He reached for the phone. Why wait till tonight to talk…?
‘So what did he say?’ Sue could hardly contain her curiosity. She had waited until Marcus had left Simon’s office, then hotfooted it to his door.
‘Over coffee,’ he suggested.
She was back in three minutes with steaming cups and sat on the arm of one of his chairs, waiting for him to fill her in.
‘Not a lot,’ Simon told her. ‘I didn’t really expect him to, not straightaway.’
‘But Marcus must have some thoughts, opinions,’ she said, impatience evident in her tone.
‘Well, he has a couple of theories. He said it’s going to take time.’
‘Time.’ Her eyebrows lifted. ‘That’s a typical psychologist’s answer, if ever I heard one.’
‘His diagnosis can’t be rushed, you know that, Sue,’ Simon pointed out a little testily. ‘There are things…ummm…behaviour patterns, her lucidity, so many aspects he must weigh and analyse.’
‘Oh, I know,’ she agreed quickly, seeing that he was becoming annoyed. ‘I’m just concerned for you, Simon. The tension, the not knowing must be awful for you.’
‘It is,’ he agreed, and then felt prompted to add loyally, ‘however, it’s even worse for Jess.’
Jess. Always Jess. A wave of frustration flooded through Sue. Somehow she had to wean him off the woman. What kind of a relationship were they having anyway? Oh, he was acting the devoted husband, but was he? And he must be getting tired of having to spend half his waking hours worrying about what she was doing.
‘Look, after work, why don’t we go have a drink? You need to relax, you’re very tense.’
Normally Simon would have refused, feeling obliged to get home to Jessica. But what harm could one drink do? he asked himself. And Sue was trying to be kind, so it would be churlish to say no.
‘That’s a good idea. We will.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Where was he? Jessica paced the living room floor for the umpteenth time, looking at her wristwatch. It was almost 9.20 pm. Always, when Simon thought he might be late, he would call. He should realise that she didn’t feel comfortable being in the house alone, at night. Night-time was when the latest strange happenings occurred. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the cottage, she feared the mental abberations that could come with the dark. If Simon, or anyone, were here, she would feel safer.
She walked into the kitchen and looked at the dinner plates on the counter top. Her tasty Veal Parmegiana—ruined. Her irritation multiplied, and then she thought that maybe Simon had had an accident, maybe he couldn’t phone! She chewed her lip worriedly as that thought took hold. She went to the phone and dialled his mobile again. Damn. Why had he switched it off?
A flash of light at the front door made her move to stand in the kitchen doorway. Soon she heard keys rattling and then metal scraping against metal as he tried to fit the key in the lock and had difficulty doing so.
Finally he got the door open and came in. He saw her waiting and gave her a lopsided, half-guilty grin. ‘Hello, love. Sorry I’m a bit late. Went for drinks with a few people from the hospital.’
‘A bit late!’ One pencilled eyebrow thrust upwards. ‘You might have let me know,’ she murmured reproachfully as she watched him teeter from one foot to the other.
‘Asked Sue to. Didn’t she call?’
‘I didn’t get any message,’ Jessica replied, tight-lipped. The woman probably hadn’t called anyway, but said she had. She didn’t like or trust Sue Levinski, despite the woman’s recent overtures to her.
He shrugged, then came up with the excuse. ‘Maybe you were out in the garden and didn’t hear the phone.’
She hadn’t been, but there was little point in making a scene over the hospital’s matron because, to her disappointment, Simon usually came to the woman’s defence. ‘You’d better eat,’ she pointed to the plate. Two hours ago it had been an appetising meal. Now it was a gluggy mess.
‘Not hungry, Jess. Picked up some take-away from the Chinese restaurant.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Think I’ll go to bed.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me what Marcus said? He told me he would be seeing you.’
Simon yawned, twice. ‘No startling revelations, love. We’ll talk about it in the morning. I’m beat.’
Jessica watched him walk unsteadily towards the bedroom, her anger rising.
Damn him! Didn’t he care that she was on tenterhooks, wondering what Marcus had said, what kind of prognosis he’d made to him? How could he be so selfish, so…unfeeling?
She looked away, wondering…What was happening to Simon, the man who’d loved her unconditionally, who’d stood by her all those months in the sanitorium, who had believed and supported her? Since they’d come to Norfolk he seemed different, had become harder. Or was it that since they’d come here, her eyes had been opened and she was seeing more? The changes had been so subtle she had hardly noticed at first. Then had come a growing impatience, an implied tendency to not believe her, almost as if he thought she were imagining the things that had happened to her…to get his attention. Yes, that had been implied in the way he’d looked at her, more than once.
She sighed as she cleaned the plates and threw the food in the rubbish bin. Maybe the fault was hers. Maybe she was imagining the change in him. Maybe it was symptomatic of her condition. Condition! What condition? Brushing back a tear, she stamped her bare foot in anger. She did not have a condition. She was not mentally unstable. Marcus, she hoped, would prove that to all who might be interested.
After tidying the kitchen, she went into the bedroom and saw that Simon had fallen asleep, fully clothed, across the bed. She tried to push him over to his side but he was impossible to budge. Grabbing her pillow and a blanket, she marched back to the living room and made a make-do bed on the sofa, but she was still too steamed up to go to sleep. Perhaps a shower would relax her…
Thirty minutes later, towelled dry and in her nightie, she returned to the living room with a cup of coffee, thankful that the shower had helped to settle her temper.
She wandered onto the verandah, purposely avoiding looking at the painting of the four faces, which had been taken down from the easel and now leant near the window against the verandah wall.
Yesterday she had begun work on a different painting. Her travels around the island had taken her down the meandering Stockyard Road and eventually to a lush meadow where she had ignored the grazing cattle, and walked to the edge of the fenced-off pasture. The place was called Simon’s Water and, it being late in the afternoon, clouds had begun to gather over the island, giving the ocean a silvery sheen. The light accentuated the silhouette effect of an outcrop of rocks in the water and a cluster of the ever-present Norfolk Pines which ran down to the shore. A quick sketch, accompanied by several photos from the polaroid camera she’d bought in Burnt Pine, had given her the basic shape, form and colours for her next work which, by its starkness and silvery grey colours, would be very different from the Anson Bay painting.
The whisper of a breeze through the open window made her shiver. She went over and closed the window tight. Silly to have left it open when she felt a little spooked, she mentally reprimanded herself.
Still, the coldness persisted and she rubbed her arms and then chaffed her hands, but the warmth would not return to them. Then she smelled that sweet smell. Jesus Christ, what was it? Roses? Yes! Oh, no! It’s happening again. By now Jessica knew the symptoms. A sudden coldness, the chill invading her limbs and, eventually, paralysing her resistance as well as her memory.
She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the sensation. In a quiet but firm voice, she muttered, ‘No, whatever is happening to me, will not happen tonight. I will be stronger than this strange nemesis,’ and, with a catch in her voice, ‘I must be.’
An extra cold blast made her body shiver. ‘Go away,’ she uttered, this time more forcefully.
‘I cannot do that, Jessica.’
Jessica’s eyes flew
open and she swivelled her head this way and that, trying to locate the person who had spoken to her. There was no one in the room. A stillness went through her, and her throat tightened so much that she found it hard to swallow. God, now she was hearing bodiless voices or, more precisely, one bodiless voice. What would Marcus make of this development? Was she indeed on the brink of insanity or some form of dementia?
‘Leave me alone.’ Oh, God, now she was talking back to it!
‘I cannot. I need you, Jessica Pearce. You are my link. You will help ta set me free.’
Again! She heard words again. The tone was lilting, and slightly foreign, but she couldn’t quite identify it.
‘I won’t allow you to do this to me, whoever you are.’ The defiance in Jessica’s tone belied her fright at what was happening, and the fact that she appeared to be talking to herself. ‘Just…get out of my life,’ she said through clenched teeth, now acutely aware that she was getting so cold she could scarcely think straight.
‘You cannot fight me in this, my dear, for my powers are too strong.’
‘Why are you doing this? Do you want me to go crazy?’ Jessica’s voice rose in tempo with her fear.
Sarah laughed. ‘You are not crazy. You have been through many difficulties. Oh, yes, I know of them. Come, sit down. I want ta tell you a story about love, and a man and a woman…
With all the mental strength she possessed, Jessica tried to resist the pull of this dominance over her. What had happened to her in the past had been weird, but this was the weirdest of all. She could feel something lulling her internally, she had a sense of being safe, protected, and so, barely aware of surrendering to this strange force, she sat in the easy chair facing the easel. Her eyelids began to droop, to close. She forced them open again for several seconds, but then a heavy langour took hold of her and, eyelids closing again, her head fell back against the back of the chair…
It was a lovely dream, even though the ending saddened her.
When Jessica woke, streaks of daylight were lightening the horizon over the ocean. She had dreamt about the same woman who had been in her other dream. About Sarah and how she had come from Dublin to Sydney Town with her soldier husband, Will O’Riley. She lifted a hand to her cheek and felt the remains of dried tears there, shed when Will had died, and again when Sarah had been attacked by the monster called Elijah. The dream had ended with Sarah and Meggie sailing to Norfolk Island and then with Sarah finding that Elijah had followed her there.
How frightened Sarah must have been! She suddenly thought. The woman had been through so much at such a young age. Oh, you fool! It’s only a dream. Why are you thinking that Sarah is, or was, a real person? She sat up straight. She had to find that sketch.
As morning light flooded the verandah, she searched every nook and cranny, her frustration growing at her inability to locate the drawing. Somehow, she sensed it was important to locate it, that knowing whether the Sarah in her dream was the Sarah in her sketch had relevance to what was happening to her. A sliver of paper peeped out from under the chair she had been sitting on. She dropped to her knees and tugged until it came free.
There it was, rolled up as she had left it almost a fortnight ago. With something close to reverence, she unrolled the paper and stared at the likeness. It was her. She then compared the lines of her sketch to that of the faces painted on the Anson Bay painting and saw that her style was more naive, more tentative. How interesting! So, assuming that she had painted those men’s faces, was it reasonable to deduce that she may have had help? Possibly Sarah’s! God, yes, she remembered the first dream: in the letter, Sarah had mentioned doing a sketch…
That possibility was a scary revelation that had her thoughts going in several directions. How could it be? How could a character in a dream influence a painting? Was she becoming a split personality? Was she part Jessica and part Sarah? The questions kept coming. Her head began to ache and she rubbed her temples. Too many questions and no sensible answers.
She padded into the kitchen and swallowed a couple of analgesic tablets. After that she went and lay on the sofa. A drowsiness was descending on her, but strangely she couldn’t get Sarah out of her head. Was Sarah the bodiless voice who’d talked to her? And if so, why did she need her help and how could she possibly help her anyway? And how did the voice know things about her, about her past? As well, and most curious of all, was the growing belief that the dreams she was having were part of a greater purpose, one that as yet, she didn’t understand.
Then she remembered what Marcus had asked her to do, to write every odd happening down.
Well, she smiled drowsily, she had experienced an odd one last night. She reached for the pad and the pencil…
When she woke again, she found a note on the side of her pillow.
‘You looked too peaceful to wake. Sorry about last night. Love you,
Simon.’
Jessica stared hard-eyed at the note and then screwed it into a ball and threw it in the rubbish tin.
‘Spirits!’ Simon repeated, a disbelieving squeak in his voice, ‘man, what are you talking about?’ The fear in his tone was almost tangible.
Marcus held up his hand to quieten an anxious Simon. ‘I’m still trying to put it all together. All I’m saying,’ he glanced at Sue Levinski who sat on the other side of Simon’s desk, ‘is that it’s not impossible, what with Norfolk Island’s history, for Jessica to have made contact, on a subconscious level, with a spirit, and that that spirit is somehow exerting some kind of influence over her.’
‘Sounds like a lot of gobbeldygook to me,’ Simon said with a curl of his lip. ‘Jessica would be the last person to go along with that theory. She doesn’t believe in the supernatural, in ghosts, spirits, entities or whatever you care to call them.’
‘I’m going by the evidence I have, and what I know about the island. I don’t think we can rule the possibility out,’ Marcus responded, annoyed by Simon’s scepticism. Surely it was preferable for a husband to believe that his wife was perhaps being controlled by something else, than to think she was sinking into a type of melancholic insanity. He decided not to show him the notes he’d got off Jessica today. They’d talked at length about her hearing voices and then dreaming of this woman named Sarah. Now he could start to investigate whether these people had at one time lived on Norfolk, or whether they were just figments of a distorted imagination.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Sue asked Marcus.
‘Keep investigating. I’ve got some names. And the uniforms of the men belong to the 58th Regiment. They served on Norfolk on and off from 1845 to 1853. I’ll get on the Internet, too, and talk to some of my cronies in Sydney. That’s where the bulk of the convict records on Norfolk are kept.’
‘And in the meantime, I’ll increase the dosage of tranquilliser for Jessica,’ Simon decided.
Marcus studied Simon thoughtfully for several seconds. ‘Do you think that’s wise? You don’t want Jessica to become a zombie, and there is the possibility that if you heavily sedate her, it may make it easier for the spirit, or whatever it is, to gain access to her subconscious.’
Simon threw his pen down in frustration. ‘What am I to do then? Hire a companion to watch over her?’
‘She’d hate that,’ Marcus said quickly. ‘Simon, look, I don’t believe Jessica will try to harm herself. She hasn’t exhibited any suicidal tendencies during any of these visitations or manifestations, or afterwards. In fact, I believe she’s behaving quite stoically when one considers what she’s been through. Someone with less mental strength might have been pushed over the edge by these occurences.’ He deliberately stared at Simon. ‘I believe it is important that you allow her to act normally. Don’t increase the medication, and don’t act as if you don’t trust her. This…whatever it is…I believe that it means her no harm, either mentally or physically.’
Sue Levinski interrupted with a chuckle, ‘Marcus, do you know how unscientific all of this sounds? Spirits, manifestations, visitations. C
hrist, I reckon we should call in a white witch or a spiritualist.’
He stared at her. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.’ Then he sighed, ‘Look, I know you two don’t believe I’m on the right track here, but I assure you, I have Jessica’s welfare at heart. All I ask is that you give me time to track down the names she’s given me from her dreams. If that doesn’t pan out, then we’ll review the situation and consider a change of treatment.’
Grudgingly, Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course, Marcus. Like you, I want what’s best for Jess. It’s just that it’s so damned frustrating. I feel that she’s distancing herself from me, maybe because of what’s going on in her head. I don’t know…’
‘I think we all have to be more patient,’ Sue soothed. ‘As professionals we know that solving a patient’s mental problem doesn’t happen overnight.’ If at all, she thought to herself as she hid a smile of triumph.
Things couldn’t be going better had she planned every detail herself. Simon had all but admitted to problems in the marriage. Marcus thought Jessica’s mind had been invaded by some ridiculous spirit, which made her wonder whether he was half the psychologist Nan said he was, and Jessica’s mental problems were escalating. God, if she hadn’t sworn off the grog, she would pop a champagne cork tonight. Not to worry, there’d be time for celebrating in the not-too-distant future. She had to subtlely help Simon distance himself from Jessica. Which shouldn’t be too hard, since he had admitted that he and Jessica weren’t getting along.
Marcus glanced at his watch, then picked up his folder. ‘Got to go. My kids are coming in on the next flight.’
Whispers Through the Pines Page 20
