On the Edge of Darkness

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!