The Healer: a dark family drama by Thompson Sharon

Author:Thompson, Sharon [Thompson, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Published: 2019-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

31

There are other girls in the house these days, but I mostly ignore them. One of them is called Tess. She is better to me than most, but even she makes me retreat into myself and talk with my shadows. I don’t need anyone. Time slips by on me and then the pains start. Long bursts of agony ripple across my tummy and there comes a terrible pressure down below. I’ve decided to call the baby after a Gaelic warrior from the legends I heard from Jane. He will be called Fionn. He will be my Fionn, the warrior with a wise heart.

A peace comes to me with each spasm. My gift just takes over and it doesn’t take that long. Fionn just falls out of me. All of the love in the world cushions his slipping out onto the kitchen floor.

‘What in the name o’ God?’ Peggy races in the back door because she spies me sitting in the middle of the kitchen. ‘Did you not think to mention he was coming?’

My baby lets out a wail. ‘Fionn will not take your nonsense, Peggy.’

‘He’s to be the stuff of legends then?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s big enough to take on giants!’

She’s right. Fionn is healthy and perfect, with all his fingers and toes, a button nose and dark eyes like our Jude and a cry that would crack iron. Fionn clings to my breast and suckles almost immediately and there he stays. He sleeps nestled in. He is my breath, my life and my greatest gift.

‘You can’t keep him,’ Peggy starts. ‘Women need to be married. He’s a bastard. He will always be a bastard. He needs a family.’

Ignoring her isn’t easy when she starts at me. Peggy wishes I could keep him, I know she does. We all want to be together, but life won’t allow this. I’m a criminal, a fallen woman in the eyes of everyone. I live in a whore-house and this is no place for a child. I’ve been hidden away, but the shadows tell me, too, that I’m right to be fearful for Fionn’s safety here.

‘If I’m found to be housing children, I could be put back inside. And he cries that fuckin’ loud! You need to be able to go outside and if you’re seen with him, he’ll be taken from you. Women must be married. You understand this? I can’t go back inside. Even if you did leave here, where could you go with a child? Where? Can you go home to where you’re from?’

‘No.’

‘Let’s talk about him going to that nice family that I’ve found in Cavan.’

I don’t want to talk about any such thing.

After a few months the time comes when I have to give in to the worst truth. I can’t be a mother to Fionn without having a father for him.

Peggy takes me on the bus all the way to this farmhouse way out of Dublin. It’s a better place than I thought it would be and the woman’s pleasant and big like a cow might be, if it had a face.

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