A59521 DDAI SteeringWheel23 - Flipbook - Page 25
STEERING Wheel
The Healing
A Short Story by Freda Fitzgerald - re-printed from Steering Wheel winter 1994
Alighting from the bus past Enniskerry, Ellen looked
about her. She followed the 昀椀nger-board sign and
walked up the lane towards Amethyst. Her weekend
case was heavy and carrying it slowed her pace. She
was looking forward to the weekend. Not that she
knew anything much about ‘Intuitive Massage’ but she
might as well give it a shot. Like many of the other
seminars she had attended, it would probably prove
to be a lot of quackery. However, if the worst came to
the worst, it was one way of passing the weekend.
Stepping gingerly over a cattle-grid, she trudged
along. She could feel the straps of the case cutting
into her hands. She might be going in the right
direction but the sign hadn’t indicated that the lane
was headed up the side of a mountain. A car passed
and pulled in ahead of her. Ellen quickened her step;
she was glad of a lift.
‘Ellen!’ she heard. She dropped her case. She hadn’t
heard that voice for years but yes, it was Noel. ‘Get in,’
was all he said. ‘We’re blocking the car behind’.
He hadn’t changed. Were she to bump into him in the
middle of the Sahara Desert, Noel Coady would not
have wasted time on needless small chat.
‘Do you want to put on your safe ...’ then he sang, ‘But
the safety belt it wouldn’t budge.’ Ellen giggled at
him.
‘Remember the time in the Pine Forest?’ he asked.
She nodded, amazed that he mentioned it. ‘No
talking now,’ he said, ‘Have to concentrate on driving.’
It was hard to know if he was being serious or just
absurd. Ellen said nothing. As the car whined its way
along the lane, he held the wheel 昀椀rmly with both
hands. His eyes were 昀椀xed on the road ahead. Noel
was never one to be surprised by what might come
round the corner. She looked closely at him, often
his face, in one of his gentle and intimate moods, had
come before her. She would hear him strumming his
guitar as he sang Chuck Berry’s, ‘No particular place
to go’. She could be 昀椀lling the kettle. Damn it! She
had never wanted it to be just ‘water under the bridge.’
Yet she couldn’t forget that it was this Noel who had
terminated their relationship.
‘You never get over it,’ a friend who had been in the
same boat had warned. Even now thinking of it all
昀椀fteen years later, her guts twisted. Had he every
regretted his decision? ‘Relationships peter out,’ he
had said. She hadn’t whined when he had said he
had met someone else. She had just gone numb.
Not for a minute did she believe he would marry that
‘someone else.’ How could he love another?
1980 was the worst year of her life. Noel and Angela’s
昀椀rst son had been born then. Also it was the year
Johnny Logan won the Eurovision, with ‘What’s
Another Year.’ She could have written those words.
Her heart had broke every time she played the tape
of that song. Since Noel, she hadn’t been able to
relate to any man, not properly. Strange men talked
of ‘freedom’ and she was glad. She didn’t want
anything to last. After Noel she had no feeling of
permanency in her life. She had often longed to meet
him like this. Away from his wife and children (it was
her brother, Dessie, who worked with Noel, who had
told her about those kids). She had often dreamt of
their loving of him. She was intensely jealous of them
sharing his life. She had been convinced that she
would marry him. No one knew how close together
they had been. Holding his hand by her side, it had
felt as if that hand was part of her own body, and
now on her way to a weekend seminar on ‘Intuitive
Massage’ he had turned up out of the blue. It wasn’t
the kind of start to the weekend she had expected.
The whining of the car became less shrill as they
turned in through a pair of high pillars. Sheep grazed
on the lawns of Amethyst.
‘Have you been here before?’ he asked.
She laughed as she shook her head. ‘Alright,’ he said
‘I come here often.’ His ‘cop on’ was a thing she liked
a lot about him. Their memories. No wonder his hand
had felt like part of her own body.
In the house, she found a vacant room for herself and
sat there alone thinking. Whatever ‘Intuitive Massage’
was, it was now something they had in common. After
tea, the participants met for the introductory talk.
When Ellen came in she saw Noel sitting near the
back. His eyes moved away quickly but she chose
a seat beside him. Bob began to talk. ‘Touching
in Ireland is used for arousal and not for healing
or caring,’ she heard him say. In her mind Ellen
disagreed. She wanted all three of them. When it was
time to do the 昀椀rst experiential work, Bob organised
them in pairs. It came as no surprise to Ellen that
she and Noel were to partner each other. She had a
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