‘That’s what everyone else calls me,’ was said with an easy smile. Jude’s maiden name and the surnames of her two husbands were rarely spoken.
‘What really interested me was what you said about … the gift of healing.’
‘Oh, yes?’ There was a small note of unease in Jude’s voice. Experience had taught her that this remark could provide the opening for a torrent of scepticism.
But she had misjudged Brandie. ‘It must be wonderful to have that gift. When did you first realize that you’d got it?’
‘Hard to say. I had various other careers and found that friends and colleagues used to come to me with their troubles. Usually emotional troubles, it turned out, but whereas some people might have regarded that as an imposition, I was surprised to find I welcomed it. And, though usually I started with just talking to help my … “clients”, I suppose even then was how I thought of them … I found increasingly I was incorporating massage. I’ve always known instinctively the links between the mental and the physical. Holistic seems the only sensible approach. So, I suppose you could say that, rather than me finding healing, healing found me.’
‘Have you got time for a coffee?’ asked Brandie.
Jude acceded to the request, though she normally welcomed a bit of time on her own after taking part in a public event. No one would have detected it from her unruffled exterior – and one of her many former careers had been as an actress – but she still found being in front of an audience took it out of her. Like many people who met the public with apparent ease, at Jude’s core was an introvert. She regularly needed the restorative powers of solitude.
Complementary Health Conferences don’t command major venues. The Bristol one took place in a former Edwardian primary school which had been repurposed as an arts centre. It had a bar and, by then being late afternoon, Jude decided she’d have a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. She had to hang around till the end of the day’s proceedings, anyway. There was a dinner scheduled with the organizer Chrissie and her wife Karen. So, she might as well start drinking now.
Brandie said she’d have a Sauvignon Blanc too and offered to pay for them. But Jude insisted they each bought their own. She didn’t want to be beholden to someone she didn’t know. Besides, Brandie looked young enough to be an impoverished student who could ill afford standing drinks for people.
When they were settled with their wine, the girl asked for more detail about her new friend’s route into healing. As she spelled out the journey, Jude surprised herself by the randomness, but also inevitability, with which she had found her vocation. It had been her destiny for a long time. As she had the thought, she was conscious of how Carole would have pooh-poohed any talk of destiny, particularly in connection with healing.
She also told Brandie about the people who had acted as her mentors, and how knowledge gained at Complementary Health Conferences, like the one they were attending, had helped develop her skills. Minds should always be open to new ideas.
‘Mostly,’ she concluded, ‘healing’s one of those things you learn by doing it. With each client you become more proficient. You increase your store of knowledge. Though all of them are different, all are individuals, certain themes recur. Certain conditions recur, and you get better at knowing how to treat them. It’s a continual learning process.’
‘But not everyone could learn it, could they, Jude?’
‘I think very few people could be bothered to. Most would find many other sorts of job considerably more appealing. And considerably more lucrative, come to that.’
‘But it’s more than a job, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a gift, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Jude cautiously.
‘No amount of learning could make you able to do it if you didn’t start off with the gift.’
‘Probably not.’ A moment to reconsider. ‘No, certainly not.’
‘Well, what I want you to tell me, Jude,’ said Brandie intensely, ‘is whether I’ve got that gift …?’
The question had still not been fully answered to Jude’s satisfaction. But there was no denying Brandie’s enthusiasm.
It turned out that she wasn’t a student. Perhaps her diminutive stature made her look younger, but she was nearer thirty than twenty. And a bit vague about her background. Jude didn’t mind that. When it came to discussing her past, she wasn’t a completist either. She always tried to answer questions honestly, following the time-honoured Jesuit principle of telling the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth.
It was serendipitous that Brandie did not live far from Fethering. She was currently renting a flat in a converted stable block on the edge of the South Downs, just north of Fedborough in the valley of the Fether.
And she was genuinely interested in the business of healing, one of those people who, on acquiring a new preoccupation, wanted to find out as much about it as possible. Already, Brandie’s range of reading on the subject far exceeded Jude’s own. And she had recently become obsessed by the literature of chakras.
But that Wednesday afternoon, as she left the kitchen of High Tor, there was no way Jude would have told Carole either of two facts. First, that the person she was mentoring was called Brandie. Or, second, that she and Brandie were going to discuss the new decoration of Woodside Cottage, based on the colours associated with different chakras.
‘The main issue of the Third Eye chakra,’ said Brandie, ‘is intuition and wisdom. It kind of represents the Sixth Sense. And the colour associated with it is indigo.’ She looked round the cluttered sitting room. ‘I could see this in indigo, you know.’
Jude screwed up her face. ‘I’ve never really liked indigo as a colour … and I’m not so pretentious as to believe I’m offering intuition and wisdom.’
‘I’m sure that’s what your clients think they’re getting from you.’
‘I wouldn’t know. As I’ve said before, Brandie, a lot of what I do is just intuitive. I don’t like analysing it too deeply.’
‘But you must think about it,’ Brandie insisted. ‘What do your clients get from their sessions with you?’
‘I suppose what I want them to get is … well, to feel better.’
‘Emotional balance?’
‘If you like.’
‘Because that,’ said Brandie with something like triumph, ‘is the main issue of the Sacral chakra! And the colour associated with the Sacral chakra is orange.’
The prospect of a sitting room painted orange did not appeal to Jude. ‘I think really what I want to give to my clients is a sense of empowerment. Yes, I may have helped them, but the healing has to come from within themselves. I want them to leave a session feeling confident that, with my guidance, they will in time be able to manage their own problems. That I’ve, in a way, enabled them to stand on their own two feet.’
‘Ah, manipura!’ said Brandie. ‘The third chakra. The Solar Plexus. Its main issues are Personal Power and Self-Will. That’s what you’re talking about really, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And its colour is yellow!’
‘Hm.’ Jude smiled and looked at her large round watch. ‘Well, you’ve given me lots to think about, Brandie.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Have I been wasting your time?’
The reaction was so immediate, the girl’s vulnerability so near the surface, Jude found herself instantly in reassurance mode. ‘No, no, it’s fine. I’m just due somewhere else shortly.’
‘You don’t mind me coming round, do you?’
‘No, of course I don’t.’
‘Cause do say if you want me to stop.’