The Sister(19)

Now, it was like that again. All day spent indoors, but at night, quiet and inconspicuous, she began pastoral work, visiting the homeless, the tramps and wino’s who congregated in the quiet, dark alleyways away from the main roads leading from the seafront; outside the boarded up pubs and guesthouses. Her association with the stone charged her with an energy she hadn’t possessed before she found it and, by now, she had an understanding of its powers.

Without the sphere, she could already see what was to come. What it did, was allow her to reverse engineer from the future to the past, something akin to analysing the moves that resulted in checkmate once the chess was over. She’d seen the rope of life with its many fibres and strands, its loops and its coils, the coming together and the pulling apart. She understood at last, exactly what fate held for her, just as she had the night she found it, when the stone had eclipsed the moon.

She watched from the shadows as a group of rough sleepers gathered around a fire burning in a perforated oil drum. In hushed tones, one was talking; he had a blanket draped over his head and shoulders. The others, mostly, listened in awe.

‘Midnight it was, I couldn’t sleep because I hadn’t had a drop for hours. I was shivering, sick and cold to the bone; I wanted to die. Not knowing what else to do, I closed my eyes and prayed. When I opened them, she stood above me, in that cape o' hers, all alight as if she’d a fire burning behind her. She leaned over me, her hand out straight – like that – and I swear it glowed. I was scared; I never seen anything like it, and she was smiling, and I felt warm. The next thing I knew it was morning. I’ve not had a drop since.’

A murmur rose amidst the men. Some believed him. A few wanted to believe. The others were too far gone to care.

‘Well, how come you’re still on the streets then?’

‘God did not build Rome in a day. All in good time, Czech, all in good time.’

Czech, a good man who'd lost his way. She smiled. They didn’t need her tonight.

It didn’t take long for her to achieve a mythical status among the down-and-outs in Brighton. Some swore she could perform miracles, or they'd say she could be in two places at once. They christened her, 'Our Lady of Brighton'.





When the church heard the rumours of a miracle Lady, they sent emissaries to investigate. She knew they were coming and stayed away from the streets at night. It didn’t occur to them to look for her in a fortune teller’s kiosk in the Lanes of Brighton during the day. The following Easter Sunday, she resumed her services. Through her, tramps, wino’s and the lost, lonely and disconsolate, found a God they could believe in.

The little bell above the door tinkled, taking her out of her reverie. She looked out from the darkness where she sat, not seeing who it was, but knowing.

‘I’ve been expecting you.’





Chapter 15



Brighton June 1975





Ryan was not looking for an affair as he strolled along the seafront past the pier that morning. A few seagulls squabbled on the ground over scraps on the promenade, their loud cries attracting new screeching arrivals from the sky above into the fray. As the size of the group grew, he wondered absently how many gulls it took to qualify as a flock.

He turned away from the front and headed towards the heart of the town. A shepherd and his flock…a congregation of people. The definitions took on a religious connotation and he found himself wondering what had happened to Vera Flynn.

Inevitably, he arrived at the point in his recollections where she’d made the second of her predictions. The first was, of course, uncanny, and left no doubt she was in possession of something extraordinary: the ability to foretell at least the near future. When she’d whispered the second prediction to him, it was far into an indeterminable future. The warmth of her breath was on his ear once more, and the tingle of pleasure her tongue had sent through him as she pushed it deep inside, sealing the memory there. As he thought through the coming about of, and later the consequence of her suggested future, he felt the stirring of an erection.

He still thought about her occasionally over the years. How he’d have loved the chance to study her.

He reflected on the order of things, on the million and one thought processes discarded every hour of every day and deliberated on the sensory impressions filtered out as unimportant to survival. He also considered the unlikelihood of successfully predicting what would happen in the next minute. Oh, you might have a clue in the here and now as to which way events might turn, based on chance, probability and the ability to guess well, but to predict something an hour before, or the day before? The odds were beyond calculation. What mechanism could be involved in singling out from all other perceived information, a moment in time that did not yet exist? He sought answers from beyond the bounds of established convention, visiting mediums and their like.

He’d yet to find a single one with any special ability, other than well-polished trickery.

At first, he walked past the shop by a few paces. A distinct impression formed that he should go back. There’s something different about this place. He stopped, retraced his footsteps and then, peering through the window; decided to go in. A tiny bell signalled his arrival.

A soft female voice came from the gloomy interior. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

What? This was a new ploy. He squinted into the darkness.