- ' (Helen some-how contrived not to snigger) ' - I can't say. But he did get kicked out of that boarding school, and - '
'He did not!' Anne had to have her say. 'Kicked out, indeed! He got his qualifications a year early, left a year before the rest. I mean to say, do qualifications - does being intelligent above the average - certify someone as a raving... homosexual? Heaven forbid! Clever Miss Know-it-all here has a couple of second class "A" levels, which apparently make her near-omniscient; in which case Yulian has to be close to godlike! George, what qualifications do you have?'
'I fail to see what that has to do with it,' he answered. 'The way I hear it, more gays come out of the universities than ever came out of all the secondary moderns put together. And-'
'George?'
'I was an apprentice,' he sighed, 'as you well know. Trade qualifications, I've got them all. And then I was a journeyman - an architect earning money for my boss, until I got into business for myself. And anyway - '
'What academic qualifications?' she was determined.
George drove the car, said nothing, wound down his window a little and breathed warm air. After a while: The same as you, darling.'
'None whatsoever!' Anne was triumphant. 'Why, Yulian's cleverer than all of us put together. On paper, anyway. I say give him time and he'll show us all a thing or two. Oh, I admit he's quiet, comes and goes like a ghost, seems less active and enthusiastic about life than a boy his age should be. But give him a break, for God's sake! Look at his disadvantages. He never knew his father; was brought up by Georgina entirely on her own, and she's never been altogether with it since Ilya died, has lived in that gloomy old mansion of a place for twelve years of his young life. Little wonder he's a bit, well, reticent.'
She seemed to have won the day. They said nothing to dispute her logic, had apparently lost all interest in the argument. Anne searched her mind for a new topic, found nothing, relaxed in her seat.
Reticent. Helen turned her own thoughts over in her head. Yulian, reticent? Did her mother mean backward? Of course not, her argument had been all against that. Shy? Retiring? Yes, that's what she must have meant. Well, and he must seem shy - if one didn't know better. Helen knew better, from that time two years ago. And as for queer - hardly. She would greatly doubt it, anyway. She smiled secretly. Better to let them go on thinking it, though. At least while they thought he was a woofter they wouldn't worry about her being in his company. But no, Yulian wasn't entirely gay. AC, DC, maybe.
Two years ago, yes...
It had taken Helen ages to get him to talk to her. She remembered the circumstances clearly.
It had been a beautiful Saturday, their second day of a ten-day spell; her parents and Aunt Georgina gone off to Salcombe for a day's sea- and sun-bathing; Yulian and Helen were left in charge of the house, he with his Alsatian pup to play with and she to explore the gardens, the great barn, the crumbling old stables and the dark, dense copse. Yulian wasn't into bathing, indeed he hated the sun and sea, and Helen would have preferred anything rather than spend time with her parents.
'Walk with me?' she'd pressed Yulian, finding him alone with the gangling pup in the dim, cool library. He had shook his head.
Pale in the shade of this one room which the sun never seemed to reach, he'd lounged awkwardly on a settee, fondling the pup's floppy ears with one hand and holding a book in the other.
'Why not? You could show me the grounds.'
He had glanced at the pup. 'He gets tired if he walks too far. He's still not quite steady on his legs. And I burn easily in the sun. I really don't much care for the sun. And anyway, I'm reading.'
'You're not much fun to be with,' she had told him, deliberately pouting. And she'd asked, 'Is there still straw in the hayloft over the barn?'
'Hayloft?' Yulian had looked surprised. His long, not unhandsome face had formed a soft oval against the dark velvet of the back of the settee. 'I haven't been up there in years.'
'What are you reading, anyway?' She sat down beside him, reached for the book held loosely in his long-fingered,