On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

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      ‘Adam, where have you been?’

      Thomas Craig had spent the whole night searching the hill. Unshaven and exhausted, he stopped, leaning heavily on his walking stick, trying to recover his breath.

      ‘Father!’ Adam had been sitting on the sun-warmed rock, overwhelmed by sleepiness, too tired to face the long walk back to the manse. ‘I’m sorry.’ He scrambled to his feet, suddenly frightened. ‘I –’ He hesitated. ‘I got lost in the mist. I thought it better to stay put –’

      ‘You thought it better!’ Thomas’s fear and exhaustion were swiftly turning to anger. ‘You stupid, thoughtless, arrogant boy! Does it never cross your mind that I worry about you? Did it not cross your mind that I might have a sleepless night and spend the time searching for you?’ The guilt, the self-punishment with which he tormented himself endlessly, was taking more of his strength each day.

      ‘I did not think you would notice, Father.’ Adam took a step back, though his tone was defiant.

      ‘You – you didn’t think I’d notice!’

      ‘No, Father. You haven’t known whether I’m there or not for months.’ Somehow Adam maintained the courage to speak. ‘You haven’t noticed me at all.’

      He held his father’s gaze. Overhead a buzzard mewed plaintively as it rode a thermal higher and higher over the hill. Neither of them looked up.

      The silence stretched to one full minute, then another. Adam held his breath.

      Abruptly, his father’s shoulders slumped. He sat down on a rock and threw his stick down at his feet. Rubbing his hands across his cheeks he sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’ He kneaded his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I’ve behaved unforgivably.’

      Adam sat down some six feet from him. He said nothing, his eyes fixed on his father’s face. His fear and defiance had changed to a strangely adult compassion for this tortured man.

      At last Thomas looked up. ‘You should come home. Get some food.’

      Adam nodded. Slowly he stood up. He was stiff and tired, and suddenly he was starving.

      The sound of screams to which he woke were his own. Muffling his face in the pillow he stared out of the window at the rags of ivy which danced round the frame, tapping the glass and blowing, in green and cream streamers, in the brisk south-easterly wind.

      He had eaten a huge breakfast under the watchful eye of Jeannie Barron and then on her instructions made his way upstairs. He had only meant to lie down on the bed for a minute, with his book on butterflies in his hand, but overwhelmed with exhaustion and his own frustration and confusion, he had fallen instantly asleep.

      The dream had been terrifying. He had been swimming underwater. At first it was fun. His limbs moved with ease and he had been staring round, eyes wide, watching the streaming green weed and the swift-moving brown trout in the dark water. Then suddenly she was there in front of him. The hag. The ugliest face he had ever seen, grotesque, toothless, her eyes bagged, surrounded by carbuncles, her nose broad and fleshy, her hair a tangled mass of swirling watersnakes. He had opened his mouth to scream, limbs flailing desperately, and swallowed water. He was drowning, sinking, and all the time she was coming closer and she was laughing. And suddenly she wasn’t the hag any more. Her face was Brid’s face and her hair was Brid’s hair and he was staring at her naked body, reaching for her breasts even as he drowned.

      He sat up in bed, clutching his pillow to his chest, still fighting for air, and realised to his miserable embarrassment that he was sporting a huge erection. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed he ran to the window and heaved the heavy sash up. Sticking out his head he gasped for air. He stayed there until his breathing had calmed and he was himself again, then he turned back into the room. He wondered if his father had heard. He was not to know that downstairs his father had closed his ears to the boy’s tormented shouts, and sitting at his desk in the ground floor study had felt the hot slow tears trickle down his own cheeks.

      The next day was the Sabbath. Adam had not wanted to go to the kirk. He had hung back on the path as the congregation had filed into the old stone building, wondering if he dared duck out of sight around the trees and run down through the kirkyard to the broad slow-moving river. Then Jeannie had come, Ken at her side, and somehow they had swept Adam inside with them and into the manse pew. Adam sat motionless, his eyes on his father’s snowy-white bands as Thomas stood above him in the pulpit. The boy was shaking. If his father could not see what was going on inside him, God certainly could. Adam was terrified. His skin was clammy with guilt, his hands clutched between his knees, his scalp crawling with terror as he thought about Brid and his dreams and what he had done. And slowly at the back of his mind he began to wonder if what his mother had done had been as bad and whether she like him would go to hell.

      As they stood for the hymns he found his mouth was dry and his voice came out as a thin squeak. When the service was over, his face was so white he was able to slide away pleading a headache without even the observant Jeannie questioning the truth of СКАЧАТЬ