Читать книгу On the Edge of Darkness - Barbara Erskine - Страница 13

The digs were situated up a curved stair in a narrow wynd of tall grey corbelled houses off the High Street. Adam felt an initial wave of intense claustrophobia as he surveyed his new domain, with its small hard bed, empty bookshelf and wobbly table, and then, seeing it instead through Robbie’s proud eyes he shifted his point of view and saw it as a haven of independence.

Throwing his bags down on the bed, next to which lay his trunk, he raised his hands above his head and gave out an exultant shout of freedom. They were, Robbie told him gleefully, just ten yards from the nearest pub. In the corner the skeleton of Knox grinned amiably at him. Within seconds it had acquired a hat and a university scarf, the box containing Adam’s gas mask was slung irreverently round its shoulders – it was only days after Chamberlain had returned from Munich and the threat of war had receded once more – and the two young men had pelted back down the stairs to sample a pint of Tennent’s. It was the first time that Adam had ever been in a bar.

It was a path they were to tread many times over the next few months between the exhausting rounds of lectures; in Robbie’s case they took place in the Old Quad, and in Adam’s in the new buildings in Teviot Place for chemistry, anatomy and dissection, in the Botanical Gardens for botany and in the King’s Buildings for zoology. After the initial strangeness of university life, and the shock of having so much freedom away from the deadening atmosphere of the manse, he took to the course like a duck to water, avidly soaking up each subject as it came, taking little time out to look for recreation. Once a week he wrote a dutiful note to his father. His mother he went to see at last.

She had changed out of all recognition. Gone was the tightly pulled-back hair, the sober dresses, the strained, pale face. When he walked hesitantly into the tea shop on Princes Street where they had agreed to meet he stood for a moment staring round, his gaze passing over the vivacious pretty woman with the swinging curly hair and fashionable hat who was sitting near him, already presiding over a teapot and a plate of cakes. Only when she stood up and held out her arms did he look into her eyes and see there the love and fear and compassion and feel the overwhelming rush of emotion which brought tears to his own eyes.

‘I wrote, Adam. I wrote often, my darling.’ She was holding his hand openly on the tabletop, playing obsessively with his fingers as though reassuring herself that they were all there. ‘You must believe me. You do understand? It’s not your father’s fault. He is such a good man. He must have thought it best if you didn’t get my letters.’ She looked away suddenly and he saw the pain; the glint of a tear on her eyelashes. ‘I wasn’t good enough for him, Adam. I’m weak. I needed things …’ She couldn’t speak for a moment and busied herself pouring more tea for him, her hand shaking slightly. ‘I was suffocating, Adam. I felt as though I would have died.’

He didn’t know what to say. Smiling at her silently he squeezed her hand and buried his face in his cup.

She was blowing her nose on a lace-trimmed handkerchief. After a moment she looked up at him and smiled. The tears had gone. ‘So. Are you going to be a good doctor?’

He grimaced. ‘I hope so.’ He withdrew his hand to stir some sugar into his cup. ‘If I am, it’s because I learned it from you. Visiting all those poor people in the parish. Hating to see them suffer. Wanting to help them.’

He looked down into his tea, distracted suddenly by a memory of a young man lying beneath a tree. Gartnait, with Brid’s small hands busy tending his wound. How strange. He had not given her a thought since he had been in Edinburgh.

He looked back at his mother. Her face was sober. ‘I hated all that. The visiting. I had no idea, when I married, what it entailed – being a minister’s wife.’ She paused, not noticing the crestfallen disillusion in her son’s eyes. ‘I’ve met someone, Adam. A good, kind, gentle, understanding man.’

Adam tensed. He didn’t want to hear this.

‘I hoped your father would divorce me. I was the guilty party.’ She glanced at Adam and looked away again. ‘That way I could marry again.’ She refused to meet his eye. ‘But of course he can’t do that, being in the church, so, I – well, I’ve had to pretend.’ She was staring down at her hands. Almost unwillingly Adam looked down too and saw that the narrow gold wedding band had gone. Instead she wore a ring of carved twisted silver.

‘I am sorry, Adam. I will understand if you hate me for it.’ She was pleading, still not looking at him.

He bit his lip. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Anger. Hurt. Rejection and yes, hatred, but not for her, for the unknown man who had stolen her from them.

He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Are you happy now?’

She nodded.

Again he looked away. She was happy! Had she ever really wondered how he was, imagined his loneliness, his desolation when she left? He found himself suddenly near to tears, remembering Wee Mikey’s teasing. The boys in the village had been right all along. She had gone off with another man. She was, as his father said, a whore.

He stood up abruptly. ‘I have to go, I’m afraid.’ He schooled his voice with care.

‘Adam!’ She looked up at him at last, devastated.

‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ He didn’t even know what to call her, he realised suddenly. Not Mummy. Never Mummy. Not any more.

‘We will meet again, Adam? Soon?’ There were tears in her eyes again.

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’ Suddenly he couldn’t bear it a moment longer. Turning, he blundered out between the tables and almost ran into the street.

Jeannie Barron baked less often now. She had agreed to stay on after Adam left; the minister’s needs were very meagre and the house very quiet. Her work did not take her so long, and it was cheerless without Adam there. So it was with some pleasure that she looked up at the knock on the kitchen door and saw the pretty face with its frame of long dark hair peering round at her.

‘Brid, my lass. How nice to see you.’ She smiled and beckoned the child in. But she wasn’t a child any longer. As Brid sat down at the kitchen table and fixed Jeannie with a cold stare the woman felt a shiver of apprehension whisper over her skin. ‘So, how are you? You’ll be missing Adam, as we all are,’ she said slowly. She turned the dough and thumped it with her fist.

‘You will tell me where he is.’ Brid’s eyes, fixed on hers, were very hard.

Jeannie glanced up. ‘Did he not tell you where he was going?’ Alarm bells rang in her head.

‘He tells me he is going to Edinburgh to study healing.’

‘Aye, that’s right.’ Jeannie smiled, relaxing again. ‘He’s very bright is our Adam.’

‘I will go too.’ Brid folded her arms. Her expression had not changed. ‘You will tell me how.’

‘How to go to Edinburgh? That’s difficult.’ Jeannie was playing for time. If Adam hadn’t given the girl an address to write to then he had a reason. ‘It costs money, lass. You’d need to go on the bus or on the train.’

Brid looked blank.

‘Why not wait until he comes home in the vacation? It’s not so long. He’ll be back before you know it. Besides, he hasn’t written to tell us yet where he’s staying.’ She hoped she would be forgiven the lie. ‘Edinburgh is very big, lass. Bigger than you can ever imagine. You would never find him.’

‘I will ask. The people will know where the healers’ school is. You will give me money.’

Jeannie shook her head. ‘No, Brid. I’m sorry. I can’t afford to hand out money, lass. You must find your own.’

‘I will have yours.’ Brid had spotted Jeannie’s handbag on the dresser. Pushing back her chair she moved towards it, putting out her hand.

‘No!’ Jeannie had seen what was coming. Stepping away from the table she grabbed it, covering it in flour. ‘No, miss! I had a feeling you were no better than you ought to be. You get out of here now. This minute, or I’ll call the minister! If you want to go to Edinburgh you go your own way, but I warn you, you’ll not find Adam. If he wanted you to know where he was he would have told you. So, that’s an end of it, do you hear me?’

For a moment there was total silence in the room. Brid stared at her with eyes of flint and Jeannie felt a jolt of real fear. She swallowed hard. The minister was actually not in his study. She wasn’t sure where he was. Visiting someone in the parish, perhaps, or in the kirk. She straightened her shoulders. Brid was only a slim wee thing. Why should she feel so afraid?

She read the fatal message in Brid’s eyes for just one second before Brid put her hand to her leather belt and calmly drew her knife. She tried to run, but it was too late. The beaten and polished iron weapon caught her between the shoulderblades before she had taken more than one step and she fell awkwardly, clutching the bag to her chest as the blood slowly welled out over her pale blue cardigan. The only sound she made was a small gasp.

Brid stood still, amazed at the incredible surge of energy and excitement which had shot through her. Then, expressionless, she wrestled the bag from Jeannie’s clutch and opened it, tipping the contents on the floor. She surveyed the items with interest. There was a little round mother-of-pearl powder compact, given to Jeannie by Adam’s mother when she realised that the minister would not allow her to keep such a frivolity. A comb. A handkerchief. A small diary. A purse and a wallet. She ignored the wallet, which contained a large white five-pound note, not recognising it as money. The compact she took and examined. She pushed the small catch on the side and gasped as it opened to reveal a mirror. For a moment she stared at herself, rapt in wonder, then, hastily, she tucked it inside her dress. Then she reached for the purse. Inside were nine shillings, three sixpences, four pennies and a ha’penny. She hoped it was enough to go to Edinburgh.

Adam met Liza when she was drawing his corpse. Dissection fascinated him. It was meticulous, delicate and the structures of skin and muscle and organ that he uncovered were beautiful beyond anything he had ever imagined. The young men who shared his class joked and complained about the smell of formalin and messed about to cover their unease at what they were doing, but Adam was completely enchanted. They thought he was mad; a bit of a swot. Only Liza understood. She arrived one morning, a large portfolio under her arm, her bright clothes and long, flame-coloured scarf a shocking contrast to the dark walls and the sober overalls of the young men.

She smiled at them from huge, amber-coloured eyes and tossed her long auburn hair back over her shoulders. ‘Do you mind if I draw your body?’ She was already setting up her easel just behind Adam’s elbow. Their supervisor was ostentatiously looking in the other direction. ‘I won’t get in your way, I promise.’

Adam was astonished. The women’s dissection room was separate from the men’s across the corridor. His surprise turned to irritation. She must have bribed a servitor or one of the lecturers to get in and she was a distraction. She made his colleagues, never serious at the best of times, behave in an even more silly fashion than usual. She herself though was as serious as he was, scowling with concentration as she sharpened her pencils and drew with meticulous detail the facial structures beneath the skin.

It was she who suggested that Adam have a cup of tea with her after the session. ‘You take your work seriously. Much more than the other boys.’ She smiled at him gravely. ‘Are you planning to be a surgeon?’ There was a faint accent there, attractive, lilting. He could not place it.

He shrugged. ‘I’ve always assumed I’ll be a GP. I like people. When you’re a surgeon they’re always asleep. Or so you hope.’ He gave a slow smile. He had grown up a great deal in the first months of his new life.

She responded dazzlingly. ‘In a way it’s a pity. You’ve got wonderful hands.’ She reached across the table and took one, opening it palm up and looking at it through narrowed eyes. ‘Your life line is very strong.’ She traced it with her fingertip. ‘And look, there will be three women in your life.’ She glanced up at him under her eyelashes, laughing. ‘Lucky women!’

Embarrassed, he pulled his hand away, feeling the colour rising in his cheeks. ‘Where did you learn to hand read?’ His father would have had fifty fits.

‘From my mother. I inherited my art from my father.’ She pulled the sugar bowl towards her and drew patterns in the crystals with the spoon. ‘I’m studying to be a portrait painter. But I need to know how the whole body works. However much you observe and notice the colour and the texture and the shadows of the skin, unless you know about the musculature and bones underneath, you’re not going to get the depiction strong enough.’ She paused and a shadow crossed her face. ‘It’s still hard for women, you know. They made an awful fuss about me wanting to come and draw your corpse this morning.’

‘Did they?’ He was beginning to fall under her spell. ‘I expect they thought you would distract us.’ He grinned. ‘You did. Why didn’t you go to the women’s class?’

She smiled. ‘I tried. They were much stricter. No outsiders. I didn’t distract you though. You were the serious one.’

‘I think I’m a serious person.’ He shrugged self-deprecatingly. ‘But I’ve one or two chums who are working very hard to reform me.’

‘Good. Let me help. Do you want to come round to see my studio?’

He nodded. He was beginning to feel extremely happy.

She did not reappear in the dissecting room but it was arranged that he would go to visit her the following Saturday.

It was on the day before that he received a letter from his father telling him about Jeannie Barron’s death.

The police can find no motive. It is completely senseless. Her handbag was rifled, but the blaggard left her wallet. He took her purse and her powder compact as far as we can guess. From what Ken says she used to keep them in there. They haven’t found the weapon. No one saw anything or heard anything …

The minister’s anguish poured off the page but Adam had stopped reading. He was crying like a child.

He almost didn’t go to Liza’s, but he had no way of getting in touch with her and in the end he was glad to get out of his rooms. Robbie’s shocked anger at what had happened – he too had known Jeannie since he was a little boy – didn’t help, nor did his way of dealing with it, which was to go out and get very drunk.

The studio was in an old loft overlooking the Water of Leith. Adam climbed the narrow dark stairway and knocked on the door, completely unprepared for the assault on his senses which the opening of the door provoked. The huge single room where Liza lived and worked was flooded with light from two floor-length windows. More than three-quarters of the floor space was given over to a studio, the bare boards splashed with paint, two easels in place, one with a picture, covered with a cloth, the other bearing a half-finished portrait of an old man. A large refectory table was barely visible under paints and pencils and palettes, knives and brushes and on a plate in one corner, Adam couldn’t help but notice with a slight shudder, there was a sandwich liberally sprouting a rather pretty green mould.

Liza’s living corner in contrast was far from spartan. The divan bed was covered in a scarlet bedspread; there were cushions and Victorian silk shawls, bright rag rugs, and an old hatstand where hung her supply of long gypsy skirts and shirts and jumpers. On the other side of the space was a small gas ring and a large chipped enamel sink. ‘Home!’ She welcomed him with outflung arms. ‘What do you think of it?’

Adam was stunned into silence. He had never seen a place like this before, never met anyone quite like Liza. He was intrigued, and enchanted and shocked to the roots of his Presbyterian soul. She fed him hot buttered toast and jam and huge chunks of crumbly cheese and pots of strong tea and showed him her paintings, which were in themselves deeply shocking to him. They were powerful, vibrant evocations of personality, ugly in their reality, uncomfortable to look at and, he decided, rightly, probably very good indeed. He wandered round, toast dripping jam in his hand, speechless as he turned canvas after canvas to face him. There were landscapes as well – rugged, moody landscapes which he didn’t recognise, but more than anything he liked the portraits.

She looked over his shoulder at a dark stormy scene of rocky mountains and torn, tortured clouds. ‘Wales,’ she said. ‘I’m Welsh. Or at least half of me is. My Da was Italian, but I never knew him.’ She began to wind up the gramophone. ‘Do you like music? I love it. Especially opera.’ She slid a record out of its paper sleeve and put it on the turntable. ‘Listen.’

It was another assault on his senses. He had never heard anything like it before. It was loud and sensuous and strident and wild. He could feel his blood beginning to race, emotions he never knew he possessed swirling up through him. Then the music stilled and grew sad and, overwhelmed by it all, to his intense embarrassment he found there were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t control them and frantically he turned away from her to stare out of the window across the rocky stream towards the huddled buildings on the opposite bank.

Liza had noticed. Silently she followed him and took his hand. ‘What is it, Adam? What’s wrong?’

It all came out. Jeannie. The manse. His father. His mother. The man she lived with in sin, but who made her so very, very happy.

Liza was appalled. Quietly she held him against her shoulder as though he were a child and let him cry. The record came to an end and hissed quietly on the turntable, waiting for the needle to be lifted off. They ignored it. He could feel a quiet sense of peace and security engulfing him, slowly healing his pain. When at last Liza moved the tears were gone. And so was his embarrassment.

She put another record on, Chopin this time, and they listened to it together thoughtfully, sitting relaxed near each other but not touching, as the light faded from the sky. Later they went for a pie and mash at a pub in Leith Walk and they laughed and they chattered and he learned about her family – an eccentric mother, kindly, warm, much-loved farming grandparents, but nothing about her exotic father – and then at last he saw her home before taking the tram back to the High Street. By the time he got back to his digs he thought he was probably in love.

In the end Brid had not needed the money in the purse to go to Edinburgh. As she walked south along the road from Pittenross in the pouring rain a car pulled up beside her. ‘Do you want a lift?’ A woman was at the wheel.

Brid was dropped in Princes Street as it grew dark. Staring at the crowds, the cars, the trams, she turned slowly round, afraid and very lost. ‘A-dam?’ She murmured his name out loud against the shouts of a newsboy calling the evening edition of the paper from a stand by the side of the road. ‘A-dam, where are you?’

Somehow she had to find somewhere quiet, then she could use her art to find him. As long as he had her silver pendant on him, it would be easy.

Adam did not go back to the manse for Christmas. He and Robbie packed their rucksacks and hitched a lift with one of their fellow students down to Newcastle for the winter break. They drank a lot of beer and walked some way along Hadrian’s Wall and talked about the likelihood of war.

Back in Edinburgh Adam saw as much of Liza as he could, though they were both working hard. Her dedication to her art was total, he learned, and it took precedence over everything. It was just as well, as his own chosen career did not leave a lot of time spare for a social life. Much to Robbie’s disgust, he was spending more and more time at his studies with only the occasional respite.

One evening he did spare for Liza. It was her birthday. Poverty stricken as usual, he agonised for a long time over what to give her, then providence pointed the way. He had been rummaging through some boxes in his untidy room and under some books and notes he found an old cigarette carton. Shaking it hopefully he heard something rattle. Brid’s pendant had fallen out of the tissue paper he had wrapped it in and lay in the palm of his hand, tarnished but very beautiful. He looked down at the intricate, interwoven pattern, the tiny links in the chain, and just for a moment he felt a twinge of guilt at the idea which had leaped into his mind. He put the guilt aside at once. Brid would never know; he doubted if he would ever see her again anyway, and he had made it clear to her, hadn’t he, that men did not wear such things. And the beauty and craftsmanship would appeal enormously to Liza. Smiling to himself, he set about polishing it up.

Liza held it for a long time in her hand, gazing at it. Then at last she looked up at Adam and smiled. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, then she let him hang it round her neck.

It was the next day after taking Liza out to a quick lunch between lectures that Adam thought he saw Brid. Hand in hand he and Liza were walking up the Mound past the National Gallery, Liza wearing the pendant at the neck of her blouse, when Adam happened to glance across the road towards the Castle. A group of people were walking fast down the other pavement, laughing, some of the young men in uniform. The road was busy, full of traffic, and he could not see them clearly, but a figure walking slowly behind them caught his eye.

He stopped, shocked. The dark hair, the pale skin; something about the walk, the angle of the head …

‘What is it, Adam? What’s wrong?’ Liza caught his arm. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet. What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’ He took a deep breath, astonished to feel how shaken he was. ‘I thought I saw someone I knew from home, that’s all. But it couldn’t have been.’

‘Are you sure?’ Liza studied him for a moment and he looked away uncomfortably. Why did he sometimes get the feeling that she could read his very soul?

‘No. It wasn’t.’ The pavement was empty now. The crowd had hurried on. The slowly moving traffic threaded its way down the hill and whoever the woman had been, he could no longer see her.

That night he dreamed about Brid. He dreamed they made love and then he dreamed that she tried to drown him in the fairy pool. He woke screaming and lay there, sweating, waiting for Robbie to come in swearing at being woken up. But Robbie, who a month before had signed up to join the RAFVR, was not there. He was three miles away fast asleep in the arms of a student nurse Adam had introduced him to only the previous day.

Adam lay staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night, watching for the meagre grey dawn to creep into the close and fight its way through his window before he got up at last and began wearily to shave with a kettleful of hot water.

He saw his first death that day. He was visiting a fellow student who had fallen down the twisting stair to his digs after imbibing several pints and broken his leg. At the end of the ward there was a young man who had been taken to the Infirmary after an accident in the factory where he was working. He had fallen into unprotected machinery and his leg had been severed just below the hip. As he left the ward, Adam lingered a moment to look at the white face on the white pillow and the young man had opened his eyes and looked straight at him. Reading the pain and terror and loneliness in the bright blue gaze Adam went across to the bed and put a gentle hand on the young man’s shoulder. It was only minutes later that he realised the young man was dead. To his surprise for a while after life had gone the eyes stayed just as bright. He stood staring down, unable to take in the moment he had witnessed. Then the ward sister who had been escorting the doctor and his train of third-year students turned back and saw him. She touched Adam’s arm. ‘You all right?’ Her smile was kind. ‘It was nice of you to stay with him.’ She pulled up the sheet with calm professionalism. ‘On your way now, young man. Forget what you have seen.’

‘I saw him die.’ Sitting on the floor of Liza’s studio, his arms round his legs, his chin on his knees, Adam was still trying to come to terms with it. ‘And yet for a minute I couldn’t see any difference. He was white, but he was white before he died. He just stopped breathing. That’s all.’

She came and sat down beside him. They were listening to some Mozart. ‘Perhaps his spirit was still there. It didn’t want to go.’ She smiled. ‘You did the right thing, Adam, to be with him. It must be very frightening to die alone.’

He shook his head. ‘Somehow I always saw myself as a doctor saving lives. Stepping in heroically and working miracles. I didn’t think about the ones we can’t save.’ They were silent for a few minutes. ‘War is coming, Liza. I’ll be staying on as a student because they’ll need doctors. Robbie will be in the RAF. What will you do?’

She shrugged. ‘I want to go on painting. I’ll do it as long as I can. It’s my whole life. I don’t want to do anything else.’ She paused. ‘I suppose the folks might want me to go home and help with the farm.’

‘Back to Wales?’

She nodded. ‘It hasn’t happened yet, Adam. Perhaps it won’t. Perhaps Hitler will change his mind.’ She shook her head violently. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t bear the thought of him interfering in all our lives. I want everything to stay the same. I want to paint sunsets and flowers and happiness. I can’t think about war. I won’t.’

Adam gave a rueful smile. ‘We won’t have any choice. It’s in the air everywhere. Besides,’ he nodded over his shoulder at her shrouded easel, ‘you never paint sunsets and flowers and happiness. You wouldn’t know how.’

She let out a shout of laughter. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

The first time they made love was after they had been to a concert together at the Usher Hall. As they walked through the darkened streets he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her to him.

‘Liza –’

She put her finger to his lips to silence him and then gently kissed him. They climbed the stairs to her studio and in the soft darkness she led him across to her bed.

They spent the summer together, and by the time the new term began they were inseparable. Liza was not like Brid in any way. Her loving was warm. In spite of her sometimes acerbic manner, with Liza he felt safe and secure and welcomed. All thoughts of the manse and the unhappiness there vanished. He had found someone in whom he could confide all his fears and hopes.

All his fears but one.

He saw Brid again one Thursday at the beginning of the new university year on South Bridge, and this time he was sure it was her.

Leaving Liza on the tram with a quick wave he had just jumped off with three fellow medics, a pile of books in his arms, his white coat slung across his shoulder, on his way to a physics lecture. The young men were laughing and talking loudly, dodging between the trams and cars, ducking their heads against cold relentless sheets of rain. Shaking his wet hair out of his eyes he looked up and saw her staring at him across the street.

‘A-dam –’ He saw her mouth frame the word, but as before the traffic was heavy and the street was crowded and when he looked again she had gone.

He was not proud of what he did next. Instead of crossing the road to look for her he dived after his friends into the Old Quad and forged ahead, leaving the spot where he had seen her far behind.

Handing in his card to the servitor in his top hat, Adam edged into his seat in the lecture hall and found that his hands were shaking. He stared down at them, fiercely willing them into fists. What was the matter with him? Why was he so afraid? Was it that she brought memories of the manse, things he wanted to forget? Or was it guilt, that he had abandoned her so easily and put her out of his mind? Whatever it was he did not want to see her again. After all, it was a coincidence almost too big to be possible that she should be in Edinburgh. It was probably his imagination. Comforted, he sat back and gave his attention to the professor in front of him.

Liza stood back from the canvas and chewed the end of her paint brush. She glanced at her watch and smiled. A good time to stop.

The knock on the door came at exactly the right moment. She and Adam were planning to bike over to the Royal Botanical Gardens for a picnic in the warm autumnal sunshine. The bicycles were a new idea, borrowed from friends of hers who had graduated to a three-wheeled Morgan. ‘Come in. It’s not locked!’ She was rinsing the brush in a jar of turps and did not turn round. ‘I’ll be with you in two seconds, Adam. I’ve done a lot of work this morning. What do you think?’ She turned, gesturing at the canvas and stopped short. Standing in the doorway was a strange young woman with long dark hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ Liza frowned, puzzled. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

‘You thought I was A-dam.’ The girl stepped into the studio and closed the door behind her. She was dressed in an ankle-length, russet dress with a soft woollen coat over it which came to her feet. On her shoulder hung a loosely woven bag. Her eyes were as hard as flint.

‘Who are you?’ Liza put down her brush and rag. The skin on the back of her neck had begun to prickle. There was something about this strange young woman which made her very uncomfortable. She moved surreptitiously a little nearer to the table and groped behind her for the knife with which she had been scraping her palette.

‘It does not matter who I am.’ The voice was strangely monotone.

‘I think it does. You are in my home. I would like to know what you want.’

‘You are A-dam’s girlfriend.’ The voice, though still flat, held venom.

Liza’s questing fingers found what she was looking for and she quietly picked up the palette knife. She stepped back again, putting the table between her and her visitor, praying that Adam would appear. Her nerves were beginning to scream. ‘I am his friend, certainly,’ she said cautiously. ‘If you are looking for him, he’ll be here soon.’

The young woman did not look round. Her eyes were fixed on Liza’s face. ‘I do not need you,’ she said calmly. ‘A-dam does not need you.’ She was reaching into her bag as she spoke.

Liza gasped. She saw a blade flash as the woman raised her arm and had barely registered the knife when without thinking she threw herself down behind the table at the same moment as she heard Adam’s cheerful shout from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Adam!’ she screamed. ‘Adam, be careful!’

He found her sobbing on her knees, the palette knife still clutched in her hand, her fingers covered in thick yellow paint.

‘Liza! Liza, what is it? What’s wrong?’ He was down beside her on his knees. ‘Tell me. What happened?’

‘Where is she?’ Shaking, Liza managed to stand up. ‘For God’s sake, Adam, who was she?’ She was staring round wildly. The studio was empty.

‘Who? What? What happened?’

‘That woman! That girl! You must have seen her?’ Unaware of the paint on her hand she pushed her hair back off her face, leaving a smear of yellow across her forehead. ‘She tried to kill me!’

Adam closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. Why had he thought immediately of Brid?

‘Describe her,’ he said. He led her to the bed and sat her down gently. Then he walked over to the door and stared down the stairs. As he had climbed them in the dark, glad to be out of the cutting wind, he had been halfway up when a cat had fled past him. He had time only to register the dark shape, the fierce green eyes, the wild fury of the claws on the worn steps, and it was gone. ‘There’s no other way out of here is there?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Then she must still be here.’ He walked slowly round the studio searching every corner, every cupboard, every shadow. There was no one there.

‘She was small, dark hair. Long dark-red clothes. She spoke with a funny foreign accent.’

Brid.

‘What do you mean, she tried to kill you?’ Adam sat down beside her.

‘She pulled out a knife and threw it at me.’

‘Are you sure, Liza?’ His voice was gentle. ‘Where is it? Where is she? I don’t see how anyone could have been here. I would have seen her.’ He found himself picturing the cat’s eyes as it raced past him down the stairs.

‘Are you telling me I’m making it up?’ Liza stared at him furiously. ‘Adam, for God’s sake, I know if someone tried to kill me or not!’

‘Then we should call the police.’ His hands were shaking. He pushed them firmly into his pockets.

‘Of course we should call the police. There’s a potential murderer running round here. Look over there. The knife must be somewhere. I saw her hurl it at me as I threw myself on the floor. She couldn’t have gone to look for it. There was no time.’

But there was no knife. They looked for half an hour, combing every inch of the studio.

‘So. Who is she?’ Liza had cleaned off the paint and was feeling calmer.

Adam shrugged. For a moment he wondered if he should deny his suspicions, but Liza knew him too well. She had already read the dawning horror in his eyes. He sat down on her divan and felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. The pendant he had given Liza, Brid’s pendant, was lying where Liza had left it, on the side table under the lamp. He could see the soft gleam of silver from where he sat.

‘It sounds like Brid. She’s someone I saw quite a bit of at home,’ he said at last. He refused to meet her eye. ‘We used to explore the hills in the holidays. Her brother was – is – a stone mason. He carves brilliantly. I think,’ he hesitated, ‘I think the family have rather exotic roots. They’re very excitable.’ He made it sound something unpleasant. ‘Brid has a very short temper. She’s attacked me before now.’ He gave a small, uncomfortable laugh.

‘And what is she doing in Edinburgh?’

‘She must have followed me.’ He shook his head. ‘I told her it was all over. We were kids together, that was all. She was going to college up north and I was coming here. There was no future for us. None at all.’ He paused for a moment, then he went on. ‘But she didn’t like it. She wanted to come with me. I told her no. I never expected her to follow me.’

‘Had you seen her here before?’

He shook his head, but she saw the troubled look in his eyes.

‘Adam?’

He shook his head again. ‘I wondered if I had seen her the other day, in the distance. But then she wasn’t there.’ He shrugged helplessly.

‘She’s obviously good at disappearing acts.’

‘Yes.’ He shivered. ‘Yes, she is.’

‘And is she capable of trying to kill someone?’

Miserably he stared at the floor. ‘I think perhaps she might be,’ he said at last.

They did not tell the police in the end. There seemed no point.

Susan Craig was sitting in the corner of the tea room, her back to the wall.

Adam had seen her only once since their first encounter. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t much time.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘We’ve a lot of studying to do at the moment.’

‘Of course, dear. I’m so proud of you.’ She had already ordered the tea. Pouring it into two cups, she pushed one towards him. ‘Adam, there is something I must tell you.’ She was perched uncomfortably on the edge of her chair. ‘I’ve … we’ve, that is, my friend and I have decided to go away.’ She spoke in a rush, not looking at him. ‘To America.’

Adam stared at her.

She blushed uncomfortably. ‘No one will know us there. We can make a new start, and with the war coming and everything …’ Her voice trailed away again and she stared down into her cup.

Adam was silent for a minute. Different emotions whirled round his head: anger, loss, contempt – what kind of man ran away from his country when it was about to go to war?

‘Adam?’ She was staring at him anxiously.

He forced himself to smile. ‘I hope you’ll both be happy, Mother.’ What else was there to say?

Two days later, Chamberlain announced that Hitler had not responded to his ultimatum and that therefore Britain was at war. Some weeks after that Robbie, already in the VR, was called up. Whether it was his decision or that of His Majesty’s government Adam was not sure, but his friend’s excitement at giving up the study of Latin and Greek civilisation for the patrolling of the clouds as part of the City of Edinburgh Fighter Auxiliary Squadron seemed totally unfeigned. To celebrate, he arranged a trip out to Cramond Inn for himself and his new girlfriend Jane. Adam and Liza went too.

Jane Smith-Newland had been a Classics student in Robbie’s tutorial. He was besotted by her. She was tall and slim with huge brown eyes and thick soft honey-coloured hair, tied in a schoolgirl plait. Her family were English, her father already high in the ranks of the army, her mother living in the south in their big house in the Home Counties. Adam, meeting her for the first time after growing used to Robbie’s usual flighty girlfriends, was fascinated by her accent, her background, her combination of reticence and the confidence which money brought her. She had beautiful clothes, a car of her own – an old Wolsey Hornet – bought for her by her parents, an almost unimagined extravagance to a penniless medical student. Lovely jewellery, and in complete contrast to all that, a genuine, deep fascination with Latin, Greek and the history of ancient civilisations, which had brought her to university instead of, as her mother and father had intended, being launched into London society. She was like no one Adam had ever met before. He could not keep his eyes off her.

As they crept with shaded headlights down the narrow roads on the way to Cramond Liza groped for Adam’s hand on the back seat. ‘At least she can’t follow us out here,’ she whispered above the sound of the engine. She was convinced Brid was still shadowing her. Adam was not so sure. He had seen no sign of her, and it made no sense for her to be following Liza. If she wanted to see Adam why did she not find his rooms and confront him personally? Presumably if she had been following them, she knew where he lived too. At first that thought had filled him with apprehension, but soon, very soon, the worry had passed and he had convinced himself that Liza had imagined the whole episode.

‘At least who can’t follow you?’ Jane glanced in the driving mirror and caught Adam’s eye in the darkness. Her hearing was obviously very acute.

‘Just an old girlfriend of Adam’s,’ Liza put in. ‘She seems reluctant to let him go.’

‘Popular man, our Adam.’ Robbie chuckled. ‘He’s always had to fight off the ladies!’

‘That’s rubbish, Rob.’ Adam could feel his face growing pink. He glanced at Liza and shook his head. He did not want to talk about Brid. And he did not want Robbie to know that she might have followed him to Edinburgh.

It was Jane who wouldn’t let the subject drop. ‘Who would have thought the strong, silent Adam Craig had a string of ladyfriends! You’ll have to watch out Liza, or you’ll lose him.’

The words hung in the silence for a moment as Jane changed gear and turned down Cramond Road. It was Robbie who leaped in to the rescue. Handsome in his uniform, he sat sideways on his seat, his arm behind her, fondling Jane’s neck. ‘I trust you’re not looking to be one of those ladies, Janie. I’d hate that. I know these doctor fellows can be irresistible, but not half as irresistible as an RAF chap, surely.’

‘Of course not!’ She laughed lightly. ‘As long as I don’t hear you’ve been tempted by some of those gorgeous WAAFs.’

On the back seat Liza’s hand tightened a little round Adam’s fingers. They looked at each other in the dark. ‘Robbie, be tempted by a WAAF!’ Adam put in lightly. ‘How could you ever imagine such a thing.’ He leaned forward and punched his friend gently on the shoulder. ‘Our Robbie’s no time for such frivolity. After all, he’s going to win the war single-handed, aren’t you, old boy!’

In the front seat Robbie smiled. He looked sideways at Jane and gave a modest shrug.

On the sixteenth of October German bombers flew low over the Forth and 602 and 603 Squadrons were scrambled. Robbie’s war had begun.

Brid had not expected it to be like this.

Her journey to Edinburgh had been easy. Prompted by the sixth sense inside her head she had found Liza when she first arrived with comparative ease. Then, inexplicably, she had lost her again. Her mind grew dizzy and clouded. She wandered, lost, around the city, vacant-eyed, afraid, not knowing where to go or what to do. Sometimes, asleep in a doorway or hidden in some secret place she would make the leap inside her head which would take her home to the hillside where Gartnait’s cross marked the transition point into her world. But always Broichan was lurking near and, afraid, she would come back to the place where her poor cold body was huddled out of sight. There were many places in this great city where she roamed, where the veils of time were thin. Slipping into the ruins of the Abbey of the Holy Rood she had felt the coldness of the mist and known it was one of them. In the great cathedral up the High Street where she slept unnoticed in the shadows, she felt it too. Deep beneath the foundations of the church there was a sacred place, a place where the goddess would be waiting if she looked for her. But she had not been prepared for the pain and the dislocation which overwhelmed her. Time was a concept which in the silence of her dreams had not existed; she had been born to transcend it – a genetic imprint from her mother’s womb – and her first teachers had been good. Quick to spot her natural ability they had taught her without caution and without initiation. They had not seen that ability without years of study might be dangerous. They did not think that this woman’s mind might fly beyond the natural confines of the philosopher’s cave and seek the stars. They did not remember that the longing of young eager flesh might prove stronger than the yearning for the alchemists’ stone of all knowledge or the threat of retribution when the absolute laws were broken. By the time Broichan had seen the danger and recognised her power it was too late and Brid, not knowing that having broken the bounds of time there are long black distances of nothingness between the suns, was lost. She did not know that the air she breathed in the twentieth century was not the same air; she did not know that the body that carried her spirit was subject to strains and pains she had not dreamed of. Curling down into the agony of adjustment, in the comparative security of the enclosed garden of an Edinburgh square, she escaped at last into sleep.

When she woke there was only one thought in her head, and that was to find Adam – and find him quickly. She would use her ancient arts again and locate him through the woman who she knew was in possession of the pendant.

‘No!’

Liza lashed out in her sleep, fighting the clinging blankets. Overhead she could hear the drone of engines. Sometimes the Luftwaffe came to reconnoitre the Royal Navy units at Rosyth, sometimes the bombers were on their way to Glasgow again. They were having a lousy time. She took a deep breath and, as she groped with a shaking hand on her side table for her cigarettes and a box of matches, thanked God that so far Edinburgh had been spared. Only when she was sitting up in bed, the ashtray on her knees, did she pause to wonder what had awoken her.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned deeply. There was something unpleasant there in the back of her mind and it had no connection with the throb of aircraft propellers and the thought of the deadly load the planes were about to drop into the blackness of the Scottish night. She lay back on her pillows, drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs.

A-dam!

The word in her head was spoken with a strange foreign accent. An accent she remembered vividly. Her eyes flew open and she stared into the dark shadows of the studio. With the blackouts drawn and no light save the small glow from her cigarette end the room was completely dark. The sound had been in her own mind, and yet, somehow it seemed to come from outside her. Hastily stubbing out the cigarette she swung her feet to the floor and sat still, listening. The drumming of the engines had faded into silence now. She could hear nothing but the soft murmur of the wind in the chimney of the stove.

Every sense was alert.

She could feel it more clearly now, probing in her mind like a finger inching its way over the surface of her cerebellum.

A-dam?

‘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 –’