While You Sleep

by Stephanie Merritt

  ‘They found him that evening over here on the mainland,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Oh, God. What happened?’ Zoe craned her neck to see her.

  ‘Oh no – he’s safe and well.’ She dropped a towel on Zoe’s bed and smiled. ‘He’d managed to stow away on the last ferry out that morning – can you believe it? Hid in the back of a van – the driver didn’t find him till he stopped at a petrol station. They were halfway to Glasgow by then. But he took the lad straight to a police station.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Last I read, he’d gone to stay with relatives in Inverness. Well, they’d reopened the case about the other wee boy that went missing up there and the family’s all caught up in that, so he’s in the best place. He’s got to testify and all the rest of it, poor mite. Time to give you a wash, if that’s all right?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Dr Chaudhry said. ‘Try to get some rest, Mrs Bergman. You survived. What you need to do now is get yourself well.’

  ‘Wait, Doctor.’ She flapped at his sleeve and he turned back. ‘Did you see Edward? Did you treat him?’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘The guy who drowned.’

  ‘No, I didn’t treat him. He died at the scene, I was told. I’m sorry.’

  ‘He was trying to save me. They both were.’ Her eyes stung with tears and her chest constricted; she felt her breath grow shallow and fluttering, like a panicked bird caught beneath her ribs.

  ‘So I understand. The police want to talk to you about it. I’ve told them you’re not well enough yet. I shall continue to tell them that for the time being. Meanwhile, try not to upset yourself.’ He replaced the mask before she could protest.

  ‘I’ll dig out the paper if you like,’ the nurse whispered, leaning in with her flannel as the door closed behind him. ‘You can read the story for yourself, if it won’t upset you too much?’

  Zoe nodded. The nurse lifted her right arm and began to sponge her down, but she hardly registered it. She felt numb with misery. Edward and Charles. And it was her fault. She had never intended to take anyone with her. Ailsa had only wanted her, she had been sure of that.

  24

  They kept her sedated for a few days afterwards; it was felt that her distress was impeding her recovery. Then, one evening, she woke to find all the lights dimmed and Charles sitting by her bed, watching her. Violet and gold streaks showed in the sky through the window beyond him. He wore a tweed coat and held an old-fashioned brown trilby hat in his lap.

  ‘Are you real?’ she asked, pulling the mask down and easing herself up on one elbow.

  ‘Quite real, I assure you.’ He took her hand; his touch was warm and dry, and entirely solid. ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’ He winked.

  ‘I can’t tell any more. They’ve been giving me these drugs.’ She tried to focus on him. ‘They said you were lost at sea.’

  ‘No, no. I chose not to be found. Not quite the same thing.’

  ‘But no one could have survived in that water, surely?’

  ‘Mm. That’s what they said last time. But they can be mistaken.’ He gave her an indulgent smile.

  She opened her mouth to ask what he meant by last time, before she remembered her sight of him on the cliff, the words he had shouted into the storm, the grave in the cellar.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she whispered, after a while. The hospital had fallen unnervingly silent around them; only a distant set of footsteps could be heard tapping down a far-off corridor. ‘You’re Ailsa’s son. That’s why they never found his body. He didn’t die.’

  Charles gave a soft chuckle. ‘Who would believe that, Zoe? A man who can’t die, like the Wandering Jew of legend? Besides, that would make me a hundred and fifty years old. Although there are days when I feel like it, I can tell you.’

  ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’re a – a cambion.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She gave a dry laugh. ‘I think I’m maybe not the most reliable judge of what’s real and what’s not right now.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The corners of his mouth twitched mischievously. ‘A brush with death is thought to convey great insight. In another age, you’d have been hailed as a visionary or a prophet.’

  ‘Or burned as a witch.’ She tried to laugh again, but it died on her lips. It seemed to her that Charles’s face had aged since she had last seen him, in some indefinable way, but his blue eyes remained as sharp and knowing as ever. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, watching him, ‘it’s like you said. There are more things in heaven and earth, etcetera.’

  ‘Then perhaps that’s all the answer you need.’

  The silence deepened.

  ‘You saved my life,’ she said after a while.

  ‘I played a part. You have Bill McCrae to thank too.’

  ‘Bill?’ She frowned.

  ‘We all came back to the house together. He wanted to talk to you about the phone. We arrived in the nick of time to find you down there on the beach. I thought I understood what was happening. Edward hurled himself after you. I had to follow you both. But there wasn’t time – all I could do was leave you on the shore and go back for Edward.’ His gaze moved away to the window. ‘It was Bill who gave you first aid and called the air ambulance. Without him, you’d likely not have survived.’ He passed his hands over his face as if washing it, and a long sigh shook his frame. ‘But I was too late for Edward. I can’t forgive myself for that. It seemed better to vanish. That’s not so hard if you know the coast.’ When he lowered his hands she saw the pain in his eyes. The room darkened around them.

  ‘You warned me to stay away from Edward. I should have listened. He’d be alive now if I had.’

  ‘But I was the one who understood the danger. It was my fault – I should have spoken more plainly when I had the chance. I was a coward, and so I failed you both.’

  She wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but she realised she was afraid to hear the answer.

  ‘What about Dougie?’ she asked, instead.

  He shifted in his seat and turned back to her. ‘He tried to run, in all the confusion, but he couldn’t get off the island with no ferries, and Bill had a few of the village men primed to detain him when he got to town. They’ve been arrested, for the video. Both of them. Mick confessed everything – he’s in a terrible way, by all accounts, though they both maintain that Iain’s death was an accident – they say he was frightened at being caught, they chased him up to the cliff and the next they knew, he’d lost his footing in the dark.’ He lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. ‘Even so, that means they’ve been concealing information, and of course there’s the business with Annag. Her father beat Dougie black and blue when he came home. It will come to trial, eventually.’

  ‘Christ. Poor Kaye.’ She looked down at her hands.

  ‘Yes. She’s taken the girls back to Glasgow, to her parents’.’

  ‘You’ve been back, then? To the island?’ She struggled to sit up, curious.

  ‘Of course not.’ He smiled. ‘I’m missing, presumed dead. I’ve picked all this up from the local papers.’

  ‘But – can’t you tell them you survived? Let people have some good news, out of all this. They’d be so relieved to see you.’

  He shook his head. ‘They’d be frightened, Zoe. People there are superstitious, underneath. I’d become an object of curiosity and speculation. No – I’m an old bachelor, with no ties – it’s easy for me to slip my moorings. It won’t be the first time. They’ll remember me fondly for a while, perhaps, and then they’ll forget. It was time to move on, anyway.’

  ‘No ties – what about Horace? He won’t forget.’

  ‘Dear Horace.’ His face creased with sadness. ‘My housekeeper will have taken him in. I made her promise she would, if anything ever happened to me. She’ll spoil him rotten in his old age. I miss him terribly, of course. But he’s not the first companion I’ve had to leave behind.’

  She gestu
red to the door. ‘You can’t just disappear. I mean, someone must have seen you come in here, tonight.’

  ‘Oh, I’m quite practised at slipping past unnoticed.’

  ‘Because you’re a shape-shifter?’

  ‘If you like.’ His blue eyes glittered with a mischievous light, and the lines around them deepened.

  ‘You knew about Caleb all along, didn’t you?’ she asked quietly.

  His expression sobered. ‘I could see that you had suffered a great loss. That was all, at first. The kind that opens up a crack that lets the dark in. I feared the house would prey on that.’

  ‘It was my fault. I was working on a painting – I resented losing a day on it because he was sick and off school. I sent him to bed to get him out of the way. I told him, “I’m going to finish my work while you sleep.” That was the last thing he ever heard me say.’ She gulped back tears. ‘Not even “I love you”.’

  ‘But he would have known that.’

  ‘Did you see him?’ She grasped his hand. ‘When you were on the cliff, and you looked down and saw me. Did you see Caleb too, in the water?’

  ‘Caleb wasn’t there, Zoe. That was a trick played on your mind. A cruel trick.’

  ‘You saw someone, though.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You spoke to them. You said, Leave her. You saw her, didn’t you?’

  When he offered no reply, she nodded, as if in answer to her own question. ‘You knew she was buried there. Ailsa, I mean. That’s why you wouldn’t come to the house.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. Poor Bonar. He loved her, you know, in an entirely chaste way. He felt he had failed her, and the boy. That was his way of making it up to her, in death – to defy the minister and bury her secretly in the old crypt, so that she would be in consecrated ground after all. He thought it was what she would have wanted. In fact, it was the worst thing he could possibly have done.’

  ‘Because she could never leave.’

  He dipped his head as if in acknowledgement. ‘Consecration never meant much in that place anyway. Older, darker forces had claimed that ground long before the Church came.’

  ‘So the house was cursed?’

  He tilted his head as if weighing the question. ‘I wouldn’t use that word. Things were done there, over the centuries, that had left their imprint. So when Tamhas began his experiments, the atmosphere was primed to act as a conduit. But he didn’t understand the nature of what he had unleashed. Neither did Ailsa.’

  She shifted against her pillows and pushed herself upright. The last streaks of twilight through the window had faded, turning the oblong of sky deep indigo. Shadows moved over the hollows of his face. Zoe wondered, briefly, why the nurses had not switched the lights on yet, and hoped they would not, for a while; it was more companionable this way. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She acted out of love, as I told you before. She believed that at seven years the boy would inherit his father’s nature. To her – a minister’s daughter, steeped in Victorian Presbyterian theology – that meant only one thing – evil – and she felt she must protect him from it, at any price. She didn’t understand, you see, that he would have a choice.’

  ‘I don’t understand either.’

  He fixed her with a serious look. ‘Ailsa believed that her husband had succeeded in calling up a demon. But it’s only New Testament Christian theology, which is really a very young religion in the history of human stories, that equates that word with pure evil. Older traditions knew that the Lilin, the night-spirits, were ambiguous. In the Old Testament they are called simply the Watchers. She forgot, you see, that even in the Bible they are rebel angels, and that rebellion is an act of free will.’ He paused and pulled at his beard. ‘That was what she failed to understand – that her son would have a choice. There is always a choice to turn to the light. Remember that, when the time comes.’

  The tone of his voice made her shiver, and she had to look away.

  ‘Why do you talk about her son in the third person like that, as if he were a stranger?’

  Charles bowed his head. ‘Because it’s a story from long ago, and that boy is a stranger to me. And now I must go. Better not outstay my welcome.’

  He pushed his chair back and stood, pressing a hand to his lower back, as if his old joints pained him. Zoe clutched at his other hand.

  ‘Wait – I’ll see you again, won’t I?’

  ‘Never doubt it.’ He smiled. ‘Not for a while, perhaps. We have our journeys to make, you and I. But we’ll meet one day, of course.’

  ‘But – how will we stay in touch? Where are you going?’ Panic rose in her voice.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll know how to find you, when the time is right.’ He bent and placed a dry kiss on the top of her head. ‘Be brave. It’s not over yet.’

  Despite his words, an unexpected warmth spread through her, tingling along her limbs; she sank back on to the pillow and watched him set his old hat on his head before buttoning his coat.

  ‘I’d like you to have this, until we meet again.’ He reached for her hand and dropped a cold object from his bunched fist to her open palm. She looked down to see Ailsa’s silver cross pendant and jerked her head up, fear in her eyes.

  ‘Won’t this bring bad luck?’

  ‘On the contrary.’ He gave her that same earnest look, and she thought how out of time he looked, like a classical actor from an old movie. ‘I like to think it will bring you courage.’

  ‘Will I need it?’ She heard the waver in her voice.

  ‘One always needs courage.’ His eyes gleamed. At the door, he turned and touched a finger to the brim of his hat. She could only see him in silhouette against the light. ‘Dan is a good man, Zoe,’ he said, as if it were an afterthought. ‘He stayed. Let him in.’

  She was about to reply, but the door had clicked softly shut behind him. Somewhere in the corridor a nurse switched on the lights – rather later than usual, it seemed to her – and all the room’s shadows were chased away by the bright glare.

  25

  ‘You’ll be going home soon, my lovely.’ Nurse Andreou bustled about arranging the latest of Dan’s flowers in a glass on the bedside cabinet. ‘I’m going to miss you. And your husband – he’s charmed the pants off everyone. Look at these gorgeous roses.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been much company,’ Zoe said. They had taken her off the ventilator now but she spent most of her time pretending to be asleep, in order to avoid having to talk to Dan.

  ‘Nonsense. Dr Chaudhry’s very pleased with you. He wants to sort you out with a mood stabiliser, and obviously that requires special care because of your condition—’

  ‘My condition?’ Zoe shuffled herself up the bed. ‘You mean, my lungs?’

  The nurse turned pale under her careful make-up. ‘Oh. Me and my – wait there – I’ll get the doctor.’

  Dr Chaudhry arrived with his usual harassed expression. He ushered the nurse out before closing the door behind him.

  ‘I understand Nurse Andreou has been indiscreet.’ He stood by the bed, rapidly clicking his ballpoint pen in and out with his thumb, as he did when he was preoccupied. ‘I was going to leave it a little longer, but we may as well discuss it now, before your husband comes back. Mrs Bergman, you’re in the early stages of pregnancy. As far as I can tell there have been no adverse effects from your recent trauma. You’re underweight, but we’re working on that.’

  Zoe blinked at him. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘I haven’t – it only happened once. And he didn’t – he pulled out.’

  He gave a faint smile. ‘I think you’re old enough to know that’s hardly a failsafe method of contraception.’

  ‘But I had my period a couple of days before, the first one in months. It only lasted a day or so, but I thought—’

  ‘Sperm can live for up to five days, as I’m sure you know. You must have had an early ovulation. That’s especially likely if your cycle has been erratic.’

  ‘I’m n
early forty-three. I can’t be. It must be a mistake.’

  ‘No mistake, I assure you.’

  ‘Does Dan know?’ Her eyes widened with panic; she struggled to sit up.

  ‘I haven’t said anything to your husband yet. But it is pressing, because the pregnancy will affect what medication I can prescribe for the depression, and that will have a bearing on when you’re ready to be discharged.’

  ‘Don’t tell him. You can’t – it’s not for you to decide.’

  He set his mouth and glanced at the door, giving the impression, as he often did, that his mind had already moved on to his next patient. ‘Mrs Bergman, I realise this is sensitive, but I understand from your husband that you had been living apart before this – occurred. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to him – in case there’s a question of – well, of course, I wanted to let you know first. As I say, it’s very early days, so you’re in plenty of time to take the appropriate steps if the pregnancy is not welcome news.’

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘Almost four weeks. Conception must have happened shortly before your accident – would that be right?’

  She lay back on the pillow and nodded. She thought of Edward; she closed her eyes and dredged up an image of his shy smile, the freckles over his nose, the way his hair fell into his eyes when he looked at her from beneath his fringe, but the details were fading. She thought of that last, frantic tussle in the kitchen, the way he had pushed her up against the sink, his touching apologies afterwards for the ferocity of desire that had overtaken him.

  She slid a hand under the sheet and laid it flat on her belly. The whole thing seemed impossible. She tried to picture his parents, wondering where they might be now, as they tried to contain their wordless grief. She had known him so little, she reflected; she had never even asked if he had siblings. Had they lost their only son, as she had? She wondered how much they knew about Edward’s death; how much they had been told about her. They would know he died saving a woman from the sea, but would they have heard the rumours?

  She spread her fingers out over the warm skin of her concave stomach. Perhaps she should get in touch with them. Would they want to know, she wondered, that there was some part of him left? If they had a grandchild? Would it be crueller to tell them or to keep it from them? She could guess what they would think of her, a woman twice his age. They would blame her for his death.