‘Wrong?’
‘To you.’
‘Darling! You’ve done nothing wrong,’ said Beth, but humiliation or panic flashed across Fern’s face, and then she reached out and disconnected the call before they had finished. She disappeared.
Beth called straight back. She tried frequently as the day progressed.
When she arrived in Kennington, Tamara was in bed, so reduced that Beth was momentarily startled. She looked almost plain, her eyes smaller with evidence of tears, an aroma of slept-in sheets hovering over the bed so Beth threw open the window. Tamara was clearly trying not to cry, the tension vibrating in her neck, and an inability to control her voice audible. She appeared so much younger, a creature in pain, and Beth took her in her arms, and then Tamara cried, clinging to her and soaking her shoulder, unable to catch her breath.
‘Please. Please please don’t go. Angus won’t be back till tomorrow now you’re here. Please stay.’
Beth said nothing, stroking her back.
‘Please.’
‘Please stay on your couch like a teenage lodger while I cook for you and clear up after you and you entertain your friends,’ said Beth in a low voice. ‘Please be a total bloody idiot. The biggest dupe of all of them—’
‘Oh, Beth,’ Tamara sobbed. ‘It’s only because I’m so terrified of losing you. I don’t know myself. I just don’t seem to know myself. Sometimes I go into these phases, say these things. I don’t even remember them afterwards! What did I say? I don’t really know.’
Beth simply shook her head, still stroking Tamara’s back.
‘Whatever it is, I know it’s hurtful,’ said Tamara. ‘I need to try to do better. I get it all wrong. Please, darling. It’s only because I don’t realise how I’m behaving. I’m in complete terror of losing you. I only behave like that because I want you more than anyone in the world, anyone I’ve ever met. I go down the wrong path.’
‘I’ve heard all this before,’ said Beth.
‘I’m afraid sometimes,’ said Tamara with a sob. ‘I’m afraid that, after all, there’s nothing to me. I’m pedalling fast on empty.’
‘And all these people adore you.’
‘Yes, but what does that mean? They don’t know me.’
‘You don’t know you,’ said Beth. ‘Go to sleep.’
Tamara’s shoulders sagged. Her eyes looked frightened. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
***
When Tamara came down much later, she smelled freshly bathed; she had dried her hair smooth again and was dressed in a cobwebbed clinging item Beth had never seen before. She was thinner, weary, the mania drifting in almost detectable tatters around her, even as she looked more beautiful.
‘Come to me,’ she said.
Beth shook her head.
Tamara perched on Beth’s lap, surrounding her with her scent, embarrassing her.
‘I need to hold you,’ she said. She looked at Beth for a long time. ‘We will plan tomorrow where to go, and we will go away together,’ she said, and Beth merely listened. Tamara trailed her fingertips down Beth’s neck with the lightest, most rhythmic touch. ‘I knew last night with complete certainty. I can’t be without you. All the others are a smokescreen. I play as a defence against not having you. I knew it when you walked into my office.’
‘None of this is true,’ said Beth.
‘It is true,’ she said, and looked Beth deep in the eyes, the strands of pigment contracting like cells of sea creature.
‘I think you actually believe your own lies,’ said Beth softly.
‘Don’t hurt me. I don’t tell lies. Tonight we will be together, and after tonight, we’ll decide where to go.’
Tamara’s voice moved through Beth’s throat. She kissed her inner wrist, her hairline, behind her ears, brushing a domino trail of nerves across her. She stroked the skin under Beth’s top, fingers slipping across her chest, circling downwards, spirals and loops of touch sending shivering currents. She kept her gaze steady, and Beth was inside her mind, deep inside Tamara, her own body inching towards an arousal she tried to resist. They looked at each other, and Beth saw depths of communication and humanity, and understanding: the layers of a life lived.
‘Come up.’ Tamara held out her hand and Beth followed her, along the silver tunnel of the staircase to the front sitting room with its spasm of green, its spidery layers of closed curtain, pink lights. Beth was melting, weakening, all sensation pooling in a bead, no control over the rhythm of her breathing.
‘We have the house to ourselves,’ said Tamara. ‘I have you to myself,’ she said playfully, ‘at last.’
Beth touched her, and still there was that feral trace of evasion even as Tamara gazed at her with her off-centre eyes.
‘You’ll have to find me, catch me,’ Tamara said, and began to wander round the room, the hypnotic choreography of her movements making Beth a dumb creature, arousal like pain between her legs.
‘No,’ said Beth.
‘No?’ Tamara said, laughing. ‘Then you won’t have me.’
Beth shrugged. She sat back and laid her arm across the sofa. She refused to look at Tamara. She took out her phone and began to email. She could barely breathe.
‘What shall I do?’ said Tamara in a laughing girl-voice.
‘Perhaps we won’t,’ said Beth.
‘I’m ready.’ Tamara came and leaned over Beth. ‘Take me upstairs.’
Beth shook her head.
‘Then I am taking you.’ And Tamara linked her fingers between Beth’s.
She kept the curtains of her bedroom closed, padding through its darkness, the incense stale in the silence of an unused room, then she lit a candle and pulled Beth to the high bed that threw shadows careering up the walls.
Tamara kissed Beth, almost fully, bringing the flat strange arousal of different saliva, her cat mouth more open and willing than Beth had ever known it, her scents clamouring, and she felt the roller-coaster plunge of immersing herself there, in the tug of hormones. Beth was falling into calamity. She knew with all certainty that she mustn’t do this. Tamara began to unhook her bra with one hand; it felt knowing, tricksy, copied from the men who had paid homage, and Beth stopped her. Her heart was suddenly thumping with fear or premonition as a vivid image of Fern came to her, without her knowing why: Fern the name, Fern the face. She jolted. The candle flickered, shadows rearing and hollowing.
‘What? What are you doing?’ said Tamara, amusement coating protest.
‘I – I don’t know,’ said Beth, standing by the bed. ‘Fern. Just a moment.’
She left the room. She walked swiftly towards her bag. It would be evening for Fern, possibly dinner time, and yet instinct told her to contact her. She checked her phone, her email; there was nothing. The instinct felt urgent.
She took a breath and switched on Skype. Fern was available. Beth raced to the loo, washed her hands, splashed water on her face, dazed, a woman who had stumbled from the bed of another woman, and was about to call her daughter, but Fern was ringing.
‘God,’ said Beth. She hooked her mess of hair behind her ears, swiped at the screen. ‘My darling.’
The connection was broken. ‘Mum,’ Fern kept saying. There were words, fragments of speech, a frozen screen. Fern talked. The words were garbled, but her tone seemed to veer between anger and apology.
‘Fern, are you drunk?’ Beth kept asking. Sobs were interspersed with laughter.
The image froze again.
‘The cousins,’ said Fern then, giggling, swaying. ‘I have to tell you.’
‘They got you drunk?’
Fern gave a childish grin.
‘Tell me, tell me. Anything at all. No judgement, no trouble.’
There were words Beth couldn’t hear, laughter sliding into what seemed to be tones of grief. ‘… and when you stopped liking me …’ Fern said through staggered images ‘… didn’t care …’
‘You don’t think this? My God, Fern, I care about you, love you, more than anyone
in the world!’
‘People you don’t love … the ones you …’
‘What? Fern? Speak slowly. Who?’
‘… Dad … your mum, who … you didn’t want to come to America, you …’
‘Fern. Baby. The line’s freezing. Say again.’
‘… annoying you, I know I do … my old Mama, I never thought … you look out of the window … who is T? … you don’t kiss me goodnight … you need to stop me. Mama. Mum …’
‘Stop what, Fern?’
‘I … I get scared … you don’t ask me questions any more … lonely, Dad … grizzly-bear Dad, how can you kill him? … my parent … is so lovely … love my dad … get divorced?’
Truncated sentences, pixilation, buffering. Fern spoke again, through repetition, static, slow motion, comments about a boy that Beth could almost grasp, and then were impossible to fathom. Then Fern said something else. Beth couldn’t hear the words, but there was a familiar rhythm that nagged her.
‘Are you now telling me a poem?’
Fern spoke again.
‘I know this, don’t I? What is that line? Fern. God, you’ve frozen again.’
‘I love you,’ said Fern into the static, and burst into piteous howls.
‘I’m flying straight out there,’ said Beth.
‘Mum.’
‘I am coming to you.’
***
‘I need to go,’ Beth said to Tamara. It was past two in the morning, and Tamara had dressed herself.
‘No you most certainly don’t,’ said Tamara, standing in the bedroom doorway, her appearance again bewilderingly different, almost hidden in the dark, and she danced about Beth, her nails on her neck, her hair, a laughing kiss pressed on to her cheek. She gave Beth her abrupt smile.
‘There is not a flight till three in the afternoon anyway,’ said Beth, frowning at her phone.
‘You’re not going.’
‘I need to get there.’
‘Go running back to hubby then,’ said Tamara in languorous tones.
‘He doesn’t want me.’
‘I do, though.’
TWENTY-TWO
‘Till then my windows ache. What is that?’ said Beth. ‘I think that’s what Fern was saying. I know that phrase. What is it?’
Tamara smiled, shook her head. ‘You need to come back to bed,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
Beth scrolled down her phone. ‘I wish there was an earlier flight,’ she said, and emailed Sol about times.
‘There isn’t. Forget it. Till tomorrow. Here you are, and here am I, and it is now, this is now,’ she said, her voice descending to a wisp. ‘No one to stop us.’
‘What is that smell?’
‘Incense. Musk. Me. Expensive wax.’
‘And these lights …? That’s a gas lamp? And you. You’ve changed as well. What is all this?’
‘I dressed. How did I know how long you would be in there?’
‘You have … What have you done?’ Beth stroked Tamara’s face, closed her eyelids, touched the glitter there. She glanced down, and in the shadows and the pools of light Tamara had created, she glimpsed her corsetry, small waist, must of vintage shops, of perfume; the buttons, hidden hooks and tightness diving to curves that fitted precisely.
‘Undress me, then,’ said Tamara. ‘You left my bed for hours. This is my challenge for you. I made you an adventure.’
She moved towards the bed in snapshots between shadows, a geisha once more, her skin now white, lips red: a mirage of limbs, tiny straps, silk seams, the body in glimpses to be unwrapped.
Tamara raised her mouth with its stained lips. Beth pushed her with her fingertip on to her back and Tamara lay there, uncurled herself and pulled Beth to her by the hair, and Beth kissed her, drawing in all she had wanted, and it was there for the tasting, that darkness, the golden-brown scents of her, Tamara’s body twisting over her. A woman was making love to her. Dr Tamara Bywater in her hospital office.
Tamara’s hair was on Beth’s shoulder, her mouth on her nipple; she was running one hand lightly over her pubic bone while the other tugged at her top. Beth held her breath, tightened her jaw, her body sliding fast, but she smelled again that almost mildewed undertow, the sickness of her, and then she was falling, she was lying in a mental ward; they would inject her soon, and then she would be lost.
‘Please,’ murmured Tamara, and Beth pulled her hand away and held her wrist above her head on the pillow, making Tamara widen her eyes, a fresh flush of excitement to her as Beth pinned her down, and she was wet, and she must hold back, she knew, but any moment she would be beneath her and in her, in that dark longed-for place, and as they were entwined, Beth’s head leaped above them, watching that remarkable sight, two women, and she couldn’t feel it in its entirety, disbelief tangling with something almost mundane. ‘Fuck me, now,’ Tamara muttered, cupping Beth’s groin, and Beth was maddened with a longing to be inside her and fucked by her, and it would be slippery, tight, the caves in which they were lost, and there was no way out, Beth realised: no light before or behind, just the dark exquisite smell of triumph, and defeat.
‘I love you,’ said Tamara into Beth’s neck, and her eyes were distant, a smile hovering over her lips, and she would be off in the morning, Beth understood with a jolt of understanding. If Tamara had her, she would then evade her. Beth’s heart thumped, an insistent tattoo.
‘We will. We will tomorrow,’ she said, hearing herself playing Tamara at her own game. ‘I’m tired now.’
Tamara made a small sound of protest, then her mouth moved into a skew-whiff seductive smile, and she skimmed the back of her nails over Beth’s nipples, buttocks, crotch. Beth kissed her and turned. ‘In the morning,’ she said.
Tamara fell asleep rapidly, her breathing deep and unselfconscious, and Beth moved away from her into a pocket of wet heat, her open legs seeming to float, and she made herself come very quickly, and slept.
***
She was woken by the first strip of sun slicing through the curtains in the bedroom. She had fallen asleep near Tamara in a crumple of damp sheets, pillow, hair, sweat. She closed her eyes several times to become accustomed to sunrise illuminating the room with its band of dust. Tamara lay beside her; she didn’t move; Beth blinked and looked around the room for the first time in the daylight, her gaze travelling in stillness. On an open drawer sat a tangle of underwear in vivid colours: small bras, strips of satin, lace in ivory, bright violet, peacock, with red and black silky straps, candles and jewellery on the surface above. All around were framed pictures: a couple of sketches, and many photographs. Beth lay still, breathing softly and willing Tamara not to wake as she studied them, peering through the various light till she could ascertain the subject of each image: photograph after photograph of Tamara Bywater.
There they all were: two photos of Tamara beside a younger and more handsome Angus; a snap of her captured head back mid-laughter with the children; a dozen or so of her alone at different ages, each one almost discomfitingly flattering. There were facial portraits, full-length shots, and two naked studies in discreet lighting. There was Tamara at a nightclub, Tamara at the opera, Tamara on grass, Tamara in shadows, every last trick of light-bleaching, shade-painting artistry on show. Even old Polaroids had been pinned to a board, charming in their washed-out colours. Beth tilted her head on the pillow to find a larger framed portrait above the bed: a silver-toned solarised profile reminiscent of a Man Ray that must have been professionally commissioned. The Bywater marital bedroom was a shrine.
She heard Sol’s scorn in her mind, and tried to catch her breath in the prison of egotism in which she lay, the curled-up body with its spread of hair like a selfish little animal beside her.
Tamara stirred as Beth moved her head.
She woke, saw Beth there, registered her sleepily and gave her a smile. ‘Good morning, darling,’ she said, and ran her hand through Beth’s hair. ‘How are you?’
‘Good morning.’
Tamara leaned over an
d kissed her. ‘I’m busy today. I mustn’t be late back to work. But first – first … I must seduce you into staying here …’ She kissed Beth’s neck then lay back.
‘Yes,’ said Beth. ‘But it’s early. Get some more sleep now.’
Beth waited for Tamara to doze again. She looked down at her hair, the dead-dyed nest of it; she gathered her clothes in one hand, and walked out of the room and left.
TWENTY-THREE
Number 4 Little Canal Street stood in silence in the morning, the water’s surface a spread of duckweed that draped detritus and slowed the moorhens. The scent of another human was all over Beth; she ran a bath and took an inhalation of Tamara Bywater’s perfume and poison, then paused, absorbing that moment when she was still covered in her, then lay under the water, and washed herself.
She looked in the mirror as she emerged, her lips parting, then shook away the reverie, bought a ticket on her credit card, and began to pack.
On my way, darling xxxxx, she texted Fern. On my way x, she texted Sol.
We’re coming back! Fern texted almost at the same moment, followed by Sol’s terser Fern wants to return.
***
Beth sent a prayer. She laid her head on the back of the sofa and thanked its fabric, and God, and her life. The world woke, its water-light swaying lilac. She raced round the house, clearing the fridge, tidying Fern’s room, the morning warmth creeping in.
The phone rang. Angus Bywater. Beth hesitated, then answered.
‘I am back,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ said Beth.
‘But Tamara is extremely distressed that you left the house. Could you talk to her? Can you return?’
‘No,’ said Beth, and she squeezed her nail into her thumb, filling the silence with the distraction of pain, as she tended to, to prevent herself from speaking.
There was a pause. ‘I don’t think you understand her fragility.’
‘How much more drama is there going to be about her?’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Angus.
Beth waited.
‘Mara is not safe when she’s like this,’ he said, his tone of urgency that of an emissary who would be in trouble if he failed. ‘She is very sensitive.’
The Seduction Page 23