On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

  Catriona stared at Brid’s face intently. There had been a movement there. The eyes had for a moment focused on hers, she was sure of it. The strange vacancy which had been her only expression for weeks had lessened. Dr Freemantle, the psychiatrist, had visited her several times. He had recognised her from her stay in the Infirmary and was fascinated by Catriona’s description of Brid as an animated, intelligent young woman. ‘It must be a brain disorder. Perhaps an injury as a child? Some kind of state which is affected by shock.’

  The energy came back in waves, small currents through her veins, pathways of light through the fog which separated her from the people around her as, slowly, she managed to drag herself back into her body.

  Catriona drove her home two weeks after she had first seen the movement in Brid’s eyes, and Brid understood that she could stay at the flat in Royal Circus until she felt fully recovered.

  Liza was painting in her barn, standing before the easel, surveying the portrait of Aneurin Bevan which she was working on for a gallery in Cardiff, a commission of which she was intensely proud, acknowledging as it did her swift rise to fame as a portraitist. In spite of her baby, nearly a year old now, she managed to put in several hours a day at the easel, and her output was increasing steadily.

  As so often happened when she had been painting for a long time she was exhausted, and her brain, so engaged as she worked, had slipped into neutral as she stood back to rest her arm. Nevertheless, the movement by the door caught her eye and she turned round to look. ‘Phil? Is that you?’

  It had been an impression, no more, but the slim figure, the long dark hair, the presence, was unmistakable. Her heart thudding with fear, she ran to the door and flung it open, staring out. The path through the orchard to the house was empty. There was no sign of anyone. A robin was sitting, singing, on the branch of an old lichen-covered apple tree near her. Surely if someone had passed close to him he would have flown away?

  She said nothing to Philip and after a while she forgot the incident. Until next time. On this occasion she was playing with Juliette on the bed in the long, low-ceilinged bedroom in the attic of the house which she and Philip shared. It was pouring with rain outside and after she had finished feeding Juliette in the kitchen she had brought her upstairs to change her, then stayed for a while, singing lullabies to the little girl, reluctant to put her down in her cot in her own little room to sleep. The room was warm and cheerful as it always was, the bed covered in the same silk throw which she had used in her studio in Dean Village. One moment she was singing, the next she had stopped. She was listening intently, aware of a presence in the room near her. She could feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling with sudden cold. Juliette stopped looking at her with those intense, loving deep-blue eyes. Her gaze refocused on something immediately behind her mother. Liza felt her mouth go dry. She held her breath, then slowly, she turned.

  There was nothing there.

  Standing up, Liza grabbed the baby and clutched her to her chest. Her heart was thudding so much she was sure Juliette would feel it as she fled across the room and out onto the landing. Downstairs in the kitchen she began to laugh. How stupid. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Brid could have found her. She did not notice until later, her tortoiseshell comb lying on the carpet near her dressing table, though she remembered putting it away.

  Later that day she climbed the hill to visit Meryn. His house was empty, the door locked. She grimaced and turned back.

  The night was dark, the wind swirling through the trees. At his feet the water poured over the rocks and sucked down into the whirlpool of dead leaves and green weed. She was there, waiting. Adam paused, looking down, his heart in his mouth. He knew he was going to have to climb down. Somewhere there the pendant lay, deep in a crevice under the rock, guarded by the hag with her small sharp knife. He could feel the wet rock slipping under his fingers; he could smell the strange electric smell of the water as it poured down round him. There was no escape. Inexorably he was being pulled towards the whirlpool. Already he could feel himself drowning, feel the reaching, clinging cold fingers of the woman who waited for him there.

  ‘Brid, no!’

  His scream was so loud it woke him up and he lay staring up at the ceiling, shaking, the bedclothes soaked in sweat.

  Beside him Jane kept her eyes tight shut. She was terrified. It was the third time in as many weeks that he had awoken her shouting Brid’s name; Brid, whom he had explained away when Jane questioned him months before, after the christening, as an old girlfriend who had become a nightmare.

  Adam wasn’t sure when he had begun to be so afraid. It was after they had gone to Hay for Juliette’s christening. It was as if talking about Brid again had conjured her in some way. Coming back to the house he had had a sudden strange feeling that she was there in the building, waiting for him. His terror was total. He stood there, completely paralysed for a moment, unable to breathe, unable to move, feeling the sweat starting underneath his stiff collar. Then sanity had returned. The feeling had left him as swiftly as it had come and he had walked into the living room and thrown the keys down on the table with a sigh of relief. Only then had he allowed himself the comfort of walking across to Liza’s crystal and touching the cold glittering surface for just a second with his fingertip. That same day he had moved it up to their bedroom and told Jane the whole story.

  Liza seated her guest at the table and put a large cup of milky coffee in front of her whilst Calum, oblivious of the fact that he had arrived at his destination and been lifted from the car, slept on. Jane stared round the kitchen. The white-washed walls and low-beamed ceiling with the heavy iron saucepans hanging from hooks along the beams had been almost hidden since she had last been here by dozens of paintings and collages, and arrangements of the pretty hand-thrown pottery on the open shelves. On the huge scrubbed table a few early daffodils, picked in the orchard that morning, were opening from tight buds in a Royal Worcester cream jug with a missing handle.

  ‘So, why hasn’t Adam come with you both?’

  Jane smiled. ‘Work, of course. They never seem to be able to spare him at the practice. I don’t know if he’ll ever get a holiday at this rate.’

  ‘Then you must insist.’ Liza glanced at her. ‘Everything is all right between you, Janie?’ There was an awkward pause. It was nearly a year since they had seen each other, since the almost-row over Brid, and so much had happened in between. ‘I was so sorry to hear about the baby.’

  Three months before, to her utter devastation, Jane had lost the baby she was expecting in the fourth month of her pregnancy. When Adam had rung Liza to tell her he had broken down and sobbed.

  Jane nodded without looking up. ‘It’s fine. He just gets so tired and I get so fed up with the situation. It hasn’t improved you know. That cow is still making my life a misery.’ Sarah Harding’s open hostility had, after the miscarriage, been replaced by a constant stream of sympathy; she was forever offering to help with Calum, almost every day turning up at the house or phoning with advice and interfering on a scale which eclipsed anything Patricia had ever achieved; it was driving Jane to distraction.

  ‘Adam should say something.’

  ‘Or I should.’ Jane sighed. ‘The trouble is I don’t want to make things awkward for Adam. And I think one of the other partners is considering leaving, which would put Adam in line for promotion in a manner of speaking. He doesn’t want to lose out on that. And there is something else.’ Picking up the spoon from her saucer she fiddled with it for a moment. She glanced up. ‘Do you remember at the christening you told me about Brid? I didn’t believe you and I was very rude.’ She looked away, embarrassed at the memory. ‘Well, he’s been having nightmares about her. He’s brought the amulet you gave us into our bedroom.’

  ‘Do you think he’s seen her?’ Liza could feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling suddenly. ‘How could she find him?’

  How had she found her?

  ‘I don’t know. There must
be loads of ways she could discover where he is. He’s a doctor after all. She could reach him through the medical school. They know where he is. Or she could get a private detective or someone.’

  ‘Jane.’ Liza bit her lip. She had been about to say, ‘She wouldn’t work like that. She’s not real.’ But that wasn’t true, was it? Brid had been – and was – very real.

  Jane glanced up and her face was suddenly naked in its misery. ‘Did he love her very much, Liza?’

  Liza stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘No! Whatever Adam felt for her once, it was over long before he met you. Before he met me. The last person in the world he would want to see would be Brid, I promise you.’

  She shuddered. So, this was the reason Jane had taken it into her head suddenly to brave the cold March winds and drive across country to the Welsh borders. Liza stood up and coming round the table, put her arm round her shoulders. ‘Adam would rather meet the devil himself than Brid.’ She smiled gravely. ‘In fact, from some of the things he told me, he was under the impression at one time that she was the daughter of the devil at the very least. He never seemed to be very sure where she came from but she really scared him. She really scared me.’ She paused. She had been so certain they were safe. So confident. But now … ‘I’m sure she can’t find us. Any of us. She might be looking,’ – she was looking – ‘but she won’t succeed. And now, I’m going to lay the table for lunch, then we’ll round up Philip from his studio and see if Juliette is awake yet and not think about Brid any more.’

  She turned away to open the dresser drawer and rummage for knives and forks, aware that Jane was studying her closely.

  She hoped her worried expression did not give her away.

  Adam had finished the last of his house calls by about midday and had just walked through the front door when the phone rang. He sighed. He had been looking forward to a glass of whisky before the cold lunch which was waiting for him in the kitchen. Picking up the receiver he glanced out of the window. ‘Dr Craig here.’ It had stopped raining at last. But the infernal east wind was still blowing. Half his patients were down with chest complaints because of it and the other half were racked with rheumatism.

  ‘Adam? It’s Jane. I just thought I’d see how you are.’

  His face softened into a smile. ‘I’m well. So, how are you and Calum? And Liza and Phil?’

  ‘We’re all fine. It’s lovely here. Oh, Adam, can’t you come? Just for the weekend? Please.’

  Adam sighed. He was missing her so much. The house was very quiet without her and the little boy, and although the nagging worry for their safety had gone it had been replaced by a whole new set of anxieties about them being so far away.

  ‘Adam, are you there?’ Jane’s voice on the phone was filling him with longing.

  Suddenly he had made the decision. The practice could spare him for a day or two. They owed him enough holiday. Somehow he would arrange it.

  ‘I’ll see if I can come, darling, all right? I really will try, I promise.’ His voice was buoyant. ‘Tell Liza to make some of that wonderful beef stew she cooked when we came to the christening last year. I’m starving to death here without my wife to feed me. I’ll be there on Saturday. I promise.’

  And he was, driving through the early hours of the morning to arrive at the farm in time for breakfast.

  Calum threw himself on his father with a squeal of excitement. ‘Daddy come see the lambs!’

  ‘So. I thought this was a painting farm.’ Adam kissed Jane and then Liza. With Philip he shook hands, passing over in the same gesture a bottle of malt whisky. ‘Where do the sheep come from?’

  ‘The field next door. They’re gambolling in the sunshine.’ Philip smiled. ‘Go with him, Adam. He’s been looking forward to showing you all week.’

  Adam swung his son up into his arms. ‘Right, young man, which way?’

  Jane followed them outside. ‘How did you manage to pacify the powers-that-be at home?’

  ‘I pointed out that I hadn’t had a proper holiday since I joined the practice.’

  ‘And that mattered to them?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Adam shrugged. ‘Let’s not talk about them. How are Liza and Phil?’

  ‘Fine.’

  It was the next day before Adam had a chance to talk to Liza on her own. He slipped out of the house and followed Liza to her barn. He closed the door behind him firmly. ‘What is it? Are you and Jane getting on all right? I can see you’re worried sick about something. What has gone wrong?’

  ‘She’s back. Inside my head.’ Liza threw down her brush and turned to him. ‘And from what Jane says you’ve been having nightmares about her too. I don’t know what to do.’

  Adam stared at her aghast. He did not have to be told who she meant. ‘Dear God!’ He sat down abruptly on an old cane chair near the table. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

  She told him about the occasions she had thought she saw Brid, then about the comb. ‘It was an especially pretty one. One of a pair. I lost the other.’ She shrugged. ‘I hardly noticed at first. But it moved. It was moving round the room. I had put it away in the dressing table drawer.’ She stroked back her long hair distractedly. ‘But it was on my bedside table in the morning. I thought I’d done it myself. Of course I did. Then it happened again. Then the next day when I was holding it, it began to get hot.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I dropped it. When I picked it up again of course it was quite cold. So I put it away in a drawer …’ She was, he realised suddenly, wearing a ribbon to hold back her hair. ‘Then this morning I found it under my pillow.’ She heaved a deep shaky sigh. ‘I’ve seen her, Adam. In here. And then she was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Not really her. A ghost. A wraith. I don’t know. Just a shadow. Then she had gone, but it was enough. She’s found me. She’s watching me. I don’t know why. You and I are not together, so why is she following me?’

  Adam bit his lip. His face had gone white. ‘Would you like me to send your crystal back?’

  She shook her head. ‘We have a neighbour. Meryn Jones. He knows about these things.’ She gave a watery smile. ‘They reckon locally that he’s a wizard. He made the crystal tree for you. He says she’s following me because I’m more psychic than you. She finds it easy to get inside my head. I’m the only contact she has with you – ’

  ‘And you let Jane and Calum come here!’ Adam stood up. He was suddenly furiously angry. ‘Knowing that girl had found out where you live, you asked Jane and Calum here, under your roof?’

  ‘I didn’t ask them, Adam! Jane asked herself. And she came because she was worried about Brid, too. What am I supposed to do?’ Liza faced him. ‘Am I going to be haunted for the rest of my life by that female because once I was in love with you?’ There was a long silence. She shrugged. ‘Sorry. Tactless. Forget it. Anyway, we’re both happily married. But Brid does not seem to have understood that we have moved on.’ She continued more quietly, ‘She should not be my problem, Adam. And certainly not Phil’s. Or Jane’s, come to that.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Adam sat down again. He put his head in his hands. ‘What does your friend Meryn say we should do?’

  ‘He’s been away. He only came back last night. I’ve rung him and explained. You and I are going to have to go and see him tomorrow.’

  ‘Not Jane?’

  ‘Not Jane. Not yet. Let’s you and I deal with this ourselves.’

  They drove up the mountain the following morning, heading up the narrow pitch, where the hedges met overhead, turning the lane into a tunnel of black-laced hawthorn, not yet showing more than tiny shoots of green and pearly buds, with hazel catkins trailing gold dust across the roof of Adam’s car.

  Outside Meryn’s house Adam stood for a moment staring out across the woods and fields towards the distant mountains.

  ‘Makes you realise how much you miss Scotland?’ Liza put her arm through his. She was shivering in the wind.

  He nodded. ‘The hills get in your blood.’

&
nbsp; ‘You’ll go back one day.’

  He followed her towards the low door which had already opened. The man who was standing just inside was nothing like Adam had expected. He was tall, dark-haired, perhaps in his forties. The lean, lined face was weather-beaten, not aged as Adam had thought it would be, and the eyes, far from being vague and mystical were piercing blue and very shrewd. He stood back to usher them in and they found themselves in the single room, half kitchen, half living room, which took up the whole of the ground floor of the cottage. Adam stared round and he felt a sudden shiver of distaste. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, filling the room with strong exotic scents which were somehow far from being of a culinary nature. On shelves near the window, he could see rows of stones and crystals. There were several bookcases, stuffed to overflowing with books and magazines. On a dark shelf near the cooking range he noticed a sheep’s skull pushed back behind some brown glass jars. The atmosphere of the room was strange. It seemed very still.

  Liza however seemed undeterred. To his surprise she flung her arms round their host and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Meryn, this is my friend Adam.’

  Meryn turned to him and gravely proffered a hand. ‘Dr Craig.’ There appeared to be a twinkle in the blue eyes but it was gone in an instant. Adam had the feeling that Mr Jones had sized him up within seconds of their arrival and he had a sudden vision of himself as he must appear to the other man. A reserved, studious, Presbyterian doctor, sceptical in the face of Welsh feyness and superstition. He wondered how Liza had described him. As if reading his thoughts she turned back to him and caught his hand. ‘Adam, I told Meryn all about you and Brid when he made the amulet for you. He knows you don’t like this sort of thing.’ She waved her hand to encompass the room and its contents, including, but Adam was not sure whether or not it was intentional, their host.