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 wide-eyed at the sloping rows of tiles overhead. As she turned so he lifted his hand a fraction, but didn’t take it away.
‘My desire not to be? Not to be innocent? What makes you think that?’ And she thought: because it’s so obvious?