The Seduction Page 17

  ‘Perhaps you’d better go. If I stay with you any longer, I fear …’ She shook her head.

  ‘What is going on?’ said Beth rapidly.

  ‘I am not sure when Angus will get back.’

  ‘No. Us. I feel – I feel sometimes you’re – flirting.’

  Tamara paused. ‘Of course I am. It’s very odd, isn’t it? Does it really matter? You’re blushing. As long as we can see each other.’

  Beth was silenced. ‘Yes, but – but – we’re both straight, we—’

  Tamara laughed. ‘You old-fashioned thing. Quaint! Younger people don’t see it like that. At all. They barely even know what gender they are.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. But we’ve – we’ve both got families. Nothing can happen. Well. I mean …?’

  ‘Nothing can happen,’ said Tamara, and she gave the same smile. ‘Nothing! I would be struck off, anyway. Enough talking now,’ she said, taking Beth’s arm. ‘You’re trembling! There’s the whole world out there for us to explore, remember. We’ve agreed we can’t have each other, so—’

  ‘We can,’ said Beth, clearing her throat.

  Her phone went. She jolted. Aaa Sol.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘It’s Sol.’ Her voice was too high. ‘I promised to call him about when I was returning.’

  ‘So?’ said Tamara. She looked Beth straight in the eyes.

  Then Tamara’s arms were around Beth’s waist, her mouth breathing laughter into her collarbone. Beth pressed the Reject button.

  Tamara pulled away. She began sorting a pile of papers on the table with fast movements. She took a sip of water. There was a thump from overhead that sounded like the front door shutting. She lifted her head, then she turned her eyes to Beth and held them for a second. Beth moved quickly towards her, and they kissed, Tamara’s lips, coated in the taste of cold water, her tongue tip a suggestion of warmth revealing itself beneath.

  ‘I don’t know how to resist you any more,’ murmured Tamara. She looked up at Beth as her husband’s feet set off a cacophony of creaking on the stairs. ‘I tried,’ she said, and Beth smoothed the frown on her forehead. ‘I keep trying.’

  Beth held Tamara and kissed her, thrown off course by the contrast with all men: the softness, the silken smallness, Tamara’s lips on hers with a shock of intimacy, a wetness, so wrong, strange, then right: a shoot of pleasure that Beth knew even then would be played back countless times, the present moment almost impossible to grasp, and all Tamara’s bewildering female scents streamed into her like poison.

  SEVENTEEN

  When Beth had failed to recognise the house in Sefton Park, she attempted to subdue her despair, and pressed the bells of the houses situated roughly where she had crossed the road before. Silence followed, or sounds of enquiry, delays, crackling, voices at once.

  She went to the nearest phone box and rang the reception in her brother’s hall of residence until she located him, and as she eventually stumbled into the question about their mother’s whereabouts, the foolishness of her words was immediately apparent, and he was dismissive. Had she been hallucinating?

  But one day, later that week, she saw a figure from across the park.

  ***

  Fern’s rejection was the great sorrow of Beth’s existence. To survive at all, she threw herself into both her river series and her obsession, with its drug-like properties.

  ‘Fern,’ she said one day, ‘we can’t carry on like this.’ She faltered, and Fern froze. ‘If you can just tell me honestly where I’ve gone wrong,’ said Beth. ‘Please. Fern.’ But Fern turned away. ‘We cannot carry on like this,’ said Beth again. ‘I love you. Something is very, very wrong. What?’ Fern said nothing. ‘I know I – revolt you, anger you, annoy you. Some of it is normal. But not this. Please. What is going on? Do you intend to ignore me in front of Oma in America? I love you so much. Fern, I would give everything for you,’ Beth said to the back of Fern’s head, a still fall of hair. Beth tried to touch her. Fern shrugged away her hand with a jerk. ‘All I want to know is the cause. For this being this bad,’ said Beth, but she could barely speak. ‘Can you just tell me one thing that you think I have done?’ Fern was silent. ‘Just one of the things. I … I could go the other way and say that you are being unacceptably rude, obstructive, and punish you,’ said Beth, and there was a twitch of Fern’s shoulder. ‘But I’m not going to. All I’m going to say now, if you won’t, really won’t speak to me, is that I love you, always, more than anyone in the world, and whatever you do, however you are to me, I always will.’

  Fern stood still, her arms now folded, then, without turning, she walked away. Beth curled on the sofa until she fell into a sudden exhausted sleep.

  ***

  ‘Ungrateful,’ Lizzie Penn had called her, and worse.

  ‘I’m her grandmother,’ Lizzie had said that morning almost thirteen years before in London Fields, in a voice that expected a response, grabbing her arm so Beth shook it off and began to run in the direction of her house, back to Fern and Sol.

  ‘Go to Bill’s girls,’ she called back with a pang of disloyalty.

  ‘But—’ Lizzie’s face closed off.

  A picture of herself returned to Beth as it often had over the years: the last time she had seen Lizzie Penn in her childhood, calling out in TJ’s to a mother who was not moving towards her.

  ‘Mum. Please. No. It’s – it’s much too late.’ Beth spoke more softly, but she sped on. ‘Please. I wish you well. You have to leave us.’

  ‘No,’ said Lizzie, catching up. Her gaze was so close, breath unpleasant on Beth’s face. She was like some taunted bear about to hit out.

  A fury that Beth had never expressed even to herself was surfacing in her throat, something vast and unstable. ‘No way on this earth.’

  ‘I think I’m entitled,’ said Lizzie. Her jaw jutted out.

  ‘Do you have no shame, Mum? No embarrassment about this?’ said Beth.

  Lizzie was momentarily silenced. ‘I think we should move on,’ she then said.

  ‘So you can start again.’

  ‘If you like. Yes,’ said Lizzie, again that protrusion of chin, that wobble of determination. ‘I’d like to see my granddaughter, please.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Beth walked faster, faster, breaking into a run, Lizzie running beside her, now gabbling nonsense, pleadings, accusations.

  ‘… pity for … ungrateful … bitch,’ Beth heard clearly among the stream of insults, and she picked up her pace.

  She slipped into an alley, ran even faster, entering the nature reserve and then an estate as a convoluted route home to shake her mother off. It was the first time she had ever stood up to her.

  ***

  Beth rose to soak her eyes with cold water before Sol and Fern saw them. There was a new text on her phone: I want to do that again.

  She could never sleep, those nights. She spent the time from midnight with Tamara, riding glittering distortions of their real life; then in the morning she paid the price with guilt as she recalculated the stretched seconds of kissing while the husband lumbered towards them. Everything else had fallen away, the rest of life merely a distraction from desire.

  She woke drained, yet with an unstoppable energy. Everything seemed washed in new colour. The discordance of bird call in the trees outside the house was a clamour of excitement.

  She stared at a new text on her phone. Tamara B. Why aren’t we kissing?

  Like mercury sliding inside her.

  ‘I think there’s something you need to read,’ said Sol, and his voice was not quite steady. ‘David sent it again.’

  ‘OK!’ said Beth over-brightly from the window.

  He tapped on a link from David Aarons and handed Beth his iPad. ‘“The Slippery Slope …”’ she said. ‘This again?’

  ‘I think you should read it.’

  ‘He says in his teacher voice.’

  She carried on talking as she read. ‘“The Slippery Slope to Boundary Violati
on” by Dr Robert Simon.

  ***

  ‘Therapist’s neutrality is eroded in “little” ways

  Therapist and patient address each other by first names

  Therapy sessions become less clinical and more social

  Patient is treated as “special” or confidant

  Therapist self-disclosures occur, usually about current personal problems and sexual fantasies about the patient

  Therapist begins touching patient, progressing to hugs and embraces

  Therapist gains control over patient, usually by manipulating the transference and by negligent prescribing of medication

  Extra-therapeutic contacts occur

  Therapy sessions are rescheduled for the end of the day

  Therapy sessions become extended in time

  Therapist stops billing the patient (in National Health Service settings this is not relevant)

  Therapist and patient have drinks/dinner after sessions; dating begins

  Therapist–patient sex begins.’

  ***

  Sol’s back was turned to her. A stupid grin hit Beth’s face. She looked down. You are meant to be concerned, a little voice told her, heard even then, and ignored.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Beth, once she could speak normally. ‘Seems a bit extreme!’

  Sol said nothing.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ said Beth.

  Sol took a breath. ‘He also says that the therapist will always have the power in the relationship,’ he said. ‘That any emotion caused by her will be magnified.’

  ‘OK,’ said Beth.

  He was silent.

  ***

  The warmer weather passed in a blur in which Beth lived fragments of a secret life just beneath the real one, as though disappearing down a passage to a room that was theirs alone for a limited time. The secrecy itself electrified the air. Nothing was stated – Tamara shied laughingly from the conversations, the analysis and plans Beth attempted to instigate – but the experience lay somewhere between being in love, and best friendship at school with its intensity of communication till dawn, its hysteria, the need to be in constant contact in the face of disapproval. Glances were multi-layered with meaning, and every moment was significant, a larger world beckoning. Beth felt younger, slimmer; Tamara thought her beautiful. They kissed by the canal, in the shadows, in dark.

  And then, for a few hours, or whole days even, there would be nothing, and Beth suspected all over again that she was not sufficiently of interest. After all the efforts Tamara had made to see her, she couldn’t match her, the writhings of inferiority intolerable.

  Then a text would arrive. I’m missing you …

  And then she was almost perfectly happy. Tamara Bywater could create that in her. Beth had woken from her sleep to discover the world, Tamara beckoning her, a key gleaming in her hand. Sol looked at her askance.

  Tamara rang at night and murmured to her, Beth answering only if she could; or they texted a time to speak and Beth wandered alone, at risk, along the towpath, and they were careful and then less careful.

  ***

  In all her intensity, Tamara was frequently late. That Tuesday, Beth could no longer sit still in the gloomy Italian Tamara had suggested, presumably for its anonymity. She looked around for places where kissing could happen, weighing up the potential of each corner. Tamara was very late. There was no message of apology or explanation.

  As she tried to make herself leave, Tamara arrived at the door in a flap of umbrella, lipstick, her hair wet and snaking over her cheek, her skin pale, so she looked quite different again.

  Beth’s phone rang. Aaa Sol.

  Tamara kissed Beth on both cheeks; Beth pressed her thumb on the Reject button as though it had slipped, a waitress somehow instantly there from the huddle of former indifference to help.

  Sol rang again. ‘Oh.’ Beth paused over the phone.

  ‘Ignore it,’ said Tamara, and ran her fingertip behind Beth’s neck. She held her gently. ‘I couldn’t wait to see you,’ she whispered.

  ‘You are late,’ replied Beth.

  ‘Am I?’ she said with one brow arched.

  ‘It was really hard for me to get out,’ said Beth, over-forceful in an attempt to instigate a response.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Tamara touched Beth’s shoulder. ‘I ran into someone on the way and apparently we’ve met before, though I didn’t remember. I couldn’t really be rude, could I? Please forgive me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who? Giovanni, Giuseppe something,’ she said, feeling among her bags and purses and retrieving a card. ‘Here. Giovanni Lollo.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  She shrugged. ‘Financier kind of thing?’

  ‘Financier of what?’

  ‘I’m not sure I care, but he was intriguing. Surprisingly, he said he’d read my academic work. He wants to take me to the opera next week.’

  ‘What? Tell him where to go.’

  ‘Straight to his very own opera box! How wonderful is that? It’s the Royal Opera’s Aida.’

  ‘You’re telling me you’re going to the opera with this man you can’t really remember, who is giving you a seat in his – box – and – could be a psycho as well as a stranger. Where else will he take you?’

  ‘Ibiza.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘He offered. Why not? This life is short but can be fun if you let it. Live a bit, Beth!’

  ‘I – I – What would your husband think if you announce that this year’s holiday is in I-beetha, with an Italian stranger?’

  ‘Jealousy!’ said Tamara. ‘You—’

  ‘Did you ever—’ Beth interrupted her. ‘Did you go to the opera – one day – how many months ago? Do you have a kind of shoulder thing in fur?’

  ‘I have several! What are you saying, with your many strange questions?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Beth. ‘How on earth will Angus react?’

  ‘Oh, he knows me,’ she said with airy dismissal. ‘If I only did everything with Angus, it would be the death of the soul.’

  Beth tapped the table, pressing her nails into the paper cloth. Framed Roman Holiday stills loomed in the shadows. ‘You’re going to go?’ she blurted before the waitress, who by now clearly imagined she was Tamara’s new friend, had even left. ‘I’m getting sick of this.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ said Tamara.

  ‘Er. You’re married. You don’t know him. Ibiza’s a shithole.’

  ‘Oh, my darling!’ said Tamara, and laughed, so Beth was suddenly laughing too. Giovanni Lollo’s business card sat on the table and, with a rapid gesture, she tore it in half.

  Tamara gave a delighted laugh. She paused. ‘I need some stimulation. Of course you’re going to stay faithful to Solomon,’ she said, sounding entirely unbothered.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You will stay true to your grizzled groom.’

  ‘You haven’t met him,’ Beth snapped.

  ‘I could tell a lot from our sessions,’ she said, and yawned. Beth stared. Had her own mouth really met that kitten slit that curved into a flirt’s smile in a Kennington kitchen?

  ‘Oh God,’ said Tamara, tapping on her phone. ‘More trouble. One of the ex-patients stalks me.’

  ‘Oh, do they? I’m getting bored with all this Whatshisname Lollo. All your fans. “I’m stalked, therefore I am”?’

  ‘Don’t be a silly! He’s ill! I worry he’s dangerous.’

  Beth said nothing. Fern OK?xx, she messaged Sol under the table. The conversation stalled. Beth began to dredge up, instead, the combative yet flattering statements needed to secure Tamara’s attention.

  Tamara’s gaze rested on her. She fingered a carnation, lifted it to her nose. ‘I always loved you,’ she said.

  ‘Did you?’ said Beth with an audible lack of control over her voice.

  ‘Of course. How could I not?’

  ‘What kind of – love?’ Beth blushed.

  ‘Love love,’ she said. ‘You! Defining us again! T
here are conformist streaks I find in you – unexpected. Sometimes you’re like a Victorian bluestocking, with your quotes, your surprising strands of … prissiness. This is better,’ she said, and she ruffled Beth’s hair to make it looser.

  ‘But tell me—’ Beth persisted.

  ‘I would love an all-female world,’ said Tamara dreamily. ‘I think of it. A slender, strange, smooth-skinned kind of world. No men. Imagine that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Beth. There was a silence. ‘So have you—’ she began.

  ‘I think men can even be a bit gross,’ said Tamara. ‘The older I get, the more interesting I find – ’

  Beth’s phone rang.

  ‘ – women. Oh, go back to your husband if he keeps summoning you. You’ll be spending all summer with him in Sticksville, USA.’

  Tamara gathered her bags. She started to stand, threw money down and looked at Beth with a level gaze, the tinge of melancholy visible through the radiance of her smile. Her phone then rang and she answered it, pacing towards the back of the restaurant, while Sol had merely rung to ask about some French grammar.

  ‘Yes,’ Tamara said to her caller, walking back to the table and sitting at the edge of her chair. ‘Yes, that would be lovely. Perhaps in July.’

  After a silence, Beth asked, ‘So, are you going to go?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To wherever – he – is asking you.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt it, I’m much too busy with work, but he does come up with tempting activities.’

  ‘Who? This time?’ Beth muttered, but Tamara didn’t answer. ‘Where is Dr Bywater?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where is that gentle person? With all her wisdom? Do you – do therapists – just lend their minds, as others offer their bodies? The – the – professionals of the public sector?’

  Tamara laughed loudly. ‘You’re saying I’m a prostitute?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘The psychological equivalent of a hooker.’

  ‘Sorry. No.’ Beth grabbed Tamara’s hand across the table, and Tamara ran her middle finger once over her palm.

  There was another silence.

  ‘So you’re saying there are all these men?’ Beth said, the last shred of dignity draining from her.

  Tamara’s eyes reflected the candles that were now lit. ‘If only there were space to love all the people I want to love in this world,’ she said.