Visiting Liza and Phil and Juliette had become a regular activity. Every summer now they had done it for more than ten years. Sometimes Adam would go too, and sometimes Calum would go on his own on the train, but more usually Jane would pack her son into the car and they would set off together for the west.
Adam enjoyed being left alone at home. Without Jane the pressure was off. He could relax, smoke the odd pipe, go down to the pub, without her looking at him reproachfully, and then when she came back, leaving their son in Wales for the summer holidays, they would go off together for a break before Adam came back to settle to his work again. And it was in the summer, when the others had gone and left him on his own, that he dared to let the cat into the house.
Calum and Jane regarded their drive across England as an adventure. Neither of them would acknowledge it, but they found Adam a stifling influence sometimes. He was too strict, too ambitious for Calum as the years passed, pushing the boy ever harder at his school work. ‘One day you’ll be a doctor like me, my son,’ he’d say with a smile, and Calum would nod and agree. At first it was a joke to both of them. Neither knew nor cared where Calum’s talents lay; it didn’t matter. The boy was clever, his exam results were always good. But slowly the game had hardened into a pattern. The pressure had subtly increased and changed into total seriousness, and Calum’s true feelings were, his mother sometimes thought, completely ignored whenever the subject was discussed, with the boy too conscious of his father’s ambitions for him to stand up for himself. She had tried talking to him about it, but he smiled at her in the lovely gentle way he had, pushing his hair back out of his eyes, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Mum, I won’t let him push me into anything I don’t want him to.’ And with that she had to be content, sure that she would be able to tell if he were seriously unhappy. He was not like Adam. And as far as she could tell he was not like her either. There was an echo of her beloved father who had died four years ago, in her son, but only an echo. Where the rest of the quiet confident charm and the shy mannerisms originated she would never be able to guess.
There had been no more pregnancies. As the months had turned to years she gave up hoping for the miracle that would give Calum a brother or a sister and instead turned more and more of her attention to her son.
This particular summer, when Calum was due to choose which A levels he was going to study, she was determined that he and she should have a serious talk.
It was harder than she had anticipated to get him on his own. From the first moment that they had arrived at Pen-y-Ffordd he and Juliette had been off together for every moment of the day, leaping on two of the old rusty bicycles which had been rescued from a neighbour’s barn, doused in oil and pressed into service to get them into Hay or up into the hills.
‘Calum?’ Jane put her hand on his handlebars as the two of them pushed their parcels of sandwiches into the basket on Juliette’s bike. ‘I haven’t seen you at all this holidays.’ They were already two weeks into their six-week stay.
‘Oh, Mum.’ He gave her the winning smile which never failed to melt her heart. ‘Come on. You see me every day of the year. This is the hols. I only see Julie for a few weeks …’
Shrugging, she stood back. ‘All right. But this evening, can we talk? Please.’
He gave a quick frown. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’
‘No, there’s nothing wrong, I just want to discuss something with you.’ Away from your father. Away from home. Did she have to spell it out for him? She smiled. ‘Go on, both of you. Have a lovely day and I’ll see you this evening.’
‘But Aunt Jane, we were going to a party.’ Juliette flung her long golden hair back across her shoulders. She was wearing a pale blue shirt and tightly belted jeans.
‘And so you shall, Julie. I heard your father say he would drive you.’ Jane managed to stop herself sighing. ‘All I want is half an hour with Calum and then he is all yours.’ She watched them cycle up the steep pitch and heard their ringing laughter as they disappeared round the bend and out of sight beneath the green canopy of overhanging hedges.
Walking slowly back towards the farmhouse she paused to lean on the orchard gate. Was part of the weight in her heart because she was a little jealous? They were so carefree, these children today. When she was their age the horizon had been black with the shadows of threatening war. Not that that had stopped her going to parties. It was Adam whose childhood seemed to have been the most bleak and lonely. He never talked about it much, but always in his stories there was the looming gloominess of the manse and his strict, humourless father.
The old man was in his early seventies now, still living in the manse, still alone. After the murder of his housekeeper he had employed no one else to look after him. They had never been to visit him, not once, in all the years they had been married, in spite of Jane’s pleas and Calum’s curiosity to see his father’s home and meet his grandfather. Since the wedding they had seen the old man only once when he had made the journey south to be present at Calum’s christening. He had stayed one night, his sober, black and unsmiling demeanour not endearing him to the guests at the party after the ceremony, and then he had asked Adam to drive him to the station. Father and son, out of sight of Jane, had spoken barely a word. They shook hands on the platform and Adam had not waited to see his father board the train.
‘Penny for them.’ Liza had wandered out into the sunshine and come to stand beside Jane at the gate.
Jane jumped. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Worrying about your old man?’
‘No.’ Jane smiled. ‘That’s one thing I don’t have to do, thank God. No, I was worrying about Calum.’
‘He seems fine to me.’
‘He is. I just wonder sometimes if Adam isn’t too strict with him. You know, it’s strange. He hated his own father so much for his strictness, and yet there’s more than a little of that dreadful straightlaced side to him as well.’
‘There is?’ Liza’s eyes twinkled. ‘Then he must have changed a lot!’
Jane frowned. She still hated references to Liza’s and Adam’s past together. ‘Only in some ways. Adam is so set on Calum becoming a doctor, too.’
‘And doesn’t he want to?’
‘That’s it. I don’t know. I have a feeling deep inside that he only says he does to please his father; that what he would really like is something quite different, but I don’t know what. He doesn’t confide in me about the future.’
‘He’s so young, Jane. Does he have to make up his mind yet?’
‘You know he does. He has to choose his A level subjects.’ Jane shook her head crossly. She hated hearing herself being so fussy.
Liza laughed. ‘Forget it for the holiday. Let the children have some fun without thinking about the future.’
A stray breeze had found its way down from the dark shoulder of the mountain and into the orchard, stirring the leaves on the trees. Liza shivered. ‘Come on in and have a cup of coffee, then let’s find Phil and see if he’d like to come into Brecon with us.’
Calum and Juliette had hidden their bicycles in some bracken near the road and struck off on foot across the hillside, their sandwiches in a bag on Calum’s shoulder. The hot sun was beating down on their heads as they walked and they headed instinctively for the distant trees where a narrow valley cut up into the hillside, its steep sides bordering a tumbling brook of ice-cold mountain water.
‘What does your mum want?’ Juliette turned to him, dancing at his side like an eager child.
He shrugged and glanced heavenwards. ‘She’s worrying as usual. She’s got it into her head that I don’t really want to be a doctor. That I’m only saying I do to please Dad.’
‘And are you?’ She turned cornflower-blue eyes on him, squinting in the sunlight.
He shrugged again. ‘Dunno. Maybe. I’ve got to be something.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘I expect so. I don’t want to think about it yet. Dad is always so serious. He never lets up. You’d think he could find time to come down here with us for a week or so in the summer, wouldn’t you? But no, he’d rather be at home on his own. That’s how much he cares about us.’ He kicked viciously at a stone on the narrow sheep path through the mountain grass.
‘He’s very fond of you, Calum.’ She was serious for a moment, sensing the hurt behind his words. ‘That’s not why he doesn’t come. I expect he has to work so hard because he is a doctor. They don’t seem to have many holidays and days off. Our doctor in Hay is always there. I don’t think he ever goes away. I bet Uncle Adam would rather be here with you if he could.’
‘Maybe.’ Calum’s mouth turned down in a pout. ‘Then perhaps I don’t want to be a doctor. I don’t want to work all the time without ever having a day off. That’s no fun.’
‘No, it isn’t!’ She caught his hand. ‘Come on. Enough serious talk. Forget your father. Forget everything. I’ll race you to the nant over there and we’ll have our sandwiches out of the sun.’
They had a favourite spot near a small pool where the nut-brown water lay deep at the foot of a cascade. The rocks near it were covered in sun-warmed moss and they sat there, dangling their feet in the water which was freezing cold. ‘Are you going to swim?’ Juliette turned to him as they stared down at their reflections.
He nodded. ‘You?’
She grinned. ‘The perfect way to work up an appetite.’ Under her jeans and shirt she was wearing a tiny blue nylon bra and matching pants, her slim figure a pale contrast to her tanned hands, arms and face. Calum smiled. ‘I like the bikini.’
‘It’s not!’
‘Well, near enough.’ He had had the foresight to wear swimming trunks under his own jeans. Cautiously he slid into the water, gasping at the coldness. ‘Come on in.’
‘You won’t splash me?’ She smiled conquettishly.
‘Only a little.’ He had his father’s eyes with their long dark lashes. ‘And only if you are longer than two minutes getting in!’ He struck out with one or two strokes across the small pool and his feet found the rock bottom almost at once. Balancing on the slippery weed he stood up and turned to face her. ‘I’m counting! One!’
‘No!’ She shrieked and put one toe in the water.
‘Two.’
‘It’s so cold!’
‘Three.’ He put his hand in the water and curved it into a scoop.
‘No, Calum, no! I’m coming!’ She held her breath and slid down the mossy rock. The coldness of the water took her breath away and she was gasping as she waded and then swam towards him.
‘Well done!’ His eyes were sparkling. ‘Did you know the water made your bra go all transparent?’
She clapped her hands over her breasts. ‘Calum, you beast!’
‘Take it off. Go on. You might as well.’ He reached forward to flick a strand of her long hair off her shoulder. ‘Why not? No one is going to see.’
‘You will.’ Her indignation was only half serious.
‘I’ve seen you naked before.’
‘When?’ She was indignant.
‘Loads of times. When you were in the bath as a baby.’
‘We shared a bath, so I saw you too.’
‘In the sandpit behind the barn.’
‘I was only three.’
‘When I walked into the bathroom last summer and you were painting your toenails …’
‘All right, all right!’ She had blushed scarlet. ‘But I’m not taking it off now.’ She fell back onto the water and kicked her feet up and down, showering him with spray.
‘No!’ Laughing, he dived for her toes. ‘I could have it off you!’
‘You mustn’t.’
Her voice rose to a shriek as she tried to find her feet and failed, going under. She rose choking and Calum stood up, concerned. ‘Are you all right? I’m sorry.’ He put his arm round her shoulders. As she coughed and spluttered his fingers strayed lightly to the fastening on her bra. By the time she realised what he was doing it was too late. With a shout of triumph he had snatched it away from her clutching arms and danced out of reach.
For a moment her face registered dismay then slowly she began to laugh. She stretched her arms above her head, and arched her back thrusting her small, dripping breasts at him, then slowly she reached for her pants and began to edge them down. ‘Go on. If I do it, you must too.’
‘Me?’ For a moment he hesitated, aware of what the waist-high water concealed.
‘Go on.’ She was naked now, still laughing.
In one movement he swept off his own pants and swinging them round his head he hurled them at the rocks and began to wade towards her, his eyes on hers. Gently he drew her to him and their bodies touched, their cold skin taking fire as their lips met. Without a word they waded to the bank and there he drew her down on the grass with him, his hands on her shoulders, then on her breasts, his lips everywhere as she caught him to her in return.
On the far side of the pool the shadows stirred. The figure of a woman seemed to hover for a moment near the water, then it was gone.
Half an hour later, they were sitting side by side on the shingle which skirted the pool. They were both cold, their skin pimpled from the chilled water and they pressed together for warmth, but neither wanted to go and fetch their clothes. Calum linked his arms around her body and buried his face in her straggly hair. His teeth were chattering. ‘That was fantastic.’
She nodded. ‘I knew it would be.’
‘You knew?’ He drew back slightly so that he could see her face.
‘I’ve often thought about it. Haven’t you?’
He gave a small laugh. ‘I suppose I have. Yes.’
‘You and me. It was meant to be. I always knew I would marry you.’
He hugged her. ‘Me too.’ He was silent for a moment, gazing into the depth of the pool which was rippled now only by the trickle of water sliding down the black rocks from the open mountainside above them. ‘Except sometimes I think of you as my sister.’
She giggled. ‘Incest. That makes it more wicked.’
‘And you like being wicked?’
She threw herself back suddenly. ‘Do you have to ask?’ She put her hand over her eyes and gave a deep sigh of animal content. ‘We mustn’t tell the olds of course. It will have to be our secret until you’ve taken your exams. Can you wait until the holidays each time?’
He stared down at her body. The pale skin was shivering, and her lips were going blue. Suddenly he laughed. ‘I can wait. But there won’t be a holiday if you get pneumonia and die. Come on. Let’s get dressed and run to get warm. Don’t forget there are weeks and weeks before the end of this holidays before we have to think of the next.’
Jane glanced at her son as they strolled together down the orchard. He had already changed for the party and she eyed his slim tall figure in the clean jeans and white shirt with approval. Something had changed in him. He was more confident, more grown up than she had thought. ‘I don’t want to spoil the holidays by worrying for weeks.’ She suddenly felt nervous; at a disadvantage. ‘I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about the future and then we’ll forget it till we get home.’
He was as tall as her now, she realised. In fact, perhaps half an inch taller.
He had stopped beside her and she found he was holding her gaze, a faintly amused expression somewhere in his eyes. ‘It’s about your exams, Calum,’ she floundered on. ‘I don’t want you to feel that your father is forcing you to choose something you don’t really want to do. He has always been so single-minded for you. I suspect sometimes he doesn’t realise what he is doing. He has such a strong perception of what he wants himself …’ She stopped as he put his arm round her shoulders.
‘Mummy, I shan’t let him railroad me into anything I don’t want.’ He gave her that beautiful smile which always made her go weak at the knees with love and protectiveness. ‘Give me a little credit for strength of character, will you? I’m choosing sciences because, at the moment, I do want to go into medicine. I don’t think I shall want to go into general practice like Dad. I think I’d like to do research, or specialise in something, but for the time being I am sure that science is what I want, all right? Now, forget it. Don’t worry. Have a lovely time with Liza for the summer and let Julie and me get out of your hair and explore the mountains and go to the parties she’s arranged, so that in September we can all get back to work refreshed!’ He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and turned away.
She watched him lope back across the orchard and saw in the distance the bright flash of Juliette’s hair as she appeared from behind the house. She had been waiting for him and already Liza had the car engine running to drop them down the hill into town. Slowly she shook her head. He had handled her very well, really. She ought to be proud of him. So why was she still feeling so uneasy?
With a sigh Adam shut his notebooks and his diary and sat back in his leather-upholstered chair. His study was feeling stuffy and rather dusty. It was two weeks since Jane and Calum had gone and his first guilty euphoria at having the house to himself had worn off to be replaced by a sense of ennui which was very unlike him. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the clean, meticulously-positioned blotter and rested his forehead on his fingertips, gently massaging his temples.
Tucked into the top drawer of his desk was a letter from his father. Thomas Craig wrote only once a year, on Adam’s birthday, enclosing always a ten shilling note ‘to buy himself something’, an incongruous present, Adam always thought with a wry shake of the head, from one reasonably well off adult man to another, who was now, let’s face it, over forty – just. It did however keep the space between them impersonal and distanced as ever. Thomas’s present for his grandson was the same. Ten shillings on every birthday. Nothing at Christmas.
The arrival of a letter this morning, out of sequence, was a shock. For the whole day Adam had carried it around in his pocket, not wanting to open it, knowing already in some part of himself what it would say. Then this evening, before he sat down to bring his records up to date, as he did meticulously every evening, he had pulled the white envelope out of his pocket and stared at it. His father’s handwriting, in its accustomed blue ink, was as firm as ever but the contents were as he suspected, indicative of a weakening.
I thought it best to tell you the news as soon as I knew myself. I have a cancer which is not worth the operation. There is no need for you or Jane to bother yourselves with me. My affairs are in order, my will, of which you are the sole beneficiary, is lodged with James and Donaldson in Perth. God bless you, my son, and your wife, and Calum.
Yr affectionate father, Thomas Craig.
Adam bit his lip. He wasn’t sure how he felt. He read the letter twice, then put it in the drawer, turning the small key but leaving it as always in the lock, and went back to his work. It was two hours later that he had closed his books and sat back to think. Should he go to Scotland? His mind wouldn’t register. His father didn’t say what kind of cancer, how far advanced, what he intended to do for his care, whether he was going to remain at the manse, whether he was going to retire. There was so much unsaid in the letter! He sighed angrily and then caught himself sternly. He was angry with his father for being ill. For being about to die. For making a plea, however inadvertently, for Adam’s attention, and that, in Adam’s eyes, made him every bit as cold a fish as his father had been to him. He found himself wishing suddenly that Jane were there. She would know what to do. She would put her arms round him and hug him in that warm motherly way she had, and make him feel cared for and safe and strong. Strong enough to deal with anything the world threw at him, even his father.
With another sigh he leaned across the desk and was drawing the telephone towards him when he heard the small scratch at the window. He put down the receiver and swivelled his chair to face the garden with a smile. ‘There you are, puss. I thought you’d deserted me.’ Levering himself to his feet he walked across to the French doors and unlocked them. The tabby cat trotted in past him, brushing against his legs as it did so and jumped on a chair. He smiled. ‘So, puss. Where have you been?’ It usually came when Jane was away. It seemed to sense her hostility and never appeared when she was there. He had asked tentatively several times during their marriage whether they could keep a cat or a dog – he still remembered with wistful love the puppy he had had for such a short time as a boy, which Jeannie had taken in, but Jane had shaken her head.
He stooped and touched the cat’s head gently. It looked up at him and then, standing on its back legs it pawed his chest, rubbing its head under his chin. He smiled and scooped it into his arms. ‘So, sweetheart, what am I going to do about my old father, you tell me that. Should I go up to Pittenross?’ He carried it back to the window and stood staring out across the lawn. The cat stiffened. It appeared to be listening. ‘I haven’t been to Scotland for so long,’ he went on quietly. ‘I wanted to put it all behind me. The manse, the kirk. But I suppose I’ll have to face it one day. Perhaps that’s best. To face one’s nightmares.’ He was running his fingers up and down the warm silky spine. The cat began to purr. ‘That’s what my psychiatrist friends would tell me, I expect. Dig deep and see what hidden traumas there are in my life! Dr Freud would have a lot to say, I suspect, about my relationship with my mother and father.’ His hand moved up to the cat’s ears and he scratched gently at the animal’s ruff and then bent his head to drop a kiss on the top of its head. ‘Come on. I’d better ring my Janie. Hey, why did you do that!’ He let the cat fall suddenly from his arms as it lashed out and raked at his face with razor-sharp claws. He put his hand to his cheek and his fingers came away dripping blood. ‘You little devil. Get out! Go on, buzz off! I was going to fetch you some milk after my call!’ He turned away from the door, dabbing frantically with his handkerchief as the blood poured down his face, staining his stiff white collar and blue striped shirt. ‘Hell and damnation!’ He hurried to the door of his study and ran upstairs, trying to stem the flow before it ruined his shirt altogether. Tearing it off, he flung it into the wash basin and ran the cold tap. By the time he had patched his face with sticking plaster, changed into a casual shirt and sweater and poured himself a stiff whisky it was beginning to grow dark. He wandered back into his study and stood for a moment looking out of the open French doors across the garden, sniffing the night-time scent of stock and roses. Then he turned back towards the desk and picked up the phone.
Jane drew up in the deserted street and turned off the engine. She was stiff and exhausted after the long drive and for a moment she sat where she was, looking at the house. The windows were in darkness. She had thought long and hard after Adam’s call two nights before, and then she had made her decision. ‘I can’t let him go up to Scotland on his own. If I drive back, can I leave Calum with you, Liza?’
‘Of course you can!’ Liza had hugged her. ‘You know you don’t even have to ask. Leave him as long as you like. The whole holidays if you want. I know the children love it. They always get on so well and you’ve done it often enough before. It will give you and Adam some well deserved time alone again.’
She had rung Adam back twice to tell him her decision but he was out on calls so in the end she had decided to surprise him, driving through the night to avoid traffic and arriving home at four-thirty in the morning. She climbed slowly out of the car and stretched, breathing in the sweet smell of suburban gardens, so different from the cool wild air of the Welsh hills, then she dived into the car and pulled out her suitcase and her hold-all. Slamming the door and locking it she made her way up the path and reached into the pocket of her jacket for her keys.
The house was all dark inside and she put a hand out to the hall light switch, closing the door silently behind her.
The steps of the staircase creaked beneath her weight as she tiptoed up. Their bedroom door was open and she went in, reaching to switch on the small lamp on the tall chest of drawers just inside the door. Adam was fast asleep, and as her eyes adjusted to the sudden light she realised that there was a second head on the pillow beside his, a woman’s, her long dark hair fanned across the sheet.
‘Adam!’ Her anguished shriek woke him with a start and he sat up, still half asleep.
Jane caught at the back of the chair near her, shaking. She was weak with shock. There was no woman.
‘What, in the name of God, are you doing, giving me a fright like that!’ Adam threw his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his dressing gown. He was naked. He never slept naked when she was in the twin bed next to him. They had bought the beds after Jane’s miscarriage when, for a time, her pain and restlessness and misery had driven Adam away and somehow they had never brought the old double bed back into the room. It was something she had often regretted. She watched as he pulled on his robe and knotted it round his waist.
There was a livid red scratch across his cheek and his hair was rumpled like Calum’s. ‘What on earth are you doing here in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?’
‘I thought I’d give you a surprise.’ She grimaced, kicking off her shoes. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me. I didn’t want you to have to go to Scotland on your own.’
‘I am pleased to see you.’ He came and put his arms round her and kissed her cheek, thanking God silently that she would never know how, sleepily, he had welcomed the cat into his bed, not wondering how it had got back into the house or if it would attack him again, but instead feeling the sensuous softness of its fur as it slid down under the sheet and nestled against his loins. Nor would she ever know about the violently erotic dream from which she had woken him. The dream about Brid.
Brid sat up in bed with a start, her body cold and shaking. A-dam. She had been with him. In his bed. She closed her eyes and took a deep slow breath, trying to steady the thundering in her chest and pulses. Around her the other women in the dormitory were asleep. She could hear their breathing, their silence, their groans and their sobs. She had come back to her body too fast and it had shaken her badly. She sat up, pushing the hair off her face and hugged her knees miserably. It had been so good. As good as she remembered. When he welcomed her, like that, she could overcome the strange emanations from the amulet beside his bed which for so long had held her back inside her dreams and kept her away from the house where he lived. He had held her to him and stroked her shoulders and murmured lovingly as his lips sought hers in the darkness beneath the sheet.
Then the bitch woman had arrived. Not the one with red-gold hair – his Liza. The other one. Jane. The woman with hair the colour of old dead grass who smelled of soap like the stuff they used in the hospital, the mother of A-dam’s son. Looking up at the ceiling above her bed she felt her fingers curl into claws. That woman did not make A-dam happy. She did not look after him. She went away without him and left him alone in a house which in her view was without colour or warmth or beauty.
Sometimes out of curiosity she had reached out over the years to Liza, questing, still resenting her, needing to know if she were still a threat. But Liza was strong. Far stronger than A-dam. And most of the time she was shielded by a blinding force field which repelled and weakened and Brid withdrew. It was not worth the expenditure of energy it would take to pierce the shield. One day, she promised herself, she would deal with Liza, the woman who had taken A-dam from her. But not now. Now she preferred to concentrate on A-dam himself or, when Liza had forgotten her shield, to peer at her from the darkness and amuse herself with silent threats and promises and spy, thoughtfully, on A-dam’s child and the girl who was now his lover.
At the end of the dormitory a door opened and she saw the light of a torch shining into the dark cavern between the beds. Silently she slid down under her blankets and shut her eyes. If they found you awake they would bring the needle and put it in your arm and then you would sleep for a long, long time, only to wake confused and dry-mouthed without having dreamed or travelled or even rested. And days would turn into weeks and weeks into months and years again without you knowing they had gone. She had learned a long time ago to play quiet and asleep a lot of the time, in this strange world in which she had been ensnared.
Footsteps progressed slowly up the ward. She could hear the soft jingle of the keys at the woman’s belt and as she drew closer she could smell the odd carrion smell on her breath. She shuddered and squeezed her eyes more tightly closed. The nurses in this strange place were afraid of her. They did not like her. And she did not like them. But this one, Deborah Wilkins, she especially hated. The woman sensed something of Brid’s otherness, her spirit which could never be entirely captured, and her resentment had turned to sadistic persecution.
The footsteps stopped at the end of her bed and the woman walked towards her. Brid held her breath. For a moment there was total silence, then Nurse Wilkins turned away and resumed her hourly patrol of the regimented beds.
The next day was one of those when Brid went into Dr Furness’s office and sat talking to him while they drank a cup of tea. She liked this other doctor who seemed to be in charge of the place in which she lived. She trusted him. He was wise and gentle and she didn’t mind that he wrote down the things she said to him. Gradually, as her confidence in him grew stronger and her loneliness amongst the other inmates became greater, she confided in him more often.
‘So, Brid, my dear. Did you go travelling again last night?’ Dr Furness smiled up at her as he opened the now bulging file with her name on the front. He had seen her psyche strengthen and grow as the effects of the drugs wore off and he was pleased. Here was a patient who responded well to a psychotherapeutic approach.
She nodded shyly. ‘I went to see A-dam at his house.’
‘This is Dr Craig?’ He glanced back through the pages of small neat black writing.
She nodded. ‘The woman was away still and I went to him. To his bed. He was pleased to see me. But then …’ She shook her head mournfully. For a while she was silent, sipping her tea, then she reached for the slice of chocolate cake which he had brought in for her. He smiled indulgently as she sank her teeth into it. It was several long minutes before he decided he had better prompt her again. ‘Then what happened?’ he asked.
‘His woman, Jane, came back. It was still night-time and we were asleep. She let herself into the house and came upstairs quietly, so she caught me.’
‘I see.’ He frowned. ‘And what did she say when she found you in bed with her husband?’
‘She was not pleased. She screamed.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I ran away from the room and then I came back to my bed here.’
‘And how long had you been away do you think?’
She took another bite of cake, then she shrugged. ‘Time is not the same here and there. When I woke up the horse-face nurse came in. She looked at me with her torch and I pretended to be asleep.’ She chewed for a moment. ‘Did you ask her to make sure I was there?’
He smiled. ‘I worry about you, my dear. Sometimes I wonder if you could get into trouble on your travels.’
‘If there is trouble I come back to my bed. My cord is a strong one.’
He nodded. ‘We’ve decided this is your astral cord, yes?’ He made a note. ‘I would very much like to see you when you do this travelling. I haven’t met anyone yet who does it as you do and who can talk about it.’
‘Why not?’ She frowned. ‘It is very easy. Especially when things are not very nice where you are. You can go away. I do not like this place.’ She turned a look of such abject misery on him that he was for a moment quite shaken. ‘I want to go to A-dam’s house to live. He would want me to, I know it.’
Dr Furness kept to himself the guess that Dr Craig, if he existed at all, would almost certainly not want this beautiful, wild and completely insane young woman visiting him.
‘Tell me more about Dr Craig’s house, my dear. It interests me to hear about it.’ He picked up his pen again. In his file there was an address which he had looked up for a Dr Adam Craig. It would be interesting to go and see the man, he had decided, see the house which this strange young woman claimed to visit in her dreams, and ask him if he knew a dark-haired lustful beauty who, after more than ten years in a mental hospital in north London, still looked not a day over twenty-one.
He had asked her once why she didn’t want to go home. She had sat for a long time in silence and then shaken her head. ‘They will kill me if I go back.’
‘Kill you? Why?’
‘Because I left. Because I came here, to your world. Because of A-dam.’
‘And your people are Romanies?’ He had asked her before, and she did not seem to recognise the word.
She shook her head again. ‘I have told you, I come from the people of the north wind.’
He wrote it down again and circled the phrase with his pen. It sounded wild, romantic and vague. Just like her. He had mentioned her claim at home and to his astonishment his Classics student son had reacted at once. ‘That is what Herodotus called the Celts.’
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out an atlas, borrowed this time from his daughter. ‘Do you recognise places on maps?’ he asked casually.
Brid shrugged.
He opened the book at the map of Great Britain and pushed it across towards her. ‘Do you see? England Scotland and Wales. You told me you were in Edinburgh.’ He stabbed the map. ‘There. You see?’
She stared at it blankly and shook her head. ‘Catriona showed me one of these. It did not have Craig Phádraig on it. I saw Abernethy where my uncle sometimes went and the village where A-dam lived.’
‘So, you lived in Scotland. Was that all your life? From a small girl?’
She nodded doubtfully.
‘And you wandered round the mountains, you said.’
She nodded again.
‘And you were at college?’
‘Like A-dam. Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘But where are your parents, Brid? Your brother? Your uncle? Why do they not try to find you?’
‘I do not want them to find me. Broichan will kill me.’ She could see him sometimes, shouting. He was still trying to reach her, hammering against the strange veil which separated them, like the glass in the hospital windows, calling at her to come to him. She had broken the sacred geas, the taboo which forbade the traversing of the worlds, and the punishment was death. She leaned across the desk and closed his atlas. ‘Why do you not let me go to A-dam? Why must I stay here? I do not like this place.’
‘I know, Brid. It’s very hard.’ It was all there in her records. She had been committed after being found wandering in London. There had been a few notes on her life in Edinburgh – admission to the Royal Infirmary, one to a mental hospital in Morningside and before that nothing.
He closed the file. ‘I have to go, Brid, my dear. We’ll talk again. Now, I want you to be good. Shouting and threatening the nurses does not help, you know. If you want to leave here, you have to prove to us that you can behave and look after yourself.’
She wandered out into the garden later. There she felt safe. The others didn’t seem to like the trees and the flowers. Perhaps she should tell Dr Furness about the trees and flowers in A-dam’s garden. They were beautiful.
Ivor Furness did not realise until he was almost there that his journey to his second cousin’s wedding that weekend in Harpenden would take him through St Albans and almost down the street where Dr Adam Craig lived. The address which he had found in the medical directory was engraved on his heart – the suburban house in the quiet street with the flowering cherry outside and the coloured glass in the front door which were described so fondly by Brid. ‘A detour. Only a moment,’ he told his surprised family as he swung his car out of the main road.
And there it was. The cherry tree, the blossom gone now and the leaves green and heavy with summer. The door with its inset panes of stained glass depicting an Art Nouveau white lily just as she had described it. Of course that did not prove anything. She might have been there before, as a child or as a young woman. She might have seen photographs.
Leaving his family in the car he walked up the path, raised his hand to the doorbell and rang.
It was the next door neighbour who told him that Dr and Mrs Craig were in Scotland.
‘I told you not to come.’ Thomas Craig opened the front door and stood barring the way into the shadowy hall. The house behind him smelled faintly of TCP.
‘I had to see how you were, Father.’ Adam resisted the sudden childlike urge to turn and run away. ‘Jane and I were worried by your letter.’
‘There was no reason to worry. Everything is under control.’ The old man pushed his chin forward slightly and scowled. Then unexpectedly he relented and stepped back. ‘Well, now you’re here, you’d best come in, I suppose.’
The house was spotless and tidy, his study the only room which looked even remotely lived in.
‘I thought he was going to send us away again,’ Jane whispered as they stood in the cold kitchen looking round. ‘And I’m almost sorry he didn’t. The hotel would have been better than this morgue.’
Adam shuddered. ‘This is where Jeannie died.’ He looked down as though expecting to see the bloodstains still on the floor. His voice broke and Jane put her hand gently on his arm.
‘There’s no sense in thinking about it.’ She sighed, and reaching for the kettle she glanced round. ‘The range isn’t lit. Is there an electric ring or something? I can’t think how your father could have stayed here alone after it happened.’
‘There is a cooker in the pantry there.’ Thomas appeared behind them. In the sunlight streaming in through the windows Adam saw for the first time how grey and drawn his father’s face was. ‘I never light the range.’ He walked over and pulled the back door open, allowing more light to flood the dark kitchen. ‘I stayed here, young woman, because it was my home and my parish. Where else was I to go? Going would not bring Mrs Barron back.’
He watched Jane carry the kettle through into the pantry and put it on the Baby Belling she found next to the meat safe.
‘How long will you be staying?’
Jane gave him a faint smile. ‘Only as long as you would like us to, Father-in-law. We just wanted to make sure you were all right.’
‘I’m fine.’ He frowned. ‘As you see.’ He turned away to the door. ‘When you’ve made the tea, bring it through to my study and we’ll have a wee bit talk before you both go on your way.’
Jane gave a small chuckle. ‘I think that can be counted as a success, don’t you?’
Adam picked up the tray and followed Jane back down the passage to his father’s study. ‘I thought maybe Jane and I could stay here a night, Father?’ he said as he laid the tray on Thomas’s desk. ‘You must have room in this big house. We won’t put you to any trouble. In fact we’ll take you out to a meal this evening at the hotel, what do you think of that?’
They were given the room that had been his parents’. It was cold, impersonal, the cupboards empty, the dressing table bare. Thomas now slept in Adam’s old room. But they could not persuade him to go with them to the hotel and it was alone that they sat down in the restaurant that evening and ordered cold salmon and new potatoes and peas accompanied by a fairly nice and very expensive bottle of wine.
‘It must be strange, coming back after all this time.’ Jane had been watching her husband’s face as he stared out of the window at the slow broad sweep of the river at the end of the lawn.
‘I beg your pardon?’ He dragged himself back from his thoughts with an effort and nodded. ‘It is. We should have brought Calum.’
It was something she had also been thinking, but it was too late now. She shook her head slowly. ‘So, are you going to take me up to see your famous Picts’ stone with its weird carvings? I jolly well hope so.’ She reached forward for the bottle and topped up both their glasses. ‘You are going to, Adam, aren’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s quite a climb. I was young and fit in those days.’
‘We’ll take a picnic. I can’t believe your father will miss us if we take ourselves off for a few hours. He really is a curmudgeonly old soul, isn’t he! How long has he got, has he told you?’
He shook his head. ‘Not long, I think. He’s got a drawer full of painkillers in his desk and another lot in the bathroom and they’re hefty ones. Poor Dad. I wouldn’t have wished this on him for anything.’
They left the manse in the late morning, leaving Thomas to walk stiffly over to the kirk. On Adam’s shoulder was a bag full of food and a bottle of white wine bought the night before from the hotel bar. He led the way across the river and up the steep path beneath the overhanging trees and shrubs, and within minutes was very out of breath. ‘This path wasn’t so steep in the old days, I’m sure it wasn’t.’
Jane laughed. ‘So, aren’t you sorry you didn’t join the squash club when I did?’ She danced a few steps ahead of him and then slowed again. ‘This is so beautiful, Adam. I can’t imagine anyone being lucky enough to live here all the time.’
‘It didn’t seem lucky at the time. I was miserable after Mother went.’
They stopped and stood looking down into the steep ravine where the river hurtled down the hillside in cascades of cold rainbow spray in the deflected sunlight of the overhanging trees. The roar of the water was deafening.
‘Come on. This way.’ Catching his breath he strode on ahead of her, following the path with difficulty in places, ducking beneath the pale green lichen which hung from the trees in ragged curtains. Once they were on the open hillside he stopped, panting again. ‘Up there. See?’
Jane followed his pointing hand and saw the stone silhouetted against the sky on the top of the ridge. ‘It’s certainly imposing.’
They were both panting when they reached it. Throwing the bag down on the ground, Adam bent over and touched his toes with a groan. ‘I’ve got a stitch! My God, I’m unfit. So, what do you think of it?’
‘Weird.’ Jane walked over and traced the patterns of the designs with her fingertip. ‘And it’s hundreds of years old, you say?’
‘More than a thousand.’ He smiled. ‘The Picts had this amazing reputation for being magicians and Druids and stuff. They really caught my imagination. And this is a spooky place. The mist was always playing round the top of this ridge when I was young. I was an impressionable boy, on my own, prepared to believe in anything. And then I met Brid and …’ He paused, staring away down the hillside towards the valley.
‘And?’ Jane prompted.
‘And I used to follow her into what felt like another world. It was like some strange, wonderful adventure with me as the hero.’ He sat down on a rocky outcrop a few feet from her and went on staring into the distance. ‘I felt very bad when I left her and went to Edinburgh.’ He paused. He was trying very hard to put the image of Brid out of his head. It was a seductive, erotic image, an image linked to his dreams, linked in some way to the beautiful vicious cat he had befriended; it was an image which at the same time filled him with dread.
There was a long silence as they both stood watching a circling hawk. Suddenly it closed its wings and stooped out of sight into the high corrie and they were left in the intense silence of the heat. Behind them the summit of the mountain was a blaze of heather.
‘So, tell me what it means.’ She was standing again, her hand on the stone.
Don’t touch. Leave it alone.
For a moment he thought he had spoken out loud, but she didn’t move. Her hands were still tracing the deeply incised symbols, the Z rod, the crescent moon, the serpent, the mirror.
‘It’s a message to those who come after.’
‘And what does it say?’
‘It says this is a special place.’
Behind them, in the valley, the mist was creeping closer.
Liza was leaning on the orchard gate in the dusk, watching the bats swooping above the apple trees. She gave a deep sigh of contentment. From where she stood she could see the lights on in Philip’s barn. He had come in to have supper with her and the children, and then, almost before it was finished had gone out again, that particular intense preoccupied expression on his face which meant, though he might have been sitting at the table with them in the flesh, that his spirit had still been standing in front of the huge canvas of an abstract landscape on which he was working in the barn. He had slipped back there without a word, almost unnoticed, and he would be there all night, perhaps crawling into bed as it grew light, perhaps still painting when next morning she carried a cup of coffee over to the barn. He painted with an intensity which sometimes frightened her. When she had gently suggested that he slow up, that there was all the time in the world, he shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’ve wasted too much time. All those years teaching and running a department when I should have been painting. I can’t slow up, Liza, there’s too much to be done and too little time left.’
Her most recent portrait had been crated and shipped to Paris over six weeks ago now, and her studio was empty of work in progress. She pictured it as she stood in the dusk. It was swept and the paints and empty canvasses neatly stacked. She fished in the pocket of her cotton sweater for a pack of cigarettes and lit one, smelling the fragrant tobacco on the cool night air. This was the best time, when she was pregnant with a picture, waiting. She sketched all the time of course, and painted small things, watercolours, but the big formal portraits, the attempts to capture and lay bare a man or a woman’s soul, that was something which needed to be thought about and developed, sometimes over months. She was fortunate. She could pick and choose amongst the people who wanted her to paint them. She could read up about them and talk to them and then when she was ready begin on her preliminary sketches.
A slight breeze had risen from nowhere, whispering amongst the apple trees, stirring the seeding grasses. It was almost dark, but her eyes could pick out the silhouettes of the low hills on the far side of the valley where the occasional bright light moving across the landscape showed a car following the winding road alongside the Wye or turning up into the network of narrow lanes which threaded the dark countryside.
She shuddered suddenly and throwing down her cigarette ground it into the earth with her heel. The children had gone for a walk after supper, strolling up across the fields behind the house. She turned, her back against the mossy gate, and tried to see into the darkness of the slope behind the house, listening for their voices. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted.
Dreamily she began to walk back towards the house but halfway there she stopped. She would go into her studio and look round. It was almost there, the urge to start painting. In some part of her mind she had already selected the woman whom Juliette would describe as her victim; she was an elderly French poet, a woman of enormous learning and wisdom with a craggy, lived-in face which displayed a quite staggering beauty and the most piercing lovely eyes of anyone Liza had seen for a very long time. She turned and walked with sudden determination towards the studio and put her hand to the door. To her surprise it was open. She hesitated. Had she left it like that? She doubted it. Usually she locked it, but now while there was no painting in progress perhaps she had let her usual concentration slip. Or perhaps Philip had come over to borrow something – he often did, lifting without shame her most expensive pigments or a precious sketch book as the fury with which he worked consumed him.
She pushed open the door and looked into the cavernous darkness. Parts of the barn roof had been removed and replaced by glass to give her the north-facing light she needed. Even in the dark there was a luminosity about the interior of the building. She stared round as her hand reached for the light switches and it was then she heard a stifled giggle. She froze, every sense alert. For a moment there was silence, then she heard a murmur coming from the far corner where her old sofa, covered by a brilliantly-coloured kelim, stood back against the wall. Suddenly knowing what she was going to find she smacked her hand down the bank of light switches, throwing the barn into brilliant light.
Calum and Juliette were lying together naked on the sofa. Beside them on the floor was a half-full bottle of white wine. Next to it, another, empty and on its side, showed that their consumption in the relatively short time since supper had been rapid. For a moment neither of them moved, then they leaped from the sofa. Juliette grabbed at the kelim, holding it in front of her, her face set in a defiant scowl whilst Calum after a frantic search had grabbed his jeans, and with his back to Liza dragged them on and hauled up the zip. When he turned round his face was scarlet. ‘Aunt Liza, I can explain.’
‘I don’t think anything needs explaining, thank you, Calum.’
Her first blinding fury that they had somehow desecrated her work place was being replaced in quick succession by anguish that the children had shown so plainly that they were no longer children, sympathy with their embarrassment which said more eloquently than any words that they were, terror at what Philip would say, horror at the thought of having to explain to Adam and Jane and a terrible urge to laugh at their pathetic, frightened-rabbit expressions.
‘You won’t tell Father?’ Calum’s plea as he reached for his shirt broke into her racing thoughts. ‘Please. He’d kill me.’
She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t do that, Calum.’ She took a deep breath and reached for her cigarettes again. ‘I think you’d better give me some of that wine while I think how I should react.’ Her brain was racing.
I’ve been young.
Damn it, I made love on this same sofa to his father!
Yes, but they are only children.
Supposing she gets pregnant.
We’d cope.
We always do.
‘Mum.’ Juliette had somehow managed with complete dignity to slip on her panties and the huge man’s shirt she had taken to wearing. She poured her mother a glass of wine and then one for herself. Apart from her bright eyes and the slight flush on her cheeks, which Liza suspected came from her interlude with Calum rather than too much wine, she appeared quite calm. ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have used your studio.’ She had focused unerringly on the most – and the least – important thing. ‘Don’t worry about us. We were careful. And besides, we are going to get married.’ She smiled beatifically. ‘You mustn’t tell Daddy, or Calum’s parents, because they wouldn’t understand. But you do, don’t you?’
Artfully managed, Liza thought. As she sipped her wine she found her mind was a cheerful blank. ‘I’ll have to decide what to do,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll have to think.’
Juliette’s face broke into a brilliant smile. Her mother always said that when she was about to cave in, but needed to save face. She dropped a kiss on Liza’s head. ‘You’re a darling. I knew you’d understand. Aunt Jane is such a fuddy-duddy she would probably have kittens.’ She caught Calum’s hand and pulled him close. ‘Uncle Adam would understand, I know it. You and he were lovers, weren’t you?’ Her eyes sparkled even more.
‘Julie, that’s an outrageous suggestion.’ Liza wondered if she was blushing. She was suddenly wishing she hadn’t turned on all the lights, they threw such a pitiless, hard illumination on the scene.
‘Calum and I always thought you were. We used to discuss it, didn’t we, Cal? We thought it meant we were nearly brother and sister and that was nice when we were children. But it would be incestuous now, wouldn’t it!’ She poured herself some more wine. She was drinking it too fast. ‘So we are lovers instead! It’s perfect. It brings everything full circle, especially if Cal goes to Edinburgh to read medicine like Uncle Adam.’
A sudden draught found its way through the open door and Liza felt her skin icing over. ‘Julie –’
‘No, Mum, don’t be stuffy. It’s all perfect.’ The girl took another gulp from the glass and twirled round in a little dance, her long slender legs barely concealed by the dangling shirt-tails.
There were no shadows in the barn now. Every corner, every huge oak beam in the roof was clearly visible. Liza glanced round. Was it the mention of Adam that had done it? Or the scent of lust and wine and the warm summer night …
Suddenly Meryn’s voice was echoing in her ears. It’s you she will go for, Liza. She has targeted you and she is still there, in the dark. I’m afraid that she thinks you took him away from her, and I don’t think she is the kind of woman who will forgive. Keep yourself protected. Never let her catch you unawares. However many years have passed, however much water has gone under the bridge, never turn your back on the shadows. One day she will find you again.
‘Let’s go to the house.’ Liza put down the glass. ‘Get dressed, Julie, before your father sees you. Quickly. I want to shut the barn up. Look at all the moths coming in.’
Don’t let them see you’re afraid. Don’t let her see you’re afraid. Remember the circle of protection, and throw it round these children that you love so much. She wouldn’t harm them, surely – not Adam’s son – but protect them all the same.
She could feel the eyes watching them now, even pinpoint where they were coming from. She spun round towards the door and stared, expecting to see the dark hair, the wild grey eyes, the hand with the wicked gleam of a blade. There was no one there. Outside the owl was hooting again and the night was still. It was as they were trooping outside and she had turned to switch off the lights and pull the door closed that she momentarily felt the cold whisper of silky fur against her bare leg.