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many other, well, easier places to live.'
Yulian crossed the paved floor between piles of old slates and rusty,
broken-down implements to the foot of the open wooden stairs. 'Hayloft,' he
said, turning his dark eyes on her. She couldn't see those eyes, but she could
feel them.
Sometimes his movements were so fluid it almost seemed as if he were
sleep-walking. They were like that now as he climbed the stairs, slowly, step
by deliberate step. 'There still straw,' he is said, voice languid as a deep
pool.
She watched him until he passed out of sight. There was a leanness about him,
a hunger. Her father thought he was soft, girlish, but Helen guessed
otherwise. She saw him as an intelligent animal, as a wolf. Sort of furtive,
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but unobtrusive, and always there on the edge of things, just waiting for his
chance...
She suddenly felt stifled and took three deep, deliberate gulps of air before
following him.
Going carefully up the wooden steps, she said, 'Now I remember! It was your
great-grandfather's, wasn't it? The house, I mean.'
She emerged into the hayloft. Three great bales of hay, blanched with age,
stood dusty and withered in a pyramid. One end of the loft stood open, where
projecting gables spared it from the elements. Thin, hot beams of sunlight
came slanting in from chinks in the tiles, trapping dust-motes like flies in
amber, forming yellow spotlights on the floorboards.
Yulian took out a pocket knife, sliced deftly at the binding of the uppermost
bale. It fell to pieces like an ancient book, and he dragged great deep
armfuls down onto the boards.
'A bed for a gypsy,'
thought Helen.
'Or a wanton.'
She threw herself down, was conscious that her dress rode up above her
knickers where she lay face down. She did nothing to adjust it. Instead she
spread her legs a little, wriggled her backside and contrived to make the
movement seem perfectly unconscious - which it was not.
Yulian stood still for long moments and she could feel his eyes on her, but
she simply cupped her chin in her hands and stared out of the open end of the
loft. From here you could see the perimeter wall, the curving drive, the
copse. Yulian's shadow eclipsed several discs of sunlight and she held her
breath. The straw stirred and she knew he was right behind her, like a wolf in
the forest.
His floppy hat fell in the straw on her left; his sunglasses plopped down into
the hat; he got down beside her on her right, his arm falling casually across
her waist. Casually, yes, and light as a feather, but she could feel it like a
bar of iron. He lay not quite so far forward, propping his jaw in his right
hand, looking at her. His arm, lying across her like that, must feel very
awkward. He was taking most of its weight and she could feel it beginning to
tremble, but he didn't seem to mind. But of course he wouldn't, would he?
'Great-grandfather's, yes,' he finally answered her question. 'He lived and
died here. The place came down to Georgina's mother. Her husband, my
grandfather, didn't like it and so they rented it out and lived in London.
When they died it fell to Georgina, but by then it was on a life-lease to the
old colonel who lived here. Eventually it was his turn to go, and then
Georgina came down to sell it.
She brought me with her. I wasn't quite five, I think, but I liked the place
and said so. I said we should live here, and Georgina thought it a good idea.'
'You really are remarkable!' she said. 'I can't remember anything about when I
was five.' His arm had slid diagonally across her now, so that his fingers
barely touched her thigh just below the curve of her bottom. Helen could feel
an almost electric tingle in those fingers. They held no such charge, she
knew, but that's how it felt.
'I remember everything almost from the moment I was born,' he told her, his
voice so even it was very nearly hypnotic. Maybe it was hypnotic. 'Sometimes I
even think I remember things from before my birth.'
'Well, that might explain why you're so "extraordinary",' she told him, 'but
what is it makes me different?'
'Your innocence,' he at once replied, his voice a purr. 'And your desire not
to be.' His hand caressed her rump now, the merest touch of electric fingers
tracing the curve of her buttocks, to and fro, to and fro.
Helen sighed, put a piece of straw between her teeth, slowly turned over on to
her back. Her dress rode up even more. She didn't look at Yulian but gazed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]