‘Pippa has had her money stolen, lots of it!’ The news whizzed round the village where we live like a fire through a sugar cane field. Everyone was horrified.
I commiserated with her over breakfast in the mild winter sunshine.
‘Plain and simple, ‘she said to me while buttering her toast, ‘I was seduced into giving my bank card details to a scumbag who was a con man of great talent.’ She had resigned herself to her loss and though still angry she was calm. ‘Ultimately I only have myself to blame.’
She went on to describe how a phone call one afternoon turned her life upside down in an hour or so.
‘Michael here,’ said a deep fruity cakey sort of voice when she answered the phone. She admits she was instantly beguiled by his beautiful voice into listening to his extraordinary tale.
He claimed to be phoning from her bank and had all the details of her accounts.
‘Your bank account is being hacked as we speak and I can prevent you from being robbed,’ he said speaking urgently.
Of course he needed the crucial three number code on the back of her card. He had ALL the other details.
She argued vigorously that it wasn’t right for her to divulge such information.
But his calm choclatey voice continued in his persuasive tone, ‘but ma’m you have to help us to help you. That is our job.’
He had a brainwave.
‘I tell you what, you phone me at the Bank’s Fraud Squad division and ask for Michael Ngwenya (which co-incidentally means ‘crocodile’) The switch board will put you through to me. Will that help?’
He soothed her fears and reassured her that the bank only had her best interests at heart.’
She phoned and a very efficient receptionist put her through to Michael Ngwenya and at last she was literally persuaded against her better judgement, seduced into divulging information that one should NEVER give out and yes, she was robbed of a large sum of money.
When she realised that she had been conned and the bank could not recompense her as she had voluntarily given out her private information she was hysterical for a while and then became resigned to her loss.
As a writer of a column for the local newspaper she told her story simply and called it the Fateful Seduction. Her generosity in sharing her embarrassing story has no doubt prevented the con man and his pretend fraud division from continuing with his seductive, persuasive gambit.
‘I wish you could have heard the so called Michael’s voice,’ she breathed in deeply, and rolled her eyes in a dreamy fashion, ‘utterly beautiful, a siren call. What a wake-up call!’ she yelped and smacked the table with the flat of her hand.
The following is a bit of the story from Joanne Harris’s book, The Lollipop Shoes. It describes a seduction of a different type.
It describes a con man who is an artist with a slight degree of skill.
He begins the seduction by a friendly call to a woman, usually someone rather plain and on her own. ‘Hey… it’s you!’ It gives her a warm glow to be recognised, even erroneously.
A conversation is struck up and the woman in question is persuaded against her better judgement because she KNOWS that she doesn’t have exceptional cheek bones or a wonderfully proportioned face, that she should be his model for a portrait.
She is of course seduced by this unusual attention.
Of course he is good looking and has a melodic voice. The ‘charming’ conversation begins to pall so he moves on and starts to sketch. It’s done in indecent haste and at an outrageous price. (10% for the sketch, 90% for the flattery).
Finally, realising that she has fallen for his artful seduction, she pays up, too embarrassed to make a scene in a Parisian café frequented by the ‘who’s who’ of society.
What she does with her masterpiece is her business.
If she were a woman like Pippa, whose sense of humour and self-confidence are delightfully outrageous, she would have entertained her friends with an honest and self-effacing account. She would most probably have framed the portrait and hung it behind the ‘loo’ door, showing her real opinion of the artist’s work!
One of the benefits of growing older and wiser is that I have grown out of enjoying having a friend, sister or aunt confide a secret in me.
I am the most easily seduced person where secrets are concerned.
I mean to keep them. I really do, but somehow other interested parties have the skill to winkle them out of me. I can deny all knowledge, I can say I’ll be murdered if I divulge the said secret but I always fall for the seductive tricks of the person begging to be let in on the surprise party, pregnancy or private overheard conversation.
I now have the confidence to stop people as soon as they hunch their shoulder against listening ears of other diners in a restaurant, cast an leering eye over that same shoulder and assume a grave tone in preparation for ‘sharing’ a secret with me.
‘Stop! Don’t tell me,’ I beg, ‘you don’t want me to know whatever it is you are about to tell me. I really mean to keep it secret but it is beyond me not to tell the town crier of the town and everyone will know by sunset. Something inside, and I pound my chest as though it is to blame, tells me that I owe it to any old nosy parker to be open and honest with them.
I urge the person about to ‘spill their beans’ to have a slice of scrumptious lemon meringue pie to take their minds off confiding in me.
I must sadly admit that I’m getting fewer invitations for coffee or lunch at the local Bistro these days.
I know of course that the word seduction is usually used in a sexual sense.
I’ve seen the pretty girls who twirl a lock of hair and look seductively out of smouldering eyes whilst licking their lips slowly to get their man across a crowded room.
Pixabay
I tried it myself once and when I was asked by Pippa if I had indigestion and would I like an antacid, I never tried that ruse again.
I leave that kind of thing to the experts and hope they can cope with the consequences of their usually foolish actions.
So the art of seduction should only be engaged in by actors and actresses as their aim is to get people, man, woman or child to behave in a certain way that is foolish and possibly criminal.
Decent, normal people should have ‘no truck’ in seducing anyone to do anything against their better judgement, whether it is persuading someone to buy something they CANNOT afford, giving a child an offer of an ice cream to tempt them into a motor car or a tempting voice urging me to give them my hard earned cash.
There is no glory whatsoever in such devious behaviour.
It will lead to at least a feeling of extreme embarrassment, or at worst, total heart break.