“I’ve already given you my answer to that, Andrew. I simply don’t know...”
When Andrew Dalworth dropped Jessica off at the north entrance to the Trinity quad at ten o’clock, she and Dr. Julian then drove in an open sports car down the coast to Dun Laoghaire, a seaside resort town a dozen miles south of Dublin. A pier jutted from the shore almost a mile out into the Irish Sea. Some of the sails on the boats were bright red, others striped blue and yellow, and still others white against the gray waters, gulls sweeping and crying everywhere. The great white wooden hotels were not yet open for the season, their shuttered windows looking down blindfolded from perches on the gray cliffs.
It was a favorite spot of theirs. Instead of in his office or a laboratory, Dr. Julian had discovered that Jessica — with her love of the sea and the outdoors — was much more relaxed out here in the open, feeding the birds and hiking along the breakwater, the spray hanging above them in the occasional sunlight like dozens of tiny rainbows.
“Are you going to be warm enough, Jessica?”
She looked down at her slim flannel slacks and then at the backs of her leather-and-knit gloves. She fastened the top button of her mulberry-red jacket and said, “Yes, of course I am.”
“Fine. You want to race me to the end of the pier?”
“No, let’s walk, Dr. Julian.”
He looked down at her and saw a certain mournful delicacy in the set of her expression, something wistful in her eyes as she looked at the circling birds, their orange beaks garish against their white plumage.
“Come on, Jess. I’ll give you a head start.”
“I don’t need a head start. Your pipe’s out, Julian.”
“It’s very difficult to keep it lighted in an open car. Which is beside the point, isn’t it? So let’s walk, and you can tell me what’s bothering you.”
They sat talking on a stone ledge at the far end of the breakwater, discussing what had happened to the dog Holly and the other things Jessica had seen in her luminous visions. They didn’t realize how cold they were until a tea-vendor came their way, an old man bent against the winds, pushing his wares in a three-wheeled aluminum cart.
Julian bought cylinders of hot tea and a pair of pigs-in-the-blankets — steaming sausages wrapped in brown pie-crust and laid on a paper napkin.
Jessica sipped her tea and threw the last bite of her sausage to a gull circling only six feet above them.
“Did you say a prayer for Holly?”
“Please, Julian, I’m tired of it.”
“Then we might as well drive back.”
“Oh, all right. I’m not sure, I don’t think so.” Shaking her dark hair back with a feminine swing, she smoothed it down to her shoulders with her gloved hands and tilted her head to Stare out across the gray waters.
She would be a beautiful woman, he thought, watching her in profile. It was there in the child — the fluid movements of her slim body, the high candor in her eyes and expression, the whiteness of her forehead beneath the dark spray of hair tumbled now by the salty winds.
“We buried Holly in the orchard where you can see the grave from my room,” she said. “Mr. Brown made a cross from the branches of an oak that fell last week. Everyone was there — Lily and Rose, Mrs. Kiernan and Mr. Flynn. And Charity Bostwick brought Father Malachy up. He said some prayers in Latin.”
Jessica looked directly at Dr. Julian. After a moment, she nodded and said, “Yes, I said a prayer, Julian.”
“For Holly?” he asked her quietly.
“No, Julian, it wasn’t for anyone.” She turned away from him and stared again at the rolling seas. “It was against something. I’ve told you—” She shrugged helplessly and smoothed her hair down again, the ends curling softly around her gloved fingers. “I didn’t feel responsible for Holly. It always helps, Julian, to remember what you told me about the view from the hill...”
“I’m glad you remember, Jessica. It’s only a metaphor, but sometimes that’s the only way we can get a glimpse of things that we can’t weigh or measure but still perceive in ways we’re at a loss to define or understand.”
When she was young — Jessica sighed at her thought; she’d been seven — Dr. Julian had likened her perception of coming events to that of a person standing on a high hill with a view of a river sweeping about its base.
“Imagine that you can see a boat coming down the stream. Think of that as the past,” he had said. “As it comes abreast of you, that, in our figure of speech, is the present. Now imagine you can see farther downstream to a waterfall, its spray leaping high in the air but still not visible to the people on the boat. From your view, you know what might happen. The boat may turn a bend in the forked river and be drawn into the currents of the waterfall. But the people on the boat can change course, drop anchor or find a safe cove. They have choices. You aren’t responsible for what they do or the possible consequence of what you see.”
Dr. Julian wadded up their napkins and poked them into the aluminum tea cylinders.
“We’re good friends, aren’t we, Jessica?”
“Of course, we’re good friends,” Jessica said. “I think we always will be.”
“Then answer me this: Is there any reason you won’t tell me what you’re afraid of?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’ve tried to understand it. I didn’t feel responsible for Holly — just sad and lonely. But the other thing is different. Cold brightness in the future, and it frightens me. Someone who had a small blue car and a pet — a black cat, I think. It was when I was very young, and mostly before Andrew.” She shook her head with a sudden stubbornness. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Julian. Please. Let’s go back now.”
“All right, Jessica,” Julian said, and put an arm around the girl, holding her against the winds that hurried them along the breakwater toward the blank eyes of the hotels above the resort town.
Chapter Eleven
Eric Griffith’s eye and interest were caught by a magnificent thoroughbred whose name he fancied: Yankee Drummer. It was a scene handsome enough to dispel his gloomy thoughts — the turf in Ireland, splendid crowds in tweeds and bright silk scarves, ladies carrying walking sticks, gentlemen with binoculars, placards showing the current odds above the betting stalls, and horses parading toward the race course at the Curragh.
Eric sat in a doctor’s waiting room — a depressing annex with wicker furniture, artificial green plants and botannical prints on the walls — reading Town and Country magazine. It was winter-dark outside, the streets noisy with traffic. A black woman with two small children sagging against her knees looked stolidly at the details of a large red kidney, which faced her at eye level from a medical layout on the opposite wall.
Eric and Maud had been driving to the country from Philadelphia when the pain had struck, starting at the base of her skull and fanning out into her shoulders. He had tried to persuade her to stick it out until they got home where a brisk rub and a whiskey might put things right, but oh, no, she wouldn’t have that, she thought she was dying as usual (naturally, since she’d had that damned foolish dream again last night), and so here they were in a strange doctor’s office, Maud closeted with some old black medicine man, while he sat with kids staring at him like zombies, his nerves twitching for a drink.
Thank God for small favors. In a dusty heap of Ebony magazines and old comic books, with a couple of Popular Mechanics and Modern Screens tucked among them, Eric had found a recent copy of Town and Country with pictures of good-looking people and horses to distract him from his simmering resentments.