Fog Heart (7 page)

It didn't help that they couldn't have any more children. A final twist of the knife. Perhaps they could, but simply didn't manage the trick. The biology of it was inconclusive: either her eggs grew more resistant or his sperm had lost some of its vigour. Arcana like that, with hints of psychological causes.

In recent years sex had become largely symbolic. They made love once or twice a month and there was nothing much to it. In all fairness, he'd always been a little too quick and inattentive at it. But it could also be fairly said that Jan had never shown any interest in becoming a skilled, exciting lover. She'd always preferred the affectionate aftermath to the mechanics of the main event. And that's what they had come to, skipping the sex most of the time, and cuddling each other for the soothing warmth and comfort as they fell asleep.

Jan must know that he satisfied his sexual needs elsewhere, but if she did she didn't let on, much less make an issue of it. Charley tried to be careful and discreet. The age of Aids and an increasing awareness of women's rights forced new considerations but didn't significantly reduce the range of opportunity. People were people, and college campuses would always be highly charged with sexual intensity.

And so, this marriage. There was still something good in it, he believed. He could have given up and left her long ago, and she could have done the same, but they clung together. It was far from a model marriage, but a thread of purpose and devotion ran through it. There were moments of genuine affection, fondness.

He longed to tell Jan about Malcolm's strange story. But how could he? She had been there when Fiona died, and the merest mention of the subject might be enough to unravel her. She never brought it up.

Maybe they should have sought more psychological counselling, although it seemed like they had had plenty at the time. Everybody from the parish priest to the county social worker offered their well-intentioned advice, and there had been sympathy and support from family and friends. Charley and Jan had had a hard time absorbing half of it, the rest washed on by. But there are some things you can never talk away.

Now this terrible story. Had it come from anybody else who knew him, Charley would have regarded it as a cruel joke. But Malcolm would never have considered doing such a thing, and his discomfort when he had mentioned it to Charley had been plain to see. There was no doubt that the psychic incident, or whatever it had been, had struck Malcolm as very near the real thing. Improbable as that seemed.

But was it? Charley was aware of a certain irony. He had devoted a good portion of his adult life to the work of Dunsany, whose books were saturated with the fantastic, the improbable and the supernatural. Charley had no doubt that if this had happened to Dunsany, the old boy wouldn't have batted an eyelash. He would have seen it as a glimpse of secret truth, as an intrusion of the higher reality into our drab everyday world.

Could Charley simply dismiss it, chuck it all aside as sheer nonsense? He wanted to, but it wasn't that easy. If, as Malcolm had said, there was one chance in a million that the incident was real, not a contrivance, then he couldn't ignore it.

At the moment, a more likely explanation suggested itself to him. This woman, the putative psychic, had most likely picked up on the residual accent in Malcolm's voice and tossed off a random bunch of names and phrases associated with Ireland. Fiona was a common Irish name. Even Ravenswood was not so remarkable; there were Ravens-this and Ravens-that throughout Ireland. The country had entirely too many ravens by far, alas.

That was how they worked, he thought. They threw out dozens of verbal titbits, hoping that at least one would trigger an association in the mind of the gullible customer. They watched carefully, and when something scored a hit they added a bit more to it, feeling their way, building on whatever the poor hapless soul unwittingly provided.

But. Charley had futzed about this for a couple of days and still didn't know quite what to do. Finally, he reached for the telephone and punched in Malcolm's number.

‘Listen, mate, any chance you and your good lady wife could spare me a few minutes at short notice?'

*   *   *

Bethany, where the hills begin. Malcolm and Maggie owned an old farmhouse that had been fully renovated and redecorated. The kids, two or three, could be seen and heard from time to time out in the yard or thundering on the stairs inside. He really ought to make a point of learning their number and names one of these days. But he'd gone off other people's children long ago.

They sat outside the kitchen, on a patio made of old brick. There were pots and planters full of herbs and spring blossoms, a trellis half covered with a new growth of ivy. Malcolm brought wine glasses and two open bottles of Margaux to the wrought-iron table. Maggie looked altogether too good for a repeat mother, in snug jeans that showed off a fine backside and a man's shirt that was not so loose it didn't hint at certain delightful motions and features occurring on the inside.

Heaney's latest collection was moved reverently to one side as Malcolm poured the wine. Heaney was right on track for Oslo, and Malcolm was just about the top Heaney man in the world. Look at him, will you? Maggie, Heaney, Yale – when had Malcolm ever made a bad choice? The likely lad.

‘All right, now,' Charley said, after they had touched their glasses. ‘About your woman. I want to know more.'

‘I've met a lot of these people and attended a lot of their sessions,' Maggie said promptly, as if she had been waiting for a chance to discuss it with him. ‘And she's as close as they come to the real thing. In fact, I'd say there's no comparison at all. I've never seen anyone as good as she is.'

‘So you believe it, then?'

Maggie hesitated. ‘I believe there's something going on but nobody has a clear idea what it is. For all the studies and investigations that have been done, going back to the turn of the century, our understanding of psychic phenomena is limited. The history is largely anecdotal.'

‘You don't think it's just a case of fraud?'

‘It is in most cases,' Maggie agreed, with a nod. ‘But then you find the one case in a thousand, and it's so convincing that the only explanation seems to be you've witnessed a real paranormal event.'

‘So you think these folks, the few real ones, are tuning in to actual messages from the dead?'

‘No, not necessarily,' Maggie said. ‘It may be that certain individuals have a vastly greater sensitivity to other people and situations. And their subconscious minds can pick up and process information that's there all along but which the rest of us fail to notice.'

Uh-huh. ‘The grape squash is very tasty, squire.'

‘Help yourself to more,' Malcolm said, with a smile.

Charley refilled his glass. Maggie had lovely teeth, small and pearly and very slightly uneven. Bless her for never having had them straightened. They were desperately sexy.

‘That all sounds very reasonable,' Charley said. ‘But what if she noticed your hubby's lingering Irish accent and decided to drop some names and phrases with Irish associations, thinking one might ring a bell in his mind?'

‘That's possible,' Maggie said. ‘It's a common technique. What you have to do then is follow it and see where it goes. If you're careful not to give out any solid information, it usually leads nowhere because the psychic quickly runs out of material to recycle.'

‘They're the fakes.'

‘Some, yes,' Maggie conceded reluctantly. ‘But, even then, I think that most of the ones with no real ability are still trying to help people. They're sincere in their efforts. But there are those who are simply out to make money.'

‘You think this woman is real?'

‘Oona. Yes, she may well be.'

‘Oona?'

‘That's her name, yes.'

‘Is she Irish?'

‘Scottish.'

‘Aha.' Close enough, Charley thought. ‘Did she ever happen to live in Ireland?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘You don't think she might have heard about your daughter,' Malcolm said. ‘Surely that's a stretch.'

‘Why not? It was big news in a small country.'

‘That's possible too, I guess.' But Maggie seemed doubtful. ‘Though I still don't see why she would bring it up.'

‘Because she noticed that Mal's Irish.'

‘But she wasn't aware of any connection.'

Charley didn't want to argue; that wasn't the point of the exercise. ‘How did you hear about her in the first place? Does she advertise, or what?'

Maggie smiled. ‘No. Some do, but they're not the ones worth seeing. It was word-of-mouth. I get a newsletter from a group that studies psychic phenomena, and it mentioned rumours of a woman in the New Haven area who was said to hold remarkable sittings. It took a while for me to find her, and then persuade her to let me take part in one.'

‘You had to persuade her?'

‘Oh, yes,' Maggie said. ‘The first time we met, she told me she didn't think she could help me because I had come to her out of curiosity, not need, and that was true enough. She's rather exclusive. She will only agree to work with certain people, and she won't have anything to do with those who want help or advice in business and financial matters, for instance.'

‘No media,' Malcolm added.

‘Oh, yes,' Maggie said. ‘We had to promise we'd never say anything about her to the media. She has a terrible fear of being hounded and sensationalized.'

Charley smiled thinly. ‘Pardon me, but it all sounds as if she just plays hard to get. The exclusive clientele, the refusal to lend her so-called talents to money-making and a ban on media contact – which probably means she's dying for the TV cameras to turn up at the front door. I don't know. Sounds like she really wants to build a mystique.'

‘But that really is the way she does things,' Maggie said. ‘She has some rich and powerful clients, and they compensate her generously. But she could make a lot more money if she wanted to, and she doesn't.'

Charley topped up his glass. ‘What does she use? A crystal ball? A ouija board? Cards?'

Maggie shook her head. ‘She talks, and at times it seems as if different voices come from her.'

‘Do you believe it?' Charley asked her, with sudden emotion. ‘Do you believe that the spirit of a dead child could be hanging around somewhere out there in the ether? That she picked up some English, a language she never lived long enough to learn, and now decides after all these years have gone by that she wants to send a message? Do you believe that, Maggie?'

‘If we're to believe in any of this,' Maggie explained, ‘the role of the medium is crucial. It's not that your daughter has learned English – the English comes from the medium, who has the ability to receive or sense a presence, a message. Which is also why your daughter didn't communicate directly with you, because you're not a medium, you're not sensitive in that way and so she can't get through to you directly.'

‘Ah, the medium again.'

‘As for the time difference, the people who study this field will tell you that maybe the message was out there all along and either didn't get picked up until now or was received by someone to whom it meant nothing, and so was ignored. And they will also tell you that time might not mean the same for those on the other side as it does for us.'

‘The other side,' Charley echoed. ‘Is there an
other side,
Maggie? Do you believe that?'

She laughed. ‘Who knows? Not me.'

‘But you've looked into this subject at length. What's your feeling about it? What's your best guess?'

Maggie shrugged. ‘If you're going to investigate the paranormal, you have to proceed on the basis of certain assumptions. It's not that you assume they're true, but that they're at least possible. And then you follow them, hoping that they'll lead you somewhere. To some truth you can know.'

‘You do believe it, then?'

‘Like I said, I believe there's something to it, but I don't know what that is. It may be a matter of certain things that the human brain can do but which we still don't recognize.'

‘All right.' Charley sighed heavily. ‘If you were me, what would you do?' he asked them both.

‘Talk to her,' Maggie said immediately.

‘Try not to volunteer anything,' Malcolm advised.

‘But do talk to her.'

As expected, Charley thought unhappily. Dig up the horrible past – so you can bury it all again.

6

‘I've got a difficult situation with Marthe.' Oliver picked at the remains of his salad, then moved the dish aside. ‘I'm not sure what to do.'

Carrie dipped a spoon into her
caldo verde.
She fished up a small chunk of
chorizo
and a few shreds of kale.

‘What's the problem?'

‘It's this process of hers,' he said. ‘The results are very good so far. Fantastic, really. It needs a lot more testing but the next big step is bringing it to production. We need to work out an agreement with someone who can do the job properly.'

Carrie gave a slight shrug. ‘There must be plenty to choose from. Clothing manufacturers – right?'

‘Oh, yes, plenty. But I want to be in a position to exercise some control over this. It's beautiful. It's like discovering a whole new cloth and having the chance to be the first person to introduce it to the world.'

Carrie smiled at him. ‘It's not the money, is it?'

‘The money will be great,' Oliver told her. ‘But to have a hand in something new … That would be sweet.'

‘Like you did with the band.'

‘Yes.'

‘What about Marthe?' Carrie asked. ‘What's she like?'

‘Brilliant. Neurotic as hell.'

‘Is she – pretty?'