The Angel Makers Read Online Free PDF Page A

the chance in Falucska? He couldn’t think of any local boys who would have dared to try, but she was somehow a natural; the way she shifted her body to accommodate his, the slight tilt of her head, and when he raised his hand to touch her cheek he found it shockingly hot. It didn’t last for long, and when they broke apart his head and heart was pounding; he could practically feel the violent push of blood through his body. She looked maddeningly cool, eyes cast down, a faint colour on her bone pale cheeks the only indication that something unusual had occurred.
    ‘Sari,’ he said throatily, just to taste her name, not that he had anything to say to her.
    She looked up at him and grinned. ‘I have to go,’ she said.
    Walk number five was to have been the day after Jan died, so was cancelled.
    It is several days after Jan’s funeral before Ferenc’s able to speak to Sari. He’s desperate to talk to her, to find out if she’s all right, and more, to find out what she’s planning to do. Without him noticing, over the summer, the idea of marriage to her has gone from something that he was considering to something that he’s taking for granted will come to pass. Sari’s only fourteen, it’s true – but she’ll be fifteen in November, and that’s young, but not too young to marry. When Jan was alive, that was one thing, Ferenc could have waited then, but he’s decided that he wants her, now, wants nothing so much, and he’s ready for marriage, he knows. And what’s she going to do, otherwise? Live alone in her father’s house on the edge of the village, and take care of herself? Instead, she could move into the Gazdag household, and be taken care of, absorbed into a family that she is almost a part of already, living the sort of life that no one else in the village could aspire to. And maybe, maybe it would normalise her somewhat, smooth off a few of those rough edges; by eighteen it might be too late. He loves her as she is, of course – or if it isn’t quite love yet, it’s something rather like it – but it wouldn’t really hurt, he thinks, if she were just a little more like everyone else.
    He’s wanted to speak to her since the funeral but she’s been with Judit Fekete so much of the time – and despite what Ferenc said to Sari about Judit, she still scares him a little. She’s so small that it seems ridiculous that she could intimidate him, until he remembers her fierce, malevolent black eyes. But after four days of watching Sari from afar, he sees her leave Judit’s house one morning – alone! – and head off, skirting the village, towards her father’s house where it stands, crouching low by the edge of the woods. He follows her at a slightly shameful distance, loitering at the point where her path becomes grass as he watches her mount the steps, testing each one carefully with her foot for rot or damp. He finds himself unaccountably afraid of approaching her and he dithers, stepping forward and back, until the door opens again and Sari stands on the step, shading her eyes.
    ‘Ferenc,’ she calls, and his feet start to move, almost independently of his will, elated but at the same time irritated by his immediate obedience.
    By the time he’s in the house she’s no longer waiting at the door, and he finds her on her knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor violently.
    ‘This house,’ she pant ‘The dust – it gets dirty so quickly.’
    Ferenc doesn’t know what to say, shifting his weight from one foot to another. ‘I’m sorry,’ he blurts at last, delving in his trouser pockets. ‘Look – Sari – I brought you this.’
    He holds his hand out to her, the book he is gripping shaking slightly. She rears back on her knees and looks at him silently for a moment before wiping her damp hand thoughtlessly on her skirt and taking it.
    ‘I don’t know if you’ve read it,’ he blunders on, ‘but I thought you might—’
    She turns the book over. ‘ Wuthering Heights ,’ she