On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘Only about ten minutes ago, Doctor. She was asleep. She wasn’t reacting. You know how she was!’ The distraught nurse was wringing her hands. ‘No one could make her hear. Suddenly she sat up; she looked as though she was listening; as though she could hear something far away in the distance. I went to fetch Sister and she came and talked to her. The girl listened to her. Her face became almost intelligent. That strange vacancy had gone. Sister spoke to her very kindly and the girl seemed to understand. Then Nurse Standish came in and called Sister away and when I came to check, the girl had gone. She’s taken her bag, her clothes and the charity clothes she was given. There’s no sign of her.’

  The doctor shook his head and shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose we’d better just be thankful it releases a bed for someone who really needs it. See that it’s prepared, Nurse. And you’d better ask Sister to have a word with me when she can.’ He had already put the case of the strange, silent young woman with the dull grey eyes out of his mind. There were more important things to worry about.

  When she grew tired of walking the corridors Brid made her way outside into the fitful sunshine. She had to find her way back to old Maggie’s before it began to grow dark, and get hold of some food or a bottle to buy her way again into the shelter of the stinking room. She was still disoriented, still distanced from the world around her with its pushing crowds and noisy vehicles and crowds of uniformed men.

  Always, somewhere behind her shoulder, she could sense the other world, the world from which she had come, the world which was haunting her. It came between her and everything else, distracting her, sapping her strength. She tried to push it away and sometimes she thought she had succeeded. On the open hillside, under the brilliant frosty sky, she would take deep breaths of the clean, empty air and feel something of her old vivacity and enthusiasm. She would stretch her arms above her head and shake out her hair till it crackled with energy, and begin to run down the side of the hill, jumping over the grasses, dodging outcrops of rock. Then she would remember A-dam: his serious, deep brown eyes, his strong sun-tanned hands stroking her breasts, his slow sleepy smile, and she would feel the excitement start again in the pit of her stomach and her energy would leap and soar. And then in a moment it was gone. She was back in the swirling mists, fighting unseen demons which were struggling to draw her back.

  A-dam …

  She threw back her head and cried into the darkness.

  A-dam, where are you? Please. Wait for me. I love you!

  PART TWO

  Jane

  1945–1960s

  8

  Often over the last year Adam had wondered if he was mad. Proposing marriage to a woman he hardly knew was not the action of a sane man. But inexorably time had moved on. He and Jane had become close and companionable, his plans had been laid, his exams taken and passed and his time at the Royal Infirmary completed as the war drew to an end. The Smith-Newlands were a terrifying prospect as parents-in-law. The announcement of the engagement had been followed by an immediate state visit from the south, but Jane’s father seemed to like him, and strings had been pulled to find Adam a nice safe practice as the junior of three partners in Hertfordshire, with an income higher than he had ever dared to hope and with it a rented house, which would be ready for them when they moved in. He had watched the activities around him in a daze, hardly feeling that any of it concerned him at all, except that it meant he would leave Edinburgh. When Jane had dared to question her parents’ plans and remind him that they loved Scotland and would like to live there always he had shrugged and shaken his head. ‘It’s kind of them to help us and I’d never get such a good chance up here – or not for ages.’ He did not see her crest-fallen expression, and did not add his own, single over-riding thought: Brid would never find him in England.

  The summer before he had agreed, against all common sense, to be a witness at Liza’s wedding to Phil. The misery he felt as he watched her exchange vows with the man beside her was profound and totally inadmissible. As was the devastation which had overwhelmed him as he said goodbye when they set off for Wales. As she left Liza had leaned forward and whispered in his ear, ‘No sign of Brid?’

  He had shaken his head. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Good.’ She had put her arms round him and given him a hug. Then she had climbed after Phil onto the train.

  That autumn he had heard that his mother was dead. The letter from his father was brief, without emotion. She had been killed, it appeared, in an automobile accident in Chicago. There was no mention of the man she had left Scotland with, nor of where she would be buried. Adam stared at the letter for a long time, all the old emotions of grief and anger, loss and regret resurfacing one after the other. Jane had comforted him and he had torn the letter up and then he had gone at last to Pittenross to see his father. Thomas knew no more of the circumstances of Susan Craig’s life and death in America than he had told Adam in the letter. If he felt any grief he hid it totally. The two men shook hands and parted. They were not to meet again until the day before Adam’s wedding. Adam did not climb the hill to visit the stone. And he did not pass a night under his father’s roof.

  Meryn Jones lived in a small, white-washed, stone-built cottage which lay in the shelter of a ridge of the Black Mountains, with a view of the Wye valley spread out below it in a panorama of pale shifting colours. The house was only a mile from Pen-y-Ffordd, where Liza and Phil had come to live in her old family home now that her mother had gone to live with her sister in Kent.

  Liza stood for a moment staring at the house, then, half reluctantly, she moved forward to knock on the door. Meryn had lived here for as long as she could remember, certainly since she had been a child, and his reputation locally as a wizard and a magician was formidable, so much so that when she was little she had called him Merlin. If asked, all he would have admitted to was the ability to charm warts, to predict the weather, something any farmer could do as well, as he always said, and sometimes, perhaps, to give advice on ghostly happenings in the vicinity. What he did in his lonely cottage, alone, when there was nobody to watch, no one knew.

  As she sat down by his fire Liza’s nervousness disappeared as Meryn’s kindly smile reassured her and he made himself comfortable to listen to her tale.

  Beside them the logs cracked and hissed and the room filled with the aromatic scent of burning apple and oak.

  ‘So, you want me to make you an amulet to keep your friend Adam safe from this woman who pursues him?’ he ventured at last. ‘You feel that although he has not heard from her in a long time, she hasn’t gone away.’

  Liza nodded. ‘He’s getting married. I think she might not like that.’

  Meryn gave a grave nod. ‘From what you have told me, I would agree.’

  ‘Can you do it for me? Please?’

  ‘I suspect I can.’ His smile was gentle. ‘Leave it with me, Liza, my dear. I shall think about it and come up with something suitable. Something which will give him and his bride protection from this girl and at the same time not shame their elegant home.’ The smile had become distinctly mischievous. ‘And neither you nor I need admit there is anything of the supernatural involved.’ He took Liza’s hand and held it for a moment. ‘Come back in a week. I shall see what I can do for you.’

  After she had gone he sat for a long time, his eyes fixed on the fire. He frowned uneasily as the pictures came, confused and strange at first, then slowly more vivid. He could see the girl with her long dark hair and her wild frightened eyes and he could see the great stone on the hillside. Behind her, in the shadows, was a power which turned the flickering apple flame to the colour of blood and roared in the chimney like a giant wind. He shivered and shook off the vision. Enough to know that Adam Craig and his new wife would face danger beyond their imagining. He stood up and walked over to the table which stood in the centre of his room. On it lay a litter of objects, amongst them a small, intensely bright crystal which he had been given when he had visited New York State to learn the ways of
the Iroquois Indians. It was pretty enough in its diamond brilliance to please the eye and its protective power was profound.

  ‘Darling, you look so pretty.’ Patricia Smith-Newland, kneeling on the pink Chinese carpet, fluffed up the white silk skirt, which had been made with a careful combination of hoarded coupons and a white silk bedspread. Her daughter sat in front of her bedroom mirror, adjusting her veil. ‘I can’t believe it!’ Suddenly there were tears running down her cheeks again, forming ugly rivulets in the pink face powder. ‘It’s not too late, you know, to change your mind. Daddy could make it all right if you want to stop the wedding.’

  ‘Mummy!’ Jane turned round on the narrow stool and glared at her mother. ‘Please stop it! I am marrying Adam and that is that! I love him. He loves me! You should be jolly glad I’ve found someone so respectable.’

  ‘I am, sweetheart. It’s just …’ The woman shrugged helplessly as she climbed heavily to her feet. ‘Well, he’s so Scottish!’

  Jane stared at her mother with something like real disdain. ‘All the best doctors are Scottish, Mummy. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘And that father of his!’ The hand gestures spoke volumes. ‘Thomas. He’s like the spectre at the feast.’ She shuddered ostentatiously.

  The object of her dislike was a house guest, at that very moment adjusting his snow-white bands and black gown before setting off in the car to the church where, much against his better judgement he was to help officiate at the very Church of England wedding of his son to an English lass with blonde hair so very much like the English lass who had captivated him so many years before.

  ‘Mummy, do you mind if I’m on my own for a few minutes?’ Jane smiled at her mother in what she hoped was a conciliatory way. ‘Just to compose myself. You know.’

  Patricia gulped. ‘Of course, darling. I’ll wait downstairs with the bridesmaids.’ Six of them. ‘I’ll send Daddy up to find you in five minutes, shall I?’

  The small twelfth-century Surrey church was packed on the bride’s half of the aisle. The groom’s side was less well represented, but Adam’s friends had made a noble effort. Amongst them were Liza and Philip Stevenson. Andrew Thomson was sitting beside him now, his best man. Both were resplendent in the kilt, the only thing, Adam felt, which went even a little way to pacify his future mother-in-law’s implacable dislike of all things Scots.

  Climbing out of the old Bentley, which for the whole of the war had been stored in a barn at the bottom of the field near the house, Jane took her father’s arm. He patted her hand. ‘All right, sweetheart?’

  She nodded nervously. If only she could talk to him alone; if only he had come on the long walk with her which she had tentatively suggested the evening before. Just to be with him one last time as his daughter before she became a wife. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Adam. She did, desperately. And yet she was afraid. It was as though there was a shadow there somewhere, where she couldn’t quite see it. A shadow which frightened her. Did everyone have doubts like hers at the last moment? Did everyone want a few words of reassurance from someone, a sign that they were doing the right thing? She didn’t know. But her mother had stepped in, as she always did, making sure any small moments of tenderness between father and daughter were lost in her own overpowering need to control every single member of her family. ‘Don’t be silly, Jane. The last thing you want is to go for a walk! You must have an early night. Conserve your strength! Heaven knows, you’re going to need it! Leave the poor child alone, James.’

  And so the chance had gone. She was pulling at her skirts, arranging them, vaguely wondering where the bridesmaids were when James turned her to face him. ‘Remember, Janie. It’s your life. Be happy.’ There they were. The six small girls in a froth of pink and white and rosebuds, being shepherded along the path. ‘Adam is as straight as they come, Janie. He’s a fine young man. I happen to think you’ve made a good choice. Don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.’ It was the nearest he ever came to rebellion, this quiet contradiction of the accepted view in his house. He smiled down at her with so much love and understanding she felt the tears flood into her eyes. He had understood all along. Seeing the tears he patted her hand again. ‘Come on. Let’s get these children fell in. Forward march!’

  The service passed, for Jane, in a dream of happiness. As she stood beside her kilted husband, gazing up at the old stained-glass window, still criss-crossed with brown paper to save it from any nearby explosions, she did not believe anyone could be so lucky. All her doubts had gone. She glanced across at Adam, and feeling her gaze upon him he smiled down at her and squeezed her hand.

  Mrs Adam Craig. Changing later into the soft heather tones of her suit and hat in the bedroom which was from today no longer hers, Jane tried out the name. Dr and Mrs Craig. Adam and Jane.

  She turned enquiringly at the knock on the door. It was Liza. ‘I wanted to bring you my present up here. I hope you don’t mind.’

  Marriage had not altered Liza. Her hair was still long and wild and curly, her clothes unconventional and brightly coloured, her manner relaxed and warm. For a moment Jane felt herself as gauche and naïve as she had always felt in Liza’s presence. Then she remembered. She was married too. She was Mrs Adam Craig and she knew, deep inside, that that was something Liza might have once wanted to be herself. She smiled and went forward to kiss Liza’s cheek. ‘I was so pleased to see you and Philip had come. Really pleased. I thought Adam said Philip had been ill.’

  ‘He was.’ Liza’s sparkle faded for a moment. ‘But he’s fine now. All he needed was to get away from the university and rest. He’d been working too hard. Professors have a surprisingly stressful life.’

  Jane turned away from her to sit down in front of the mirror again. She reached for her lipstick. ‘You will come and see us in St Albans, won’t you, when we’re settled in the new practice? We’ve got a lovely old house, too. Adam is terribly lucky to get the partnership. He wanted to get away from Edinburgh so badly. I couldn’t quite understand that.’ She glanced at Liza in the mirror and found the other woman’s eyes fixed on hers. ‘When he finished at the Infirmary they offered him a post, a plum post, but he didn’t take it. He said he wanted to get away from Scotland.’ She outlined her lips with vermilion and blotted them elegantly. ‘It’s funny that, though. You both wanting to leave Edinburgh so badly too. I can remember you swearing you would never go.’

  ‘Coincidence.’ Liza laughed uneasily. So Adam had not told Jane about Brid. She sat down on the bed and lay back on the shiny satin counterpane. ‘Perhaps we’d all been there too long. One can, you know. I needed new ideas. Phil wanted a complete change of scene. Perhaps now the war is over we can go abroad. I would love to go to Italy. My father’s family came from Tuscany somewhere. Edinburgh will still be there if we want to go back.’

  ‘Methinks you do protest too much.’ Jane put the lipstick in her handbag. She swivelled round and looked at Liza. ‘You are happy – you and Phil?’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘Yes,’ Liza smiled. ‘Yes, we are happy. And I hope you and Adam will be too. Just don’t let –’ She broke off.

  ‘Don’t let?’ Jane felt a small worm of unease turn in her stomach. She knew Liza had come up here to say something.

  ‘Don’t let him get too serious.’ The laugh was light and unforced. ‘Did you see papa Thomas? The wrath of the Scottish God is not to be courted.’

  Jane smiled. She stood up and checked the seams of her nylons. ‘Adam is nothing like his father.’

  ‘No!’ Liza sat up suddenly. She swung her legs to the floor, frowning. ‘Don’t ever go back, Jane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean it. Don’t go back to Edinburgh. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense at all.’ Jane half turned towards the door, distracted by a shout from downstairs. ‘Janie! Come on. Your guests are waiting to see you off!’ It was her father’s voice.

  ‘Liza?’

  Liza shrugged. ‘Just a feeling
I have, I suppose. Intuition. Put it down to my superstitious Welsh upbringing. I just think it wouldn’t be lucky. Here.’ She held out her hand. In it was a small parcel wrapped in white tissue paper. ‘This is for you. To bring you both luck.’

  Jane took it from her and turned it over in her hands. It was surprisingly heavy. ‘Shall I wait and open it with Adam?’

  ‘If you like. As long as you take it with you.’

  Liza was half a head taller than Jane. She reached forward suddenly and pulled Jane to her. ‘Please be happy,’ she whispered. ‘Both of you.’

  Jane only thought of the parcel again that night when they had checked into their hotel bedroom in the New Forest. She pulled it out of her handbag and waved it at Adam. ‘Look what Liza gave me. We were having a chat, just before we left.’

  ‘Why haven’t you opened it?’ Adam smiled at her. She was very pretty, his new wife, and he was extremely fond of her, and what he wanted more than anything was to take her to bed, but just at this moment she looked totally exhausted. The final parting from her mother had been harrowing and he had nearly lost his now almost legendary calm as he dragged Jane to the car with its obligatory old boot tied to the bumper and left Patricia sobbing in her husband’s arms surrounded by embarrassed wedding guests and over-tired bridesmaids.

  ‘Champagne?’ Adam asked quietly. James had stowed two carefully hoarded bottles in the boot beside the matching old leather suitcases.

  She nodded and began to pull at the ribbon which tied the package as Adam eased out the cork and filled the two glasses which were standing ready on the chest of drawers near the window. Outside the forest was already dark. In the grate someone had lit a fire of apple logs and the room was warm and snug.