“Sorry, darling,” he’d apologized. “Timing is everything, and I’m out of practice. But I’ve got it all together now and all’s well …”
Except that all had not been well.
Hearing Helen’s cry of alarm from the lower garden, Anne had breathlessly retraced her steps.
At first, as she reached the pond, Anne hadn’t quite known what she was seeing. She thought Yulian must have fallen face down in the green scum. Then her eyes focussed and the picture firmed. And however much she’d tried to forget it, it had remained firm to this day:
The tiny white mosaic tiles at the edge of the pond, slimed with blood and guts; and Yulian slimed, too, his face and hands sticky with goo. Cross-legged by the pond like a buddha, Yulian, the frog like a torn green plastic bag in his inexpert hands, slopping its contents. And that child of—of innocence?—studying its innards, smelling it, listening to it, apparently astonished by its complexity.
Then his mother had come wafting up from behind, saying; “Oh dear, oh dear! Was it a live thing? Oh, I see it was. He does that sometimes. Opens things up. Curiosity. To see how they work.”
And Anne, aghast, snatching up the whining Helen and turning her face away, gasping, “But Georgina, that’s not some old alarm-clock-it’s a frog!”
“Is it? Is it? Oh dear! Poor thing!” She fluttered her hands. “But it’s a phase he’s going through, that’s all. He’ll grow out of it …”
And Anne remembered thinking, God, I certainly hope so!
“Devon!” said George triumphantly, jogging her elbow, startling her. “Did you see the sign, the county boundary? And look, there’s your café! Cream teas, fudge, clotted cream! We’ll top the car up, have a bite to eat, and then we’re on the last leg. Peace and quite for a whole week. Lord, how I can use it …”
Arriving at the house and turning off the Paignton road into its grounds, the party in the car found Georgina and Yulian waiting for them on the gravel drive. At first they very nearly failed to notice Georgina, for she was overshadowed by her son. As George stopped the car, Helen’s jaw fell open a little. Anne simple stared. George himself thought, Yulian? Yes, of course it is. But what’s he been doing right?
Getting out of the car, finally Anne spoke, echoing George’s thought. “Yulian! My, but what a couple of years have done for you!” He held her briefly, taller by inches, then turned to Helen where she got out of the back seat and stretched.
“I’m not the only one who has grown,” he said. His voice was that dark one Helen had heard on a previous occasion, apparently his natural voice now. He held her at arm’s length, stared at her with those unfathomable eyes.
He’s handsome as the devil, she thought. Or perhaps handsome was the wrong word for it. Attractive, yes—almost unnaturally so. His long, straight chin, not quite lantern-jaw, high brow, straight, flattish nose--and especially his eyes—all combined to form a face which might seem quite odd on anyone else’s shoulders. But coupled with that voice, and with Yulian’s mind behind it, the effect was quite devastating. He looked somehow foreign, almost alien. His dark hair, flowing naturally back and forming something of a mane at the back of his neck, made him seem even more wolfish than she’d remembered. That was it—wolfish! And he was getting tall as a tree.
“You’re still slim, anyway,” she finally found something to say, however uninspired. “But what’s Aunt Georgina been feeding you?”
He smiled and turned to George, nodded and held out his hand. “George. Did you have a good journey? We’ve worried a little—the roads get so crowded down here in the summer.”
George! George groaned inwardly. First names, just like with Mummy, hey? Still, it was better than being shied away from.
“The drive was fine,” George forced a smile, checking Yulian out but unobtrusively. The youth topped him by a good three inches. Add his hair to that and he looked taller still. Seventeen and already he was a big man. Big-boned, anyway. But give him another stone in weight and he’d be like a barn door! Also, his handshake was iron. Hardly limp-wristed, no matter the length of his fingers.
George was suddenly very much aware of his own thinning hair, his small paunch and slightly stodgy appearance. But at least I can go out in the sun! he thought. Yulian’s pallor was one thing that never changed; even here he stood in the shade of the old house, like part of its shadow.
But if the last two years had improved Yulian, they’d not been so kind to his mother.
“Georgina!” Anne had meanwhile turned to her cousin, hugging her. Beneath the hug she had felt how frail she was, how trembly. The loss of her husband almost eighteen years before was still taking its toll. “And … and looking so well!”
Liar! George couldn’t help thinking. Well? She looks like something clockwork that’s about wound itself down!
It was true—Georgina seemed like an automaton. She spoke and moved as if programmed. “Anne, George, Helen—so good to see you again. So glad you accepted Yulian’s invitation. But come in, come in. You can guess what we’ve got for you, of course. A cream tea, naturally!”
She led the way, floating light as air, and went inside. Yulian paused at the door, turned and said, “Yes, do come in. Feel free. Enter freely and make yourselves at home.” They way he said it, somehow ritualistically, made his welcome sound quite odd. As George, at the rear, made to pass him, Yulian added, “Can I bring in your luggage for you?”
“Why, thanks,” said George. “Here, I’ll give you a hand.”
“Not necessary,” Yulian smiled. “Just give me the keys.” He opened the boot and took out their cases as if they were empty and weighed nothing. It wasn’t just show, George could see that. Yulian was very strong …
Following him inside the house, and feeling just a shade useless, George paused on hearing a low growl of warning which came from an open cloakroom in an alcove to one side of the entrance hall. In there, in the deepest shadows behind a dark oak coatstand, something black as sin moved and yellow eyes glared. George looked harder, said, “What in—?” and the growling came louder.
Yulian, half-way down the corridor towards the stairs, turned and looked back. “Oh, don’t let him intimidate you, George. His bark is worse than his bite, I assure you.” And in a harsher tone of command: “Come, boy, out into the light where we can see you.”
A black Alsatian, almost full grown, (was this monster really Yulian’s pup?) came slinking into view, baring its teeth at George as it slid by him. The dog went straight to Yulian, stood waiting. George noticed that it didn’t wag its tail.
“It’s all right, old friend,” the youth murmured. “You make yourself scarce.” At which the vicious-looking creature moved on into the house.
“Good Lord!” said George. “Thank goodness he’s well trained! What’s his name?”
“Vlad,” Yulian answered at once, turning away, cases and all. “It’s Romanian, I believe. Means”Prince“or something. Or it did in the old times …”
Yulian wasn’t much visible for the next two or three days. The fact did not especially bother George; if anything he was relieved. Anne merely thought it odd that he wasn’t around; Helen felt he was avoiding her and was annoyed about it, but she didn’t let it show. “What does he do with himself all day?” Anne asked Georgina, for the sake of something to say, when they were alone together one morning.
Georgina’s eyes seemed constantly dull, but only mention Yulian and they’d take on a startled, almost shocked brightness. Anne mentioned him now—and sure enough, there was that look.
“Oh, he has his interests …” She at once tried to change the subject, words tumbling out of her: “We’re thinking about having the old stables down. There are extensive vaults under the grounds—old cellars, wine cellars my grandfather used—and Yulian thinks the stables will crash right through to them one day. If we have them down we’ll sell the stone. It’s good stone and should fetch a decent price.”
“Vaults? I didn’t know that. You say Yulian goes down the
re?”
“To check their condition,” (more words babbling out of her). “He worries about maintenance … could collapse, make the house unsafe … just old corridors, almost like tunnels, and vaults opening off them. Full of nitre, spiders, rotten old wine racks … nothing of interest.”
Seeing the sudden build-up of her—frenzy?—Anne got up, crossed to Georgina, laid a hand on her frail shoulder. The older woman reacted as if she’d been slapped, jerked away from Anne. Her eyes suddenly focussed. “Anne,” she said, her voice a shivering whisper, “don’t ask about that place below. And never go down there! It’s not … not safe down there …”
The Lakes had come down from London on the third Thursday in August. The weather was very hot and showed no sign of letting up. On the Monday Anne and Helen drove off to buy straw sunhats for themselves in Paignton a few miles away. Georgina was having her noontime snooze and Yulian was nowhere to be found.
George remembered Anne mentioning the vaults under the house: wine cellars, according to Georgina. With nothing better to do he went out, walked around the house to the back, came face to face with a sort of shed built of old stone. He’d noticed it before, had long since concluded that it must be an old, disused outdoor loo and until now had had nothing more to do with it. It had a tiled, sloping roof and a door facing away from the house. Shrubbery grew rank, untended all about. The door was sagging on rotten hinges but George managed to drag it ajar. And squeezing inside, he knew at once that this must be an entrance to the alleged cellars. Narrow stone steps went down steeply on both sides of a ramp perfectly suited for the rolling of barrels. You could find covered delivery points like this in the yard of any old pub. He went carefully down the steps to a door at the bottom, began to push it squealingly open.
Vlad was in there!
His muzzle came through the first three inches of gap even as George pushed on the door. The snarl of rage preceded it by the merest fraction of a second, and snarl and snout both were the only warning George got. Shocked, he snatched back his hands, and only just in time. The Alsatian’s teeth snapped on the door jamb where his fingers had been, tearing off long splinters of wood. Heart hammering, George leaned on the door, closed it. He’d seen the dog’s eyes and they had looked quite hateful.
But why would Vlad be down there in the first place? George could only suppose that Yulian had put him there to keep him out of the way while guests were around. A wise move, for obviously Vlad’s bark was not as bad as his bite! Maybe Yulian was down there with him. Well, they were a duo George could well do without …
Feeling shaken, he left the grounds and walked half a mile down the road to a pub at the crossroads. On the way, surrounded by fields and lanes, birdsong and the normal, entirely pleasant hum of insects in the hedgerows, his nerves slowly recovered. The sun was hot and by the time he reached his destination he was ready for a drink.
The pub was ancient, thatched, all oak beams and horse-brasses, with a gently ticking grandfather clock and a massive white cat overhanging its own chair. After Vlad, George could stand cats well enough. He ordered a lager, perched himself on a barstool.
There were others in the bar: a fashionable young couple seated well away from George at a corner table close to small-paned windows, who doubtless owned the little sports job he’d seen parked in the yard; local youths in another corner, playing dominoes; and two old-timers deep in conversation over their pints at a table close by. It was the muttered, lowered tones of this latter pair which attracted him. Sipping his ice-cold lager and after the bartender had moved on to other tasks, George thought he heard the word “Harkley” and his ears pricked up. Harkley House was Georgina’s place.
“Oh, ar? That ‘un up there, hey? A funny ’un, I’m told.”
“Course there ain’t a jot o’ proof, but she’d bin seen wi’ ‘em, right enough. An’ clean off Sharkham Point she went, down Brixham way. Terrible!”
A local tragedy, obviously, thought George. The Point was a headland of cliffs projecting into the sea. He glanced at the two old-timers, nodded and had his nod returned, turned back to his drink. But their conversation stayed with him. One of them was thin, ferret-faced, the other red and portly, the latter doing the story-telling.
Now he continued, “Carryin’, o’ course.”
“Pregnant, were she?” the thin one gasped. “It were ’is, you reckon?”
“I reckons nuthin’,” the first denied. “No proof, like I said. An’ anyway, she were a rum ’un. But so young. “Tis a pity.”
“A pity’s right,” the thin one agreed. “But ter jump like that … what made ‘er do it, d’you think? I. mean, unwed an’ carryin’ these days ain’t nuthin’!”
Out of the corner of his eye, George saw them lean closer. Their voices fell lower still and he strained to hear what was said:
“I reckon,” said the portly one, “that Nature told ‘er it weren’t right. You know ’ow a ewe’ll cast a puggled lamb? Suthin’ like that, poor lass.”
“It weren’t right, you say? They opened ’er up, then?”
“Oh, ar, they did that! Tide were out an’ she knew it. She weren’t goin’ in the water that one. She were goin’ down on the rocks! Makin’ sure, she were. Now ‘ere, strictly ’tween you an’ me, my girl Mary’s at the hospital, as you know. She says that when they brung ’er in she were dead as mutton. But they sounded ‘er belly, and it were still kickin’ …!”
After a moment’s pause: “The child?”
“Well what else, you old fool! So they opened ‘er up. ’Orrible it were—but there’s none but a handful knows of it, so this stops right ‘ere. Well, doctor took one look at it an’ put a needle in it. He just finished it there and then. An’ into a plastic bag it went an’ down to the hospital furnace. An’ that was that.”
“Deformed,” the thin one nodded. “I’ve heard o’ such.”
“Well, this one weren’t so much deformed as … as not much formed at all!” the florid one informed. “It were—‘ow’d my Mary put it?—like some kind of massive tumour in ’er. A terrible sort of fleshy lump, and fibrous. But it were s‘posed to ’ave been a child, for there was afterbirth and all. But for sure it were better off dead! My Mary said as ‘ow there were eyes where there shouldn’t be, an’ things like teeth, an’ ’ow it mewled suthin’ terrible when the light fell on it!”
George had finished his lager, the last of it with a gulp. The door of the pub was flung open and a party of young people came in. Another moment and one of them had found a juke-box in some hidden alcove; rock music washed over everything. The barman came back, pulled pints for all he was worth.
George left, headed back down the road. Half-way back, his car pulled up and Anne shouted, “Get in the back.”
She wore a straw hat with a wide black band, contrasting perfectly with her summer dress. Helen, sitting beside her, wore one with a red band. “How’s that?” Anne laughed as George plumped down in the back seat and slammed the door. Mother and daughter tilted their heads coquettishly, showing off their hats. “Just like a couple of village girls out for a drive, eh?”
“Around here,” George answered darkly, “village girls need to watch what they’re doing.” But he didn’t explain his meaning, and in any case he wouldn’t have mentioned Harkley in the same breath as the story he’d overheard in the pub. He took it that he’d simply misinterpreted the first few words. However that may be, the unpleasantness of the thing stayed with him for the rest of the day.
The next morning, Tuesday, George was up late. Anne had offered him breakfast in bed but he’d declined, gone back to sleep. He got up at ten to a quiet house, made himself a small breakfast that turned out quite tasteless. Then, in the living-room, he found Anne’s note:
Darling—
Yulian and Helen are out walking Vlad. I think I’ll drive Georgina into town and buy her something. We’ll be back for lunch—
Anne
George sighed his frustration, chewed his bottom lip angrily. T
his morning he’d meant to have a quick look at the cellars, just out of curiosity. Yulian could have perhaps shown him around down there. As for the rest of the day: he’d planned on driving the girls to the beach at Salcombe; a day by the sea might fetch Georgina out of herself. The salty air would be good for Helen, too, who’d been looking a bit peaky. Just like Anne to be cab-happy with the car the minute they were out of London!
Ah, well—maybe there’d still be time for the beach this afternoon. But what to do with himself this morning? A walk into Old Paignton, to the harbour, perhaps? It would be a fair bit of a walk, but he could always drop in somewhere for a pint along the way. And later, if he was tired or pushed for time, he’d simply come back by taxi.
George did exactly that. He took his binoculars with him and spent a little time gazing at near-distant Brixham across the bay, returned to Harkley by taxi at about 12:30 and paid the driver off at the gate. He’d enjoyed both the long walk and his glass of cold beer enormously, and it seemed he’d timed the entire expedition just perfectly for lunch.
Then, wandering up the drive where the curving gravel path came closest to the copse—a densely grown stand of beech, birch and alder, with one mighty cedar towering slightly apart—there he came across his car, its front doors standing open and the keys still in the ignition. George stared at the car in mild surprise, turned in a slow circle and glanced all about.
The copse had an overgrown crazy-paving path winding through its heart, and a once-elegant white three-bar fence running round it—like a wood in a book of fairy tales. The fence was leaning now and very much off-white, with rank growth sprung up on both sides. George looked in that direction but could see no one. Tall grasses and brambles, the tops of fenceposts, trees. And … maybe something big and black moving furtively in the undergrowth? Vlad?