Scene Fourteen
In the meantime, Karen couldn't believe herself, the way she was rivited to the sense of time creeping onwards, noting that Ross hadn't come back as promised. A whole mass of conflicted feelings rose up in her that she couldn't articulate. What if he had been run over by a car? What if he'd gone out to his friend's place and had got himself legless? What if he'd met a girl and had swanned over to her place? She knew that those big blue eyes could charm some nameless girl and get what he wanted from her. After all, she ruefully reflected how she had put up with his wayward ways for way too long and hadn't drawn the line as tight as she should have done. Maternal guilt had such a lot to answer for.
"Can I knock on your door and meet the shitload of ideas you've got running around
inside your head?" a distant voice interjected harshly into her closed in world. Karen blinked and saw Beth standing in front of her, hands on her hips, challenging her very status.
"I'm sorry Beth but I didn't hear you," came the reply from the careworn looking fair haired woman, fiddling with a lock of her hair in a distracted fashion. Before Beth's exasperation blew to the surface, she realised that this stressed out looking woman looked a million miles different from her confident lover and confidante.
"You might be surprised but I really believe you. I've seen you clockwatching for the past few hours and your cigarette intake has doubled."
"So what if you are," muttered Karen, guiltily stubbing out her cigarette into the already full ashtray.
"I know you're worried about Ross but you must remember that Ross is twenty years old and a grown man unless you have serious reasons that he's not acting his age," Beth offered in a tone of voice that tried to be reasonable. She foung back the temptation to be contemptuously sarcastic as a whole stream of possible advixce whirled around in her mind.
"Even though he acts like a spoilt brat, he should remember that you have a life of your own...because he hadn't got the brain to leave you his mobile number doesn't mean he should run a guilt trip on you...After dossing around and acting like you don't exist doesn't mean he can sponge off you...you'll never see the money back that he's sponged off you...he clearly doesn't give a shit about you so why should you care about him...'
She rejected every single one of them because, while they might all be undoubtedly true, this form of truthfulness would only backfire and fuel Karen's existing unhealthy tendency to bear all the guilt of the world upon her shoulders. She really didn't buy all this happy families crap being a proudly independent woman and an unashamed lesbian as well. If this was what 'happy families' was all about, then the entire world could stuff it, Beth reasoned as she knocked back her glass of wine and anger rose in her.
It wasn't only when cooler reason started to prevail when she reined in the rush of ideas and found words to say that Karen might relate to.
"The trouble is that I do have reason to believe he won't act his age. It was simpler when he was a was a smaller, simpler wirld that he moved in. The trouble with him growing up only means that he's got the mobility to get around more, the greater ability to get himself into trouble without the maturity to make the right decision...I'm sorry, darling. I've been an antisocial git and I've shut you out of everything."
"Come here, darling," Beth said, her voice soft and seductive. She really did feel desire in her feeling that her woman was back with her. Karen moved forwards into Beth's open arms who gently caressed her. The sometime mother was overwhelmed with inexpressible gratitude for Beth just being there. There was something in her large eyes, the softness of her full lips, the shape of her face and that glossy dark bobbed hairstyle that made her want to melt into her. Feelings of tenderness ran through her system that here was someone whose love was safe to receive, that didn't kick her in the teeth when help was unselfishly offered. She was such a dependable friend as well as a glorious lover. Finally Karen's fingertips were tempted to reached down to her lover's shapely backside as desires started to colour her loving feelings. She planted little kisses in gratitude along her lover's soft neck and breathed in her subtle perfume.
"I tell you what, babes. Since you've comeback, what about a drink or two and a nice evening in?" Beth purred in her sexiest voice.
"What could be better?" Karen responded in like vein, noting her friend's sharp observation about herself, her lips against Beth's ear.
She drew herself back a little and their lips met in the way they were always meant to be. After a long while exploring the delicious texture of each other's mouths, Karen drew her lover by the hand and in the general direction of their bed.
The bag lay in the corner, unregarded and irrelevant in the great scheme of things.
Suddenly, there was a loud repeated knocking at the door which told the two women that this wasn't someone briefly announcing her or his presence but someone demanding and insensitive. A sudden suspicion shot through Karen's mind.
"Hell, I bet that's Ross again," Karen exclaimed, maternal instincts visibly kicking into gear to immediately respond to the demand.
"We'll answer the door but not before we're ready," Beth interjected in decisive tones.
While Karen hastily shot out of bed, Beth coolly reached for a reasonably decorous nightdress and started brushing her hair into its customary elegant bob. As she popped on her slippers, Karen feverishly wrenched on her nightie and was about to rush towards the front door when Beth laid her hand on her partner's arm.
"Remember, it's our flat and even if it is your son making that bloody awful row, he can't come the spoiled brat routine. It's not as if he's been the dutiful considerate son."
The dark haired woman's quiet words finally had its effect and cut through deeply buried but none the less powerful instincts. She stopped to adjust her dishevelled nightie and ran a brush briefly through her hair.
"You're right, darling. Now we'll sort him out," she said her mouth set in a determined line.
Karen reached the front door and flung it open, abruptly stopping her son from barging in.
"What the hell were you doing making that almighty racket. We've got neighbours you know."
"Most people are up at this hour though I suppose you've been screwing your bird," Ross replied with a disapproving scowl on his face. To his secret disappointment, there was noone on the landing.
"Ross, come in while I set down a few boundaries around here. You're still the teenage brat that I need to make a few matters clear to,"Karen retorted, her blue eyes flashing fire and that unmistakeable mother tone in her voice, the aspect of her past persona that Ross found unwelcome and uncomfortable, not to mention the prison officer persona that she'd once been and didn't shake off at the end of her shift. Temporarily submissive, he followed his mother inside while Beth looked on with delighted interest.
"Take a seat," Karen gestured curtly to the armchair while Beth followed Karen to the settee.
"First thing you've got to know is that you don't ask two lesbians what they do in the privacy in their own bedroom. That is totally off limits. Secondly, you had better get it into your head that Beth, my partner is with me for the long run.
"Like Steve was?"countered Ross "I remember you introducing me as your new partner. He was the one that introduced you into the prison service so you spent more and more time on late shifts so I got some childminder dumped on me that I didn't want while you were mooning after some new guy."
"Ross, we're talking about the present, not the past," cut back Karen, slightly colouring at the undoubted truth of his remarks. Why the hell should she be imprisoned by her son for the mistakes of her past, she thought to herself rebelliously, fighting to not get sucked into the swamp of an infinity of guilt that could never be assuaged. "You're not some helpless child but an independent twenty year old so you'd better talk like one. Yes, I made mistakes in my choices of men, your father included but you better believe me when I say that if I'd met Beth years before, I wouldn't have got into all the messes I got into."
"So you thought you'd try women for a change, like a change in fashion?"
"You are totally trivialising my situation," exploded Karen, hardly believing her ears."Who the hell are you to tell me what to do with my life? If you must know, I had a lifelong lousy choice in men. Just why they turned out self centred, unreliable, dishonest with a superficial charm for which I fell hook, line and sinker, you'd better ask them not me. Beth is the real thing and they're not. You'd better get used to her being around in my life for a long, long time to come."
Instinctively, Beth's hand reached out to her partner's who she admired so much for fighting back under the weight of family centred moral blackmail, something she knew to be a powerfully destructive force when it could do so much good in the world. Karen's hand moved towards hers and their fingers and palms became strongly interlinked.
"I suppose you can't keep yourself off each other," Ross sneered
"That's enough Ross," cut in Beth at last. "Your mother has told it like it is. You can't change our situation so you'd better accept it."
"You can't tell me what to 're not my dad," Ross shot back, trying the oldest trick in the book. To his dismay, this frighteningly self assured woman looked back scornfully while his mum took up the cudgels with perfect controlled ease. Karen felt as comfortable here as she had done in giving evidence before the Old Bailey.
"Look at it this way, Ross. You're either a brattish adolescent or a spoilt child in which case I can tell you what to do. If you're really being a man , though you sound far too much like your dad for my liking, then Beth and I have every right to make a reasoned case and you are obliged to do the same in return. Emotional manipulation is out and so is moral blackmail."
"So I suppose your mind's made up, as usual. I don't get a look in."
You don't see that we've been extraordinarily patient with you. This is the one and only privilege you'll get. We don't take this sort of crap from strangers, from people we know and we certainly don't take it from you, Ross. We can certainly flourish with your so- called moral disapproval. That's your problem, not ours."
"So the door's shut here. I might as well piss off back to my crappy flat," Ross said sulkily, making an obvious attempt to glance round at the comfortable surroundings which were to be denied him.
"The trouble is that you want to have it both ways, Ross. I'm not going to tear myself apart why you haven't made more of yourself than you have. That's for you to work out, same as I did when I joined the WRAF when I was seventeen."
"We're not shutting the door, Ross,"Beth gently interjected, feeling for the sadness that her partner clearly felt."It's up to you to prove yourself if you want to come around. If we have a repetition of this bad behaviour, the door is closed."
Ross saw the way that his mother's jaw was set and he'd come to the end of the line in trying to get his own way. He wanted out of here but not without one last try at getting something out of her for old times sake.
"I'm a bit short of money, mum. Can you lend me a fiver till I get paid at the end of the week. I'll come back, honest."
Karen got up without saying anything. Ross was watching his mother's slim legs and couldn't help noticing her sense of dignity as her nightdress covered her reasonably decorously. Her whole manner wasn't that of the floozie who had been caught in flagrente but she was his mother. She had always been strong but had always been vulnerable to his demands on her as a hardworking woman who had never been round long enough as a child and whose male partners had undercut her efforts to create a normal home. The trouble was that he had always been necessary to her as a symbol of her normality and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she didn't need that anymore. She wasn't his mother on the terms that had been and he resented her taking that power from him. It escaped his mind that he hadn't been around when she was going through living hell with a court case hanging over her for a hit and run accident she wasn't responsible for. He was off doing other things and, besides, he didn't read the papers and the TV news was part of the boring bit he didn't want to know about.
In this silence, Karen found her handbag, tore it open and thrust the note angrily into his hand.
"I mean a tenner. I could really do with it," he said in that wheedling tone of voice.
"A fiver you asked for, a fiver you get. Don't you pull that stunt on me. This is the way it is. I really don't expect you to come back and repay the fiver but I'm willing to be proved wrong. If you do, you go up in my estimation. If I see you in a couple of months trying to cadge more money off me, the answer's no with a capital N. I could have been stuck in prison for all you cared if it hadn't been for my female friends while you were off being independent," Karen said with a sneer that cut like a knife while tightening her grip on her lover's firm clasp. "Like Beth says, it's up to you to prove yourself. That's the way things go."
The young man took the money and shambled out. He couldn't think of anything else to do but to go to the boozer. It was a step up from what he'd been recently doing though he wouldn't tell his mother that.
"Beth, I want to take you to bed and show you that I don't need men anymore," Karen said with an undertone of desperation.
This took Beth momentarily aback. She knew that Karen wanted to penetrate her in the way they normally didn't do in the daytime. If it meant that her lover would feel the better for it and it meant so much to her, she'd go along with it. she knew that there wasn't a simple straight line that instigated their lovemaking.
"You mean your son as well," questioned Beth, summoning up the courage to deal with the one area in her lover's life that some would think a weakness and others would think an unbreakable obligation.
"He knows by now what he needs to do with his life," Karen answered shortly. "I can't live my life through him to get him to do the right thing. Whatever claim he has on me isn't unconditional. You can't choose your family but I can choose my lover."
The broad smirk with which Karen spoke the last lines showed Beth how single minded were Karen's desires for her.
"Right now, I love the idea of being chosen- and everything that goes with it," came her softly spoken, downcast lidded response.
She let Karen take her by the hand back to their bedroom where the fair haired woman took her in her arms and hungrily kissed her. This was the start to them disrobing each other and when they were lying naked in bed, Karen reached for their bedside cupboard and reached for her strap-on. She looked at herself with satisfaction in the way she looked and, for a second, Beth wondered if Karen's hunger to make love was going into a dimension she wasn't ready for.
"Don't worry darling." Karen said, an unexpected softness in her voice. "I'm not about to ravish you- certainly not in a way you don't want."
"You mean it," Beth couldn't help herself from saying.
"Of course I do." Karen said gently, softly kissing her lover's eyes tenderly."Don't worry, I've been on the receiving end before. I wouldn't do that to you ever. That would be a gross betrayal."
All the tension that had build up in Beth eased out of her body. Karen had felt that and it impelled her to speak. She was going to make love to her in a way both women wanted. Gently, she pressed at Beth where she was soft and yielding and to her delight, she felt her lover's legs open and be ready to receive her