On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

      The dog heard him.

      ‘That man should be locked up!’ Ken Barron was pouring water from the pans on the range into the hip bath before the fire. ‘He ought to be reported.’

      Jeannie shook her head. Her lips were tight. ‘No, Ken. Let be. I shall deal with this myself.’ She had had to fight back the tears when she saw the state of the boy.

      The bath had been the only way. He couldn’t sit down in it, but she had him kneel in his clothes whilst she poured jugs of water over the thin shoulders and slowly worked first the shirt and then the shorts free of the dried blood.

      When at last the wounds were clean and she had soothed them with Germolene she put one of her husband’s clean shirts on the boy, cursing the roughness of the linen as she saw him wince, then she gave him some broth and put him in the press-bed in the corner of the room.

      What she had to say to the minister would keep until morning. He was not going to get away with what he had done this time.

      ‘Don’t be a fool, Jeannie.’ Ken was only half-hearted in his effort to dissuade his wife from visiting the manse the next morning. He had enormous respect for Jeannie’s towering rages.

      Her blue eyes were blazing. ‘Just try and stop me!’ Her hands were on her hips as she faced him and he moved back hastily and stood in the doorway, watching as his wife sailed off down the street, clutching Adam’s hand.

      The front door of the manse was open. She dragged Adam in with her and stood in the hall looking round. She could smell the unhappiness in the house, the lack of fresh air and flowers, and she shivered, thinking of the beautiful young English woman Thomas Craig had somehow won when he was training for the ministry and brought back to this house fifteen years ago. Susan had been full of the love of life, her hair bright, her clothes pretty and the high-ceilinged rooms of the two-hundred-year-old house had resounded for a while to the sound of her singing, to the piano she played so beautifully, to her laughter. But slowly, bit by bit, he had destroyed her. He forbade the singing, frowned at the laughter. One day when she had gone into Perth on the bus he had someone take the piano out into the garden and he had burned it as an abomination in the eyes of God, for was not all music frivolous and shocking if it was not played in the kirk? Susan had cried that evening in the kitchen like a child, and Jeannie, young herself then too, had put her hand on the bright hair, now tied back in a tight styleless bun, and tried in vain to comfort her.

      Adam had been born ten months after Thomas Craig brought Susan to the manse. There had been no more children.

      Her whole life was bound up with the little boy, but Thomas had views on his son’s upbringing too; children should be seen and not heard; spare the rod and spoil the child.

      Jeannie sighed. Adam was a bright child. He went to the local school and was now at the Academy in Perth. He made friends easily but, too afraid and ashamed to ask them home, became more and more engrossed in his books and his hobbies alone. The only love and happiness he had experienced in his home life had been sneaked behind the closed door of the kitchen, where his mother and the manse’s warm-hearted housekeeper had in a conspiracy of silence tried to make the boy’s life happy out of the sight of his father.

      At the private life of the minister and his wife, Jeannie could only guess. She sniffed as she thought about it. A man who could order the shooting of a dog for covering a bitch in a country lane just because it was outside the kirk on the Sabbath, a man who ordered the village girls to wear their sleeves to their wrists even in the summer, was not a man at ease with sensual needs.

      Thomas had seen them walking in through the courtyard from the window in the cold empty dining room. His clothes were immaculate, his shirt white and starched. There was no sign in his face of the pain he was feeling as he appeared in the doorway and confronted them. His eyes went from Jeannie’s belligerent, tightly controlled expression to that of his son, white, exhausted and afraid. He did not allow himself to waver.

      ‘Adam, you may go to your room. I wish to talk to Mrs Barron alone.’

      He moved stiffly in front of her into his study and turned to face her at once, before she had a chance even to open her mouth. ‘I would like you to take your old job back. There has to be someone to look after the boy.’

      His words took her breath away. She had been ready for a fight. She clenched her fists. ‘I nearly had the doctor to him last night,’ she said defiantly.

      She saw his jawline tighten, otherwise his face remained impassive. ‘It will not happen again, Mrs Barron.’

      There was a moment’s silence between them, then she lifted her shoulders slightly. ‘I see.’ There was another pause. ‘Is Mrs Craig not coming back, then?’

      ‘No, Mrs Craig is not coming back.’ His knuckles went white on the desk as he leaned forward to ease his pain. The scattered pieces of Susan Craig’s note had disappeared.

      Jeannie nodded in grim acknowledgement. ‘Very well then, Minister. I shall resume my position here. For the boy’s sake, you understand. But it must not happen again. Ever.’

      Their eyes met and he inclined his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said humbly.

      She stared at him in silence for a long moment, then she turned towards the door. ‘I’d best go and light the range.’

       2

      For Adam the days that followed were different. His father spoke to him seldom, and when he did he was distant, as though they were polite strangers. The boy had his breakfast and midday meal in the kitchen with Mrs Barron. Supper was always cold. Sometimes he and his father would sit opposite one another in silence in the dining room; sometimes, when Thomas was out, Adam would put his supper in a bag, stow it in his knapsack and escape onto the hill.

      The holidays were drawing to an end. In a few days school would start again. He was glad. Something had happened between him and his friends which he didn’t understand. There was a new restraint between them – a slight embarrassment, almost an aloofness. He did not know that the news had sped round the district that Mrs Craig, the minister’s wife, had run away to Edinburgh with – the selection was varied – a travelling salesman, a university lecturer (he had been staying at the Bridge Hotel for two weeks over the summer), or the French wine importer who had been visiting the Forest Road Hotel along the river and who had left two days before Mrs Craig had disappeared. Nothing was said, but when he caught sight of Euan and Wee Mikey whispering behind the shop and heard their sniggers, hastily cut off as he approached, he felt himself colour sharply and he turned away. They had betrayed him. His best friend Robbie would have understood, perhaps (Robbie being one of the few friends to whose house he was allowed to go) but Robbie had not been at home all summer and a year ago, after his mother had died, had gone away to boarding school. So, instead of seeing his friends for the last precious days of the holidays, Adam amused himself and concentrated hard on the thought of school.

      He had always enjoyed school and he enjoyed his work. He hadn’t told his father, yet, of his ambition to be a doctor, although he had no reason to believe the minister would object. In fact he would probably be pleased. Medicine was a respectable profession. Of one thing Adam was absolutely certain. He did not wish to go into the church. He hated the kirk. He hated the Sabbath. He hated the Bible and he hated the terrible guilt he felt about hating them all so much. Only one part of his duties as the minister’s child had ever appealed to him and that was visiting the poor and sick of the parish with his mother. It was something she had done extremely well and in spite of her English background they liked her. She did not condescend or patronise. She was cheerful, helpful and not afraid to roll up her sleeves. The people respected her and Adam had swiftly absorbed the fact that half an hour in her company clearly did more for an ailing woman or an injured man than hours of preaching from his father. Sometimes they met Dr Grogan on their rounds and Adam would,