CHAPTER 38
Pat arrived early, the following evening.
‘Franz isn’t home yet,’ Ella told him, bringing him into the kitchen. ‘We overslept this morning and he was later than usual getting to work. He’s just phoned to say he’ll be about another half hour, which is still early for him.’
‘He has a very important job,’ Pat said respectfully. ‘He’s made it big in the world, all right.’
‘Alison’s babysitter’s been delayed but she should get here about the same time as Franz. What would you like to drink? There’s wine, beer, cider, Guinness or soft stuff.’
‘You didn’t get the Guinness for me, I hope?’
‘I did, actually.’
‘I’ve never been able to abide the stuff,’ Pat confessed. ‘Terrible, for an Irishman, isn’t it? I don’t admit to it back home; I have to drink it.’
Ella laughed. ‘Well, you don’t have to here. What would you prefer?’
‘Wine would be great.’
Ella took a bottle of white out of the fridge and a bottle of red from the rack on the wall. ‘Help yourself.’ She set out glasses and put dishes of dips with crisps, nuts and olives on the table.
‘Don’t put food in front of me,’ Pat warned. ‘You get fierce hungry working on the bridges.’
‘I’m sure you do. Eat away: it’s to keep us going till the others get here. I’m eating for two, so that’s my excuse.’
‘Mick told me yez are having a baby. That’s fantastic news! Mick’ll make a great father!’
‘Will he?’ Ella needed to hear that from someone who knew Franz well.
‘He will, no doubt about it. He was always great with kids. Little Rachel worshipped the ground he walked on and he had endless patience. She and her friends never gave him a moment’s peace! D’you know Rachel?’
‘I just met her, in Ireland. She’s a lovely girl.’
‘Is she back, then? That’s good. She was fair cut up when her mother died – Mick’s mother Maria, that is.’
‘Did you know Mick’s mother?’
‘Oh, sure, I was always round their place. She loved to have a house full of people, Maria. She was a stickler for tidiness, mind, and she’d complain no end about boots and mud and the smallest thing out of place but she loved it really.’ He was tucking into the dips with enthusiasm. ‘I spent more time round at Mick’s than with my own family. He was a lifesaver to me.’
‘Was he?’ Ella sat down at the table and cupped her chin in her hand. ‘Why?’
‘My da was an alcoholic – a nasty-tempered man when he was drunk, which was more often than not – and the mother could never stand up to him. It was miserable, altogether. It was like a breath of fresh air to go to Mick’s.’
‘Did you know his father?’ Ella asked cautiously.
‘I knew Father Francis quite well. I used to forget, to be honest with you, that he was Mick’s dad. Mick never mentioned him. I heard all the gossip but, like you do when you’re a kid, it goes over your head. I saw him round Mick’s house from time to time but no more than at our own or anyone else’s. He was a lovely man.’
‘What was he like?’ Ella asked, thinking of the frail little figure dying, raising himself up on the bed to give Franz one more word of encouragement before his breath ran out.
‘Oh, he was someone you don’t meet the like of very often,’ said Pat softly. ‘He was great when my grandda was dying – my mother’s father, that was. She was worn out exhausted looking after him all the time, and my da sitting there in the chair shouting at her to bring him this and bring him that and never lifting a finger to help her.
‘She was close to her old da and I thought the grieving would kill her if the work didn't first. She couldn’t bear to let him go. Several times he nearly slipped away and she almost forced him back to life. Couldn’t stand to be left alone with my da, I suppose, and four kids to raise.
‘Father Francis called round one evening and he could see the state she was in, so after taking one look at her he sends her off to bed to get some rest and says he’ll stay a short while and sit with my grandda and he’ll call her to get up when he goes home. Well, she slept until morning and Father Francis never called her – he never moved from my granddad’s bedside all night.
‘Then off he goes to say morning Mass – late, I expect; he was never on time for anything in his life – and to do all his duties of the day, which was hard work, you know. And next night he’s back again and does the exact same thing. And the night after that as well.’
‘He sounds like some kind of hero.’
‘He was to me, I’m telling you. I’d been sitting up with the old fella a bit myself, to help out my ma; I was never that close to my grandda myself; he wasn’t an easy person to look after, resented getting old, I guess, and hated having to have things done for him. But with Father Francis, he was like a lamb. Trusted him, d’ye see.
‘So I got up in the night, one night Father Francis was there, and went in to see did he want tea or something to eat or just some company, and he says to me, “Pat, come and sit down here with me. Your grandfather’s near to passing and it’s a great privilege to be present at the moment of death.”
‘Well, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, I can tell you. No siree! I wanted to run out of there as fast as my legs would carry me, only there was something about Father Francis that made you do what he said.
‘So I sat down there next to him and he says to me, “Take his hand now, Pat, and tell him you love him because it’s the last time you’ll have the chance and it’ll last him for eternity.”
‘I tell you, I would sooner have lain down in the road in front of a ten-ton truck than say the words "I love you" to anybody, let alone my grouchy old grandda, but somehow I managed to say it to him and d’you know, he squeezed my hand to let me know he could hear me, though I wouldn’t have said he had the strength left in him.
‘And then Father Francis made the sign of the cross on my grandda’s forehead and he says to him, “You can go now, Padraig,” and would you believe it, my grandda smiles and lets out this great sigh and then he’s gone. That very minute.’
‘Were you glad you were there, afterwards?’ Ella asked.
‘I was. It was like Father Francis said, it felt like a privilege.’
‘He was an influence on you, then, Father Francis,’ Ella said thoughtfully.
‘Oh yes. He was a good man. I know he wasn’t at home for Mick and that, like a proper father, but then mine was around too much. Drunk at the school nativity play, drunk at my first communion, throwing up in the street and shouting at me and my friends on the way home from school. I envied Mick his da.’
‘Did he know you did?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I ever said as much. As I say, Mick never mentioned his father, so I never did.’
‘He might like to know that, even now,’ Ella said.
‘That I envied him his father?’ Pat thought for a moment. ‘I can see that he might like to hear that. It was a terrible situation for him. I don’t envy him any of that. People can be terrible cruel, you know.’
He was silent for a few minutes, crunching his way through a huge fistful of peanuts. Then he laughed. ‘I remember something else he did,’ he said.
‘Franz?’
‘Father Francis. He was in this city parish – it was the pits. That’s where I first knew him; we lived there for a while, till we managed to get moved out. Everyone that lived there spent their whole time trying to get moved out. A truly dire place, let me tell you.
‘Well, the first week Father Francis was there he catches some kids skateboarding in the church, up and down the aisle. The old parish priest, if he caught them he’d give them a clip round the ear and complain to the parents. I know because my younger brother was one of them. He’d come home crying and then my father would give him a worse beating, for showing him up in front of the priest. That's how it was.
‘But Father Francis, he sits down with this bunc
h of kids and he asks them about themselves and what they do with their time and where they like to play, and my brother speaks out – he was always the one with the mouth – and tells him there’s nowhere to go that the older lads don’t hang out in gangs and beat up the younger ones, and it’s not safe to play anywhere.
‘So Father Francis takes them outside and unlocks the side gate. Now this was a big old church with what was once a fine house attached to it, and it’s crumbling at the edges now but still a listed building that architectural students come and take a look at, from the university.
‘And round the back is this courtyard, all paved, with a well in the corner that people used to say was a holy well but, you know how it is, people nowadays are more cynical so nobody took any notice of it any more and it was covered with a grid so that folk wouldn’t jump the gate and throw dead cats and such down it.
‘Father Francis takes the kids out to the yard and he says, “Is this any good, as a place to play?” Well, they were made up! Then he gets them to show him how good they are on the skateboards, and they start jumping and twisting and rolling down this little bit of a slope on one side of the yard, near the house, and he says, “I can see the sloping ground is what you need but that part’s too close to the window so I don’t want you to go there for now, but we’ll sort something out.”
‘And would you believe what he does but give my brother a key to the side gate – a key, and these kids out of the rundown housing estates that would rob anything that wasn’t nailed down and were never trusted with anything! They were over the moon, I can tell you – but that was nothing to what happened when they went back the next day!’
‘What happened?’ said Ella, fascinated.
‘They goes back and the yard is a perfect skateboard track, with piles of soil all stacked up at different heights and flattened down solid as a rock, and there’s a big bottle of pop and bars of chocolate and a note from Father Francis telling them "Have fun." Can you imagine?’
‘What about the parish priest? Didn’t he stop them?’ Ella asked.
‘That was the mystery. They would see him looking out the window at them now and again but he never came out to stop them, never said a word about it.’
‘How do you think Father Francis swung that one?’
‘I’ve no idea. I reckon he threatened him with something. He could play dirty, when it was in a good cause,’ Pat said seriously.
‘Like what?’
‘Like, I don’t know – found his secret supplies of whiskey and threatened to pour them down the sink or something: he was as bad as my da, that particular one.’
Ella shook her head. ‘He sounds like a maverick, Father Francis. Why did they keep him on? I thought the Catholic Church was strict, the bishops and so on?’
‘Depends on the bishop,’ Pat said sagely. ‘I reckon if his first bishop had sacked him immediately for getting a woman pregnant it wouldn’t have surprised anyone. But once the decision was made to let him stay on, the church had to stand by it. And Maria’s view was that she and he had both made a mistake, being young, and she’d rather bring up the child on her own than deprive the church of a good priest in the making. She probably had a lot to do with him staying on.’
‘It would have saved them a lot of heartache if she’d quietly had a termination, wouldn’t it?’ Ella asked. ‘Wasn’t that a possibility in Ireland at the time?’
‘Not in Ireland, but plenty of girls took a sudden desire to go for a weekend in London,’ Pat said. ‘So it was possible, technically, but I doubt it was ever an option for either of Mick’s parents. Apart from believing a child’s life was sacred, Maria always said Mick was the best thing to happen to her, and I reckon Father Francis thought the same, privately.’
‘Really? What makes you say that?’
Pat scratched his head and thought. ‘Something about the way he was with Mick. When Mick was in the room, he was never obviously watching him or anything like that but it was as if he always knew where he was – always kept track of him, d’you know what I mean?’
‘Until he moved to London. His father lost track of him then,’ Ella said.
‘Maybe he didn’t,’ said Pat. ‘I mean, no, he mayn’t have known his address but I reckon Mick was never far from his heart. He’d have prayed for him every day, anyway.’
‘Wow. What must that be like, to have someone praying for you every day?’ Ella wondered.
Pat looked surprised. ‘Normal, I’d say. It’s what parents do, isn’t it?’
‘Not mine.’
‘Or grandparents,’ Pat suggested. ‘No granny in the background praying for you?’
‘Possibly. I have Orthodox Jewish grandparents. I only met my grandmother once but they knew about me. I wonder if they ever prayed for me?’
‘Bound to,’ said Pat staunchly. ‘And even if you slipped through the net you’d fall into the category that the ladies of the church pray for every Friday morning – the souls who have no one to pray for them.’
‘Do they do that?’ Ella took two steaks out of the fridge, regarded them dispassionately for a minute, then decided her stomach could probably face the challenge of cooking them if her mind didn’t dwell on the task. She turned her thoughts back to Franz and his parents. ‘So you don’t think Father Francis ever wished Maria had just got rid of the baby and never told him?’
‘I don’t think the idea would have occurred to him. And there was no air of resentment between him and Maria, not when I knew them. They were comfortable together but there never seemed to be anything between them, not like a couple; they were like brother and sister. I tell you one thing, though - any young lad in the parishes ever got a girl into trouble or was cut up about a girl dumping him, Father Francis was the one they’d go and talk to, because he knew what it was like, they reckoned.’
‘Was he respected, by some people, then?’
‘By most, I’d say. He made it clear that the church is for sinners and who better than him to tell people that and mean it? But there was a goodness about him that was genuine, and people noticed it – even bishops, even other priests, though they certainly didn’t all like him. He had the courage of his convictions and it showed up the ones who hadn’t, I suppose.’
Ella nodded, thinking about what Sister Briege had told her as well. ‘Do you think Franz was ashamed of him, or proud of him?’
Pat stopped munching for a moment and thought about it. ‘A bit of both,’ he said. ‘Both at once. That was what got to him. He loved the old fella and he was embarrassed sick and sore by him and by who he was, every day of his blessed life, the poor sod.’
Ella noticed that Pat’s loquacity dried up abruptly when Alison arrived. She was equally tongue-tied and sat as far away from Pat as was possible in the small living space, on the old sofa almost behind where Pat was sitting at the table.
Did I get this wrong? Ella wondered. She wished Franz would come home and help out with the conversation.
‘How’s Carl getting on?’ Ella asked Alison. ‘Did he get the new software he wanted?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Alison’s son Carl’s really into computer graphics,’ Ella told Pat. ‘He’s only eleven but he’s got a real feel for it.’
‘He must be clever, then,’ Pat said. ‘That kind of thing leaves me baffled altogether.’
‘He’s not doing that well at school,’ Alison said, ‘but the things he’s interested in, he keeps going at till he’s really good at them.’
‘What else is he interested in?’ Pat asked.
He turned his chair round to face Alison. Ella, hoping Alison would be drawn to talk on the subject of her son, got on with cooking the meal.
‘He likes football but it’s too expensive to take him to matches. He plays at school but they say his co-ordination isn’t very good.’
‘Can that be helped?’
‘I don’t know. They haven’t suggested anything. I got him a pogo-stick last birthday and he couldn’t get t
he hang of it for ages but he wouldn’t give up. His goal was to do a hundred jumps without falling off.’
‘Did he do it?’
‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘He was out there on this little patch of ground by the dustbins till it got dark and he came in with blisters all over the palms of his hands, but he did it!’
‘He’ll go far,’ said Pat. ‘What else does he like?’
‘He got hooked on fishing, unfortunately, as we’re living in London and there’s nowhere to go to do it! We stayed with my brother in Cornwall last summer and he took us out on a fishing trip on the last day. Carl's talked about it ever since.’
‘There are places you can go round here,’ Pat said. ‘I’ve been with a fella from work a couple of times. Can’t remember the name of the place but there’s this great lake with trees all around it. Good for roach and tench. Would you know where that would be, Ella?’
‘Not offhand, no. Which direction did you go out of London?’
‘South, I think. It didn’t take very long to get there. Would your boy like to come some time?’
Alison blushed. ‘I’m sure he would.’
‘You’re welcome to come along, of course,’ Pat said casually. ‘You won’t want your son going off with strangers.’
Oh, nice one, thought Ella wryly. As long as Alison does actually like him. She looks more embarrassed than anything.
‘Actually,’ Alison said, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a go as well. I really enjoyed the sea fishing.’
Pat picked up his glass of wine and the bowl of nuts Ella had refilled and plonked himself down on the sofa next to Alison. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I might be free next Saturday. I’ll check my diary.’
Playing hard to get, thought Ella with amusement, but Pat pulled his phone out of his pocket on the spot and checked the calendar, saying with genuine disappointment, ‘Oh, I can’t.’
‘Never mind,’ said Alison, too quickly. ‘Some other time.’
‘The Saturday after is all right,’ Pat said, ‘if that suits you. See, I help out at this club for disabled children and such, and they’re short of volunteers so I try to fit in around them. One week they had to cancel it and it’s a shame for that to happen.’
‘How did you get involved with that?’ Ella asked.
‘I fell off a scaffold – my first week in England, would you believe? – and sprained my ankle. It was slow to heal and I had to go for physio at this rundown sideshoot of a hospital and there was this young doctor there I got talking to – nice fellow – and he tells me there’s this project he has set up.
‘It’s for people who need long-term help, not just kids but people with disabilities, people getting over strokes and such like. They really benefit from the right kinds of exercise and contact with people in the same situation as themselves, so the helpers turn it into games and make it fun, like. The times the patients get allocated in the hospital gym aren’t enough, so this doctor and some colleagues got fundraising and they rent this hall and some basic equipment and get people to come along and help.
‘I liked the sound of it so I started going along. The people are great so it was good for me too because I didn’t know anyone in London when I first came. The facilities aren’t much but people enjoy themselves. Jake says he needs to do some more fundraising – the organizations are out there that would help but it’s knowing how to approach them and present a proper case, and he’s short of time as well.’
‘Franz might be able to give him advice on that, if he wanted,’ Ella said. ‘He had to raise loans and grants to start the Healing Place and he still goes and gives presentations to various groups to keep the interest going.’
‘That’d be great! But he’s a busy man himself. I didn’t realize till Alison told me that he actually ran that big place. It took me a while to put two and two together about who you were talking about, mind,’ he told Alison, ‘seeing as how he’d changed his name.’
‘How did you track him down?’ Ella asked.
‘I saw him in the street one night, coming out of the pub with a couple of folk, and my first thought was "That’s Father Francis!" because of the hair being gone silver, and then I realized of course it must be Mick. I knew he was in London somewhere but I’d lost touch with him, so I couldn’t believe my luck, seeing him like that.
‘I called after him but he didn’t turn round; I guess he wasn’t used to being called by his old name and I didn’t know he’d changed it.
‘Then I see him again, going into this big building right near where I was working, but too far away for me to shout after him. So I go and look at this place after work and see it’s some kind of public building and I think to myself, maybe that’s where he works. So I take the number down and phone up and get put through to this Franz Kane fellow!’
‘And he didn’t tell you who he was,’ Ella said.
‘He did not! He says, in this London accent, that if he ever comes across the guy he’ll get him to call me but he thinks it’s unlikely.’
Ella nodded. ‘That must have been shortly before he got the letter from Ireland saying Father Francis was dying.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Pat. ‘So I don’t give up, being a thick-skinned kind of a bloke who doesn’t know where he’s not wanted ….’ He shot a quick look at Alison here, who smiled. ‘And I go in and get up my courage to speak to this beautiful lady at the front desk, who I’m sure won’t give me the time of day, being so far above my station ….’
‘Now you know what’s meant by blarney,’ Ella told Alison, who laughed. She was looking more relaxed now, Ella noted.
‘But what would y’know – she talks to me,’ Pat continued, undeterred, ‘and tells me about this place and how it started and when I describe the man I’m looking for and she describes the boss, we realize he has to be one and the same person.’
‘And Pat mentioned that he was in the building trade and I said we had this problem with the ceiling that Franz was worried about,’ Alison said. ‘I wasn’t sure if I should have done that. Was Franz annoyed about it, Ella – did he say anything to you?’
‘No, he didn’t.’ Ella thought of last night, when he had had other things on his mind than cracks in the ceiling. ‘But I’m sure he wouldn’t be annoyed.’
‘I told him I’d plastered it for him,’ Pat told Alison, ‘and that he owes me a pint. Some bloke with a grudge against him had told him a pack of lies about the building being about to fall to the ground.’
‘Oh. That’s all right, then. It’s just, it was the first time I’d been put in charge and everything went wrong.’
Alison looked upset suddenly. Ella heard Franz’s key in the door and decided to leave Pat reassuring Alison that if somebody wanted to plant bombs in the building they’d be devious enough not to get found out by all the receptionists and security guards in London.
‘Okay?’ Ella asked, kissing Franz as he came into the hall. He looked tired.
‘Yes. Someone did get in through the air conditioning ducts, far enough in to plant heat devices anyway. The police have got some forensic evidence but that’s not much help because it must have been a child and they won’t know who was behind it. The chances of some child’s DNA being on a criminal records file are remote.’
‘I suppose there might be a chance. How did the rest of the day go?’
‘Normal, as far the circumstances allowed. There’s still a smell of smoke but all the treatment rooms are usable. My office is a bit black around the walls but nothing’s damaged or stolen, as far as I can tell.
‘I phoned around all the guides and some of them are reluctant to come back until we know who did it but the clients all turned up for their appointments. And I phoned all the seekers signed up for next week’s courses and confirmed that we’ll start as planned.’
‘That must have taken all day, in itself!’
‘Just about. Alison helped.’
‘I think,’ said Ella quietly, ‘she’s blaming herself for the fact that it happe
ned while she was in charge.’
‘She’s not, is she? Thanks for letting me know; I’ll say something. I felt guilty having left her to face such a situation. Are they here?’
‘Yes. The food’s ready. I managed to cook the steaks.’
‘Brave woman! Did you have any problems taking the hire car back?’
‘No, it was fine.’
‘I owe you a day out,’ he said.
‘You owe me a holiday! I won’t let you forget, don’t worry!’
He laughed. ‘I’ll go and have a wash and then I’ll be in.’
When he came in, Pat jumped up and greeted him with a bearhug.
People don’t do that with Franz, Ella realized. She thought it was good for him. He and Pat were like chalk and cheese but the affection between them was evident.
Through the meal, Pat and Franz did most of the talking, throwing anecdotes back and forth. Twice during the evening, Ella noticed Franz go still, the way he did at times when something spoke to him. The first time was when Pat started talking about his memories of Father Francis and his respect for him. Alison, Ella could see, didn’t know that this man he was talking about was Franz’s father but it was clear he was someone both Pat and Franz knew, and she was happy to sit and listen.
The other time was when Pat mentioned Jake, the young doctor, and his plans for the Recovery Centre, as he was calling his ambitious project.
‘He wants to have everything in it,’ Pat said enthusiastically. ‘A big hydrotherapy pool and all kinds of heat treatment facilities.’
‘Do they offer massage, at the moment?’ Franz asked.
‘They had a lady go in and do that aroma massage and it helped a lot of the kids with cerebral palsy and such - helped them relax, you know,’ said Pat, ‘but she stopped coming.'
Franz looked at Ella.
‘I’d love to do that,’ she said. ‘And Franz, if you’re volunteering me, I have to admit that I’ve volunteered you as well! I told Pat you might be able to give this doctor, Jake, some advice on how to go about fundraising.’
Franz nodded. ‘We might be able to do more than that,’ he said.
At that point, he went still. His fork, which had been drawing patterns on the tabletop, remained poised in mid-air as he focused on some invisible image. Ella, used to his ways of pondering something important, hoped the others wouldn’t interrupt his train of thought.
Pat, for the first time that evening since his short spell of shyness when Alison arrived, was silent. He glanced at Franz once, then also went still, waiting for him.
He knows him, Ella thought, and was surprised to feel a wave of relief. Someone else understands him, someone who has known him since they were both in their teens.
She had felt it might be a burden, coming back here and being the only person to know Franz’s history. She also worried that, being with people who knew – or thought they knew – Franz Kane but had never known Michael Finnucane, Franz would revert, out of habit, to being Franz Kane, and Michael Finnucane would once again be left behind him in Ireland. She could see that with Pat around that couldn’t happen.
Finally, Franz moved. He said, as though there had been no break in the conversation, ‘There’d be ample space for a hydrotherapy pool in the basement.’
‘As well as the flotation tank?’ Alison said doubtfully.
‘I was thinking we might be able to adapt it.’
‘We’re taking a lot of bookings for flotation,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s getting more popular all the time.’
‘I know. But popularity isn’t the only thing,’ said Franz. ‘Pat, have you seen round The Healing Place?’
‘I guess you couldn’t call our mad dash last night seeing round it. Apart from that, I’ve only seen the entrance part and that big hall with the ceiling. It’s a fine building,’ said Pat reverently.
‘Why don’t you come by and I’ll show you round sometime?’
‘I’d like that. I could come tomorrow, after the club finishes?’
‘Fine. Or,’ said Franz slowly, ‘I could come to the club first and meet this Jake. What d’you think?’
‘Have you got an enhanced disclosure certificate from the police? They don’t let anybody in near children now without the full police check, even the parents. It costs money but you can't afford to take risks with kids.’
‘That's right. Yes, I’ve got the certificate. I can bring it along but have a word with him first in case he wants to do a double-check for himself.’
Ella was feeling tired again. She hoped she wasn’t going to have these bouts of suddenly running out of energy throughout the rest of her pregnancy. It might be after-effects from the travelling and all that had happened in Ireland, she consoled herself.
Alison gave her a quick smile, noticing. ‘I’m going to go now,’ she said. ‘It’s been a lovely evening. Thank you.’
The men protested at her leaving so early.
‘No, really,’ she said. ‘My neighbour will be ready to go by the time I get home. Not that Carl really needs a babysitter but I don’t like to leave him on his own so she comes round with her son.’
‘I’ll walk you home,’ Pat volunteered.
‘I’ve got my car. It’s parked a few streets away.’
‘I’ll walk you to your car, so. Do you want me to leave now too?’ he asked Ella. ‘Are you tired?’
His directness made her laugh. ‘I am a bit, but don’t go on my account. Stay and talk to Franz. You’ve got a lot to catch up on.’
‘I’ll get out the best brandy,’ Franz told him. ‘Well, the only brandy. Someone gave it to us and we haven’t tried it. It may be paintstripper.’
‘I’m willing to risk it if you are,’ Pat said. ‘You’re sure now, Ella? I don’t want to keep you from your bed.’
‘You won’t. I’ll go off and ignore you when I've had enough.’
‘You do that. I'll walk Alison to her car and I'll be back.’ He gave Franz a high-five before he left. ‘Finn and Quinn,’ he told Ella. ‘We were a great team, I’m telling you!’
It took Pat a long time to return from walking Alison to her car in the next street.
‘Told you,’ Ella reminded Franz smugly. ‘And he’s invited her to go fishing on Saturday week, with her son.’
‘They did seem to like each other,’ Franz conceded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of those two together but I can see it would work.’
‘They’re not too similar. Like Pat and you.’
‘Or you and me?’ Franz suggested.
‘Are we that different?’ Ella yawned, kicking her shoes off and putting her feet up on Franz’s lap as they sat on the kitchen sofa.
He stroked her feet thoughtfully. ‘You’re not as emotionally retarded as me,’ he said.
She took it as a reference to her outburst last night about him not forgiving himself. ‘I’m not good at imagining why it’s so difficult for you to talk about yourself, because I don’t find it that hard. Or maybe women generally don’t find it so hard to own up to having emotions, because we haven’t been under the same pressure as men to conceal them.’
‘We think we have to stay strong to guard the tribe,’ said Franz, smiling. ‘If we start looking inside ourselves instead of outside, the enemy could raid the camp.’
‘So you end up shutting out the friendly tribes as well,’ Ella said. ‘The ones who come to help with the harvest.’
The doorbell rang.
‘Pat,’ said Franz, getting up.
‘Come to help with the harvest,’ Ella told him. ‘So talk to him, Franz.’
‘If I can get a word in edgeways,’ said Franz, opening the door.
Pat was in quieter mood when he returned and made it clear he had come back to listen rather than talk.
‘So,’ he said, settling himself at the table and sipping uncritically at the brandy Franz set in front of him, ‘tell me about yourself, Mick. That would have been a shock to you, losing your old man.’
‘I’d wonder
ed, over the last year or so, if he was still alive,’ Franz said.
Pat twisted the brandy glass round and round, studying the glint of light in the dark liquid. ‘I never thought you’d stay away so long,’ he admitted. ‘I wasn’t surprised that you went: you always said you wouldn’t stay in Ireland. But I thought you’d have been back before now.’
‘I meant to come back,’ Franz said. ‘Just, whenever it came to the point, either there was some crisis at work or else I … I don’t know. I even got to the ferry once, about five years ago, and then turned back. I couldn’t bring myself to go.’
‘What stopped you?’ asked Pat. ‘I thought it wouldn’t have been so bad, coming back to visit once you’d made a life for yourself somewhere else. And sure, Rachel was gone abroad but the old man was there, and your friends that had stayed around home.’
Franz nodded but was silent.
‘Was it the old man?’ Pat asked. ‘You had a falling out with him?’
‘It was both of them,’ Franz said slowly. ‘My father and Rachel.’
‘Well, Rachel was always raising Cain about something,’ Pat conceded, ‘but then she had a lot to contend with, with her past and so on. It would never have been personal, Mick. She worshipped the ground you walked on.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ he said. There was sadness in his voice.
‘And the old man. He’d never have stayed mad at you for long, surely?’
‘It wasn’t them,’ Franz said. ‘It was what I did to them both.’
Ella held her breath. Pat went still. He sat back in the chair, crossed his legs and prepared to listen. Franz said nothing. Pat, keeping his eyes on Franz’s face, waited. Again, Ella was reminded how well this man knew him. He wasn’t going to ask. She found the tension unbearable. Just tell him! she wanted to scream at Franz. Tell me! Tell someone before it breaks you!
After a long pause, Pat said, ‘It’s not for me to say that you couldn’t have done anything that bad, because if it wasn’t bad in your view then it wouldn’t have kept you away so long. So it must have been bad for you.’
‘It was bad for them. It might not sound it to somebody who didn’t know all the circumstances of our lives,’ said Franz.
So that’s it, Ella thought. He’s not afraid we’ll judge him. He’s afraid we’ll brush it off, not see its significance – not be harsh enough on him?
Pat made a small sound of assent. ‘You let them down, was that it?’
He’s not going to let Franz off the hook, Ella realized with relief. He’s not going to sit here and watch him suffering; he’s going to make him get through it.
‘Are you tired, Ella?’ Franz asked. ‘Do you want to go to bed?’
‘If you want me to go so you can talk to Pat on your own, I will,’ Ella said.
He smiled. ‘Ella knows me too well,’ he told Pat. ‘She knows when I’m trying to get out of something.’
‘I guess we can both see you’ve got something to get off your chest,’ said Pat. ‘I’m not telling you how to do it, Mick, but if I were you – which, fair enough, I’m not – I’d spit it out and get it over with. Neither Ella nor I will think the worse of you, whatever it is you did. But if you don’t want to talk, then it’s nobody’s business but your own, is it?’
Franz grimaced. ‘How long have you got?’
Pat pushed his empty brandy glass towards him. ‘Give us another shot of that and I’m your man. Till the cows come home. Go for it, Micky Finn.’