It was only a matter of time before someone decided it was original to dismantle a doll, rearrange its limbs in sub-Chapman fashion, or use its face for shock value, to coos of admiration from classmates. Bleeding objects, self-mutilation videos and barbed-wire motifs would inevitably shortly follow. Beth felt her phone buzzing in her pocket several times, but again these were phantom vibrations, and the phone stayed text-free. She edged it out and propped it on a windowsill as she taught. She breathed deeply, using Tamara’s CBT techniques to challenge her thoughts, to distinguish assumptions from reality.
In the evening, she had to put her phone upstairs so she couldn’t hear it. Even No Caller ID no longer contacted her. Laurie arrived with a battered Standard, pointed to a photo and laughed. ‘You look like an old git, Dad,’ he said.
There they were in a group of artists at Aranxto’s private view, Beth in profile, whispering in Sol’s ear in amusement while he smiled at what she said: a couple caught in a moment of communication. It was flattering. Beth’s only thought was a hope that Tamara had seen a rare good photograph of her.
By Wednesday, Fern had told her that there was no point in her coming to say goodnight, Sol was guarded with her, and her phone was still blank. Two more days passed. The Dairy term ended. As she dutifully hung Christmas decorations, Beth ached for the Tamara Bywater of old.
And the flavour of waiting reminded her of those years she had longed for the sweetness of her mother. A longing that was replaced in adulthood by aversion, and ultimately by a fear of contact. And then, just as Beth had anticipated, when her daughter was born – how had Lizzie known? She and her ex-husband Gordon hadn’t spoken for years, but there were still other Liverpool networks – the requests had started up again. There had been a message via Beth’s gallery, followed by a postcard on Lizzie’s behalf from her half-brother in Liverpool, to which Sol had replied with a furious letter.
A few weeks after the postcard, Sol had just left for the day, and Beth was feeding the baby in the glow of astonished love, unwashed hair falling over her breast as she breathed in the miracle through a pall of exhaustion. How had she, they, produced a perfect thing? The perfect thing? The traffic on Beck Road, the builders’ radios, were a dreamy backdrop and she was an animal, her stomach spongy, her body producing food for her beloved: the cleverest thing it had ever done.
Fern was a baby fern. A rosebud mouth on a heart, a dormouse. How had anything so exquisite ever landed on the planet? Beth wanted to retch with tiredness, but in the dips between the waves, she knew magic.
The doorbell rang.
Beth hitched Fern to her shoulder but there was no one there. One of the artists from the studios along the street addressed her and admired her baby, an early winter Hackney morning rose, and Beth decided to take Fern out. She changed her, tucked her up, kissed her and walked along in an old coat, her hair bright against grey wool, stopping the buggy just to look at her baby, check on her, kiss her. The little peach of a cheek in a blanket, fathomless smudge of eyes gazing at the sky.
Someone came towards her but she barely looked up. They passed. The sun was a chilled haze; she bought some apples, stroked Fern’s forehead, saw her blanket filling and falling with new sleep.
‘Bethy,’ came a voice, and there was a smear of awareness, but the name was a thing of the past. For a few seconds she could dismiss what she might have heard, people walking down the street talking; and then there came, ‘Bethy?’ like a croak, both familiar and confusing.
She whipped her head round.
There she was, clearly Lizzie Penn but older.
Beth took in the hairs that wired independently in metallic strands above the brown, the pleats forming below Lizzie’s eyes, the flickers of almost tan-coloured striation in the beds of her irises, the flecks of dandruff on her shoulders: fragments of her mother, those human signs that the young Beth would have died for. The bird’s-foot patterns angling from her eyes were more deeply grooved; the gamine look of hers had filled out a little, broadening her face and waist. Lizzie’s mouth was concertinaed with creases that bloomed and sank as she talked. Beth held the buggy handles, her jaw slack.
Lizzie said nothing. She was a straight-spined statue of a ballet dancer standing there: the Degas sculpture draped in work clothes instead of a dead girl’s grubby tutu. There was nothing readable behind her eyes. What was she doing in London?
‘Can I see?’ she said eventually.
***
And these days, Beth feared that the thirteen-year-old Fern would again mention her grandmother. In Fern’s earlier childhood, Beth and Sol had instinctively underplayed the issue of Lizzie leaving, though they told her the facts. Fern had simply nodded, puzzled. Infant acceptance had been followed later by a curiosity inspired by abandoned-animal and orphan novels: questions about clothes, diet and wickedness that were more appropriate to television drama than real life.
Beth almost texted into Tamara’s silence, several times. Instead, she made herself return to her river series: leaves and crabby brickwork, the buildings increasingly haunted; fungus, desire; the loneliness of a search. She put a final wash over a backdrop built up with wax beneath oil, the river’s muscular heave lifting detritus through the paint layers. She was painting intensely again. In all the turmoil, Tamara Bywater had returned her ability to her.
She came home from work and hugged Sol, wrapping her arms round him so he looked surprised. His steady love and stringency seemed at that moment the best qualities in the world. They drank some sloe gin from her father, the sloes picked by Gordon Penn with his son Bill’s twin girls when he took them fishing and exploring in New Brighton and beyond. When he came to London, or, steeling herself, Beth visited him in Liverpool, Fern had always clung to him and danced around him, and he was intensely proud of his three granddaughters. Bill had returned to Liverpool after college, married and had his twin daughters six years to the day before Beth gave birth to Fern, so the three girls called themselves triplets.
‘Look,’ said Beth, and nodded at the bottle, smiling as she swallowed a tightness in her throat. ‘We must call Dad.’
‘He doesn’t like it, Bet.’
‘I know, but he wouldn’t like not being called. I’ll just chat at him. I’ll send him a Fern picture.’
‘You’re a good daughter,’ said Sol.
She shook her head against a needling in her eyes, and poured them more gin.
A beep came from her phone, and she looked at it when she stood, weary with hope. Tamara B.
***
Dear Beth. I’m finally letting myself write to you. How are you? I’m sorry I couldn’t write to you before but I was too afraid. I dithered, didn’t know the best thing to do. But I didn’t want to let you down. For the next few months I won’t contact you again in written form. Just to be safe and in case you change your mind which you can do, of course, at any time. Just want everyone to stay safe. Xxx
***
Beth murmured in a small meow that she turned into a cough she then exaggerated. She wanted to leap, to grin, to yelp out loud. She read it again.
And yet there was nothing to answer. There was no suggestion of meeting. A sense of rejection quickly filtered through and settled in her stomach. She messaged Tamara the next day, waiting until the evening, when she was laughing with Sol and suddenly felt warm and certain. So bonsoir, ex-shrink. How are you? Let’s meet x, she wrote.
There was no answer.
On Friday, she painted, doggedly, and as she worked, she cringed at the text’s whiff of desperation. She had started a new river painting from a lower point of view, in which she found that the water only swelled between the thickets of detritus, and she added a translucency of French ultramarine to the mud. There was more surfacing through the top layer of her paintings now: oiled feathers over hair, quite possibly flesh.
Her phone rang, and she jumped, with a rocketing of her heart. She almost knew it would be Tamara Bywater. Instead, it was No Caller ID. Her hand shook. She waited.
‘Hello?’ she said warily.
There was silence, but this time there was no echo of space or breath.
‘Hello? Hello?’ said Beth rapidly. ‘You a fucking PPI company?’ she snapped into the void.
The bathos hit her with shame. But of course it wasn’t her mother. Of course it wasn’t. It never was. Or was it? Perhaps, just once, just once in her life, it had been: the face overlooking Sefton Park. The shock of her mother’s face framed by a window, mere streets away from her own home.
She had been fourteen, nearing fifteen. The day had been unexceptional, Beth trailing home in a group of girls, grey uniforms like rain; pigeons, clouds, the gut-tearings of unhappiness subsiding into a growing awareness that this was now normality: the boredom and guilt of sitting with her father over dinner with so little to say, the waiting to bury herself later in Lives of the Great Artists and Just Seventeen. The house containing the woman had cracked rendering, the face appearing as an impossible vision above a row of bird deterrents. Momentary only, looking out.
‘Just a min,’ Beth said, but these were mouthy local girls who converged on the way home rather than close friends, and she hesitated, then she ran across the street, almost stumbled, pressed the middle bell, then again, then the top and bottom in rapid succession, but a couple of the girls were looking at her and frowning. She knocked, very quickly, the calls of ‘Antwacky’ and ‘Divvy’ barrelling over, and there was no answer, though the woman was there.
THIRTEEN
Fern stiffened as Beth went to hug her as she left for work, and so Beth forced herself to turn, blow her a kiss and then go.
The riverscapes were more vivid now, burping bubbles, writhing with life: mussel blood, fish roe, seaweed like glans in the diesel. Beth loved working in the large studio; she loved working on location, however unusual it was, in layers and coats and fingerless gloves. She mixed Alkyd medium with French chalk, or sand, or even sawdust to create such surfaces. What was emerging disturbed her, but she barely questioned it, and simply followed the disarming progress from landscape to narrative. At the side of the canvas, there was, perhaps, a figure in a window. Or was there? A woman. Or was it just a shadow? The shape the curtain made?
Finally, later that Friday afternoon, a text arrived. Beth stared at the sender, the name from the hospital on her screen surreal under the clouds. Tamara B.
***
So – madly – I can see you TONIGHT! Could you? Say you can. Early eve? Early as poss. I’d love to see you. This is my only real chance for at least a fortnight, with all the Christmas nonsense, X PS This message should spontaneously combust after reading … T
***
Beth stood there, and the clouds that had been sinking into the river raced back into life.
***
‘Why are you carrying that?’ she said to Sol when she arrived home, smiling at him.
‘I was just about out of here.’
‘What?’
He turned, put his hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ve always said the Tube is the easiest?’ he said. ‘Cheapest. The good Lord bless the Piccadilly line.’
She watched him, her mouth moving minutely.
‘Picca— yes –’ she said. She frowned. ‘Sorry, I … Heathrow. Yes.’
His eyebrows knitted.
‘You had actually forgotten, hadn’t you? Bet.’
‘No.’ She coloured. ‘Yes.’
‘Kahramanmaraş mosques,’ he said impatiently. ‘You’ve known about this for a while.’
‘I’m so sorry, I’m just—’
‘Busy,’ he said, looking straight at her.
‘Well, I am. Where’s your bigger case?’
‘I’m only taking this. Pernille has the equipment. I need to pee.’
Beth grabbed a pen, scrawled a note and slipped it in his hand luggage, as she had done in the early days when he went on potentially dangerous jobs.
‘You’re going now?’ she said.
‘In five.’
‘It’s just – yes. I need to go out tonight too. Fern can … I’ll organise something.’
‘Mum,’ said Fern immediately. ‘Jemma’s.’
‘Laurie,’ said Beth at the same time, rejecting outfits in her head. ‘We can see if Laurie can come round?’
‘Unlikely?’ said Sol. He waited.
‘The shrink,’ she said at the wrong moment, just as she was calling Laurie. Fern was pulling her shoulder. ‘Oh,’ she said to Sol, ‘he’s already out.’
Fern made her eyes wider.
Beth leaned over and kissed Fern, dashed into the downstairs loo and began to brush her teeth and hair at top speed.
‘You are smart,’ she said to Sol in a toothpaste voice.
‘Reception as soon as I’m out of Atatürk,’ he said.
‘Oh yes. This was already arranged. I can’t really cancel my—’
‘Who?’
‘You can get going,’ said Beth, kissing him through toothpaste. ‘Oh, and you smell nice too. Huh,’ she said in affronted tones. ‘Watch out. That Pernille.’
‘And her boyfriend. What about Fern?’
‘I’ll sort it.’
‘Can I go to Jemma’s?’ said Fern brightly.
Beth groaned. Sol stood there saying nothing, emanating disapproval that made Beth want to shout out loud. Sometimes I hate you, she thought.
‘You are happy with her going to Jemma’s now, after all?’ he said eventually.
‘Yes,’ snapped Beth.
His face was blank.
‘Where are you going at this time?’ he said. ‘Shrink? Why? After work hours?’
‘Oh, she could only see me late,’ said Beth.
‘What?’ He took out his phone and stared at it, his fingers doing nothing while Beth watched. ‘What is it with this shrink and lateness?’
‘I’ll – I—’ she said, floundering.
‘In the evening?’ She could hear the frown in his voice with his back to her. ‘Is that pretty crazy? Departments open? Well, I guess David does, but that’s private.’
‘Oh, I’m – she can see me then. Privately. Remember. It’s private. I – I don’t know. It’s a bit late; it must be the only time she can do. She works, so she has to fit her private clients round that.’ She was speaking too quickly. There was a small silence. Just tell him, she thought; tell him, despite what Tamara had cautioned, about their new friendship.
His mouth was invisible behind his beard. His chest moved up and down in a new shirt. ‘Well, you omitted to tell me that it’s private.’ He fiddled with his phone again. ‘OK. You pay for it now. So where do you meet her?’
‘South London. Just across the river,’ she said, the ease of lying carrying fresh pinches of self-disgust.
‘Enjoy yourself.’ He had the Notes page of his phone open.
‘Well, that’s hardly—’ she began. ‘Aren’t you late?’
‘Probably.’
‘You – you go.’ She started to clear up swiftly, holding an earring between her teeth. ‘I’m really sorry I forgot. Duh. I hope it’s good. Good work I mean,’ she said.
He watched her. One eyebrow travelled minutely upwards. He patted his pocket for his wallet and keys, but didn’t leave.
‘You look like an incredibly annoying teacher when you do that,’ she said.
‘Uh huh.’ He stood there, waiting. His navy shirt was done up to the neck, no tie, one of his professorial grey tweed jackets over his shoulder.
‘Go,’ said Beth. ‘Just go. You also look sexy dressed up. I’ll sort out Fern. I may not even go.’
‘You must,’ he said semi-gruffly, and a contraction of guilt made her look down, then smile at him.
They kissed briefly.
‘Take care of yourself, Sol. We need you.’
Fern flung herself at him, holding him for long moments and then rubbing her head against his neck like a Disney faun with its mother.
‘I love you so much,’ she said in a hoarse whisper in his ear that Beth could h
ear.
I love you more than anyone, ever, in the world, she thought, looking at the dots of Fern’s freckles.
***
There was a text: Tamara B. Beth looked at the name. Hurry hurry hurry! I’m missing you.
‘Mum, go. See you later,’ said Fern on Peyton Street, where Jemma lived. Fern looked up as though inviting affection, then cut her gaze, and Beth had learned through pain and discipline to detach herself as required. She let her hands drop and didn’t hug or kiss her goodbye.
She increased her pace from the Tube, slowing just before the restaurant, an understated modern Japanese off Greek Street she had once been taken to by Aranxto’s gallery owner after a show. She disappeared into the gloom of a run of rooms resembling a series of drawers, with screened and walled alcoves, blue-lit orchids, as she was shown to a tiny room of three tables placed awkwardly close together. Despite Tamara’s text, she wasn’t there. Beth angled a candle to read the menu. Her stomach felt unsteady. She examined her teeth in a metal chopstick holder, adjusted her hair.
A couple arrived at the table next to her, and there was an obligation to acknowledge each other in their proximity. She sat there for a further few minutes. It hit her. She was sitting here waiting for Dr Tamara Bywater, the NHS professional randomly assigned to her, with her worksheets and her skills.
There was movement at the opening to the room, a man who was clearly the manager himself gesturing to her table. Beth’s eyes were drawn downwards and she saw heels behind him, slender-strapped and clearly expensive sandals that rendered the legs they supported disproportionately thin, and a dark satin cheongsam that fell just below the knees. Beth registered the woman’s face, then deregistered it in a moment of confusion, a crudely executed double take, before understanding, as the woman bent down and swiftly kissed her, catching her temple, that this was indeed Tamara Bywater.
‘I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean to be late.’ Her voice was the dove swoop in Beth’s ear. Through the darkness was the radiant smile, lipsticked, hands settling calmly on the table. A different ring.
The Seduction Page 12
