On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

‘No, you bitch!’ Sliding off the bed, she shook her head violently. She cannoned into a chair and swore loudly, rubbing her shin. ‘No, you’re not finding him through me. I’m wise to you, girl. What kind of a sneaky witch are you, anyway?’ She rubbed her palms against her temples as hard as she could.

  Switching on the lamp, she put a match to the gas and put on the kettle, taking comfort from the companionable hiss of the flame. The room was very cold. Pulling her scarlet shawl from the bed she wrapped it round her shoulders, shivering. It was there again, probing into her brain; she could almost feel the sharpness of the little iron-bladed knife digging the secrets of her life out of her head.

  ‘Why me? What do you want with me?’ She found she was backing across the studio, trying to move away from this horror in her mind. ‘You must know where he is? What do you want with me?’ It was the third time this had happened. And it was the worst. It was like hearing someone knocking, in the distance. At first it was not frightening – not even irritating. Then it would become more persistent and slowly her body’s responses would begin to work. The dry mouth, the cold tight stomach, the prickling at the back of her neck, the icy shiver gripping her lungs until she could hardly breathe as the weight of someone else’s mind slowly began to pull her down.

  Suddenly it was too much. The empty building was too quiet around her, the echoing studio too lonely. Tearing off the shawl and her dressing gown she groped for sweater and jacket and a pair of woollen slacks. In two minutes she had let herself out of the building and was running along the path, divided from the river by old twisted railings, heading up towards the town.

  Adam was woken by the hammering on his door. Fighting his way out of sleep he groped for his wrist watch, but he could see nothing. The blackout was still firmly drawn. He had no idea what time it was. Fumbling for the light switch he made his way to the door.

  ‘You’ve got to let me in. That bitch gypsy girlfriend of yours is after me! She’s using some kind of occult technique to get inside my head, Adam. You’ve got to do something about it.’ Liza pushed her way past him and sat down on his bed. She was shaking.

  He glanced behind her down the darkened stairwell and closing the door he turned the key. ‘What happened?’ In the light of the single bulb in the ceiling he had established that it was four-thirty in the morning. He ran his fingers over his scalp. He had been studying his physiology notes until one and his head felt like a pan of mashed potato. ‘How did you get here, Liza?’

  ‘I ran.’ Her teeth were chattering. ‘I know it was stupid. I didn’t want to bring her to you, but I was scared. She was in the studio. In my head. She’s mad, Adam. Completely mad.’

  He sat beside her and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Tell me what happened. Slowly.’

  There wasn’t much to tell. How can you explain intuition? Knowing something deep inside you? Instinct – and the pain of the probing knife?

  ‘When did you last see her?’ Calmer now, Liza stood up. She pulled one of Adam’s blankets off the bed and wrapped it round her shoulders. She was still wearing her coat and gloves.

  He took the hint and went to light the small gas fire. ‘I haven’t. Not properly. I thought I saw her in the street a couple of times, then you said you’d seen her in the studio. Then nothing. Not a squeak.’ He looked up at her from his position in front of the fire. ‘She does know strange things – occult I suppose you could call them – and she told me she was studying things like that. But gypsies know these things anyway, don’t they? They have powers, the second sight.’

  ‘I have the second sight, Adam.’ She spoke so quietly he didn’t register what she had said for a moment. ‘That is why she can reach me. That is why I understand what is happening.’

  He stared at her. ‘You don’t mean it. That’s ridiculous. That’s evil!’

  ‘Oh, there speaks the minister’s son! I knew you’d react like that if I told you.’ Her voice became bitter. ‘Adam, for God’s sake, I thought you had realised by now just what a bigoted, narrow upbringing you’ve had. Just because people don’t conform to what your father allowed in his narrow-minded little world doesn’t mean they’re evil!’

  ‘No, of course not.’ He blushed. ‘I didn’t mean that – ’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Liza …’ He stood up and went across to her, taking her hand. ‘Don’t let’s quarrel, please. Whatever you think of me and my background, don’t let it come between us.’ He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully for a moment, then he looked at her. ‘I don’t think Brid is evil. At least she wasn’t. But she had different values from us. From you as well as from me. If she wants something –’ He stopped speaking with a shrug, then he gave a deep sigh. ‘I still don’t see how she could have got here. She knows nothing about our way of life, nothing about our century – ’

  He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Our century?’ Liza stared at him.

  He gave a small apologetic laugh. ‘I know it’s crazy, but sometimes …’ He paused and the silence stretched out between them.

  ‘Sometimes?’ she prompted at last.

  ‘Sometimes I used to imagine that when I went to see her, when I walked past the great stone on the hill where we used to meet, I was walking into the past. Literally. Her world was so different. She talked about such strange things – King Brude and St Columba, as though they were alive for her. And her way of life was so primitive in some ways. And then I would rationalise it when I went home. She lived in a tinker community and time does stand still for some of those people. Her family were wandering craftsmen, and –’ He stopped again. He had been about to say ‘priests’. ‘I taught her English. I never knew what language it was she spoke. I don’t think it was Gaelic. I don’t know what the tinkers speak amongst themselves. Romany, I suppose. She learned very quickly. Her mother and her brother said she was exceptionally bright.’ He shook his head. Sitting down at his desk he put his head in his hands. ‘She wanted to come with me to Edinburgh. She thought she was in some danger from her family because she wanted to reject their way of life for mine. But our time together had run its course. She was already at college herself, somewhere in the north. I couldn’t bring her here. I just wanted to finish it.’

  And she had begun to frighten me. He didn’t say it out loud.

  ‘Were you and she lovers?’ Liza looked up at him wanly. Her eyes were black-ringed with exhaustion.

  He nodded.

  ‘And she was – is – still in love with you?’

  He shrugged, then he nodded again. ‘I think she might be.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she find you?’

  He shook his head miserably. ‘I’m sure she knows where I am.’

  ‘Then why does she keep coming to me?’

  ‘I don’t know, Liza. I wish I did.’

  Back on the hillside, Brid couldn’t understand why she found it so difficult to reach into A-dam’s head. Perhaps it was because his father was a priest; he had learned techniques he had not told her about to keep her away. Liza was easy. She was receptive, open to the simplest probe. At least to start with. Brid stared down into the cold dark water of the well, one of the places where the veil was thin, and she shook her head, puzzled. The pictures, at first so clear and bright, had grown muddied and her mind was tired. She sat back on her heels and rubbed her eyes, shivering in the cold dawn. Above her the hump of Arthur’s Seat rose against a hard green sky whilst below in the town the traffic was beginning to move. She squinted up at the clouds. The first time she had seen the planes they had filled her with terror. Flying in formation like geese coming in from the sea in winter they came closer and closer, their beating engines drumming against her ears till she fell on her face on the grass and cried, pressing her hands to her ears. But then they had passed, flying on towards the west, and slowly she had grown used to them. They never seemed to stop. She had no way of knowing the havoc they were causing over the industrial heartland of Scotland as they dropped their bombs.


  She slept sometimes in the open, wrapped in blankets she had stolen; sometimes she slept on the floor at the home of a woman called Maggie, who had befriended her as they sat side by side on a bench in the park. Food she stole. Her clothes she stole – adept now at hiding herself within the circle of her magic. She did not know, and would not have cared if she had, that she had been noticed and classified by those who were interested as mentally defective, but harmless. As the war moved into its next phase there were other things to worry about than a beautiful young woman with vacant eyes who walked the streets of Edinburgh, sometimes down near the Dean Village, sometimes in the Grassmarket, watching, always watching, for someone who never came.

  She tried once more, staring down into the peaty waters.

  A-dam. A-dam, where are you?

  But he was not there. Far away across Edinburgh in the Infirmary Adam, now a third-year student, was staring down at a man whose arm had been torn away by shrapnel and he was fighting the urge to be sick.

  7

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  Liza pulled the cover off the painting and stood back triumphantly. Adam stared. He could see the face, the planes of the flesh, the huge dark brooding eyes, the ugly strong hands, the stormy, uncomfortable background, but he could not recognise himself at all. She was watching him closely and he saw her face fall. ‘You don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful picture, Liza.’ He tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘It’s just a bit modern for me.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘Do I really look like that?’

  ‘Oh you!’ She stamped her foot in frustration. ‘You’re impossible! Yes, of course you look like that! In a way. It’s a picture of you as doctor. You as a man. You as the essence of yourself.’

  ‘I see.’ Adam stared at it harder. Parts of the flesh tones had a translucent green quality which looked to him extremely unhealthy. ‘I’m sorry, Liza. You know what an ignoramus I am.’

  ‘You really are.’ She sighed loudly. ‘So, what am I to do with you?’

  ‘Give me lessons in art appreciation?’ He put on a rueful, chastened schoolboy look which infuriated her even more.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother. There are a lot of people in this world who can appreciate art. You just go away and watch birds, or chop someone’s leg off or something.’ Folding her arms she turned away from him and went to look out of her window. Rain was lashing down the glass and a gust of wind rattled the panes. ‘Go on. Go. I’m not talking to you.’

  He stared at her, trying to make up his mind whether she was being serious. Then suddenly he gave up. He had better things to do with his precious time off than play silly games with her.

  She heard the door bang and turned round in disbelief. ‘Adam?’

  He had gone.

  She sighed. This had happened too often lately. Sometimes she wondered if they could agree on anything at all.

  A-dam?

  She looked up, shocked, her quarrel with Adam forgotten. It was months since she had heard the voice in her head. It was distant, questing.

  ‘No!’ She put her hands over her ears.

  A-dam? Please help me.

  ‘Go away!’ Liza turned round, staring into the different corners of the studio as though she might be able to see the owner of the voice. ‘Can’t you see you’re not wanted? Leave me alone!’

  ‘Liza?’ The voice she could hear now was strong, male and sounded very hurt. It was not Adam’s. ‘I hope you don’t mean that, sweetheart?’

  ‘Philip?’ Her fear had vanished in a surge of relief. ‘Come in!’

  ‘Did I see your young doctor friend heading up the path as though the hounds of hell were behind him?’ Philip Stevenson, some twenty years older than Liza, had been her tutor for the past two years. A tall, devastatingly attractive man with iron-grey hair and a charming crooked smile, he was the target for every female art student in the college and Liza was well aware that as the recipient of his occasional attentions she was viewed with a certain amount of resentment and jealousy by her colleagues.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘A row?’

  ‘You could say so. He didn’t like his portrait.’

  ‘Young heathen.’ He stood in front of the easel and stared at it in silence for several seconds. ‘You’ve caught him very well. But maybe it isn’t flattering to the young man’s ego. Is he really that driven?’

  ‘I think so.’ She put her hand to her head, distracted. The voice was still there in her head.

  A-dam, where are you?

  It sounded sad. Lost.

  Philip noticed her expression. ‘What is it, sweetheart? Earache?’

  She shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Try me.’ He was still standing, arms folded, in front of the easel.

  ‘All right. How’s this.’ Suddenly she was fed up with Adam and his attendant spirit. ‘Adam had a gypsy girlfriend up in Perthshire. And when he came to Edinburgh he said she couldn’t come too. So guess what, she’s put a spell on him. She’s bewitched him and she’s haunting me. She keeps talking to me inside my head and it’s scaring me to death!’

  The tremor in her voice was very slight, but she had his full attention at last. Turning his back on the painting he stared at her. ‘You are joking, I hope.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Liza, it’s your imagination.’

  ‘If it is I should be in an asylum.’

  ‘But things like that don’t happen.’

  ‘They do. But not for much longer. I have a feeling if I say goodbye to Adam, then the beautiful Brid will disappear too.’

  ‘And do you want to say goodbye to him?’ Philip viewed her thoughtfully under bushy eyebrows. ‘You’ve been smitten with that young man since the day you met him.’

  She grimaced. ‘Was it that obvious?’ For a moment she found herself staring at him. Compared with Adam he looked solid, dependable, and so very safe. ‘Phil,’ she plunged on, ‘there is something else. Something terrible happened at Adam’s home soon after he left. The woman who was his father’s housekeeper was murdered.’ She turned away. ‘Horribly murdered. Stabbed to death. They never found out who did it.’ She was staring at the painting again as though she could read an answer there.

  He was ahead of her. ‘And you think it was this girlfriend?’

  She shrugged. ‘She tried to kill me, Phil. She threw a knife at me. Adam doesn’t believe it. There was no one here when he arrived, and she couldn’t have passed him on the stairs, and we couldn’t find the knife, but –’ She stopped.

  ‘Liza.’ Philip took a couple of paces forward and took hold of her shoulders gently, forcing her to face him. ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was no point. It was only my word. Adam seemed to think I had dreamed the whole thing. But I hadn’t. I know I hadn’t.’

  ‘And did you discuss with him the idea that she might have been responsible for this other woman’s death?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Liza, sweetheart, it seems to me that if you really thought there was a completely insane young woman running around Scotland with a knife murdering people left, right and centre you would have told someone about it. You would have told Adam. You would have told the police. You would, I hope, have told me before now.’ He drew her close to him and held her in his arms.

  She tensed for a moment and then relaxed. The strange probing voice inside her head had, she realised, completely disappeared.

  Phil stood for a moment staring over her head at the painting, willing himself to remain still, not to tighten his arms and scare her any more, then quietly he dropped a light kiss onto her hair. ‘Come on, lass. I think some food is what is required. I suggest we leave your painting and your studio and this unhappy ghost to their own devices and go out and spend our statutory five bob a head on the best we can find at The Aperitif.’

  When Adam found the note from
Jane asking him to meet her at the North British for tea he nearly said no. Had he been busy he would have done so, but he had two hours off, and Liza told him she was too involved with her painting to break off to see him for such a short time. Piqued, he telephoned Jane from the Students’ Union. They sat next to each other in the deep armchairs with a plate of cakes and scones and a pot of hot tea and Jane told him about her relationship with Robbie. They talked quietly, aware of the other couples around them all engaged in equally intense and quiet conversations, and they laughed a lot and he found himself, with a sharp pang of guilt at his disloyalty, comparing her gentle kindness and charm with Liza’s acerbic manner and driven talent.

  ‘Robbie’s been posted down to England.’ Jane poured tea for Adam and passed him a scone. He nodded wearily, barely able to keep his eyes open. He had been studying most of the night. ‘It’s awful,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know how he is. I don’t know what’s happening. He can’t even tell me where he is.’

  Adam shrugged sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you go home? There must be things you can do down there to help, and your father can find out about Robbie for you.’

  She bit her lip. ‘Part of me wants to. I’m not exactly helping the war effort by studying the Classics!’

  He laughed. ‘Someone’s got to keep the standards up, Janie. Why not you? You’re too young and beautiful to get involved in the war! Anyway, they’ll have you digging tatties or rolling bandages before long, never fear, so make the most of it.’

  ‘Two of our tutors have gone. They’ll probably close down the department soon.’

  ‘So, that’s the time to go.’ He grimaced ruefully. ‘I would miss you dreadfully.’

  ‘Would you?’ She glanced up at him under her lashes. ‘I thought you had eyes for no one but Liza.’

  He was silent. How could he explain how he felt about Liza? He wasn’t sure himself. And if he knew, he wondered suddenly, would he want to tell Jane? He crumbled the dry scone on his plate, toying with the crumbs with his knife. There was no butter.