On the Edge of Darkness

Frowning, he moved a few paces forward, overwhelmed suddenly by a strange dizziness. His head was spinning. He had been running too fast. He stumbled, shaking his head from side to side, trying to rid himself of the slight buzzing in his ears. Then the moment had passed and his head cleared. Below him the mistiness had drifted away and in the distance he could see the grey stone roofs of the forge and the post office, the lights from the main street, and the shoulder of hillside above the waterfalls which hid the manse from his view, while behind him the old cross caught a last shaft of slanting light from the sun as it slid over the horizon.

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‘A-dam?’ The hand on his shoulder was as light as thistledown. He started and sat up. ‘Brid?’

It was the spring. The Easter vacation. Ten whole days of freedom stretched before him. Adam had come back several times in the autumn but there had been no sign of Brid or Gartnait, no trace, though he cautiously searched, of the shabby cottage or the village. Frustrated, he pored over maps and books in the library for signs of the place, but to no avail, and when the snows came to the mountains he gave up looking and concentrated, much to his father’s satisfaction, on his school books.

He had also given up hoping for a message from his mother. He no longer raced to meet the postie or hid on the stairs peering through the banisters, his heart thudding with hope when there was a knock on the door.

Sometimes, at night, he cried for her, secretly, his head under the pillow to drown his stifled sobs. His father never mentioned her and he did not dare ask. He was not to know that there had been letters; four of them. Enclosed in the missives she sent to her husband, pleading for forgiveness and understanding, the lonely, frightened, desperate woman’s declarations of love for her son went unread into the waste paper basket and slowly, miles away to the south, her despair of ever seeing Adam again grew greater. Once she had come on the bus and stood, hidden by a hedge, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but her fear of being spotted by someone from the village, or worse still by her husband had been too great, and, in tears, she had caught the next bus back to Perth and then the train south. She did not know that that day Adam had been far away on the hillside, lost in dreams.

Jeannie Barron knew no more than Adam did. Her heart ached for the boy as she saw his white face and the tell-tale red-rimmed eyes in the mornings. When school started he would cycle off while it was still dark to the bus stop in Dunkeld five miles away and there he would catch the bus to Perth, leaving his bicycle hidden behind a hedge. When he returned from the long day, his books in his satchel, it would be dark once again and there was no question of going anywhere but, after supper, to his own room. When the snows came he would stay in Perth during the week, lodging with Jeannie Barron’s cousin Ella as he had done since he first went to the Academy.

‘Brid!’ He grinned with pleasure. ‘I thought I wouldn’t see you again!’ He had been terrified for her after he had fled from her village, his memory of the tall, angry man and the gleaming knife-blade haunting his worse nightmares.

‘A-dam, shortbread?’ She sat down beside him and, reaching for his knapsack, rummaged through it hopefully. It contained his bird book and field glasses, the notebook and an apple.

He shrugged. ‘No shortbread. Sorry.’

‘No shortbread. Sorry,’ she repeated.

‘Have the apple.’ He picked it out and handed it to her.

She looked at it doubtfully.

‘Surely you know an apple!’ He shook his head in despair and taking it back from her took a huge bite to demonstrate.

She laughed and nodded and taking it back from him followed suit, displaying her small white teeth. Like him she had grown taller in the intervening months.

‘Apple good.’ She nodded.

‘Brid, why was that man so angry when I came to your village? Who was he?’ He was trying to mime the question.

She looked at him and for a moment he thought she understood. The quick intelligence in her eyes, the sudden tension of her shoulders betrayed her, but she shook her head and smiled. ‘Apple good,’ she repeated.

Frustrated, he shrugged. Then he had an idea. ‘I’m going to teach you some more English,’ he announced suddenly. ‘Then we can talk properly.’

His lessons went on all through the summer. Adam, his knapsack laden with shortbread, or scones or chocolate cake – immediately popular with Brid – met her on the long evenings and at weekends and then in the vacation. Most of the time they stayed on the southern slopes of the hillside, making no attempt to go to her village. He had pushed Brid on the subject of the man’s identity, but she had changed the subject with a shrug. One thing was clear however: whoever he was, she was very afraid of him. A couple of times they visited the cottage where her mother lived, just for the summer, he discovered, so Gartnait could be near the carving, for carving the slab seemed to be his full-time occupation. In the winter it appeared he had a workshop and men to help him but there was something special about this carving, something special about this stone, so that he had to work on it in situ. Sometimes they would sit and watch him for hours and he too would join in the language lessons while he worked, his chisels, hammers, punches and polishing stones laid out neatly in a row beside him.

Brid was a very fast learner and talkative and it was not long before she had overcome the frustrations of not being able to communicate with her companion. Adam for his part had already found out from his lamentable marks in Latin and French at school that languages were not amongst his strengths. His tongue tied itself in knots around the words she tried to teach him and he could remember few of them though he loved the way she laughed till she cried when he tried. Her fluency though made it easy for her to avoid his questions when she wanted to, and eventually he gave up asking about her village and her people. Gypsies, he supposed, must be naturally secretive, and with that conclusion he had to be content.

Jeannie Barron, discovering that chocolate cake was one of the ways to make Adam happy, made them more often and the two young people grew brown together in the sun as they picnicked and paddled in the burns through the hot spell. Adam made no effort to see the boys who had once been his friends. He no longer knew or cared if they avoided him. He seldom saw his father, who himself stayed out late more often. If he had known that Thomas was spending more and more time in agonised prayer, locked alone in the kirk, he might have felt a glimmer of sympathy, he might have sensed his father’s turmoil and loneliness and confusion, but he did not allow himself to think about his father at all. There were only three adults now in his life whom he trusted: Donald Ferguson, one of his science masters at school, Jeannie Barron, and Brid’s mother, Gemma.

‘A-dam, today we go see eagles.’ Brid adored his bird book. She pored over the pages and told him the names of many of the birds in her own tongue – names he could never remember. To his surprise she couldn’t write, so he had added that skill to his lessons, reassuring her when she fumbled with pencils, praising her when they found to the surprise of both of them that she could draw.

The eagles had an eyrie high on the side of Ben Dearg. To reach it they had to walk for a couple of hours, scrambling over increasingly steep rock and heather before stopping and sliding down the first of the deep corries that ran from east to west across the high moor. Halfway along, near the foot of the rockface, a torrent of brown burn water cascaded over a cliff some twenty feet or so into a circular pool before racing on down the mountainside. As they came to the edge of the cliff, several deer looked up startled and stared at them for a moment before bounding away out of sight.

Adam smiled at her. She was wearing as she always did a simple tunic, this one dyed in soft blues and greens, tied at the waist with a leather girdle in which she wore a serviceable knife. On her feet she wore sandals, not buckled like his but fastened round the ankles with long ribbon-like thongs. Her long hair she had fastened back with a silver clip. ‘We gave them a fright.’

She nodded. She had reached the pool first and she stopped and waited for him. Adam fell to his knees and bent over the water, splashing it over his hot face. ‘We could swim here.’ He grinned at her. ‘It’s deep. Look.’

She looked at him doubtfully and then at the dark water. ‘Swimming not allowed here.’

‘Why not? You paddle in the burn. It’s not that deep. I’ll show you.’

Before she could stop him he had pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his shorts. Dressed only in his underpants, he leaped into the brown water.

It was much deeper than he expected and ice cold. He swam a few strokes under water, reached the vertical rock wall on the far side, ducked into a turn and rose to the surface gasping.

‘A-dam!’ Brid was kneeling on the rock at the edge of the pool. She was looking furious now. She held out her hands to him. ‘Come out. You must not swim.’

‘Why not?’ He shook his wet hair out of his eyes and struck out across the pool towards her. He was there in four strokes. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

She was pulling at his arm. ‘Get out! Get out! Get out quickly!’ She stamped her foot.

‘What is it, Brid? What’s wrong?’ He levered himself out beside her. ‘You’re not afraid, surely?’

‘A-dam! The lady in the pool. You have not paid her!’ Brid was whispering angrily.

‘The lady?’ He stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The lady. She lives in the pool. She looks after it.’

Adam looked puzzled for a moment, then light dawned. ‘Like the cailleach, you mean? The old witch. A spirit. Brid! You don’t believe that? That’s wicked. That’s against the Bible.’ He was shocked.

She shook her head, not understanding him. Going to the knapsack which was lying on the ground in the shade of a rock, she rummaged in it until she found the greaseproof-wrapped cake. Opening the paper she drew her knife and carefully cut the wedge of cake into three. ‘For A-dam. For Brid. And for the Lady.’ She pointed to each slice in turn. Picking up the third piece she walked with it to the edge of the pool and climbed carefully out onto the rocks, which were slippery with spray, until she was as close as possible to the waterfall. Crumbling the cake between her fingers, slowly she dropped it piece by piece beneath the cascade, chanting some words under her breath as she did so.

When she had finished she stood still for a moment, staring round anxiously as though waiting to see if her offering had been accepted.

‘Brid!’ Adam was appalled.

She silenced him with an abrupt gesture, still scanning the water, then she pointed. He saw a small shadow flash past and it was gone.

‘That was a trout,’ he said indignantly.

She shook her head. Then in another lightning change of mood she clapped her hands and laughed. ‘Trout messenger of the Lady!’ she cried. She skipped back onto the bank. ‘The Lady is pleased. Now we swim.’ She sat down and began to unlace her sandals.

Beneath her tunic Brid was naked. She stood for a second on the rock, her body a pale contrast to her tanned arms and legs, then she leaped into the water with a splash and a delighted shriek.

Adam stood still. He caught his breath. He had seen the baby sisters of his friends sometimes without their clothes when their mothers bathed them before the fire, and he had always averted his eyes, particularly avoiding looking at the shockingly naked slit between their legs. He was still seriously intending to be a doctor, but he had never seen an older girl or a woman without clothes before, and now he had seen for a short moment when she stood untroubled on the rock this slim girl, young woman; seen her small firm breasts, the dark fuzz of hair between her legs, the provocative curve of hip and buttock before she leaped into the water.

He had never before considered how old Brid was. About his own age, he assumed, but she was his friend, his pal. He had never thought of her for a single moment as being like the giggling girls in Pittenross or Dunkeld, but his body, to his extreme embarrassment, was reacting by itself.

He stood where he was, mortified, the water dripping in pools around his feet as Brid flung back her hair, which had come free of its clip, treading water near him. ‘Come, A-dam,’ she called. ‘Come in. Nice.’

He smiled uncertainly, his eyes on her breasts as the water cascaded over her shoulders. Dark strands of hair plastered her back and clung to her pale skin.

‘Come.’ She had realised suddenly the effect she was having on him and her smile became provocative. She ran her fingers over her body, resting them for a moment on the pert nipples before sweeping them down over her hips. ‘A-dam. Come.’ Her voice had deepened. It held command. He hesitated for only a moment longer.