The Seeing

Chapter Thirteen

On a fine clear morning a week later, Charity Bostwick and Jessica left Easter Hill for Donegal, the northernmost county of Ireland, traveling in Miss Charity’s open roadster with their suitcases on the luggage rack and bundled up against the coastal winds in tweeds and scarves and leather-palmed driving gloves.

Fluter followed them to the end of the long beech-lined lane, the breeze stirring his heavy gray ruff, but stopped obediently and raised his head for a last look at the bright green car winding into the hills. Then the big collie barked at the gulls riding in on thermals from the sea, and trotted back to the house and the figures that stood on the terrace of Easter Hill — Lily and Rose, Mrs. Kiernan, old Flynn, Capability Brown, and Kevin O’Dell, who still had a hand raised in the air.

They traveled up the coast to Galway and Connach and Mayo, stopping at inns along the way, and dining in lounges with handsome plates displayed on wall racks and swords crossed above big fireplaces. They reached Sligo when fogs covered the old town and the darkness was sprinkled with city lights.

In a cemetery there, Jessica brushed a film of gray moss from the letters carved on William Butler Yeats’ headstone. And when she read the words, she felt a stir of nostalgic affection for the poet and for all the other souls stretching away from her in the reaches of the old graveyard.

They visited famous views and landmarks and ancient monastaries, great grey dolmens and crumbling shrines. And in the little town of Glendrum, they learned through an innkeeper of an elderly couple named Mallory — no kin of Jessica, but the old man, Liam Mallory, was well known for his strangeness, his stories and the deep poetry of his speech.

They spent an evening with the couple in their cottage high in the wooded hills above Glendrum, a dwelling of one huge room with an earth-packed floor and a tall stone fireplace where Corinne Mallory, wrinkled and shy in her black shawl and bonnet, sat knitting while her husband talked and an immense silky wolfhound lay at her feet.

During their long swing up and down the western coast, Jessica managed to write postcards at every stop to the staff at Easter Hill and to Andrew and Dr. Julian in the United States. And between gathering rock specimens, having roadside picnics, and taking the wild-bird count for Miss Charity’s records, Jessica also absorbed a fair share of Irish history, partly from her own observation of the land and its landmarks and in part from Miss Charity’s rambling, disconnected anecdotes, which ranged from the time of the British Tans to the present troubles with intervening accounts of the activities of her own family and of Capability Brown and the other residents of Ballytone.

Yet among all the crowded, vivid memories of the trip, the one that stood out most clearly and distinctly from all the others in her mind was the one of old Liam Mallory and the strange and marvelous things he had told her, the way he had looked at her when he’d said goodbye — a huge figure of a man with a staff in one hand and tendrils of sea mist curling around his white beard and streaming hair.

“You were sent back to this soil to replenish your gifts,” the old man told her. “We need all the wild geese, the second sights, now as never before, not just for this poor, tortured country but for the whole world.

“Once we lived with our gods and were close to them. But man with his bricks and buildings and motor cars and science is always building Towers of Babel that are doomed to drown out the true language of the human spirit.”

“And if the gods aren’t close to us anymore,” she asked, “are they lonely for us?”

“Ah, you’re a wise child,” Mallory said. “They’re lonely for us, dearie, like fathers and mothers for lost, crying bairns. But it’s the nature of things. We must go and seek them. You see that, don’t you? And for those like you and me, with the gift, that search and its need gives us the power of the elements, the strength of archangels.”

“How do we know that that strength is wise?” Jessica asked him.

“You’ll know, child. You’ll know when the time comes...” and he thrust his staff against the roaring winds and held it there as a shield for the two of them.

This was the way Jessica would remember him in all the years to come, a patriarchal figure struck from the myth and rock of Ireland, as dauntless in the face of time as the elements themselves.

The morning after she returned from Donegal, Jessica breakfasted with Andrew Dalworth, who had flown into Shannon the night before. Then, with Fluter wheeling about her- in excited circles, she ran down to the stables to tell Kevin O’Dell that she was back at Easter Hill.

O’Dell was working in the blacksmith shop, his collar open and his sleeves rolled up, and Jessica was proud of the look of strength in his arms, muscles coiling as he shaped a horseshoe with powerful hammer blows. He listened with interest as she told him of Sligo and Connach and Yeats’ grave, the old churches and the inns and pubs they had stopped at, and raised her voice to make herself heard over the clanging hammer and the explosive hissing sound when O’Dell plunged the white-hot horseshoe into a bucket of water.

At first, he smiled at her enthusiasm, seeming to relish her account of the journey. But as she recounted what Miss Charity had told her of Capability Brown and the troubles and of the time they had spent with the old couple above Glendrum, his mood changed, and he shook his head in obvious exasperation.

When she finished her account of that hillside visit, trying to recreate for him the fantasy and wonder of old Liam’s visions, Kevin put his hammer down on the anvil and looked directly at her, a controlled impatience in his expression.

“What is it, Kevin?” she said, “What’s the matter?”

“Jessica, this talk about charms and spells and elves dancing on shamrocks or whatever you’re saying, it’s a lot of nonsense,” he said.

“You wouldn’t talk that way if you’d heard Liam Mallory.”

“He wouldn’t waste his time or breath on me, Jessica. Those old-timers save their talk of leprechauns and widows’ curses for children and gullible American tourists.”

“Just because you’re growing a mustache, you think you know everything, Kevin.”

Kevin looked embarrassed, but he continued. “I’m sorry, Jessie, but it’s true. Those old people may be harmless enough but in a way, they’re the curse of Ireland. They’re living in a past that never was or truly existed. They don’t contribute anything to us except superstition and ignorance. They’re simply not part of the real world.”

“If they’re not, then what is the real world?”

“I can show you where that is, Jessica. Just take the Number Ten bus south from Shannon to where the German-owned factories are today. It took foreign brains and foreign capital to teach this old country about reality. Our choice was always to half-starve, digging for potatoes or finding a boat to take us to America or New Zealand. So there’s your real world, Jessica: my brothers in factories making tools and goods, not old men in the mountains believing that every sparrow coming in a window was chased by the Devil.”

He didn’t understand, Jessica realized. It wasn’t the literal sense of what the old man had told her that was important. That the seventh son or a Mac or a Mc had the powers to cure sickness in farm beasts. “A Mac can spit in his own hand and wipe the pain from a mare’s flanks,” old Liam had told her. And he had spoken that night, his voice rumbling like the waves below them, of priests hidden away in the homes of the Catholic faithful, of the Black and Tans spying on men in pubs or out searching the houses, of a chance word or drunken whisper often leading to the betrayal and death of loyal countrymen.

And more about the strengths of curses and visions and specifics against evil... It was valuable not because it was true; it was valuable simply because it was.

Like their own Father Malachy’s talk of gentry bushes inhabited by the wee folk and strange, unexplainable happenings in the woods in winter moonlight. Once he had told Jessica of seeing a woman in a black dress in the shadows at the back of his church. Struck by something terrible in the woman’s expression, the old priest had asked her if she’d wanted to confess her sins. In a low, trembling voice, she had said, “It’s too late for you to hear my confessions, Father. I am damned.”

The woman had placed her bare hand on a wooden crucifix above the baptismal fountain and then — Father Malachy had blessed himself at this point — she had fled the church, and Father Malachy had told Jessica, whispering now, “You can still see the imprint of her hand, the mark of her fingers burned into the sacred wood.”

Jessica had turned her eyes to where Father Malachy’s finger had directed them, to the cross above the baptismal fount where there was, in truth, a warp or shadow on the grain of the wood. She knew it could have been made by freezing winter temperatures or shafts of strong sunlight through the stained glass windows, and that it could well be that Father Malachy had fallen asleep in a pew and dreamed the whole thing. Yet the truth of it one way or the other didn’t seem to matter very much, she decided; what mattered was the faith of the old priest. Just as the important thing about Liam Mallory was not the exact truth of his words but the magic of belief that charged his life and his energies with significance.

As Kevin turned to pick up another strip of metal with a pair of tongs, Jessica said, “You’re welcome to your real world, Kevin. I like old Liam’s world and I like feeling a part of it.”

“That’s an easy choice for Miss Jessica Mallory of Easter Hill to make.”

“Now what is that supposed to mean, Mr. Kevin O’Dell?”

“It means that you don’t have to worry about Number Ten buses, factories or anything else in the real world. You’ll be off to boarding school next year where you’ll have a toff’s education, a nice little Jaguar or Mercedes when you’re old enough, lots of time for theatre and musicals. You’ll find you’ll miss Fluter and Windkin more than you do the human beings here at Easter Hill.”

Tears of hurt and anger started in her dark eyes. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Kevin.”

“Now listen, Jessica, I didn’t mean—”

“If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?”

“But, Jess, let me—”

The young lad stopped there, startled and almost frightened by the cold intensity of her expression, the dangerous anger in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’m sorry, lass. I mean it. I’m sorry.”

A strange, little chill went through Jessica. She had experienced something unfamiliar to her, a stir of resources, a surge of power that made her apprehensive. “It’s all right, Kevin,” she said, troubled by the hurt in his face and frightened by her own anger. “It’s all right.”

Then Jessica turned and ran with Fluter from the blacksmith shop and up the lawns to Easter Hill.

She had never had a quarrel with Kevin before, not even a misunderstanding, and the memory of it disturbed her the rest of the day. At dinner she was quiet, and Andrew wondered aloud if she might be coming down with something.

“No, I think I’m a little tired from the trip,” she said.

“Yes, you look a bit pale. Why not tuck in early, Jessica?”

“I think I will, Andrew.”

He folded his napkin and held her chair as she rose from the table. “Mr. Brown’s been damming up two streams in the south pasture. He thinks they’ll make fine duck ponds.” He glanced at his watch. “Since it’s such a fine evening, I’ll take the bay hunter out for some exercise and see how the project’s coming along.”

In the great hall, he put his hands on her shoulders and smiled into her eyes. “I missed you very much on this trip, Jessica.”

“I missed you, too, Andrew. There’s still so much to tell you.”

“All right, run on up now and I’ll come in to say goodnight to you.” He kissed her on the cheek and she would always remember the feel of his big, caring hands on her shoulders, the roughness of his tweed jacket and the familiar smell of his worn, leather cigar-case.

Jessica stood at the windows of her bedroom looking down at the gathering dusk toward the stables. A yellow rectangle of light glowed and she could see Kevin’s shadow occasionally as he moved about tidying up.

It seemed to Jessica then that she had somehow become older than her years. A breeze from the terrace outside her room stirred her long hair which was still damp from the bath. She recalled a game they had played on soft dusky nights like this, with Andrew reading in the library and Mr. Brown putting the last touches to the rosebeds.

From her window she would signal to the stables with a flashlight and Kevin would answer with a light of his own, then he would collect “messages” from Windkin and bring them to Jessica, climbing the big oak tree and swinging from its top limbs to the mansard roof and on down thick clusters of ivy to Jessica’s terrace.

They talked in whispers until it was dark, Jessica with her elbows on the windowsill, Kevin kneeling on the terrace. Their happy acceptance of a make-believe world had added a sweet and exciting innocence to their friendship.

But she remembered one experience that hadn’t been so casual and tranquil. They were exploring caves on the beach below the house, searching for shells and mosses and sea mollusks. Kevin was about to plunge his arm into a dark pool formed in a crevasse by the waves when Jessica was seized suddenly by a vividly ominous premonition.

“Don’t, Kevin!” she shouted. “Don’t!” Running to him, she grabbed his shoulder and threw him aside with such a burst of strength that he went sprawling onto the wet floor of the cave.

“Damn it, what’s the matter with you, girl?”

“Look, Kevin, look!” Using a piece of driftwood, she probed into the small dark pool of water and finally brought up the pale, gelatinous form of a poisonous ray-fish, swollen as big as a soccerball.

“Lord Almighty, how did you know it was in there, Jessica?”

“I knew it was there. Haven’t I told you to listen to me?”

“Yes, Jess, but I never know when you’re serious. I mean, real serious.”

“Well, you’d better start learning...”

“That I will,” Kevin said. He smiled and rubbed his aching shoulder. “You got a grip on you like a blacksmith, Jessica. You could have broken my arm.”

“I’m sorry, Kevin. I was frightened for you.”

Acting on an impulse now, Jessica found her flashlight and played it across the weathered boards of the stables. Within minutes she heard the sound of footsteps above her and then the creak and rustle of the stout, ropey ivy as Kevin dropped lightly onto the terrace.

“I’m sorry I spoke as I did, Jessica. Everything seems to be changing so fast.”

He was feeling the same bittersweet loss which she had experienced, Jessica realized as she watched him pick up a handful of leaves from the terrace and let the wind blow them from the palm of his hand and spin them off into the darkness. A frown darkened his face.

“It used to be that all this was home, Jessica. Ballytone, Easter Hill, the Head and shores, all the country around here. A place where the O’Dells belonged.”

“But you still do, Kevin.”

“It’s different now. My brothers are gone south to work and that’s more final than when my dad died. I can visit his grave and put flowers at the cross, but Tim and Mike will never come back here, you can be sure of that. Soccer games we played at the top of the street, that’s all over now. There’s nothing but my mother with her beads at night, the telly and waiting for news from them, the two of us with hardly a word between us when we sit down for our supper.”

“And is that why you were angry with me, Kevin?”

“We’re friends and I’ll tell you the truth. I was angry when you said that Miss Charity had talked about Mr. Brown and the troubles. She has the right to speak her mind, of course, but there are some things better kept silent. It’s what’s torn us apart as a country, Jessica, the hatred between countrymen over religion and politics.”

He looked at the moon just slipping up past the crest of Skyhead and said, “It’s time I’m going. Mr. Dalworth will be back directly.”

He stood and looked steadily at her. “I won’t be coming here again this way, Jessica. It’s no longer a game and we’re no longer children. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Jess?”

“I think so. It’s what you said about things changing.”

He smiled and said, “And something more than that, too.”

“But, Kevin, I don’t want things to change. I know that’s foolish, but it’s the way I feel.”

“And I know how I feel. Things have changed, so goodnight, Jessica.”

When he had gone, Jessica closed her windows and sat down on the edge of the bed, her hands locked tightly in her lap and the faint moonlight glinting on tears in her eyes.

She looked at the clothes laid out for tomorrow morning and realized that there was something mocking and irrelevant about them now, the boots upright in their blocking stays, the gray jodphurs, the blue jacket and yellow silk scarf. She knew she wouldn’t be wearing riding clothes in the morning and she realized with a twist of terror that Kevin had lied to her tonight, unwittingly, but lied nevertheless. She knew he would come to her room again on another occasion...

Jessica saw then a play of shifting colors in her consciousness and the shapes behind them were so suggestive of menace that she shook her head quickly and helplessly. Closing her eyes, she covered them with her hands, but the childish gesture couldn’t erase the blazing white radiance in her mind, diamond-sharp reflections as clear and pitiless as a cold winter sun.

She saw with hideous clarity, as clearly as she had seen the bloated form of the poisonous ray-fish with Kevin, saw there in her scented room exactly what would happen to Andrew.

She leaped to her feet and faced the door of her bedroom, hearing voices raised in the great hall below and knowing what they meant. Then another sound, the frantic footsteps coming up the stairs, and Jessica knew with a sad and terrible certainty just what message was being brought to her.

Old Flynn’s voice sounded in the hallway, breaking with anguish. “Come, Miss Jessica, come at once! Mr. Dalworth’s had a terrible fall. They’ve sent for the priest and the doctor...”