On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

  He shrugged. ‘Dad.’

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘He won’t hear of me and Julie getting married.’

  Liza suppressed a sigh. ‘Why on earth did the subject even come up, Calum? I told you there is no question of you getting married until you are older.’

  ‘And we won’t. We’re going to wait until after the exams. Julie agrees – ’

  ‘Julie agrees?’ Liza sat forward and fixed him with an eagle glare. ‘Calum Craig, you and my daughter are not getting married for years yet, do you hear me? You are both much too young. You have your whole lives ahead of you. I am not going to let you spoil them by rushing into something as serious as marriage when you still haven’t even made up your minds what you want to do in life.’

  ‘We both know what we want to do.’ Calum set his jaw. ‘I’m going to be a doctor, like Dad, and Julie wants to paint.’

  ‘And both those things require years of training, Calum. Years of living on practically nothing as students. Years of hard grind!’ She took a deep breath and counted silently to ten. ‘Believe me, Calum, we are saying this for your own good. After all, who should know better than Adam and me just how hard it is? He is a doctor and I am a painter and we both had to study and work for years and years and years to get where we are.’

  Calum reached for his tea and gulped some of it down, scalding his throat. ‘But you and he were together. You had each other. You were lovers, before he ever met Mummy.’

  ‘Maybe we were, maybe we weren’t.’ She fixed him with an eagle eye. ‘That is not at issue. What is, is that you are only seventeen, Julie is only sixteen, and you are children!’ She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Opening it she concentrated on withdrawing one, tapping it for a moment on the table, finding a box of matches and selecting one. Striking it she lit the cigarette and at last drew on it deeply. Only then did she look at him again. ‘Please, Calum. I’m not trying to separate you. I know how much you love each other. Just believe me, it would be a disaster if you and Julie got married too soon.’

  Their food arrived and she stubbed out the cigarette. Watching Calum tuck into his plate of eggs and bacon and fried bread she felt an overwhelming fondness for him. She tipped her own bacon and bread onto his plate and watched him eat that as well. Only when he had finished every scrap, wiping the last piece of toast around the greasy plate did she speak again. ‘You can come back to the farm for a few hours. Then you must get back. Phil is driving across to Cardiff this afternoon. I’m going to get him to put you on the fast train to Paddington and then you can find your way home from there. Agreed?’

  He looked up and nodded at her reluctantly. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Feeling in her pocket for money she found none. She turned towards the brightly lit doorway. ‘Eleri, can I settle up next week?’ she called.

  ‘Course you can, sweetheart.’ The voice from the depths of the kitchen was comfortingly matter-of-fact.

  ‘Good, then we’re on our way.’ She caught Calum’s hand as he stood up and squeezed it. ‘I know it all seems complete hell, love. Just stick it out. It will all come right in the end, I promise.’

  Julie was waiting for them in the kitchen. She threw herself at Calum and clung to his neck. ‘You idiot! I love you!’

  Liza shook her head. ‘You have until two,’ she said threateningly, ‘and until then you behave yourselves!’ She turned and walked out of the room to tell Philip, working on his own in his studio, that he would have a passenger on the way to Cardiff.

  It was on the way back in that she stopped, shivering inside her jacket, to watch for a minute the play of light through the clouds across the valley. It was a view she never tired of watching, the shadows racing across the green and brown and grey of the country, the successive rays of sunlight pinpointing and highlighting a village here, a church spire there on the far side of the valley and the occasional glint from the River Wye itself as it wound its way across the landscape. A cloud crossed the sun and the grass around her grew momentarily dark.

  Liza …

  She shook her head and rammed her hands deep into her pockets. The bitch had started using her name now. She was questing again, searching, but for what? Adam so rarely came here. Surely by now she knew where he was, or was she expecting Liza to show her the way to find him? She looked up suddenly and took a deep breath. Of course, it was Calum. She was following Calum. But why? Why was she interested in Adam’s son?

  Turning, she walked back into the house. ‘Julie? Calum?’ she called. She glanced round the kitchen. It was empty.

  ‘Julie?’ She ran to the foot of the stairs and looked up. There was no sound from the bedrooms but she ran up anyway and threw open Julie’s door. The room was empty, the bed still unmade, the floor a tip. She gave a rueful smile. If Julie had thought the beloved was coming she would have tidied up!

  ‘Julie? Calum?’ She walked down again to the kitchen and stood staring out of the window. They could be anywhere, but the best bet was a walk across the frosted fields. She would have to wait until they returned and in the meantime she would ring Meryn.

  He was waiting for her at the door of his cottage. His face broke into a smile as he saw her. ‘It’s always good to see you, Liza, but not for emergencies. What has happened?’

  She followed him in and sat down on the sofa by his blazing fire, holding her hands out gratefully to the warmth. ‘The same old thing. She’s getting into my head again.’

  ‘The trouble is she too is on a learning path.’ He squatted opposite the fire and hooked a small stool forward to support his weight. Behind him his table was piled high with papers and books. ‘As fast as we learn to protect you from her, so she learns ways to get round the protection.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘The amulet is no longer working.’

  She stared at him in horror. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know.’ He looked at her seriously for a moment. ‘Sometimes – just sometimes – I can reach into the head of your mysterious Brid. There is much that is strange about her. For long periods she is not there. Not anywhere.’ He paused, frowning. ‘It is as though she is asleep or in a coma. Then she stirs. Her energy increases and I can sense her.’

  ‘How?’ Liza was staring at him. A rash of small goosepimples ran across her forearms and she shivered.

  He smiled. ‘I have my own ways of doing these things. Of tracking her, seeing where she goes. Of seeing who it is who is following her through the expanses of darkness where sometimes she hides.’

  ‘But can’t you stop her?’

  The anguish in Liza’s voice made him grimace. ‘I too am learning, Liza. There is much here I don’t understand. But don’t despair. I am as strong as she is, in my way. Now, you are worried about Adam’s son.’

  She nodded. It was clear her mind was easier to read than Brid’s.

  He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘It is possible she has focused on him now. She is jealous; possessive. It may be that he is in her way. All I can suggest is that you teach the boy how to protect himself as you do. She cannot harm you, and she cannot get inside your head unless you let her. Tell him the same.’

  She nodded. ‘I will. I’ll tell him.’

  Meryn sat forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘How is his wife? She is in far more danger than either you or the doctor, or I think her son. If Brid decides to remove the opposition, it is she who would be the prime target.’

  Liza shrugged then she shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think Jane really believes all this stuff. I relied on the amulet protecting her, but if as you say it doesn’t work any more she needs help. It’s strange. Such long intervals go by when nothing happens. As you say, it’s as though Brid has gone away. She’s lost interest. I feel secure and forget about her, then suddenly there she is again, inside my head, as insidious as ever.’

  There was a long pause as he stared thoughtfully into the fire. ‘You know, it may be that
where she is, she has no sense of time. A year or a minute are the same to her. What about Adam? Does he have the same experience of her?’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know. It’s a long time since we talked about it.’

  She remembered the last conversation, months ago, when he had told her brusquely to forget it; that Brid was someone from the past; nothing more than a memory and not a very happy one at that. The idea that she was, or ever had been, a danger, was completely ludicrous. Hanging up the phone incredulously after that conversation Liza had sat perfectly still for several minutes then, thoughtfully, she had walked back to her studio where she had picked up a brush and stood for a further half an hour in front of the current painting. Adam had changed. He had sounded defensive and angry and guilty all at once.

  He had not sounded like himself at all.

  When she had gone Meryn sat for a long time staring into the embers of the fire. His body relaxed, his eyes unfocused, he searched lightly in his mind. It was not Brid whom he sought but the other, the one who pursued her. There was power there, intelligence, enormous learning. Once or twice he had come close, sensed the piercing gaze, felt the energy of the man’s anger – it was a man, of that he was sure – and he had needed all his own resources to stay firm. He had a good idea who it was he was dealing with and the knowledge terrified and excited him.

  A bright orange flame shot up the chimney from the ashes and he felt his attention quicken. His nerves tightened and he made himself relax. ‘Come on, my friend. Let’s see you. You and I need to talk.’ He didn’t know if he said it out loud. It didn’t matter. A pathway was opening up between the planes of existence and there, in the shadows, Broichan was waiting for him.

  Ivor Furness had been standing at the window of his office lost in thought, his thighs resting comfortably against the warmth of the radiator as he planned the next chapter of his book on the hospital care of the mentally ill during his coffee break, when he spotted Brid outside in the hospital grounds. He moved his position slightly so he could keep her in view, an easy task against the white sprinkle of snow which had fallen only that morning and stubbornly refused to melt. She was wearing an ugly brown cardigan over her blue dress and her ordinary indoor sandals, but she did not look as though she were feeling the cold. On the contrary she looked as though she were relishing it. He could see from where he stood that her cheeks glowed, and her hair, whipping round her head in the light vicious wind, seemed to have a life of its own. She was walking confidently, her shoulders back, not huddled into her cardigan for warmth and she was walking with purpose rather than strolling as he would have expected of someone who, in their break between activities and in a garden icebound by winter and surrounded by a high wall, had nowhere to go.

  She was walking away from him now, still in full view heading towards the leafless trees round the perimeter wall. Suddenly he frowned. He had a mental picture of her shinning up the wall and dropping out of sight into the road outside. Grabbing his jacket from the coatstand by the office door he let himself out into the corridor and headed for the stairs.

  Outside he stared round. His office looked out over the west-facing gardens and he should be able from here to see where she had gone. He strode out across the grass, conscious that his foot-marks in the thin snow left irregular green patches with every step he took. Drawing near to the high red-brick wall he paused and looked round carefully. There was no sign of her that he could see, nor was there a trace of her footprints. He scouted round carefully and then walked a few yards further on. There was a robin sitting on the bare branch of a cherry tree near the wall, its chest feathers puffed as it sang its heart out and he watched it for a minute, conscious that he had been listening to its song as he walked across the grass. If someone had been there, scrambling over the wall, it would have flown away, indeed as he drew a few steps closer it stopped singing, cocked its head at him suspiciously and in a second was gone. He stopped, and stared round again, feeling suddenly rather foolish, though his head felt immeasurably better after his sojourn in the fresh air. Where the devil was she? And then suddenly he saw her only a few yards away standing watching him from the shelter of a tall holly tree.

  ‘Dr Furness. You were following me.’ She put her head slightly to one side, a little like the robin, he thought suddenly.

  ‘I’m afraid I was.’ He smiled at her. ‘I was worried you might be cold without a coat.’

  ‘I’m not cold. I like the snow. It makes me feel free.’

  Why did she always manage to make him feel guilty, where none of the other patients did?

  ‘You don’t get on with any of the other women, do you, Brid?’

  She did not deign to answer. Instead she turned towards the building behind them, surveying its Edwardian towers and red-brick solidity. ‘This is not a happy house. I would like to live somewhere else.’

  ‘I know, Brid, and one day soon you will, I promise.’

  She turned to face him and he found himself held by the silver-grey of her eyes. ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as you are well enough.’

  ‘I am not ill.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Then why am I here? It is like prison.’ He was wrong about the other women. Some of them she did like, and some of them talked to her. They all agreed this was a prison and when she enquired were happy to tell her what a prison was.

  ‘Brid, it is just that you find it hard to manage in the outside world.’

  ‘No, I do not find it hard. I am all right. Because I am sleepy it does not mean I am not all right. Everybody sleeps. And because I go on my travels to see A-dam, that does not mean I am not all right either. In my country all the people who have studied as I have studied can do it.’

  ‘I believe you, Brid. And I will help you.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘But now, it is cold. Let’s go back inside.’

  ‘I am not cold.’ He could feel the steely strength under her charm. It was something she was usually careful to hide from him, though in front of the nurses whom he suspected she despised, it showed more often than she probably realised.

  ‘Well, I am.’ He began to walk slowly towards the hospital. ‘Stay out here if you wish, but I’m going in.’

  Brid watched him go, then she turned in her tracks. As she headed across the grass once more she was smiling.

  The shed stood against the high perimeter wall, its door hanging off on a broken hinge. Once upon a time the groundsmen at the hospital had used it for keeping mowers and gardening equipment, but for a long time now it had stood empty and forgotten, hidden by a clump of laurel bushes. It was dark inside, but it was out of the wind and the snow and the walls, though gaping in places where the boards had slipped, gave plenty of warmth and above all privacy. She had found a pile of old sacks in the back, and various bits of discarded gardening equipment, including a pair of rusty shears. These she had hidden above the door in case she found a use for them. The sacks she had folded and piled so that she could sit comfortably, well back from the door but still able to see out of it. From that angle the hospital building was completely hidden and all she could see was a vista of grass, a few leafless trees and some cheerless beds of shrubs. But it was wonderful compared with the sterile horror of the wards and recreation rooms in the hospital, and it was above all silent but for the gentle sound of the wind in the tree branches and the laurel leaves nearby. She knelt down and pulled at a board in the side of the wall. Behind it was another piece of wood on which with the aid of the rusty blade from the shears she had carved some symbols: a crescent moon, a broken spear, a mirror and a comb. They were her map and her key. Propping it up near her she sat down on the pile of sacks and closed her eyes. It was strange that here, in this small hut of all places on the vast hospital estate she should sense power. Deep under the ground there was water, not the sluggish water in metal pipes which she felt everywhere around her in this strange world, but living water from the depths of the earth, welling up through the sand an
d the clay and the gravel until it burst into an underground cavern of some kind far below her feet. With a succession of deep breaths she closed her eyes and pictured the water. It was cold and vibrant, like the water of the streams on the mountains at home, and she could feel its energy surging through her blood.

  * * *

  Calum was sheepish and exhausted in equal measure when he at last arrived home in the early hours of Monday morning and it wasn’t until the evening, whilst Adam was still tied up in a late surgery, that Jane asked him what had happened.

  He shrugged evasively. ‘Liza was okay about it. She’s not as fussy as you and Dad.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s not. It doesn’t mean she’s not worried. She wants Juliette to do well too, you know.’

  ‘I’m not going to stop her.’

  ‘Not as long as you’re both careful, no.’ She looked down at her hands. A doctor’s wife and she found it difficult to talk to her own son about contraception.

  ‘Mummy –’ He had taken a deep breath and then stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Liza talked to me about something. It was all a bit odd.’ He glanced away from her, clearly embarrassed, and she gave an inward sigh of relief. So Liza had spoken to them. That was good.

  ‘She said it was something to do with her and Dad, from their student days.’

  Jane frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone called Brid?’

  ‘Brid?’ she echoed, surprised. ‘Why did she talk to you about her?’

  ‘It sounded really far out, Mum. She said this woman was haunting her, and that she thought she was trying to get to Dad through me and that I had to learn to protect myself with all sorts of psychic stuff. I tell you, it was really weird.’

  The silver amulet tree: still broken, it was in the drawer of Adam’s desk, she had seen it there only yesterday when she was looking for the phone number of the pathology lab at St Thomas’s for him. He had obviously forgotten it.