‘I know.’
‘No one sees the danger. And she has to work tomorrow. If you could speak to her—’
‘Sorry,’ said Beth. ‘But no. Really no. And I thought it was today she was working.’
There was another silence. Angus seemed to be digesting the response.
‘If you could reassure her?’
‘Sorry. I—’
‘She was—’ Angus coughed. ‘I should tell you … I’m afraid Mara had a breakdown many years ago. Briefly. It was serious. I do always fear a repeat of this.’
‘I’m sorry about that. But she’s a survivor. Best of luck to you. I mean it.’
Beth put the phone down, and she was shaking.
She glanced at the time. There were still several hours before Sol and Fern were due to land. The house was strangely silent, the canal light mobile. There was a missed call from Sofia Aarons. She left it.
She glanced at the clock repeatedly, willing a conciliatory or hostile Fern into her arms. There were hours, still; hours to go. Tamara was smiling at her, the curve of her breast visible, the mouth that could take her in, stroking, withdrawing, and Beth lingered there for seconds, then snapped the image shut.
She rose, and she had to do it, finally: there at home, where she had transported the picture, she painted. The last of the series, the one she couldn’t finish, and the mud-hair was rising, no becalmed Ophelia, but a scream into the water, death, please death, and the body was now emerging, not ambiguous as it had been before, but an arched spine, and lungs filled with mud. Beth’s forehead was wet, tears were spreading over her cheeks, and yet she painted on.
When she had run from Lizzie over a decade before on London Fields, Lizzie had pursued her with entreaties that turned to insults as Beth raced back home in order to grab her little daughter, who was being minded by their friend downstairs.
Beth tried to shake Lizzie off by crossing the urban nature reserve she visited with Fern, with its much-loved pond, its bulrushes and dragonflies, its tadpoles and ducks among the lily pads. The ground was frozen tussocks. The rain had begun to slant. She heard words behind her, the burblings of the unguarded, or even mentally ill. She heard, ‘Pond shit water, you little slut, at least I married my men, whose is that baby, little bastard, had a bastard child, don’t deserve her. It. Where is she now? Not with your child now?’
Beth ran. Lizzie now seemed to be shouting out a poem, the words repeated but garbled. It turned into more insults: ‘ … pity for … bitch’ were the last words she heard, and then she hid in the first path she came to in the estate adjoining the reserve, crouching near some bin storage sheds with a needling of cold in her lungs, and she had shaken her off, her heart pounding, heard nothing more but the faintest sound like a movement of water, then she dismissed it as her own anxiety-laced imagination. It bothered her as she rushed down Beck Road in the rain, but still she ran on to Fern, clinging to luck and magic, not believing her mother would do that, trusting that things would be all right; that it was her own fearful mind only.
Yet she had heard. She knew, in her truthful moments – when drunk, or stumbling between sleep and awake, or in sudden lucidity – she knew that she had indeed heard. That sudden silence, then a folding of water like a sheet over a head, a human breaking the surface, hurting her dear limbs with the freeze, her lungs, her complicated mind. And Beth had let her mother do that.
She always remembered the moment, half a minute later, when she had run to the house, taken Fern from the neighbour, and the sound and the silence began to worry her again. The anxiety with its ballooning into fear. Hastily, she put Fern into the buggy and was about to run back there, no time to attach the rain hood, but Fern cried, and as Lizzie was lying down around the corner in the mud, Beth leaned over Fern, untwisting the buggy straps and trying to comfort her, but Fern cried more, red-faced, straining, and Beth buried her face in her daughter’s, and soothed her as she bawled, and stayed there in a panic of indecision, telling herself her fear was in her imagination, then taking Fern into the house, her uncertainty increasingly tinged with fury, and she decided she wouldn’t go to her mother, and her mother tried to drown herself.
***
There was an email from Sol that he must have written from the airport. He had arranged for Fern to spend the late afternoon with Laurie, and then return for dinner. No, wrote Beth in protest, but Sol’s brief comments about their need to talk made her delete her answer.
She watched the hours as they passed.
A text arrived. Aaa Sol. By bus stop. She leaped up, and ran down to find him, her legs unsteady, the sun beating down on her as she entered the shade of the canal, widening her eyes in the dark after the glare. She saw Sol appear in the distance before he saw her. He was carrying a rucksack while lugging his equipment bag, his appearance distinctly more American, with his suntan and some sports jacket she would have to hide. The greyness of jetlag was visible beneath his tan as he approached.
She kissed him in a clumsy collision with his lips, and grabbed his hand. ‘Oh God, I’m so glad you’re back.’
‘You are?’ Sol stopped beside her, lowered his equipment bag. He didn’t smile. ‘Uh huh.’
‘Of course I bloody am. I knew you’d say “uh huh”.’
He was silent.
‘Sorry. For saying about “uh huh”,’ said Beth. ‘I’m gabbling. I’m so glad.’ She exhaled as though she had been punched. ‘Darling. Darlington.’
‘Honey. Oh—’ He opened his mouth, then stopped.
‘You didn’t mean to call me “honey”, did you?’
He said nothing.
‘You don’t realise how happy I am to see you. And I’m, I’m so sorry. I—’
‘What the hell were you doing?’ he said with the abruptness of delivery that she had only seen aimed at his lazier assistants, at Laurie in his early teenage years.
‘Oh God,’ she said, crumpling. She shook her head. ‘I was … I was … Where to begin …? I don’t know what to say. I—’
He waited.
‘We can talk forever,’ she said. She had little control over her voice. ‘I will. When you want.’
‘You will,’ he said.
‘God, you’re strict.’
‘I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it. Beth, you can fuck off right now if you’re going to fuck off,’ he said into the light-flared shade, he who rarely swore.
Her eyes widened.
‘No way do I want this,’ he said. ‘As for Fern—’
‘I know, of course you don’t.’
The dredger started grinding down the canal in the distance, clearing the duckweed. ‘Oh God,’ she said, nodding at it. ‘Timing. Ignore it.’
‘This isn’t the marriage – partnership – that I want. You have been lying.’
She gazed at the ground. She shot a look of shame at him.
‘You have been unfaithful,’ he said.
‘I’ve fucked up, I’ve totally fucked up. Sol. I love you. I know it can’t be like it’s been.’
‘It cannot.’
‘I love you so much. Sol, you don’t know. I love you so much. I look at you, and you have the most beloved face in the world. I’ve been a dickhead. I am a cunt. I have to keep away.’
Sol merely waited.
‘We need to talk about – I need to tell you what I’ve done. The mess. Shit.’ She was trembling. ‘Do you want to go home?’
‘No,’ he said. He lowered his cameras.
The coots were squabbling in a gaggle nearby. ‘Shut up,’ she snapped at them. Her voice shook. She couldn’t stand still. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Tamara floated above her.
‘This affair is what will kill us,’ said Sol.
She looked into his eyes. She tried to speak. ‘It wasn’t exactly … Kind of it was. Oh, Sol. Shit.’ She dropped her head. Tears wormed from the corners of her eyes, warm in the heat. ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry. Sorry is only the beginning of it.’
‘There is not a lot I can say,
’ he said.
‘I know. It’s up to me to – to talk.’
‘Do you know what you want?’ said Sol in his monotone. ‘Really?’
She lowered her eyes. She tested her own certainty, gazing at the water, the dredger forcing sloppy emerald waves before it. The old irritations of Sol came to her, the lack of lust, the pull of a wilder life, and she waited for what was scented and diseased to pool over her vision and drag her with it. She kicked the picture away.
‘I am not certain you know,’ he said.
‘I do. I’ve always wanted to be with you. From the moment I met you.’
He nodded, solemnly. She saw a memory pass over his face. ‘I fear this side of your nature.’
‘So do I.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You do?’
‘Yes.’ She lowered her head again.
‘So why should I – we – trust you? Why in hell’s name should anyone trust you? Least of all me.’
‘I know. Why should you? But you can. You can.’ She gulped. She couldn’t keep her voice steady.
‘What about what I might need?’
Beth paused. She felt the colour drain from her face. ‘Yes. You’re right. Sol.’ Coots shouted in the sludge, echoed by mallards. ‘I’m scared.’
‘While I was there, I thought I might return to the States,’ said Sol. ‘East Coast. Laurie can come in the college vacations, even go to grad school there, and Fern, and I’d –’ he looked despairing ‘– travel every fortnight, to be with her. Or she can travel now. She kept saying all summer she’d like to live in America some day.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Beth.
‘I’m not threatening you. About Fern. She needs her mother. Perhaps she needed her mother this summer.’
Beth put her head in her hands, digging her nails into her scalp.
‘She – she seems to think something wrong … about me—’
‘You have been distant. From us. I—’
‘Don’t say “I told you so.” Thank you,’ she said. She rubbed her cheeks impatiently to dry them. ‘Sol. This is a nightmare.’
‘I don’t know whether you want to be with me. You don’t tell me how you’re really feeling. There are situations I just won’t tolerate, Bet. And therefore—’
Beth shook her head.
‘I want to return to the States,’ he said. ‘You know, I always wanted to return. I’d be there if it wasn’t for everything here.’
‘No – Sol!’ Beth grabbed his arm. ‘Please. Please no. I need you. I want you. So does Fern.’
‘This discussion is for later. Jesus. Spell out the fucking facts, Beth. Who is he? Is it that slimy asshole?’
Beth jolted. ‘Who? Listen, sorry,’ she said. ‘My voice’s weird. I’m shaking. You really want to go to America?’
‘Yes.’
‘No! Please. Sol. No! Talk to me.’
‘You fucked the Jackass?’ said Sol above the noise of the dredger. ‘How many times?’
‘What? Oh, Jesus, you’re not really still thinking it was—’
Beth turned to the canal. The dredger driver winked at her and she looked down.
‘It’s clear you have a boyfriend. Who? Then?’
‘Is that why you’ve been making notes on your phone? Every time you think I’m seeing some boy-friend?’
Sol nodded, a wave of self-consciousness passing over his face.
‘Why? For some custody battle? Good God. We don’t need that. I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘I said do not lie,’ he said.
She felt herself colouring. She put her hands over her eyes. She pressed red pools of pressure into her vision.
‘Sol, I’m not,’ she said. She stretched her lips against a childish, involuntary smile.
‘He—’
‘She—’
‘I have noted every damn time you’re with this jerk, whoever he is, or talking about him to that unprofessional shrink of yours.’
Beth shook her head. She kept wanting to laugh. She was afraid of crying.
‘It was that unprofessional shrink.’ She swallowed her words.
‘What?’
‘It was her, not him. No boyfriend. I was in – it was, it was the therapist. I’m sorry.’
Sol looked bemused, still frowning, so Beth reached out and smoothed the line on his forehead.
‘Look, can we sit down?’ she said, and he paused then nodded, and on a towpath bench, cyclists and joggers and narrowboats almost invisible shimmers in the heat that gradually trailed shadows, she gave the details he asked for, her voice unsteady through all his silences and questions as she scrupulously strained to tell the truth.
The canal danced with gnats in the shade as they talked. The day seemed static, all time arrested, merely waiting.
***
‘Fern will be home soon,’ he said eventually, and they began to walk back.
They entered the house together.
‘You need to see a therapist,’ said Sol as he walked up the stairs, and threw his rucksack hard at the sofa.
She gave a small laugh. ‘Remember, it was your suggestion in the first place.’
He refused to smile. ‘A proper therapist. A regular one. Who obeys boundaries, does not criminally abuse power,’ he said in an angry monotone.
‘I promise. We will find someone dependable.’
He paused. He nodded. ‘To repair some of the damage of the first one.’ He stood still. ‘We need to get this fucking psychologist struck off,’ he said.
She hesitated. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said.
‘Except you can. You should. I need to take a shower. Your girlfriend does not deserve to make a salary from exploitation.’
She caught his eye. ‘You …’ she said. ‘I hardly know how to say it. You care a bit less because it’s a woman, don’t you?’
He frowned. The tiniest hint of a smile moved his mouth; he turned to the window.
‘You do! You do! It’s a relief it’s not the Jackass or any other man.’
Again, he said nothing. He felt his beard.
‘You’re so Soli-ish,’ she murmured.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good thing. In your book.’
‘It is. You can’t help being pleased, can you? Can’t take it as seriously. You old sexist.’
‘Pleased? That my wife has been having some – Sapphic liaison with some corrupt supposed professional who should be debarred? Hey, yes, Bet, thrilled. That you have been stupid and unfaithful enough to—’
‘Yes, but you’d still prefer it was a chick, not a – dick, wouldn’t you? It’s less of a challenge?’
Sol hesitated.
‘Ha!’ said Beth. ‘Caught that tiny wrinkle of a smile. Yeah, I kind of get that, even though you’re a sexist—’
‘You think I am going to be amused by this? Only you, at this time, would say—’
‘Please sit down with me,’ said Beth.
‘Fern should be back in ten minutes,’ he said, taking off his shoes.
‘My heart just leaped at that. I don’t know whether she will talk to me.’
‘I don’t know either.’
Beth looked out. The trees bent over the canal were dragging light, and the water was oiling. Sol went to take a shower.
‘Where is she?’ she called to him after twenty minutes, but the extractor fan was still on. ‘Sol. Don’t hide from me.’
She rang Fern’s mobile.
‘She’ll be here,’ he said. He shook his hair, towelled his chest. ‘She’ll be shooting the breeze with that flake brother.’
She called Laurie, but went straight to his voicemail.
‘Please,’ said Beth, biting her lip. She turned to Sol, then dropped her gaze. ‘Please don’t take any action against her. I mean Tam— Dr Bywater.’
He shot a look of amazement at her.
‘I got burnt. But it was me too,’ she said. ‘It was transference. That is no excuse. But—’
‘It is immorally mishandled transferenc
e. It is abuse of power. It is illegal behaviour,’ he spat out.
‘I’m not going to not take responsibility. I wanted it.’
‘I know. That’s the problem. Thank you for being honest. But fuck you, Bet. Fuck you.’
She jolted. Fresh tears gathered in her eyes. ‘I don’t even know if I’m crying for myself, for all this shit – or as – as a last resort to get you to soften.’
‘I like the new honesty,’ he said with an ironic smile, feeling his beard.
‘Stop feeling your beard. It annoys me.’
He laughed. ‘I fucking love you, Bet. And I am stunned by you. I don’t trust you. Now.’
‘Of course. I don’t trust me. Except I do. I know I will have to work to get your trust back.’
He came to the window and gazed at the canal, half-turning from her. Beth’s heart hammered into his silence. She summoned Tamara Bywater. Her legs weakened. Sol was behind her. Cat and dog.
‘I – I—’ said Beth, her heart racing. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You need to put in a complaint,’ he said, picking up his phone.
She paused. ‘God. Can we talk about this later? Where’s Fern? Look … it’ll be dark soon.’
He called Laurie and spoke briefly to him.
‘When did she leave him?’ said Beth.
‘An hour and twenty ago.’
‘Jesus! Sol.’
‘She knows the route backwards. It was light.’
Beth looked out at the darkening towpath, mallards arrowing the water, then ran to the front of the house, opened a window and stared down at the street. She checked the clock again.
‘She’s really very late,’ she said. She tried Fern’s mobile again, and a friend’s. She sent another text. The darkness seemed momentarily, blessedly, suspended, but she glanced at her own phone and saw that only two minutes had passed.
‘Tell me everything she said about coming back.’
‘Just what I’ve told you.’
‘And you saw Laurie. Them together?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s dark.’
‘Right,’ said Sol, and she could hear a hesitation that reminded her of the time Fern had been so late in the autumn.
The water rippled; the houseboat’s candles were now lit, their shades of red crystal the weakest embers, barely penetrating the gloom that gathered and darkened almost as she watched. She had gazed at those tiny candle shades so often, and they had meant nothing; but now, surely, they were objective confirmation of darkness.
The Seduction Page 24