Pushing through the bracken, he headed away from the Scots pine downhill. The fold in the rock there looked familiar. If he remembered correctly he would find the burn there, running between steep banks. He was wading through the undergrowth now, feeling the tough stems of heather and bracken tearing at his legs, and he was out of breath when at last he burst through it onto the flat outcrop of rocks where, sure enough, the burn hurtled down over a series of steep falls to the pool beneath, the pool where Gartnait had caught the trout. He frowned. It was the right place, he was sure of it, but it couldn’t be. There was no sign of the little rough cottage where they lived; where he had spent that fateful night. He scrambled down the slippery rocks: here. He was sure it had been here. He gazed round, confused. The grass was long and lush, watered by the spray from the falls. There was no sign of the fire.
It was obviously the wrong place. If he followed the burn down he would find the right one. He searched until it began to grow dark, becoming more and more annoyed with himself as his systematic crossing and recrossing of the ridge brought him back again to the same spot.
In the end he had to give up. He sat down and ate the pieces of cake himself, then admitting that there was nothing else he could do, he made his way back to the manse, tired and disappointed and depressed.
In the garden he hesitated. His father’s study was lit; the shutters were fastened so he could not see in. Tiptoeing round to the kitchen door he cautiously turned the handle. To his relief the door opened and he crept inside.
He did not pause in the hallway. Running up the stairs as fast as he could on silent feet, he dived on up, past his official bedroom, unslept in now since the day his mother had left, and up again to the attic. There he had made himself a mattress with a line of old cushions and covered it with some bedclothes. Still fully dressed and wearing his shoes, he flung himself down on his improvised bed and pulling a blanket over his head he cried himself to sleep.
* * *
It was two hours later that he heard the footsteps below him on the landing. He had awoken with a start and he lay for a moment, wondering what had happened. He was still fully clothed. Then he remembered.
He tensed. There it was again. The sound of heavy footsteps. His father. Quietly he crawled out of the bed and, standing up, moved silently towards the door. His heart was pounding. The sounds grew louder and for a moment he thought his father was on his way up to the attic, then they drew away again and it began to dawn on Adam that his father was pacing the floor of the bedroom beneath him. He listened for a long time, then at last, careful not to make a sound himself, he climbed back under the blankets and humped his pillow over his head.
He did not sleep for long. At first light, he was awakened by the sound of a blackbird. He crawled out of bed and went to look out of the window. The churchyard beyond the hedge was grey. There were no streaks of sunlight yet above the eastern hills. He padded across the floor to the window on the opposite side of the attic. From where he stood he could almost see up the high hillside to where the cross-slab stood.
Making his mind up quickly he pulled a thick sweater over his sleep-crumpled clothes and let himself out of the room.
On the landing outside his parents’ room he stopped, holding his breath. From behind the door he could hear the sound of husky broken sobs. He listened for a moment, appalled, then he turned and ran.
In the kitchen he grabbed the rest of the cake and a box of shortbread and another bottle of ginger beer from the cold floor of the pantry. Cramming them into his knapsack he paused for a moment to snatch Mrs Barron’s shopping list pad and scribble, Have gone birdwatching. Don’t worry. He propped it up against the teapot, then he unlocked the door and let himself out into the garden.
It was very cold. In seconds his shoes were soaked with dew and his feet were frozen. He rammed his hands into his pockets and sped towards the street and he was already across the river and at the bottom of the hill when the first rim of sunlight slid between the distant mountain peaks and bathed the Tay in brilliant cold light.
He did not have to search for Brid’s house this time. She found him as he was sitting leaning against the stone, eating the last piece of cake for his breakfast.
‘A-dam?’ The voice behind him was soft but even so he leaped out of his skin.
‘Brid!’
They stared at each other helplessly, both wanting to say more, both knowing there was no point. Until they found a way of communicating they were impotent. At last, on inspiration, Adam dived into his bag and cursing the fact that he had eaten the cake himself he brought out the shortbread. Breaking off a piece he handed it to her shyly. She took it and sniffed it cautiously, then she bit it.
‘Shortbread.’ Adam repeated the word clearly.
She looked at him, head slightly to one side, eyes bright, and she nodded enthusiastically. ‘Shortbread,’ she said after him.
‘Good?’ he asked. He mimed good.
She giggled. ‘Good?’ she said.
‘Gartnait?’ he asked. He had a piece for her brother.
She pointed to the cross-slab. ‘Gartnait,’ she said. It sounded like a confirmation. Jumping up, she tugged at Adam’s hand.
He followed her, aware that with the sunrise had come the mist, wreathing through the trees and up the hillside. It had already reached the stone. He shivered, feeling it hit him like a physical blow as he walked after the girl. She glanced over her shoulder and he saw for a moment the look of doubt in her eyes, then it was gone, the mist was sucked up in the heat of the sun and Gartnait was there, sitting close to the cross. In his hand he had a hammer and in the other a punch.
‘Oh, I say, you can’t do that!’ Adam was shocked.
Gartnait looked up and grinned.
‘Tell him he can’t. That cross is special. It’s hundreds – thousands – of years old. He mustn’t touch it! It’s part of history,’ Adam appealed to her, but she ignored him. She was holding out a piece of shortbread to her brother.
‘Shortbread,’ she repeated fluently.
Adam was staring at the back of the cross. Instead of the sequence of weathered patterns he was used to seeing – the incised circles, the Z-shaped broken spear, the serpent, the mirror, the crescent moon – the face of the stone looked new. It was untouched, with only a small part of one of the designs begun in one corner, the punch-marks fresh and sharp.
Adam ran his fingers over the raw clean edges and he heard Brid draw in her breath sharply. She shook her head and pulled his hand away. Don’t touch. Her meaning was clear. She glanced over her shoulder as though she were afraid.
Adam was confused for a moment. The cross – the proper, old cross – must be there in the mist and Gartnait was copying it. He looked again at the young man’s handiwork and he was impressed.
They sat together and ate the shortbread, then Gartnait picked up his chisel again. It was as he was working away at the intricate shape of the crescent moon, with Brid watching, giggling as Adam taught her the names of the plants and trees around them, that Gartnait suddenly paused in his chipping and listened. Brid fell silent at once. She looked round, frightened.
‘What is it?’ Adam glanced from one to the other.
She put her finger to her lips, her eyes on her brother’s face.
Adam strained his ears. He could hear nothing but the faint whisper of the wind through the dry heather stems.
Abruptly Gartnait gave Brid an order which galvanised her into action. She leaped to her feet and grabbed Adam’s wrist. ‘Come. Quick.’ They were words he had taught her already.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’ He was bewildered.
‘Come.’ She was dragging him away from her brother towards the trees.
‘Brid!’ Gartnait called after her. He gabbled some quick instructions and she nodded, still clutching Adam’s hand. The mist had drifted back across the hill and they dived into it as Adam saw two figures approaching in the distance. Clearly Brid did not intend him to meet them. In seconds h
e and Brid were concealed in the mist and their visitors were out of sight.
She led the way, confidently recognising landmarks he couldn’t see and almost at once they were emerging near the spot where he had first seen her.
He looked round nervously. Surely Gartnait and the two strangers were only a few paces away behind the stone? He glanced back, seeing its shape looming out of the murk, touched now by the early morning sun. There was no sign of Gartnait or his unwelcome visitors.
‘Who are they?’ Adam mimed his question.
Brid shrugged. To explain was too complicated, clearly, and she was still afraid. She tugged his hand and, her finger to her lips, again headed down the hillside. Of Gartnait there was no sign.
The day was spoiled. She was clearly afraid and although she sat down near him when he beckoned her towards a sheltered rock from where they could survey the valley, which was still bathed in sunshine, in only a few minutes she had risen to her feet.
‘Goodbye, A-dam.’ She took his hand and gave it a little tug.
‘Can I come again tomorrow?’ He couldn’t keep the anxiety out of his voice.
She smiled and shrugged. ‘Tomorrow?’
How do you mime tomorrow? He shrugged too, defeated.
She shook her head and with a little wave of her hand turned and ran back up the hill on silent feet. He slumped back against the rock, disappointed.
She wasn’t there tomorrow or the next day. Twice he went up the hill again and twice he searched all day for their cottage and for Gartnait’s stone, but there was no sign of either. Both times he returned home feeling let down and puzzled.
‘Where have you been all day?’ His father was sitting opposite him in the cold dining room.
‘Walking, Father.’ The boy’s hands tightened nervously on his knife and fork and he put them down on his plate.
‘I saw Mistress Gillespie at the post office today. She said you hadn’t been down to play with the boys.’
‘No, Father.’
How could he explain the side-long looks, the sniggers?
He studied the pattern on his plate with furious concentration as if imprinting the delicate ivy-leaf design around the rim on his retinas.
‘Are you looking forward to starting school again?’ The minister was trying hard. His own eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his hands shaking slightly. When his plate was only half empty he pushed the food aside and gave up. Adam couldn’t keep his eyes off the remains of his father’s supper. If he himself left anything he was normally the recipient of a lecture on waste and was told to sit there until he had eaten it. Seething with sudden resentment, he wished he dare say something, but he remained silent. The atmosphere in the room was tense. He hated it and, he realised it at last, he hated his father.
Miserably he shook his head as his father offered him a helping from the cold trifle left on the sideboard and he sat with bowed head whilst Thomas, clearly relieved that the meal was over, said a quick prayer of thanks and stood up. ‘I have a sermon to write.’ It was said almost apologetically.
Adam looked up. For a brief moment he felt an unexpected wave of compassion sweep over him as he met his father’s eyes. The next he had looked away coldly. Their unhappiness was, after all, his father’s fault.
* * *
‘A-dam!’ She had crept up beside him as he lay on the grass, his arm across his eyes to block off the glare from the sun.
He removed his arm and smiled without sitting up. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Hello, A-dam.’ She knelt beside him and dropped a handful of grass-seed heads on his face. ‘A-dam, shortbread?’ She pointed to the knapsack which lay beside him.
He laughed. ‘You’re a greedy miss, that’s what you are.’ He unfastened it and brought out the tin of shortbread. He was pleased she had remembered the word. He glanced round. ‘Gartnait?’
She shook her head.
As he peered round the cross-slab to see if her brother was there she wagged her finger. ‘No, A-dam. No go there.’
‘Why not? Where have you been? Why couldn’t I find you?’ He was growing increasingly frustrated at this inability to communicate with her properly.
She sat down beside him and began to pull the lid off the shortbread tin. She seemed uninterested in further conversation, leaning back on her elbows, sucking at the soft buttery biscuit, licking her lips. The sun came out from behind a cloud, throwing a bright beam across her face and she closed her eyes. He studied her for a moment. She had dark hair and strong regular features. When the bright, grey eyes, slightly slanted, were closed, as now, her face was tranquil yet still full of character, but when those eyes were open her whole expression came alive, vivacious and enquiring. Silver lights danced in her eyes and her firm, quirky mouth twitched with humour. She was peeping at him beneath her long dark lashes, conscious of his scrutiny, reacting with an instinctive coquetry that had not been there before. Abruptly she sat up.
‘A-dam.’ She was saying his name more fluently now, more softly, but with the same intonation which he found so beguiling.
He ceased his scrutiny abruptly, feeling himself blush. ‘It’s time we learned each other’s language,’ he said firmly. ‘Then we can all talk together.’
She moved, with a graceful wiggle of her hips, onto her knees and pointed down the valley the way he had come. ‘A-dam, big shortbread?’ she said coaxingly.
He burst out laughing. ‘All right. More shortbread. Next time I come.’
He hadn’t planned to follow her. He just couldn’t stop himself. He had spent the afternoon teaching her words, astonished by the phenomenal memory which retained faultlessly everything he told her. He taught her more trees and flowers and birds; he taught her the names of their clothes; he taught her arms and legs and heads and eyes and hair and all the items in his knapsack; he taught her walk and sit and run. He taught her the sky and the sun, the wind and the words for laugh and cry, and they had ‘talked’ and giggled and finished all the shortbread, and then at last she had glanced up at the sun. She frowned, obviously realising how late it was, and scrambled to her feet. ‘Bye bye, A-dam.’
He was taken by surprise. ‘But it’s hours until dark. Do you have to go?’
It was no use. She shrugged and turning, with a little wave, she dodged behind the stone slab and out of his sight.
He leaped to his feet. ‘Brid, wait. When shall I see you? When shall I come again?’
There was no answer. He ran a few steps after her and stopped in confusion. There was no sign of her. He retraced his steps to the spot where he had been standing and then turning, followed in her exact tracks. The afternoon seemed to have grown misty again. He stood, his hand on the stone, and peered ahead and suddenly there she was, running down the hillside in the thin sunshine. He set off after her, not shouting this time, deliberately following her at a distance and consciously noticing the way they were going.
She was following a clear track which he did not remember seeing before. He frowned, looking at the wood below him on his right. That was where the Scots pine should be. There were Scots pine, but too many – many many more than he remembered, unless they had already slipped unnoticed into a different valley. That was perfectly possible. One often did not see ridges and glens in the hills until one was upon them. He realised she was fast disappearing from sight and he plunged after her, aware of the strong smell of the heather and the baking earth and rock. Overhead a buzzard was calling, the wild yelping miaou growing fainter as it spiralled higher and higher until it was nothing but a speck in the blue.
The first he noticed of the village was the thin spiral of white smoke, almost invisible against the sky. He slowed down, trying to get his breath back, more cautious now. Brid was skipping unselfconsciously about a hundred yards ahead of him as he ducked behind some low whin bushes. She stopped and seemed to be gathering some flowers, then she moved on, holding them in her hand, more decorous now. He saw her surreptitiously rub some dust from her skirt and run her f
ingers through her hair.
He hesitated for a moment, then he ducked out of his hiding place and ran a few paces further on, to throw himself full length behind a small outcrop of rock. From there he peered at her again. Two figures had appeared on the dusty track and he could now see the village more clearly. It consisted of little more than a cluster of small round houses situated around a larger, central one. He squinted to see the figures better and recognised the taller of the two as Gartnait. The young man stopped when he saw Brid and waited for her. From the way he stood, the flailing of his arms and Brid’s sudden, obvious dejection, it was clear that Gartnait was angry.
Adam, who had been about to leap to his feet and admit to his presence, changed his mind abruptly. He lay where he was, his chin propped on his hands, watching. His vantage point allowed him to see the three figures – the third unknown to him – walk slowly back towards the village. Once there they stood and talked again animatedly for several minutes before at last ducking into a low doorway in one of the houses and disappearing from sight.
He stayed there for a long time, hoping someone would reappear. When it was clear they weren’t going to, he began to crawl slowly forward, taking advantage of the clumps of long dried grasses as the only reasonable cover to hide him. Once he heard a dog bark. He dropped flat, pressing his nose into the dry earth, smelling its hot peppery sweetness. After a few moments the barking stopped, abruptly silenced by a curt command, in what language he could not tell.
He waited, holding his breath. There was no further sound and he raised his head again to find himself looking at a pair of soft leather sandals. Leaping to his feet in fright he found himself half suspended by the collar, face to face with a tall, white-haired man with fierce dark eyes, a fine aquiline face and a narrow mouth set in a tight-lipped scowl. The man barked a question at him and Adam wriggled desperately, half angry and half afraid.
On the Edge of Darkness Page 4