'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 was 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, showed 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. This 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 get 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?
It could well be that Anne, Helen, Georgina and Yulian were all walking together in the copse; certainly it would be leafy and cool under the canopy of the trees. But if it was only Yulian and the dog in there, or the bloody dog on his own…
Suddenly it came to George that he feared one as much as the other. Yes, feared them. Yulian wasn't like any other person he knew, and Vlad wasn't like any other dog. There was something wrong with both of them. And in the middle of a quiet, hot summer day George shivered.
Then he got a grip of himself. Frightened? Of a queer, freakish youth and a three-quarters grown dog? Ridiculous!
He gave a loud 'Hallooo!' — and got no answer.
Irritated now, his previously pleasant mood rapidly waning, he hurried to the house. Inside… no one! He went through the old place slamming doors, finally climbed the stairs to his and Anne's bedroom. Where the hell was everyone? And why had Anne left his car there like that? Was he to spend the entire day on his bloody own?
From his bedroom window he could see most of the grounds at the front of the house right to the gate. The barn and huddled stables interfered with the view of the copse, but -
George's attention was suddenly riveted by a splash of colour showing in the tall grass this side of the fence where it circled the copse. It caught his attention and held it. He moved a fraction, tried to see beyond the projecting gables of the old barn. It wouldn't come into focus. Then he remembered his binoculars, still hanging round his neck. He quickly put them to his eyes, adjusted them.
Still the gables intervened, and he'd got the range
wrong. The splash of colour was still there — a dress? — but a flesh-pink tone was moving against it. Moving insistently. With viciously impatient hands, George finally got the range right, brought the picture close. The splash of summer colours was a dress, yes. And the flesh-coloured tone was — flesh! Naked flesh.
George scanned the scene disbelievingly. They were in the grass. He couldn't see Helen — not her face, anyway — for she was face down, backside in the air. And Yulian mounting her, frantic in his rage, his passion, his hands gripping her waist. George began to tremble and he couldn't stop it. Helen was a willing party to this, had to be. Well, and he'd said she was an adult — but God! — there must be limits.
And there she was, face down in the grass, naked as a baby — George's baby girl — with her straw hat and her dress tossed aside and her pink flesh open to this… this slime! George no longer feared Yulian, if he ever had, but hated him. The weird-looking bastard would look a sight weirder when he was finished with him.
He snatched his binoculars from his neck, tossed them down on the bed, turned towards the door — and his muscles locked rigid. George's jaw fell open. Something he had seen, some monstrous thing burned on his mind's eye. With hands numb to the bone he took up the binoculars, fixed them again on the couple in the long grass. Yulian had finished, lay sprawled alongside his partner. But George let the glasses slide right over them to the hat and disarrayed dress.
The straw hat had a wide black band. It was Anne's hat. And now that fact had dawned he saw that it was also Anne's dress.
The binoculars slipped from George's fingers. He staggered, almost fell, flopped down heavily on his bed. On their bed, his and Anne's. Willing party… had to
be. The words kept repeating in his whirling head. He couldn't believe what he'd seen, but he had to believe. And she was a willing party. Had to be.
How long he sat there in a daze he couldn't tell: five minutes, ten? But finally he came out of it. He came out of it, shook himself, knew what he must do. All those stories from Yulian's school: they must be true. The bastard was a pervert! But Anne, what of Anne?
Could she be drunk? Or drugged? That was it! Yulian must have given her something.
George stood up. He was cold now, cold as ice. His blood boiled but his mind was a white snowfield, with the track he must take clearly delineated. He looked at his hands and felt the strength of both God and the devil flowing in them. He would tear out the black, soulless eyes of that swine; he would eat his rotten heart!
He staggered downstairs, through the empty house, reeled drunkenly, murderously towards the copse. And he found Anne's hat and dress exactly where he'd seen them. But no Anne, no Yulian. Blood pounded in George's temples; hate like acid corroded his mind, peeling away every layer of rationality. Still reeling, he scrambled his way through low brambles to the gravel drive, glared his loathing at the house. Then something told him to look behind. Back there, at the gates, Vlad stood watching, then started forward uncertainly.
