Read Online The Tamarind Seed by Evelyn Anthony - Free Book Online

took her hand. ‘Tell me what happened. What did he do to you to spoil you for me?’
    â€˜I met him about eight, nine months ago. He was the only man I’ve been involved with since Pat died,’ She had told Sverdlov, very briefly, that she had been married and lost her husband in a motor accident. He hadn’t seemed interested and the subject dropped. ‘I wanted to work hard and get over his death. I kept everyone at a distance; I was quite happy. Then some friends asked me and Nancy Nielson, that’s my boss’s daughter, to come to Washington for a weekend and I met Richard Paterson. He called me in New York and took me out to lunch.’
    â€˜How long did it take him to sleep with you?’ Sverdlov asked. ‘Did he send you flowers, tell you he loved you?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Judith sounded unsteady. ‘Exactly like that. Lunch, dinner, phone calls. Then the final date when he told me he was getting a divorce from his wife, and I let him come back to the apartment with me. I believed him, Feodor. She wasn’t with him, everyone knew she’d refused to come over.’
    â€˜And so you became lovers. Was he a good lover, did he please you?’
    â€˜I’m not prepared to answer that.’ She pulled her hand away. ‘You’re making this sound revolting, like some sordid roll in the hay. It wasn’t like that. I told you, I was in love with him.’
    â€˜I see,’ Sverdlov said. ‘I am sorry. Why is it all over then?’
    â€˜Just chance,’ she said. ‘Pure bloody chance. I was having lunch with some people who knew him, not very well, and they had no idea about him and me—the wife said she’d met his wife in Washington. She’d joined him months ago, and he never said a word to me. But the real thing that finished it was when I heard she was having a baby.’ Sverdlov said nothing. When she began to cry he didn’t move, he went on sitting in the darkness, smoking. Below them the sea rolled up the beach, clawing the stones and sand in its retreat. It was a beautiful clear night.
    â€˜I felt so cheap,’ Judith said. ‘He’d lied and lied to me, letting me think he was serious and that after his divorce we might … Oh, all right he never actually said it, but he let me think it! Can’t you understand that?’
    â€˜Very well,’ the Russian said. ‘So while he was loving you, he was reconciled to his wife and in her bed as well? And so you can’t forgive him for making a fool of you.’
    â€˜It’s more than that,’ Judith said angrily. ‘I trusted him. I would never have started an affair if I’d known his wife was going to join him. If he’d told me the truth I’d have broken it off at once.’
    â€˜That’s why he didn’t tell you, because he knew what you would do. He was in a very fortunate position; a charming mistress in New York and a wife in Washington. Aren’t you really upset with him because he did it to his wife and gave her a child? Isn’t that what hurts, not this great love?’
    â€˜It all hurts,’ she said. ‘You can interpret it how you like—make it squalid and cheap if you want to, because that’s exactly how I see it! And especially myself. I feel so sorry for that woman, thinking he was being genuine, staying alone in Washington having his baby while he came up and down twice a week to stay with me! I’m a great judge of character, aren’t I?’
    â€˜No, I think you are terribly bad,’ he remarked. ‘He is an ambitious man. Very correct, very interested in himself. I suppose you could say he was good looking, if you like that kind of face. Which you did, of course. I would say he was dull.’ He stretched in the chair; below them the night watchman plodded through the sand, his torch flashing round the bungalows. ‘Very dull,’ he continued. ‘I would be much