The Omen (3 page)

It was a morning well worth the effort, and as he packed his gear Jennings felt satisfied. But somehow he was uneasy too. At the top of a hill he gazed back to see the coffin being lowered into the grave. The child and the dog were small in the distance, but their silent communion was plain.

The following day brought a fresh onslaught of rain and the arrival of Mrs. Baylock. She was Irish and outrageous, pulling up to the front gates of Pereford and announcing herself as the new nanny. The guard had attempted to detain her but she bullied her way through, her boisterous manner at once intimidating and appealing.

"I know it's a difficult time for you," she announced to the Thorns as she took off her coat in the vestibule, "so I won't impose on your grief. But between you and me, anyone who hires such a skinny young thing for a nanny is just asking for trouble."

The movements of her massive frame were so vigorous that they created a breeze; Thorn and Katherine, watching dumbfounded, were silenced by her certainty.

"You know how to tell a good nanny?" she laughed. "By the size of her breasts. These little girls with pigeon tits, they come and go in a week. But me, the big saggy ones like me. These are the nannies that stay. Go look in Hyde Park, you'll see it's true."

She paused only to pick up her suitcase.

"Well, now. Where's the boy?"

"I'll show you," said Katherine, indicating the stairs.

"Why don't you just leave us alone at first? Let us get acquainted in our own way."

"He's a little shy with new people."

"Not with me, he won't be, I can assure you of that."

"I really think..."

"Nonsense. Let me give it a try."

And in a moment she was climbing the stairs, her massive bottom disappearing from view. In the sudden silence left in her wake the Thorns exchanged a glance, Thorn nodding an uncertain approval.

"I like her," he said.

"I do, too."

"Where did you find her?"

"Where did I find her?" asked Katherine.

"Yes."

"I didn't find her. I assumed you found her."

And after a moment's pause, Thorn called up the

"Mrs. Baylock?" "Yes?"

She was already on the second-story landing, her face peering down from above.

"I' m sorry . . . we're a little confused."

"Why is that?"

"We don't know how you got here."

"By taxi. I sent it away."

"No, no. I mean .. . who called you?"

"The agency."

"The agency?"

"They saw in the papers you'd lost your first nanny, so they sent you another."

It seemed a bit opportunistic, but knowing the fierce competition for employment in London, Thorn thought it made sense.

"Very enterprising," he said.

"Can I call to confirm that?" asked Katherine.

"Go right ahead," replied the woman. "You want me to wait outside in the rain?"

"No, no .. ." added Thorn quickly.

"Do I look like a foreign agent to you?" asked Mrs. Baylock.

"I don't think so," chuckled Thorn.

"Don't be so sure," the heavyset woman rejoined. "Maybe my girdle is filled with tape recorders. Why don't you send up a young Marine to check it out?"

They all laughed, Mrs. Baylock hardest of all.

"Go ahead," said Thorn, "we'll check it out later."

The Thorns retired to the drawing room where Katherine called the agency and confirmed Mrs. Baylock's credentials. She was well qualified with high recommendations, the only confusion being that their files showed she was presently employed in Rome. It was likely, however, that her situation had changed without being entered in their files, and they would clear that up as soon as the agency manager who no doubt sent her to the Thorns, returned from his four-week holiday. Katherine hung up the phone and gazed at her husband and both shrugged, rather pleased with what had transpired. Mrs. Baylock was an oddball, but full of life, and that, more than anything, was what they needed.

Upstairs, Mrs. Baylock's smile had faded and she gazed down through misted eyes at the child asleep in his bed. He had apparently had his chin on the window ledge, watching the rain, and had slipped into slumber there, his hand still touching the pane. As the woman watched him, her chin began to tremble as though she were standing before an object of incomparable beauty. The child heard her faltering breath, his eyes opening slowly to meet hers. He stiffened and sat upright, edging back toward the pane.

"Fear not, little one," she whispered in a faltering voice. "I am here to protect thee."

Outside there came a sudden clap of thunder. The beginning of a two-week rain.

By July the English countryside was in full flower, an unusually extended rainy season causing the Thames tributaries to overflow and bring life to even the most long-dormant seeds. The grounds of Pereford too had responded, becoming lush and green, the forested area beyond the gardens grown thick, sheltering an abundance of animal life. Horton feared that the rabbits of the forest would soon overrun their refuge and start feeding on the tulips, and he set traps for them; their piercing cries could be heard in the dead of night. The practice ended, not only because Katherine asked that he stop, but also because he had become uneasy about entering the forest to collect their remains. He felt "eyes" upon him, he said, as though he were being watched from the thickets. When he confessed this to his wife, she laughed, telling him it was probably the ghost of King Henry the Fifth. But Horton was unamused, refusing to enter the forest ever again.

It was, therefore, of special concern to him that the new nanny, Mrs. Baylock, often took Damien there, finding God-knows-what to amuse him with for hours at a time. Horton also noticed, on helping his wife sort through the laundry, that the boy's clothing had a great many dark hairs on them, as though he had been playing with an animal. But he failed to make any connection between the animal hairs and the trips into the Pereford forest, chalking it up to just another one of the disturbing aspects of Pereford House, of which there were coming to be many.

For one thing Katherine was spending less and less time with her child, somehow replaced by the new, exuberant nanny. It was true that Mrs. Baylock was a devoted governess and that the child had come to love her as well. But it was disquieting, even unnatural, that the boy preferred her company to that of his own mother. The entire staff had noticed it and talked about it, feeling hurt for their mistress's sake that she had been replaced in her child's affections by an employee. They wished that Mrs. Baylock would leave. But instead each day found her more firmly entrenched, exerting more influence on the masters of the house.

As for Katherine, she felt much the same way, but found herself helpless, unwilling to allow jealousy to again interfere with someone's affection for her child. She felt responsible for once having robbed Damien of a cherished companion, and she was loath to let it happen again. When, after the second week, Mrs. Baylock asked to move her sleeping quarters to a room directly opposite Damien's, Katherine consented. Perhaps among the rich this was how it was supposed to be. Katherine herself had been raised in more modest circumstances where it was a mother's job, and her only job, to be the companion and protector of her child. But life was very different here. She was the mistress of a great house, and perhaps it was time she started behaving that way.

Her newfound freedom was occupied in all the right ways; ways her husband heartily approved of. Mornings were taken up with charity causes, afternoons devoted to politically oriented teas. Thorn's wife was no longer the social oddball, the fragile flower, but a lioness possessed of an energy and confidence he had never seen before. This was the wife he had dreamed of for himself, and although the sudden change in personality was somehow disquieting, he did nothing to stand in her way. Even her lovemaking had changed, becoming more exciting, more passionate; Thorn failed to realize that it was possibly an expression of desperation rather than desire.

Thorn's own work was all-consuming; his job in London put him in a pivotal position in dealing with the oil crisis, and the President relied more and more on his feedback from informal meetings with the Saudi Arabian oil sheiks. A trip was planned to Saudi Arabia in the weeks ahead, and he would be going alone, since the Arabs took the presence of a wife in a touring entourage as a sign of weakness in a man.

"I don't understand it," said Katherine when he told her.

"It's a cultural thing," Thorn replied. "I'm going to their country, I have to respect it."

"Don't they have to respect you, too?"

"Of course they do."

"Well, I'm a cultural thing, too!"

"Katherine—"

"I've seen those sheiks. I've seen the women they buy. Wherever they go, they're followed by whores. Is that what they want you to do, too?"

"Frankly, I don't know."

They were in the bedroom and it was late. Not the time to start an argument.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Katherine quietly.

"It's an important trip, Kathy."

"So if they want you to sleep with a whore—"

"If they want me to sleep with their eunuch, I'll sleep with their eunuch. Do you know what's at stake here?"

They were at a standoff; Katherine slowly found her voice.

"Where am I in all this?" she asked quietly.

"You're here," he answered. "What you're doing is equally important."

"Don't patronize me."

"I'm trying to make you understand . .."

"That you can save the world by doing what they say."

"That's one way of putting it."

She looked at him in a way that she never had before. Hard. Hateful. He felt weakened by her glare.

"I guess we're all whores, Jeremy," she said. "You're theirs and I'm yours. So let's just go to bed."

He spent a long time in the bathroom hoping she would be asleep by the time he came out. But she was not. She was awake and waiting, and he detected the scent of perfume in the air. He sat on the bed and gave her a long look; she returned a smile.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I do understand."

She took his face in her hands and pulled him close to her, locking him tightly in an embrace. Her breath became heavy and he began to make love to her, but she failed to move beneath him.

"Do it," she insisted. "Just do it to me. Don't go away."

And they made love in a way they had never made love before. Katherine refused to move, but refused to release him, urging him to completion with only her voice. When it was finished she released her hold and he moved off her, gazing at her with hurt and confusion.

"Go save the world now," she whispered. "Go do what they say."

Thorn did not sleep that night, sitting instead by the French doors in their room, gazing out into the moonlit night. He could see the forest from there, and it was unmoving, like a single entity in slumber.

Yet it was not slumbering, for he felt somehow as if it were staring back. They kept a pair of binoculars on the porch for bird watching; Thorn went out and got them, raising them to his eyes. At first all he saw was darkness. And then he spotted the eyes, gazing back. Two dark, glowing embers reflecting in the light of the moon; close-set, yellow, they were riveted on the house. It made him shudder and he lowered the binoculars, backing inside. He remained there, frozen for a moment, then forced himself to move; he padded silently down the long stairwell in his bare feet to the front door, then stepped quietly out. It was silent, even the noise of the crickets had stopped. Then he began to move again, as though pulled forward to the edge of the forest, where he paused, staring in. There was nothing. Not a sound. The two glowing embers were gone. Turning, his bare foot stepped on something soft and wet, and he sucked in his breath, stumbling to one side. It was a dead rabbit, still warm, its blood staining the grass where the head should have been.

The following morning he rose early, questioning Horton as to whether he was still setting traps for rabbits. Horton said he was not, and Thorn took him to the place where the dead carcass lay. It was buzzing with flies now, and Horton shooed them off as he knelt to examine it.

"What do you figure?" asked Thorn. "Do we have a predator in there?"

"Couldn't say, sir. But I doubt it."

He lifted the stiffened body, pointing to it with distaste.

"The head's what they leave, not what they take. Whatever killed this did it for fun."

Thorn instructed Horton to dispose of the body and to say nothing of it to anyone in the house. As they headed away, Horton stopped.

"I don't like that forest much, sir. And I don't like Mrs. Baylock taking your boy in there."

"Tell her not to," replied Thorn. "There's plenty to do here on the lawn."

That afternoon Horton did as he was told, and it brought the first indication to Thorn that something in the house was amiss. Mrs. Baylock sought him out in the drawing room that night and expressed irritation at having orders relayed to her through another member of the staff.

"It's not that I don't follow orders," she said indignantly, "it's just that I expect to receive them direct."

"I don't see what difference it makes," replied Thorn, and he was surprised at the anger that flashed in the woman's eyes.

"It's just the difference between a great house and a small house, Mr. Thorn. I get the feeling here that no one's in charge."

Turning on her heel, she left him alone; Thorn wondered what she meant. As far as the household was concerned, Katherine was in charge. But then again, he was away every day. Perhaps Mrs. Baylock was trying to tell him that things were not as they appeared. That Katherine was, in fact, not in control.

In his cramped six-flight walk-up in Chelsea, Haber Jennings was awake, gazing at the growing gallery of Thorn portraits that adorned his darkroom wall. There were the funeral pictures, dark and moody, the close-up of the dog among the headstones, the close-up of the boy. And then there were the pictures of the birthday party: Katherine watching the nanny, the nanny in clown costume, all alone. It was the latter photograph that most interested him, for above the nanny's head there was a kind of blemish, a photographic imperfection that somehow added to the portent of the scene. It was a fleck of faulty emulsion, a vague haze that hung over the nanny, forming a halo around her head and neck. Though normally a flawed photo would have been discarded, this one was worth keeping. The knowledge of what happened immediately after it was taken gave the blemish a symbolic quality—the shapeless form like a shadow of doom. The final photograph was of her dead body suspended by a rope; a jarring reality to complete the montage. Altogether the Thorn gallery was a photographic study in the macabre. And it delighted Jennings. He had taken the same subjects that adorned the pages of Good Housekeeping and found something extraordinary in them, something different that no one had found before. He had also begun to research, using a contact in America to check into the Thorns' backgrounds for more information on them.

He found that Katherine had come from Russian immigrant parentage and that her natural father had died by his own hand. According to a back issue of the Minneapolis Times, he had leaped from the roof of a downtown Minneapolis office building. Katherine was born a month later and her mother remarried within a year, moving to New Hampshire with her new husband who gave the child his name. In a few interviews that Katherine had given out over the years there was never any mention of the stepfather, and Jennings speculated that she herself might not know the truth. It wasn't important, but somehow it gave Jennings an edge. Just one more delightful morsel, adding to the illusion that he was on the inside.

The only shot missing was that of the Ambassador himself, and Jennings hoped that tomorrow might be the day. There was an important wedding at All Saints Church which the Thorn family would be likely to attend. It wasn't Jennings' kind of setup, but he'd been lucky so far and perhaps would be again.

The day before the wedding Thorn dispensed with his customary Saturday chores at the Embassy and took Katherine for a drive in the country instead. He had been deeply disturbed by their argument and the strange lovemaking that had followed it, and he wanted to be alone with her to attempt to sort out what was going wrong. It appeared to be the right medicine, for she seemed relaxed for the first time in months, enjoying the drive, the simplicity of holding his hand as they wound their way through the English countryside. At noon they found themselves at Stratford-Upon-Avon and attended a matinee performance of King Lear; Katherine sat enrapt, the play moving her to tears. Lear's soliloquy over the death of his child: "Why does a dog, a rat, have breath . . . and Thou no breath at all. . .." struck a chord deep within her, and she wept openly, Thorn comforting her in the silence of the theater long after the play was over.

They returned to the car and drove on; Katherine held tightly to Thorn's hand, the release of emotions having created an intimacy that had long been absent in their relationship. She was vulnerable now, and as they stopped by a stream her tears came again. She spoke of her fears, her fears of losing Damien. She said that if anything happened to him, she would not be able to carry on.

"You won't lose him, Kathy," Thorn gently assured her. "Life couldn't be that cruel."

It was the first time he had called her Kathy in a long while, and it stung, somehow accentuating the distance that had come between them in recent months. They sat on the grass beneath a towering oak tree and Katherine's voice came in a whisper as she watched the . movement of the stream. "I'm so afraid," she said. "There's nothing to be afraid of." "Yet I fear everything."

A June bug was crawling beside her and she watched it wind its way across the vast landscape of grass.

"What's to fear, Katherine?" "What isn't to fear?" He gazed at her, waiting for more. "I fear the good because it will go away ... I fear the bad because I'm too weak to withstand it. I fear your success and I fear your failure. And I fear that I have little to do with either. I fear you'll become President of the United States, Jeremy ... and you'll be saddled with a wife who isn't up to it."

"You've done beautifully," he reassured her.

"But I've hated it."

The admission was so simple, yet it had never been said. And it somehow cleansed them.

"Doesn't that shock you?" she asked.

"A little," he replied.

"You know what I want for us more than anything?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I want for us to go back home."

He lay back in the grass, staring up into the leaves of the great oak.