Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  ‘What about the financial side?’

  ‘It’s all organised. A consortium of doctors who have seen it as a form of superannuation for their own retirement want to be involved. It can’t fail.’

  ‘May I come in?’ a male voice said as the door half-opened.

  ‘Marcus. Of course,’ Simon said. He began to roll up the plans. ‘We were just talking about you.’

  ‘Hello, Marcus,’ Sue said, and then to Simon, ‘I’d better do the rounds.’ She pocketed the script he’d given her as she stood up. ‘See you at lunch.’

  Lunch. Marcus’ eyebrows rose, then settled. These two were becoming very buddy-buddy. Practically every time he called in on Simon to give him a progress report, Sue Levinski was either in his office or coming to or going from it for one reason or another. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Simon, not that it was any of his business anyway, but Sue, well, she was another matter. On the island she had a reputation for being something of a piranha when it came to men. And, Simon and Jessica were experiencing difficulties in their marriage. He wouldn’t put it past the dark-haired Sue to take advantage of that.

  Yes, and wouldn’t that suit you, too? a voice inside his head queried. If Simon intended to stray, it would assuage your conscience somewhat, knowing how you feel about Jessica! Uncomfortable with that thought, he deliberately put it to the back of his mind as he took a seat opposite Simon.

  ‘Marcus,’ Simon began without preamble, ‘I’m more concerned than ever about Jessica. I don’t think there’s any improvement. In fact, I think she’s getting worse, becoming more influenced by whatever is troubling her.’

  Marcus said nothing for a moment. He tried to see things from Simon’s point of view. There appeared to be no improvement but he, personally, saw no further decline. ‘I wanted to talk to you about attacking the problem from a different angle. I’d like to hypnotise Jessica and see what she reveals under hypnosis.’ He looked straight at Simon and assured him, ‘It’s a perfectly acceptable medical procedure.’

  Simon appeared unconvinced. ‘How might that help?’

  ‘You talked about a split or the beginnings of a multiple personality theory. If I can regress her sufficiently, I may be able to prove or disprove that theory. In most cases the hypnotist doesn’t know what his patient will reveal,’ he said honestly. ‘It’s something of a voyage of discovery.’

  ‘Can it do Jess more harm? I’d be reluctant to try to talk her into it if there were any possibility she might get hurt.’

  Marcus looked thoughtful, weighing up the advantages and disadvantages in his head. ‘So would I. While I can’t give you a one hundred per cent guarantee, I don’t believe it will harm her mentally or emotionally. In fact, it may help us learn more about what’s troubling her…more about Sarah, even. I think it’s worth a try, but it has to be your decision.’

  ‘And Jessica’s?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right, we might as well try it. I’d want to be present when you do it.’

  ‘I hoped you would. I thought it might be best to do it at my place instead of Cassell’s Cottage, where a percentage of the strange happenings have taken place.’

  ‘Fine by me. When?’

  Marcus ran the fingers of both hands through his hair, then laced them together behind his head. ‘The sooner the better. Tomorrow evening, if Jessica’s agreeable.’

  She was nervous. Marcus had told her she needn’t be, that under hypnosis she wouldn’t reveal anything she was uncomfortable with, but still, she was nervous. She had never been hypnotised before, though she had once, at uni, seen a fellow student hypnotised. It hadn’t been anything dramatic, rather ordinary in fact so, really, there was nothing for her to be nervous about, was there?

  ‘Before we start, I’d like to tell you what I’ve found out about those names you gave me. All of them, Sarah, Waugh and Dowd, as well as Captain Stewart and his wife Cynthia, did at one time exist. So,’ he glanced briefly at Simon, ‘that is proof that the dreams Jessica’s been having have been based on real people, all of whom were at one time on Norfolk Island.’

  ‘My goodness, that’s amazing.’ Nan said in a wondering tone. ‘Seems like proof to me that you’re,’ she looked at Jessica, ‘not hallucinating after all.’

  Jessica smiled her thanks to Nan. So they were real, had been real. Thank God!

  ‘Sarah came to Sydney with her husband, Will and, as per Jessica’s dream, Will died of pneumonia and Sarah went to work for the Stewarts.’ Marcus went on. ‘There’s also written evidence in military records of a Corporal Elijah Waugh being court-martialled for the attempted rape of Sarah. He lost his stripes, was flogged and sent to a company that supervised the Newcastle mines. And, finally, regimental records show that Elijah was transferred, as a disciplinary measure, to Norfolk Island and that Dowd was on the island as well. Now, interestingly, Waugh drowned in November, 1853, and Dowd got in a fight with a soldier, killed him and was subsequently hanged that same year. I think it’s reasonable to deduce that the new face on the painting is that of the man Dowd murdered, a Private Rupert McLean.’

  ‘But what about Sarah?’ Jessica wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, well, she was housekeeper to the Stewarts on Norfolk and, sometime in October, 1853, she disappeared. There was an extensive search, but no trace of her was found. An entry in Captain Stewart’s journal says they assumed she’d either fallen into the ocean and drowned or wandered off into the bush—it was very thick in those days—became disorientated and died of thirst or starvation.’

  ‘How awful,’ Jessica shivered at the thought of Sarah, a vibrant woman coming to such an ignominious end. She thought of Sarah’s child. ‘What happened to Meggie?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Marcus admitted. ‘I’m waiting for more information to come through. But,’ he paused for a moment, ‘what we have gives us some kind of picture. What it doesn’t do is explain the link between Sarah and the men, other than Elijah.’ He smiled at Jessica. ‘I’m hoping that under hypnosis, more may be revealed.’

  He beckoned for Jessica to sit in the most comfortable chair and intimated that both Simon and Nan should remain beyond her peripheral vision to keep her concentration focused on what he was doing. He pulled out a compact tape recorder and showed it to her. ‘If it’s okay with you and Simon, I’d like to record what’s said. It will be a handy reference later on.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ she agreed.

  ‘This is going to be painless,’ he assured Jessica with a smile. ‘I hope you’ll be receptive to hypnosis. Not everyone is, you know. I want you to focus on this.’ He pulled out a pendant with a round disc and held it at eye level. ‘Watch it spin, Jessica, focus your mind on that and nothing else. And as you do, I want you to count backwards from one hundred. In a while you’ll get sleepy, and your eyes will want to close. Don’t fight that feeling, go with it. Then you will only hear my voice and do as I say.’

  ‘Ninety-eight, ninety-seven,’ She felt foolish and not in the least sleepy. ‘Eighty-eight…seventy-six.’ The disc seemed to be spinning faster and faster, it made her blink. ‘Sixty-four.’ Her eyelids felt heavy. She’d close them for a while. What was Marcus saying…? He had a nice, smooth voice, easy to listen to. ‘Sixty-one…’

  ‘Relax, Jessica, nothing can harm you. Just relax. Every bone in your body, every muscle is feeling heavier and heavier, your eyelids too. Close them, Jessica. Relax, breathe deeply now. I’m going to take you back in time over some of the events in your life.’

  He waited maybe half a minute, checking that she was breathing evenly and deeply. ‘Now, Jessica, it’s your twenty-fifth birthday. What’s your name and where are you?’

  ‘My name is Jessica Rose Ahearne, and I’m at a restaurant in Perth. Alison and Keith are there, and Dad. It’s a double celebration ’cause I’ve just been given a huge bonus by my employers, Lowe and Greiner.’

  ‘That’s good. Now you’re sixteen, and it’s Christmas school holidays.’


  She paused for maybe twenty seconds. ‘I’m having a beaut time at the beach with my two best friends, Liah and Christine. Three boys are giving us the eye. I rather like the one in the middle. They’re coming over to us,’ there was girlish anticipation in her tone, ‘his name’s Michael. Oh, he’s lovely…He’s asked me to go to the drive-in. Dad won’t let me, so I’ll have to sneak out.’

  ‘Isn’t it wrong to do that, Jessica?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve done it before, you know. Dad’s very strict and, really, I do it for a lark. I have to make sure Alison doesn’t find out though, ’cause she’ll rat on me.’

  ‘Fine, Jessica, you’re doing fine. Now we’re going to go back a little further. You’re…ten and you’re at home. What’s happening?’

  ‘Mummy’s so sick,’ there was a tremor in her voice. ‘She can’t get out of bed and Daddy’s really worried. He hardly talks to Alison and me, he spends a lot of time with Mummy. Alison’s real mean,’ her tone reverted to being quite childish, ‘she says Mummy’s got the big C, whatever that is, and that she’ll probably die in a year or two. I hate Alison, she’s such a liar.’ Tears formed at the corners of Jessica’s eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  ‘It’s all right, Jessica,’ Marcus said in a soothing tone. ‘You’re not to be sad. Relax, let the pain go. Now you’re much younger, say three and a half, and you’re at kindy. Do you like kindy, Jessica?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ came a babyish voice. ‘I didn’t at first ’c-cause Mummy left me there alone, but I found a friend, her name’s Tara. We play together.’ She giggled. ‘She protects me from Alex, who’s a big bully. I don’t like Alex ’cause he takes my juice and pushes me over.’ She paused for a couple of seconds. ‘Mummy says I got to stand up to him.’ She smiled. ‘So I did.’

  ‘What did you do, Jessica?’

  ‘This morning Alex pushed me and I pushed him back. He fell over and hurt his knee, it bled real bad and he had to have two bandaids on it. Mrs Booth was cross with me, but I don’t care.’

  ‘Why’s that, Jessica?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Tara says he won’t push me any more.’

  Marcus grinned to himself. Typical pre-school behaviour. She was responding well to hypnosis, and her breathing remained relaxed. Now for the big test. Should he regress her further, back before she was born? What would they learn if he did? Perhaps nothing. Besides, there was some risk in it, because the patient could become disorientated or agitated.

  ‘This may be difficult for you, but I want you to try to go back several more years, Jessica, before you were Jessica Rose Ahearne. Can you do that?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jessica, are you there? Talk to me.’

  Jessica took a sudden deep breath and her body shook involuntarily.

  ‘I’ll be talkin’ ta you, but me name’s not Jessica, it be Sarah O’Riley and what are you wantin’ ta know?’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Marcus’ gaze jerked to Simon, saw his eyebrows shoot upwards, his jaw go slack. Whoever was talking to him now was doing so in a distinct Irish accent.

  ‘Aahh, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I hoped you’d come through. I know a little about you, Sarah, but I’d like to know more. Where were you born and what was your name?’

  ‘I was born Sarah Flynn until I wed my Will and me name became O’Riley. Our family came from County Armagh, we did. Pa worked a farm there and pitiful poor we were, too.’

  ‘Did you have any schooling in Armagh, Sarah?’

  ‘Course I did,’ she replied indignantly. ‘Up ta the fourth grade. I’ll be tellin’ you I was the best student in Father O’Connell’s class, I was.’

  ‘I’m sure you were,’ Marcus tried to calm her, for Sarah appeared to have a mercurial temperament. ‘You worked on the farm with your pa?’

  ‘Aye, me and Paddy did. He’s me brother so he did the heavy work. I helped out with the plantin’ and milkin’ of the cows and feedin’ the stock.’

  ‘Were you always on the land, Sarah?’

  ‘Oh, no. I came to Dublin when I was eleven, after Pa died. Ma got a domestic position with a doctor, but she took poorly after me brother died and just faded away. I went ta work down on the wharves, for a ship’s chandler. That’s how I met my Will.’

  ‘You and Will were happy?’

  ‘Aye, we were, especially when our babe, Meggie, came along. We were goin’ ta make a life fer ourselves in Sydney Town. Will had plans, you know.’

  ‘What kind of plans, Sarah?’

  ‘Ta get a land grant. It was said that sometimes they, the government, gives them ta retired soldiers, did you not know that?’ There was a touch of scorn in her voice for his lack of knowledge. ‘We were savin’ our pennies ta have our own farm, raise sheep and cattle. But then…’

  She stopped and Marcus frowned. Her intonation had changed, there was an emotional timbre to it. ‘What happened, Sarah?”

  ‘Me Will took ill, he did, and then…he died.’

  ‘And you came to Norfolk Island, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’ There was faint surprise in her voice that he knew. ‘And ’tis the worst place in the world. So much cruelty and pain here.’

  ‘That’s where you met Elijah Waugh again, wasn’t it? Thomas Dowd and Rupert McLean, too?’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ Jessica’s shoulders shrugged, and her face contorted for a moment into an expression of utter disdain. ‘Dowd is always hangin’ about, tryin’ ta get me ta talk ta him, which I won’t, because I can’t bear ta look at the man. And Elijah’s been made to keep his distance, thank the Lord. He frightens me with his evil-lookin’ eyes. The Captain had him sent ta a timber camp, so I feel a little safer. He’ll be a’leavin’ on the next ship that drops anchor here, the Captain promised me that.’

  ‘What about Rupert McLean? Do you know him?’

  ‘Rupert McLean,’ Jessica’s lip curled with disgust. ‘The man is as bold as a street pedlar. Came right up ta me one day as I walked along Quality Row and asked me straight out ta be his woman. Not his wife, mind you, his…his whore. I gave him a fine tongue lashin’, ta be sure I did.’

  ‘And what about the other man, Sarah, the one not filled in in the painting?’

  There was a pause. ‘Oh, him. Timothy Cavanagh. He’s a spineless, weak-minded fool of a boy. I pay him no mind at all, though I think Maude Prentiss has a tenderness for him.’

  ‘And who might Maude be?’

  She gave an impatient sigh at his apparent stupidity. ‘Mrs Stewart’s maid, of course.’

  Marcus paused for breath. It was going better than expected, but now he had to ask the hard questions. ‘What is your relationship to Jessica, Sarah? Has your spirit been reincarnated into that of Jessica Pearce?’

  ‘No,’ Sarah’s tone scoffed at such an idea. ‘Me spirit’s me own, and so is Jessica’s.’

  ‘Then…why are you using Jessica?’

  A longer pause ensued. ‘I must. I need her ta help me…’ She stopped again.

  ‘To help you do what?’ Marcus improvised, ‘has it something to do with the four men, the faces in the painting?’

  He watched Jessica closely now to see if there were any reaction to his question. She became restless, her breathing pattern changed, her features took on a certain anxiety.

  ‘What right have you ta be askin’ me that? ’Tis none of your concern,’ the answer, in a strong Irish accent, came through angrily. ‘I’ll be answerin’ no more of your interferin’ questions.’

  ‘Sarah! Sarah, are you there?’

  Silence.

  ‘Bring Jessica out of it, Marcus,’ Simon hissed at him. He had witnessed an astonishing event and was utterly confused by it. With his own ears he’d heard Jessica talk in an Irish accent, using phrasing common place in the nineteenth century. There had also been confirmation of what Marcus had claimed earlier, that all the people Jess had named had at one time existed, as had Sarah. He repressed a shudder of discomfort as he watched Marcus, with painstaking slowness, return Jessica to conscious
ness. It was all too much for him, he admitted. When he’d first heard Sarah’s voice, he had almost panicked and wanted to run out of the room, away from it all.

  Only the fear of being thought a coward had kept him in his seat. God Almighty, what had they all got into? Hypnotism, reincarnation, spirits! And this Sarah had debunked his theory of multiple personalities, leaving him with the unpalatable thought that Marcus had been right. Definitely, a strange, supernatural force was at work here. Some netherworld entity could and was, at will, taking control of his wife and making her do things she had no memory of doing—such as painting those faces on the Anson Bay painting. It was too much to comprehend or be comfortable with.

  Jessica yawned and stretched. She looked at Marcus. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘You don’t remember any of it?’ Simon asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘My God, I can’t deal with this!’ Simon almost yelled, clenching and unclenching his hands. ‘Look, I have to go.’ He glanced at Marcus. ‘Will you drive Jessica home, please?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marcus agreed, though his disappointment at Simon’s attitude showed. Jessica needed his support right now, not his desertion.

  Simon looked at Jessica. ‘Sorry, love,’ and then he left the room, at speed, as if all the demons in hell were after him.

  ‘Well, that’s bloody poor support,’ Nan said, incensed by Simon’s departure. She hugged Jessica, for the woman looked stunned and in need of comfort. ‘Not to worry, love. Perhaps it’s best if he’s not here. You want to listen to the tape, don’t you?’ She watched Jessica nod affirmatively. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, make us a cuppa, while Marcus rewinds it. Then we’ll all listen to it.’ She gave Jessica a confident smile. ‘It’s amazing stuff, love, and it definitely proves you’re not crazy.’

  ‘Does it?’ Jessica caught Marcus’ gaze as she asked the question.

  ‘I believe so.’ Just looking into those blue depths of hers was doing weird and wonderful things to his insides. There was an implicit trust in her gaze that made him feel humble, almost undeserving. And he was so proud of her because she had exhibited great courage in going under hypnosis, and the result pleased him enormously. Several points had been clarified, and he had a couple more names to check out. The mystery was unravelling and building to a climax. That would happen, he was sure, after Sarah painted in the fourth face.