroy knew anyway. Why had the man gone to the trouble of obtaining a copy of The Healing Place’s statement of policy?
Franz was not going to be forced into a corner. Not by anybody. He wanted Leroy to go and leave him alone, with no hassle.
‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ he said firmly. ‘I have a meeting. Send me your details, okay? Bye now.’
He put down the phone and found he was shaking. This was getting beyond a joke, these reactions of his. He must calm down. He ran a place devoted to making people relax, for God’s sake. Not for God’s sake – for their own sake. He shook his head, impatient with his lack of control over even the words he chose. He needed this break.
His meeting was with Alison, who was delighted at the prospect of taking over the office while Franz went to Ireland. She was so delighted that Franz wondered how easy it would be to take the reins back from her and make her return to being a receptionist when he returned. It might be time, as Ella had been saying for so long, to delegate some of his duties to someone else.
He was surprised to find how familiar she was with the computer system.
‘My son uses a similar program,’ she said. ‘He taught me.’
‘How old is your son?’
‘Ten, going on thirty! He’ll be eleven next month. I’ll be able to get him the new software he wants, with this money.’
Franz was touched. ‘Don’t spend all your extra salary on boys’ toys for your son!’
‘That’s what it’s for. If you have kids, you want to do the best for them, don’t you?’
He supposed so. He wondered if he would feel like that about Ella’s baby. Then he realized he was still thinking of it as Ella’s, not his.
‘I’m about to find out,’ he said.
Alison’s eyes widened. ‘Is Ella expecting?’
‘Don’t say anything to anyone,’ he cautioned. ‘She hasn’t told anybody yet.’
Alison was even happier to be entrusted with a confidence. ‘I won’t say a word,’ she promised. ‘Tell Ella I’m really happy for her. For both of you.’
He probably wouldn’t pass the message on. Ella might not be pleased that he’d mentioned it to Alison. Though it wasn’t true that Ella hadn’t told anyone. She had told Maz, Jan, probably Phil. Maybe Sharma. Her mother? He should have asked her whom she had told and if she minded him telling anyone. Why hadn’t he discussed that with her? The answer came back to him like an arrow: because he had nearly hit her. The ultimate conversation stopper.
‘When is the baby due?’ Alison asked.
He hadn’t asked Ella that either. ‘Oh – she’s only just found out. About seven months. Okay, is that all you need to know about the running of the office?’
If she was taken aback by his sudden shut-down, she hid it well.
‘That’s fine. I won’t take up any more of your time. Will there be a number to contact you while you’re away, Franz, or do you want a complete break from this place?’
‘The usual mobile number. Feel free to leave messages and I’ll call you.’
It was the first time since its inception that Franz had taken any kind of break from The Healing Place, even for a day. The thought occurred to him: if I go, if I do this in my own name, who will I be by the time I return? Will I still be free to be Franz Kane, director of The Healing Place, or will it have all slipped away from me, never to let me back in?
Although Alison knew his phone numbers by heart, he handed her one of his cards from the pile on the desk and she took it politely. The card told her that he was Franz Kane of The Healing Place and included a list of n
umbers and contact details. Although he had told Ella, from the beginning of their relationship, that he kept his home life separate - and in fact he had never, until Sharma’s visit on Sunday, invited anyone but Ella into his modest accommodation – Ella had commented that he was never really off-duty. Now he would be. He would switch his phone off and pick up Alison’s messages once or twice a day. It felt scary to be out of touch, as scary as starting The Healing Place had been initially, though The Healing Place now felt like security - his only security, perhaps. That was a dangerous situation to be in. Certainly it was time to go away for a while. He had made a purely rational decision, he told himself, on solid logical grounds.
‘I’d only ring in an emergency,’ Alison assured him. ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine. When are you planning to leave?’
‘I’m about to book the flight now. I’ll let you know.’
‘Is Ella okay to fly, this early on in her pregnancy?’
He couldn’t remember if he had said enough for Ella not to expect to go with him. She would probably be glad to be rid of him for a while, after Saturday night. Still, he hadn’t offered her the choice; he had made lame excuses about Maz needing her at work, instead of telling her honestly that he needed to go alone.
Did he really need, or want, to go alone? It would be easier, certainly, with Ella beside him. But how much would he need to tell her? 'Least said, soonest mended,' his mother used to say - one of the catchphrases she had picked up from the Irish mothers and made part of her vocabulary, trying to sound more native than the people born on that soil.
He didn’t want to think about his mother.
Franz was used to assuming that he and Ella were a liberal couple, equal partners who discussed everything. What was the phrase she had used for him: Neanderthal in a New Age kind of way? He had better give her a call, immediately. He picked up the phone. Alison, seeing that he wasn’t answering her, left the office discreetly. He was a busy man, she told herself, with a lot on his mind. It had been nice of him to share his and Ella’s good news with her, but she mustn’t impose on his time.