The Seduction

by Joanna Briscoe

  ***

  The consulting room was in a studio at the back: its pitched roof casting shadows, its one window looking out on a bay tree in the garden. Again, there was pigment that glowed, a gloom-dancing shade in which blue-grey-lavender variously emerged. Beth averted her gaze from the embarrassing presence of a couch along the back wall, but Dr Bywater gestured to her to sit opposite her in a red bentwood armchair, and lamps pooled about the room as they did at St Peter’s, and there were pictures in frames, indistinguishable shapes in a row above her. Dr Bywater sat in front of Beth in a matching armchair in green.

  ‘How are you?’ asked her new persona in new clothes in the same run of a voice, but with a more conversational tone to it. She stretched back in her chair. She looked at Beth and smiled, held her eye, then she suddenly toppled into laughter, without excuse, and Beth laughed too. Every muscle in her seemed to flex to stand to embrace her, but she sat further back.

  Dr Bywater touched her neck. Her nails were now burgundy, and she wore two large rings on her right hand.

  Beth spoke to her for some time, and gradually her life seemingly ordered. The atmosphere of the room was more fluid than it had ever been in a therapy session: almost drowsy, but with that same calm shot through with the tightest wire of alertness, the combination reminiscent to Beth of something else, of those exquisitely paced moments before orgasm, that drop into profound relaxation.

  They were back on to her mother. ‘Where is she, now?’ said Tamara Bywater.

  ‘She lives outside Liverpool. She returned there. My father doesn’t see her. We never even mention her, to save his feelings.’ She twisted her hair. She tried to breathe steadily. ‘My brother Bill won’t have anything to do with her. She only tried twice, then left him alone. He doesn’t think she deserves it.’

  Dr Bywater nodded. ‘A fairly standard male response. Have you seen her since?’

  Beth felt her mouth loosen.

  For some years after Lizzie had failed to turn up to Beth’s opening, Beth could almost dismiss her; giving up meant a new sense of freedom, enhanced by Sol’s ferocious protection. In those years before Fern was born, it was as though Lizzie Penn was buried in an open grave: her eyes alert, but she couldn’t climb out to get her.

  Only Aranxto, who enjoyed claiming that Mrs Penn was ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ or, infinitely worse, ‘lonely’: only Aranxto ever intermittently implied culpability. Sol, Ellie, Bill and Gordon Penn, the few who knew about her mother, were all unequivocal in their assertion that Beth should not see her. Yet while pregnant, Beth had had a premonition, the first for several years, that Lizzie would return.

  ‘There is more?’ said Dr Bywater.

  Beth looked down. She nodded.

  ‘I think I can help you,’ said Dr Bywater. The rain of her voice in the deepening darkness. She glanced down at her lap. Her mouth twisted a little. ‘I don’t generally speak to anyone else like this,’ she said rapidly. ‘To my clients, I mean. It’s different with you.’

  ‘Is it?’ Beth sat very still.

  ‘Yes, and it happens spontaneously, but it worries me. There are boundaries to observe. You understand that?’

  ‘Yes. Sol’s analyst friend David Aarons bangs on about them.’

  Dr Bywater paused, expressionless. She seemed to be forcing herself to speak. ‘We should explore the transference that’s going on here,’ she said.

  ‘I know about that. You mean,’ Beth said flippantly, stiffening to ward away a blush, ‘that I think you’re my mum? My dad? That I think I’m in love with you because I’ve confused you with some past figure?’

  Dr Bywater smiled then straightened her face.

  ‘I think there are issues of transference and countertransference,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get researching,’ said Beth, steadying her breathing.

  ‘You know – much of the efficacy of therapy rests on what goes on in this room.’

  Beth gazed at the wall behind.

  ‘The relationship between the therapist and the client,’ said Dr Bywater.

  Beth nodded. She couldn’t catch her eye. A heat and a suppressed smile were rising through her.

  ‘But it has to obey long-established boundaries.’

  Beth’s mouth stiffened.

  ‘We bond,’ said Dr Bywater.

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Sometimes I think too much.’

  Dr Bywater suddenly reached for her diary, a Design Museum ring-bound book, unlike the sober desk diary of St Peter’s, then looked at the clock. Abruptly, Beth twisted herself round to see the time. ‘It’s time to go,’ she said.

  Dr Bywater opened the diary.

  ‘Sometimes I’m held behind at St Peter’s. Could you come an hour later instead next session?’

  Oh my God, Beth murmured on the street, baring her teeth in her hand mirror to check she had nothing stuck there, and she grinned to herself, the only way to siphon off the triumph, emitting Tourette’s-like exclamations, knowing but not caring that she sounded crazy. She wanted to tell someone: Ellie, the world. Because by now, she was becoming certain. Surely, surely, Dr Bywater loved her back.

  ***

  At home, Fern came downstairs, Sol clasped her confidently and she succumbed, while Beth failed to break through her resistance, and fetched her hot chocolate and a biscuit. She saw the scene through Tamara Bywater’s eyes: the efficient mother, the art-strewn house, the subtexts at play. Sol picked out a few notes on the piano in passing. He told Beth she was beautiful. He shouted at a builder who had ripped them off, then Skyped his mother, full of consideration. He tripped a little as he returned. He would invariably, at some point in the day, bang into a stair or stub his toe on a cupboard and curse, play a few more piano notes, frown at a camera back, announce his love for the two women in his life.

  The evening progressed. Beth did some work on the Metropolitan Mice, cleared up, and then hesitated outside Fern’s room. She knocked, brought in Fern’s clean washing and talked pretend-casually, sorting clothes for her as an excuse to avert her eyes, only a show of semi-indifference now making communication possible. Fern hardly spoke at all. She herself barely dared to say goodnight, let alone to kiss her.

  Later, Beth yawned as she prepared for bed. Sol reached down and stroked her tummy; she tensed it reflexively, then relaxed it, and her skin responded as he moved upwards, webs springing to life and running to her nipples, and Tamara Bywater spoke to her, leaning towards her, the Vivien Leigh voice murmuring, I wish I could be her friend, again, and again.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she said abruptly, and laughed, and she pushed him back on to the bed, lifted herself on to his chest, and the lights were going past along the corridor, and Tamara Bywater was having sex with her husband across the Thames, across the night streets of the city.

  When Beth came, she found her eyes were wet for a few seconds, for no reason.

  Sol lay flopped across her on his stomach. She stroked his head.

  ‘My darlington. Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Why, hello,’ said Sol in the voice of a Hollywood lothario.

  ‘Good evening, fine sir,’ she said, pulling a face.

  ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’

  They started to laugh, and old jokes emerged, released by sex, a huge hectic happiness washing over her.

  ‘Oh, my love, what has been happening to us?’ said Beth, snuggling against him.

  He paused minutely. ‘Just come back to us.’

  She opened her mouth to question and protest, but nodded into his neck instead.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said eventually, then cursed herself.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.

  She drew in her breath.

  ‘I don’t know where you’ve gone,’ he said. ‘Someplace else.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I do love you,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘It’s the “do” that worries me,’ she said after a moment, and tried to speak more, but words were rolling out of reac
h. He said nothing, and held her, sticking to his skin.

  I wish I could be her friend, said Dr Tamara Bywater.

  ***

  The following morning, there was a whiff of coolness between Beth and Sol, the tightness of his mouth and her own guarded echo creating a film of tension that kept them at a distance.

  ‘I think you are sidetracked,’ he said in a low voice, and Beth’s pulse speeded.

  ‘You – you are still saying this?’ she said weakly.

  ‘You’re not engaged with me. And even with Fern sometimes. That has never happened previously. Never for one minute.’

  ‘What? I thought I was too engaged with her! “Helicopter parenting”. “Give her space,” you said – even when she’s disappearing all over the place along the canal. I can’t win.’

  Snapping accelerated into a round of indignation and verbal blows, Beth’s heart thrumming with the sudden knowledge that they had been blown out to sea when looking elsewhere, and every old wound was there, and raw after all, and new battles had sprung to life, along with the absolute knowledge, for that fragment of time, that they would have to separate.

  Sol kept his impassive gaze on her, his expression further unreadable behind beard and glasses, and whenever she was indignantly in the wrong, he reminded her of a headmaster patiently waiting for the truth to emerge.

  ‘And what do you expect?’ she said, unable to tolerate his silences. ‘It’s almost as though she hates me. She can barely tolerate me, Sol.’

  ‘Yes. True. But, Bet. Sometimes, in some modes … like – now, maybe – you are not necessarily making the best decisions.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ she said, and her voice was trembling. ‘How can I when you won’t discuss the real problems with Fern? I feel alone with this. So I just have to tell the shrink.’

  Sol paused. ‘David has some concerns about the psychologist.’

  ‘I thought he didn’t even know her?’

  ‘Sofia does.’

  ‘You wanted me to go to the fucking psychologist.’

  He raised his hands in the air. ‘True.’

  ‘So what are you saying to me?’

  ‘I am reluctant to say … But I catch Fern’s glances. Her looking at you with – sadness? Her expressions once you’re gone. She keeps looking at the door. She thinks you’re not with her either.’

  ‘But, Sol! Have you been listening to a word I’ve said? If only. It’s all I want. But it’s impossible! She won’t let me anywhere near her.’

  ‘But maybe it’s a vicious circle. Cycle? Circle? Which is it?’

  ‘Believe me, I try. She can’t stand the sight of me.’ Beth swallowed.

  Sol walked over to the architect’s easel where he looked at photographs he printed out.

  ‘You know what is mad?’ said Beth. ‘That the day after these rows, I often hardly know what the real cause – subject – was.’

  Sol paused, and tapped on his phone. ‘Uh huh. Me too. Crazy.’

  ‘You keep writing things on your phone after we’ve had disagreements. Are you texting someone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then.’

  ‘Making notes for myself. Reminders.’

  ***

  The following Friday, Beth went to the dry cleaner’s to collect a green 1940s dress she had pounced upon in Camden Passage while doing early Christmas shopping, and she glanced at it with something approaching gratitude. The taste for vintage dresses had sprung from periods of uncertainty about her father’s ability to pay for new clothes, and she had taken to mornings of searching in charity shops with pocket money and later waitressing wages. ‘Antwacky’, they had called her at school.

  She had bought the dress through a filter of Tamara, just as she made other choices through her imagined vision. It was beautiful; it curved to a tight waist.

  ‘Oh!’ she said when she came back to the house and Sol still hadn’t left for work. ‘Hi, darling.’

  ‘You coming straight to the PV from therapy tonight?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Be there on time? I don’t want to hang out with those people. Your appointment’s moved to later, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So on the basis of something that Sofia Aarons said, David showed me something that maybe I should show you,’ he said, sounding hesitant. He lifted his iPad, brought up an attachment and tapped on it.

  ‘What is it? It’s sappy she took her husband’s name.’

  ‘Darn thing won’t download.’

  She leaned over Sol’s iPad. The document was titled ‘The Slippery Slope to Boundary Violation’ by Dr Robert Simon.

  Beth gazed, attempting to steady her expression.

  ‘Is this some strait-laced piece of moralising the old workhorse has dug up?’ she said after a beat.

  Sol looked at her. As so often, a twitch of amusement crossed his face before he said anything.

  ‘Got to go!’ she sang out. ‘Gonna be late.’ She leaned over and kissed him.

  ***

  Standing outside Tamara Bywater’s in her dress and high-heeled sandals, she was struck by the fraudulent disparity between her self-doubts and the world she partly inhabited, that seemingly glamorous round of openings and private views. On Dr Bywater’s instructions, she struggled through gnarled tumbles of jasmine to negotiate the yard that led to the door at the back of her consulting room, leaves sticking to her hair and coat.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Dr Bywater as she opened the door, then immediately turned and walked to her chair. She sounded formal. Beth hesitated. There was a silence.

  ‘You shouldn’t have to be working after a day of work,’ said Beth.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ said Dr Bywater.

  She shook out her hair and sat precisely, a notebook on her knee, unsmiling. She took off her jacket. She wore a blouse underneath, an antique froth of ivory.

  She settled into her seat with her appointments book, asked some questions and made some notes. Shame was fingering its way towards Beth. The therapist was pleasant, and unknowable. Beth tried to make Dr Bywater laugh, but it didn’t work, and humiliation broke over her. She was, she was coming to realise, just like the transference-riddled fools she had found on forums who conjectured, to the point of certainty, that their therapist desired them in return. Even David Aarons had attempted to enlighten the preening idiot that she was.

  They talked about her mother’s legacy, and time went on. The evenings were darker and colder as midwinter approached. There was no sign of personal engagement. Dr Bywater would also be aware of her crush, gently guiding her through it, or even, apparently, using it therapeutically. Beth wanted to bury herself under the couch.

  The dialogue seemed to grind to a halt.

  ‘Is there something – wrong?’ said Beth eventually, to break the tension.

  Dr Bywater said nothing. She knitted her hands together, unusually ill at ease. She appeared smaller and older.

  Beth swallowed. ‘I haven’t been bumping into you,’ she said in a gabble to lighten the mood.

  A look of self-consciousness crossed Dr Bywater’s face. ‘I thought … if I see you painting near the hospital, I should avoid you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Beth. I’m your therapist.’ Her skin paled, quite visibly, as though she absorbed her own words for the first time. She shivered. She twisted round and took a cardigan from the back of the chair, a deep rose cashmere threaded finely with glitter, unlike anything she had worn at St Peter’s. ‘There are rules – boundaries – to observe.’ She shook her head. She touched her neck, glancingly. Beth turned. The clock hand was edging further.

  ‘Oh, it helps your patient,’ said Beth. ‘Just come out equipped with a straitjacket and a slug of lithium, in case your boss catches you.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh again,’ said Dr Bywater, but she didn’t laugh; she stayed looking down, the nervous movements abating, but an air of melancholy hung about her. ‘I want to help you so much.
I – I – for instance, I could handle – this wrongly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This situation. I have to say something to you. I have to … This – what we have been doing in the last few weeks – isn’t therapy any more. We can’t carry on talking like that. I – really don’t talk to any of my other patients like this. To anyone much, really.’

  A smile rose inside Beth and broke out on her face. Words to Ellie formed in her mind.

  ‘Talk to me,’ said Dr Bywater. She looked distracted. ‘I should really still give you the odd worksheet.’

  Beth laughed. A hectic happiness lifted her. ‘I know you’re changing the subject,’ she said. ‘No you shouldn’t. They’re too boring.’

  Beth glanced back at the clock. She cringed. She had planned to leave on time, race back from Kennington, meet Sol at Aranxto’s private view, and then go to Andrew Edmunds with him, dates either a romantic novelty or an attempt to reinstate normality after a row.

  Traffic was a thrum. Hooting was sharp through the winter night. As they talked, more fluently, after the hour’s end, Beth only half-registered the time, denial overlaying any awareness.

  It was nearly twenty-five past seven. Sol was attending on her invitation, and unwilling to be in the gallery alone, impatient with the displays of affectation at such events, especially if linked to Aranxto. Beth glanced at the clock again and moved abruptly, feeling for her bag and jacket. ‘I must—’ Sweat sprang up on her forehead. She slowed down the clock hands, flexing her fingers against them until time stopped.

  She felt for her phone. ‘I’m sorry, I just need to …’ she said.

  ‘Of course. You must get on with your evening.’

  Beth began to message, blindly.

  ‘Your friend has a new show!’ said Dr Bywater, shaking her head and speaking more animatedly. ‘His work fascinates me. Not as much as yours. Bleached, Ghost Walks … I … Is that where you’re going, looking so beautiful?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Beth. ‘How did you …?’

  ‘I am passionate about contemporary art. You know, it’s just amazing to me that you know Aranxto, and others, so well. Well, you are part of that yourself. You take it for granted, but … Beth, you look beautiful.’