On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ