Joely thought of the paintings she’d seen earlier, and since most were nudes it was clear that stripping off wasn’t a hobby the young Freda had grown out of.
‘That girl,’ Freda continued, ‘and I call her that girl because she feels like a stranger after all these years, someone who had nothing to do with me … That girl was in love with herself and her body and most definitely with all the new things that were happening to it. When sexual desire first comes alive it has a kind of rawness to it, don’t you think, a hunger, a greed that has no recognition of its power, or direction to proper satisfaction. It takes over, consuming the mind and the body – and we have to remember that I came from a home where carnal pleasure wasn’t only permissible, it was virtually obligatory.’ Her eyes sparked as she said, ‘Put more simply, I was determined to get the man everyone else wanted. I had to have him; it meant everything to me. Not that I could have articulated that to myself at the time. What girl of that age could?’
Not many, Joely thought, remembering how she too had gone through a phase around that age of believing herself to be all powerful where boys (not men) were concerned, and Holly was definitely feeling it. Please God, don’t let her be trying to seduce one of the schoolmasters. She said, ‘I’m still getting the sense that you’re angry with yourself, that you detest what you did, whatever it was – so is this memoir about punishing yourself?’
Displeasure flashed sharp in Freda’s eyes but was quickly gone. ‘Yes, I suppose it is about punishment,’ she conceded, ‘but it’s also about understanding and truth.’ She raised a hand as Joely started to speak. ‘A lot of lies were told back then. Lies that hurt people, destroyed people, and they have to be exposed, that’s why I say it’s about truth. Now, do you think it’s time to put the veg on?’
As they worked together around the Aga and set the table Joely found herself wondering if she liked the older Freda any more than the younger one. Actually, she decided she had some sympathy with the fifteen-year-old narcissist for she at least had naivety on her side. The older Freda had nothing like it, so it was understandably hard to warm to her, and yet Joely couldn’t deny that the reason she felt hostile towards her was because of the way she’d so curtly and condescendingly criticized her literary effort.
You need to get over yourself, Joely. This isn’t about you, it’s about her and whatever it is she needs to get off her chest. It’s the only reason you’re here, not to like her, or make her your best pal, or be her therapist, it’s to play midwife to this burden of hers that she’s apparently determined to bring into the world.
‘The song, “Young Girl”,’ Freda said as they ate. ‘Did you know it before you took this assignment?’
‘Vaguely,’ Joely replied. ‘I had to find it on YouTube while I was in town, to be sure I was thinking of the right one.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. As far as I’m aware there haven’t been any covers and I don’t suppose there will be. In this day and age it could be seen as promoting paedophilia, but for us girls, back then …’ Her eyes drifted as she presumably returned to the past. ‘We all believed it was about us and not one of us gave a moment’s thought to the wrongness of it, I suppose because falling for older men is what girls do, isn’t it? And we all know how irresistible most men find young girls.’
Thinking that was truer than most would want it to be, Joely said, ‘I have to ask if Sir found his piano student irresistible, or was it all one-sided?’
Freda regarded her archly, her eyes taking on an intensity that made Joely uncomfortable. ‘Do you think it was all one-sided?’ Freda countered. ‘That only she had the crush?’
‘Actually, no, but I’m getting the impression you want her to take the blame.’
Freda put down her fork and reached for her wine as she dabbed her mouth with a napkin. ‘You’re running ahead with all sorts of assumptions,’ she accused. ‘I don’t blame you, it’s human nature to try to work out where a story is going, what the outcome will be. We do it all the time when we read books or watch films, we’re always trying to second-guess the writer as though we have to prove that we’re cleverer than him or her. I wonder why we feel compelled to do that? Is there something wrong with just waiting for the narrative to unfold?’
Taking it as the criticism she knew it to be, Joely said, ‘OK, I won’t ask again what comes next, I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me.’
Freda continued to eat. ‘Would I be right in saying that so far you’re considering Sir to be a victim?’
Joely said, ‘I don’t think he can be that, given his age and position, but he could be considered prey.’
Freda broke into a smile at that. ‘Yes, prey,’ she agreed. ‘He was her prey – until he wasn’t any more.’
Joely continued to eat, presuming Freda was going to expound on the verbal trickery.
‘Nabokovian games,’ Freda stated.
Having no idea what that meant, Joely helped herself to more pie.
‘You know who Nabokov is?’ Freda asked.
‘Didn’t he write Lolita?’
‘Yes, he did. Have you read it?’
Joely shook her head.
‘Humbert – you know Humbert is the main protagonist – he claims to be a hebephiliac. This is someone who has a sexual preference for children in early adolescence, usually up to fourteen, but I think we can stretch it to fifteen. A paedophile is generally recognized to be a person whose attraction is for pre-pubescents. Eleven and under.’
Wanting to be sure she was following this, or maybe she didn’t want to follow it at all, Joely said, ‘So are you suggesting that a hebephiliac is more acceptable than a paedophile?’
‘Don’t you think so?’
All Joely could really think was that she’d rather not be having this conversation, but she said, ‘I guess I’d prefer it if neither of them existed.’
Freda didn’t appear to disagree. ‘The problem is we don’t choose our sexual proclivities, we’re born with them – or are we conditioned into them?’ She puzzled that for a moment. ‘I’d say both are possible, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s just deal with those whose chemical make-up comes into the world with them. They don’t at any point in their lives make a conscious decision to become a monster, if that’s how you’re going to view men whose predilections are for children. Do you have any, by the way?’
Startled by the question, Joely said, ‘Presuming you mean children, I have a fifteen-year-old daughter.’
Freda’s eyes widened with interest. ‘Is she healthy? Normal? A pretty girl?’
‘I’d say all of the above.’
‘So if an older man found himself attracted to her, would you consider him a monster?’
‘I’m sure I would if he did something about it.’
‘But what if you found out she’d instigated it? Do you think it would be fair for him to be labelled a paedophile for the rest of his life when her sixteenth birthday might be just around the corner and she made all the running? She’s not under eleven, she’s practically old enough to get married.’