I’m waiting for you, was what Tamara had said.
Beth cursed her for delaying that moment of truth. She embellished the mosaic design with vicious baroque flourishes. The biliousness that had been swelling inside her all morning rose, and she hurried to one of the pots and threw up a pathetic trickle of saliva into a passion flower.
She picked up the tesserae that had fallen on to the ground, and when eventually she rang Tamara, she got her voicemail. She WhatsApped her.
Sol texted. F good. Mom spoiling her. Talk later x.
Beth stared at his name. Hi darling. So glad. Love to Nancy, big kiss and love to F and you. Working. Will prob work quite late. Use suncream on F please please! I love you both xxx, she wrote.
She hated herself.
There was no sign of the Bywaters. Beth eventually left Tamara a brief message on her voicemail.
She looked at her river paintings from different angles on her phone. The last one was grotesque, unsellable, and yet she had finally begun to work on it after postponing it, barely conscious of what her hand was doing. The layers were foul, stagnant, more human decomposition than water in motion.
***
And so Beth had left Lizzie that day in London Fields almost thirteen years before, when she had refused to let her see Fern, and Lizzie had then gone to the urban nature reserve nearby that Beth had wheeled Fern to so often, with its pond.
Lizzie had been found later in the water by some teenagers after her accident that was no accident, and taken to the Homerton, then transferred to the Royal Liverpool. A loss of surfactant in the lungs had caused pulmonary oedema and she had had a stroke, resulting in neurological damage.
Sol had tried every method he could devise to stop Beth going to visit, but she shook him off, bought her ticket and went straight to the station, and he followed her, protesting his way on to the train, Fern in a buggy, and stayed when she refused to get off.
Lizzie was almost unrecognisable in her hospital bed. She was wearing make-up. The combination of her stroke-slurred voice and doll demeanour was chilling, her cheeks lopsidedly plump but pulled tight in odd directions, so that Beth suspected she had had some kind of cosmetic surgery in the past, before her stroke. Her lips painted a kind of coral against too much powder lent her the puppet face of an old soap actress beaten up by her toyboy lover, or skewed by alcohol and pavement falls. Her loneliness was palpable. Where was the husband? She was so hungry for human contact that her very being was weighted with it, denture-scented and undignified.
Sol waited outside the ward with Fern. Beth placed her face next to Lizzie’s to kiss her, putting her arms round tubes to hug her. ‘Sorry sorry sorry,’ she was saying. ‘Mum, how—’
There was a sting on her cheek.
Lizzie had slapped her. Beth’s scalp leaped with pain as her hair was grabbed then yanked.
‘Bitch, bitch, fuck-fucking bitch,’ said Lizzie. ‘Bitch bitch.’
‘Oh God.’
Lizzie slapped her again.
‘Mum!’ cried Beth.
‘I ain’ – not yer mum. Never.’
The voice was muffled, a new London accent overlaying the struggle to speak, mouth sunk into her face.
Beth stared.
‘Bitch bitch, smelly kid you were. Did it. Dro— drove me away.’
‘Mum! Lizzie.’ Beth felt faint as she stood up. ‘I was thirteen,’ she said, trying to take deeper breaths.
‘Hate you, hate you. Now you depri— depri—’ She fought to say words, spat out a stream of invective, curses audible among the barely comprehensible, until a nurse heard, came over and shot a look at Beth, who backed away.
‘Go,’ said Lizzie.
***
By late afternoon at Tamara’s house, Beth was veering between storming out and cooking the family meal. She sat in the consulting room instead and wrote in the back of a notebook, needing to express herself to the good man she appeared to have left.
Her ear traced a sequence of door, footfall, male and female voices.
Tamara entered the room, animated and almost luminous, a creature blown in with the summer. Her clothes were quite different from anything Beth had seen on her: a gauzy waisted frock spattered with small flowers that took Beth back to girls in childhood whose mothers dressed them. There was art in the way Tamara’s dress slanted in narrow folds from her ribcage to her waist. Her hair was tied back, held in a ballet dancer’s bun at her neck. In a fascinating new version of herself, her arms were placed lightly around two girls: one a tall female version of the husband with a bag of the type Tamara favoured, and the other squat and darker. Beth traced aspects of Tamara’s looks in the younger girl, though she wouldn’t catch her eye. There was something odd about the girl’s teeth, and she was squarer, with a fierce brow, as though Tamara’s genes had consolidated in exaggerated form. The two seemed to spring from Tamara, loosely attached to her hips. Despite Beth’s former fury, she smiled at her.
‘Go up now, my darlings, so I can see to my neglected guest,’ said Tamara in the softest voice to the daughters, and the elder one went, while the younger girl’s squaw face went blank, then darkened into a scowl before she bumped into the doorframe and left the room.
Beth saw emotion in Tamara’s eyes through the filtered light, then Tamara ran to her. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she said. She buried her face in Beth’s neck on the couch. ‘I’m so relieved you waited for me. It was awful, he dragged me out, all cross with me because I got up at nine.’
She stroked Beth’s face, drawing her to her, Beth stiffening against the leap of response. ‘My throat was like glass but he was in a total lather.’
Beth drew in her breath. ‘You could have left me a note. Where were you?’
‘There wasn’t even time for that. Angus – he gets all uptight about these things – was pulling me out like a madman. It was just some stupid summer party at Miriam’s school Angus spends all his money on. Oh darling?’
‘Why didn’t you text me?’ said Beth.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think of that. I think I had my phone off the whole time – speeches, endless.’ She played with Beth’s face, threading her hair with soft and spiky movements. ‘That was stupid of me. I’m so sorry, my love. You came here in the night, and this is how I treat you. I didn’t mean to. My throat’s so sore. It never manages these things. I talk all week, and then I need to rest it at weekends.’
‘Poor Dr Bywater,’ said Beth stiffly.
Tamara lay against her, gazing down as if contemplating her for the first time, her body warmth conducted through the thin dress, and Beth kept her hands still. They kissed.
Tamara’s fingertips pattered across Beth’s clavicle. ‘How can we be together?’ she said.
Beth grazed the skin under Tamara’s dress, moved on to her shoulder.
Tamara hushed her with a kiss. The backs of her nails trailed lightly over Beth’s chest. ‘I need to be with you all night,’ said Beth.
‘Let’s see how we can do this,’ whispered Tamara.
‘You said to come to you. So I did.’
Tamara twisted Beth’s hair, said playfully, ‘We haven’t really thought it out, have we? Practicalities. We’re like two naive children, babes in the woods.’
‘Yes. Well, no.’
‘Angus can be a bit wary of guests. I’ll come back to you later,’ said Tamara, kissing Beth between each word. ‘Stay here.’
Beth made a sound of protest.
‘Hush. Stay here,’ murmured Tamara.
There was a two-word text from Sol in response to her messages. All fine.
***
‘Oh!’ said Beth when Tamara next walked into the room at speed, her hips swinging. She was wearing a gleam of a dress the colour and texture of the Wizard of Oz shoes, her lips a similar deep red that was almost disturbing. Over it she wore a black cropped jacket.
‘Peter Grimes,’ she said, kissing Beth. ‘I made a scarlet mess of your mouth. Shall I mark your cheek too? Bran
d you mine. Here.’ She grabbed Beth’s hand and rocked her lips to press a kiss mark on to it.
‘What?’
‘I’m late! See you when I get back. Oh, you are beautiful. Did anyone ever tell you that, Elizabeth Penn? I thought it the moment you walked into that rickety old hospital.’
She kissed Beth again and started to open the back door.
‘But you’re – going out? I’m here for you! What—’
‘Well, I didn’t know you were coming, my love. Did I? You didn’t seem to be. I gave up hope a bit.’
‘Who is Peter Grimes?’ said Beth in a furious monotone.
‘Philistine! Britten. Covent Garden,’ said Tamara, and sped out, waving.
‘That bloke, you mean? That box?’ Beth called after her in indignation, but Tamara didn’t hear, or she didn’t answer. Beth thumped the couch. Go, she told herself. Very obviously go.
Her phone beeped. Tamara B. I love you. Later. Please please wait for me.
Beth waited.
She went out, got herself some supper, working on her iPad and attempting to get some of her admin and freelance accounts under control to ward away emotion.
You deserve better than me, but I’m not going to use that as my excuse, she wrote in her notebook, partly for herself, largely for Sol at some future time. There was no further word from him, no reply to her texts, no answers from Fern. She doesn’t even compare with you. It’s not you. It’s my addiction. I didn’t know how to stay away.
***
Beth drank wine to medicate herself to sleep, aware of the footsteps and voices of Angus and at least one daughter. In the night, she crept out and ran herself a glass of water, her scalp hot. She hadn’t seen Tamara. She thought of Lizzie, spurned by her daughter, and when she began to doze, daggers tore into her: not merely raining at her, but cutting through her abdomen.
‘No! Fuck, fuck,’ she said quite loudly, waking herself again, and the door opened.
‘Hush, shhhh,’ said Tamara, pressing her forehead against Beth’s. ‘Strange muttering. It’s OK, it’s OK.’ Her hand was stroking her.
‘Oh, God,’ said Beth, and she allowed herself to be held by Tamara in silence. Tamara breathed rhythmically beside Beth until her pulse slowed.
Tamara stroked Beth’s forehead in time to the breathing, running her fingers into her scalp.
‘I do that to Fern,’ Beth whispered. ‘Fern. God. What time is it?’
‘About three. I came to get a glass of water. Hush, darling, it’s all all right now. What was it?’
‘But I have this, oh God, what? Terrible. Guilt.’
‘Over Sol—’
‘Yes, and – but – but over Lizzie. I – chose not to see her. I don’t see her.’
Tamara hesitated, clearly attempting to retrieve the name in her memory. ‘This is attachment to the bad object,’ she said eventually, making swirls in Beth’s hair ‘– your mother.’ She kissed her ear and murmured streams of words into it. ‘Attachment theory would say you feel guilt, self-loathing, to maintain your relationship in your mind with the woman who rejected you.’
Beth breathed slowly, as though in the fanned air, the peace of the consulting room, and Tamara kissed her again. ‘You need to feel the pain of what you didn’t have before you can lay her to rest,’ she whispered, warm breath near Beth’s mouth.
‘How can you do this stuff at three in the morning?’ said Beth. They held each other, the occasional car in the distance somehow proof, proof that all this was happening, as though pinning the intimacy to reality of time and place. ‘Where were you earlier?’
‘I peeped through your door when I returned, but you were asleep, sleeping so deeply.’
Beth lay still, sedated by the stroking. She began to protest, but Tamara was kissing her, her fingertips on her neck, sliding her hand over her ribs. She could smell her own desire rise like a spring of teenage hormones, in contrast with the coolness of mouths.
‘You wanted me to come to you,’ she said between runs of small kisses. ‘To give it a go.’ She stiffened slightly.
Tamara smiled, wound her hand round Beth’s head, then cupped it where her neck met her skull and pulled her to her, kissing her more forcefully. ‘I did,’ she said. The surprising, discreet curves of Tamara pressed against Beth’s body, their tongues merged.
‘There is more, so much more, I can show you. Or is it you showing me?’ Tamara’s smile inched over Beth’s lips.
‘Oh, God,’ moaned Beth, her breathing seemingly generated from elsewhere. Her legs moved apart.
‘Hush,’ said Tamara, putting her hand lightly on Beth’s mouth. ‘I need to take you to … places you haven’t been.’
‘Fuck me.’
‘We can’t. We can’t yet!’
‘I am not going to sleep on your couch like a hitch-hiker any more after tonight,’ said Beth.
Tamara laughed. ‘Never one to mince words. Just give me a couple of days and we can think exactly what to do. I’m so unbelievably happy you’re here. At last.’
She pulled her shoulder strap down, rapidly and unexpectedly, and Beth paused, then Tamara guided her hand.
‘Yes,’ said Tamara, whispering. ‘Like that. Tomorrow. It’s almost dawn.’
***
In the morning, Beth emailed Sol, stressing how busy she was.
She heard the pattern of creaks and thumps that was the Bywaters waking, the downstairs toilet flushing, voices and crockery muffled along the passage. Tamara didn’t come to her. Beth thought she heard her voice, but she was uncertain. She pictured herself like a rodent in a hole, waiting to emerge and uncertain when to poke out its ferrety face. She would go home, try to make Sol suspect nothing on Skype, then return to Tamara in the evening. She left quietly by the consulting-room door, then went back to leave a note.
***
The emptiness of Little Canal Street took her back to Sefton Park, back to that last time there, when she was just fifteen. After that day, she had avoided it, taking a different route home and promising herself with superstitious urgency that she wouldn’t ever look again, or it might turn her mad.
The lights in the flat had been on that day. And there, finally, there she was, at the window, without a single doubt. Her own mother. Lizzie Penn. All Beth wanted. All she ever, ever wanted, would ever want, illuminated by a yellow glare through drizzle, in a gap between net curtains, simply looking out at the park. An electric shock of recognition. Instant. Certain.
‘Oh God,’ said Beth, her throat contracting in relief. She ran up those steps. She was there. In moments they would be together. She pressed the second bell up, which she assumed belonged to the floor that housed her mother. A pause. Beth thought her heartbeat might make her ill before she could see her.
Static. Another pause. Her mother’s voice. ‘Hello?’
‘Mum,’ said Beth, and there was a catch of breath, or was it electricity, the same flap of compressed air as all those years later, when No Caller ID rang; and Beth spoke again into it, her voice soaring. ‘It’s me, Mum. Beth!’
A hesitation. The slightest sound, perhaps. A little ‘mmm’, and then the intercom went dead.
Beth’s eyes widened. She froze. She waited for her mother to come down. She waited longer. She tried to twist the door handle.
She pressed the bell again. A mistake. The sound echoed. She pressed again and again, pushing so hard the button rocked in its cradle and she hoped she might break it. It protested, buzzing, whining. She let it shriek. No answer.
And the lights were off, the gap in the net curtains gone.
***
Beth looked around, tidied up. On the table, obscured by a book and a studio-lighting equipment catalogue, was the note she had written to Fern the night she had almost slipped out and left her on her own to see Tamara. Beth had torn the note, screwed it up and chucked it somewhere. Where? Probably in the nearest fireplace. Her jaw slackened, there on her own. The two torn pieces of the note were smoothed out and placed together, lef
t there for her to find.
She didn’t know what to do. Eventually, she tried to Skype Fern, who had her own log-on, but she didn’t pick up. She FaceTimed her, but there was nothing. Pacing around to steel herself, she FaceTimed and Skyped Sol, who was also unavailable. She typed out a message to them both, asking them to call.
She worked for several hours. Come back. Please was the only communication she received from Tamara, after a quick chat with Sol, who was rushing out, on a bad connection that revealed nothing but showed the Little Canal Street house behind her.
When Beth returned to Kennington in the evening, she found the consulting-room door unlocked and the house quiet. She left her bag of washed clothes and walked into the kitchen, where there was a noise coming from above. Angus padded down the staircase in his careful stoop with his knees bent to the sides, giving Beth an uneasy nod of acknowledgement, and she realised that what she could hear above her was sobbing.
‘She’s not well,’ Angus said gravely with a blink, but he was lit from within by a sense of purpose.
‘Since when?’
‘She’s been saying she’s in a bad way for a day or two now, but she’s at the worst end of how she gets this. Throat on fire. Temperature I have to admit scares me. Hallucinations.’
‘Poor Tamara.’
‘Her tonsils are in a terrible state,’ he said in hushed tones.
Beth’s mouth twitched. ‘Why can’t they chop them out?’ she said callously.
‘Oh no, no, they are inclined not to operate now,’ he said, and treated Beth to an informed medical explanation, which at length concluded that such repeated bouts of tonsillitis could reveal themselves to be glandular fever.
‘I have a conference tomorrow.’ He now seemed more anxious. ‘My annual conference in Geneva. Over a week.’ Beth watched him. He was, quite literally, wringing his hands.
She suppressed a smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said in a businesslike manner. ‘I can look after her. Which antibiotics are her usual? A starter dose of Amoxicillin?’
Angus folded himself like a dinosaur over the table to provide a list of tasks that ran to several pages: practical jobs; contacts for Tamara’s work, which gave Beth a rush of the old regressive excitement; daughters’ activities; medicines with backup antibiotics, fruit, herbs and obscure minerals.
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