On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

  Ivor Furness was standing looking down at her bed, stroking his chin with his left hand, whilst his right held the thick file of notes. She had gone to lie down on her bed after lunch saying she was feeling tired, so the nurse had reported. When they tried to wake her at half past two when she was late for her remedial art class, they had failed to do so. After shaking her and shouting, and calling for help one of the staff had come to fetch Ivor, who was sitting in front of the old typewriter in his office.

  ‘Why didn’t you come for me at once?’ He leaped up and grabbed her file. ‘I have given orders that she is not to be woken when this happens!’

  ‘You can’t wake her!’ Deborah Wilkins, the nurse on duty, sniffed angrily and glared at his back as he swept down the corridor in front of her. ‘Nothing short of a bomb!’

  He ignored her, pushing through the heavy doors into the long dormitory and striding to Brid’s bed.

  ‘So, my dear. You are away at the end of your silver cord, are you?’ He stood looking down at her, half expecting to see it. She was lying on her back, her arms crossed on her breasts, looking for all the world like an alabaster figure on a cathedral tomb. And alabaster was the word. He rested the back of his hand gently against her cheek. It was ice cold. Behind him Nurse Wilkins stood looking down at the girl, a frown on her heavy face. Ivor could feel her dislike and disapproval like a tangible cloud around her. He turned. ‘Thank you, Nurse Wilkins. I’ll look after her now. Please get on with your duties.’

  The woman shot him a look of intense dislike which he failed totally to see. He was bending over Brid, his fingers lightly seeking for a pulse in her wrist. For a moment he thought there wasn’t one and he felt a shot of alarm run through him, then he found it, so light it was no more than the tiniest flutter. He reached for his stethoscope and began to unbutton her blue dress. ‘All systems on minimum,’ he murmured to himself. He tucked the stethoscope into his pocket and stood back, watching her. ‘Brid?’ He said her name softly, although he could imagine there was nothing subtle about the way Deborah Wilkins had tried to wake her. There was, as he had expected, no response. ‘So, where are you, Brid? Are you with your handsome Dr Craig?’ He thought back to his visit to the quiet suburban street with the pretty detached house where Dr Craig–aDr Craig – lived with his family. Did he ever see this beautiful witch woman in his dreams? Did he even guess what a strange hold he had on her fantasy life? One of these days he and Dr Craig were going to have to meet.

  He realised suddenly with a start that she was staring up at him. ‘Dr Furness?’

  ‘Hello, Brid.’ He smiled down at her. ‘So, my dear. Where have you been?’ Almost automatically he had reached for her wrist, but he didn’t have to feel for the pulse to know it was racing; he could see the colour flooding back into her cheeks, sense the vibrancy, see the satisfied curve to her lips. To his embarrassment he felt a sudden surge of desire himself, and what was worse, she noticed. She gave him a sleepy smile and turned her hand over to grasp his. ‘I have been to see A-dam.’

  ‘And was he pleased?’ He took a firm grip on himself.

  ‘Oh, yes, he was pleased. His bitch wife was not there.’ She pulled herself up onto her elbow so her long hair cascaded over one shoulder. How the devil did she manage to look so seductive in her horrible regulation dress? He realised he had not rebuttoned it for her after listening to her heart and breathing and found himself staring at the shadowy vee above her breasts.

  ‘We made love.’ Her voice deepened. ‘It was very good.’

  I’ll bet it was. He almost said it out loud, but stopped himself in time. ‘Brid, my dear. You are late for your class. You’d better get up and brush your hair and go down to the recreation room.’ He was holding her notes across his chest like a shield. ‘I have some phone calls to make.’

  There was no answer from Adam Craig’s private house so he rang the surgery. The stern voice on the other end of the line said Dr Craig was seeing a patient and could not be disturbed. Ivor smiled. If he ever retired into private practice he would have a gorgon like that in the office to fend off interfering colleagues. Leaving his name and number he rang off and pulling open a drawer in a filing cabinet he put away Brid’s notes.

  In his study Adam sat watching his cup of tea grow cold. Jane was next door watching television. On his desk the pile of paperwork he had brought back from the surgery confronted him reproachfully. He had so far managed to ignore it today, but as he sat forward to switch on the desk lamp he saw the note Emma Souls, their new receptionist, had clipped to his diary at the end of surgery: Please ring Dr Furness as soon as possible. URGENT. Below it was a London phone number. He frowned. The stupid woman should have told him it was urgent. She should have pointed it out to him at the end of the consultation, not left it for him to find next time he looked at his diary. Furness. It was not a name he knew. He unclipped the piece of paper and studied it, then he pulled the telephone towards him and began to dial.

  ‘Dr Furness?’ He swivelled his chair to look out at the garden.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Furness has gone home.’ The voice was expressionless, bored.

  Adam frowned. He reached for a pencil and began to doodle on the pad by his elbow. ‘I see. This is Dr Adam Craig. I have a message to ring him urgently. Is there another number where I can reach him?’

  There was a moment of silence whilst the voice the other end went into consultation with a second, more distant and shriller companion. Then she came back. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Craig. Dr Furness has not left a contact number for this weekend. Could you call him again on Monday?’

  Adam put the phone down with a shrug. Outside in the light thrown from the window he could see the sleety rain was beginning to turn to snow. The lawn was already white. He hoped the cat was somewhere safe and warm.

  Jane turned the television off as soon as Adam had left the room. Ten minutes later she was still staring at the blank screen. Supper had been a total disaster. The three of them had sat in silence picking at their food and as soon as they had finished Calum had flounced off upstairs, banging his bedroom door behind him as usual. She sighed miserably. Life with two touchy men was not the ideal she had dreamed of once. Standing up with a groan she walked to the door and pulled it open. The house was totally silent. Even the usual beat of pop music from Calum’s bedroom was missing. She wandered into the kitchen and stared distastefully at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. From Monday to Friday she had a daily woman who came in to clean the house, but at the weekend and on Friday night she did all the housework herself, and that included the washing up unless she could trap Calum or Adam in the kitchen long enough to persuade them to help her. One of the things her mother had drummed into her was that you never left a pile of dirty washing-up until morning. That way you never had to face a filthy kitchen first thing when your defences were at their lowest. She stood staring at the saucepans and plates for a full thirty seconds, then she turned and walked out, shutting the door behind her.

  Slowly she climbed the stairs and went into her bedroom. Pulling the curtains she switched on the lamps on her dressing table and stared round. The pink shades gave the room a pretty, warm feel and she felt suddenly more at home and relaxed. Next to her bed there was, on the small cupboard, a pile of new novels. She sat down on the bed and pulled them towards her. Iris Murdoch and Margaret Drabble, and for sheer romantic indulgence Mary Stewart’s latest. This was her own small comfort, writers with whom she could curl up over the weekend whilst Adam went out on call or played golf with the Hardings, something she could not bring herself to do. She kicked off her shoes and hauled her legs up onto the bed, lounging against the pillows and the small lace cushions which decorated the pale pink cover. Adam’s bed, identically made up stood, unruffled, the statutory two feet from hers with between them the small bedside table on which stood his lamp and his books – in his case a volume on natural history and a thriller by Raymond Chandler. She glanced at it as she made herself comfortable, and then she froze
. The silver amulet tree was missing. She glanced round the room. Her dressing table, Adam’s tallboy, the bookshelf, the window sill. There was nowhere else it could be. When had she last seen it? She racked her brains, frowning. Mrs Freeling cleaned the bedroom on a Wednesday. If by any chance she broke something – it had only happened twice in all the time she had been working for the Craigs, she had at once made a tearful confession. So that was not it. Perhaps she had moved it. Or Adam had. She frowned. She had been so tired last night and the night before she probably would not have noticed if the bed itself had been missing. So, when had it gone? For a moment she contemplated getting up and going downstairs to ask Adam if he knew where it was, but she changed her mind. She was tired, and her books beckoned. She would ask him later, when he came to bed.

  She had read for nearly an hour when she looked up again, distracted by the pins and needles in her foot. Putting down the book she stretched and yawned and looked at her watch. It was after nine. She frowned. There had been no sound in the house. No pop music, no phone calls, no footsteps on the stairs. Standing up she went to the door and pulling it open she listened. Calum’s room totally silent. Tiptoeing on stockinged feet across the landing she went to the door and listened, then she raised her hand and tapped. ‘Calum? Calum, darling, can I come in?’ There was no reply. She frowned. He was probably asleep. Carefully she turned the handle and pushed the door open. The room was in darkness. She knew he wasn’t there even before she had turned on the light. She surveyed the room with dismay. His books were where he had left them on his desk, a folder of chemistry notes lying open on the bed. There was a half-eaten apple, brown and disgusting on the desk, a glass empty but for the dregs of ginger beer in the bottom. She looked round, her heart sinking. His rucksack, always stashed on the cupboard, was missing, as was the anorak from the back of the door.

  ‘He’s gone to Wales.’ She stood in the doorway of Adam’s study. ‘He must have hitched.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. He can’t have.’ Adam stood up.

  ‘He has. He’s gone to see Juliette.’ She bit back the urge to cry. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he? He’s a sensible boy.’ She was trying very hard to convince herself.

  ‘He’s not all right.’ Adam closed his eyes for a moment in sheer frustration. He took a deep breath. ‘And I’m not at all sure that’s where he’s gone. Good God, he’s got school on Monday. He can’t just hop off and go to Wales for the weekend! He’s probably gone off to see one of his friends. If you ring round you’ll track him down, you’ll see.’

  ‘He’d hate me to ring his friends.’ Miserably she went to the chair by the electric fire and sat down. ‘We’ve handled this very badly, Adam.’

  ‘You mean I have.’

  ‘No. We have. We should have been more understanding. They’re so young. We were young once too, Adam.’

  He gave a grim smile. ‘We didn’t put our exams at risk.’

  ‘He’s not doing that. He’s no fool. We must give him the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘You’d better ring Liza and warn her in case he has gone there.’ Adam frowned. ‘And if he has she’d better drive him straight to the station and put him on the train back home. The stupid boy. I knew something like this would happen. You should have kept a better eye on what was going on down there.’

  ‘I should?’ She raised an eyebrow, trying to ignore the spurt of anger which invariably hit her when Adam accused her of something she thought was his fault. ‘I don’t seem to remember you thinking it was anything other than a good thing.’

  ‘To leave an impressionable young man in a house with all those bohemian women?’ He scowled.

  ‘There are only two women in that house, Adam, and Philip seems to cope with them all right.’

  ‘Philip is so old he can’t see an inch in front of his nose,’ Adam said tetchily. ‘You should have known what would happen.’

  My fault. She bit her lip to suppress the internal wail. My fault. Everything is always my fault.

  Wearily she stood up. ‘I’ll go and ring Liza, then.’ Why didn’t he ring? He was sitting there with the telephone in front of him on the blotter as though he had just been making a call when she came in. He didn’t reply and she walked slowly towards the door. ‘Adam?’

  He looked up.

  ‘What happened to the amulet tree?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’ He looked away and she was astonished to realise that she could see guilt and embarrassment written all over him, in the angle of his shoulders, the way he shifted his gaze uncomfortably away from hers, even the slight colour which rose to his neck and face.

  ‘Adam, what on earth has happened to it?’

  ‘I broke it.’

  ‘You broke it?’

  He nodded. Brid had broken it. But how could she when she was nothing but a dream? No, he must have knocked the ornament over and trodden on it in his sleep. When he woke he had collected the small snapped pieces of silver and the crystal and put them together, wrapped in one of his handkerchiefs, into the back of the bottom drawer of his tall boy. It had not occurred to him to tell Jane or to take it to the jewellers to see if it could be mended, and sitting looking up at his wife’s serious, worried expression and her short sensible hair with the few wisps of grey appearing at her temples he knew why. He no longer wanted to protect himself against Brid. He wanted to dream about her. He wanted to lock himself upstairs in the empty house when Jane was away and fantasise about Brid’s young supple body and her silky hair and her warm firm lips.

  He swallowed hard and ran his hand across his face. ‘It’s stupid of me. I forgot all about it. I must have knocked it off when I was dressing in a hurry and stood on it by mistake. I’ll take it with me tomorrow on the way to the surgery and get it mended.’

  She smiled. ‘Good. I miss seeing it there on the bedside table.’ She was watching his face intently. ‘It always makes me feel safe.’

  ‘I know.’ He nodded vehemently. ‘I know, Jane. I know.’

  But he also knew now with a strange inner certainty that last time it had been broken it had lost most of its protective power. That was why Brid had found them. That was how she had managed to overcome all his defences. Now it had been broken again it was useless. He would take it to the jewellers when he had time if it kept Jane happy, but it would do no good. It was no longer strong enough to act as a safeguard against anything. Not now that Brid had gained entry to his home.

  Calum stood shivering outside the phonebox in Hay. Broad Street was deserted. From where he stood he could see the butcher shop across the road and a solicitors’ office locked and in darkness; in the distance the low hills were silhouetted against a cold, lightening sky. He glanced up the street past the clock tower hopefully. It was twenty minutes since he had rung Liza and confessed where he was and she had said she would come and fetch him. He could tell from her voice that she had been expecting the call. He wrapped his arms round himself and stamped his feet to try and bring back the circulation. It was still dark and the town was very quiet. He could see one or two lights appearing in upstairs windows now, and as he watched a milk lorry tumbled down the street and around the corner in the distance. He could smell sweet woodsmoke on the air and in the distance the cold aromatic tang of the Black Mountains.

  When the old Land-Rover finally rattled down the street and stopped near him he was nearly dead from cold and exhaustion. Liza took one look at him and drove them down the hill, parking the car in a narrow cobbled street outside a small café. It was shut but there were lights on behind the blind in the window. The door opened to her knock. ‘A couple of stranded starving travellers, Eleri, can we come in and have a cup of tea?’ she asked the plump, red-faced woman who opened it. With the blast of warmth from the doorway came the almost overpowering smell of newly baked bread.

  ‘Course you can, sweetheart.’ The woman stood back and ushered them into the café. It was dark there, the counter empty. The light and smells came through a door at the back where the kitc
hen was all warmth and bustle. The woman reached for the lights and switched them on. ‘I’m opening soon anyway for the boys from the town. Come by here, near the radiator, and I’ll get you breakfast.’

  ‘Thanks, Liza.’ Calum gave her a rueful smile. ‘I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.’ He leaned across and put his hands on the radiator to try to thaw them out. ‘It took four different lifts to get here.’

  ‘Which is not bad, considering,’ Liza commented tartly, ‘that you left home after nine and that you were travelling across country all night and that you have exams at school any moment.’

  His smile grew more sheepish. ‘Mummy has been talking to you, then.’

  ‘Of course. She was frantic.’

  ‘She knows I’ll be all right.’

  ‘She doesn’t know anything of the sort, Calum. There are such things as notes you know, or don’t they teach you to write at that expensive school your father sends you to?’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He looked about six.

  ‘Eleri, you’re a saint.’ Liza looked up as a large earthenware pot was unceremoniously plonked on the table, with cups, saucers, milk, and a huge basin of sugar.

  ‘That’s what they all say.’ The woman smiled contentedly. ‘So, what do you say to bacon and eggs and all the trimmings?’

  Liza glanced at Calum. ‘Yes please. I think this young man is about to die of hunger.’

  ‘I can see he is.’ Eleri gave Calum an affectionate punch on the shoulder. ‘Won’t be long.’

  ‘She’s nice.’ Calum watched as the woman disappeared back into her kitchen.

  ‘She is.’ Liza reached for the teapot. ‘So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?’