‘Put it down!’ Yulian hissed from below.
Helen put down the Beardsley, read off more titles. ‘Vampirism – ugh! Sexual Powers of Satyrs and Nymphomaniacs. Sadism and Sexual Aberration. And . . . Parasitic Creatures? How diverse! And not dusty at all, these old books. Do you read them a lot, Yulian?’
He gave the ladder a shake and insisted, ‘Come down from there!’ His voice was very low, almost menacing. It was guttural, deeper than she’d heard it before. Almost a man’s voice and not a youth’s at all. Then she looked down at him.
Yulian stood below her, his face turned up at a sharp angle just below the level of her knees. His eyes were like holes punched in a paper face, with pupils shiny as black marbles. She stared hard at him but their eyes didn’t meet, because he wasn’t looking at her face.
‘Why, I do believe,’ she told him then, teasingly, ‘that you’re quite naughty, really, Yulian! What with these books and everything . . .’ She had worn her short dress because of the heat, and now she was glad.
He looked away, touched his brow, turned aside. ‘You . . . you wanted to see the barn?’ His voice was soft again.
‘Can we?’ She was down the ladder in a flash. ‘I love old barns! But your mother said it wasn’t safe.’
‘I think it’s safe enough,’ he answered. ‘Georgina worries about everything.’ He had called his mother Georgina since he was a little boy. She didn’t seem to mind.
They went through the rambling house to the front, Yulian excusing himself for a moment to go to his room. He came back wearing dark spectacles and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. ‘Now you look like some pallid Mexican brigand,’ Helen told him, leading the way. And with the black Alsatian pup tumbling at their heels, they made their way to the barn.
In fact it was a very simple outbuilding of stone, with a platform of planks across the high beams to form a hayloft. Next door were the stables, completely run-down, just a derelict old huddle of buildings. Until five or six years ago the Bodescus had let a local farmer winter his ponies on the grounds, and he’d stored hay for them in the barn.
‘Why on earth do you need such a big place to live?’ Helen asked as they entered the barn through a squealing door into shade and dusty sunbeams and the scurry of mice.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said after a moment, his thoughts elsewhere.
‘This place. The whole place. And that high stone wall all the way round it. How much land does it enclose, that fell? Three acres?’
‘Just over three and a half,’ he answered. ‘A great rambling house, old stables, barns, an over-grown paddock – even a shady copse to walk through in
the autumn, when the colours are growing old! I mean, why do two ordinary people need so much space just to live in?’
‘Ordinary?’ he looked at her curiously, his eyes moistly gleaming behind dark lenses. ‘And do you consider your-self ordinary?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well I don’t. I think you’re quite extraordinary. So am I, and so is Georgina – all of us for different reasons.’ He sounded very sincere, almost aggressive, as if defying her to contradict him. But then he shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s not a question of why we need it. It’s ours, that’s all.’
‘But how did you get it? I mean, you couldn’t have bought it! There must be so 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 is still straw,’ he 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, but unobtrusive, and always there on the edge of things, just waiting for his chance . . .