She was sitting on the bed wrapped in a dressing gown. ‘Who were you shouting at?’ She smiled at him wearily. Her face was wan.
‘No one. I burned myself on the kettle.’ He set the tray down carefully.
‘Oh Adam, you should take care. Where’s Calum?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Sarah took him home last night. We thought it best. He was getting frightened, poor little lad.’
‘I see.’ She pursed her lips. ‘And when is Sarah bringing him back?’
‘I was going to go and fetch him now. That is if you want him home. I’m sure they’d keep him if – ’
‘No! I want him here. With us.’ Suddenly she was crying again.
‘All right, darling, but I’ll have to leave you on your own.’ He put a cup of tea on the bedside table next to her. ‘Here, climb back into bed, and stay here warm and safe. I’ll be less than half an hour.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll be all right. Just get him, Adam. Please.’
He let himself out and looked up and down the street. It was deserted as it always was on a weekday afternoon. It was cold and the children had gone in from their play to have their tea and do their homework. A strong wind had got up and was bending the trees and hedges before it in the front gardens, shaking the elegant wrought-iron sign on the house next door. Adam shivered. He strode over to the Riley, which was parked neatly against the kerb. Groping in his pocket for his car keys, he glanced over his shoulder.
A figure had appeared at the corner of the street in the distance. He straightened up, staring at it. It was a woman and from her silhouette it looked as though she had long hair. He was clutching the keys so tightly in his hand he felt the skin of his palm abrade and bleed under the pressure, but he took no notice. For a moment he was unable to move, then he unlocked the car quickly and dived in. He slammed the door shut, surrounded by the usual comforting smell of leather and oil and old cigarette smoke, and with a shaking hand inserted the key into the ignition. He glanced into the driver’s mirror. There was no sign of her. Pulling away from the kerb he swung the car out into the empty street and put his foot on the accelerator.
A few yards down the road he stepped on the brake and screeched to a halt. He couldn’t leave Jane on her own. He would have to go back. Shaking, he turned in the seat and began to reverse slowly to stop outside his front door once more. What, after all, could Brid do to him? She was a slip of a thing. Slim. Delicate. He couldn’t quite remember now, how she had looked, but she couldn’t harm him. Not face to face. He turned off the engine and opened the door. Climbing out he squared his shoulders and turned towards the end of the road where he had seen the woman. There was no sign of her. He looked carefully up and down, scanning hedges and front gardens, the few parked cars, the broad, tree-planted pavement. Nothing. The street was empty. Had she gone into another house?
He gave the road one final scrutiny and then turned back to the car. He wasn’t going to be more than half an hour at most, and the doors of his house were locked.
Inside the house Jane slept on. She hugged her pillow miserably in her sleep, feeling the ache in her heart and the soreness in her belly, blacking them out with uncomfortable dreams. She could see Adam standing in the garden. It was dark out there and stormy moonlight was streaming through the trees. Near him there was some kind of an animal. She stiffened in her sleep, watching, wanting to call out to him but afraid to draw attention to herself. Perhaps it hadn’t seen him. Perhaps it would go away. It stepped away from the bushes a little and she saw what it was. A cat. A huge striped cat with low-set feral ears and, as it turned and looked straight at her, she saw that it had blood dripping from its fangs. ‘Adam!’ Her call died in her throat. She fought against sleep, knowing it was a dream, yet unable to wake up. ‘Adam, be careful. Come in, quickly.’ But her voice wouldn’t work. No sound came.
And then, as she watched, the cat walked out into the full moonlight. It went up to Adam and leaned against his legs, purring. It had washed off the blood with soft silver paws and he looked down and smiled. He bent to stroke it and only then did she wake up. She was shaking violently and she knew she was going to be sick. She staggered out of bed and through to the bathroom, kneeling on the cold linoleum to vomit again and again down the lavatory. When she had finished she was drenched with sweat and shivering all over. She went to the door. ‘Adam?’
But of course he had gone out. Gone to collect Calum from the Hardings. Clutching her dressing gown around her she walked over to the window and stared out. The sunlight had gone. A strong gusty wind was tossing the branches of the pear tree on the back lawn, rustling last year’s dead leaves from their resting place at the foot of the old wall. She was feeling very wobbly still and she propped herself up against the window sill for a minute, feeling the chill from the glass cooling her hot forehead.
The cat was watching her from the shadow of the wall. She caught her breath in shock, as her eyes met the intense golden stare. For a moment they looked at each other without either of them moving. It was a striped cat, with snow-white paws, bigger than usual, she thought in terror, as she stood mesmerised by its gaze, transfixed by the intense feeling of hatred which seemed to come from the animal. Neither moved for several seconds, then Jane at last tore her eyes away. She ought to throw something at it. Horrible creature, threatening to scratch up her seedlings, tripping her up, perhaps causing her to lose her baby. Fighting back her tears she glanced round looking for something to throw. Then she looked back. The cat had gone.
‘She can’t cope, Liza.’ Adam was sitting at his desk, the phone in his hand, a cup of coffee rapidly growing cold in front of him. He ran his fingers through his hair distractedly. ‘She won’t hear of the Hardings having him, or her mother, and yet he’s wearing her out.’ Physically Jane was still very weak, drained by the events of the last few weeks, but by now she should have been improving. Psychologically she seemed to be handling the loss of the baby better than he had dared hope. She was sad and sometimes weepy but that was to be expected. She was taking comfort from the little boy and yet she was terrified for his safety; obsessed by the thought that something was going to happen to him; obsessed with the cat which had attacked her. She refused to let him leave the windows open. She panicked if he opened the French doors here in his study and at night she insisted they close both windows and curtains, something they had never done in all their time together. The amulet had been retrieved from the jeweller and was back in place beside their bed.
‘Let Calum come to me, Adam.’ Liza’s voice the other end of the line was eager. ‘I’d love to have him, you know I would. And she wouldn’t object to him coming here, would she? He can play with Juliette and see the lambs again. And he would be safe, I promise. I’d look after him.’ And keep him from Brid. The unspoken sentence hung in the air.
There was a long silence. ‘Are you sure? All she needs is some time to recuperate. I don’t think she would mind him coming to you.’ He closed his eyes with relief. At Liza’s Calum would be away from the house – and near Meryn. ‘You’re a saint, Liza. You’re sure Phil won’t mind?’ He listened to her assurances for several seconds, smiling, before he put the phone down and exhaled loudly.
Liza arrived to collect Calum in a brand new Morris Traveller. Her glorious long red hair had been cut fashionably short, and she was wearing a stunningly elegant dress. ‘Liza, what’s happened to you?’ Adam was really shocked. This was not his Liza. It was a stranger.
She let out a peal of laughter. ‘Must move with the times. My sitters expect me to look up to the mark.’ She giggled with the old Liza throaty cynicism. ‘They don’t see me at home, don’t forget. I usually go to them. To Rome and Paris. You should see me!’ She twirled round, showing them the spin of her skirt. ‘Then I go back to Wales. This gets put in the cupboard and I dive into old trousers and thick woollen jumpers and I paint and paint and paint in the barn until it’s time to come out again and go and find another victim!’ She pulled Juliette to her an
d dropped a kiss on the little girl’s golden head. ‘Phil and Julie won’t talk to me when I’m being posh. They don’t recognise me, do you, darling?’ She patted the little girl’s nose and sent her back to play with a delighted Calum.
Adam smiled. He had been watching Jane’s face, and seen the longing as she stared at Liza’s lovely dress. That at least was one thing he could do for her. Suddenly he had had an idea. He would take her to Paris, or to London. And he would spend some money on her. He cursed himself for not thinking about it earlier. It was always Jane who had the ideas, Jane who booked their holidays – somewhere where there was plenty of sand and sea for Calum. It had never occurred to him, as he slept in a deckchair, exhausted by his work, or built sandcastles or romped in the waves with Calum, that she might be bored and restless and longing for the bright lights of the town. That was it. They would have a holiday whilst Calum and Juliette played together in the safety of the Welsh border hills. Then perhaps they could all forget the striped cat with the slanting eyes and, protected by the amulet, put the unspoken thought of Brid behind them. For good.
In the hospital Brid sat quietly, her eyes fixed on interminable distances. At first she had fought the psychiatric staff, but they gave her drugs and she lost track of the long circling ribbons of time inside her head. Again she fought the men and women who tended her. Again they strapped her down and plunged needles into her arm. Time froze. Weeks. Months. Years – she did not know or care. Her abilities dulled and shrank and she withered like a flower in frost. But in the end she woke. Memories returned. She focused on Adam and saw him in her mind. This time she would be more careful.
She had upset Adam. He knew she had frightened the woman Jane and he blamed her for the death of his baby. Stupid. He was not so clever. The baby was already weak and failing in the woman’s womb. If it had been strong it would have clung to life. She thought about it again and again. If she chose to destroy Jane one day she would have to be much more clever. More subtle. Adam must not know. And in the meantime somehow she must get close to him again. Make him love her again. He could not resist the cat. Slowly between the drugged sleeps in the hospital which wanted to trap her spirit and tie her down, she would slip free of her body and visit the garden. There she was sure she could make him forget Jane and the weakling dead baby and turn back to her for comfort and love.
10
Visiting Liza and Phil and Juliette had become a regular activity. Every summer now they had done it for more than ten years. Sometimes Adam would go too, and sometimes Calum would go on his own on the train, but more usually Jane would pack her son into the car and they would set off together for the west.
Adam enjoyed being left alone at home. Without Jane the pressure was off. He could relax, smoke the odd pipe, go down to the pub, without her looking at him reproachfully, and then when she came back, leaving their son in Wales for the summer holidays, they would go off together for a break before Adam came back to settle to his work again. And it was in the summer, when the others had gone and left him on his own, that he dared to let the cat into the house.
Calum and Jane regarded their drive across England as an adventure. Neither of them would acknowledge it, but they found Adam a stifling influence sometimes. He was too strict, too ambitious for Calum as the years passed, pushing the boy ever harder at his school work. ‘One day you’ll be a doctor like me, my son,’ he’d say with a smile, and Calum would nod and agree. At first it was a joke to both of them. Neither knew nor cared where Calum’s talents lay; it didn’t matter. The boy was clever, his exam results were always good. But slowly the game had hardened into a pattern. The pressure had subtly increased and changed into total seriousness, and Calum’s true feelings were, his mother sometimes thought, completely ignored whenever the subject was discussed, with the boy too conscious of his father’s ambitions for him to stand up for himself. She had tried talking to him about it, but he smiled at her in the lovely gentle way he had, pushing his hair back out of his eyes, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Mum, I won’t let him push me into anything I don’t want him to.’ And with that she had to be content, sure that she would be able to tell if he were seriously unhappy. He was not like Adam. And as far as she could tell he was not like her either. There was an echo of her beloved father who had died four years ago, in her son, but only an echo. Where the rest of the quiet confident charm and the shy mannerisms originated she would never be able to guess.
There had been no more pregnancies. As the months had turned to years she gave up hoping for the miracle that would give Calum a brother or a sister and instead turned more and more of her attention to her son.
This particular summer, when Calum was due to choose which A levels he was going to study, she was determined that he and she should have a serious talk.
It was harder than she had anticipated to get him on his own. From the first moment that they had arrived at Pen-y-Ffordd he and Juliette had been off together for every moment of the day, leaping on two of the old rusty bicycles which had been rescued from a neighbour’s barn, doused in oil and pressed into service to get them into Hay or up into the hills.
‘Calum?’ Jane put her hand on his handlebars as the two of them pushed their parcels of sandwiches into the basket on Juliette’s bike. ‘I haven’t seen you at all this holidays.’ They were already two weeks into their six-week stay.
‘Oh, Mum.’ He gave her the winning smile which never failed to melt her heart. ‘Come on. You see me every day of the year. This is the hols. I only see Julie for a few weeks …’
Shrugging, she stood back. ‘All right. But this evening, can we talk? Please.’
He gave a quick frown. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’
‘No, there’s nothing wrong, I just want to discuss something with you.’ Away from your father. Away from home. Did she have to spell it out for him? She smiled. ‘Go on, both of you. Have a lovely day and I’ll see you this evening.’
‘But Aunt Jane, we were going to a party.’ Juliette flung her long golden hair back across her shoulders. She was wearing a pale blue shirt and tightly belted jeans.
‘And so you shall, Julie. I heard your father say he would drive you.’ Jane managed to stop herself sighing. ‘All I want is half an hour with Calum and then he is all yours.’ She watched them cycle up the steep pitch and heard their ringing laughter as they disappeared round the bend and out of sight beneath the green canopy of overhanging hedges.
Walking slowly back towards the farmhouse she paused to lean on the orchard gate. Was part of the weight in her heart because she was a little jealous? They were so carefree, these children today. When she was their age the horizon had been black with the shadows of threatening war. Not that that had stopped her going to parties. It was Adam whose childhood seemed to have been the most bleak and lonely. He never talked about it much, but always in his stories there was the looming gloominess of the manse and his strict, humourless father.
The old man was in his early seventies now, still living in the manse, still alone. After the murder of his housekeeper he had employed no one else to look after him. They had never been to visit him, not once, in all the years they had been married, in spite of Jane’s pleas and Calum’s curiosity to see his father’s home and meet his grandfather. Since the wedding they had seen the old man only once when he had made the journey south to be present at Calum’s christening. He had stayed one night, his sober, black and unsmiling demeanour not endearing him to the guests at the party after the ceremony, and then he had asked Adam to drive him to the station. Father and son, out of sight of Jane, had spoken barely a word. They shook hands on the platform and Adam had not waited to see his father board the train.
‘Penny for them.’ Liza had wandered out into the sunshine and come to stand beside Jane at the gate.
Jane jumped. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Worrying about your old man?’
‘No.’ Jane smiled. ‘That’s one thing I don’t have to do, thank God. N
o, I was worrying about Calum.’
‘He seems fine to me.’
‘He is. I just wonder sometimes if Adam isn’t too strict with him. You know, it’s strange. He hated his own father so much for his strictness, and yet there’s more than a little of that dreadful straightlaced side to him as well.’
‘There is?’ Liza’s eyes twinkled. ‘Then he must have changed a lot!’
Jane frowned. She still hated references to Liza’s and Adam’s past together. ‘Only in some ways. Adam is so set on Calum becoming a doctor, too.’
‘And doesn’t he want to?’
‘That’s it. I don’t know. I have a feeling deep inside that he only says he does to please his father; that what he would really like is something quite different, but I don’t know what. He doesn’t confide in me about the future.’
‘He’s so young, Jane. Does he have to make up his mind yet?’
‘You know he does. He has to choose his A level subjects.’ Jane shook her head crossly. She hated hearing herself being so fussy.
Liza laughed. ‘Forget it for the holiday. Let the children have some fun without thinking about the future.’
A stray breeze had found its way down from the dark shoulder of the mountain and into the orchard, stirring the leaves on the trees. Liza shivered. ‘Come on in and have a cup of coffee, then let’s find Phil and see if he’d like to come into Brecon with us.’
Calum and Juliette had hidden their bicycles in some bracken near the road and struck off on foot across the hillside, their sandwiches in a bag on Calum’s shoulder. The hot sun was beating down on their heads as they walked and they headed instinctively for the distant trees where a narrow valley cut up into the hillside, its steep sides bordering a tumbling brook of ice-cold mountain water.
On the Edge of Darkness Page 22