The Seeing

Chapter Seven

Easter Hill was a slate-gray mansion on high ground that dominated a coastline of rough, wild beauty, steep cliffs and rolling meadows spiked with shale and fieldstone. The gray waters of the north Atlantic fused in these southern seas with the Gulf Stream, producing, in season, warm winds and a climate that nurtured the incongruous palm trees swaying above the Connemara shores from Ballycastle down to Galway Bay.

At eight years of age, Jessica Mallory had become securely adjusted to the rhythms of a convent school and to the surface tranquility of Irish country life. She thought of Andrew Dalworth, whom she called Andrew, not as a second father but simply as an “older” father. She still remembered her own father and mother, like images from a dream, as a tall, patient man with books and pencils, and a smiling lady who hugged her and played games with her on the floor in a room filled with bright posters.

Sometimes, when her school schedule permitted, she went on trips with Andrew, to Paris and London and on occasion back to the United States. When she couldn’t go with him, her life at Easter Hill revolved around the people who looked after them there; Flynn, the butler; Mrs. Kiernan, the cook; Rose and Lily, the housemaids. Taking care of the grounds and stables were Kevin O’Dell, a young groom, and the gardener, Capability Brown, who had explained to Jessica that he had been named after an English landscape artist — the famed Capability Brown who had designed the gardens and lakes at Blenheim, country seat of the Marlboroughs and Churchills.

And, of course, she had friends at school, and in the nearby village of Ballytone there were Father Malachy and his housekeeper, and Charity Bostwick who gave her riding lessons.

On this late spring afternoon, Jessica rode her brown hunter, Windkin, up the promontory known as Skyhead, a broad point of rocky shoreline directly above the northern pastures of Easter Hill. Holding Windkin’s strength easily but surely in one hand, she leaned her slender body into the salty winds coming in off the sea, her knees guiding the horse up to the highest peaks from where she could see the stretches of beach where Holly liked to chase and frighten the seagulls.

Jessica reined in the big hunter and turned in the saddle to study the rocky shoreline and narrow beaches far below her. There was no sign of her brown and white fox terrier scampering and barking after the strutting gulls and the crying terns, and Jessica suddenly felt a sting of tears in her eyes as she realized that she would never see Holly again...

In her years of growing up in Ireland, Jessica had had only occasional promptings from the strange mental phenomena which she thought of as her “colors.” There had been no recurrence of the diamond-bright whiteness that had glowed so terrifyingly in her mind the night her parents had crashed to their deaths. There had been other colors from time to time, warm and comfortable, moments of excitement in the schoolyard when she had “guessed” the winners of foot races and the time when she had “guessed” what grades several of her classmates would get on certain written exams. (She’d been right, too, and what a scene that had caused!)

Some of the things that Jessica seemed to know in advance, she had learned to keep to herself, like the time she had known that Andrew was having Windkin sent over from Kentucky as a Christmas present for her.

Staring along the distant, frothing beaches, Jessica said a silent goodbye to Holly in her mind, remembering with an ache the joyous barking and fierce loyalties that were gone forever. Then she swung Windkin around and spurred him into a full gallop down the broad slopes leading to Easter Hill.

Kevin O’Dell heard the sound of the horse’s hooves on the hard spring earth and stepped from the tack room, still holding the bridle he’d been oiling. He was fourteen, tall for his age, with burnished red hair, dark gray eyes and a complexion that remained fair despite the hours he’d spent working with horses in all kinds of weather.

Watching Windkin and Jessica coming down the hill, their figures blurred by ground mists, he wished she would take the slope more carefully, but Miss Charity had trained the girl well and Windkin was a dependable, sure-footed mount.

Kevin O’Dell’s chores were finished for the day, the stables smelling of fresh hay and water, the tack oiled and ready for tomorrow. He had waited for Jessica to return in case she wanted him to hot-walk Windkin, although she usually preferred to do this chore herself. In truth, he didn’t mind spending extra time at Easter Hill, because his home in the village of Ballytone wasn’t a cheerful place these days. His father was dead and his two older brothers had gone off to work in the German-owned factories in the south, leaving him and his mother to share a silent supper at night, and then to watch American-made police shows on television. In the half-darkness of those evenings, Kevin could see his mother moving rosary beads through her work-rough hands and he knew her mind wasn’t on the television show at all, but on the gray headstone up at the church and on her sons in strange rooming houses waiting for the early morning factory whistles.

When Jessica cantered up to the stables, he saw the tears on her cheeks and his first thought was that she had taken a fall.

“Are you all right, Jess?” he said, as she swung down to the ground.

“Would you walk Windkin for me, Kevin?”

“Sure, but tell me what happened.”

“It’s Holly. She’s gone.”

“You can bet she’ll be back for supper, Jess. She’s probably up in the woods or over in the meadow chasing rabbits.”

“No, she’s gone,” she said again but in a voice so quiet that he barely heard the words above the winds coming down Skyhead.

Andrew Dalworth was at his study desk, speaking to Stanley Holcomb in New York. The study was a small teak-panelled room connected by double doors to Easter Hill’s library and furnished sparely and functionally with a writing desk, Telex equipment, phones and filing cabinets. In one corner of the room was a triangular glass wall-case which contained a collection of antique and historic hand-weapons with the ammunition arranged in small drawers. The case was locked and only the butler Flynn and Dalworth himself had keys to it.

Dalworth said into the phone, “Here’s a change of instructions, Stanley, for Tom Bradley at the farm. We’ll want Yankee Drummer sooner than we’d anticipated. By the third of the month at the latest. The trainers here want her to get used to the track and climate at the Curragh.”

Dalworth heard the front door open and close and he knew that Jessica was home. After completing his business with Holcomb, he walked into the library, whose walls of books were burnished bright by the late afternoon sunlight. It was his favorite room in the rambling old house with a great stone fireplace, tall leaded-glass windows, a scattering of mellow Aubusson carpets on the parquet floors, and deep wine-red leather chairs around a pair of reading tables.

It was not only his favorite room but his favorite time of day, he thought, as he poured himself a sherry and waited for Jessica to join him. He moved to one of the windows and looked out at the view of meadows and ponds stretching toward Skyhead. It had been a damned fine four years for him and he was profoundly grateful for them, even the times with Dr. Julian and their mutual concern over Jessica’s gifts.

Dalworth had been alerted decisively to the phenomenon of her precognitive skills when Mother Superior Agnes had asked him to join her for a private meeting at the local convent school. Mother Agnes, an old woman with a face pale and hard as a white-washed wall, had accused six-year-old Jessica of going through a teacher’s desk without permission to look at grades on certain examination papers. The Mother Superior’s evidence had been circumstantial but impressive. Jessica had, in fact, been in the classroom alone. No one but Sister Malvern, who had marked the papers, could have seen the test grades. One conclusive fact remained — Jessica had known the grades and given them to four of her older classmates.

Mother Superior had sent for Jessica then. The child had joined the two adults in the spare office, where pictures of saints stared from the wall like stern jurors and the candle before the Madonna flickered across the frosted windows.

Dalworth had been very proud of her as she stood stiffly but respectfully facing Mother Superior, her face not much higher than the old nun’s desk, her blue school smock matching the color of her bright eyes.

“Yes, I told them their grades, Mother Agnes,” she said. “I saw the numbers in my mind and I didn’t think it was wrong. I would never go into Sister Malvern’s desk without permission.”

“You’re asking us to take a great deal on faith, my child. You say you didn’t look into the desk. You say the correct numbers just appeared in your mind? Is that it?”

“Yes, Mother Agnes.”

“Tell me then — has this happened to you before?”

“Sometimes, Mother Agnes, when I’m excited.” A cloud had seemed to pass across her small, pale face. “Or when I’m frightened...”

The old nun had looked dubiously from the little girl to Dalworth. “Perhaps we can test the truth of what you’re saying. In the drawer of my desk, is a test paper I graded myself only minutes before Mr. Dalworth came into my office. It belongs to a student in the upper grades. Could you tell me the grade on that test, Jessica?”

Dalworth recalled vividly that instant of time, the blank eyes of the Virgin glinting in the flame from the votive light, the sound of voices murmuring in unison from a nearby classroom, the old nun’s sceptically pursed lips and the tension visibly straining Jessica’s expression.

“Could you tell me that, child?”

The mood of the room dissolved into something unreal as Jessica said quietly, “The grade is an 87, Mother Agnes, and the test paper in your desk belongs to Chalice O’Reilly.”

The silence that had followed had been broken at last by the Mother Superior’s startled gasp as she blessed herself with a large brass crucifix which hung around her throat and exclaimed, “Praise be to God, the child spoke the truth.”

It was at this period of her life that Jessica began to experience a profound curiosity about her powers. Her speculations and intuitions amounted to a certitude that seemed to come to her from somewhere beyond the realm of her physical senses. She knew in some fashion that she occasionally was better informed about what was going to happen in and around Easter Hill than Mrs. Kiernan, the cook, and Lily and Rose, and even, on occasion, than Kevin in the stables. This made Jessica feel triumphant because Kevin knew so much about horses and foaling, and tides and weather, that he was always quick to forecast sailing conditions to Andrew or to predict the exact day a foal would be dropped.

In many small and personal ways, Jessica liked to test her powers to herself. Most of these experiments were innocent and blameless. Often in the early morning she would go down to the hatching house, count the eggs in the brooder and make a mental guess about the color of chicks that might emerge, scoring herself in predicting accurately the nests that had chicks in black, beige or shades of creamy yellow.

Seated in her tower refuge, she sometimes watched the sky during thunderstorms, anticpating what distant crag or tree might attract the next jagged thunderbolt.

Dalworth was aware of her powers, although at that time he still preferred to think of them as “gifts,” the natural intuitions of a perceptive, sensitive growing child. But he began to realize that Jessica’s gifts were not wholly unremarkable and innocent, as on the occasion of his trip to Dublin. It was a curious business. The train had been due in Ballytone at nine. Jessica told him it would be an hour early, but he hadn’t listened to her. When he got to the station, he found that she had been right. Schedules had been changed because of track repairs, and the train was already on its way to Dublin. Dalworth’s point of contention with Jessica was admittedly weak.

“You should have insisted I call the station,” he told her.

She had looked evasive then, and he had let the matter drop, knowing it was as much his fault as hers that he had missed his train. After all, Jessica had got what she wanted — his continued presence at Easter Hill for the weekend.