The Rendezvous (11 page)

‘No. Just give me
some
advice on how to stop this thing.'

‘Run away from it. As far as you can get. From what you tell me, you're still in the clear, you haven't been to bed with Amstat – you've got nothing to reproach yourself with but a temptation – right?'

‘Yes, absolutely right.'

‘Then stop seeing him. Go to Bob and get him to take you away for a trip. Make any excuse you like – say you're tired, think of something. He's never said no to you in his life, has he? O.K. He'll think it's a wonderful idea, and by the time you get back in, say, six months, you'll have gotten over this completely. I'll guarantee that.' The phone rang on his desk. ‘Excuse me, Yes?'

‘Mrs. Kaplan on the line, Doctor. Shall I wait till Mrs. Bradford's finished, or shall I put her through?'

‘No, tell her I'll call her right back. How do you feel about that idea?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘In a way I don't want to do it – I want to go on seeing him. But if I do, Joe, I'm lost. And if I let Bob down I'll never forgive myself. And you'll never forgive me either.'

‘I wouldn't say that.' He got up and they faced each other. ‘But I might be pretty mad with you at that. Do as I say, Terese. This is the time to be really brave and play the coward. Get away from this guy. Ask Bob tonight. And don't see Amstat before you go.'

‘All right. I'll do it. Dear Joe. I'm so grateful to you. I'll run away from it, I promise. And then it'll be over – I won't feel the same when I come back?'

‘You don't even live in New York,' he reminded her. ‘You haven't any problem, my dear, except which place to choose out of the world. Go on a tiger-shoot, like Ruth.' He smiled and took her hand in both of his. ‘And don't worry. Everything's going to be fine.'

When she had gone he made notes on a pad. There was nothing medical in them but they would be attached to her original file. He kept all his private patients' files: the one on Terese Bradford was in the basement in the cabinet for old patients, the cured, the vanished and the dead. ‘The bastard.' He said it out loud. Waiting outside the apartment for her, determined to get her. Julia Adams wasn't enough for his ego, he had to pick on a happily married couple like the Bradfords and start working the wife over. Joe had never liked him, and they had met several times since then, once or twice at cocktail parties and at dinner with Julia. He didn't like the type, the Swiss were too near the German for Joe to feel at ease with them, and he sensed a hostility in Amstat which was carefully concealed but not carefully enough to escape Kaplan's racial sensitivity. Of all the unlikely people in the world for Terese to fall for – lunch and art galleries and a wall of unspoken sex rising up behind them, waiting to collapse and bury them flat. He must be an odd guy to have taken so long coming to the point. Anyway, it didn't matter. It might even release the wife's tensions in the direction of her husband, now that she found she could experience desire like anyone else. It only showed him, he decided, how little he still knew about the workings of the human mind, that after twenty years a woman he knew so well, that he had almost moulded her personality himself, could escape him and prove his theory wrong. He had never expected her to reach emotional maturity. She had married and adjusted and kept Bob happily in love with her, and by doing this alone she was Joe Kaplan's private miracle. His greatest success, he had called her to Vera, and this was true. He had re-made a human being, getting her and Bob through the early months of marriage, guiding and advising. Terese meant everything to Robert Bradford; she was his purpose in life, the reason why in spite of his millions and all the opportunities for turning into a rich bum, like so many of his generation, he was stable, happy and mature. His wife was the only thing he cared about; she was his lover, his child, his companion, all rolled up in one personality. How lucky Terese had come to him in time. Joe remembered that he had promised to telephone his wife, but when he did so there was no reply. She hadn't waited for the call. It was such a pity about them, but it was far too late. She had probably been unfaithful to him; women often were because they held a grudge, or needed reassurance which their husbands didn't give them. Very few indeed were motivated by the ‘fire in the loins' Terese Bradford had described to him, though the quotation would have shocked her. He had had it himself, and so had Vera; he could understand the damned stupid things it made a rational being do. It could lead to a doomed marriage as much as a disastrous affair. The desk phone rang. It was his next appointment. He shut Terese out of his mind completely, and got up to shake hands with his patient. ‘Sit down,' he said. ‘Have a cigarette – good. Now, how have you been feeling?'

‘Darling,' Julia said, ‘please come on up. Just for a drink.' They stood on the step of her apartment block on 61st; they had been to the theatre and had dinner at the 21 Club with another couple who were friends of hers, the Staffords from California. Amstat had insisted on leaving early, saying he had work to do. She didn't show her feelings; she just asked him please to come up, and after a moment's hesitation he agreed. She switched on the lights and told him to make himself a drink.

‘And a brandy for me. Courvoisier. You'll find some at the back of the cabinet. I won't be a moment.'

She went into her bedroom and took off her theatre coat. It was scarlet silk with a thick brown sable collar and deep cuffs; her dress was a plain sheath of the same colour. She had taken more trouble than usual that evening to go out with Karl. Everyone had looked at her when they went to the theatre and in 21. There had even been a gleam in Donald Stafford's eye and they were old friends, long past noticing each other. It was all for Amstat's benefit. She had done exactly what a clever woman is supposed to do when she feels her lover losing interest. Made herself extra beautiful, bought some new scent, and gone into battle determined to win. Not to quarrel, not to reproach, but to get him back. That had been her original intention when they started out and it had lasted all through the first act of the new English musical, which was a sell-out, with Tony Newley, right up to the moment they ran into the Bradfords taking a walk in the interval. They were with Ruth, and her husband and two other people she didn't know, and Bob had hailed them, calling them over. That was when her plan disintegrated. When she stood back a little and watched Karl with Robert Bradford's wife. There was nothing obvious about it. She had looked ill-at-ease for a moment, and then they began to talk and Julia was able to study Karl, while she pretended to listen to Bob. He was not a man who showed his emotions easily; that had been part of his attraction for her, the sense of discipline over himself and its consequent authority over her. But this was something that he couldn't hide. Never, at any moment in their relationship as lovers, had she seen him look into her face as he was doing to that other woman. They might have been in the middle of the Sahara, they were so absorbed in even their brief moment together. He had reached out and touched her arm, and it was a caress. Julia had gone through the rest of the evening, behaving normally, refusing to let him slide away and leave her at the door. She took a quick look at herself in the mirror. ‘You poor deluded bitch,' she said under her breath. Then she went into the living room to have it out.

He stood up when she came into the room; his manners were always meticulous in these small details. ‘Here's your brandy, Julia. I didn't make it too large.'

‘Thanks; as it happens it's just right. You take such good care of me, Karl darling.'

He sat down, watching her warily; something was wrong but he wasn't sure what. He had never seen Julia in this restrained mood, like a ticking time-bomb in scarlet, smiling and patting the seat beside her. When he came over she put her glass down, twisted her arms round his neck and kissed him.

‘You know I really am in love with you,' she said.

‘I know you are.' He said it because there wasn't any other answer.

‘Will you ever marry me, Karl?'

He put her arms away from him and got up.

‘We've been into all this before. I don't want to marry. If I wanted a domestic life it would be different, but I don't. I thought we'd agreed all this!'

‘Well, we'd agreed to let it rest,' she said. She leant back with her arms raised, showing the line of both breasts, and crossed one leg so that the line of thigh was continuous under the red silk. It meant nothing to him, any more than the arousing kiss had done. He was cold, dead, as far as she was concerned. ‘I suppose I'd resigned myself to living with you and hoping one day we'd make it legal. I was happy with that, so long as you were happy with me. Tell me, darling, how long have you been seeing Terese Bradford behind my back?'

The question was so unexpected that he couldn't believe it – his first reaction, born out of a different kind of guilt, was to try to deny it. ‘I don't understand you, Julia. I don't know what you're talking about!'

‘Oh yes you do. You've been seen, my sweet, lunching à deux around town. And, of course, a kind friend or two thought I ought to know – people are so nice about these things.'

‘I'm sorry. There was nothing in it – I just gave her lunch once or twice. Look, Julia, it's late and I told you, I have work to do – if you want to pick a quarrel for some damn silly reason, like me taking another woman out to lunch, then you'll have to choose another time! I'm going.'

He didn't want to discuss Terese with her; he didn't want her to say anything derisory or start tearing their relationship to pieces with her jealous verbal claws. They had been seen, Terese and he. It was inevitable, he should have been prepared. He looked at her with a new viewpoint, the slim body in the expensive suggestive dress, the angry eyes accusing him, the woman he had lived with and with whom he found a sort of security instead of love, was now an object of dislike, who had the temerity to open his mouth when she kissed him and imagine that what they had done before gave her some claim on him.

‘You're in love with her, aren't you!' She got up and she was between him and the door. ‘You bloody liar, I saw the two of you tonight! You were going to bed mentally right there in the middle of the foyer. How long have you been having this affair – you and that cheap little nobody he picked up from some French junk heap in the war – loss of memory! She was probably an army whore!'

He didn't hit her; he stopped himself in time. He had only hit one woman in his life and this one didn't mean enough for him to touch her.

‘You spoilt, useless tramp,' he said. ‘You wouldn't understand a woman like Terese Bradford. You wouldn't understand why I'd rather go out to lunch with her than go to bed with you. You're the whore.'

‘Thank you,' Julia said. She put her hands to her face and began to cry. ‘Thank you for what you've said. What are you aiming for, my sweet? What are you going to do when Bob finds out and divorces her? You going to marry the little bitch?'

‘I've told you,' he said quietly, ‘don't call her names. I'm not her lover. I don't care whether you believe it or not, but it happens to be true. I've never touched her. I told you, she's not like you. She's not a whore!'

As he reached the door she came close to him; her face was wet with tears. He had never imagined that she could cry.

‘This is the finish then? You're walking out?'

‘I think we've come to the end, don't you? I'm sorry, but my capacity for scenes is limited. Good night.'

‘Goodbye,' she said. ‘Get that straight. Goodbye.'

He didn't answer. She heard the front door of the apartment close behind him. She went back to the sofa and sat down, shaking. The brandy was untouched in the glass. On an impulse she reached for the phone and dialled the Bradfords' number, without knowing what she was going to say when someone answered. But the ringing went on and on until she put the receiver back. They were still out, probably with Ruth and the others. She finished the brandy and began to cry again.

‘Darling, do you want a drink?' Bob Bradford put his arm round his wife and kissed her. It had been a long evening. Ruth had insisted on going on to the Peppermint Lounge to show her husband the dancing, and it was past three when they finally broke up. He was very fond of his sister; unlike so many of the very rich, the Bradfords were a united and affectionate family, but he found her energy a little exhausting. She never seemed to tire, and when it wasn't marriage or travelling that provided her with an interest, it was involving herself in complicated battles with their trustees over the terms of her mother's will.

Much of the evening had been spent in discussing the particular section of the trust it would benefit her and Bob to have broken, and he had felt sorry that Terese had been left out, like the Englishman, who sat gazing down at the mass of gyrating, twisting couples on the floor of the Peppermint Lounge as if he had taken a table at the reptile house in the Bronx Zoo. The Bradfords had millions, but there were so many strings attached that Ruth found it a real brake on her activities.

She was determined, and she had spent a large part of the evening proving it, to her brother, to release more money for their joint benefit.

He thought that Terese looked very tired, and rather silent. She had gone into their bedroom and said nothing since they got back. He stood in the doorway, a whiskey in his own glass, and repeated the question.

‘Would you like a drink, sweetheart? I need one, after this evening. My God, Ruth's taken the bit this time! I couldn't do a damned thing with her!'

‘I don't want anything, darling. Let's go and sit in the study while you have your drink. I'm not really tired at all.' She had made up her mind to take Joe Kaplan's advice, and to act on it immediately, while her resolution was still strong. And meeting Karl at the theatre had shaken her so badly that she couldn't wait till the morning. If she did, she might never try to go away at all. If he called her, and they met, she couldn't trust herself not to delay, just for a week, just to see him once or twice more.