The Seeing

Chapter Twenty-Four

A concerned and thoughtful Charity Bostwick sat with a cup of tea in Father Malachy’s parlor.

“I’m worried sick about Jessie,” she said to the old priest.

“But it’s her own aunt and uncle you’re speaking of, Charity. Don’t be rash in your judgments.”

“Father Malachy, if you’d been there, you wouldn’t be taking this so calmly. Mr. Griffith pretended to ask Jessica if she’d care to see me. I watched him. He turned right at the top of the stairs. The child’s bedroom is left, in the opposite direction. He lied to me.”

“We’d best go easy with such reckonings...”

“Oh, my foot, Father! Do you believe that story they told Constable Riley about Mr. Brown? Before I came here, I went to see Kevin O’Dell. The poor lad told me that Brown never had a moment’s heart trouble in his life.”

“Death can come like a thief in the night, Charity.”

Yet, despite the old man’s disclaimers and attempts to remain calm and judicious, Charity Bostwick saw that he was just as troubled as she was.

The unsettling phone call had come in early that morning, prodding him from sleep, the strident male voice speaking of signs and portents, of lights in the sky that matched those in the caller’s mind, and a wild sea eagle that had settled at midnight on the roof of the cottage...

“You’re not as serene as you’re pretending, Father. I’ve called Mr. Ryan in Dublin, but the poor man’s been taken to the hospital with influenza. And why do you think they whisked the child off to London in such a rush?”

The caller that morning had said his name was Mallory, Liam Mallory. Obviously unused to telephones, he had shouted and roared into the mouthpiece, numbing the priest’s eardrums. Mallory and his wife were traveling by bus down to Athlone where they could borrow a pony and trap to cover the final miles to Ballytone.

What had chilled Father Malachy were old Liam Mallory’s words foretelling the evil, shimmering and darkling, that menaced the child Jessica.

“There are forces gathering around her and she has need of our help, Father, need of the power of the elements, the strength of archangels. She is young in her gifts, she has yet to believe in the wisdom of her powers. She needs us and we are too far away. Her enemies are crowding around her...”

At that moment, a static drummed along the wires, splintering the old man’s words and the line went dead.

As the priest thought of these things and prayed for guidance, Charity Bostwick lit a cigarette with an impatient gesture, “You can’t sit there and tell me you believe that Andrew’s loyal servants were, in fact, no more than common thieves. And if Jessica could stand straight at Andrew’s grave, do you suppose she’d take to her bed at poor Mr. Brown’s death? I don’t believe that child is sick. I think they’re lying to all of us.”

Remembering the fervor in old Mallory’s voice — the words charged with the savage beliefs of Ireland, and truth and history and superstition so impenetrably twined together in them that no human mind or fingers could unsort or unravel it — preferring a fool who believed, to a scholar blinded by arrogance, Father Malachy put his pipe aside and said, “Charity, what do you think we should do in this matter?”

“The first thing I intend to do is make a call, Father. May I use the rectory phone? It’s an overseas call to Dr. Julian in California. I’ll check with the operator for time and charges.”

“Never mind the charges, my dear. Surely we’re doing the Lord’s work now.”

Dr. Julian Homewood let himself into his apartment the evening of that same day and dropped his briefcase into a chair before pouring himself a club soda with lime. At the open doors of his terrace, he looked across the lights of Palo Alto, the Stanford campus dusky and beige in the soft twilight, the stucco facades of old California styles blending effortlessly with the glass and brick masses of modern architecture.

He had given a late lecture to a group of FBI agents from the Bay area, outlining the possibilities of precognition as a tool in criminal investigations, relating this to the research presently underway in Russia and the U.S. in the field of global target identification through clairvoyant techniques. It was one of a series he had given to CIA case officers, including Simon Cutter, the week before in Washington, but Julian knew that today his efforts had been mechanical because he had been preoccupied by an earlier telephone call from Charity Bostwick in Ballytone.

Miss Bostwick’s call had wakened him at three in the morning. He had immediately placed a call to Easter Hill; it was almost noon then in Ballytone.

A woman had answered, identifying herself as Maud Griffith. “This is a pleasure, Dr. Homewood. Jessica has told us so many nice things about you.”

Julian had attempted to form a picture of the woman from her voice. She seemed to be trying to project a simple warmth and friendliness. And yet a thread of over-stimulated enthusiasm in her tone troubled him.

When he asked to speak to Jessica, Maud Griffith said, “But she’s out riding, Doctor.”

“I’d been told she was ill.”

There had been the slightest pause. Then Maud Griffith said, “You’ve heard some village gossip, Doctor. She was in bed with the sniffles this morning but she had no temperature so we let her out into the sunshine with Windkin. Is there any message?”

Puzzled, he replaced the phone after giving Mrs. Griffith numbers where Jessica could reach him, this apartment and his office at Stanford.

Pacing now, he checked his watch. That had been almost eighteen hours ago. And not a word from Jessica.

Julian’s sense of dislocation was not a new sensation. He had been plagued by this strange alienation ever since he had arrived in California. At faculty parties, he had found himself wondering what he was doing in this land of distances and mountains that took your breath away with their ungiving size. And why had he felt estranged from the California girls with their surfing and skiing talents, manes of blond hair, long, tanned legs, and eyes electric-bright with health and vitality as they chatted about their work and danced in discos and drove to the university in their bug-like sports cars.

It wasn’t the presence of nothing, he found distressful here. It was the absence of something. And he hadn’t realized what that something was until he had re-read that morning the poem that Jessica had written for him in her suite in London.

Of course, Julian had always known that Jessica loved him. As he loved her. But as dear friends, an older brother enjoying a sister’s company, a teacher with a favorite student, an affectionate cousin who remembered birthdays...

They had shared many pleasures, the times at Easter Hill, the friendship with Andrew Dalworth, but more importantly, they had shared the exploration of her mental processes, examining the gifts of clairvoyance that were the essence of Jessica Mallory.

Julian had known these things and was grateful for them. But now he felt frustrated and helpless because he had never seen the coming years as Jessica had, or the future she had perceived in her last poem from London.

The poem was untitled. The words formed in Julian’s memory as he looked out across the darkened campus:

Making an inevitable decision, he dialed his secretary and told her to book a flight for him to Shannon. He had showered and changed when the phone rang and his secretary was back on the line.

“I’ve tried everything, Doctor. Pan Am, Icelandic, KLM, even an Air Force circling up from Algiers. But it’s the week of the Grand National in England and everything is booked solid...”

Julian then dialed another number and within minutes — courtesy of a private, unlisted number — spoke directly to a ranking CIA officer in Langley, Virginia.

When Dr. Homewood explained his problem, Simon Cutter said, “No sweat, Doctor. A chauffeur will pick you up in about twenty minutes. You can connect with our shuttle out of San Francisco for Alaska. Courier plane will take you to Reykjavik and on down to Prestwick. An Army jet will be standing by for Shannon. You’ll be at Mach II all the way, so you’ll beat commercial flights by about six hours.”

Julian Homewood checked his currency and passport, strapped up his shoulder bag and within the hour was in a jet aircraft looking down thirty-five thousand feet at the choppy blue and white waters of the Pacific.